by W E DeVore
She finally caught up with him halfway down the block. “Sanger, what is with you?”
“What is with me?” he asked. “A month ago, you were in tears when I told you that my father wanted me to move back to Memphis, but now you’re leaving and you want to know what’s with me?”
“I’m not moving away. I’m going on tour again. It’s not like I haven’t done this before.” She grabbed his arm, holding him in place. “Aaron, talk to me. It’s not like you’ll be alone. You’ll have Yvie. Jesus, Sanger, I’m not the only game in town for you anymore. You have a girlfriend. You don’t need me. If anything, you need less of me to make some room for her. Tell me what’s going on in that head of yours.”
The anger that had been building dissipated and he shook his head. “Nothing. You’re right. Of course, you’re right. Of course, you should go on tour with them. It makes all the sense in the world.”
“Are you ok?” she asked.
He put his hands on his hips and watched the setting sun beyond her shoulders. “No, I’m not. It was abstract before. Your stalker. I knew they were out there, but I hadn’t seen any of the letters myself. Just heard about it from you. You’ve been downplaying how bad those letters are. I don’t understand why you’re not more worried about this.”
“I was, at first. But Derek’s been treating it like a game. He calls them love notes. His manager acts like it’s just another day at the office.” She shrugged. “It’s hard to maintain panic when everyone else in the room is calm.”
Sanger smiled at her. “I’m familiar with this.” He looked down at his feet. “I’ve been working overtime trying to keep you out of this Ackerman mess while this sick fuck’s been watching you through windows. I don’t know if I can protect you from both, Clementine.”
“How bad is this stuff with Mike?” she asked.
“It’s not good.”
When he didn’t continue, she said, “You gonna talk to me about it?”
“No. The less you know, the better.”
Q slid her arm around his waist. “Come on, Aaron. I’ll buy you dinner. You’re going to have a stroke if you don’t relax a little.”
“No, you go on,” he said, pushing her away. “I want to look into this a little longer. I’ll get a uniform to take you home.”
“That’s ok. I think I’ll walk down to the Cove and check out the Beasts’ set. Maybe fuck with Charlie,” she said. With her contractually obligated to abandon them for the next two months, the Beasts had agreed to carry on without her. The fact that Charlie finally got to stand in the center of the stage with every eye on him was going to make any future reintegration the QT into QT and the Beasts a less than enjoyable experience and she wanted to limit her exposure as much as possible.
Sanger abruptly caught her hand and pulled her back to him. He cupped her face, staring into her eyes and making her more uncomfortable by the minute. “Please be careful. Please take this more seriously. I can’t protect you if you’re not on your guard and I can’t lose you. You’re my family. You understand me?”
“You’re stuck with me for the long haul, cowboy. I’m too stubborn to die. You should have figured that out by now.” He rested his forehead against hers and closed his eyes. Q trembled as Sanger’s worry and fear began to infect her bloodstream. “Please don’t push the panic button, Aaron. I can’t be afraid anymore. I’ll lose my mind.”
He nodded and let her go. Clearing his throat, he said, “You watch your six, Clementine. I’ll call you later.”
She glanced at the back of her jeans. “It is a nice six, isn’t it? I’d hate for it to get scuffed up.”
He laughed and gestured for her to leave. She kissed him on his cheek, swallowing back her fear to head out into the gathering darkness.
◆◆◆
By the time she made it down to the Cove, the Beasts had already loaded in and Charlie was standing out front, leaning against the building, smoking a cigarette.
“What are you doing here?” he asked. “You’re supposed to be at rehearsals. You can’t sit in.”
“I don’t want to, asshole,” she replied. “Rehearsals got cut short tonight. I came to see Ben, not you.”
“You’ll need to wait your turn.” He nodded towards the grassy neutral ground and she saw Ben arguing with her new bandmate’s brother-in-law near a stand of azalea bushes.
“What’s that about?” she asked.
“Homedude talking smack about a man’s wife in his place of business.” Judging from the expression on Charlie’s face, the pistol he kept in his guitar case was itching to make an appearance.
“Ok, I’ll bite. Since when did you get all chivalrous?”
He took a long drag off his cigarette. “Nobody calls my bandmate a talentless cunt.”
“That’s not true,” she said. “You do all the time.”
He grinned. “Yeah, but that’s my line. I can’t let some craft beer-swilling hipster take it from me. There’s only one man who gets a pass for calling you a cunt and it ain’t him.”
“Whatever, diva dick.”
“Back at you, center-stage slut.” He tossed down his cigarette and stubbed it out with the heel of his combat boot before turning to go back into the Cove. “If you decided to punch the fucker, holler. I’d love to see that.”
Q saluted him and skipped across the street, calling out, “Hey Chris, Kyle says ‘what’s up.’”
