by J. M. Colail
“Okay,” she agreed gamely, sitting criss-cross on the stool. Jack spared Julian one last, smoldering glance before hopping up on the stage.
Roz elbowed Julian in the ribs. He pointedly ignored her, face still burning.
“Good evening, everyone,” Jack said into the microphone. The crowd responded with cheers and whistles. “I’d like to get started in just a minute, but before I can do that, has anyone seen my fiddle player?”
There was a smattering of laughter, and a man about Jack’s age appeared behind him on stage, looking sheepish. Julian assumed this to be the little girl’s father. “Sorry, sorry. Line up in the bathroom.”
Jack rolled his eyes theatrically and picked up the guitar on the left. “A likely story.” He slung the strap over his shoulder and sat on the stool, strumming the guitar gently with his head turned slightly to one side before plugging it in. “What d’you think, Roy? Start out with the classics?”
“Boy, you wouldn’t know classic if it bit you in the—” At the last second, Roy seemed to remember his daughter was in the audience. “Leg.” He picked up a fiddle from a case on the floor and set it to his shoulder. “After you.”
Jack miraculously produced a pick from somewhere and Julian grinned as he recognized the opening chords of Gordon Lightfoot’s “Alberta Bound.” Jack had more than just a passable singing voice, and the fiddle was an excellent substitute for the song’s twangy lead-guitar riffs. The audience had obviously heard this version a multitude of times before, and it was clearly a favorite, especially the part about Toronto. Julian smiled. Albertans and Torontonians would be at each other’s throats until the end of time. No wonder the song was a hit.
By the end of the song, the excitement in the room was palpable. Jack continued to appease the older crowd by playing his “classics.” Roy picked up a maraca and Seger’s “Night Moves” followed, setting the hair on the back of Julian’s neck standing straight up at the sudden rasp in Jack’s voice. He glanced sideways at Roz, only to find her oh-so-innocently sipping at her drink. When she noticed him looking, she nudged him back toward the stage.
Jack’s eyes met his own with a spark that ran straight through him, lighting nerve endings all the way down his spinal cord, and Julian had to take a long sip of his drink. He was really glad that he was sitting down. He thought he might’ve heard Roz snicker, but he wasn’t sure.
Jack and Roy worked their way through the rest of a ten-song set during which Roy played everything from a harmonica to a tambourine. After finishing a particularly popular Billy Joel tune, Roy beckoned to his daughter from the stage, bending to whisper something in her ear. Hallie smiled at him and walked back to sit with Roz and Julian—or so he thought. As soon as Jack hit the opening chords of “Bad Moon Rising,” she turned to Roz and said, very seriously, “May I have this dance?”
Laughing, Roz allowed herself to be pulled into the crowded space that served as a dance floor, twirling the little girl around enthusiastically. Julian wasn’t really sure who was the better dancer. He was fairly certain Roz had said Hallie took lessons; Roz had had to hire an outside instructor for the rec complex because of her own two left feet.
“You all right for drinks, Julian?”
Julian glanced at the dregs of his beer, then assessed Roz’s rum and coke. “We could do with another round. Oh, and can we get some of those sweet potato french fries? Those things are delicious.”
“Sure thing,” Brad grinned. “Cute couple, huh?”
Julian turned back to the dance floor. Roz and Hallie seemed to be enjoying themselves immensely. “I think the age gap might be a problem.”
“Good point.”
Brad replaced Julian’s beer with another, and he watched the girls dance for a few more seconds before becoming firmly distracted by the guitar player. Damn, the man had nice hands. How had he never noticed that before? They were almost surgeon’s hands, with long, nimble fingers. The dirt Julian could see under his nails undermined the artistry he could see in the fingers, and he had to remind himself that Jack spent his time divided between working up computer models and taking apart and rebuilding heavy machinery in the field.
After the second song, Roz and Hallie headed back to the bench, Roz sweating slightly and grinning. “Ooh, you got me a refill. Thanks.”
Julian opened his mouth to say you’re welcome, but didn’t get that far. Hallie Klein was tugging on his hands. “Dr. Julian,” she said, “dance with me!”
