“Whose your dad?” Aaron grabbed his tea and sat down in his chair. He turned to face the television again.
“Kilgore H. Parker. The owner of Parker Family Movers.”
“Oh,” Aaron didn’t seem to care, because he didn’t care. He didn’t even know the name of the moving company he’d hired until that very moment. He had his realtor deal with all of that crap.
“If you want, I can come unload some things myself. I probably can’t move the bigger stuff myself, but I can certainly unload some boxes—get your kitchen set up at the very least.”
Aaron shook his head and sighed. “Just don’t worry about it. Whatever.”
“What’s that?” Lily perked up.
“Let them watch the stupid football game. Just come back on Monday. I’m sure I’ll survive.” He didn’t look at Lily while he spoke, staring blankly at the fuzzy television screen instead. “How do I make this stupid thing go HD?”
“Burns Bog doesn’t get HD just yet, though I hear we might be getting it next year.”
Maybe Aaron was making big mistake, biting off more than he could chew. He was born in New York City, raised in Los Angeles. Small town living wasn’t exactly a lifestyle he was accustomed to.
“Thanks so much, Mr Stein. It’ll really means a lot to the guys, you know—really.”
He sighed. “Don’t mention it.” He continued to stare at the fuzzy screen, waiting for Lily to leave. But Lily didn’t leave.
“So what are you up to tonight? It’s Friday night—Karaoke night down at the Pub.”
“Which pub?”
“The only pub. It’s just called the Pub. You can’t miss the sign. Big red letters, spells out ‘Pub’.”
“Sounds wonderful. I’m staying in tonight. Probably going to go to bed soon.”
Lily began to wander the room, oblivious to Aaron’s less-than-subtle hints. “This house is beautiful. I can’t believe I’ve never noticed it from the highway before. Well, I guess it is treed-in pretty good. I used to drive down this road nearly every day when I was a kid. You’d think I would’ve known this place was here, being so big and all.” Lily was having the opposite problem from her first meeting with Aaron, fifteen years before, when she froze and couldn’t speak. Now, she couldn’t stop speaking…
Even though she could tell Aaron was starting to get frustrated. But for some reason she just couldn’t stop herself. “My Uncle Larry used to own a cabin that looked a lot like this one, only smaller. It was made of cedar, but he sold it and the new owners put up sheetrock.” She may as well have been speaking gibberish because Aaron wasn’t listening.
When he finally turned to look at Lily with his narrowed eyes, Lily thought she might just have been speaking gibberish. He forced a smile—the first smile she’d seen out of him since 2001—and said, “I’m sorry, but I really am very tired.”
A glimmer of sense came rushing back to Lily, so she apologized and politely left Aaron alone in his big, empty cottage home. After Lily left, Aaron did a lap around the house, making sure all the doors and windows were locked, in case Lily decided to come back and tell him more about Uncle Larry’s cedar cottage, or God forbid, someone was out looking for a pressure washer to clean their deck. Back in Los Angeles, they would have shot your damn head off if you let yourself into someone’s house to borrow their power tools.
Aaron wasn’t actually tired. He just liked to delude himself into thinking he hadn’t moved to a small town filled with simple lunatics. He liked to be alone. He didn’t have to worry when he was alone. No one was secretly sneaking in a cellphone video, no one was making careful note of each of his words, waiting anxiously for a slip up so they could go and tell the world how close they are to a celebrity and can prove it with their newly acquired information.
The basement was the main reason Aaron bought the cottage-style house over the other options. It was big, open, and fully sound-proofed. The cement floors were stained white with lye, the air carried a tinge of bleach, and the whole room sloped a bit towards a drainage grate. During the initial walkthrough, the realtor did her best to avoid showing the basement, and she stuttered and lied awkwardly when asked why the owner was selling. Aaron didn’t ask any questions. The basement would make a perfect music studio.
Now, in the center of the big open basement, was a pile of boxes, all labelled, “BASEMENT. DO NOT OPEN!” They were big, heavy boxes, and the movers all got chills when they took the boxes down into the dungeon-esque space. None of them said a word when they ran back upstairs, making sure they were out before the door closed behind them.
