The Happy Hour Choir (18 page)

He sat on the piano bench, his nose hovering only inches from mine. Even as young as he was, he knew it would be completely unprofessional to make a pass at me. I, on the other hand, could always kiss him.

There'd been a time I would've kissed a man for the chance to leave town.

That time had passed. I looked straight ahead. “That's certainly something to think about.”

He sighed. “Do you have a business card on you?”

A business card? What would it say? Beulah Land, Prodigal Daughter and Honky-Tonk Piano Player?
“Um, no.”

He reached for his wallet and took out two business cards. “Keep this one. Put your info on the other. I'll give you a call if anything pans out.”

“I'd appreciate that,” I said, even though I didn't expect anything to “pan out.”

He slipped out the door, and I helped myself to a beer from the cooler before flopping down in one of the café chairs to study his business card and think.

Ginger said I needed to go to college and get a real job, but that didn't appeal to me for many reasons. This Derek dude said I could work as a studio musician, but did I want to do that right now with Ginger feeling as poorly as she did? If I told her, she would insist I needed to strike while the iron was hot—as if I would even think about leaving her at a time like this.

Then there was the question of Luke, Mr. You're-the-One-Who-Turned-Me-Down. Did I dare walk across that parking lot and try one more time?

I almost made it to the door, but I chickened out and went for another beer instead.

Chapter 21

T
wo beers led to four. I heard lots of voices in my head. On the one hand, I heard Luke saying, “For the record, it was you who turned me down.” Then I heard the cocky intern's “Now, you? You've got what it takes.” I laughed. I cried. It was
not
better than
Cats.

Sometime around two in the morning I got the bright idea to call Tiffany.

“Hey, Tiffany. 'S me, Beulah.”

“It's almost three. Are you drunk?”

“No.” The Fountain dipped and spun around me like a Tilt-A-Whirl. “Maybe.”

She yawned. “Do you need me to come get you?”

“No. If Ginger asks, tell her I'm going to be later than usual.”

Tiffany paused. “Are you sure you don't want me to come get you?”

I shook my head then remembered that phones didn't yet allow head shaking to come through. “I won't drive till I'm okay.”

“That should be about noon tomorrow,” Tiffany muttered.

“Then I'll sleep on the risers. Sorry I woke you up.”

“God, Beulah. Be careful.”

“I always am.”
Not.

After she hung up I stood there until the phone made that annoying you-left-me-off-the-hook sound. Then I looked down at the phones in each hand, unable to remember if I'd been talking to her on my cell phone or on the old rotary phone that hung on the wall. Finally, my brain cells remembered only the landline made that obnoxious sound, so I hung up the wall phone and put the cell in my pocket.

The phone confusion should've been the first clue I wasn't doing my best thinking.

I had taken five steps across the parking lot when I remembered Bill had asked me to lock up. I pivoted and staggered back, tripping over a large piece of gravel.

That should have been the second clue.

Once I'd locked up, I took the stairs of the parsonage at a slow clip, shuffled the two steps to the door, then knocked loudly, wincing at how the sound reverberated oddly. The world spun around me. We had moved from the Tilt-A-Whirl to the Gravi-tron, only I had my forehead against the clapboard to the side of the door instead of having my back plastered against a wall.

Luke opened the door with a scowl on his face. “Beulah, what are you up to at this time of night?”

I answered him with a kiss, a sloppy, drunken kiss. Then the scent of his skin and the scratch of his not-quite beard stirred something I had forgotten or had maybe never known, and I kissed him for real.

My memory's a little shaky, but I still say he kissed me back. When I trailed my hands down his bare chest, though, he grabbed my wrists.

“What are you doing?” he panted.

“What does it look like I'm doing?” I tried to pull my hands free, but he wouldn't let me.

“Why?”

“I'm not turning you down.” This time when I kissed him I had enough wits about me to make it tender, framing his face with my hands before letting them wander. He refused to give in. My hands wrapped around him and traveled down his back to his ass. Boxer briefs, not tighty whities. I giggled, but he growled.

He pulled me inside and slammed the door hard enough that somewhere a picture fell off the wall. Pushing me against the door, he gave in completely, kissing his way from my neck back up to my lips and across my other jawline.

“Be my David,” I whispered.

“What?”

“I'll be Bathsheba, and you . . . you can be my David.”

His eyes shone intensely. I sucked in a deep breath while he weighed his options. He muttered something under his breath, but I drew him close again. Finally, his lips found mine and his hand started a steady climb from my waist. My heart did a somersault at being wanted, at being chosen after all.

His hands roamed all over my body, while mine remained fascinated by his arms, his chest, and his powerful shoulders. He backed us in the direction of the living room, and I let him pull me. When we reached the couch, he pulled me down on top of him. What few brain cells I had snapped and popped until I thought my brain might explode from the sheer bliss of my body resting on top of his.

And then he ripped his lips from mine with a ragged sigh.

Before I could fully process what was going on, he stood at the end of the couch looking down. “If Eve was anything like you, no wonder Adam was a goner.”

“Then why don't you come down here and take a bite?”

He leaned forward, but stepped back with a “Dammit, no!” then muttered what I thought was “Not again. Not this time.” He ran a hand through his hair, and this time a few strands didn't make it back into place. I would've cheered if my head hadn't been spinning and I hadn't been so afraid I'd done something wrong yet again.

“Beulah, I can't be your David.”

“Luke, that was me flirting. I want you for you.” My response startled me. Apparently, I'd had more than enough beer to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

His eyes looked gray in the dim kitchen light shining over his shoulder. “But for how long?”