Julian caught Jack’s eye across the dance floor and gave him a dirty look. Jack just fiddled with the tuning of his guitar and grinned. Julian had the feeling that this kid was going to be trouble when she grew up. “All right, all right. Just a second.” He took another swig of his beer, then reached down to hold her hand.
He was entirely too conscious of Jack’s eyes on him as he started in on something Julian recognized only vaguely as a song from the ’60s or ’70s. For her part, Hallie seemed to be rather attached to him. She didn’t let him sit down for the rest of the set. When Jack and Roy finally stopped to take a break, Julian glanced around the room. The older crowd seemed to be leaving, though they’d clearly enjoyed themselves. Julian had even seen old Mr. Bender sitting in the corner, tapping his foot out of time to “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”
Despite the exodus of people, the pub wasn’t getting any less crowded. The crowd itself just seemed to be getting younger, the older patrons being replaced by the next generation. They were like ships passing in the night, the forty-plus crowd going out, and the twenty- and thirty-somethings coming in, exchanging greetings as they went. Julian shook his head. How they all seemed to know one another just boggled his mind, even after almost twenty years of calling this his home town. He slumped onto the barstool, stealing the basket of sweet potato fries from Roz’s dangerous clutches. “Mine.”
“Grabby,” Roz chided, popping another of the delectable snacks into her mouth. “God, these are fantastic. Think they’ll give you the recipe?”
“Even if they did, they’d never be as good if I made them at home.”
“True.”
Julian was about to scowl at her for agreeing with his dismissal of his culinary skills when the hair on the back of his neck stood up again. He turned all the way around in his chair, just relaxed enough to let his legs fall open slightly. “Jack,” he said with a sly grin, “I didn’t know you played. You’re pretty good with your hands.”
Roz, who’d been taking a sip of her rum and coke, snorted into the drink and excused herself to go to the ladies’ room.
She might as well have been invisible for all the attention Jack paid her. “I’ve had a lot of practice.”
Julian snickered, noting with a slight rush of excitement that Jack was practically trying to eat him with his eyes. He’d have to let Roz dress him more often. “I bet,” he said innocently, raising his beer to his lips. “Maybe I could sit in sometime.”
The feather-light touch of Jack’s knee against the inside of Julian’s own had his blood rushing southward. That was a brave move for someone as obviously closeted as Jack. Then again, in this crowd, there was hardly room for anyone to notice. “I could even teach you a thing or two.”
“I’m a fast learner,” Julian told him in confidence, then sat back to take a sip, licking the beer from his upper lip slowly.
Jack laughed at that, relaxing a little, and settled onto the barstool beside him, downing his bottle of water. Watching the muscles in his throat move as he swallowed, Julian fidgeted in his seat. His whole body was starting to tingle. “I believe it,” Jack said when he’d emptied the bottle and set it on the counter for Brad to collect. “How long’d it take you to get through med school, anyway? You don’t even look old enough to be a doctor.”
Julian shook his head, thinking back. “Two years of undergrad, four years medical school, six of residency. I’m twenty-seven.” The two years of undergrad had been the craziest, between overloading his course load every semester and playing
on the university hockey team.
From the look on Jack’s face, the math wasn’t adding up. “You’re shitting me.”
“Nope. I skipped second grade, then fast-tracked through high school and university.” The open look of admiration on Jack’s face was sweet. Julian managed to restrain himself from kissing it off. “I had a lot of ambition when I was younger.” And not a lot of social skills, he added mentally. Those had started to come later, but it was still a struggle.
“Obviously.” Jack’s gaze appraised him frankly. “Why was your residency so long? I thought you only had to do a couple of years to be a GP.”
Julian’s heart skipped a beat. It’s okay, he told himself. You can work around this. “Ah, well, see, I didn’t do my residency as a GP.”
“You didn’t? That’s what you are now, though, right? What did you do your residency for?”
“Ah, um.” Oh, fuck it. “I’m a surgeon.”
