by LJ Evans
I couldn’t help but smile. They were the same words I’d said to her an age ago about Derek. I’d meant every word at the time, and I knew she did now too, not only because Wynn was one of her best friends, but because Wynn had been hurt so many times already by men. Boys. Assholes.
“I love her,” I told her, using her same words. She looked up with surprise in her eyes. Like she hadn’t expected me to admit it. But I did. Wynn and I may not have progressed from nothing to all in at the crazy pace that Mia and Derek had, but to some people, the handful of months we had spent getting to know each other would still have been too soon for I love yous.
“That doesn’t mean you won’t hurt her,” she said, continuing the series of words that we’d said to each other well over a year ago, but now in reverse. I understood her response so much better now than I had when she’d said them to me then. At the time, her response had made me leery of her. Like she wasn’t committing to Derek. Like she wasn’t ready to just give in.
But now I understood, not only because I loved Wynn and wanted to promise to never hurt her, but because I’d seen how sometimes loving someone doesn’t always come without pain. That, in fact, the pain is sometimes the way the love grows even more. So, I told her the same thing she told me.
“I can only promise to try not to.”
Mia hugged me, and Derek came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her up against him. “Let him go, Little Bird. He’ll be late if you don’t.”
I nodded to them both and left, bounding down the steps two at a time. Anxious and happy at the same time. Worried and excited. But above all that, filled with hope.
When I got to Wynn’s parents’ house, Tim answered the door. I found I liked everything about Tim. His demeanor, his love for his family, and even the smell of sawdust that seemed to waft off of him even when he hadn’t come from a jobsite. It made him seem all Southern cowboy to me. I shook his hand in greeting. “Hey, Tim.”
“Lonnie. Come on in. I think she’ll just be a minute.”
I followed him into the kitchen where Cary was cooking something that filled the kitchen with spice. “Hi, Lonnie,” she greeted with a smile.
It always surprised me that Wynn’s mama didn’t have red hair. In fact, Wynn didn’t really look like her much at all. But they were similar in the way they made everyone feel at home. Feel wanted. Feel like they belonged.
“Hi, Cary.”
“Where y’all headed today?” Tim asked. He reached for a beer in the fridge and offered me one.
“No, thank you, I’m driving,” I said, feeling like I was sixteen and being tested. Tim just nodded and twisted the top off his beer. “I’m taking her over to McMinnville. There’s a concert today in the caverns, and then we’ll go to dinner after.”
Cary looked over at Tim with a look that said, “See,” and I smiled. Tim sighed. “I know. You’ve wanted to go forever. Tickets are hard to get, though. How’d you come up with them?”
“I have a manager in the music industry.” I smiled at them both.
“We always seem to forget that,” Cary laughed. “But maybe you can hook this man up with a pair of tickets sometime.”
“Will d—” but my voice died in my throat as Wynn entered the room. I couldn’t help it. She took my breath away almost always, but today even more so. She wasn’t wearing anything that different than I’d seen her in before. Just dark skinny jeans and a floaty green top that was so sheer that when she hit the light just right, it silhouetted her frame. She was stunning. Her hair was partially up, showcasing her blue eyes, and yet still spiraling down her back in waves of red that I wanted to tangle my hands in. And maybe because I knew she’d gotten dressed for me, it just made it different. Better. More lovely than I’d ever seen her, which was pretty much impossibly beautiful.
“You’re beautiful,” I said to her, and she smiled. I heard Tim chortle and a hand slap his arm, but I didn’t turn away from my girl. The gorgeous woman who was lighting up my world.
“You look pretty good yourself,” she said, coming closer, and I got a whiff of her strawberry scent, and I wasn’t sure I could go the whole day without losing myself in her.
I was still frozen in my spot, and she looked down to twine her hand into mine, the diamond bracelet sliding on top of our wrists. “Should we go?”
I just nodded. It was pretty much all I could do.
“Have fun!” Cary and Tim said as we left, and I have no idea what we said back.
When we got to the truck, she still had to slide in next to me on the bench seat because Edie’s car seat was still there. I’d forgotten to leave it with Derek and Mia, and I hoped they didn’t need it. But I liked that it forced her to sit next to me. She didn’t have a choice.
There was a Dairy Queen bag in the car seat and two milkshakes in the cup holders. Wynn looked at them curiously. I started the truck, backed out of the drive, and headed out.
“It’s a snack. We have a little drive ahead of us, and dinner won’t be till later,” I told her.
“Is this going to be our thing, then?” she teased.
“What?”
“Dairy Queen for every momentous occasion?”
“Momentous, huh?” I teased.
She flushed a little but then opened the bag and turned it to me so that we could share the fries. We ate and drank in silence as we drove. It wasn’t uncomfortable. It was a silence that we’d had land between us many times since we’d gotten to know each other.
“I’m not very good on first dates,” she told me, turning down the music.
“Why do you say that?” I asked.
“Well, they're kind of like trying on clothes. You have to keep bringing things in from the racks to see what actually fits. It’s the same with the conversations. What works, what doesn’t work? Do you end up saying something that will step on their toes or accidently trigger their pet peeve?” She shrugged.
