Norah shook her head and tried again to compose a few exercises to the rhythm made by her feet. After another half lap she gave up, and slowed to stop and breathe for a while. She was always amazed that she could dance, full out, for hours on end, but when she switched to a different exercise she burned out quickly.
When she stood up, she considered calling it quits for the day. She had three classes tonight; she’d get plenty of exercise then running routines with the older girls. But just when she decided to throw in the towel she saw him coming down the stairs.
Norah was at the far side of the track, so it was impossible to make out his features, but it was him. She’d know that physique anywhere. For just a moment, standing there by herself in the cool morning sunlight, Norah lit up a blush like a firecracker. Then she pushed that thought firmly aside.
Only TJ would grasp the railing that ran up the center of the stairs like that. He was in a black sleeveless t-shirt that showed off his arms, and black shorts with white stripes down the sides. His dark hair fell casually, looking like maybe he’d just run his fingers through it.
She wondered if he spotted her.
He did.
Even at this distance she could see him freeze for just a moment, his face, and therefore his gaze, trained right on her. She didn’t move either, waiting to see if he would wave. He didn’t.
After that momentary pause, his face went back to looking at the task at hand: the stairs and the gate. He reached the bottom and stretched for just a minute.
Her breathing, which had almost been normal when she’d straightened up, had sped up again. Her heart was pounding and she wondered if he’d even call 9-1-1 if it gave out and she collapsed right now.
She started walking, continuing on the same way she’d been going, her pace slow enough that he’d see her coming. He took one glance and started off in the same direction she was headed.
She’d hoped to make eye contact, but he’d made it impossible.
Norah picked up speed, coming up behind him while he walked, his pace eating a surprising amount of ground. Still, she figured she’d pull up beside him and maybe say something.
Just as she was contemplating what to say, when she was just caddy-corner behind him on the right, his hand shot out. With a quick, casual flip of the wrist he motioned her to go around.
With that one simple gesture, he made it clear that he didn’t want to speak to her.
For a lap she was glad that she hadn’t told him anything, if this was the way he handled it. Who knew what he would have thought if she’d told him? He might have accused her of trapping him.
This time when her feet came up behind him, he didn’t even make the motion. And her brain changed as she passed him.
His stance wasn’t arrogant, it wasn’t mean. She’d betrayed him, not the other way around. Maybe that was just because she hadn’t given him the chance to, but there was no denying that she’d made the first cut.
His head turned slightly away from her as she passed, as though he couldn’t really stand to look at her. Maybe he couldn’t.
With a deep breath, she told herself again it was really all for the best. God knew what He was doing, not giving her another baby. Not giving them one to share. She should snap these feelings for TJ at the base. Make it quick and clean.
But there was nothing quick or clean about it.
It had been weeks since they’d been together and she still dreamed of him at night. Hot erotic dreams like she hadn’t suffered in years. She dreamed of him trying to hold her afterward, and her own frightened struggles against him.
She had to stop again. She couldn’t sustain the pace she’d set, so she made her way off to the outside edge of the track and clung to the fence with her hands on the top bar and her feet braced apart. For long minutes she tried to breathe deeply. She heard TJ pass by her, and wondered if he looked up to watch her.
She stayed at the track the entire time he did. Wearing herself out. Because she needed to. Hair of the dog that bit you, right?
When at last he headed up the stairs, she watched. He was tired, his legs doing too many repetitive motions for too long a distance and then tackling stairs. He’d walked further today than before, but Norah was used to TJ pushing himself.
So she hung back, finishing her lap and reaching the top of the stairs just in time to see his green Mercedes pulling out the far side of the lot. She climbed in her own car and turned the engine over.
Chapter 37
TJ had seen Norah three times at the track. Every other morning when he went she was already there. They didn’t speak, although he saw that she followed him home each time. Probably worried about his legs giving out on one of those turns.
He had no idea if she was worried about him or protecting other drivers from him. So he tried not to think about it much.
They had no real communication there, and he didn’t see her at all anywhere else. He’d tried to hide it, but JD just point blank asked Kelsey one night if Norah talked while they ran. TJ had been sitting right there and considered spontaneous combustion a real option at the time.
Kelsey had turned to him. “Not a single word about you.”
Great.
But Kelsey continued on in that woman-logic he didn’t understand. “That speaks volumes in itself. She’s playing it close to the chest.”
If that spoke volumes, Kelsey hadn’t pulled any off the shelf to read to him. So he had no idea what to make of it, and wasn’t about to turn to JD’s wife and ask.
When he was there on the track, he kept thinking Norah might just plant herself in front of him and say something. She had to know that she held those cards. That she could outrun him in any footrace these days if she so chose.
But she didn’t choose.
Even when he’d pushed himself to go too fast and he’d stumbled and gone down, she’d only briefly paused, then run on by.
