Red Hot Blues (2 page)

Blues players rarely sport tats.

The drinking in Nashville can be cool, if you
don’t abuse it, and when I turned twenty-one, I actually went out
and showed my ID
on purpose
to most of the bars. It was the
first time I ever got
really
drunk. So drunk I couldn’t
walk. How did I get home? Well, that brings us to my next best
friend, my human best friend, my roommate, and the head waitress at
the Blues Bar: Layna Roderick.

Layna is everything I’m not. She’s country,
she’s blonde, she’s green-eyed, she’s thin. She’s also the sweetest
girl I’ve ever met. I told you earlier I hate thin girls? Layna is
the exception.

We met the first night I sang at an Open Jam
at the Blues Bar. It was a Tuesday night. I signed up on the yellow
piece of notepad paper, stating that my forte was vocals, that I’d
played a bit of piano as a kid but not anymore. Layna started
serving me drinks, we started chatting, one thing led to the next,
and we ended up at two-thirty a.m. at her place (the hole above
Coyote Ugly with a view of the river) and stayed awake even longer,
talking until the sun came up.

She’s had it rough, has one kid she never
sees because she lost a custody battle with the kid’s father (rich
dude, asshole) and was deemed “unfit” as a parent. If she’s lucky,
she sees little Kenny Ray once a month, under supervision. Layna’s
had a hard life, alcoholic mother, abusive father. She herself took
too quickly to the booze at sixteen, fell pregnant at nineteen,
lost Kenny Ray to his father at twenty, and now all she’s trying to
do is make enough money to put together a case so she can get her
son back.

But before the case, comes the finances to
even
raise
a child. Money money money, it makes the world go
round. And Layna doesn’t have much of it.

We’re working on it.

I do some web design. I’ve always been
creative. Music’s my passion, but I never planned on making a
living out of it. I’ve always been good artistically and, despite
all the travelling, I did manage to get a diploma in basic web
technologies online. So that’s what I do on a small-time basis to
help pay the bills and put a little extra aside. Layna promotes me
at the bar, gives everyone who comes in a card of mine, and I give
her a cut of everything I make. It’s working out well. It’s not big
money, but it’s looking promising. I’ve done a few sites for local
musicians and, through word of mouth, I’m getting my name out
there. But my services are dirt-cheap. I don’t mind. You gotta
start somewhere.

Guys? I’ve told you my problem with that.
Maybe indirectly, but I have.

Sure, I’d like a hard-rock guy with muscles
and tattoos and sexy eyes to hold me tight from behind while we lie
and feel the cool Tennessee breeze race in through an open window,
moonlight covering our skins and softening our breaths from the
intense lovemaking we just had. I’d like to feel his hardness
behind me, caressing me just between my generous cheeks as his
calloused hand snakes around my mighty thigh, up my belly, over
onto my full and healthy breasts. I’d like to feel him turn me onto
my back, while his sturdy leg moves around me, and his manhood
presses down on me while he gently, softly, and lovingly, lowers
his lips to mine, cups my head between his hands. And kisses
me.

And then, I’d like to be taken by him. Like
he loves me.

I’m a dreamer. Always have been. But I’m not
a go-getter.

Let me tell you something about me and boys.
It all started with that incident after I hit puberty—remember, the
bikini? Cali. I hate Cali. Everyone wears bathing suits in Cali,
hardly anyone wears a shirt. I guess the only place worse than Cali
would be Florida. I avoid both like the plague. Once mom did meet a
guy from Florida. She had to dump him because I wouldn’t go with
her. It’s the only man she ever did dump because of me.

It’s
that
serious.

I was laughed at. And I guess it wasn’t
too
bad, but it started the ball rolling. But that wasn’t
the worst, just a hint. The worst came when I was seventeen, when I
was already fully developed, when I was sporting hormones that get
you thinking about sex at all sorts of odd times of the day; when I
was so hot for...
Brett Lexington
...that I would’ve done
anything to be with him.

Brett was in the football team. Brett had
girls drooling all over him. Brett got the blonde, the brunette,
and the Latino girl with tits larger than melons.

