First Love

by G. L. Snodgrass

  A movement out of the corner of my eye drew my attention. Okay, creeps Ville. The man looked to be in his early twenties. Hair the color of decayed oranges, overweight, and a let’s just say, not very athletic.

  Dressed in brown corduroy trousers and a yellow T-shirt. No big deal, but he was staring at me like I was some kind of after-dinner treat.

  I knew the type. I’m a New Yorker after all. They only come out at night. Late at night. The social skills of a coffee table and just as interesting. A shiver dripped down my spine.

  I glanced towards him. Letting him know I was aware and not interested. He didn’t blink, didn’t move, just stared. What? Did I have something stuck in my teeth? Hadn’t he ever seen a girl before? Why was this guy acting like this?

  I swallowed hard and tried to ignore him as I focused on the books in the bin. I refused to be driven off by some creep.

  A presence coming up behind me set off my alarms. I turned quickly to give this guy a piece of my mind and stepped right into Eric’s arms.

  He smiled as he caught me. I froze. His arms fit perfectly around me. Who knew? A warm, safe zone. A girl could get lost in them and never come out.

  “I thought you might want some company. I was getting lonely without you,” he said as he shot the guy a look.

  Eric had seen what was going on. The boy was a genius and building up points left and right.

  The creep guy’s eyes narrowed as he stared back at Eric. He still seemed to refuse to blink. They had one of those male moments where they stared at each other. Sending messages back and forth. I had absolutely no idea what they were silently saying to each other, but it seemed to work.

  The creep guy turned and walked away. My shoulders slumped in relief. I so did not want Eric to get into a fight in a bookstore. It would have so ruined the entire night.

  “Find anything interesting,” Eric asked as he stepped back and let me out of his embrace. My body shivered with sudden cold.

  I nodded yes and focused on the books again. I couldn’t look at him. Not now. He’d know how much I missed his arms. The boy didn’t miss a thing.

  We spent an hour or so looking through the store. Eric stayed close, but we didn’t run into Earth Tones guy again. He seemed to have disappeared.

  The store was different at night. Fewer customers and each of them in their own little world. Eric and I were the only people together. The counter clerk was busy reading a Dicken’s novel and seemed pissed off anytime someone interrupted his reading so that they might buy something. I could have walked out with half the store and he wouldn’t have known.

  After a while, I could tell Eric was bored. He stood to the side with his arms folded across his chest. He’d looked through the science fiction section three times.

  My heart went out to him. Granted. He didn’t have to be there. It was all wrapped up in his weird sense of sexist chivalry, but it was sort of cute.

  A sense of guilt washed through me. And a little worry. What did he think of the weird girl who dragged him to a bookstore on their first date?

  I tucked my hair behind my ears and asked him if he was ready to go.

  His eyes lit up and he had to fight hard to keep the smile from his face.

  “Sure, If you’re ready?” he said.

  As we left the store, I caught a glimpse of creepy guy watching us leave. My spine tingled. It felt good knowing Eric was there. I didn’t want to think about hanging out in the bookstore all alone at midnight. Probably not a smart move.

  As we stepped outside, Eric glanced at his phone then asked, “Do you like music,”

  How was I supposed to answer that? Who doesn’t like music? What? I was going to say. No, can stand it. Wind instruments make my teeth hurt. Obviously, the boy didn’t know me.

  I listened to music all day, every day. I loved everything about music especially when I’m reading.

  Besides? What kind of music was he talking about? Inca Jazz, Southern Hip Hop, Eighteenth-Century Harpsichord. There were so many possibilities.

  Seeing him wait for an answer I smiled and said, “I love music,”

  “Great,” he said as he turned me back the way we had come. “If it works, it’ll be great.”

  “And if it doesn’t work,” I asked hesitantly.

  “Hey, don’t worry. I don’t think they’ll throw us in jail.”

  My heart dropped. What was he talking about? Jail. I couldn’t do jail. My mom would kill me.

