His For Keeps: (50 Loving States, Tennessee)

by Theodora Taylor

  “Of course,” Josie says.

  “Hello,” I say as I walk out of the kitchen. Supposedly to get out of earshot, but really just to get away from Beau. For someone who can’t see, he sometimes makes me feel like he can see right through me.

  “I’m not this guy.”

  I nearly stumble. It’s Colin. Colin calling me from an unknown number.

  “What are you doing calling me from a number I don’t know?” I say.

  “I’m not the guy who chases the girl,” he tells me. “I don’t like games, and if a girl tries to play them with me, I cut her loose, because I’m not that guy.”

  I shake my head. “But you’re calling me after I told you not to…” I point out.

  “Because you’re making me that guy,” he bites out on the other end of the line. “The kind of guy who borrows his guitar tech’s phone, so the girl who’s not returning his calls will pick up. The kind of guy who’s thinking psycho shit, like ‘Maybe I do need to get a detective. Track her down. Show up at her work.’”

  The thought of Colin showing up here at Beau’s house stops my heart.

  “If you do that, I’m not ever going to forgive you.”

  “Then talk to me!” he yells on the other side of the phone. “If you don’t want me to act like a psycho, talk to me!”

  “There’s nothing to talk about,” I say back as fiercely as I can, considering I have to keep my voice down. I step all the way outside to put an extra layer of protection between me and Beau. Shivering in the blustery wind, I say to Colin, “We had a weekend. It’s over. It’s time for both of us to move on.”

  “That wasn’t the deal,” he says. “What happened to the deal we made? The promises?”

  “I changed my mind,” I answer, my voice as corrosive as acid. “Sometime between being covered up with a blanket by your assistant and getting back to the real world where I don’t have to do things like get snuck off somebody’s property.”

  “So that’s what this is about?” he asks. “You’re upset about the way things ended? Listen, I can control a lot of things, but I can’t control the press—”

  “I’m not asking you to,” I tell him, annoyed with his explanation even before he makes it. “Believe me, I’m not. But you said you recognized me from before, back when I was stupid enough to date Mike Lancer, right?”

  A pause. “What does Mike Lancer have to do with you and me?”

  A lot, I think. And I give it to him straight. “You know I dated Mike Lancer, so you also know I already did the secret girlfriend thing. And I’m over it.”

  Silence drops like a bomb over our conversation.

  “Purple,” he finally says. “I’m a very private man—”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard that,” I answer. “So feel free to go get yourself another secret girlfriend. I release you from our deal.”

  “Okay, let’s talk about this.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it. I’ve said all I’m going to say on this. Now you need to let me off this phone, because I need to get back to work.”

  “No, we need to talk about this. Take a half-day. I’ll pay your missing wages.”

  I figure now was as good of time as any to let the poor boy who became rich know money doesn’t solve everything. “Don’t call me again,” I say.

  “Don’t hang up on me,” he practically growls through the phone. “If you hang up on me—”

  I hang up on him.

  A few seconds later, a text comes through. “Just so you understand, I haven’t released you from our deal. See you when I get back to Tennessee.”

  26

  See you when I get back to Tennessee.

  Colin might as well have said, “See you every single day until I get back to Tennessee.”

  He didn’t call. And so far, no detectives had turned up, sniffing around. But that didn’t mean I was rid of him.

  The next two weeks are brutal. Filled with avoiding any baby conversation with Beau, trying to keep thoughts of Colin out of my head, and a difficult ten-day visit from Beau’s mother, Kitty.

  The good news is when it comes time to turn down the nanny position, I can easily use Beau’s bossy mother as an excuse. She is straight out of a pre-Civil War novel, and it’s all I can do to keep a polite tongue when she orders me about like I’m her assistant, not Beau’s.

  By the time she leaves, I’m not surprised Beau Sr. died of a heart attack early into his retirement. Living with Kitty twenty-four-seven had to be a lot for any soul to take. Putting up with her was worse than putting up with my worst patients, and she doesn’t even have any ailments to use as an excuse.

