Kelsey put it back in the printer tray. “Okay, here’s what I can do.”
For the next hour she flipped them through photos, until they agreed on one. They altered the logo in a way she suggested, to make it look a little more hardcore and a little more country.
With a few keystrokes she changed Alex’s drum logo to match. They all nodded. Finally, they laid out the poster, upright, name on top, then photo, followed by block letter info underneath.
“When you advertise, McMinn’s will make more money, and you’ll get invited back, and you can demand more pay, and maybe even move to Friday or Saturday nights. You’ll also get your name and faces out there. The more people that recognize you, the more other bars will want to hire you . . . It’s win-win-win.”
“It’s two thirty a.m.” Craig scratched the back of his neck. “I need to get some sleep.”
TJ said good-night and followed his roommate out the door. Alex lasted two seconds after they did, and JD was left standing there with Kelsey, both of them suddenly dog tired.
“I don’t want to carry Andie home.”
“Then don’t.” Kelsey couldn’t hide a yawn. “Just show up tomorrow morning around seven with a change of clothes, and her school stuff. Maybe you can walk them in while I hit the printers.” Her hands flew to her face. “Oh, god, that’s less than five hours away.”
“Okay.”
It was all he could muster, but he went and checked the bolts on the front door before letting himself out the back.
Chapter 17
Kelsey met him at the front door the next morning, looking far too chipper for seven a.m. “I hate you.” He growled out.
“Good morning to you, too.” She gave a false fifties-housewife smile and motioned hostess-style for him to enter. She then waltzed back over to the table where three pajama-clad kids were eating cereal and grabbed her can of coke.
“Jesus, Kelse. It’s seven a.m. and you’re already hitting the sauce.”
She held out a second can to him. “I’m awake and perky. Do you want one?” She sounded like she was straight out of Leave-it-to-Beaver. She threatened to throw the can to him.
He growled again, and stalked over to yank the coke away from her. He might as well drink it. She was alert enough to do impressions and he was barely upright.
When he found his voice, he went over to Andie, who had previously looked like she didn’t care that he was there. But now she launched herself into his arms. “Daddy!”
“Morning, baby.” She almost toppled him, but he held on, the weight of this child sweet in his arms. He stood and grabbed Andie’s hand. “Let’s go get you dressed, baby.”
As usual, Kelsey saw him as he wondered where to do that and prevented him from even asking. “Use my room.”
He led his daughter down the hallway to a room he had never really seen before. Every time he’d been in here it had been dark or Kelsey had commanded his attention in her ‘little devil’ underwear and naked legs. He didn’t want to pay attention now. So he tried to focus on getting Andie ready for school.
Was Andrew such trouble that Kelsey had learned to anticipate questions and bring whatever was needed to avoid violent storms? She didn’t seem to act like it had been that bad. His picture, a whole family picture, was beside the bed on the small table. Andrew was blond-haired and blue-eyed. No one would guess that the almost too-good-looking man in the photo was mentally ill or violent. They certainly looked to be the perfect family.
“This room is pretty.”
Andie’s voice pulled him away from mulling over the photo. The room was pretty. It was soft without being frilly, feminine without feeling girly. The dusty red comforter across the big bed was still rumpled from use. It looked inviting against the creamy yellow walls. Large pieces of dark furniture and a patterned chair in the same reds and yellows filled out the rest of the room.
He laid Andie’s jammies over the arm of the chair without thinking and tied her shoes. He pulled out her brush, and Andie eyed him warily. JD sighed. He didn’t have time for this, but he also knew that if he took a step backward, then he would have to make up for it later. Usually in spades. He turned away. “Fine, I’ll see if Kelsey wants her hair brushed.”
He went into the living room and sat at the edge of the couch with his knees apart. In just a minute, Kelsey ushered Allie and Daniel out into the living room, dressed and shining.
He held up the brush. “Do you want your hair brushed?”
“Yes.” She smiled widely, and before he knew what to do, she had plunked herself onto the floor between his legs.
He did what she’d taught him: started at the bottom and worked his way up. He held his hand against her head if there was a tangle. He also did what she probably didn’t realize she’d taught him: stroke with long clean lines from the crown of her head to the tip of the long hair. He did it in every direction, placing the brush just above her ear and pulling back until he ran out of hair, and from underneath, pulling up.
Kelsey responded the way he figured she would: she made low humms in the back of her throat. She turned her head side to side, giving him better access, and placed her cheek against his knee, resting it there.
He kept going, knowing that the whole thing had turned vaguely sexual, and still not quite willing to stop. When she curled a little tighter against him, brushing her breast against his calf, his jeans tightened a bit, and he decided he had to call the dogs off. “Okay, that’s it. You’re done.”
She didn’t move.
He nudged her, “Kelse, I know you love this but you have to get up. The kids have to get to school.”
It was Daniel who pointed out the problem. “She’s asleep.”
“What?”
Daniel looked askance at the both of them. “This is what happens when you stay up past your bedtime.” He shot a questioning look at JD before walking away. It was just enough to make JD wonder if the kid knew what kind of thoughts sometimes went through JD’s head about his mother.