  Before I could ask for details, he stopped in front of a big black man guarding a small blue’s bar named “Ink Spot”. I could hear a steady beat escaping from the door behind him.

  “Hey Lawrence, how you doing,” Eric said to the big man. The guy was obviously a bouncer. A New York bouncer. Taller than a building with muscles on top of muscles. A black T-shirt stretched across a barrel chest. What was Eric doing?

  “Hey Eric,” the giant said as he broke into a large grin. “How’s it going,” he added as he pulled him into a bro hug.

  “Good, really good,” Eric said as he pounded the man on the back like guys do. “How’s Jimmy?”

  “He’s fine man, thanks to you.” The big man said as he glanced at me. “This your lady?” He asked.

  Eric smiled. “Yeah, Cassie, meet Lawrence.” My heart sort of skipped a couple of beats as I smiled up at Eric’s friend. How did he know bouncers? What kind of crowd did he run in?

  Lawrence nodded his head and smiled.

  “Listen,” Eric said. “Any chance we can get in. We’ll hide in the back. No booze. I just wanted to show Cassie.”

  I froze. We couldn’t go in there. No way. They’d throw us out, or call the cops. I could just see trying to explain to my mom about why she had to come down to the precinct.

  Lawrence frowned for a moment then glanced both ways as if looking for the police. He seemed to ponder Eric’s request then smiled and nodded. Reaching out he disconnected a chain and waved us in.

  “If anyone asks, you snuck in. Got it?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Eric said. “No problem. Tell Jimmy I said hi. And thanks.”

  Lawrence smiled and held the door for us. Eric took my hand and started to pull me into the bar. Every instinct yelled at me to drag my feet. No way was I going into a bar. I was only seventeen.

  At the same time. A warm tingle traveled up my arm from where Eric held my hand. He saw me hesitate and smiled.

  “Come on, it will be fun.”

  A wall of cigarette smoke, alcohol fumes, and life, washed over me as we stepped in. Musicians were tuning up on the stage.

  “We got here at the perfect time,” Eric said. His face was alight with an inner happiness. “You’re gonna love these guys,” he said.

  I wasn’t so sure. How could I enjoy myself while I was waiting to be arrested? It just wasn’t in me.

  He wove through a gaggle of customers as he guided me to a table in the back corner. As I sat down, I looked around. This was my first bar after all. I wanted to be a writer didn’t I. Observe, I told myself. I might never get an opportunity like this again.

  The room was only half full with a very mixed crowd. All races, all ages. An old man in a black beret sat it one of the first tables. Not far away, a guy who looked like a stock broker after a long week. Dress shirt sleeves rolled up, tie loosened. And two drinks in front of him.

  Couples, young and old sat next to each other.

  I was in a bar. I couldn’t believe it. This was so cool.

  “I hope you like the blues,” Eric said.

  “They will be great,” I said. What else was I going to say? I knew about as much about the blues as I did Harpsichord music.

  “Who’s Jimmy?” I asked him. My curiosity was killing me.

  Eric smiled. “Lawrence’s little brother. He goes to my school.”

  “Do they let just any friend of Jimmy’s in here?” I asked. My voice dripping with sarcasm.

  “Jimmy got into a fight last week. I sort of helped him out. Lawrence figures he owes
me.”

  Before I could dig out more details, the band began to make sounds like they were going to start. Eric shifted his chair over next to mine and smiled. He was really enjoying this.

  An older, African American man, sat on a metal chair at the front of the stage. A crusty, electric guitar on his knee. The instrument looked like it had been around since Noah’s flood.

  He was backed up by a bass, drums, and another guy on rhythm guitar.

  “Thank you,” he said to the audience in a voice deep and hard, as if it had been dipped in thirty-year-old whiskey.

  “This one’s for Mr. John T.”

  The man began playing. And I fell in love with the blues. The beat seemed to reach in and grab my soul. The words had meaning. Several different meanings at the same time. Layers and mazes. It was like poetry with a pounding hammer driving into my mind. How was it possible that I hadn’t heard this before?

