by Thia Finn
“I come in here all the time. Have been for years.”
“Is that right? Well, how is it you manage to keep showing up where I am? If I didn’t know better, I might think you were a stalker.”
I chuckled. “Maybe it’s the other way around. Maybe you’re stalking me.” I wanted this conversation to go easy, but I figured she didn’t from her body language.
She gave me a hard look. “I’ve got work to do. Jenna will wait on you.”
“What if I’d prefer you? Ford likes the band and me coming in. We bring in business.”
“I don’t give a shit what you bring. Someone else will always wait on you, not me.” She turned around and took off. Her anger became apparent when she walked to the first set of men and began speaking with a flirtatious tone. She spoke loud enough for me to hear her. Obviously, she wanted me to know she did have a sweet side, but I just might never get to see it.
Gunner texted me as I finished my second brew, and asked me to come over for a while. Lola’s job called her in, and he hated being alone out by the lake. I expected them to move at any time back into the heart of the city. It would make sense since Lola worked at the children’s hospital.
I threw some cash on the bar and walked out the front door. Before I closed the door, I looked back and found her watching me. She got her way and I left as she asked. I drove out to Gunner’s thinking about the short time we’d spent together. She didn’t tell me anything about herself. Timbre lived in a garage apartment west of downtown, a safe area. I’m sure from the location the rent wasn’t cheap. I wondered how she made enough in the bar to live there.
Gunner and I sat by the pool and laughed at some of my stories about Crew and Tucker. He didn’t see them as much as I did, so I invited him to watch a football game before I left.
“Don’t be a stranger, dude. You’re always welcome. I shouldn’t have to call to get you out here.”
“I know. It’s just hard to get it all in with different bands, writing music for y’all, and doing the dad thing.”
“I bet so. Maybe I’ll be doing the dad thing soon.” He smiled at me.
“Is Lola pregnant?” I knew they wanted kids.
“Maybe. We practice every chance we get.” His grin told me that information was true.
“I bet y’all do. This big old house out here. Lots of places to practice.” This time I wiggled my eyebrows.
“Damn right. We’ve christened the whole fucking house.”
My hand rested on the bar when I put the empty bottle in the trash. I looked at him, and he looked at the bar causing me to move my hand away quickly.
“Right.” I moved to the front door. “I hope y’all can get out to a game before you’re out of town again.”
“We will. I promise. Lola’s been dying to hang with the women, so we’ll do it soon.”
We shook hands and I climbed in my truck, noticing the time on the truck clock, 1:30 a.m. She would get off soon so I headed back into the city.
The mostly-empty parking lot made me question the safety of the two women walking to their cars. Surely Ford walked out with them every night. I parked on the street under the overhang of an oak tree that offered a lot of darkness. I wanted to see where she lived now. She didn’t want to talk to me, and Ford and her friend wouldn’t share, so I’d take matters into my own hands to get the information.
The door finally opened with Jenna and Timbre coming through it. Only two cars were in the lot now so either they shut the bar down alone, or they came together. I watched them laughing and talking when they both should have been paying close attention to their surroundings. The two had a complete lack of safety heading to their car in the early hours of the morning beside a bar. I doubted from watching them, they even thought about it.
They both sat in one car with Jenna driving. She backed out and took off down the road. I followed them at a safe distance with a feeling I’d learn a lot about little Miss Timbre. Jenna drove under I-35 and made several turns on the East side of the city before coming to a stop in front of a plain building with a parking lot but no sign. This building looked like a large single-story office building with few windows. No one hung out around the doorway, but she pushed a button and then a big man opened the door for her. What the hell?
Jenna waited until Timbre walked through the doorway and the man waved at her before she pulled out of the parking lot. Four cars sat in the lot unattended. What kind of place was this? I watched her turn back onto the street and speed away to another destination—so she didn’t live here, too. Once she was out of sight, I pulled into the lot. Nothing on the building indicated what kind of place Timbre lived in now, but I intended to find out and soon.
I pulled out of the lot and parked across the street. I couldn’t find a street address on the building either, but I did find the numbers on the house next door. At least I knew something about its location. If not an apartment and it wasn’t her friend’s house, what the fuck was it? Why did she move from her garage apartment across town to this? I had some research to do.
I never thought going to bed at 3:00 a.m. on a regular basis would be a problem for me. Staying awake all night never seemed to be a bother until now. My routine set itself. I walked through the door of the shelter between three and four, depending on the amount of people the bar had in it at closing time, took a shower and fell into bed. I never heard anything going on around me until eleven or twelve the next morning. It didn’t matter if a bomb fell in the middle of our room, I didn’t wake up. Working on my feet wore me out.
Jenna and I had the same days off which I loved. Since I’d changed jobs and lost my roommate, other so-called friends didn’t come around when they saw where I lived. So much for fair-weather friends, but I didn’t care. At least I knew who my true friends were now.