  But even worse than Kitty Prescott are the nights I spend in my little attic room. My brain is all the way done with Colin. It knows I’ve made a good, sound decision, solidly based in not being an idiot over a dude like I used to be when I was fifteen, because I’m grown now, and it’s not like I don’t know any better.

  But my body is a different story. My body burns with thoughts of the way Colin completely possessed me that last night in his cabin. Whenever I’m lying there alone in bed, my body goes crazy. Makes me wonder if dignity is all it’s cracked up to be. Questions if being someone’s dirty secret is really such a terrible thing. It gets so bad that the only way I can calm myself down is by thinking about my mother. Her constant drinking and spiraling every time she got dumped by yet another one of her married boyfriends.

  The thought of my mother is almost enough to cool me down. Almost enough to make me forget about Colin. Like I want to. Like I really, really should.

  Almost.

  One night instead of trying to sleep, I pull out my guitar and start working on a song about a no-good guy. It feels appropriate, and every writer knows songs about no-good guys never go out of style.

  I’m making good headway on it, picking out a melody to go along with the lyrics, when Colin’s voice pops off inside my head.

  “I don’t think that song’s what you think it’s about.”

  “It’s exactly what I think it’s about,” I answer the imaginary voice in my head. “All it needs now is the right melody.”

  I work on the melody for a few minutes. Finally get something decent worked out, only to have Colin start up again.

  “Nice tune. Too bad about them lyrics.”

  “My lyrics are fine,” I answer.

  “Alright, I guess you’re cool with fine. I thought you wanted great, but if ‘fine’ is all you’re after…”

  The voice trails off.

  And I think, Good, now I can work on my song in peace. Which I do. Except I can still sense Colin, lurking in the back of my head like a green cartoon cricket, who thinks he knows better than me.

  “I know what the song is,” I tell him.

  “Sure you do. It’s your song. Feel free to ignore the guy who’s racked up over two dozen number ones. That’s cool.”

  “It’s not really you,” I say to him, feeling like a crazy person. “You’re just a voice inside my head. A voice I really don’t ever want to hear again.”

  “Is that why you keep lying to yourself about what that song is really about?”

  “I’m not…”

  “Because if you’re okay with using your free time to lay down a mediocre song, just cuz you don’t want to admit its really a song about missing me, then you go on ahead and do that, Purple. I’ll shut up.”

  My hand tightens around the guitar’s neck. “I don’t miss you.”

  “Okay.”

  “I don’t… I shouldn’t.”

  “Now that sounds like the start of a promising lyric.”

  Goddammit. I picked up my journal and the words start pouring out of my black felt pen so quickly, I can barely write them down fast enough. It’s ugly work, and in the end, I find myself looking at two pages of barely legible mania scrawl. Nothing like the pretty penmanship of the well thought over songs on previous pages.

  I squint, not knowing if I’ll be able to read the words, much less matc
h them to the melody I’ve worked out.

  But when I play the completely rewritten song, it comes out of the oven, piping hot. Raw and simple. A song about a girl missing a guy. Another perennial favorite. One I have no doubt I could have sold if I wasn’t on the blackball list of one of the biggest names in country.

  I think about his hotel room threat the day I chose Beau over him. He isn’t the kind of guy who makes threats like that lightly. And now, I’ve refused to be his secret girlfriend. There is no way he’s going to let me get anywhere near a country label exec, especially with a song about missing him. When I really shouldn’t.

  Sighing I set aside the guitar and walk downstairs. Josie and Beau are in the living room, curled up on the couch in front of the fire, listening to an audiobook. They’re such a good-looking couple. Like looking at an ad for high-end sweaters that only beautiful rich people can pull off.

  “I’m going out,” I tell them, trying to tamp down my jealousy, because neither of them deserve anything less than the perfect love they’ve found. “Can I bring you back anything?”

