“Do you miss your friends?”
He shrugged, fingering the straw cowboy hat he’d tossed on the table in front of him. “I make it back to Durham from time to time, but I lost touch with a lot of people when I left. I mainly just hang out at Leo’s bar when I go back there now. That way I get to see some of my old friends when they come in.”
“Leo owns a bar?”
Zack nodded. “Yeah, it’s called Devil’s Hangout. Have you been?”
I shook my head. The name sounded vaguely familiar, but I wasn’t sure I’d been there before.
“It’s a cool place. They have live music a lot. You should check it out when you’re back at school. Leo will give you free drinks,” he said, grinning widely at me.
“Do you ever play there when you visit?” I asked, coyly.
He smiled sheepishly at me. “I’ve been known to play there before. It might have even been where I first played live. I don’t know.”
God, he was cute when was being self-conscious. He rarely showed that side of himself, but when he did, it was incredibly endearing, and I just wanted to pinch his cheeks.
“Well, maybe I’ll go, if you’re playing that is.”
He started to stand up. “You might want to hold that thought until you’ve seen me play live,” he said, grinning at me, as he placed the cowboy hat on his head, and if it was possible, he looked even more adorable than usual.
Zack took his seat on the stool he’d set up behind the microphone, and all around us conversations stopped.
“Hey ya’ll. Welcome to Phil’s Tavern. I’m Zack Easton, and unfortunately for you, I’m the entertainment for the night.” That garnered a few chuckles from the audience and a few jabs I could tell were from other locals. I noticed he’d dialed up his accent just a bit. I was pretty sure I’d never heard him say ya’ll before. “I will be taking requests and am not bashful about taking tips, especially if your tip is that I need to keep my day job, because you are probably right.”
He snuck a glance at me, and I just shook my head and grinned. He was too much.
“Freebird!” someone yelled from the audience.
“Stairway,” someone else yelled out.
“Sorry Mike, no Stairway tonight, and no Larry, I’m not playing Freebird. I told you that was a onetime deal on your birthday when I played it last month. You don’t tip well enough for me to do it again.”
From the audience, Larry and Mike laughed.
“We will, however, do a little bit later on in the night, when you’re all nice and drunk, that I like to call, ‘Stump the Singer’. That is where I’ll challenge anyone in the audience to find a song I don’t know. If I don’t know it, well, then you can then pick any song you choose for me to sing, and yes, you can look me up on YouTube to see past videos where I delighted audiences with I’m a Little Teapot, complete with hand gestures, and Ice Ice Baby. However, I’ve been playing at this bar for over a year, and it’s only happened twice, so don’t get too excited.
I laughed out loud. Zack was hilarious. He was truly in his element, and so far gone was the sad guy who was afraid for his mom and haunted by a past he couldn’t change. He was so at home on stage.
“You guys ready?” he asked, and the audience cheered in response. “Alright, let’s do this.”
Zack launched into a song by Creedence Clearwater Revival that the crowd loved, before playing other crowd favorites from bands like The Beatles, Jimmy Buffet, and Dire Straits. He played for an hour, keeping the crowd engaged the whole time, and when he announced he was going to take a short break, he was met with several ‘boos’. They loved him.
“No worries. I’ll be back, and just to be sure ya’ll have fun tonight, we’ll put out the request pail. Feel free to drop in any songs you’d like me to play, and I’m happy to do ‘em.”
With that he set his guitar down, set his hat on his stool, shook out his hair, and came back to the table. He leaned down to give me a deep kiss, earning several cheers from people who were nearby.
“I’ve been wanting to do that all night,” he said, breathlessly before settling into the seat across from me. I noticed his accent had returned to the light southern lilt he usually spoke with.
“You were so good,” I gushed, because I truly loved watching him play, but it was so different from when he played at the beach. He’d stuck to mostly upbeat classic rock that would please the crowd of people who were our parents’ age, but he was good at it. I didn’t think there was anything he could play that wouldn’t sound amazing.
“Thanks,” he said, taking the last two beers out of the bucket and handing one to me.
I’d slowed down on the drinking as he’d been playing since I’d started to feel buzzed and didn’t want to go over the edge. I took a long drink and appraised him.
“So what’s with the accent and the hat?” I asked, taking another sip of my beer.
He looked back at the cowboy hat he’d left on the stool and laughed. “So the first time Phil asked me to play, I was sort of nervous. It had been months since I’d played for a crowd, and for some reason, when I introduced myself I used this really affected southern accent. I have no idea where it came from, but the crowd seemed to like it, so Phil asked me to keep doing it. I added the hat a few months later. I consider it to be my on-stage alter-ego.”
He shot me a crooked smile, and I bit my lip.
“You like it don’t you,” he said, baiting me.
“Consider it your version of my leather skirt,” I said, and he laughed out loud.
“So have you thought about what you’re going to try to stump me with?” he asked, grinning at me in challenge.
I smiled widely. “Sure did.”
“What is it?” he asked, leaning forward slightly, his dark hair falling sexily over his forehead.
I laughed out loud as I reached over to run my fingers through his locks. “I’m not telling you. You’ll just have to wait.”
He leaned back and took another drink of his beer. “Okay then.”
Before I knew it, fifteen minutes were up and Zack has to return to playing. He started playing the requests people had been dropping into his silver beach pail while we’d been talking. Then he started in on his game of ‘Stump the Singer’. The first three people called out songs that he knew, and he gladly played them, smiling each time he realized he knew the song they’d selected.
