by LJ Evans
My life wasn’t going to get any easier that July because that’s when HE entered my world, flipping it on its axis even more.
That day it was hotter than blue blazes with the humidity like a wall you could almost see if you squinted hard enough, and I contemplated laying down on the tile showroom floor to cool off like our dog Sparky. But instead, I lifted up every last hair on my head and stood under the air conditioning vent trying to dry the sweat off my neck.
And of course, it was then, when I had my hair, bangs and all, swept up like a Conehead that he sauntered into our dealership. While I was a sweaty puddle, he looked like a Jamie McGuire book boyfriend come to life.
He was lean and muscular in a blue t-shirt and just tight enough ripped jeans that accentuated every sculpted line. Lines of gorgeous muscles that belonged in an underwear ad. He was tall, but not too tall, around about six feet, and had sexy, bed-tousled looking brown hair that highlighted his pale gray eyes. Eyes that were the color of the winter skies right before a tornado. I was a sucker for a boy with tattoos even if I thought I’d never date someone who had them. And this piece of gorgeousness had them.
There were words wrapped around each wrist, and some sort of bird on his neck. None of it was easy to make out over a distance, but that made me think about how, if I was close enough, I could brush aside those curling ends and investigate more. And I suddenly wanted to do that very much. Every fiber in my body was aching to drop my grossly sweaty hair and sweep up his, just so I could get a good look at him, his tattoos, and his scent.
my life as a pop album
(my life as an album series vol. II)
available now
http://bit.ly/MLAAPAlje
Continue reading for a preview of vol. IV in the my life as an album series
my life as a MIXTape
STRAWBERRY GIRL
A Wedding & Tequila
THEY SENT ME TO FIND her, and even though I didn’t want to go, I couldn’t say no. It was always difficult for me to be around the Strawberry Shortcake.
Not that she was short. Or even cutesy like that doll my sister used to play with. But she had auburn hair like the doll and skin so pale you’d think it was a white sheer hung on a window filtering in sunlight. A polka-dotted sheer because she was dusted with cinnamon across her cheeks. Just like that damn doll.
And like the toy, she always seemed to have a fruit scent hovering around her. It was enticing in all the wrong ways.
This strawberry girl never wore her hair curly. It was pretty much always straight. Straight and silky. So, it was like she was the doll but not.
And somehow, it physically hurt me to be in the same space as her. Every time.
I’d leave her presence with a bellyache and nothing to show for it. A bellyache should come from overindulging in some way, and I never got to overindulge in anything where she was concerned.
Truth was, it would have been more dangerous to other body parts than my stomach to do anything with her.
And now I had to go find her because they wanted to throw the bouquet, and they wanted her there. One of the bride’s maids had gone missing. Bride’s matrons? I’d heard rumors, but wasn’t sure what she was anymore. Married or not. I think I preferred the idea of her married. That way I couldn’t want her.
When I finally found her, in the depths of the garden half hidden in the dim lights and the foliage, I heard the sob before she saw me, and I froze. Crying Strawberry Shortcake was going to do me in.
I waited to see if she would see me and stop crying. But she didn’t. She didn’t even raise her head from those pale fingers. Shit, shit, shit. What to do?
I finally cleared my throat, and she went silent mid sob. And I could see her, even in the semi-darkness, wipe her eyes and face before she turned towards me.
“Lonnie?” She seemed surprised. So was I.
“Hey. Um. They’re about to throw the bouquet and wanted to know if you wanted them to…um wait?” He didn’t mean to ask it like a question, but when she looked up at him, it was with a smile that he could tell she pasted on her face and a laugh so sarcastic that it hit him in the chest instead of his stomach.
“No. I don’t think I need to catch the bouquet.”
“Okay,” he said, but they both knew that it still meant she should head back.
“They sent you to find me? Like some misbehaving toddler?”
I had to grin at her. “Well. Maybe not a toddler.”
“What does Mia call you? Lumberjack?”
“Or idiot. But I think she prefers lumberjack.”
“I bet we’ve both been called worse,” she said with a wave of her hand to my hair. Hers was ten times better than mine. Mine was almost tomato red. Whereas hers was the shade of red that the bottled die job companies want on their boxes. And so smooth that I almost reached out and touched it but caught myself at the last moment.
I shrugged at her. “Probably.”
“Well, let’s go Lumberjack,” she said, and I followed her and watched as her bride’s maid dress swayed around her hips. It was a good color on her. A deep ocean teal that made her skin and eyes stand out. And the dress clung to all the right places on her kick-ass body, showing off nicely shaped legs. Long legs. Because she was pretty tall for a girl. Sure those legs were pretty white, like the rest of her, but damn if they weren’t enough to make my sock monkey want to raise to attention.
We got to the door, and I grabbed it before she could, and she whispered thanks, but it was like that one action was enough to send her back sobbing again, and I didn’t know why or how, but I wanted to bust something or someone for making her feel this way.
When we entered, she went directly to Mia’s side. Mia Phillips. Well, I guess Mia Waters now that she just married my best friend Derek Waters. Derek and I had been friends since high school, and I’d been around as their whirlwind romance came to fruition last summer. Three weeks and they’d become inseparable. So inseparable that Derek and I had uprooted ourselves from Los Angeles and moved across the country to this small town in Tennessee.
It was funny, everyone around here said it wasn’t a small town, but after you grow up in the L.A. basin, everything seems small. And especially in this town because everyone seemed to know everyone and everyone’s business.