“It’s not really the same with us, though. We already know a lot of those things.”
“You think you know my pet peeves?” She grinned up at me.
“I think I know a few.”
“Okay, Monkey Boy, try me.”
She hadn’t called me monkey boy in so long that I’d almost forgotten it. It made me grin, thinking back to how hard she’d laughed at the sock monkey reference. Or at me calling Lita’s vagina a Twinkie.
“You hate when people assume what you want to order, but then you order for everyone else,” I teased her.
“I do not…” but she trailed off because she knew it was true. She frowned, as if realizing she’d done that a lot with me—order for me. And I could tell she was now wondering if I’d minded that she did, so I just cut her off mid-thought.
“It’s sexy as hell,” I told her.
She looked up at me, her blue eyes turning a shade darker along with her cheeks. I tore my eyes away to place them back on the road.
“And you hate when I leave the dishes in the sink to clean in the morning.”
“That’s just gross. It gets all crusty and disgusting. And smells.”
“Says the woman who can clean diarrhea, blood, and vomit without gagging.”
“Not if they get dried up and crusty.” She shivered.
Silence returned.
“So, your date with Zack, did that end with pet peeves triggered?” I couldn’t help the jealousy that snuck into voice as I said it, but I had to know. How far had she gotten with Zack? Had he gotten that first after-divorce kiss, or had it been me on her birthday?
“Zack and I never went out.”
Her words hit me in the stomach.
“Wait. What?” I swerved as I looked at her with a shy grin on her face before I straightened the truck and put my eyes back on the road.
“He had to cancel for a work emergency. But I would have cancelled myself if he hadn’t.”
Her words filled me with more hope and happiness than I deserved.
“Why?” I asked.
“I wasn’t ready. And you were right. It would have been a do-over. It wouldn’t have been a first.”
I couldn’t help grinning again. “I like being right.”
She shoved my shoulder but didn’t argue with me. Maybe because she was as happy as I was that I’d be her firsts.
We pulled up into the caverns lot, and she looked surprised again for what felt like the hundredth time already.
“You’re taking me caving?”
I shook my head with a smile. “No.”
“But we're at the caverns.”
“Yep.”
She slid out of my truck, and I helped her into her blue peacoat that matched her eyes.
I grabbed her hand, and we made our way toward the caverns. “Seems like we are going toward the caves.”
But then she saw the sign for the concert and squealed. “You’re taking me to a Bluegrass Underground concert?”
I couldn’t help but smile at her excitement.
“Mama is going to be so jealous. She’s been trying to get Daddy to take her here for years.”
“So I discovered. This is the last concert of the year, but I’ll look to see what Asha can find them next year.”
“Asha did this?”
“Asha is a saint. She’s the only reason we got these tickets today.”
She pulled me toward the caves, the excitement still radiating off of her in a way that was contagious. I gave them our tickets, and the man looked at them for a moment and then showed us how to find our seats over three hundred feet underground.
The caverns were just as I remembered them, but lit up and beautiful. The chandelier that hung above us near the stage made Wynn gasp as I’m pretty sure Mia had done when Derek and our band had first brought her here.
When we found our seats, we were near the front. Asha had done a great job. Wynn was smiling from ear to ear. “So Derek knows we’re here, obviously. Was he jealous, too?”
“Derek has made Asha’s bonus dependent on making sure we can play here sometime. I have no idea if that will work out, but he wants to play in these acoustics.”
When the concert started, Wynn was still smiling. She’d wrap her hands around mine and then let them go to clap along. I wasn’t really paying much attention to anything but her. I was sure if Derek was there, he’d be entranced by the band, their music, the way the sound echoed off the cavern walls, but for me, the only thing that was entrancing was Wynn’s smile. The carefreeness that had settled in over her today instead of the heavy burden she’d carried when I’d first met her.
Near the end of the show, the lead singer stopped to take a drink. He came back to the mic with a smile. “We have a special couple in the audience today.”
Everyone started looking around, including Wynn and me, for the special couple.
“And we got a request for today that was a little unusual, but we like unusual, so we thought we’d go with it. We’ve been asked to play a song that isn’t ours. A song that hasn’t even been released yet and is by another band.”
My heart constricted. Derek hadn’t!
“It’s a single that no one has even heard, but because a member of the band is here tonight, with his inspiration for the song, we were asked to sing it for their first date.”
Wynn looked at me with shock as the singer’s words settled over us, but I was as shocked as she was. Derek was going to be in a shitload of trouble when I got home. I wasn’t prepared for this. I wasn’t prepared for Wynn to hear any part of this song yet. I still wasn’t even sure that I wanted to release it. To have my name on the songwriter line for the world to see my heart on my sleeve.
“I hope you all like it. We were kind of partial to it ourselves when we first heard it. It’s called ‘All the Women With Beautiful Eyes.’”
