Tricks

by Cambria Hebert

  Because my beer was otherwise occupied, I grabbed her wine and took a drink.

  She timidly tilted the bottle up until the liquid spilled into her mouth and I imagined the distinct flavor spreading across her tongue and sliding effortlessly down her throat.

  She tilted the bottle again and her eyes closed briefly, her golden lashes sweeping down to conceal what could be considered weapons in certain countries.

  After a few moments, she held the bottle out to me. “I like it.”

  Her lips were shiny from the moisture of the bottle.

  “Keep it,” I drawled. “Watching you wrap your lips around that bottle is far more intoxicating than drinking out of it.”

  I heard her little gasp like it was the only sound in the room.

  I signaled to the waitress that we needed more booze.

  Charlotte took another sip out of the bottle and looked over at the piano. “This place is really cool. I like the piano.”

  People were throwing little scraps of paper into a giant glass fishbowl perched on the top of the piano, putting in requests for certain songs. Once a song would end, the man playing would reach in and grab one and then start playing again.

  “Do you play?” I asked, forgetting it was likely something I was supposed to know.

  She shook her head. “Always wanted to learn. Never had the time.”

  On impulse I reached out around the back of her head and found the damned clip that chained her hair back so fiercely, and I yanked it out.

  “Hey,” she said when I dropped the clip on the table between us.

  Long hair tumbled down her back. It was wavy, probably from being twisted so tightly.

  “I like it better down,” I announced, picking up my newly delivered beer.

  She ran her fingers through it, separating the waves and letting it fall over her shoulders and around her face. “You do?”

  I nodded. “It suits you.”

  “I liked that leather jacket,” she blurted. Then her cheeks turned scarlet.

  A slow grin spread across my face. “Yeah?”

  She nodded, giving all her attention to the beer and the piano man. I stripped off the suit jacket I was wearing and flung it over the back of the chair. Then I unbuttoned my sleeves and rolled them up past my elbows. I lost the tie hours ago. I hoped I never saw it again.

  Charlotte’s eyes wandered back to me, peeking through honey-colored hair. For a lawyer, she didn’t have a very good poker face. Her desire was plain as day. How could a woman in a relationship be so hard-up for a good old-fashioned fuck?

  “You never answered my question.” I reminded her.

  “Your question?”

  “Are you happy?”

  “I’m happy I’ve accomplished almost everything I set out to do. I like to think my father would have been happy too.”

  Oh shit. She had daddy issues. That explained a lot.

  Ten to one, everything she did in life was to get the approval from some guy who didn’t care. But she tried anyway, thinking some day he would realize everything he was missing.

  “I wanted to call him today, after I closed the deal,” she said softly, taking another sip of the beer. It was empty so I pushed another in front of her. “Sometimes I forget he’s gone.”

  Gone as in died?

  Well, shit.

  “I’m sure wherever he is, Charlie, he’s proud.”

  She glanced up when the nickname slipped out. I thought she might yell at me for calling her by a “boy name,” but she just took another pull on the beer.

  “Do you think they can see us? You know, from heaven?” Her voice was so small I had to lean forward to hear it over the music. I knew this wasn’t a topic she brought up very often, and something in my chest expanded that she would trust me enough to talk to me.

  She thinks you’re Max. I reminded myself. I barely heard it though because she was laying into me with the full affect of those eyes. I threaded our fingers together. “Yeah. I think they can.”

  God, I hoped so. I thought of all the buddies we lost over in the sand that I wasn’t going to forget. I wanted them to know that even though I lived, I wasn’t going to take it for granted.

  “Sometimes I wonder what my father would think of me, you know?” She leaned just a little bit closer and it was like everything else in the room ceased to exist. The piano, the bar noise, the drunk guy singing at the bar… it all went away. We were in our own little bubble, a bubble in which she completely captivated me and yet somehow made my heart beat just a little too fast.

  “How long’s it been, again?” I asked casually.

  “Seven years.” A faraway look entered her eyes. “I still remember the day of his heart attack like it was yesterday.”

  I gave her fingers a gentle squeeze. She glanced up. “Did I ever tell you I was the one who found him?”

  A hard knot formed in the pit of my stomach. “No.”

  “He had come home in the middle of the day, maybe he left something in his office, and that’s when he had a heart attack. No one was there to help him.”

  She paused for a moment and I gave her the time she needed.

  “When I got home from school, he was there… lying in the living room, his hand just feet away from the phone. He was purple and so still.”

  “Don’t,” I told her. I knew what it was like to relive the vision of a dead body. To stare down at someone who was once full but was now completely devoid of life. I knew people sometimes turned bloated and blotchy looking when they lay for too long without anyone knowing they were there.

  I remembered the smell, the vacancy in eyes that no longer saw.

  “Max?” her concern broke through the fog of memories seeping into my mind.

  “Yeah,” I replied.

  “You okay?”

  “Of course.” I looked at the beer at my elbow and thought about picking it up. But then I realized if I did, I would have to remove one of my hands from hers.

  I wasn’t that thirsty anyway.