The dark-haired man standing with Ben turned to her in surprise. “What did you just say?”
“Your brother-in-law is my new bandmate. I don’t think we’ve been formerly introduced. I’m Q Toledano. AKA Derek Sharp’s little slut…. Or is it talentless cunt, now? I’m having trouble keeping up. You have any insults you’d like to say to my face instead of to my husband?”
Chris stammered out something that may have resembled an apology in some language with which Q was unfamiliar, and Q moved closer to take Ben’s outstretched hand.
“I just wanted to come in for a drink,” Chris finally managed to say.
Ben smiled broadly and said, “And I just want you to pack up and move back to Seattle. Looks like neither one of us is getting what we want tonight. I told you. You’re not welcome in Lafitte’s Cove. Your wife can come and go as she likes; get her to order you up a go-cup.”
Q bit back several dozen thinly veiled inferences that Chris’s wife came and went for Derek Sharp like a screaming freight train and snickered at her feet.
Chris tilted his head, regarding her before he said to Ben, “You should watch your wife around her new boss. He doesn’t respect marriage vows and she doesn’t look like she knows how to keep her knees closed.”
Ben lunged, and Q held him back. She also had a sudden awkward urge to defend Derek and said, “On the contrary, Derek respects marriage so much, he refuses to engage in the institution, and I think it’s your wife’s knees you should be worried about, not mine.”
“What did you say?” Chris hissed in her face.
“Oh, I think you heard me. Y’all have a nice evening.” She quickly moved them away from their irate neighbor.
When they were out of earshot, Ben explained, “Dude had the balls to try to come into the bar for a drink. Started running his mouth about Derek and you. Josh took away his scotch and handed him back his cash. Then he started getting real pissy. Charlie had to help me get him out. What a dick.”
“To be fair,” she said. “Derek did fuck his wife.”
Ben choked and said, “When?”
“In Seattle, a couple years ago. Kyle Nakamura, the guitarist for Dark Harm…?”
“The one that you don’t think likes you very much?”
“The same. Kyle is her brother. Derek threw him a birthday party and they hooked up after.” She squeezed his hand and moved closer. “I don’t think that Chris knew the real reason his wife wanted to move to the Big Easy. Derek made it sound like it was still going on.”
They walked into the Cove and Q waved at Tom and JJ where they w
ere setting up on stage.
“Things go so well at rehearsal that Derek gave you the rest of the month off?” Ben grinned down at her.
“Not so much, we should talk.” She led him back into his office and leaned against the desk. “BBB left a love note at the backdoor of the Orpheum this afternoon.”
Ben ground his teeth and closed his eyes for a moment. “What was it this time?”
“A photograph of me and Derek from that dinner party the other Saturday with some crazy biblical verses scribbled on the back.”
Ben audibly exhaled his relief. “So, the usual.”
“And my discharge papers from the E.R. the day I miscarried.”
He pulled out his phone. “I’m calling Aaron.”
“I already did,” she said. “I just came from the station. It really threw him, Ben. I’ve never seen him like this.”
“Like what?”
“Freaked.” Before Ben could join Sanger on his journey to Panictown, she held up her hand. “The thing is, it’s really not that bad. I mean it’s bad, but it’s not any worse than any of the others.”
“You don’t think that some maniac getting your medical records isn’t somehow worse?”
“No. The same creep managed to get a picture of you and me at Gracie’s gallery opening six months ago. It’s a small town, Ben. All they’d need to do is steal our recycling when you threw it out.”
“But I didn’t throw it out,” he admitted. He nodded to the cabinet in the corner of his office. “It’s filed with your other medical stuff right over there.”
“Well, that’s better even. They must work at the hospital or one of those medical coding places. That’ll make it easier to catch him,” she said. “That rules out random luck.”
Ben relaxed somewhat. “You’re still too exposed, darlin’. They got into the Orpheum…”
“They didn’t get into the Orpheum. They got into the wide open, unsecured parking lot behind it. Derek is hiring extra security right now. We’re moving into the studio until it’s done, and that place is a fucking fortress. Aaron doesn’t seem to think that’s enough for some reason.”
“What did he say?”
“He said I was his family. He said he’d burn the city to the ground if something happened to me. It was weird how scared he was.”
He leaned next to her against the desk and said, “No, it’s not. You are his family. If it wasn’t for you and Ernst, he’d be on his own.”
“That’s not true, he has you. He has Yvie...”
Ben interrupted, “You’re his best friend, darlin’. You know that. It’s also his job to protect people. So, of course, he wants to protect you.” He took her hand and stared at it for a minute. “What you and Aaron have is special. And I’m glad you have it.”
“Why?”
“Because I know that if anything ever happened to me, you wouldn’t be alone.”
She shook her head as a surge of raw terror filled her at the thought of losing her husband. “Nothing’s going to happen to you, Ben.”