My quick answer scared me. What was I saying? Hell, I was too drunk to know what I was saying.
Or drunk enough to tell the truth.

If I gave him the answer he was looking for, I would probably get exactly what I wanted—even more, if his response to my kiss was any indication. If I gave him the wrong answer, though, I knew he was going to send me packing. My brain swam.

To my credit, I stuck with the truth. “I don't know.”

His strong shoulders slumped. “The intern said no, didn't he?”

“Yes, but—”

He released my wrists. “And you've had too much to drink, haven't you?”

“Probably, but—”

“Then your heart's not in the right place. I'll get my keys and drive you home.” He walked down a short hallway and returned shrugging into a T-shirt.

He pulled me to my feet, and I stood there in his living room, mouth agape. The world had slowed down considerably, almost enough for the embarrassment to creep in.

We didn't say anything on the way home. He never once chastised me nor did he tease me. He killed the engine in the driveway, and he turned to look at me. “Beulah, I'm not the saint you seem to think I am. I don't know what's between us, but I think it'd be best to forget tonight happened for now.”

Fat chance
. But I swallowed hard and nodded affirmatively.

“And don't drink so much. Not when you're sad—especially not when you're sad.”

I nodded again. He had reverted to preacher mode, a stilted, authoritarian tone far different from his whisper of “And for the record, it was you who turned me down.”

“I care a lot about you.” He reached for my cheek, but his hand landed on my shoulder instead. “We all do.”

My eyes met his but quickly looked away. He hadn't been willing to give me the help I needed—at least not the help I thought I needed.

“Thanks for the ride.” I scooted out of his car before he could tell me anything else that might make me want to cry.

Ever the gentleman, he waited until I made it inside before starting his car and backing down the drive. I closed the door behind me and leaned against its solidity. I had kissed a minister. I had had every intention of fornicating with a minister. No fewer than twelve of my Baptist ancestors were rotating in their graves like pigs on spits while demons readied my room in hell.

I tiptoed across the foyer and made it as far as the bottom step before I heard Ginger's voice.

“Beulah Lou,” she said softly. “I think you need to come in here and have a seat with me.”

My head whipped around, but it took me a few seconds to adjust enough to the dark to see her. She sat in the recliner, with her hands splayed at the end of the armrests and her fingers digging into their cushioning.

“Are you okay? What are you still doing up?”

“I'm fine.” She grimaced, and the pain etched in lines above her would-be eyebrows proved her a liar.

“You are not okay. Let me take you to the doctor.”

“Nothing they can do. It's this damn itching. I itch all over, but there's not a scratch in this world that will fix it.”

I had some idea of what that was like. Well, but there was a cure for me. I just couldn't seem to get my hands on him. “Can't we do something?”

“Oh, baby, it'll pass. It always does.” Ginger shifted in her seat. “Celebrating too much?”

“No. The intern didn't think our little group was marketable. He said we might be able to rent a studio and do it ourselves, maybe sell copies out of the trunk of our car.”

“Well, then. Do that!”

“Now, Ginger. Can you imagine me loading everyone up for a trip to Nashville?”

“Then do a recording at the church or the bar or something. There's no rule that says it has to be fancy.”

“That's not the worst idea. I'll think about it.” I didn't tell her about his studio musician suggestion. I wasn't sure how I felt about that yet.

She grunted as she shifted again. “His loss. Who drove you home?”

I opened my mouth to ask her how she knew that, but Ginger never missed a beat. She had heard the car pull up, kill its engine, then start up again. “Luke.”

She nodded, her eyes closed. She had known the answer before she asked the question.

“That was nice of him,” she said. Her grip eased on the arms of the chair, and the creases in her brow lessened as her eyes remained closed.

“Yes,” I said softly. “Yes, it was.”

“Turned you down, huh?”

I plopped on the end of the couch closest to her chair. “He turned me down flat. I don't know what I was thinking.”

“You weren't, but that's not entirely a bad thing. Luke's too much of a gentleman to sleep with you while you're drunk,” Ginger's words were slurred. She turned to shine her bleary eyes on me for a moment before looking back at the ceiling and letting her eyelids droop.

“He's too much of a gentleman in general.”
Your heart's not in the right place.

“Take off the ‘gentle,' and you'll have what Luke is, and there are damn precious few of those running around.” A few of the lines in her brow disappeared. Whatever had caused the itch was receding.

“Ginger, do you think Luke could ever fall in love with a girl like me?”

But she didn't answer because she'd fallen asleep.

That night I sat on the couch to be near her. I had no desire to sleep, but I needed to be close to her, to hear the sound of her breathing. She would inhale, hold her breath, then let it go with a snore. Each time she held her breath I held mine.

I wanted to tell her more. I wanted to tell her about knocking on a preacher's door for a booty call. I wanted to ask her what she thought about Luke's conversation in the driveway. Did she think we could forget what happened? Did she think we should?

In the end, I couldn't bear to wake her up once she was peaceful. And I couldn't bear the thought of disappointing her, of showing her how I hadn't learned from my mistakes. She would've understood me, though. She would have told me I staggered across that parking lot due to a primal need I'd never had the chance to figure out on my own. She would have pointed out that Bathsheba's tale of losing one baby but gaining another had given me hope.

But Ginger wasn't awake to counsel me through my feelings.

Nor was she at the parsonage to assure Luke my intentions had been purer than even I had intended.

Tears coursed silently down my cheeks because life without Ginger was going to be a life without someone to champion me, without someone to explain to me why I did the things I did.

I reached over to squeeze her hand, but I couldn't bring myself to possibly interrupt her hard-won sleep. Instead I whispered, “Ginger Belmont, I love you more than you'll ever know.”