  Of course, it wasn’t your typical seventeen-year-old girl music. This was real, live, and human. The kind of stuff writers wrote about.

  During the next song, a young waitress started towards us. I held my breath. No, not now, we just got here. I needed to hear more.

  She stopped at our table. “Hey Eric,” she said with a smile.

  Does he know everyone in New York I wondered?

  “Lawrence sent these over,” she said as she placed two drinks in front of us.

  “Thanks, Cecilia,” Erik said.

  She gave him another smile then turned and left with a definite hip wiggle. I shot him a look. The music was forgotten for a moment.

  “Jimmy’s sister,” he said as he took a drink.

  I relaxed and lifted the drink to my nose. Coke, no alcohol, just a plain coke. Okay, I could do that.

  Eric and I sat there and let the music wash over us. This was all so unexpected. I was supposed to be home in bed by now. Not sitting next to a hot boy in a New York Blues bar.

  We were close enough so that I could feel the heat from his body. I could smell his aftershave. Subtle, not too strong, but very manly. A dusky scent that made my spine tingle.

  I tried to focus on the band, the crowd, the architecture. Anywhere but the boy next to me. Tried to soak up every detail. I didn’t know what story I would use it in. I just knew that somewhere, somehow, I would use it all.

  “This is cool,” I whispered. “Thanks” I smiled at Eric and reached over to take his hand. Realizing what I had done, I immediately dropped it and put my hands back in my lap where they belonged.

  He chuckled and sat back to enjoy the music.

  Chapter Four

  Eric

  Okay, three things in common, no fathers, crazy mothers, and the blues. She liked it. You could tell a lot about a person by what music they liked.

  I glanced over at her and felt something shift inside of me. Just a little. Her smile could light up half of Manhattan. The way her foot tapped to the beat under the table. The way she tucked her hair behind her ear. It was enough to move a mountain.

  She sat there, looking like the perfect girl next door. A future grade school teacher. But underneath, deep down where it counted. There was a fire burning inside. A passion that needed to be let out and exposed to the light of day.

  I smiled to myself. This was fun. The pure joy of watching someone discover something new. It was electric. She’d never done anything like this I realized. She lived in the heart of the greatest city in the world and she’d never flown free. Never pushed the envelope.

  Well, we were going to have to change that I realized. At least for tonight.

  We sat there, enjoying the moment. I was tempted to tell her this was my first bar too. But she thought I was some wild, hip, cool, dude who hung out in blues bars all the time. Who was I to correct her?

  She caught me staring at her and smiled back before focusing on the band again.

  I took a deep breath. Her perfume reminded me of springtime. New and pure. The kind of scent that lifted a man.

  The band broke for a break and an awkward silence fell over us. What now, I wondered?

  She played with the straw in her drink then turned and asked. “Earlier, he sang about needing to go dust his broom. What did he mean?”

  I smiled to myself. “Sex,” I answered. “It is, or was, a euphemism for sex.”

  “Oh,” was all she said as her cheeks began to turn pink.

  Okay, this girl was seriously cute when she blushed.

  “With the blues. If you don’t know what they mean, you can just assume they mean sex. Both Rock and Roll and Jazz used to mean that.”

  Her cheeks got even pinker. “How do you know this stuff?” She asked.

  “My dad, he was into Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, B.B. King, Robert Johnson. All of them. I grew up on this stuff.”

  She looked at me for a moment. “It’s nice that you had that together.”

  I knew she was thinking about her own dad and what she missed by not having him around.

  I pulled out my phone to check the time. Cassie gasped when she saw it.

  “It’s almost two,” she said as if she were Cinderella dreading the end of the ball.

  “Yeah, we’ve got a ton of time left,”

  “My Mom, She’ll be going crazy.” She pulled her phone from her purse and raised an eyebrow. “Six text messages. I turned it off when we got to the restaurant.”