  “So…” I began, turning the conversation back to her. “Do they know what caused the heart attack?”

  “Artery blockage. Stress. Lack of physical activity.”

  I had a feeling that was why she got up every morning at the crack of dawn to work out.

  Her hair was so long that some of the strands falling over her shoulder dangled onto the table as she leaned close to me. It looked like bottled sunshine, even in this darkened piano bar.

  I picked up a strand that was lying near our hands and rolled it around my fingertips, letting the softness wrap around my skin.

  The air between us was charged, so much so that it practically vibrated my skin.

  I wanted to kiss her. I wanted to press myself as close her as I could get.

  A bright light turned on us and caused the moment to break. Both of us squinted and looked around for where the hell it was coming from.

  The guy at the piano was holding a spotlight on us. A freaking spotlight.

  His voice boomed over the microphone that was attached to the piano. “You know it’s that time of the night for me to take a break and for someone out in the bar to entertain us all.”

  Seriously?

  “And I couldn’t help but notice the love birds sitting over there,” he said, flickering the light on us once more. “So how about it? We need some entertainment!”

  I glanced at Charlotte. Her eyes looked like saucers and she was shaking her head adamantly. “Oh, no,” she said, and I could tell she was ready to bolt.

  I wasn’t ready for her to leave.

  I disengaged my hands from her and pushed back from the table. Everyone in the bar screamed and whooped.

  Nothing like a bunch of drunk people to give a man confidence.

  I heard Charlotte call my name and I shot her a grin, then walked toward the piano.

  14

  Charlotte

  I was drinking beer.

  In a piano bar.

  On a weekday
.

  Not only that, but I was enjoying it. Like really enjoying it.

  His presence was exciting, like being around him was somehow an adventure. And the way he looked at me… I’d never seen that look before. It was like I was a giant candy bar and he wanted to peel away the wrapper so he could inspect every inch of the chocolate.

  It made me feel naked, yet I was fully clothed.

  It also loosened my tongue.

  Or maybe that had been the beer. Or the wine. Whatever it was, I just told him things that I only ever kept to myself. I never let anyone know how much I wondered about my father and what he would think of me now. I never talked to anyone about coming home from school that day and finding him lying dead on the carpet.

  Those things affected me. Affected me in ways I still felt to this day. And I never spoke of them because it made me feel weak. It made me feel self-conscious.

  But his touch acted like Miracle-Gro to a flower. I felt my petals, my feelings unfurling from deep inside me and opening up, blooming right in front of him.

  And he didn’t look at me like I was weak. He didn’t look at me like my feelings were silly.

  He looked like he understood.

  How had we never had a conversation like this before?

  I wondered what else we would have talked about had it not been for the piano man that, up until this moment, I actually enjoyed. Until he suggested I get up and sing, that is.

  I did not sing.

  As far as I knew, Max didn’t either.

  Did he?

  I watched in fascination as he strode up toward the small stage. The navy dress pants hugged his butt a little more tightly than usual and his back muscles strained beneath the white dress shirt.

  A few of the women sitting around whooped and whistled, and the burning sensation of jealousy scorched the back of my throat like acid. It was the first time I ever felt jealous that a woman was checking out Max.

  Usually I found it flattering.

  Tonight I found it annoying.

  He stopped beside the piano and spoke briefly to the man who called him up there. He smiled and then crossed behind the large wooden instrument and bent, picking something up from against the wall.

  Max draped a thick strap across his shoulder and swung a guitar up across his middle.

  People in the audience cheered as he stepped across the stage and sat down, letting his feet hit the floor. A hush fell over the room. Even the singing drunk guy shut up (Thank God for that).

  Anticipation coiled through the room like a deadly snake, and I found nerves fluttering around in my stomach for Max, wondering what in the world he was going to do.

  And then he started playing.

  His thick fingers strummed the chords on the guitar with perfection. A song I wasn’t familiar with but he seemed to know with ease.

  And then he started to sing.

  The bottom dropped out of my stomach. His voice was absolutely stunning. Entrancing. Tunnel vision claimed me and it was as if I were staring through goggles that only pointed in one direction.

  His.

  His voice was raspy and jagged, like a broken piece of glass. There was so much emotion behind the words—which were about love and loss—that my heart began to ache. Every single person in the bar was completely ensnared.

  I don’t think anyone looked away; no one even dared to breathe.

  My God, how had I lived with this man for almost a year and never seen him this way? Should I start stocking the fridge with beer?

  The song dropped a little in tone and his voice slid down into that deep and smooth place that literally lifted the fine hairs off my arm. I hung on his every word.

  He sang a line about never leaving and as he did, his eyes lifted, cut through the dimness shrouding the room, and looked at me. My heart skipped a beat. I lifted my hand toward my throat, my palm resting in the hollow place beneath my chin.

  He watched me as his fingers moved. He strummed that guitar with such finesse and he didn’t struggle, not one time. His voice kept perfect pace with the music… and then the piano started to play backup.

  It didn’t overpower his voice because he was so commanding that not even a bomb would do that. The music just accompanied him; it floated along behind him like the caress from a lover.

