‘Honey, where aren’t I posting that? Instagram, your Facebook Fan Page, your personal website. You name it, it’s going up there. I want everyone to see that you’re just a good, old-fashioned country boy who hasn’t forgotten his roots. You know they’ll eat that shit up. It’s very in right now.’
‘And if I agree to that, you’ll give me a couple of days? No questions asked?’
Meredith nods absently, but her fingers are going a mile a minute, tapping away at her phone. ‘Sure,’ she says. ‘You do your thing.’
‘So you’re going back to New York?’
‘Not a chance,’ she says without looking up from the screen.
‘Merry…’
‘Oh no. I’m not going anywhere, bucko. If you want to have your spiritual retreat or homecoming or moment of grief, whatever the hell this is, that’s fine – I can’t stop you. But if you think that I’m letting you out of my sight for even a second, you’re out of your bloody mind. I’m going to be watching you like a hawk until I get you on a plane to the first stop on the tour. After that, you’re the road crew’s problem, not mine.’ She holds up the screen to Hale; it pings and buzzes at him. ‘See? Social media presence, darling. A couple of days of blitzing it, and we’ll see if we can’t get the rest of those tickets sold. I’ll just snap a few quick photos. You won’t even know I’m here.’
‘You know I hate all that crap.’
‘Which is precisely why the agency pays me. So you don’t have to deal with it.’ She turns to me, as if to mark the end of her discussion with Hale; suddenly, I’m the one she needs. ‘I suppose it’s too much to suppose that there’s a decent hotel in this town?’ she asks. ‘I’m not asking for a Hilton, but… a Marriott, maybe?’
I shake my head. ‘There’s a guest house on Chambers Street. Other than that, you’re back over in Hogarth.’ Or, you know, you could just head right on up to Austin. I’m sure that might be more to your taste.
‘Ah well. Needs must, I suppose.’ She stands up, smooths down her skirt, and heads for the door before he can respond. ‘Oh, and Hale?’ she says.
‘Hmm?’
‘Pay for my coffee, there’s a dear. That’s the least you can do, given everything you’ve put me through, don’t you think?’
And with that, Hurricane Meredith heads off across the street to see how Polly Kimble’s hospitality shapes up when compared to the Ritz-Carlton. It’s a little while before anyone says anything. Eventually, it’s Jerry’s voice that pipes up – twice in one day. A new record.
‘What the hell was that?’ he asks. He’s not the only one wondering, that’s for sure.
I wish I knew, buddy, I think. Honest to God, I wish I knew.
2006
‘Play something for me,’ I say.
We’re sitting in the park, under a large cherry blossom tree. A plaque next to it informs us that it was planted on August, 1969, in remembrance of Franny Richards by her loving husband Tom, who had spent forty-eight years married to her and wished he could have had forty-eight more. I love this tree. I love everything about it: the way the blossoms smell in the summer, the way the branches stretch out far enough to provide as much shade as you could possibly need. I love the way the tree means something, the way it was left here as a monument to love.
Where better to bring Hale on what’s effectively our first real date?
He brought the guitar, of course; he always does, pretty much wherever he goes. Not that I mind at all. Any time he gets a chance to practice – or perhaps even to show off a little bit – he’s all over it like white on rice. Now he’s sprawled out on a picnic blanket in the shade, the guitar resting against the tree. I brought enough food to feed a herd of elephants, packed up in a cooler, plus another package for him to take home with him after we’re done. I didn’t think he’d take it, based on the last time, but he did, and with thanks.
A group of kids are goofing around on the playground, seeing how far they can get along the monkey bars before the sun-heated metal becomes unbearable on their hands. They’re not that much younger than us, but sitting here with Hale it feels like that period of my life was a world away. Suddenly I feel very grown up, very adult – as though the drink in the cooler should be wine rather than just coke.
Hale grabs the guitar from its resting place near the tree and pulls it towards him. ‘Sure,’ he says. ‘What do you want to hear?’
‘I don’t know. Something I haven’t heard before.’