With a bottle of Jack Daniels’ whiskey in hand, Aaron began the long, tedious process of unloading the boxes—boxes filled with amplifiers, guitars, PA systems, speakers, microphones, microphone stands, keyboards, keyboard stands, a drum kit, nearly one hundred cables, effects racks, studio monitors, acoustic paneling, and so on. It would take a week to get everything set up properly.
But all Aaron needed was an amp and a six-stringed guitar. The amp served a few purposes: it amplified his guitar, it was the large room’s only seat, and it was the room’s only table, for his bottle of Jack Daniels.
And as Aaron began to play, he wondered, How did I wind up here, in a dungeon in Burns Bog, Illinois? He thought about that crazy woman who let herself into his house and went off about Uncle Whoever’s Cedar Cabin. She wasn’t so bad—friendly enough. At least she didn’t know who he really was.
Aaron was looking forward to becoming Fred Stein, meeting new people who didn’t know that he had millions of dollars, or that he was once on the cover of Time Magazine. He was looking forward to new relationships, hopefully, he thought, with someone who loved him for him, and not for Gunpowder Girls or for a house with a pool and a private tennis court in Beverly Hills.
That Lily girl was kind of cute, though, a bit crazy, Aaron thought.
Maybe Burns Bog wouldn’t be so bad, after all.
CHAPTER THREE
The biggest secret Lily ever had to keep was when Fran Teller had a crush on Bobby Irwin in the tenth grade. Fran only told Lily and trusted her to keep her secret safe. Even that was too much for Lily to handle. She didn’t go the whole afternoon before she told her closest friends, her favourite teacher, and the lunch lady who asked, “Why are you so giddy?” As far as Lily was concerned, the lunch lady got it out of her. She couldn’t help it. Fran and Bobby would have made the cutest couple.
But that had nothing on the secret that Lily now had in her possession. In her little hometown of Burns Bog was the biggest rock star of her generation, watching television alone under the moniker, Fred Stein. Who could she tell? Who could keep the secret?
Fran still wouldn’t speak to Lily and still scowled at her in the streets, though she probably couldn’t even remember why. Maybe, Lily thought, it’s better to keep a secret a secret.
The next day, Lily told the barista at the local café, a very honest, dependable woman as far as Lily was concerned, about Fred’s true identity. The barista didn’t seem to care all too much, and she claimed she’d never heard of an Aaron Brown. In her defence, she was a good fifteen years older than Lily, and never listened to much of that pop music.
It was a relief to share the weight of her secret, even if it was with someone who’d forgotten entirely by the time Lily was finished her morning coffee. But even with some of the weight off of her shoulders, the secret continued to torment her. It was so distracting; it wasn’t until she walked onto her father’s property that she realized she’d forgotten to tell everyone that they did, in fact, have the day off of work. Lily had forgotten herself that she didn’t have any reason to go into work that morning—but it was a good thing she did. As she walked into the staff room, the men became silent and she was met with half a dozen brooding glares.
The glares turns to wide-eyed apprehension when Lily told everyone they could go home, though there were still a few mumbled profanities from the men who’d passed on Friday night outings with friends
because the boss’s spoiled-ass daughter was making them all work Super Bowl weekend. Instead of going home like they would have any other Saturday, the men took off for Main Street, where all of the Super Bowl’s Eve festivities were set to take place. Lily didn’t join, and not just because no one invited her. She had a different agenda—an idea which came to her as she stood alone in the Parker Family Moving staff room.
She was going to see to it that Aaron felt welcomed in Burns Bog.
A welcoming gift, maybe a gift basket, she thought would be the perfect way to say welcome on behalf of her little town. Though the town’s only gift shop was closed, and so was the bakery and the deli and the butcher. The only shop that was open was Tom’s Sporting Goods, and all that was for sale were Danny Fitzpatrick jerseys and football memorabilia. So Lily made a nice little gift basket filled with Denver Broncos swag.
Lily knocked on Aaron’s door, and Aaron was very slow to answer. He only opened the door slightly and peeked his face through the narrow crack.
“Well, hello there!” Lily said with far too much enthusiasm for the hour.