He nudged her a little harder this time. “Kelsey. Wake up. We have to get the kids to school.” He didn’t stop rattling her until she moved of her own will.
She sucked in a breath. “Wh- what?”
“You fell asleep.”
His explanation fell by the wayside, as she stood up and stretched her arms over her head, leaning from side to side and exposing little slices of smooth skin where her shirt gapped above her jeans. He noticed all of it. And wished he hadn’t.
“Okay, kids, JD is walking you to school today.” She gathered thermal lunch bags and light jackets.
“Nope.” JD countered. “We’re all walking today.”
“Why?” She looked up at him, mussed, and blinking, and beautiful.
“Because you just fell asleep on your living room floor. You are not driving to the printers by yourself. You walk with us.”
Daniel looked up at her, big-eyed and stern. “No complaining, Mom. You’re the one who wanted to stay up late.”
JD had to laugh. It sounded so like Kelsey.
She blinked again and disappeared into her room, then reappeared with a thin sweater drawn over her shirt and stuffing her feet into slim sneakers. She ducked into the kitchen for a minute, and when she emerged she was accompanied by the pop and fizz of a fresh can of soda.
JD shook his head at her even as he held the door open. She was the last one out, and his hand was at the small of her back before he was even aware of what he was doing. He pulled it away, locking the door behind him. “You’ve got a bad habit there, Kelse.”
She turned and glared over her shoulder, even as the kids went down the sidewalk single file, looking like an old Norman Rockwell painting. “Bite me. I’m a single mom, with small children. I get my coke.” She cradled the drink to her, despite the hint of chill lingering in the air.
After that, the walk was pretty uneventful. They took Daniel and Andie to the gate at the school, then cut a few blocks over to drop Allie off at day-care, with K
elsey cringing as they left the property. “I’ve been running up a bigger bill here than I planned.”
JD nodded. “Everything is cheaper without kids.”
She nodded, but stayed silent.
JD turned around, walking backward down the sidewalk. “Isn’t this the part where you extol the virtues of parenthood to me? Remind me of what I have? How money doesn’t compare to love?”
Kelsey smiled sweetly at him. “Nope. If you don’t know that by now, there’s nothing I can say to change it. It’s okay to gripe about money and how much they cost, I won’t doubt your love for your child.”
JD nodded, but inside he smiled.
It was only two blocks to Kelsey’s house. She darted in to grab the things for the printer, but then seemed surprised that he was going with her.
“Kelse, you fell asleep once already this morning. What if you fell asleep at the wheel?”
Her eyebrows went up.
JD continued. “Who would take your kids?” Her mouth pursed, then opened, but he didn’t let her speak. “I would. Do you really want me to be a single Dad with three kids? I don’t think anyone does.”
She laughed at him, as she often did. “You’d be fine. You’d find some beautiful young wife to help you out and all would be well.”
They climbed into his car and headed just five or six blocks down to the print shop. The guy at the front counter greeted Kelsey by name. Several copies of the photo as well as a disk copy were handed over with an explanation.
“Ready by five.” The man assured them.
She smiled at him. “So we eat an early dinner and take the kids out postering.”
Without saying anything else, they climbed back into the car, and he dropped her at the curb to her front walk. He was afraid she would barely make it to the bed.
They did exactly as Kelsey had suggested, eating dinner before all driving over to pick up the posters. All five of them headed in, and JD tried not to show what it meant to finally see his band on a real poster.
The thick stack of glossy paper was heavier than it looked. Kelsey paid for the posters on her account to avoid the mark-up, and he made a mental note to put a check in her hand before the night was over.
Then they hit the town looking for blank walls and old posters they could cover. When they found a good one, Kelsey pulled to the curb and popped the trunk while JD helped all the kids get out.
A homeless man stepped up to him and asked for money. First putting the kids behind him, JD pulled the last three singles out of his wallet. He couldn’t refuse anyone in need of help, even though it wasn’t much. He’d been pretty broke himself sometimes. The man was gracious and walked away.
Kelsey pulled out eight of the posters and she held up the top row while JD rammed the staples in. The kids held up the bottom row, poorly, until he knelt down and lent a hand, showing Andie and Daniel how to line up the edges. There was almost no hope for Allie, who was holding up a single poster that had folded over on her.
“Where’s Allie?” Kelsey feigned. “JD, have you seen Allie?”
Allie giggled.
Daniel put his fingers to his lips, and motioned for Andie to play along. “I haven’t seen her in a while, Mom.”
Andie shrugged.
Allie giggled again.
She still had a tiny baby voice, and she called out from under the poster, “I'm in here. I’m stuck.”
He pressed his own lips together. “I hear her but I can’t see her.”
“I’m under the poster!” She yelled it at the top of her little lungs.
He lifted the edge and found her with her hands still holding the poster to the wall, just as he had instructed. He hammered the staples in and hollered. “Okay, everybody! Back in the car!”
The kids ran screaming, and jumped in. He and Kelsey buckled each of the kids in a pretend rush and drove off to find the next blank wall.
They plastered up lines of posters, covered doorways on shops for rent, and wrapped telephone poles. They wore themselves out and called it a night with four hundred posters left to go.
