Red Hot Blues

by Rachel Dunning

  RED HOT BLUES

  BY RACHEL DUNNING

  Copyright © 2014 Rachel Dunning.

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  Book Cover Male Model photo, Copyright 2014 "pudi studio"

  Book Cover Guitar photo, Copyright 2014 "mekCar"

  Book Cover Design, Copyright 2014 Rachel Dunning

  Smashwords Edition.

  First Edition.

  ISBN: 9781311097156

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Also by Rachel Dunning:

  Know Me, #1 Truthful Lies

  Find Me, #2 Truthful Lies

  Need Me, #3 Truthful Lies

  Finding North, #1 Naïve Mistakes Trilogy

  East Rising, #2 Naïve Mistakes Trilogy

  West-End Boys, #3 Naïve Mistakes Trilogy

  Like You, #1 Perfectly Flawed Series

  Christmas Comfort, #1 Hot Holidays Series

  Easter Sundae, #2 Hot Holidays Series

  Girl-Nerds Like it Harder, #1 Girl-Nerd Series

  Girl Nerds Like it Faster, #2 Girl-Nerd Series

  Girl-Nerds Like it Deeper, #3 Girl-Nerd Series

  Girl-Nerds Like it Longer, #4 Girl-Nerd Series

  For news of upcoming releases, visit:

  http://racheldunningauthor.blogspot.com

  Or connect with me on Facebook:

  http://bit.ly/RachelDunning

  To all the beautiful people I met in Nashville while researching this book. Thanks for answering my questions, for showing me a good time, for introducing me to Jack Daniels Honey Whiskey, and for having me experience the incredible feeling of watching sixty-thousand Americans lighting up their phones and lighters, standing in the pouring rain, and listening to them all sing along to Darius Rucker’s Wagon Wheel at LP Field.

  It’s five days I will never forget.

  Table of Contents

  GIN – 1

  GIN – 10

  ACE – 16

  GIN – 24

  ACE – 32

  GIN – 34

  ACE – 41

  GIN – 52

  GIN – 60

  ACE – 64

  ACE – 71

  GIN – 73

  GIN – 76

  EPILOGUE

  FROM THE AUTHOR

  ~ GIN ~

  -1-

  There's nothing sexy about me, except my voice.

  You seen that series, Nashville, where all the people live in big houses with large lawns and drive big cars with tinted windows, and have rich daddies that are mayors or CEOs or property developers; and every girl has blonde hair and striking green eyes and a physique to make you drool and a pair of conkers to poke an eye out?

  That’s not me.

  My name is Gin, short for Ginger. Last name is Waters. Yeah, I get a lot of jokes about that. Especially in Nashville, whiskey and hard liquor capital of the world.

  Waters was my dad’s name. So I kept it. I lost my dad when I was five.

  I don’t like to talk about it.

  People smile a lot in Nashville city, just like in the series, but in real life they do it mostly ’cause they’re drunk. Real drunk. So drunk they can’t stand. Every night. Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday. Every night.

  Welcome to Nashville.

  I’m not from here.

  I’m not big into Country Music. Been to the Grand Ole Opry—didn’t do it for me. And if y’all get offended by that, I’m sorry.

  See? I’m even saying y’all now. It’s contagious, this place.

  I moved here about a year ago, with my mom. My mom married a cowboy, who loves country, and whiskey, and drives a big truck.

  Again, welcome to Nashville.

  Why did I stay here?

  Music Row. Music City.

  You can’t love music and not love Nashville.

  But the two top things about Nashville are not things you will find in a Google search. The two top things, in my books, about Nashville, bar none, are these: Honey Flavored Jack Daniels, and a tiny little bar in Printers Alley (the de facto home of the Karaoke bar and local Strip Joint) called the Bourbon Street Blues and Boogie Bar.

  The Bourbon Street Blues and Boogie Bar plays the blues, all the blues, and nothing but the blues.

  I love the blues.

  I love John Lee Hooker, Z.Z. Hill, B.B. King, The King of Rock n Roll, and Walkin’ King Snake, baby. I love sippin on a Honey Bourbon on the rocks and swaying my head to the tune of a cream colored Gibson being played by some dude who’s way past his prime but who is hard-rock sexy because he’s feeling it while he plays. I love getting up on stage in an overly air-conditioned room so that my head hurts because it’s so damn cold and my skin’s rocking the goosepimples, and then singing Aretha Franklin’s Respect or I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You) or, my favorite, (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman.

  I’m twenty-one, been drinking honey whiskey since I was twenty. Sometimes I got carded, most times I didn’t. Been singing the blues since I was five, maybe four, maybe even one.

  My momma’s not a big blues fan. (There I go again, saying things like “momma!” Urgh!) She’s not much of a fan of anything. She’s a fan of finding a guy, getting married, getting divorced, finding another man, and basically keeping us out of trailer parks that way. She’s done good so far. In keeping us out of trailer parks, that is, not in finding the right man.

  Dad was probably the right man for her. But we’re not gonna go there.

  The guy she married that brought us to Nashville is no longer with her, but he gave her a condo. Yes, gave, as in, purchased. No rent. No fees. No strings—except one: It’s a short story having to do with the fact he’s a well known local celeb (everyone is in Nashville, especially at the bars) and there was a little sumthin-sumthin he did on the side which led to momma getting the condo so she would keep her mouth shut and he could keep his hard-earned Christian Country Musician reputation. (Either that, or to keep his mistress from taking a shotgun to his ass.)

  Welcome to the NRA-Loving Bible Belt.