He didn’t lie to himself that he didn’t harbor images of her stopping and picking up his injured hand and kissing it. But he wasn’t that injured because he’d been wearing leather biker’s gloves as he’d planned on picking up his feet and jogging a little. And he’d been thinking about the old Norah, not the one who didn’t let him in on life-altering possibilities and found it perfectly acceptable to condemn him on her father’s shoulder.
He’d gone home each day and showered, thinking that he’d wash it all away. He hadn’t been able to scrub hard enough.
He stood waiting, inside the front door of the handi-house. Most of his things were packed up. He’d been to his old house three times taking loads over. Tomorrow, he would actually vacate this place. He hadn’t wanted to do it on top of the show tonight at McMinn’s. That would just be too much at once.
JD was coming to pick him up, which was good because he was a little more nervous than normal. But that made sense, it was his first time back up on stage. Clearly everyone else was nervous about him, too.
JD pulled up in the SUV and TJ locked the front door behind him, then walked himself down the ramp. He’d warmed up his voice at home, and aside from a few words he remained silent all the way there.
The place was local so it wasn’t a long drive, but he just rolled his head from side to side and stretched his arms and legs while his brother drove. He was grateful for the big SUV then. His brother wasn’t a small guy, and TJ was bigger. Well, one inch taller—his pride and joy since he’d attained it at nineteen.
Brenda was off base about McMinn’s being nostalgic. They pulled into the back at a loading bay for the stage, not the alley entrance they’d used before. The tables were different, the stage was bigger, the manager was unfamiliar, and now half the audience was there in Wilder t-shirts, which came in too many varieties to count. Their first show here, Kelsey and her friend had showed up in shirts that Kelsey had ironed-on Wilder pictures herself. Only the beer was the same.
TJ glanced through to the crowd. The place was packed already. But that wasn’t what he was looking for.
>
JD’s voice caught him from over his shoulder. “Do you think she’ll show?”
He shook his head, not bothering to try denying it.
“Kelsey did.” JD reminded him.
That only brought a snort. “Kelsey was head over heels for you. And she didn’t lie to you, then try to get off on a technicality. It isn’t the same.”
JD nodded and TJ pulled himself back to look at the other guys. When they finished tuning up, they just nodded at each other like always and he led them out into the glare.
The house lights had dropped, leaving him virtually blind beyond the edge of the stage. With a sense of unreality about it, he took a deep breath and opened his mouth. Like always, the words just happened. He never planned them except to be sure he knew where he was, he just talked to the audience he couldn’t see.
He welcomed the crowd and thanked them for coming out and crushing themselves into too little space. He told them he was grateful that he was back up on stage and that he’d worked hard for it. Then he cracked a joke about what they should do if his legs gave out, and he pointed to a tall bar stool that was off to the side of the stage. The crowd laughed and several women promised to fetch it for him if he needed it. Another feminine voice volunteered to help keep him in the chair if he so needed it, and that time he laughed along with the crowd.
“Most of you have seen us before, and it’s a real treat to get to perform in a nice little quiet bar like this.” The crowd screamed and joked about the ‘quiet’ part. “As you know, right here is my favorite place to be.” His finger pointed at the stage between his feet.
Right then, he realized it no longer was.
For a moment he thought he might pass out, but he sustained himself. Since no one in the audience gasped or even joked about the bar stool, they must not have seen it.
Those words had always been the cue to the guys that he was done talking and they should start playing. Only he barely heard the sound of the chords that were his cue, and he missed it.
He’d never done that on stage before.
Luckily, the guys were pros, and they made a smooth repeat of the intro, which this time he grabbed onto with both hands. He didn’t miss a note, but he felt flat all evening. He didn’t shine, and it was his job to shine.
Craig outdid him on every beat of Sand, which he performed solo with the acoustic guitar. Having the others sing numbers was something usually reserved for longer shows. It was intended to give TJ a rest, and they’d decided to do it tonight in a better-safe-than-sorry measure.
JD and Alex did Go To Bed Mad, and outshone him there, too.
TJ went back up after the break the two songs had afforded. He’d used the time to drink water and get back on his A-game. But he wasn’t on it.
He wasn’t bad. He just wasn’t all that good.
For the first time, he was utterly grateful when the lights blacked out and the show was over. The audience screamed for an encore, but he begged out of it and thanked them again before beating a hasty retreat off-stage.
He was walking down the loading ramp, not feeling the damp night air, when a hand clamped down on his shoulder and spun him around.
Craig faced him, still clutching his bass by the neck, the tribalized strap still across his shoulder. “What the hell happened in there?”
TJ shrugged. He really had no clue.
JD found his voice and tapped Craig’s hand off TJ’s shoulder. “Give him a break, we’ve all had our bad nights.”
It was Alex who spoke up. Since Alex didn’t get into the scuffles with the rest of them, they all snapped to.
“No, we haven’t all had our bad nights. We have.” He pointed to himself, Craig, and JD. “But TJ doesn’t. He’s always on. He covers for our bad nights.”
He didn’t continue. He’d made his point.