At the front of Kelsey’s house, they all wearily climbed out and dragged themselves across the grass. The kids hadn’t complained at all. They had been given jobs, and worked hard only knowing that it was for JD. Each kid had ‘helped’ to the best of their ability, which sometimes wasn’t much, but didn’t matter.
“Well, that was fun.” Kelsey smiled, even though she was clearly exhausted. “The kids will sleep well tonight.”
He nodded and said good-night, holding Andie’s hand as they walked around the corner to their condo.
He had a big day tomorrow. He and Craig had four hundred posters to get up. It would certainly go faster, but he doubted it would be anywhere near as much fun.
The following Wednesday McMinn’s was turning away customers.
Chapter 18
October had come in on little cats’ feet. Wilder was doing better and better. Craig had to cut back his shifts at Starbucks. The band was playing three and sometimes four nights a week, with a Friday or Saturday night booked most weekends. They even had a standing gig at McMinn’s on Wednesdays.
Kelsey had enlisted Maggie and they had sold over two hundred t-shirts with the Wilder logo and her photo on them. One day JD saw a total stranger walking down the street wearing their shirt.
Each week, they were going out and putting half sheets with up-to-date info over the old info on the posters. Craig told her she was brilliant when she said she’d designed them that way on purpose. Kelsey was a single mom, and single moms knew how to do things without any unnecessary work. Time was precious.
She’d racked up a ton of babysitting hours with JD, but she wasn’t all that anxious to get them paid back. He did watch her kids a few times when she met photography clients. She’d even shot a wedding.
The band had taken her out for a nice steak dinner to thank her for helping them turn things around. Kelsey agreed to accept the steak but not the credit. All the posters in the world wouldn’t mean a damn thing if the band wasn’t any good. She had simply helped them tell the crowd where they’d be.
Andie had learned her days of the week and colors, and Daniel had taken to writing and drawing stories. It seemed like she stapled a stack of paper for him to ‘make a book’ every day. Allie was counting the days until next fall when she, too, would get to go to school.
JD and Andie were coming over for dinner. It was happening more often these past two months. Maybe once a week they were all together. Tonight it was pizza, and JD and Andie were bringing it. Kelsey hollered out to her kids. “Okay, TV off, we have to make the salad.”
She heard two sets of small feet heading into the kitchen. She chopped and handed off lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, cucumbers and raisins for the kids to toss. Then she had them carefully set the table.
They had just slid the chairs back into place and set up the third booster seat for Andie, when the front door clicked. None of them bothered with knocking anymore. Not JD or Andie, not the band, not even Alex, who was the most soft-spoken of the whole group.
“Hey, we’re here.” JD hollered out.
Allie and Daniel went screaming out to find them, and Kelsey started pouring drinks. She realized as she did it, that she didn’t even ask what he wanted, or what his child should have, anymore.
He appeared in the doorway to the kitchen, the smell of hot pizza wafting from the table behind him. He didn’t say hello. His hands were jammed deep in his pockets, and she knew what was coming. “It’s tomorrow.”
Kelsey nodded. His mother and father were coming, and he dreaded it like someone was going to remove a limb. “You look pretty upset.”
“When you meet her you’ll be upset, too.”
Kelsey now wanted to meet this woman just to see if she was as bad as JD said. TJ agreed with him, so there was probably merit. But her own mother had drunk herself into oblivion, and her brother had fits and threw things. She understood that his mother didn’t ap
prove of him or TJ, but how bad could her behavior be?
She motioned them all to the table, and she and JD made the kids finish a small pile of salad each before they could have pizza. He didn’t speak much, just nodded at Andie’s talk about meeting her grandparents.
So Kelsey changed the subject. “What was the most interesting thing at school today, Andie?”
“Todd put thirty paper towels down the toilet, so when I had to pee, I had to walk over to the other classroom.” She took a bite of pizza, and chewed thoughtfully.
Leave it to a kindergartener.
She tried the adult next, and they ran down the list of the upcoming week’s Wilder events. “It’s good,” she smiled. The guys had four shows this week, one at their biggest venue yet.
JD smiled as wide as she had ever seen. “I know. I’m solvent.”
“Really?”
He nodded and downed almost another whole slice of pizza at the same time. “It’s been so long since I was ahead. I want to do something for Andie, she’s been so good through all this. I just have to get through this thing with my mother first.”
Kelsey didn’t say anything.
“I’m afraid my mother’s going to undo all that Andie and I have built.” Andie and Kelsey’s kids had asked to be excused, so JD spoke more freely knowing that the kids wouldn’t hear. “You’re going to be there for dinner tomorrow night, right?”
“Yes, me and the kids.” She chewed for a moment. “Where is there? Your table isn’t big enough, the five of us barely fit around it.”
“I got a new table. With a leaf-thingy in the middle.”
“Cool. Are you cooking?” She tried to hold her face straight while he panicked.
“Only a little, you said you’d bring-”
She caved quickly. “I was kidding. Of course, I’m bringing chicken and dessert.”
“That was mean.”
“I know,” she grinned before she polished off the last of her pizza, “and it was fun.”
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