“What time is it?” Aaron’s voice was hoarse from the night’s whiskey intake.
“It’s almost nine. Time to get up, as my mom used to say.” Lily smiled. She didn’t see anything wrong with waking Aaron up. If she slept in that late, she would have wanted someone to come wake her up—there’s nothing worse than having your schedule all mucked up.
“I thought I told you not to come over here this weekend.”
“Oh, I’m not here with the movers. I just came to say hello and drop off this little welcoming gift.”
Aaron peered down at the basket filled with orange, blue, and white. He opened the door wider to take a closer look. “What is that?”
“Folks around here love their Broncos. I thought, what better way to say welcome to Burns Bog than some Broncos gear, just in time for the Super Bowl weekend.” Lily smiled and raised the basket. On the top of the basket was a football with ‘DENVER’ written in big orange letters.
“Denver?” Aaron said. He didn’t follow football. As a matter of fact, he couldn’t have cared less about football and sports in general. Just a bunch of steroid-injected meat heads senselessly pounding their chests like wild apes.
“That’s right. The Denver Broncos.”
“You know Denver is about one thousand miles from here, right?”
“Oh, I know. But one of their running backs, Danny Fitzpatrick, is a Burns Bog boy. Burns Bog loves Danny Fitzpatrick. There’s even a Fitzpatrick jersey in here for you. Number sixteen, that’s him! Do I smell coffee?”
Aaron hadn’t even noticed the smell of coffee until Lily pointed it out. It was the one appliance he’d managed to find and set up the night before, pre-setting it to have a fresh pot ready in the morning. It was after his sixth whiskey that he wisely predicted his Saturday morning hangover. After a number of world tours, and nights spent with some of the rowdiest punk bands of the 90s, Aaron learned that coffee was a miracle cure for hangovers. Now, he was quickly learning that spunky small town mid-westerners were not good for hangovers. Particularly the headaches.
“I’d love a cup, if you don’t mind,” Lily said, still smiling her biggest smile.
Aaron wanted to say no, and he would have if he’d been a little more awake. He opened the door to let Lily in. That’s when Lily realized he was half-naked, dressed only in his underwear. She paused in the doorway.
She’d never seen a man in that kind of shape before—big pecs, hard abs, tattoos all over his arms and sides. Was this Aaron Brown, the rock star, or Aaron Brown, the personal trainer? Men didn’t look like that in Burns Bog. The beard, sure. The chiselled abs? Never. Burns Bog men liked their chicken wings and beer too much to bother.
But Aaron wasn’t born or raised in Burns Bog. He lived most of his life in Santa Monica, where it was strange to see a man with a shirt on his body, where men who couldn’t get ripped in a gym went and got ripped up by a plastic surgeon. And the tattoos—no one in Burns Bog had tattoos, except for a few military vets.
As he walked towards his kitchen, he was oblivious to the nearly-drooling Lily behind him.
“I’m going to go and get dressed. Feel free to sit down, or stand, or whatever it is you people do in this town,” Aaron said as he turned down another hallway.
He used to be so small, Lily thought, just a meek, little, fresh-faced teenager. Now he was a man.
The kitchen had the floor space of Lily’s entire rented home, and the vaulted ceiling had twice the height. The space was a sea of moving boxes labelled ‘KITCHEN,’ a table, four chairs, and a coffee maker. The table and chairs came with the house, carved from the same cedar of which the house was built. The air carried an addictive combination of cedar and fresh coffee.
It was a tad disappointing when Aaron returned to the kitchen in a loose sweater and a pair of sweatpants.
“You know, Danny Fitzpatrick had a twenty-six point season this year,” Lily said. “His best year yet. I went to high school with Danny. Well, he was a few years older than me, and I never really talked to him any, but you’ve gotta cheer for the home boys, you know. Putting Burns Bog on the map.”
Lily may as well have been speaking in Mandarin. “Is twenty-six points good?” Aaron asked, forcing as much enthusiasm into his voice as possible, but sounding no more enthused than a man who was just told he had to serve jury duty.