  “I’m good,” Beau calls back.

  Josie throws me a worried look from her position in Beau’s lap and asks, “Where are you going?”

  “Just to the twenty-four hour drugstore for some snacks,” I answer. I know she’s worried about me going out this late at night with Mike Lancer still posing a threat.

  “In that case, I could use some ice cream and maybe a jar of green olives if they have them,” she tells me. “If you don’t mind…”

  “I don’t,” I assure her, and then I turn to get out of there because I’m technically off the clock, and the last thing I want to do is spend my personal time with a couple who are not only best friends, but also a walking reminder of what most guys want at the end of the day. Someone kind and beautiful. Someone with flawless skin and no visible scars. The kind of girl you’re proud to call your wife.

  Colin wanted Josie, so he could be normal. He settled for me.

  And that’s what I really need to remember about Colin, I think to myself as shame and regret wrestle inside my head. Instead of writing songs about how much I miss him, I have to remember why he chose me. Because I’m dirty. Because he knew he could be as messed up as he wanted to be with me.

  I pause at the front door, a decision suddenly becoming clear inside my mind.

  “Hey, Josie,” I say, coming back to the open archway that separates the front room from the front entrance. “What color do you think I should dye my hair this time? Blue or green?”

  27

  After the night I dye my hair blue, I decide to leave my guitar alone for a while. I know one day I’ll be able to pick it up again without inviting Colin right back into my head, but that day isn’t any of the ones that have come so far. And I have a feeling it won’t be coming for quite some time.

  I keep myself busy, running errands for Beau. And Josie now, too, because she’s not only pregnant, but busier than she’s ever been, running the Ruth’s House Alabama location by herself.

  Colin, to my great relief, doesn’t call. Then eventually the weekend before Columbus Day rolls around, and Colin continues not to call, so hooray, I guess. We’re on the same page. I don’t want to be his secret plaything, and he’s accepting no for an answer.

  Instead of moping around, I spend all Saturday and then Sunday morning, too, helping Josie register for both her wedding and baby showers. I’m supposed to be off weekends, but it’s not like I have anything better to do, especially now Colin’s temporarily possessed my guitar like a poltergeist.

  “I don’t understand why we have to do a combined wedding and baby shower next weekend. It feels like Mrs. Prescott is just being mean with that call,” Josie complains as we scan items onto her shower registry at the closest big box baby store.

  She then waves her hand at the five-page long list we downloaded from the internet earlier in the morning.

  “And I really don’t understand why we need all this stuff to keep a baby alive. I mean we set up a Diaper Genie and a changing table at Ruth’s House, scattered a few toys on the floor, and we were good to go!”

  I laugh as I pick up a baby floor gym and register it with one of the scan guns a clerk from the baby registry department gave us.

  “You need to just be happy Beau’s mama agreed to scale down the wedding enough so you’d still fit in a wedding gown by the time you walk down the aisle.”

  Scaled down wasn’t really a good word, though. Now instead of the four-hundred person summer wedding Mrs. Prescott had been envisioning, Josie and Beau will be having a two-hundred person Christmas weekend wedding, complete with fake snow, a full orchestra, and a gown that looks like it was straight out of a production of The Snow Queen.

  There had even been some talk about dressing the security guards as nutcrackers, but Beau had squashed that, explaining to his mother that no security team worth its salt would agree to do their job while dressed in fake white beards, red short coats, and beefeater hats.

  Still, I could tell all the wedding preparations, along with taking over Ruth’s House, were wearing on Josie. So I’d stayed in Alabama for most of the weekend. Going around with Josie to different shops and vendors and helping her take care of the mountain of little things you had to take care of before a wedding and the arrival of a baby.

  However, I can only be so much help, and I don’t love the dark circles under Josie’s eyes. Especially since I know one of the things she’s worrying about is finding a nanny.

  “Why don’t you go test out the gliders,” I say, nodding my head toward the nearby section of rocking chairs. “I can take care of this.”