He grins. ‘All due respect, Carrie, that doesn’t narrow it down all that much.’
He’s not wrong. We’d run through our respective tastes in music that afternoon at the lake, the first time we’d met. He was absolutely aghast that I’d never listened to the Velvet Underground, to the Smiths, to the Violent Femmes. Occasionally he’d mention someone that sort of rang a bell, and I’d get excited when he rang out a few chords and I could tell what it was.
‘We’re not really a big music household,’ I had said, almost apologetically.
‘That’s OK,’ he had replied. ‘I don’t mind teaching you.’
And I was learning – albeit slowly. He’d written me a list of albums that I just had to listen to, and I’d made my way through about half of it. Raiding my friends’ CD collections had come up blank – apparently there was nothing Hale recommended that came after the turn of the millennium, which meant it might as well have been prehistoric as far as Kitty was concerned – but Mrs. Ellis had been kind enough to let me rummage through her CDs to see if anything matched up, and there was always the public library. That and the internet, of course.
I wondered how Hale had got such a rich knowledge of music. From what he’d told me about his parents – his mom, gone; his dad, the less said the better – and his home life, it didn’t seem like his house was one that was filled with song. I meant to ask him, but… well, there just never seemed to be a good time.
He’s waiting for me to answer, and I do by sticking my tongue out and blowing a fierce raspberry at him.
‘Why, Miss Walker,’ he says, doing his best impression of a shocked Southern Belle. ‘I am positively scandalised.’ He gestures over to the kids on the monkey bars. ‘Just what will the neighbours think?’
‘Hush, you.’
‘So rude.’
In return, he gets a roll of my eyes powerful enough to split rocks. When I finally roll them back around into the front of my head and refocus on him, he’s got a wry little smile on his face.
‘Hey, Carrie?’ he says.
‘Yeah?’
‘C’mere.’
The thing is, I already am here. I’m sitting about a foot away from him. The only way I could get closer is if I was sitting on his lap, which means there’s only one thing he can possibly be getting at. I just don’t realise what it is until my face is no more an inch or two away from his and he leans in to kiss me.
He’s not aggressive; if anything, he’s almost hesitant, as though he thinks even for a moment that I might pull away, that I might not want it. That lasts a split-second before I feel his hand at my cheek, a gentle pressure drawing me to him, holding me close, promising to never let me go. I want this, it seems to say. I want you.
And my God, how I want him. Like a bird needs to fly. Like a fish needs water. Like loving husband Tom needed Franny Richards. All of him, all at once, always. Not even the kids at the monkey bars, whooping and hollering at us, can do anything to spoil the moment. Even the child who shouts out ‘Gaaaaaaay!’ – in what can only be described as a fundamental misunderstanding of the ins and outs of what homosexuality involves – barely registers. The only thing that matters in that moment is Hale: the sound of his breaths; the scent of his sweat; the sensation of his lips on mine.
It’s perfect. Given the chance, I’d stay frozen in that spot forever.
When Hale pulls away at last – too soon – he’s smiling. ‘I’ve been waiting to do that all day,’ he says.
‘Why�
��d you wait?’
He grins. ‘Now that you mention it, I have no idea.’
I wonder if perhaps he’s going to kiss me again, but instead he gestures for me to sit back with him against the tree, and I do: my head nestled on his shoulder, my hands on his leg, perfectly content with the world.
‘OK,’ he says. ‘Something you haven’t heard before. Got it.’
He starts playing then, and for three or so minutes, all of his focus is on the guitar. His fingers dance up and down the fretboard, so light and nimble it’s hard to believe that he’s as strong as he is. Every time I expect him to begin singing, to launch into lyrics that I might recognise in some distant part of my mind, he doesn’t. Whatever he’s playing, it’s an instrumental. I close my eyes and try to keep my mind on the music, letting myself get carried away in his soft strumming, the warm breeze and the scent of the grass the only things from the outside world I bring along with me.
For three minutes, I’m all his. A captive audience, captivated.
‘So?’ he asks when he finishes. ‘What did you think?’