We had decided to go out tonight and eat a real meal together. My food budget hovered around zero since saving to get a place of my own became my sole reason for working. A kick-ass pair of tennis shoes to work in so my feet didn’t hurt came first, and other than that I kept all of my money now in a savings account. The shelter provided some food, and Ford usually sprung for a meal each shift. Guess he knew Jenna and I needed to have one good meal a day.
With the bar being on South Congress, lots of great places to eat were close, but we wanted something different than we ate daily. We ventured downtown to Stubbs so we could listen to live music while we enjoyed dinner. A band we often heard on the local radio station, Halo’s Car, headlined tonight, and we both wanted to hear them. They sang a lot of true country music and not the ‘Bro Country’ that played on the big country radio stations so often now.
“I’m excited we came,” Jenna told me as she climbed on the barstool at the high-top table. The stage sat perfectly in front of us from the elevated platform where we ate.
“I’m happy to be out doing anything that I don’t have to wait on someone else.”
“Ain’t that the damn truth? The smell of beer makes me want to run the other way these days.” We talked and laughed about crazy things that happened at our bar while waiting for our food to be delivered.
“Jenna, I wanted to thank you for helping me when I moved into the shelter. I don’t know what I would’ve done without you reaching out to me. My prospects for a job never panned out. Finding a job here is tough. I’m thinking about moving to Houston or Dallas to take a job. I’ll have to save money first, though.”
“I’d hate to see you leave Austin, but I get it. Lots of stiff competition here.”
“Yeah, and how do I compete with my degree from little West College with students from UT?” I didn’t bother to mention that I’d applied and received rejection emails from several companies, which I blamed partly on my mediocre GPA. A full-time job while I attended college, so I didn’t owe for the entire education, got in the way of studying as much as I should have.
“But you got that degree, girl, and that’s all that matters.” Jenna tried to boost my spirits at
every turn.
“Yeah, I guess.” A few roadies set the stage while we finished our dinner. Neither of us paid attention while they worked. When the two singers finally took their places on the darkened stage, the waitress cleared. Jenna ordered a beer, but I stuck to water while we enjoyed the music.
The lights came up, and I immediately recognized the man on the stage. He came into the bar with the other guys from Assured Distraction. He used to be part of the band. The pair began playing, and I immediately fell in love with their sound. They both opened the song with precise details of beautiful rhythms coming from their guitars.
When the woman started singing, and he backed her up, I became caught up in the music they made. It sounded like they’d played together forever. His rich, deep voice accompanied her higher melody to perfection. As they sang a song about a lost lover, I thought I’d never experienced that feeling for myself. Yet, these two made me feel their pain that came from their souls.
My old boyfriends played a role in my life, but I never loved anyone. In high school and college, the experimenting usually ended with heartache but nothing like the words these two sang. Did they love each other now or had been in love before? This was a fact I would never know, but I could create my own ideas like a dream. Isn’t that what a lot of love songs allowed the listener to do, attach the lyrics to something in their lives as though they understood and felt their pain?
The song ended, the duo then launched into a much happier tune they both obviously enjoyed playing and singing. It captured the crowd’s attention. Since most of the audience sang along, it became obvious their fans followed them. Loud claps erupted for them when the song ended, and the man started talking.
He introduced them as Halo’s Car. The band name didn’t register with me, but it did with the people in the crowd if the applause, whistles, and yelled comments that echoed across the listeners indicated the popularity. Their music would make it easy to fall in love. When they started to play the next song, they convinced me to be their newest fan.
They played for over an hour before announcing a break but promised to return with more. Jenna and I clapped along with the crowd. Our date turned out to be exactly what I needed. It had been too long since I did something just for the fun of it. Jenna ordered another drink, and the waitress filled my water glass while we talked about the music. Country music piped in through the speakers allowing the people in the audience to start dancing where they stood while the duo played.
The waitress dropped off our drinks, and over her shoulder I spotted the two singers from the stage standing at the end of the bar talking to two other men. When one turned and faced me, I almost spit my drink across the floor.
“Damn, there went my night,” I managed to get out while coughing.
“What’s wrong?” Jenna turned to look in the same direction I was staring. “Isn’t that the guy from the bar that spoke to you?”
“Yeah, that’s him.” I never confessed to Jenna about how I knew Hayden. I had a job to do that night and didn’t want to make a thing out of it.
“Why don’t you go talk to him? He’s looking right at you. He obviously remembers you.”
Hayden Devillier faced me, and we were looking straight into each other’s eyes. My mind said I should look the other way, but I couldn’t make myself turn my head. Damn, this guy’s looks could melt panties on the spot. He was seriously hot with his dark hair and brown eyes and all of those beautiful tattoos. Ink never looked so good until that moment. Dressed in a black tank, jeans, and black leather boots, my eyes devoured him from head to toe.
Jenna tapped me on the arm. “Timbre, go talk to him. He’s eye-fucking you from across the room, and his friends must be giving him hell about it, too.”
What she said caused me to tear my gaze from him and notice the singers from the stage standing around the corner from him at the bar. Another man from Assured Distraction stood there, who I knew came into my bar that day I saw Hayden there. I turned to look back at Hayden, but now his long stride headed straight toward me.
