by Nella Tyler
Finally, the host was free. “Thank you for your patience, ma’am,” he said, giving me a polite smile.
“Not a problem,” I told him. “I’m actually meeting someone who’s already been seated: Zeke Baxter?” The host nodded quickly and snagged a menu from the stack on top of his podium with a graceful movement.
“Please, follow me,” he said, keeping the smile on his face all the time. I’d been to a lot of restaurants in the course of doing my job, and it never ceased to amaze me how well hosts and hostesses (generally) managed to keep their tone polite and a smile on their face whenever they were dealing with a customer. I knew that no matter how good my self-control had become, I didn’t have the kind of patience to do their job.
I followed the host across the dining room and spotted Zeke seated at a two-top table. He was dressed for work in a suit and tie, and I had to admit to myself that he looked as good as ever—especially when I knew exactly what he looked like underneath the suit. He stood as we approached and gave me a slightly awkward kiss on the cheek before the host pulled my chair out and laid my menu down on my place setting.
I sat down, taking a deep breath as surreptitiously as I could. “How have you been? I can’t see any sign of what happened,” Zeke said when the host had left the table.
“I’m doing all right,” I replied, smiling. “I’m about ninety percent healed up; my knee still bugs me a little bit, but I’m doing a little light physical therapy to get it back into shape.”
“It sucks that you have to go through that, though,” he said, frowning. “Any word about that asshole?”
I shrugged. “I filed a report, and none of the services we’re affiliated with will work with him. The police let him out on bail, and they’re moving forward with charges.” Just the thought of Nathan Giles—and the terrible way he’d come after me in the middle of a restaurant—was enough to make my heart beat faster in my chest, enough to make anger start up in the pit of my stomach. “But let’s talk about something else, okay?”
“Right—yes, of course,” Zeke said, his face anxious for a moment before falling back into his normal polite smile. “How’s Brady doing?”
“He’s really, really good,” I told him, smiling more warmly than I had since walking into the restaurant. “We’re going to start looking at pre-K places probably next month, so I’m looking over all the options in the area to figure out the ‘short list,’ so to speak.”
“Maybe I should let you borrow Trevor,” Zeke suggested. “He’s great at collating information, and I feel like he probably doesn’t have enough to do.” I laughed and shook my head; in spite of how nervous I’d felt, I was starting to really, truly relax.
The waiter came and Zeke gave me a moment to decide on what I wanted while he asked about the wine selection, the specials, and anything else he could think of to stall on my behalf. I grinned to myself, almost shaking my head at how sweet he was being. Careful, girl. Don’t get caught up. You’re still a professional here. I ordered one of the roast meals—free range chicken sliced off of the bone, potatoes, carrots, parsnips, and a raw broccoli salad—and a glass of wine to go with it, and Zeke ordered lamb.
“So, I guess this is where we talk about where we stand,” I said, taking a sip of my water. My nervousness had returned.
“I want to make sure we’re okay, first,” Zeke said, looking at me intently. “I know things went a little pear shaped the last time we met.” I laughed in spite of how nervous I felt.
“You could say that,” I agreed.
“I definitely want to keep working with you,” he told me. “I want to know if you still feel comfortable working with me.” I considered that. A very loud voice in my mind shouted that this was a chance to explain that what we’d done had compromised my ability to be professional, and that I needed to get some distance from him, and I needed to do the “right thing” and refer him to someone else. But another part of my mind insisted that I could still be professional, I could still be detached. I had let myself get too involved before, but we’d had two weeks of no contact with each other; surely I’d regained some objectivity by now? And besides: I liked working with Zeke. He was a better client than easily more than half of the men I worked with, and didn’t I deserve the break?
“I think we need to be…mindful,” I said slowly. “Obviously, the fact that we’ve sort of…” I took a deep breath and half-sighed. “Overstepped some boundaries, has made things a little weird between us. But I think we work together well.”
“I agree,” he said, nodding. “I think we’re really good together.” I tried to keep myself from reading into that comment.
“So yes, we can keep working together,” I told him. Our food arrived then and for a few moments, I had the comfort of digging into the excellent chicken and vegetables, and pretending like things weren’t awkward at all. I had regained my composure a little bit by the time Zeke began talking again.
“I’m glad to hear it,” he said. “Especially since I’ve done something that I think…” he licked his lips. “I hope you’ll like it. Consider it a peace offering, as well as our next session together.”
“Oh?” What kind of peace offering would he want to give me? Obviously it wouldn’t be more flowers—if it were something relevant to our next session. “What would that be?” I wasn’t sure whether I was more excited or nervous.
“Here,” he said, reaching into a pocket on the inside of his suit. He took out an envelope and extended it towards me across the table. I hesitated for just a moment and took it from him, wiping my hands on my napkin even though there was no need.
I opened the envelope and saw that there were two slips inside. I frowned to myself, wondering what they could be. I tugged them out carefully and saw the words printed on them: Frank Turner and the Sleeping Souls. They nearly fell from my fingers as I stared in shock. I had mentioned wanting to see Frank Turner, but the tickets had sold out before I’d gotten a chance to buy them, much less arrange for someone to watch Brady. I had resigned myself to missing him this time around, and now—now, Zeke had gotten me the tickets I coveted. “How—how did you get them?”
