Unc disappeared to the back. He swore he was fine, just needed to catch up with some liquor orders, and promised to return for closing duties. I didn’t believe him, but I let him take the break he was unwilling to confess he needed.
As things start to slow down and customers go home, some alone and some partnered off, I finally make my way back toward Bobby feeling like an out-of-her-league moth drawn not just to a single flame but to a huge bonfire.
He’ll burn me. I know it as surely as I know the sun’s going to rise in a few hours. Hell, he’d probably destroy me, leaving ash in his wake as he sauntered on to the next groupie.
So it’s a good thing I’m not here for him. I’m here for Unc, and I don’t need any distractions.
Not even Bobby Tannen.
“Couldn’t avoid me anymore?” His voice is gravel and grit, like he gargled sand for breakfast, followed it with a diet of black coffee and whiskey, and then screamed his throat raw. It sounds more animal than man, but I know that when he sings, honey coats that gruffness, making his words melt into your heart.
“I wasn’t . . .” The words taper off at the sharp rise of his brow. I’m busted. I know it. He knows it too, so there’s no point in pretending. “Sorry.”
“Apology accepted.” He blinks and it’s like it never happened. “You think about my offer?”
My mind whirls, not sure what he’s asking because his eyes have been offering me all sorts of things. As if he knows exactly the thoughts going through my head, he leans closer and whispers, “For me to show you around town. I can take you to all the best spots for pictures.”
How does he make ‘pictures’ sound like ‘sex’? Or is that just my mind dipping deep down into the gutter?
I push my bangs to the side, slipping them behind my ear so that I can focus and see him better. Seeing inside people, past their fronts and defenses, is what makes me good at what I do . . . both behind the bar and behind the lens.
On stage, he somehow seemed softer. Or vulnerable, maybe?
But now, at the bar, it’s like he’s closed off part of himself, going hard, dark, and aggressively flirtatious. I can’t decide if I like it or if it scares the shit out of me.
Instead of answering his question, I ask one of my own, going well beyond the standard superficiality of bar room flirtation and straight into date-seven territory, which is usually more than enough to scare off the typical beer drinker looking for a hookup. “What’s your happiest memory?”
“Hmm, deep question. Is this a test?” He spreads his hands out wide on the bar, and I notice just how large they are. They’d seemed almost delicate when he played his guitar, but now I can see the scars and torn cuticles. Working man hands. “So we’re clear, I like it either way.” He waits a beat then clarifies, “Test or not.”
He knows what I’m doing, trying to run him off, but he isn’t swayed in the least. If anything, he seems more intrigued by the too-personal question. Why does that smile of his feel like the sun is shining on me?
“Maybe it’s what I ask everyone who sits at my bar? Something to focus on the good times,” I say coyly, both of us knowing I don’t ask people that. But I asked him.
And not because I’m trying to run him off but because I’m flirting with him.
Me, Willow Parker, a quiet and invisible mouse, flirting with Bobby Tannen, the big, growly lion. Maybe he’ll let you check out his thorn?
My mind is so weird sometimes.
One of his dark eyebrows raises as if he’s reading my mind and agreeing with my assessment of my own oddity. But he answers my original question. “My eighteenth birthday, I was an asshole kid who thought he knew everything. Only one thing in my life kept me from the really stupid shit. Music.” He glances over his shoulder toward the stage and points to his guitar case, sounding a bit wistful as he continues. “My family saved to get me a new guitar. It wasn’t so much the guitar, though. When I opened that wrapping paper and saw Betty, I could feel their support. I still do every time I play.”