  Josie hesitates. “But you have to get on the road soon to drive to Tennessee for your grandmother’s Sunday Dinner. I don’t want to…”

  “I’ve got about two more hours until I’m in the danger zone,” I tell her. “Besides, I don’t know where you come from, but I’m black. You know Sunday Dinner isn’t going to start exactly on time.”

  Josie laughs. “You’re so good to me,” she says, squeezing my shoulder. “I must have been a saint in a past life, because that’s the only way to explain how I got lucky enough to deserve you.”

  A wave of guilt passes over me as I think about all the things I’m keeping from her. And that she really has no idea who exactly she invited into her life.

  The ringtone version of “9 to 5” saves me from having to answer, and I pull out my phone like a drowning man reaching for a buoy.

  I’m so surprised when I see the name flashing across the scene that I let it show on my face.

  “Who is it?” Josie asks beside me. “Is everything okay?”

  I school my face to something just about neutral.

  “Um, it’s Colin,” I tell her.

  And Josie smiles.

  “Ooh, he hasn’t called in a while. I was afraid to ask how the friendship project was going. But don’t let it go to voicemail. Answer it! The CMAs are coming up. He might need to talk.”

  I do as she says, wondering if there will ever be a guilt plateau to all the stuff I’m keeping from Josie.

  “Hi,” I say, trying to keep my voice as neutral as possible.

  St. Josie gives me a thumbs up and goes over to the glider section as Colin says, “I was wondering if you’d make me borrow Keith’s phone again.”

  “Why are you calling me?” I ask him. “I thought I made myself clear the last time we talked.”

  “Tell me something, Purple. When’s the last time you Googled yourself?”

  I blink, thrown off by the question. “I’ve never Googled myself,” I answer.

  “Why is that?”

  “I dunno. I guess because I haven’t done anything that would really get me an electronic footprint.”

  “Hmm.” The sound is little more than a grunt coming out of Colin’s mouth. “Well, I guess I can wait.”

  I look to both sides. “Wait for what?”

  “For you to Google yourse
lf. Go’on ahead. I’ll still be here when you’re done.”

  With a mixture of dread and curiosity, I lower my smartphone, open up its browser, and type in my own name, first and last. This is silly, I think to myself as I do it. It’s not like my name is all that uncommon. Most likely I’ll have to scroll through a few pages before I even get any real hits…

  The results immediately begin to flood the screen preceded by headlines like: “Colin Fairgood Reveals New Relationship” and “Country Singer Colin Fairgood Finally Admits to Being In a Relationship.”

  The preview copy in a few of the links reads, “Colin Fairgood, who has always been notoriously secretive about his love life, was surprisingly candid about his new girlfriend in an interview with Canadian talk show host, Oliver Morgan…”

  My eyes go wide as I scroll through the results. There’s even a video clip. I click on it, somehow thinking this is a joke, that it all must be a joke, even as Colin appears on my screen, seated on a couch next to the desk of a pudgy man with a thick Canadian accent.

  “So you’ve been on the program a few times and I always tell my producers not to bother asking aboot your personal life in the pre-interview. But this time, my producer comes running into my office and says, ‘Colin Fairgood’s got a girl and he’s giving us the exclusive!’ Of course my first response is, Why the hell would he do that?”

  Both the audience and Colin fall out laughing on my phone’s small screen as Oliver Morgan insists, “We’re a small show. We’re nothing, for Chrissake’s! On late at night with an audience share so small, we’ve started counting the moose hanging aboot outside as part of our viewership. I’m serious man, our audience is so small, we’ve been reduced to having American country music stars as guests.”

  Colin responds with a good-natured chuckle. “Well, maybe this will help your ratings.”

  “In America maybe, yes.” Oliver Morgan agrees. He then calls over his shoulder to his unseen crew. “Are we even on in America?”

  A few helpful crew members call back, “In Puerto Rico!”