  I’ve lived all over the place; spent some time in Cali, some in New York, even a bit in Ohio. I guess I could pick favorites, but none of it has ever really been home.

  Momma now lives in The Gulch, the Yuppieville of Nashville. It’s a small section of Downtown that is LEED certified (“Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design”) and where people don’t smoke, they “vape.” The Gulch is small, just a few blocks wide. There are about five boutique stores there, two new-agey clothes stores (disguised as hipster heavens), a vinyl shop, and...more live music locations. Yeah, she got it good. Mr. Christian Country Music Celeb had more than his hand in the cookie jar if you know what I’m saying.

  Only, it wasn’t his hand at all.

  And it sure wasn’t a cookie jar...

  Momma works at one of the aforementioned boutique stores as a consultant. She doesn’t do much. Just smiles and looks pretty. Momma’s been doing that all her life. She’s a pro. Now she gets paid for it.

  I’m happy for her, it’s a nice little section of town and I can get there for free using the Green Line Bus from MTA which runs until six p.m. most days. Except Sunday. Nothing runs on Sundays here, or even opens. As the chick at Walgreens told me: “This place is like a ghost town to me on a Sunday!”

  Welcome t
o the Deep South.

  Me? I don’t stay in Yuppieville. But I do stay Downtown. On First Avenue, to be precise.

  From my apartment (basically a hole a few floors above the Coyote Ugly nightclub) I look out over the wooden structure of the historical Fort Nashborough just below me. Beyond that is the Cumberland River, with LP field on the other side, home of the Titans and a bunch of kickass music concerts throughout the year; Gateway bridge deep on my right where you can cross the river by foot; and right next to Fort Nashborough, on the left, a small park with a statue of two guys in buckskin clothing shaking hands, and about seven homeless people who call that little park their home.

  I call this place home now as well.

  Music is Music, and Nashville is Music City.

  Sure, I could’ve done like that girl in The Edge of Never and caught a bus to nowhere and found love on the road. But, truth is, I don’t have the guts. Bus stations scare me. Being alone on the road scares me. And going somewhere hoping I could make money somewhere-somehow, scares the hell out of me.

  I’m not attractive. I have short black hair and a plumpy body. Yes, black hair. Not dark brown, not brunette, plain black. I guess my eyes could be called an asset—they’re blue, a pretty cool blue I might add. But that’s not much when you’re pushing forty pounds over your ideal weight and the last time you wore a bikini was six months after you hit puberty and people made fun of you.

  Right, I’m overweight. I’ve been on diets, cycled, done spinning, Atkins, running, jogging, jumping, breathing, crash-diet, yo-yo diet, no-sugar diet, no carbs diet, outright starvation, balanced diet, all-you-can-eat diet, sushi diet—

  I eventually gave up.

  I was always a little round but it all just ballooned when I hit puberty and it never went down from there. And I didn’t even get the benefit of using my breasts (my second-best asset, next to my voice) to attract boys because I hit puberty at such an early age, and most of the boys my age were more interested in baseball cards than in girls. And, when they did finally catch up to me hormonally, well, they were into the “sexy” girls a.k.a. the “thin” girls.

  I hate thin girls.

  These days I just make sure I don’t overeat and that I don’t eat like a pig. I don’t eat ice-cream more than once a month. I have three straight meals a day. If I get hungry in between, I chomp on some Slim Jims or peanuts, and I avoid beer at all costs. It doesn’t mean I lose weight, but it means I don’t gain it...too quickly. Sometimes I go down a pound, sometimes I go up. I try not to let it faze me. But it does. I weigh myself way too often, and as much as I try and avoid thinking about it, it’s all I think about sometimes.

  I do cycle. My little bicycle is called Katie. She’s bright yellow and has a little brown basket in the front. Katie and I are best friends. I think she’s the reason I don’t move beyond that dreaded one-eighty mark on the scale.

  I love my girl Katie.

  If you’ve never been to Nashville, what you need to know about it is that everything that’s important (the bars, the Starbucks, Printers Alley, and the library) is all within the radius of a few blocks. There’s a small uphill from First Ave up to Fifth (where the Starbucks is) and then an awesome roll back down to First while sipping on a Caramel Frappuccino through a straw, with one hand, and holding Katie’s handlebars with the other.

  I said I ate Ice Cream once a month. Frappuccino’s are not ice cream. I have those considerably more often. Trust me, I’ve tried the No-Frappuccino diet as well. Didn’t work, so I might as well get some damn pleasure in life.

  Beyond that little stretch of road (Church Street, to be precise), I avoid the rest of downtown Nashville at all costs. You’re welcome to come here. But here’s a short description in case you don’t: From Church Street, go down First, past Fort Nashborough, until you hit Broadway. Turn right. There’ll be a bar on the right with live music (Hard Rock Café) and a bar on your left—across the very broad street—that also plays live music every night. What’s playing? My bet’s on country. Go up one establishment, bar on the right, live music, bar on the left, live music. Country. One establishment up, on your right, country, live; on your left, country, live. This goes on for several blocks. Large blocks.

  I hang out at the Blues Bar.

  All the cops look like your uncle, every girl wears cowboy boots and Daisy Dukes (you didn’t see that in that TV series, now didya?), and every dude has a tattoo. I mean, every dude. As well as the chicks. Lots of them. Big ones. Colorful ones. Everywhere. Now, I’m all for tattoos, have a small one of a butterfly myself just above my left hip, a little to the back, but if everyone has one, doesn’t it become boring?

  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.

  -2-

  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.

  -3-

  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 b
oys. 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.