When Derek had dumped his whole life to move here after knowing Mia only three weeks, I wasn’t about to let him come on his own. No way in hell. How did I know that Mia and her family wouldn’t become cannibals and eat my boy for dinner some night?
So, I’d come with him. And now I was stuck. Because not only did I need to be here for him, I was strangely and unexpectedly attracted to the everyone knowing everything about everyone thing.
Like the fact that I knew even though it wasn’t any of my damn business that the Strawberry Shortcake, Wynn, had moved home three months ago with some story about her husband being on assignment in Thailand. I didn’t know if that was the real deal or the story everyone was telling to protect her. Because this town also protected its own carefully. They hung together like third class passengers on the Titanic. Going down together or not at all.
I didn’t know what the truth was about Wynn because we hadn’t hung out. I’d seen her in passing or sometimes at the family gatherings that I was invited to like I was part of the family when I wasn’t. She’d hardly spoken but maybe six sentences to me.
But that had been enough for me to know that me and her would never mix. She wasn’t the kind of girl that you took home for the night. She was the kind of girl you took home forever, and me and forever were never going to happen.
When we reached Mia, who looked damn beautiful in her slim halter style wedding dress, Mia turned her mosaic eyes at us, and they filled with fire at the sight of Wynn with her swollen eyes.
“What in the fruit salad did you do to her, idiot?”
And I had to grin again because Mia’s crazy non-cuss words were always sweet and unexpected. You never knew what would come out of
her mouth.
“He didn’t do anything,” Wynn said quickly. “You know me, I shouldn’t have been anywhere near the hydrangea’s, but I couldn’t resist. It’s just allergies.”
Mia eyed us both but seemed to be willing to buy it or let it go. It was her wedding day after all, but I wouldn’t put it past Mia to actually buy what Wynn had just fed her. Mia tended to be on the gullible side. I think it was part of what had attracted Derek to her. That sense of almost innocence.
But, I knew that Wynn’s issue wasn’t allergies. I’d heard the sob.
Wynn and Cam, Mia’s almost sister-in-law in another long story, argued over whether Wynn should be out trying to catch the stupid flowers. But Wynn was putting up a good fight.
Cam wasn’t used to anyone not doing what she wanted. I didn’t know Cam well, but I knew that. Cam was engaged to Derek and I’s entertainment lawyer, Blake, and I’d never seen her lose a battle with anyone but him.
“Wynn, don’t be a schmuck, just get your booty out there.”
“No. I’m married.”
“Not anymore,” Cam snarked back.
Those words hit me in the chest even though Wynn had her smile still pasted on, and I took a half a step forward as if I might say something and had to stop myself. It wasn’t my place.
“Cam,” Mia said for me. Her tone all scolding teacher like her tone often got with me and the rest of our band. Cam just rolled her eyes. Mia turned to Wynn. “Don’t go out there. Kayla is out there and you know she wants this so badly that if you accidently got it, we’d have one of those America’s Funniest Videos clips as she pounded you to the ground to take it away.”
I snorted.
The ladies all remembered I was there and turned to me with a scowl. I put my hands up and backed off because you never interfere with a bride on her wedding day. I’d learned that the hard way from my cousin when I was only ten and she was twenty-five and I’d stuffed my face into her cake before she’d cut it. I’m lucky I still have hands to play my bass with.
I’d taken two steps away when Derek came up behind me and put a hand on my shoulder. “Thanks for finding her,” he said with a nod towards Wynn.
“Sure.”
“You okay?”
“Yep, all good. You?” I turned looking towards Mia and then back.
“You are an idiot. Everything’s perfect,” Derek said with his smile that stretched his whole face and attracted the ladies like wax on a surf board. The ladies loved Derek. But they were out of luck now because he only had eyes for one short brunette.
I grinned at him. “You really did it.”
“Did you doubt it?”
I shrugged at him, “No. It’s right.”
Derek got serious and nodded.
“You don’t need to stay in Tennessee, you know,” he said. “I appreciate that you did it. To make sure I’d be okay, but this is exactly where I belong.”
I got kinda choked up, but there was no way I was showing that shit to him. “Well, I needed to make sure my lead singer didn’t go all serial killer and end up in jail before our album reached platinum.”
“So. You going back to L.A.?”
“Hell no. I kinda like it here.”
Derek looked at me with that serious look he gets sometimes that doesn’t last long. He’s mostly one happy guy. We both are. We don’t let our pasts and our baggage drag us down too far.
“Really?” He was surprised.
“Yep.”
His eyes narrowed at me like he was expecting me to cough up some kind of hidden secret. There really wasn’t one. I just liked Tennessee in a way that I hadn’t expected.
“Okay.”
The scream of girls like the ones at our concerts, brought our attention back to the dance floor where Wynn’s step-sister, a stunning blonde with curves that could easily grace the PlayBabe Mansion that Derek used to live in, caught the bouquet and flushed happily, casting an eye at her date who looked like he’d just eaten a guppy.
“Wow. Stay away from that one,” Derek said with a smile, “Otherwise you’ll be married before I get back from my honeymoon.”
“Well, that’s two weeks which is about as long as it took you and Mia.”
“Don’t go for that, dude, she’s not right for you.”
I just nodded, because he was right. The blonde wasn’t right for me, and her step-sister, the Strawberry Shortcake, wasn’t right for me either, even though my loins objected to everything my head was telling me.
my life as a Mixtape
coming soon
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