“Jer’s a stripper,” Cali says, tossing a bar towel into the hamper with a quick flick of her wrist. Nothing but net.
I give Cali a narrow-eyed look. “I model for figure drawing at the University,” I correct.
“Figure? Like geometry?” asks the man next to Allison. Not sure if he’s her date tonight, but considering that he’s also drinking a Mojito, I don’t have enough respect for him to bother learning his name.
“More like the geometry of the six pack,” Cali says. “Also known as the geometry of how many seven-digit numbers my naked boyfriend can collect from drooling art students in an hour while they sketch every little nook of his body.”
I roll my eyes and catch her fingers below the level of the bar. “I have to go.”
“Don’t stay out too late,” she teases. “Or Dave’ll fall asleep at the bar.”
I squeeze her hand, rubbing my thumb over her ring with the thorny vines on it before I let her go and head out, dropping the pass-through with a clang behind me.
Shit. Her comment sounded like a joke, but it was probably a hint that I’m getting a lecture on being overprotective when I get home. I pull out my phone and text Damon a single number to cheer myself up. He zaps back right away:
I’m already sitting at five overprotective and two jealousy-is-unattractives for October, sucker. Elena’s got Cali beat on nagging four to one on a slow month.
I snicker and step out onto the street.
“I expect at least ten phone numbers or I’m sending you back to the gym for an extra helping of crunches,” Cali calls after me and I just flash her a wave over my shoulder.
She hates figure drawing with a fiery passion. Well, not figure drawing in general. I came out of the class with straight A’s for how many times I’d practiced on her before I ever took a day of instruction. She just hates the idea of people seeing me nude, which is weird for someone as unselfconscious as she is. But it’s good money, I don’t mind being naked, and I’d never tell her this, but it’s a great way to make friends.
After class when the teacher and his be-professional scowl are nowhere to be found, the girls (and some of the guys) find me and then it’s maybe coffee sometime or let’s grab a beer, sometimes a straight phone number or even a wink and a promise of no strings attached. I tell them I’ve got a girl I’m crazy for and one and all, they melt at that and I’ve made a friend for life. It’s made the art department a hell of a lot more cozy, and actually less people hit on me now than they did when I was a freshman.
Damon says it works the opposite for him when he picks up a shift, but I’m fairly sure he only models to find willing snack food, and it’s not like he leaves any of the girls with a memory of having approached him, anyway. Compulsion is not the best way to make friends.
But then again, Damon doesn’t really seem to want new friends, and I don’t know why he’d need them considering how attached at the hip he and Ric are. With as often as vampires move, I wonder how many times they’ll share a U-Haul before they’ll admit it’s not just an accident that they live in the same town all the time.
After the Augustine bullshit, we all moved back to Mystic Falls together and got apartments. I was the first to head to Richmond, as soon as I could scrounge the right test results to shrug off the rest of high school. Caroline and Elena tried to go back to Whitmore that spring, which meant Stefan and Damon went along and Ric “just happened” to rent a room down the street. The next semester Elena broke down and transferred up to Richmond, at the same time as Ric “decided” he needed his Ph.D. in history so he could teach college instead of high school, and enrolled right alongside Elena. I’m betting when Stefan and Caroline come back this Thanksgiving, Caroline will decide to finish up her degree here, too.
There was a time in my life when I would have been pissed that my whole family basically followed me to college but that time is absolutely not now. I missed them all like crazy for the few months we spent apart and yeah, I can call Elena and Ric when I feel like talking, but Damon’s not exactly the type of guy you dial just to “catch up.” If his phone rings and nobody’s dying, he thinks you’re weird.
It’s much easier to hang out now since we live only a couple miles from each other. Plus, I think it helped Cali a lot to have family close by when she lost her grandma. And yeah, they’re technically my family and friends, not hers, but at this point there’s not much of a difference.
After Stefan healed Gram, she had perfect health, which she used to go to all of Aperture’s concerts, no matter how out of place she looked. She also had a great time with her second-favorite hobby: making me blush, however she could manage it. But after six months, she had another stroke, this one permanent. Sometimes, I think I miss her as much as Cali does.
Gram would have had way too much fun with the idea of me modeling nude, though, so I’m glad I didn’t do it when she was still around.
Tonight I modeled for two art classes, so by the time I’m loping out of the dressing room, happy to be free to scratch my balls again, it’s pushing the time I told Dave I’d be back.
The bar is filling up when I get there and I slide a keen eye over the crowd, watching for anybody who is a little too tipsy or anyone with the smooth reflexes of the inhuman. The patrons mostly look calm and unthreateningly mortal, so I relax, smiling when I see a familiar set of hunched shoulders lined up next to Dave.
I take the long way around the bar, clapping the old Marine on the back on my way by.
“Dave, thought I told you to keep the riffraff out of the bar?”
Dave grunts. “Shit, I thought this riffraff grew up out of the bar. Little like a fungus.”