“Well, I’m not really sure to be honest. I don’t follow football really. But I like the atmosphere. Everyone gets together, eats, laughs, cheers, drinks, and has a good time. What’s not to like, you know?” Everything Lily listed made Aaron shudder. All he heard was: the people are fat, loud, obnoxious, and drunk. “I hope that jersey fits,” Lily continued, pointing to the basket, which now sat in the center of the kitchen table. “It was the only size they had left. It’s a small, but you know, jerseys always fit bigger.”
Aaron stood in front of the coffee maker, a steaming pot filled with the delicious cure to his treacherous ailment. But the cupboards and drawers were all empty and the mugs were nowhere to be found.
“Do you have cream? I’d love a little bit of cream in my coffee. No sugar though. I never much liked sugar in my coffee. My dad takes four sugars and four creams. The doctors told him he needs to cut back, or switch to Stevia. But just cream for me, please,” Lily said from across the giant, forlorn space.
“Do I have cream? No, I don’t have cream. I don’t even have any goddamned mugs,” Aaron said. He thought he muttered it to himself, but the acoustics of the room were impressive, carrying his grumpy mutterings all the way over to Lily. He didn’t mean to snap, but there was no caffeine to subdue his angry hangover.
Lily’s face became red. In a town of one thousand, everyone knew pretty well everyone. If not by name, then by brief description. ‘Caroline Peters? Is that the girl with the cleft lip and the frizzy hair?’ or ‘Lily Parker? Is that the spacey girl who just keeps on talking for days? That girl’s got a big mouth on her, dontcha know it.’ There were worse reputations to have. But still, it was an embarrassing quirk—especially embarrassing because Lily knew when she was doing it, when she was veering off, but she couldn’t help it. Maybe it was a nervous mannerism, or maybe she really did just have a big mouth. “Black is fine,” she said awkwardly, quietly.
Aaron returned to the table with the steaming pot, sans lid. “I guess we’re sharing this.” He took a sip, powering through the near-boiling temperature. The effects of the caffeine were felt immediately, and he quickly realized he was being an ass. “I didn’t get much sleep last night.”
“I can imagine. Moving takes a lot out of a person. I mean, I’ve never moved, but from what I hear from clients and whatnot, it’s exhausting.”
“You’ve never moved?”
“Never. I was born here in Burns Bog. The house we live in was my grandparent’s. And my dad will pass it down to me—probably soon. My mom passed away a year ago, and my da
d is thinking of retiring to Florida. Yeah, soon I’ll be the owner of Parker Family Movers.” Lily beamed with pride.
Aaron drank some more coffee. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a box of smokes. He offered one to Lily.
Lily looked at the box as if was a contagious tumour.
“Don’t smoke?”
“No, sir,” Lily said, shaking her head. “I mean, I’m not religious or anything like that.” Not too many people in Burns Bog smoked—not since one of the local church ministers called cigarettes ‘Satan Sticks.’
Aaron stared at Lily with narrowed eyes. Religious? What the hell does religion have to do with anything? Aaron drank more coffee then reached the pot forward with the same hand he used to hold his smoke.
Lily had never seen someone smoke inside their house before. It seemed like such a silly, strange thing to do, especially when your house was built entirely out of beautifully fragrant timber. “Aren’t you afraid of cancer?” she asked.
“No.”
Lily took the coffee pot with both hands. The pot was heavy, full of coffee that was far too hot for her own level of comfort. But Aaron was cool. He was a rock star. He smoked. He had tattoos. She wanted him to think she was cool too, not just some square from Nowhere, Illinois. Her hands trembled as she pulled the pot towards her lips and gently tilted coffee into her mouth, being careful not to pour in too much and burn herself.
Aaron watched with a combination of amazement, confusion, and a small hint of pity. Like watching a grown man trying to skate for the first time, arms extended like wings, knees bent awkwardly inward.
She successfully braved the heat, but the flavour was too much—the potent black coffee, intentionally brewed to cure the worst hangover imaginable. Lily was more of a decaf girl, with cream, light roast, topped with whipped cream. Aaron’s coffee was the closest Lily would ever come to consuming methamphetamines. She turned green.
LIMELIGHT LOVE: A Small Town Rock Star Romance Page 2