“Trevor,” he said with a shrug when I finally looked up from the gift he’d given me. “Trevor with a little help from American Express; they had some extra tickets they’d bought up.”
“I—wow.” I shook my head, looking down at the tickets in shock once more. I knew that I shouldn’t go on a date that was so personal. I should tell Zeke that I appreciated the gesture, but that for a session we should go somewhere more neutral. But I couldn’t resist. I couldn’t give the tickets back or make Zeke let me go with someone else. “Okay,” I said, nodding slowly. “That—that works. We can do this.” I looked up and saw him grinning.
“Good to hear,” he said. “Put them away before you get chicken grease all over them, will you?” I laughed and slipped them into my purse, still not quite able to believe the surprise that Zeke had gotten me.
Chapter Thirty
Zeke
“How many shows have you been to in the last five years?” I glanced at Natalie as we waited in line outside of the club where the Frank Turner show would be. I shrugged.
“Not very many,” I admitted. “The last concert I was at was at that amphitheater that keeps getting a new name.” The line shifted, but didn’t quite move up. Natalie grinned.
“It’s going to get packed in there, you know,” she said. She looked me up and down. “You’ll probably be all right; Frank Turner shows are energetic, but there’s no real punching or kicking in the pits.” I’d listened to one or two of the albums that Frank Turner had put out to prepare myself for the show. It was obvious why Natalie liked him: the lyrics told stories about love and life and sadness, happiness, what it was like on the road, relationships in their beginning, in the middle, and at the end. I didn’t know the songs well enough to be able to sing along, but I figured I would enjoy the show nonetheless.
“I can handle myself,” I tol
d Natalie, grinning at her. “We’ll have a couple of drinks, sing a few songs, and have a good night out. What’s to worry about?” She chuckled. She looked more casual than she had at any of our other dates: tight jeans that hugged her curves, a pair of sneakers, and a tee shirt—not for Frank Turner, but for another band.
We’d met in the parking lot for the club about an hour before doors were set to open; even then, there were at least twenty or thirty people in front of us in line. I saw a few more people crossing the parking lot to get to the end of the line, which stretched another thirty people behind us.
After another fifteen minutes or so of small talk, the line started to actually move. “You do have the tickets, right?” I glanced at Natalie; I hadn’t even thought to ask her in all the time we’d been waiting.
“They haven’t left my sight since I got them,” she confirmed, taking them out of her bag and showing me.
I laughed. “You must have really wanted to come to this show.”
“I thought it was going to be the first one I was going to end up missing since I started listening to his music,” she admitted. “I probably shouldn’t have accepted the gift, but we’ve already crossed so many other professional boundaries that honestly…” She shrugged.
The people at the door were apparently good at their jobs as the line kept moving steadily, and in a matter of a few minutes, Natalie was handing our tickets over to them, almost dancing in place with her impatience to get in. The club was an enormous cavern: there were two bars, one directly across from the stage, the other hugging the wall opposite the door, and a balcony section. Natalie reached back and her fingers closed around my hand, steering me forward into the darkness. There were graphics splashed across the stage and crewmembers darting back and forth finishing their setup.
We found our way to the bar, and I stalled Natalie’s reach for her purse—and the wallet inside of it—with a shake of my head. “It’s a session, right? So I’m paying.”
“I’ll just have a cider then,” she said, glancing at the specials written on a blackboard over the back of the bar. “Don’t want to get drunk.”
“Make it two ciders,” I told the woman behind the bar. She nodded and reached into one of the ice bins, pulling out two bottles. I gave her a twenty and gestured for her to keep the change on it.
We picked a spot in the standing-room crowd and sipped our ciders, waiting for the first act to come up on the stage. More and more people crowded into the club, and I could see what Natalie meant about it getting packed. I stayed close to her; the last thing I wanted was for us to get separated before the show even got started properly.
“So when did you hear about Frank Turner for the first time?”
Natalie shrugged. “One of my friends had his…I think it was his second album?” She considered. “And, she insisted that I should listen to it. Of course, I did, and it was amazing.” She shrugged again. “And since then, I’ve been a big fan.” I nodded. “Have you heard any of his music?”
“I’ve listened to a couple of the albums. Good stuff.” She grinned and I caught someone looking at me askance, but I ignored it.
The first band that went up on the stage had three members: guitar, drums, and bass. I didn’t catch their name, but when they launched into their first song, I thought I would definitely see about visiting their merch table in the back of the club. They whipped the crowd into an early fury, even though no more than maybe half the people in the club seemed to know any of the songs well enough to sing along. Next to me, Natalie was jumping up and down with the rest of the audience, occasionally singing along but not always, clearly already having a good time, and I told myself that in spite of her comment before about boundaries, the date idea I’d had was obviously a good one.