“Ha ha,” Ric says dryly, not looking up from his notes. He’s got a stack of professional journals half a foot high in front of him, and his bourbon is going watery as the ice cubes melt.
“How’s your advisor this week?” I ask him while I hang up my jacket.
“Sadistic, know-it-all son of a bitch, as usual,” he grouses.
Ric’s on the Ph.D. fast track to a teaching position at the University, and all the faculty members already adore him. Which means the academic ballbusting is out of control and they keep him busy as hell.
In a normal week, Ric and I can spend upwards of thirty or forty hours studying together with nothing to break the silence but Cali’s teasing when she brings him a fresh bourbon and me a Coke or a beer. But lately, he’s seemed happier and he’s been skipping more and more of our study sessions. I think things are getting serious with his girlfriend, which is awesome, because Ric deserves somebody really special.
Cali whistles a little five note song, and I smile in return, even though she doesn’t look up, just scoops ice into a highball, squeezes a lime over it, lines up two more with her right hand, flips a bottle of gin up into her left hand, hitches a whiskey into her right and upends them over the glasses, cutting them off less than a half second past a level ounce. She sprinkles sugar over the whiskeys, drops in two twists of lemon then one of lime for the gin, splashes in some tonic and deals the drinks like a pro, flipping back around just in time to turn off the taps before a Guinness overflows.
She’s down the bar and back up to me with empties in the time it takes me to shake my hair out of my eyes and enter the pass-through. She’s fast but there’s a stiffness to her stride I recognize and even though my libido is relieved she wasn’t wearing the ballet flats tonight, her feet definitely aren’t.
She sets the dirty pint glasses down, slides a longneck of Bud out of the fridge and cracks the lid off in one smooth motion, turning to serve it with a sly smile that means she’s about to drop a dirty joke on the ex-Jesuit priest it belongs to. I interrupt, taking her by the hips and lifting her as soon as she sets the bottle down. She squeaks and I spin her up onto the barstool she keeps tucked behind the bar.
“How long since the last song, Allie?” I call out.
“Fifty minutes too long, Jer. And she was bitching about your exhibitionism the wh
ole time.”
I frown at Cali and she sticks her tongue out at me. I bend to brush a kiss on the tiny jewel sparkling in the side of her pert nose and drop easily to my knees from there, to the accompaniment of two more wolf whistles I don’t recognize. I pull the high heels off her feet as she kicks in protest.
“Health department, Jeremy!” she complains. “Kinda have to wear shoes at work.”
“Anybody know the number to the health department?” I call over my shoulder to a chorus of boos and fuck no’s and one hearty, “Laws are for the bloody English!”
Gotta love Irish pubs.
I grin and nudge her stilettos under the bar where I won’t trip over them, then pick up the guitar and wrap her resisting fingers around the neck of it, kissing her knuckles as I rise back to standing.
I dig into my pocket and pull out a handful of scraps of paper, lifting them high over her head before I let them rain down like snow. She bursts into laughter, batting them away.
“Jesus, Gilbert! Seriously?”
I just wink. Actually, only two of those were real girls’ phone numbers. I made the rest up just to yank her chain.
I dodge her little hand when it flashes out to try to smack me and do a quick sweep down the bar. Looks like we’re at least two beers down and some kind of martini, and judging by the tapping fingers, somebody who wants to close out a tab. I go for them first, just as the first notes of the song drift from Cali’s agile fingers.
I have the bar all set up by the first refrain and the rest of the room settled down by the second song, and then I just lean against the bar and listen to Cali cover a Joan Baez song like she was born to sing folk. The guy next to me has a scar that took a notch out of his right nostril and he’s got his eyes closed, swaying slightly with the rhythm of her voice, knuckles clenched tight around his beer. I feel like fist bumping the dude in silent understanding because I hear it every day and her voice still knocks me ass over teakettle every time I hear her sing.
When Cali’s finished she takes over, scampering around more quickly now that she’s barefoot. I grab my homework from the corner and hop up into one of the hammocks, swinging gently as I let the clatter of the bar and the periodic bursts of music soothe themselves into the back of my mind.
We’ve lived two years in Jameson’s and it already feels more like home to me than anywhere in Mystic Falls ever did. There’s a place two doors down serving Mexican breakfast food that makes me want to howl with joy, and a coffee shop the next block over with black Arabica roasts and live music every Thursday. I’m still trying to con the gallery on 10th into showing my stuff, but I think they’re cracking. Everybody in the neighborhood waves when Cali and I go out.
If it were up to me, I’d finish my degree, cash in what’s left of my trust fund and buy this place from Pat. I’d expand the apartment and put in a stage so we could showcase local talent, and clear the old beer posters off the wall so we could rotate student art shows through here too, help ‘em make a buck or two off their sketches.
But Cali’s headed for the big time and I’ve got a couple years left on my degree before I can even go on tour with her. Won’t be a big deal once I can though, since the guys pretty much feel like I’m the fifth member of the band. The guitarist, Rob, and I had some tense moments at first, but once I helped him Sheetrock his garage, he loosened up a bit. They even let me play backup guitar in one of their smaller gigs last month, and Rob’s always threatening to teach me to play drums so they can use Cali as their lead singer for more of the songs, run a few duets and whatever.