‘I liked it,’ I say. ‘Who’s it by?’
He smiles – not his joking, playful, I can’t believe you didn’t recognise that smile, but a genuine smile of unrestrained pleasure, bubbled up to the surface and impossible to hide. ‘No one,’ he said. ‘That’s a Hale Fischer original.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Yep. I wrote it for you. After I walked you home that afternoon, I went home and started playing, and… well, that’s what came out. All you. I just remembered it, that’s all.’
I don’t know quite what to say to that, but that’s OK. Just like Hale, I have something better than words for the situation.
This time, I’m the one that that kisses him, and I don’t stop until both of us – at long, desperate, tragic last – need to come up for air.
Chapter Nine
I spend most of the rest of the morning on my phone, doing my best modern-day Nancy Drew impression. Anything I can learn about Hale, I do. Facebook, Instagram, his personal website – not to mention what appears to be a disturbingly large number of fan pages dotted around the web. I mean, he’s not exactly stratospheric or anything, but he’s apparently made quite a name for himself.
I don’t know how I feel about that.
On the other hand, though… I mean, he actually did it. All those goofy little wisecracks he used to make when we were kids, the way he said one day he’d end up making a living by playing guitar – they actually came true. I mean, it was easy to believe it when I was a teenager. When you’re a teenager, most things are easy to believe; that’s why Young Adult novels always end with a happily ever after, with your darling couple heading off into the sunset for a life of true love and never worrying about stretchmarks or car payments or whether or not that lump is something they need to get looked at. Everything works out, eventually. Everyone gets their dream house, their dream job, their dream lover. And so what if life doesn’t really work like that?
Well, apparently it did for Hale. Mostly.
He still hasn’t told you if he’s single, the voice in my head whispers. I try to pretend to myself that’s not what I’m looking for as I scan the internet, tearing webpages apart and delving into all the nooks and crannies I can find in search of some clue as to whether or not he’s seeing someone. So far, I haven’t been able to come up with anything either way. Outside of the official channels – all of which have been carefully moderated by Meredith, I’m sure – there’s very little information out there. Apparently Hale is just as private with the rest of the world as he is with me.
Mom isn’t thrilled to hear that Hale is back, of course, but I figure it’s probably best that she hears it directly from me rather than from the Eden grapevine; if it comes from the horse’s mouth, maybe she won’t think I’m trying to cover something up and I’ll be spared the inevitable hard time that follows – or at least, I might be allowed a shortened version.
‘Oh, Carrie,’ she says, in a way that suggests it’s somehow my fault that he’s rolled back into town, as though he’s a biblical plague I’ve managed to bring back onto myself. ‘You aren’t getting mixed up with him again, are you?’
I can’t help but think that mixed up is probably the best way to put it, but I can hardly tell her that. ‘No,’ I say. ‘And besides, who still says “mixed up with”, anyway? You make me sound like I’m some convent schoolgirl he managed to get pregnant.’
‘Don’t even joke about that.’ My mother, for a woman who was married for over twenty years and has a daughter of her own, is shockingly reluctant to admit the fact that people actually, you know, do it.
‘We’re friends, Mom,’ I say. ‘That’s all.’
I think, anyway.
‘Honestly, Carrie… it’s like you’ve forgotten what he did to you. You were an absolute mess after he ran away. Crying yourself to sleep every night for months. Me and your father didn’t know what we were supposed to do with you. Nothing we seemed to do helped. You were just… broken. Completely. It was heartbreaking for a mother to see, it really was.’
I don’t think there’s any danger of me forgetting the sadness of that fall, any more than I could forget the joys of the summer that came before it. I was different afterwards, different in a thousand little ways – some stronger, some better, and some far, far worse.
‘I know, Mom,’ I say. ‘I was there too, remember?’
She rolls her eyes at me before she heads off to give the Gallaghers on Table Six their desserts – ever the martyr – and that’s the last that’s said on the subject.