  “Wow, six,”

  “I was expecting double that,” she said with a small laugh.

  “What does she say?”

  Cassie scanned down through her messages. “Basically, where am I and have I been abducted by aliens.”

  You had to give the girl credit, she had a great sense of humor.

  “I should probably call her. Let her know I’m all right.”

  “Text her,” I said. “That way she can’t talk you out of tonight.”

  She looked at me for a moment as if trying to figure out if I was an alien or not. She eventually nodded and quickly texted her mom.

  I was tempted to look over her shoulder but restrained myself. She caught me and smiled. “I just told her that I was fine and not to worry.”

  “Will she believe you?” I asked.

  “No,” she said with a resigned shrug of her shoulders. “I gave her the keyword. The one that lets her know it’s really me and not some serial killer who has me locked up in his basement.”

  I smiled, nodded my head and placed my arm on the back of her chair. Cool, we wouldn’t want Mom freaking.

  That awkward silence descended over us again. When were we ever going to get past it?

  Sighing to myself, I looked out over the crowd. Things had picked up. The place was almost full. I caught Celia looking at me with a raised eyebrow. It was probably time to leave before someone realized we were taking up space without buying drinks.

  “Come on,” I said as I stood up. “It’s probably time for us to go. We’ve already been here way longer than I thought they’d let us.”

  Cassie looked around, her lips dropping into a little pout. She wanted to stay I could tell, but it wasn’t in the cards.

  She seemed to accept the situation and finished the last of her Coke. Turning, she took one last look around the bar as if trying to soak in every sight, scent, and taste of the place. As if it were her last meal and she wanted to remember it.

  I guided her outside and nodded to Lawrence. He smiled back then glanced around to see if anyone had seen us leave.

  Cassie smiled up at him and said, “Thank you, that was wonderful.” She said it with such sincerity, you could tell she meant every word. That it was important Lawrence know how much it meant to her.

  He smiled back at her. The girl had him wrapped around her little finger. What’s more? She wasn’t even aware of the fact.

  We began walking, the night had gotten a little cooler, but not too bad.

  “Do you want my jacket,” I asked.

  She startled for a moment. Like I’d surprised her or something. “No
thanks,” she said with a smile.

  We continued on. New York changes as the night progresses. I’d learned long ago that you could almost tell the time of night by the number of weirdos on the street. More weirdos, the later the hour.

  “What now,” she asked. “How are you going to top that?”

  We stopped at the light then crossed with the crowd. Well after midnight, and there was still a crowd. God, you had to love this city.

  I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t know about you, but I’m getting hungry again.”

  She laughed, and shook her head as she mumbled “boys!”

  “How about a slice, I know a great shop on the next block. They’re open all night. We can grab something and figure out what we’re going to do next.”

  She nodded. Who could say no to pizza?

  “But, you’ve got to let me pay,” she said with a serious frown.

  My first instinct was to push back. My dad would have. But, I could see she was determined. She had that look I was beginning to recognize. The creased forehead and steady gaze that told me I wasn’t going to win this one. I figured I would only have two slices instead of three. It soothed my tortured soul a little.

  Smiling, I nodded acceptance and we started for Joe’s Pizza Palace.

  We got our food and ate it on the sidewalk as we headed up Broadway.

  “So what now?” Cassy asked around a bite of pizza.

  Shrugging my shoulders, I finished my first slice and started on the second.

  She watched me eat then shook her head at something. What? She hadn’t seen a growing boy stuff his face at two in the morning?

  “What would you like to do?” I asked between bites as I twisted to make sure the melted mozzarella didn’t drop. “What have you never done that you’re super curious about?”

  Her eyes flashed for a moment and her cheeks began to turn that delectable pink. What had I said?

  She turned away from me and kept heading up the street.

  “What’d I say?” I said as I hurried to catch up.

  She laughed, shook her head and said, “Nothing, don’t worry about it.”

  “Okay then, what do you want to do?” I asked for the umpteenth time. I had long since run out of ideas.