Part of me wants to freeze time right here, in this little local bar where we know everybody, and the rest of me can’t freaking wait to see Cali’s knowing smile on the cover of the Rolling Stone, to have to buy a tux to take her to award shows, and to clap until my hands are sore every time somebody wants to recognize how talented she is. My girlfriend’s gonna be a star, and she fucking deserves it.
I just have to enjoy this time as much as I possibly can because she’s too amazing to stay all mine for long and soon enough, I’ll have to share her with her growing leagues of fans.
I look back at my notebook, my knuckles clenched a little bit too tightly around the pen, and it brings me back to the one moment of Damon and Elena’s wedding I remember with perfect clarity. It was a Caroline-stravaganza, complete with a carriage pulled by white horses and tuxes for everyone involved, even though all I had to do was walk Elena down the aisle and it’s not like anybody was looking at me, considering the dress she was wearing.
But for all the things captured in their doorstopper of a wedding album, the thing that sticks with me is signing the first page of their guestbook, along with the rest of the wedding party. Some of them I’ve known all my life, like Matt and Caroline. Some showed up when I wasn’t paying attention and I had no idea what they would mean to me, like Damon and Ric and Cali. Some names were just as conspicuous in their absence, like my parents, and Bonnie, and Aunt Jenna.
But what struck me is that every name on that guestbook page was somebody who would drop everything to help me, no matter what the problem. And yet it was only a couple years before that when I was in my bedroom, gulping down Anna’s blood and handfuls of pills, feeling completely, gut-wrenchingly alone.
I had no idea what was ahead of me. If somebody would have told me in that moment that someday, I would live in a bar and the most important people in my life would be a bunch of vampires, a punk rock drummer, and my old history teacher, I would have thought they were crazy. But I’ve never been happier, and in Jameson’s, I’m never alone.
At the sound of a soft chord, I lift my head and Cali smiles at me from across the room, her fingers graceful on the guitar strings I tuned this morning. Ric hunches over his books not far from where she’s sitting, his hair standing up in a messy spray from his careless fingers, and Dave nods to me as he takes off for the night.
It’s funny how fast life changes, how even in moments like this that feel as slow and familiar as the rocking of the hammock beneath me, you’re already speeding toward an unknown future that will be populated with faces you wouldn’t even recognize if you saw them today.
But I’m not afraid of change anymore. It’s brought me too many things I wouldn’t know how to live without.
I smile as my girlfriend’s eyes drop to her guitar and I think about the time when we first met and she played me a song that was my personality, melted into musical notes. It was only four chords on that day, and since then my life and my heart have expanded until my song has five notes.
And so does hers.
Acknowledgments
Finding the right critique partner is a task on par with climbing Mt. Everest with no map, no legs, and no airplane ticket. Because you have to find somebody that you get along with as a person, whose writing you admire, who has the technical skills to help you improve your writing, the diplomacy to make the process as painless as possible, the humor to make it actually fun, and the selflessness to pour endless time into a piece of work that is not their own. Thank God for Katie, that’s all I have to say. She’s worth more than a trailer full of Andalusians and a houseful of Tillamook Ice Cream, and I damn well know it.
All hail to Hoku, the reigning queen of comedic titles for adult themed how-to manuals. Thanks for all your enthusiasm and support throughout this long project, and for those fabulous epistolary reviews.
Thanks to Alf, for making like 4 different beautiful covers for this book, because I was being picky, and for always being so generous with your time and talents on my behalf.
Thanks to Chris, for always supporting every word I write and understanding when I say I “have” to write.
And finally, thanks to all of my fanfiction readers, who are a fantastic, amazing group of people whose enthusiasm fuels my every paragraph. None of my books would exist if it weren’t for all of you.
About the Author
I live kind of an odd life.
In 2010, my husban
d and I decided we wanted a change, so we put our house up for rent and moved into our Toyota pickup. From there, we started traveling around and rock climbing, hiking, canyoneering, writing, scuba diving, riding horses, slacklining, kayaking, and generally having more fun than you should be allowed to have as an adult. Along the way we've taken seasonal jobs as: a wrangler in Arizona, a heavy shop mechanic assistant in Antarctica, a fragrance product development staffer, a riding instructor in Idaho, a counselor, a curriculum and activity writer, a stunt rider in a western movie and most commonly, as tortoise biologists in the Mohave Desert.
In Time We Trust was written on the go while I was in a lot of different places. In a golf cart in 115 degree heat and -10 degree cold during downtime on a construction site, on the beach of an island in Honduras, in a cabin in the Sawtooth Mountains, on a river in Utah, in the mountains in Oregon, and from an apartment in Boise, Idaho.
The Vampire Diaries: Trust In Betrayal (Kindle Worlds) (In Time We Trust Trilogy Book 3) Page 40