by Theresa Weir
He was surprised by the truth of his words, and knew they could apply to him as well as Lola.
He felt her relax. “Yeah, you’re right,” she said. “Music is a part of my life. It’s part of who I am. It’s nothing to be afraid of.”
“Right. Try to enjoy the moment.”
She smiled at him, and then she placed an open palm against the side of his face and leaned in close. He wasn’t much taller, maybe five inches, so it wasn’t hard for her to kiss him. Just a brush of her lips against his, but oh, god. The feather-light touch was enough to make Emerson go weak all over.
“You are the sweetest guy,” she said. “I can’t believe I always thought you hated me.” Then she swirled off and her movements were light as she made her way to the stage.
Emerson watched her. Watched the ripple of her floral skirt and the shine of her hair. And as he watched, he pressed fingers to his lips, trying to hold her kiss there. And even though she was gone he could smell the scent of her hair and the scent of her skin, the leather of her belt and boots, the wood of the violin she now tucked under her chin.
Her father took a seat on a nearby stool and picked up his blue guitar. Adjusted his mic.
Ben Brown had the kind of distinguished cool the rest of the world could only hope to achieve. Wavy gray hair several inches long, a black T-shirt from a local record shop, faded and patched jeans. He probably hadn’t changed for the show. Just came in the clothes he’d put on that day, because that’s what cool guys did. Cool was the journey, not the destination.
The stage was bright, and Emerson stood in the dark, but he saw Lola’s eyes scan the crowd, saw her lock on his location… and smile. He smiled back even though he knew she couldn’t see him.
It was a perfect moment. The kind of moment a person remembers his whole life. You know those perfect moments when they happen. When everything is heightened, and everything is right.
Too right.
Emerson understood that this person standing in the bar was him, and yet it wasn’t. This was the cool, calm him that Emerson Foshay could never be.
He thought about his first trip inside. How he’d flipped out and ran. And now…now he was Mr. Mellow. Mr. Advice. Mr. Kiss.
In his mind, he backtracked.
Emerson was a thinker. That’s what always got him into so much trouble. He over-thought everything. He analyzed everything.
Beautiful girls didn’t kiss him. They didn’t take the stage and search the crowd for him. They didn’t put his name on the guest list.
It had all started with the cat.
The cat named Sam.
The cat that was now perched right behind Emerson’s head, right behind his brain, whispering in his ear.
“Hello.”
Emerson swung around. Not the cat talking to him. This was a girl.
“I’m Melody,” the girl said. “Lola’s sister.”
Oh, yeah. He saw the resemblance, although Melody didn’t have any tattoos—none that he could see anyway—and she looked a bit more conservative than Lola.
“Lola told me about your cat.” She pulled out her iPhone and began scrolling through images. “I have to show you pictures of Max.”
She turned the phone around, and pretty soon Emerson was viewing page-after-page of cat photos. “He does look like Sam,” Emerson agreed. “Except for the mustache.”
“I swear there must be a lot of cats that look like them. We had one show up at my house. Just walked right up to the front door. I was going to keep her, but a friend wanted her so badly I gave her away.” She barely paused for breath before launching into her next sentence: “Can I take a picture of Sam?”
“Uh, sure.” Emerson swung around so the hood of his sweatshirt was facing Melody. She took a few photos, then stuck her phone away. “I can’t wait to show Max when I get home.”
“I don’t know if he’s really my cat,” Emerson said in an attempt to set the record straight. “I put up flyers, but so far haven’t heard from anybody.” He wasn’t sure if she was listening. She was petting Sam, and kind of baby talking to him. Emerson could hear the cat purring right behind his head.
“I hope you can keep him. God, he reminds me so much of Max. Something about his attitude, although Sam is more laid back. Max wouldn’t be happy here. He’d come, but he wouldn’t like it. He wouldn’t be purring.”
The cat love ended abruptly as Lola’s dad spoke into the microphone, welcoming everybody to their first show. It was a decent turnout for a weeknight, maybe fifty people in the small venue. A nice number, Emerson thought. Not so few that Lola would be disappointed, but not so many that she’d be more nervous than she already was.
The music was primarily folk rock, not a surprise given the fact that Ben Brown was known for his solo performances as well as fronting a number of bands over the years, some famous, some not so famous. Lola’s playing added a dimension to an otherwise sparse sound, and Emerson was surprised to find that she included some nice vocal harmonies to a couple of the songs. And her vocals weren’t the only surprise.
Her lack of confidence had led him to believe she’d be an average but adequate violinist. Nothing embarrassing, but nothing great. She wasn’t average in any way. It would have been hard for most people to tell because the violin she was playing was such a piece of shit that all the tweaking and modification in the world wouldn’t change it, but Emerson had an ear and his ear told him she was phenomenal. And she had no idea. No freaking idea.
From where he stood, he’d say the set went well other than a little feedback and a few times when Lola got so into her playing that she moved too far from the microphone. But the space was small enough that it didn’t really matter. The crowd was enthusiastic and once the set was over several people crowded the stage to shake hands and congratulate father and daughter as they packed their gear and wrapped cords.