Brett also got me. Completely.

And then he dumped me.

It scarred me for life.

Was it a fetish? Did he just want to get it
on with “the big girl”? Was he just so drunk and so horny that he
couldn’t keep his boy in his pants?

Yes, I, the plumpy, overweight, blue-eyed
girl with plain-as-nothing boring-black hair, had my virginity
taken by the most wanted guy in school. And then I had my heart
stood on, kicked, and thrown in the gutter by him.

I learned a lesson there. Fat girls aren’t
screwed because someone loves us; we’re screwed because guys think
it’s easy to get in our pants, maybe even because they think we’re
desperate.

I wasn’t desperate. I’m still not. And he was
the last boy I ever let inside me, with
anything
, if you
catch my drift. He was the only boy I ever let beyond second base
with me.

Never again.

It was after a football game, afterparty. I’d
only been in the school a few months—and would only be there for
another three more, thank God! I didn’t know that then, but mom
would later find another guy and, well, the rest is history.

After the game we went to someone’s house,
big party, lots of beer, lots of whiskey, lots of spirits.
Lots
of drinking.

I had one beer. Brett? Well, he seemed OK to
me when we met secretly.

After that night, I spoke to no one again at
the school.
No one
! I was too embarrassed. Did they know?
Did the football team know?

Brett and I had been texting for a while. Not
much. And I was under no illusions that I was Scarlett Johansson or
even Kat Dennings. She has shape. I don’t.

He and I were in the same science class, sat
next to each other. We’d worked on a few projects together so, of
course, we’d exchanged numbers. No biggie. I’m smart, and he’d
needed my help on some geek stuff. I could do that. Sure, whenever
I got a text from him my heart would flutter and my throat would
swell and my skin would go moist. I’d struggle to breathe and my
chest would tighten.

Sure. And I knew I’d gone through some
hormonal changes and that, at seventeen, I was technically a
“woman” and “fertile” and all that jazz. You know, all scientific
jargon you learn about in sex-ed or even during Human Anatomy 101.
But I still felt these things.

I kept a cool head about them; really, I did.
We’d been texting every now and then, about homework, about school,
and he’d then, out of the blue, say something cool in a text like,
“You’re cool”—and I’d almost drop the phone.

Meanwhile, I knew he wasn’t interested,
because he had that blonde and that brunette and that Latino chick
all over him during school hours. He never talked to me during
school. He didn’t ignore me as such, but he didn’t come up and
speak
to me! I’d get the evil eye from the blonde whenever
I’d walk past him. I’d clutch my books to my ample chest and look
down at my feet and keep walking. Brett never shouted hi at me
while I was doing that.

But when school was out. When I was at home,
alone, doing nothing, or reading, he’d text me, and say shit like,
“You looked good at school today.”

And I’d melt.

I never chased it up, never asked him if he
wanted to date me. I was under no illusions about what I looked
like, under no pretenses as to
True Love
or
The One
or all that crap. Years of watching my mother’s miserable
relationships had taught me all I needed to know about The One and
about True Love. It doesn’t exist. There are contracts, there are
deals, and there is survival. Mom marries for money. And she’s
survived. And although I never wanted that to be me, it’s all I
knew.

It’s all I
know
.

Two weeks before the game, the texts had
become more frequent. He’d asked to meet me one day after
school.

He kissed me, in a park, under some trees.
Secretly.

We walked, sat on a swing, let the wind blow
through our hair. Said nothing.

We kissed more, no questions asked, no
explanations needed. When you’re young, you don’t look for the
negative; you’ve suffered too little to be cynical. I wasn’t
cynical. I thought this was the natural progression of things with
him.

He’d wanted to keep it quiet. I could live
with that. Maybe he’d wanted to be sure...

At school, he stopped hanging around with the
sexy
biatches
I’d seen him with before. So I knew there was
something there. I knew this might have a future.

I didn’t feel overweight in those two weeks.
I felt normal. Liked.
Loved?