~~~
There’s a certain spring in my step as I pull down the shutters and lock up the diner for the night. If anyone asked, I’d point to the takings, which are something approaching decent for the first time in months. A steady stream of customers had poured in ever since the morning, and by the time Pete had packed up and gone home for the night I could tell that he was worn out despite the smile on his face. He knew as well as I did what a good day looked like: the sun in the sky, a full cash register, and a smiling boss.
Of course, my good mood isn’t just about the fact that maybe, just maybe, the Red Rose Diner will live to fight another day. Partly – perhaps even mostly – it’s all about Hale. The effect he has on me. The way that, just like he did when we were sixteen, just like things were before they all went south, even his presence is enough to brighten my day and bring a smile to my face. By the time I get down to the corner of Maple and Main, I’m practically walking on air.
The angry throttle of a motorbike engine pulls me out of my daydream. I turn on my heel, ready to yell at whoever thought they could get away with being so rude – that’s just not how things are done, not in an apple-pie town like Eden – but it’s Hale’s face I see smiling back at me, his eyes glinting like the bike’s chrome under the Texas sun.
‘Finally,’ he says. ‘I’ve been calling you for, like, two blocks.’
‘Sorry. World of my own.’
‘I can see that. Something wrong?’
I shake my head. ‘No, no. Furthest thing from it, in fact. I’m having a great day.’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘Mmm-hmm.’
‘Well, I’m glad.’ He pauses, just for an instant, just long enough to set aside what he’s thinking. ‘Can I give you a ride home?’ he asks.
‘On that thing?’
He grins at me. ‘It’d be kind of weird if I offered you a piggyback, wouldn’t it?’
I point down Maple Avenue. ‘I live there,’ I say. ‘I can literally see my apartment from here.’
‘So we’ll take the long way. You want to go for a ride?’
‘Are you serious?’
‘Sure.’
‘Is it safe?’
‘I’m still here, aren’t I?’
‘That’s not exactly the best endorsement, Hale.’
He smiles the kind of smile
that promises trouble, and reaches into the case behind the seat with one hand. When it emerges, it’s holding a helmet, the same hard black material that Hale’s is made out of. Obviously he’s no stranger to sharing. ‘Yes, it’s safe,’ he says. ‘I wouldn’t offer otherwise. So what do you say?’
Chapter Ten
Twenty minutes later, we’re tearing up the asphalt, heading north away from Eden fast enough to leave it a twinkling dot on the horizon behind us – or at least, I’m sure it would be if I dared to look around. The sun is hanging low in the sky to my left, casting a deep, rich glow across the countryside, painting the world in reds and oranges. The scrubland whizzes past us too fast for me to focus on any one thing, blurring with motion until it turns my stomach and makes my head spin just to look at it. How the hell does anyone travel on one of these things for fun? I think – but that lasts just about as long as it takes me to look out to the open road in front of us. Over Hale’s shoulder, I can see the white lines against the black of the asphalt, stretching out towards the horizon like they’re grasping for the future, for everything that could be. What’s behind us doesn’t matter, as long as there’s a destination – somewhere for us to head towards.
And who cares if we never reach it, eh? Who cares if the road keeps going, as long as I’m here with Hale?
~~~
I’m still in a state of complete bliss when he pulls off the main road and slows the bike down from what might as well have been a million miles an hour to a slow crawl. The place he’s chosen isn’t bare desert, although it might as well be; there’s nothing but a large patch of once-clear ground that has just started to be reclaimed by the most stubborn of Texas weeds. Once upon a time, it might have been a rest stop, but now there’s barely any sign that anyone ever spent any amount of time here.
‘How come we’re stopping?’ I ask as he pulls himself off the bike and helps me down after. His hand is soft and strong around mine, but even once I’m safely back on two feet he doesn’t let go. He leads me over to a large flat rock, easily the size of a picnic table, and hoists himself into a seating position on top of it. It’s a lot easier for him, with eight or so inches of extra height to work with, but ever the gentleman he helps me scramble my way up next to him.
Reckless: A Bad Boy Musicians Romance Page 10