Oh, God. What was I going to say to him?
“Timbre?” he asked it as a question.
“Yeah?” I looked at his face when he said my name. The gold flecks suspended in his brown irises melted me on the spot.
“Having a night out from work?”
“Uh, yeah.” I didn’t know what to say to him. Spinning my barstool around, I took a drink from the water glass in front of me. My throat felt like the Mojave Desert inside.
“Do you come to this place a lot?” he asked.
“First time.” Why couldn’t I make my brain think of actual conversation?
He stopped talking and looked at the dance floor. “Timbre, would you like to dance?”
“Me?” Oh my God, a squeak? Was I twelve all over again?
“You’re the only Timbre I’ve ever met and probably the only one in this building. Hell, you’re probably the only one in Austin. So, come on.” He slid the glass from my hand and sat it back on the table.
“You’ll watch this for her, right?” He looked at Jenna, and she nodded looking between the two of us with a smile.
“Sure will. Y’all have fun.” She winked at me.
His palm rested against my lower back and directed me to the floor. I stopped at the edge of it. “Uh, Hayden. I’m not sure this is a good idea. I haven’t danced in forever. I don’t know if I remember how.”
“Like riding a bike, Timbre. Just follow me.” He wrapped his warm hand around mine and put the other arm around my waist pulling me close to him. A perfect beat for dancing came across the speakers, and I hung on hoping not to make a fool of myself.
“See, you know what you’re doing. You’ve danced before I take it,” he softly said while he bent down against my ear.
“I’m from a small town. Everyone learns to dance by junior high.” The grin spread across my face. With his height, I felt like a little girl who should be standing on her daddy’s shoes, but my thoughts about him certainly weren’t familial.
We two-stepped around the small dance floor. Actually, he two-stepped because I felt like I floated on a cloud with him leading. With my cheek laid against his pecs, his wonderful scent had me deeply breathing him in. I could dance with him all night, but before the song ended he broke the trance by talking.
“I would like to hear how you ended up losing your job, Timbre. You managed to skip out on my questioning at the bar, but you’re captured now. So spill. What’s going on?”
“I… I don’t want to talk about it, Hayden. It was a long time ago.”
“Not that long, Timbre.” The song ended, but he didn’t let me go. He stood holding me in the same way until the next one started, and we again moved to the music.
“One dance was enough don’t you think, Hayden?” I loved being held by someone who knew what they were doing. His warmth heated me but in all the wrong places for this conversation.
“No, I wasn’t through talking to you, and I was afraid you’d leave or something.”
“Well, I don’t like leaving Jenna over there alone.”
He spun me around so that I could see her talking to a man. “See, she’s busy, too.”
“Damn, I guess I’m not getting out of this.”
“No, so tell me. Why did you lose your job, Timbre?”
I couldn’t put these questions off any longer. Maybe I should have been honest the first time he asked me, so I didn’t have to live the nightmare of the last four-and-a-half months all over again. “I lost the job the day after I didn’t go to work.” He didn’t act too surprised at my announcement.
“Why?” The persistence of this guy amazed me.
“Why? Because I didn’t come to work that day. The boss constantly looked for reasons to let people go since the company lost so much of its business. Me, missing work, especially unplanned as it was, gave him the ammunition he needed to fire me.”
“Shit. I knew something like that was bound to have happe
ned.”
“Yeah, shit is right. It was bullshit that he fired me over something so minor. My performance at that place was excellent.”
“Then why are you working at a bar?” He spun me around before I could answer.
When he pulled me back into him, he held me much closer. His arms had muscular biceps, but that hard, flat abdomen placed against my body begged me to touch it. An image of me running my fingernails over that washboard under the thin cotton between us played through my mind with delicious thoughts.
“So, you’re hedging again, Timbre. Why are you working in a bar?”
“Because I can’t find another job, Hayden. I looked for a long time, and there’s nothing out there that pays any money. I still look every day, but with all of these UT people running around here looking for employment, it’s hard to find one.” I hoped this finished his questioning. I didn’t feel like he had the right to grill me.
“Okay, fair enough. I know it’s hard here in Austin right now, but why didn’t you relocate?”
“On what money? That’s expensive, you know.”
“True, next idea? I gave you my card, why didn’t you call me? That’s the reason I left it with you.”
“I lost it.” The words came out high and unbelievable, even to my ears.
“Lost it? Why don’t I believe this, Timbre?” He looked directly in my eyes when he said it. His were deadly to females. I’m sure he charmed the pants right off women when those gold rays shot out as if on cue. I’d never seen someone’s eyes with golden rays in them.
“Timbre?” He didn’t give up.
“Sorry. Honestly, Hayden, I didn’t want you to feel responsible. It was an accident, and you paid me plenty to get my clothes clean. What happened wasn’t your responsibility. Just because my boss was an ass doesn’t make it your place to get involved.”
“But I told you to call if there were any problems. I meant what I said, Timbre.” He spun me out away from his body and pulled me back again. This gave him enough time to think more about the situation.
“So you lost your job, then what happened? Didn’t you have a roommate?”