Jack blinked. “Well. I guess that explains the really neat stitches.” He cracked open the second bottle of water without looking at it. “And why, exactly, are you not… working as a surgeon?”
Julian fiddled with the fry basket, then pushed it away. It was empty, anyway. “I got lonely, I think. This is where my family is—well, where Roz is anyway; our parents are living it up in Florida. And the office didn’t need a surgeon; it needed a GP. And I needed to come home for a bit. I’m more than qualified, so….” Jack didn’t need to hear the rest of the story. Not yet, anyway. Nothing cooled a burgeoning romance—if that’s what this was—faster than a story about how an ex-lover ruined your life.
Not to mention, it made him sound kind of pathetic.
“Hmm.” The absentminded noise could have meant Jack wasn’t really paying attention, or that he didn’t quite believe the story Julian was telling. What difference it would make to him, Julian didn’t know and couldn’t guess. “They visit often?”
“Sorry? Oh, my parents.” He’d stopped feeling guilty for calling them Mom and Dad years ago. “They were here for Thanksgiving, before I started work. It’s a toss-up right now if Christmas will be here or in Florida. Dad’s arthritis gets worse in the cold, but Mom likes to have a white Christmas.” Wondering if he was tempting fate by even broaching the subject of Jack’s parents, he said, “What about you?”
“Dad’s been gone almost twenty years,” Jack told him. Almost the same as Julian’s own, then. “My mom was here last week to baby me. She’s a nurse. I think Bella probably told her I was in a coma or something.”
Ah, hell. Might as well go for broke. “Do you see her often?”
“Not as much as I should.” Jack looked a little regretful, but didn’t seem inclined to continue the conversation in that vein, so Julian let the subject drop. “Well, looks like everyone’s ready. Better start before they get going without me.”
Julian frowned around the room. “Where’s Roy?”
“It’s a one-man act from here on out,” Jack winked at him. “Roy plays the first set with me, but he doesn’t like having his daughter in the bar when these rowdies come in. It’s past her bedtime, anyway, but he hates getting a sitter. He thinks he’s not there for her enough as it is.”
The way he said that made Julian sure there was more to the story than Jack was letting on, but the other man was already weaving his way back to the stage. “How’s everybody doing tonight?”
A few smattered cheers and catcalls rang out into the crowd.
“Ah, maybe you didn’t hear me. I said, how’s everybody doing tonight?”
This time, Julian nearly covered his ears at the volume. Jack sure knew how to work a crowd. That probably wasn’t the only thing he could work, either. Julian was distracted by the long, sure fingers on the fret board of the guitar again. Damn. He could almost feel those fingers like he had the other night, on the inside of his elbow, in his hair, on either side of his face. He could think of a lot of other places he’d like to feel them, too, but that would have to wait for later.
Jack started the second set off with a rousing and entertaining rendition of a pop song that had originally been recorded by a female artist most accurately described as a bimbo. With his energetic guitar and occasional falsetto, not to mention the fact that he wasn’t taking himself too seriously, Jack lent the song new life, and had nearly everyone in the crowd singing along just for fun. Julian even turned around to order another beer and found Roz, who’d hated the original, lip-synching into an invisible microphone.
He wondered how long she’d been sitting there again. He didn’t remember noticing her come back from the bathroom. Then again, he’d been pretty distracted. Jack toned it down a bit for the next two songs, ones that Julian didn’t recognize but several other members of the audience seemed to. He supposed they were originals, and had that thought confirmed by Jack a few minutes later. “Like the last two, this one’s an original number that I wrote about a friend of mine back in Cape Breton who fell completely in love with the bitchiest woman I’ve ever had the misfortune of meeting. No offense, ladies.” He strummed a chord or two to cheers throughout the room. “This one’s called ‘A Really Stupid Kind of Love.’”
Julian listened rapt along with everyone else as Jack sung the tale of the wooing of a girl named Janice O’Toole. Roz was laughing so hard there were tears streaming down her cheeks. The applause was louder than for any previous number.