He smiled at her. “You know that panic you just felt?”
Q nodded.
“That’s all it is. Just fear. Aaron will calm down once he gets his back under control.”
She bit her lip. “I need you to say it, Ben.”
He bent down and rested his forehead against hers. “Nothing’s going to happen to me, darlin’.”
“Promise me,” she whispered.
“Cross my heart.”
Ben kissed her slowly and her entire body sighed in contentment. She deepened their kiss, wanting to be closer to him. He pulled back and smiled at her.
“Come on,” he said. “I don’t think anyone will miss us during the first set. Let’s go get lost for a minute.”
“You read my mind,” she replied.
He led her out of the office and nodded to Josh behind the bar. “Got to go check on something out in the apartment. Be back in a while.”
Josh smirked, knowing exactly what Ben was going to be checking and laughed to himself. “Take your time, bossman.”
As they crossed the parking lot, Q asked, “Did you take that meeting with Charter Real Estate.”
“Your foreplay is rusty, darlin’.”
She kicked his foot. “Come on, answer the question.”
“Yes. I’m meeting with them tomorrow,” he said. “You still want me to keep the Cove open?”
“Yes, I do. You just need to convince Josh to be a partner and take over most of the day-to-day stuff.” She exhaled slowly and said, “I’m taking two years off when it happens. No gigs. But maybe that record with Derek. He knows now. That we’re trying. Or he’s guessed. When he saw the discharge papers today, he was almost kind about it.”
Ben unlocked the door to the small efficiency apartment in the back of the parking lot and pulled her inside.
“I see those gears turning, darlin’. I told you, we’re waiting.”
She licked her lips and tugged at his suitcoat. “You don’t even want to practice?”
He moved to take it off and Q walked towards the bed at the back of the room, taking off her t-shirt and stepping out of her Converse on the way. Ben stood behind her and fondled her breast as he kissed her shoulder. In the dim light of the streetlamp filtering in through the windows, she turned to look at his face. A sudden chill caught her, and she shivered.
“You alright?”
She kissed him by way of a reply, pulling him closer to her and tugging at his clothes. He brought her to him and held her more tightly against him, pushing her down to the bed. Q kicked off her jeans and Ben trailed his tongue from her neck to her stomach. She cried out as her body flooded, opening for him.
She drew him back up to her, frantically unbuckling his belt to free his erection. When he resisted, she groaned, “Fucking condoms.”
He laughed and reached for the drawer in the nightstand. “What’s your rush tonight?”
“Shut up and fuck your wife already, would you?” she said, wanting to be as near to him as possible. A vague unease had settled over her after thinking of losing her husband and she couldn’t shake it.
He kissed her slowly and she took the condom from his hand, tearing it open and slipping it on him, sliding him inside of her. Ben grunted as he penetrated her fully, cursing to himself as he struggled to maintain control. Q moved her hips more aggressively against him bringing her climax to the brink. Her back arched and she screamed his name.
When her body began to tremble around him, he pushed deeper inside of her, moving faster until his own orgasm exploded into her. She clutched him to her body and moaned as her breathing began to calm.
Ben kissed her and buried his hand in her hair as he held her closer to him before he reluctantly stood up and began to redress.
Q whined, “Boo. Stay.”
“Got to get back to work, sweet little wife. You coming?”
“In a minute. I’m going to stay here for a while. There will be less of a chance of catching hell from Charlie if we don’t walk in together.”
“I don’t want you to be alone,” he said.
“Ten minutes. Promise.”
He bent down and kissed her again, sitting on the edge of the bed to put his shoes back on. “Ten minutes, then I’m sending in the cavalry.”
She nodded and watched him leave the room. Lying back, she stared at the ceiling fan spinning lazily overhead, waiting for the sweat on her body to dry before she finally stood up and pulled her clothes back on. She locked up the apartment and quickly crossed the parking lot to the Cove, waving at a few patrons loitering near the cars on the way.
Josh grinned at her as she approached the door. “Mrs. Bordelon,” he said. “Nice to see you again. You’re looking relaxed.”
Q flipped him off and walked into the club where the Beasts were already tearing their way through their first set. Ben waved at her from behind the bar and she sat at the end, sipping on the martini he already had waiting for her. She watched her b
andmates perform on stage: Tom grinning like a lunatic, JJ’s calm, steady bouncing from left foot to right, and Charlie playing trumpet like the voice of God, himself.
I’m going to miss you, boys.
Ben caught her studying her bandmates and said, “I think they’ll make it ok for six months. What are you thinking?”
She stared into his amber eyes until her heart felt like it would fall from her chest. “I’m going to tell him yes, Ben. I’m going to do it.”
He smiled at her and leaned across the bar to kiss her. “You’re going to have a blast, you know that?”