We’d meet every day at the park, never at his
house. Never at mine. One day, we stayed out late, until nightfall,
and he touched me.

And I burst under him.

I was falling in love—deeply, irrevocably, in
love.

“I like you,” he said to me, both of us lying
under the stars, listening to crickets, feeling the moisture of
cooling air before rain.

“I like you, too.”

I more than liked him.

Still, he wanted us to keep things under
wraps.

Brett sent me a text before the game on that
fateful night, the night that would change my life forever, the
night from which I would never be the same again.

The text said one thing only:

I more than like u. I...well...read between
the lines.

I wrote back.
Oh?
My heart
was in my throat.

Yeah. I really do. I like u for u. And,
well...I’ll tell u in person l8er 2nite

My head was woozy.
Tell me
what?

L8er. C me after the game?

My fingers were trembling by now.
Sure. Where?

I’ll find u. Oh, & Gin, 1 more
thing...

Yeah?

Keep this 2 urself. It’s very personal 2
me.

I did.

Like I’d been doing for two weeks.

It all happened so fast. There was a throng
of people around me. The afterparty. I was indoors. Music rocked
from speakers and thin girls were twerking with hard and solid
dudes and grinding their asses against their crotches and
hollering, screaming, going “Woohoo!” and letting their dripping
hair stick to their sweaty faces while they moved their hands over
their breasts and opened their mouths just slightly, and then bent
over, slowly, and
ground
against jeans and slid their hands
down their knees...

Lights strobed and people shouted and
confusion whirled.

I was so out of my element.

I’m a little shorter than most people. All I
saw was heads, baseball caps, people around me, squashing my large
figure, bumping me, sweat forming on my arms despite the light
sundress I’d worn. I could feel the salt fall into my eyes and
sting them, body heat, the smell of stale warmth and then—

Sweet, delicate fingers entwined themselves
in mine. I knew it was him. My whole body relaxed. My muscles
eased. I breathed in deeply and it suddenly felt like I was on a
mountain of dew, sipping in the breaths of a fresh forest.

Brett had grabbed my hand.

And then he let it go.

I turned, saw him, smiling, bright eyes
shining and grin melting me from top to bottom. I was so his.

He tipped his head in the direction of the
French doors to the pool, then looked around like it was some kind
of secret. I knew the deal. He’d said so in his text:
Keep this 2 urself. It’s very personal 2 me.

You know what it’s like when you’re
seventeen. We could over-analyze it, say I was “insecure.” Maybe I
was. But, more than anything else, I was just naive. Just plain,
fucking, naive.

He made it through the throng. I had a can of
Rolling Rock in my hand. I still drank beer in those days,
occasionally. I struggled through the crowd as well, being bumped
every which way, jostled, kicked, slammed into. Eventually I got
outside. It was a fresh night, cool, crisp air. A little cold
suddenly, compared to inside. Some beer had fallen on my wrist and
I licked it off.

It was mostly dark, except for a shining blue
pool, a few pool chairs. I looked around for him, unsure where he
was. And then I felt that hand again, out of nowhere, and I heard a
laugh. A friendly laugh. Call me naive back then, but to this day I
know that laugh was genuine. It was the laugh of someone who wants
to break the mold. The laugh of someone who wants to “get it on
with the not-sexiest girl because he really likes her.” To this
day, I believe that. To this day, I believe that, no matter what
happened before or after, Brett got it on with me because he
wanted
to get it on with me. And because he liked me. No
matter what the other facts—if there really was a dare, or
whatever—he liked me. He really did.

It doesn’t make it hurt any less.

Before I knew it, we were behind the house,
my back up against a cold, brick wall. A glorious wall.
Goosepimples had formed on every pore of my bare legs, my
shoulders, my arms. Wind eased itself up my thighs. I shivered.
Brett eyed me down with golden eyes. There was a gentle whine in
our ears from the breath of the earth’s air. He eased closer to me,
and it felt like my whole body expanded by an eighth of an inch. I
held my breath, could feel his own brushing against my lips. He
wasn’t touching me, not yet, but it felt like he was.