Then, they started. And I held my breath and watched Wynn’s face, wondering what she would think. If she’d know. When they sang the words about the town full of women with beautiful eyes of all the various earthly colors, I saw it caught her attention. The lines I wrote were true. That there was only one woman whose eyes had caught mine and held them. Only one whose hurts could make me hurt, whose laugh could make me laugh, and whose love could make me love. And just like the words said, she was everything I never thought I wanted, and yet everything I could ever hope for again. All the other women—girls really—were now in my past because there was only one woman I loved. There was only her and her crystal blue eyes.
The chorus repeated, the song went on, and I watched as the woman with the eyes I’d written a song about turned to stare into mine. When the band stopped, the crowd around us burst into clapping as if it was John Lennon onstage, come back to life, but I only had eyes for the blue-eyed woman next to me. My girl, even though she wasn’t a girl.
“Lonnie, it’s…” And she leaned over and kissed me. Her full pink lips hitting mine. I barely recovered from the shock enough to pull her tight up against me and kiss her back.
The smell and taste of berries surrounded me. My left hand traced the skin that peeked out at her waist as she leaned up to reach my mouth. My right hand went to the back of her head, getting lost in strands of silk as I pulled her head toward mine so that our lips were melded tighter together, becoming one.
Every single nerve ending in my body responded to her like fireworks going off in the night sky, waves of electricity, and light, and color. My body ached to pull her all the way into me so that we would be one instead of two. So that our souls would mingle into each other until there was no Lonnie or Wynn but just a new being created in our place. An us.
There was whistling, and catcalls, and clapping around us, and I opened my eyes to find her blue ones smiling up at me, and I noticed the stares and the people watching us for the first time. I pulled back reluctantly from her lips but didn’t remove my hands from her body yet. I couldn’t. I was still tangled too deep into the one creation we’d become when we’d kissed.
“I love it,” she said quietly, her breath caressing my lips that were still inches from hers. “I love you.”
And I crushed her mouth to mine again, not giving a shit about the crowd, and the people, and the lights. Not caring about the people we didn’t know. Not caring about anything but that she’d whispered words to me that I didn’t think I’d ever hear from anyone, let alone this amazing woman who I’d taken to calling mine before she ever even recognized that we belonged to each other.
I inched my lips from hers again as the band moved on to their last song. Something sultry and sweet that reflected my mood. That reflected all my feelings for her. Wynn. My girl.
“I love you too,” I finally whispered back, and her eyes filled with tears, and she closed them. I rubbed my thumb against the drops that came from the corner of her eyes.
“Don’t cry,” I whispered.
“I just…” Emotion clogged her voice. “I’m terrified of losing you. Losing Edie. I really suck at choosing guys in my life. All the yins and yangs and coke and bubbles have never worked out.”
I could barely hear her over the music. But it broke my heart. “You didn’t choose me, Wynn. I didn’t choose you either. We were always meant to be. We’re each other’s unanswered prayers.”
She tucked her face into my neck, and I pulled her even closer, bodies twined as the last notes faded, and the lights came on, and people moved around us.
Eventually, she looked up at me with a smile and eyes that weren’t leaking tears anymore.
“Thank you,” she said softly.
“I’m pretty sure those were supposed to be my words.”
We grinned at each other, and then I pulled her hand and made my way to the stage to thank the band for playing my song for my girl before we made our way out into the twilight. It was only five o’clock, but it was almost winter, so the sun was gone behind the hills, and the stars were starting to file into the Tennessee sky. It felt like it was much later than it was. I felt like we’d gone underground as two people on a date and come
up ages later, but no longer as two people. Instead, we were one unit. One thing. Us.
You’re the Inspiration
Dates & Kisses
“And I want you here with me
From tonight until the end of time.”
—Chicago
When they emerged from the cavern into the twilight, Wynn felt like she’d spent a lifetime there. Like in the bathroom at Mia’s. A revelation. A truth. A transformation had happened somewhere between his words and his touch. And they were his words, even though he hadn’t confirmed it. She knew with every fiber of her being that the words that had been sung didn’t belong to Derek. They belonged to Lonnie…and to her. He’d done a first for her. A first song.
After they got in the truck, he kissed her again, sweet and hot at the same time. Then he drove them into downtown McMinnville where he pulled into the parking lot of a tiny Creole restaurant. It barely had seating for twenty people. It was quiet and romantic. White tablecloths and candlelight that made her bracelet sparkle as it moved around her wrist.
They had a little corner booth with a semicircle bench that allowed them to sit shoulder to shoulder with their knees touching in a way that filled her whole body with sensations of longing and peace at the same time. The longing wasn’t for something she didn’t have anymore. Instead, it was visceral. A longing to be connected to this man in a way she’d never been connected to any other person.
After they ordered, his lips kept finding hers. Mid-sentence. Mid-word. She laughed and pulled away, but he just tangled his fingers up with hers and found his way to her lips again.
Normally, this would have embarrassed her. The public display of affection in a room where she could feel people’s eyes turning toward them and then flitting away. Normally, she would have put distance between them. Between any person who was dating her and trying to kiss her like that in a restaurant.
But tonight she didn’t care. Tonight, it was just Lonnie being Lonnie. He was smiling so big that it filled her heart to overflowing and made her smile back like she’d never smiled before.