The set went along smoothly after that, and before Julian knew it the night was ticking away into morning. When Jack bent to put away his guitar, Roz nudged Julian in the shoulder, yawning. “So.” She raised her eyebrows, expression betraying nothing but curiosity. “You coming home tonight?”
That was the million-dollar question, wasn’t it? “We just met,” Julian protested feebly, cursing himself for letting his hand shake a little as he deposited his empty beer bottle on the bar.
“Oh, spare me. It wouldn’t be anything you haven’t done before.”
“It’s not like that,” Julian protested before he could stop himself. He raised his hand to his mouth to stop the words coming out, but it was too late. The damage was already done. The last time he’d jumped into bed with someone this soon, they’d ended up in a relationship for almost a year. Julian wasn’t sure if he could handle something that serious right now. He wanted it; he just didn’t know if it was a good idea. “I mean, it can’t be like that. This isn’t Toronto. People talk.”
“People talk in Toronto, too, but that’s because they want to hear all the juicy details.” Roz sighed, patting his knee. “Okay, I’ll let it slide this once, on one condition.”
Sighing in relief, Julian was agreeing before he knew her terms. “Name it.”
The sudden gleam in her eyes let him know he should’ve thought twice. “Invite him to lunch tomorrow while I’m at the gym and you have the house to yourself.”
“I—”
“Do it, Julian.” She looked over his shoulder, probably to get a bead on the herd of guys he’d known in high school that had been checking her out all night. “Here he comes. I’ll just be conveniently elsewhere. Bye!”
“Is it just me,” said Jack, coming up beside him with a guitar case in one hand and the portable amp in the other, “or is she a little on the flighty side?”
Julian smiled, offering wordlessly to take something, but Jack shook his head. “If by flighty you mean manipulative.” The smile morphed into a grin. “Who says flighty anymore, anyway?”
Jack nudged him with the guitar case. “Watch it. I might be older than you, but I’m also bigger.”
Raising his eyebrows, Julian declined to comment. “What’re you gonna do, spank me?”
Woah, easy. Jack’s eyes were caught somewhere between calculating and aroused. “One step at a time.”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, actually.” Julian grabbed the door for him and followed him out onto the street, wishing he’d brought his coat. He’d left it in the bar, draped over the back of his stool. “Um….
”
Jack wasn’t going to make it easy for him, he realized suddenly. “Yes?”
Hell with it. “Have lunch with me tomorrow. At my house.”
Turning, the other man fixed him with a smirk. “Took you long enough to spit that out.” He hefted the guitar and unlocked the back of the pickup, sliding it inside. The amp followed, settling on the floor on the passenger side. He must have seen the apprehension on Julian’s face, or the way his hands were shaking, because he finally softened. “Relax, Jitterbug. I already told you, I’m interested. What time do you want me to come over?”
“About one-thirty sound good?” Julian hedged. Then: “Jitterbug?”
“That’s what you were dancing with Hallie, isn’t it?”
Julian decided to let it slide. “I was trying, anyway. I’m not used to having such a short partner.” He ruffled a hand through his hair, not knowing what to do now that the hard part was over. Sure, he knew what he’d like to do—preferably without an actual audience, and he didn’t think they were going to be that lucky. Now that the entertainment was over, people were starting to trickle out of the pub. “Do you know how to get to my place?”
“Big old farm house out on the tenth, two stories, lots of big trees, detached garage, balcony in the back?”
Surprised, Julian blinked. “Are you sure you’re not stalking me?”
Jack grinned. “Nah. I was out there a couple of years ago helping your dad fix one of the exercise machines. Circuits got fried or something.”
For some reason, it was odd to think that Jack had known his father longer than him. Putting it out of his mind, Julian shook his head. “Well, it’s had a couple of coats of paint and a new roof since then, I think, but it looks more or less the same.” He scuffed his Converse on the asphalt, stuck.
“I’ll find it,” Jack promised, looking both ways furtively before reaching out and grabbing Julian’s wrist.
He let out a small oomph as their chests collided and all the breath was forced from his lungs, but he hardly noticed. For a few brief, blissful seconds there was nothing but Jack as his stubble-roughened mouth covered Julian’s, burning his lips.