  I wondered if his fingers would caress me like they did the guitar.

  I squeezed my thighs together and squirmed a little in the wooden chair. He made me feel fidgety inside.

  Then he closed his eyes, bowed his head, and delivered the last few lines of the song, his raspy, deep tone fading away with the music.

  You could have heard a pin drop in the seconds that followed.

  And then everyone erupted into mad applause. But I didn’t. I still couldn’t move. I still was wondering about this man—feeling him in ways I never expected.

  My eyes caught on the way his hips swiveled as he weaved through the bar, back to our little two-person table. Even his movements seemed new to me, like I had been blind all this time, but now I could see.

  It was so confusing.

  Yet it was so achingly wonderful.

  He lowered himself into the chair and gave me a little half smile, and I could have sworn I saw a little bit of insecurity in his eyes.

  “I’m so sorry,” I rasped, my voice literally scraping out of my throat.

  His brows drew together. “What are you sorry for?”

  I grabbed the bottle of beer and slid it closer to me, almost hugging it against my chest. “For never seeing you the way I see you right now.”

  The fleeting look that passed behind his eyes was of alarm and sadness. But it was gone so fast I couldn’t ask him what it was all about.

  “How do you see me right now, Charlie?” he asked.

  “Real,” I said, not knowing what else to say.

  “What?”

  “I just…” I began, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. “I just always thought of you as this perfect guy. The guy who always knew what he wanted. The guy who never let emotion rule his head or his heart. The kind of guy who never stumbled a day in his life.”

  “And now?” Max whispered. I swear his face seemed paler than just seconds ago.

  “Now I know I was wrong. There is no way anyone could have that kind of grit, that kind of soul in their voice, if they hadn’t lived through pain. There’s no way that kind of emotion can just be pulled out of thin air. You aren’t perfect, are you, Max?” I whispered the last part, sliding my hand across the table toward his.

  He opened his fingers and mine slid into his palm, like it was exactly where they belonged.

  “No. No, I’m definitely not perfect. I guess I’m not the guy you thought I was. I’m not the guy you wanted.”

  Why so much sadness in his tone?

  “Can I tell you a secret?” The fluttery sensation in my stomach was so wild I felt like I was sitting at the top of a super steep roller coaster.

  “Yeah.”

  “I like this guy better.”

  He jerked so forcefully his hand pulled away from mine and his chair slid back a couple inches. Then he snagged a bottle off the table and chugged the rest of it down.

  “I gotta piss,” he announced and shot up out of his seat and took off for the bathroom across the room.

  I sat there and wondered what I said that was so wrong.

  15

  Tucker

  My dick was broken.

  It was so hard it was uncomfortable, and I couldn’t leave the bathroom until it decided to knock it the hell off.

  Okay, fine. My dick wasn’t broken. Clearly, it was working just fine.

  I needed to get laid.

  Like STAT.

  I should put Charlotte in a cab, send her packing, and then pick a girl—any girl—at the bar and go home with her. That would take care of this pecker problem.

  I thought about a couple of the girls I noticed sitting at the bar. The blonde was pretty hot. An image of Charlotte flas
hed into my mind.

  Okay, no blondes.

  There was also a brunette. Brunettes were good.

  I thought about Charlotte again. I heard the words she just admitted.

  She liked me better than my brother.

  Holy hell.

  What a freaking clusterfuck.

  I went over to the urinal and unbuttoned my jeans. Of course, he sprang out like some secret agent on a mission. Pissing with a hard-on wasn’t the easiest task. It required some heavy leaning.

  Stop thinking about your brother’s woman, Patton! Think about someone else!

  I thought back to the brunette at the bar. She had long, dark hair, pulled up in a bouncy ponytail. Her top was tight and her boots went all the way to her knees. She looked like the kind of girl I would take home any night of the week. She was exactly what I needed right now.

  I looked down.

  I wasn’t hard anymore.

  Apparently, thinking about my time tonight with the brunette wasn’t appealing to my other brain.

  With a sigh, I finished up in the bathroom and headed back toward the table. I realized that I never came up with a response in the bathroom. I had been too busy trying to slow my roll.

  She probably expected me to tell her I loved her or some shit. I didn’t tell women I loved them, even if that’s what they wanted to hear. If I was gonna say it, I would damn well mean it.

  All the more reason to put her shapely little ass in a cab.

  When I arrived back at the table, Charlotte wasn’t alone. She was accompanied by a tray of shot glasses, all of them filled with clear liquid.

  Fury laced through me, like a match next to gasoline. What guy sent her over all these damn drinks? He probably saw me leave and was hoping to get her drunk and take advantage of her.

  I’d beat his ass.

  I began pushing up my sleeves a little more and dropped into my seat.

  “Who sent these?” I demanded.

  She seemed a little taken aback by my harsh tone, but I didn’t care.

  “It seems you have a fan club,” she spat, her tone matching mine.

  Wait, what? I glanced up for more of an explanation.

  “Those girls over there sent them to you. Along with their regards,” she said, flat.