While the crew began clearing the first band’s gear off of the stage, I told Natalie to stay where she was so I could get us more to drink. I didn’t want to get drunk any more than she did—we both had to drive home at the end of the night, after all—so I bought us each another cider and a bottle of water. That seemed like a safe bet, even if it would mean we had to use the already-packed bathrooms sooner rather than later.
The second band was even better—although also much stranger—than the first. They set up a laptop and a mixer and one or two other things I couldn’t identify, and in moments, the two guys—dressed in matching tee shirts and shorts—started singing along with a basic, demo-type beat and synthesizer sounds. At first, about a quarter of the crowd looked as if they weren’t sure whether or not to take the two men seriously, but as the song wore on, and the men onstage kept shouting to the crowd to sing along with the simple, almost childish choruses or wave their hands or do some form of activity, everyone started to get into it. “Who are these guys again?”
Natalie beamed at me. “Koo Koo Kangaroo,” she shouted up into my ear. “They tour with Frank pretty regularly when possible.”
Koo Koo Kangaroo’s act heated up quickly, and they got the audience more and more involved in the singing and dancing, even going so far as to jump down off of the stage and into the crowd to instruct people on dance moves. I kept back far enough that I wouldn’t be a good target for a demonstration, but I found myself laughing and smiling, singing along, following instructions.
By the time Koo Koo Kangaroo left the stage, everyone in the crowd was worked up, ready for Frank Turner to come out. The stage went dark, and a sheet came down over the front. You could feel the tension building inside of the room as setup seemed to drag on—even though when I checked the time on my phone, it had only been about fifteen minutes, and then twenty. The shadowy figures of the crew darted offstage from behind the curtain, and every light in the club went black for just an instant.
The next moment, the band came out onto the stage, lit with green and blue, and after a few heartbeats, they launched into their first song. The screaming and cheering and shouting all around me was almost enough to make me deaf; Natalie was just as excited as anyone else in the room, especially when the sheet came down and the band started playing in earnest. I found myself getting into the music, too, singing along when I remembered the occasional lyric, dividing my attention between Natalie and the front man—Frank Turner—onstage.
“This is a song about how I fuck everything up,” Frank said, and Natalie let out a shriek that was almost sexual; it was enough to stir something in me, a jolt of heat that had nothing to do with the crowd pressing against us on all sides. Frank started strumming and immediately sang, “Just give me one fine day of plain sailing weather and I can fuck up anything, anything…”Next to me, Natalie was singing along word for word, jumping up and down, completely and totally absorbed in the song, in the man onstage. If we were actually dating, I’d almost be jealous, I thought, watching her close her eyes and smile with satisfaction.
The band onstage went from one great song to another, and Frank Turner himself had the crowd eating out of the palm of his hand. The band left the stage after about a dozen songs, and just as everyone was beginning to get restless, Frank came out again with an acoustic guitar. He grinned at the audience and meandered through his stage banter in between songs, and next to me, I could tell that if Natalie had a clear way to go home with the man, it wouldn’t even take a question to get her onto the bus.
There is no way that she’ll ever forget this night, I thought, feeling a mixture of satisfaction and jealousy. “Speaking of not my finest hour,” Frank said from the stage, and I turned to look in that direction, “this song is about another moment like that.” He started playing and next to me, Natalie almost moaned—not in a sexual way, but something like pain. I glanced to see that she wasn’t injured, just deeply affected, as the man onstage started to sing. “I was walking home to my house through the snow from the station/ when Springsteen came clear on my headphones with a pertinent question/ Oh, is love really real, and can any of us hope for redemption/ or are we all merely biding our time down to the lonely conclusions?”
; In spite of the fact that I didn’t know the song as well as Natalie, it was obvious how powerful it was—and how personal. I nodded along, reaching out for Natalie’s hand; she wrapped her fingers around mine without a moment’s hesitation. How much better would this be if it were a real date? I pushed the thought aside. I wasn’t going to let myself indulge in that fantasy.
By the end of the night, we were both drenched in sweat, and Natalie’s voice was hoarse from screaming and singing and cheering. “We could go across to the bar on the other corner,” she suggested. “Sometimes Frank hangs out after the show to meet people.”
“I’m too lame to hang, I’m afraid,” I told her. “But don’t let me hold you back.” Natalie laughed and then coughed, taking a gulp from her bottle of water—it was nearly empty.
“Then, I guess I’ll say goodnight.” I leaned in to kiss her on the cheek and Natalie ducked away. I frowned, but I let her give me a quick, friendly hug before stepping back. I started back towards my car as she made her way across the lot to get to the other street corner. As I watched her leave, I thought to myself that if I could just find a woman who was like Natalie—as close as anyone could possibly be—but who wasn’t being paid to go on dates with me as practice, I would be a happy man. You have to let her go. You can’t keep pining over her. So things didn’t work out with Brigitte; that doesn’t mean that every woman you meet is going to be boring in comparison to Natalie. I climbed into my car, already starting to feel the ache in my neck and back and shoulders, and watched Natalie dart across the street to get to the bar. I turned my key in the ignition and promised myself that I would ask another woman out again soon. I couldn’t afford to keep letting my feelings get all wrapped up around Natalie.
VOLUME IV
Chapter Thirty One