TJ shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Is it Norah?” JD’s voice hit him like bricks.
“No.” TJ protested through ground teeth, not believing his brother would air that here.
“What?” Craig looked back and forth between the Hewlitts. “Tall, hot, dancer Norah?”
TJ just shook his head and stalked off, his hands in tight fists on his hips, denying everything, even to himself.
JD pursued both him and the topic. “It’s just the only thing I can think of that’s really different. Because we can’t play without you up there giving a good show. And you always have. This group can’t be tied to Norah.”
TJ turned, his fists now in front of him from no conscious thoughts of his own.
“Oh, no.” Craig was backing away like TJ had the plague.
The words burst out of his mouth. “That’s not what this is. I have just been to hell and back.” He lashed out at all of them, verbally clearing a half-circle in front of himself. “Which ones of you just spent months in a wheelchair, a good portion of it not certain if you’d ever walk again? Did your dick not work and you thought it might never again? It was all my own fault, too.
“So I’m sorry if I’m not as good at getting up there and sweet talking a bunch of strangers. That doesn’t mean it’s about a woman.” The hot air left him. “I just have to find my feet again.”
JD laughed at him, and instead of getting angry TJ took it for the sign of acceptance that it was. Alex looked satisfied that things were getting resolved, and walked off, his mind always on his sweet wife and his daughter and new baby.
Just like that, they’d all let it go. All had faith in him that he’d resolve it. They packed up and said good-night, agreeing that they had their work cut out for them in the studio.
Later, he showered and laid himself out on the now familiar bed and stared at the ceiling. He thought through the evening and knew it had all gone wrong when he realized that he didn’t live for the stage anymore. He shouldn’t have made that realization there, with a crowd looking on, but it couldn’t be helped.
He was a performer. It was what he did. It was what he was best at. And now it all seemed past-tense.
He wondered if the semi had knocked something more than his spinal cord loose, and if they were only just now beginning to see the effects. For a brief moment he imagined the doctors examining him and concluding that he had broken his stage presence. Or his charisma.
He’d thought he might laugh at the image, but in the end it really wasn’t all that funny. He had to find his legs again was all. In more ways that just the obvious.
But in the back of his brain he wondered about JD’s suggestion that it was because of Norah.
Chapter 38
TJ picked up his feet a little. Norah was coming up behind him. As usual, she passed him without a word.
He trained his mind back on the track in front of him. He stumbled repeatedly when he’d decided to jog. So he only did it for short stretches. It was like his legs were still too new to walking to try another method.
His brain wandered off again to what happened on stage at McMinn’s. He still hadn’t figured it all out except that what had driven him to perform was gone. The crowd screaming didn’t turn him on the way it used to. The women who volunteered to keep him in his seat would have made him grin and think about letting them do just that. But now they were vapid and cheap. Their words didn’t mean anything, and he finally saw that.
Maybe that did have to do with Norah.
He took that back, even just to himself.
It had everything to do with Norah. A man didn’t just fall in love, really in love, for the first time and have it not change him. Especially when it ended so badly. But either way, he needed to find something else out there.
Maybe what he needed to see was that he was capable. Able to really love someone. He hadn’t truly been sure before. The accolades and adoration he’d gotten from performing had been enough. Now it wasn’t.
Maybe the question now was: could someone love him? Not the man on the stage or the one in the papers.
The right woman wouldn’t be jogging past him, ignoring hi
m again, in tight black spandex that hugged her dancer’s ass.
No, that was really the one place he was certain she wasn’t.
This was the seventh time he’d seen her here. She was on the track before him, rain or shine. He’d even skipped a day, leaving three between his return, but still she’d been here, already going, when he’d started.
He’d tried going to the gym and walking their track twice now, but it was useless. The gym was a meat market in the best of circumstances. But being on the track brought out women who wanted to know if he needed a buddy. One had even pulled out a cell phone and called her friends. Fifteen minutes later the track was too crowded to walk, let alone try to jog a little. He didn’t need or want a damned audience.
He just needed one person to scrape him off the ground if it came to it. Apparently she was here, spatula in hand, waiting for just that.
Six times Norah had followed him home and waited just behind the neighbor’s trees. She must have thought she was actually out of sight. She was either stupid or thought he was. Both possibilities reflected badly on him.
He picked up his pace a little bit and turned it into the lope of a slow jog. He made it to the next mark on the track before he didn’t get one of his feet lifted right and the shoe scuffed the rubberized track. Since the track was designed to grip tread, it held his foot and took him down.
TJ felt his hands smack the rough ground. His fingers took it, but at least his palms didn’t. The leather gloves had more than done their job, and from the scuffs on them they’d felt every scrape he hadn’t.
He knew his neurons weren’t still working properly. His doctor had told him so. Apparently he even wasn’t supposed to be upright—he was only there through sheer force of will. He didn’t have much of the fine muscle control most associated with standing upright and walking.
Love Notes Page 19