Not wanting to intrude, Emerson hung back and was even thinking of slipping out when Lola found him again, this time with her dad in tow. The next thing he knew, Emerson was having a drink with all three of them, Lola, Melody and Ben.
It felt weird. Like he shouldn’t be there. Like he was intruding on a family event. At the same time, he liked it. Liked hanging out with the whole bunch of them, but he was also distracted. He kept thinking about the cat. About how it had just shown up. Found him.
And now Emerson was here, smiling and talking with the girl he’d had a crush on for years, just days after the cat walked into his life.
Maybe the cat’s good luck. Maybe that’s all it is.
But good luck didn’t give someone a loose tongue. Good luck didn’t make a normally shy and reserved guy outgoing.
“You should come.”
The words pulled him from his crazy thoughts about the cat. Melody was looking at him, telling him about a cookout and potluck they were having at their dad’s house once their mother got back from a trip. “You should come,” she repeated.
He caught a movement out of the corner of his eye—Lola, trying to signal to her sister that inviting Emerson to a family get-together was not a good idea. Emerson was ready to decline the invitation. The letters and words were all lined up in his head and ready to exit his mouth when he started talking, saying something about loving to come and that he’d bring dessert.
“Apple pie,” he announced.
Apple pie! He’d never made an apple pie in his life. But how hard could it be? Just throw some dough in a pan and toss in some apples, right?
He wouldn’t look at Lola. No, he wouldn’t, couldn’t. But weirdly, he found his head turning her direction, and when their eyes locked, he smiled…and she smiled back, but there was a recognizable awkwardness about that smile.
It was one thing to invite him to a show, but a totally different thing to invite him to a family gathering. Family gatherings meant a relationship had moved from o
ne level to the next, and they weren’t even at level one. He understood that.
“Just pie,” he whispered so the others couldn’t hear. Her shoulders softened and her smile got a little less strained. “Pie.”
“Do you work at Let it Be?” Ben asked as if he’d just figured out who Emerson was and where he’d seen him before.
“Been there three years.” He didn’t add that he hoped to have his own shop one day, and he didn’t add that he made amps and he made guitars, and he’d just recently started an apprenticeship under a local master craftsman. He thought about Lola’s piece-of-shit violin. He wanted to try making a violin.
“You’re the magic man?” Ben asked.
“Magic man?”
“The only person I’ll let touch my guitars. Wow. I always figured you for an old guy. Not…well, almost a kid.”
“I’m twenty-six.”
“You know what I mean. Someone with your level of talent—I expected him to be old. Have years and years of experience.” He was looking at Emerson in awe, then he looked at Lola. “This guy is the reason I always tell you I won’t take my guitars anywhere else no matter how much you try to talk me out of it.”
“You try to talk him out of bringing them to my shop?” Emerson would hate to lose Ben’s business, not just because it meant Lola would never come by, but he also enjoyed perfecting instruments that were almost perfect to begin with. Tweaking them here and there to bring about another level of sound.
Lola was flustered again. “Well…it’s just that your shop isn’t that close to his house…”
“But close to yours,” Ben pointed out.
“That’s okay,” Emerson said. “I understand. Not a big deal.” But it was a big deal.
“Don’t worry,” Ben said. “I refuse to take my guitars anywhere else. Not gonna happen.”
The reassurance didn’t take the worry out of knowing Lola had been pushing for a change. Emerson could only think it was because of him.
The little party broke up. Ben announced he’d be in the van arranging equipment, and Sam got some extra love from the sisters before Emerson headed for the door.
On the way he noticed something odd, something that helped take the sting out of Lola’s father’s revelation, something that never happened to him. Girls were looking at him with curious eyes and sweet smiles. Inviting him to stop and say hi.
This is so weird. So weird and wonderful.
For the first time in his life, Emerson was cool.
* * *
Lola watched Emerson and Sam leave the bar. She continued to stare at the door long after it closed.
Fingers snapped in front of her face. She blinked to see Melody standing in front of her, a puzzled look on her face. “So, I have to ask you something. Is Emerson the Let It Be asshole you’re always talking about?”
“Yeah.” Lola spoke that single word like a bemused question while she felt frown lines forming between her eyes.
“The guy you say hates your guts? The guy who’s the reason you never want to pick up Dad’s guitars?”
“That’s the one. I always hope he’s not working when I stop in there. The other day when I saw him behind the counter I almost turned and ran, but I forced myself to step inside.”
“I don’t get it. He seemed really nice tonight.”
“I don’t get it either. And I really wish you hadn’t invited him to the cookout.” The sisters rarely fought, but this was one time Lola felt Melody had stepped over the line. In fact, all of them seemed to have said things they shouldn’t have said.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know why I did it. It wasn’t anything I’d planned. Honest.” She made a face. “Can we undo this? Tell him we had to cancel?”
“That’ll be just as weird as having him come. I don’t like lying to people. And what if he drove past and saw us grilling?”
“Maybe it’ll be okay,” Melody said. “Maybe it’ll be nice.”
“Or maybe he’ll be asshole Emerson again.”
Melody linked her arm with Lola’s and the two sisters stepped outside. “Is that what you’re afraid of?”
“That mean guy lives inside him somewhere. People don’t just suddenly change. I don’t want him to go all Jekyll and Hyde on me. I’ve had enough of that stuff.”
“Well if he does, wouldn’t it be better if he turned into Jekyll when your family is around? Wait. Is Jekyll the evil one? Or is it Hyde?”
“I think Hyde’s the evil one,” Lola said.
“You’d think it would be Jekyll. Just the way the name looks.”
“I know!”
Melody squeezed her arm and leaned close. “I hope you don’t let the stuff that happened with Milton turn you against all guys.”
“I don’t think it’s a bad idea to be wary.”
“No, but you were in a relationship with the king of creeps.”
A kind way of putting it.
The guy had been a grifter, an ever-changing chameleon, charming everybody around him. Lola’s friends, her family, and of course Lola herself. And by the time their relationship ended he’d stolen her credit card, wiped out her small savings, and vanished into thin air, probably heading for another city and another victim.
No, trusting another guy was not going to come easy, and Lola was surprised she was even considering having anything to do with Emerson. Especially Emerson.
“I told you I want to be single the rest of my life,” she said.
“Yeah, that’s what I said until I met Joe. I was dedicated to becoming the crazy cat lady.”
“Come on, girls!” their dad shouted from the van parked at the curb. “I want to hit Sebastian Joe’s before they close. I’ve got a serious craving for raspberry chocolate ice cream.”
The sisters squealed like they were five and ran for the van.
Emerson
Chapter 6
Emerson apprenticed under a guy named Les Ray. He was pretty much what you’d expect in an old-school master craftsman—from his wildly curly gray hair and rolled-up sleeves, to his olive cargo pants and brown leather sandals.
The shop was pretty much what you’d expect too. Shelves of wood, and drawers of tools for shaping and carving and bending. Ceiling-to-floor walls with parts as well as finished and unfinished guitars, a place where you felt the history of the space the moment you stepped in the door.
The room smelled like wood shavings and wood heated and shaped on a bending iron. It felt like a world untouched by what was going on beyond the door, yet Les was famous around the globe. His instruments were owned by some of the biggest names out there from Paul McCartney to local hero Prince.
“I want to make a violin,” Emerson said.
Les looked up from the electric guitar he was buffing. The instrument was a nice burgundy. Rumor had it this was a special order from Neil Young, but Les didn’t talk about that stuff and Emerson had learned not to ask.
“You aren’t done with your acoustic,” Les said. “I always start my apprentices on guitars. And you can’t move on to a new instrument until you finish the guitar. That’s how I weed out the people who aren’t in this for the long haul. If you start getting bored and want to make something else one month in, you might as well walk out that door and not come back because there are hundreds of guys in town who’d kill to be here.”
Normally Emerson would have backed down because arguing might mean losing his apprenticeship, but this was important. “I realize that. I do. And it’s not boredom. Not at all.”
“Hit me with your pitch.”
“I know somebody who’s an excellent violin player,” Emerson said. “I mean really, really good. But she doesn’t have any idea how good she is, and she has this crap violin. I think maybe if she had a good violin…then maybe it could give her confidence. Make her realize how good she is.”
�
�A girl.”
Emerson nodded.
“You want to make a violin for a girl.”
“Yeah.”
Les sighed, put down his polishing cloth, and shoved his glasses to the top of his head. “Is this a girlfriend?”
“No.”
“Someone you’d like for a girlfriend?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Kid, I’ve been married and divorced three times and I have to say that’s the most idiotically romantic thing I’ve ever heard. You know this violin, if you make it, could be worth a lot depending on the tone. With a violin you never know until it’s done if it’s going to have the magic. But if it does, and because you apprenticed under me, the violin could sell for thousands. You realize that, don’t you?”
“I know.”
“ My apprentices usually keep the instruments they make as part of their portfolio, and a real luthier feels a pretty damn strong attachment to his first project.”
He pointed to the wall. “See that guitar up there? I made it thirty years ago. First one. I’ve been offered ten thousand dollars for that guitar, but I’ll take it with me to my grave. Bury it in my coffin right on top of me. Hugging it if my arms aren’t too full of rigor.
“So I’m saying you’re foolish and crazy and blinded by a temporary infatuation. Guy your age… It happens. People always say girls want romance, but you guys…” He shook his head. “If you give that girl the violin, you’ll regret it. Somewhere down the line, maybe a year or two from now, you’ll get a sick feeling in your gut whenever you think about it. And she’ll ride by on the back of some dude’s Harley, while your instrument’s hanging in a pawn shop downtown where nobody knows its value. That what you want?”
Wow. “Are you sure that’s your first guitar up there?” Emerson asked. Because it sure as hell sounded like Les was talking about himself.
Les laughed. “Yeah, it is. A friend of mine spotted it in the pawn shop and thought it was mine. Gave me a call, and I was able to buy it. My own damn guitar.”