When he finished Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen, he said to the audience, “Do ya’ll see this pretty blonde up here in the front?”
Every eye in the place focused on me, and I wanted to hide under the table.
“Is she the one you were smooching before?” either Mike or Larry called out, and I felt my face get hot.
“Yeah, she’s the one,” Zack said, grinning at me. I hid my face in my hands. “She told me she has a song she thinks she can stump me with. Do ya’ll think she can?”
Mixed cheers went up throughout the audience.
Zack just laughed. “I don’t know. She knows her music. This might be the first time in six months anyone’s stumped me. Shall we see what she’s got for me?”
The audience cheered loudly. They wanted to hear my song.
“Alright, Em. Lay it on me.”
My face was flaming red, but I couldn’t help smiling at Zack who was grinning widely at me. I took a deep breath, and said, with just a hint of cockiness in my voice, “Great Filling Station Hold Up, by Jimmy Buffet.”
Zack looked perplexed for a few moments, and I thought I had him. Then his face broke into a big smile. “One of my dad’s favorites,” he said. “But that was a good one, princess. I’ve actually never played it live. I hope I don’t screw it up.”
I laughed. “Do I get to make you sing another song if you mess it up?” I called out.
Zack just winked at me as he launched into the song, never missing a beat and hitting each word. It was a tough song, so I had to give him credit. When he finished, he stood up and took a bow, so I walked up to the stage an
d stuck a twenty in his tip jar.
“Money,” he called after me as soon as I turned away. “That’s all I get?”
I turned back around to face him. “You weren’t that good,” I said, suddenly aware of the sexual reference that could be taken from my words as soon as the audience began jeering.
“Ouch,” Zack said, playing up the hurt as he looked at me and bit his lip just enough to make me wish he’d hurry up and finish playing.
“Kiss him,” a woman in the audience, who sounded pretty drunk, suddenly yelled.
“Kiss him,” someone else said, and soon the entire audience was chanting at me.
On stage, Zack pouted playfully until I threw my hands up and said, “Oh, alright!”
Pulling all of my courage, I jumped up on the small platform, wrapped my arms around Zack’s neck and kissed him as the audience cheered us on.
When I finally pulled away, he whispered to me, “Please tell me that was just a preview to what we’ll be doing later.”
I smirked at him. “Only if you promise to keep that hat on the whole time,” I said, before sauntering off the stage, knowing I had never, in my life, been as forward as I was being with Zack. He had a way of bringing it out of me, and seeing the look on his face when I surprised him, I loved it.
“Yes ma’am!” he called after me, and I knew he was grinning.
Chapter Twenty
“Hey,” I said, sitting down at the kitchen table with my bowl of cereal.
“’Sup,” Chase mumbled, seemingly hung over as he leaned on his hand and slowly dragged spoonful’s of Trix to his mouth.
I looked at the clock on the wall. It was almost eleven. I’d been late getting home from my night out with Zack, and I wondered if Chase hadn’t gotten home much earlier than me. I knew he’d been up when I got home. His light had been on, and he’d been on his phone, but I’d only heard bits and pieces of his conversation through the bathroom wall when I’d been brushing my teeth.
“Late night?”
He looked up at me with just his eyes, as if he couldn’t be bothered with the effort do more than that. “Molly. Ecstasy. Fight with Amy. Remind me to kill her, will you?”
“Amy?”
“No, Molly,” he muttered, stuffing in another mouthful of cereal.
“You took ecstasy?” I asked in disbelief.
“No. Molly did.”
“What happened,” I asked, trying to piece together the night with the little bit of information my brother was offering.
“That girl is fucking crazy,” he said. “We go to this club, and she decides to partake in some recreational party favors. No big deal. She offers me some, but I tell her no, because first of all, I did that shit in high school and it’s not all that great. Second, I realize we’re not in walking distance from home, so one of us has to stay sober if we don’t want to drive off a fucking bridge on our way back here, being the apparently sane one, I decide to be that person.”
“That’s good,” I said which only earned me a look from Chase.
Hey, it was good. I was glad my brother had the foresight to be the responsible one. I didn’t want him or Molly to end up at the bottom of the ocean.
“So Molly gets pissed at me and takes off with the guy she got the pills from, and I spend the next two hours trying to track her ass down. When I find her, she’s completely out of it, and the guy who she trusted enough to follow is laying on top of her.”
My eyes got wide and my heart started pounding, as I suddenly had visions of Molly being violated against her will.
Chase shook his head. “She was fine. He wasn’t in his right mind and couldn’t actually figure out how to unbutton his pants, which was a good thing, but it also didn’t deter me for kicking the shit out of him before I dragged Molly out of the club, where she promptly passes out in the car.”
“So, how did the fight with Amy ensue?” I asked, not quite sure where this story was headed.
“Oh, this is the good part. So, she’s blowing up my phone, because it’s two in the morning, and I told her I’d call her at one, and she’s freaking out that something happened to me. So I call her back on the ride home, and halfway home, Molly wakes up and starts pawing me.”
“Pawing you?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at him.
“Yes,” he said derisively. “Apparently someone told her a story about how I liked to draw tiger stripes on myself when I was a kid, and she decided that was the moment to bring it up and actually paw me – which she found hilarious.”
“Sorry,” I mumbled, stuffing my face with another mouthful of cereal. “It was a cute story.”
“Yeah, Amy loved hearing about it last night,” he said sarcastically, “especially after she overheard Molly crying and telling me she loved me and kissing my face as I tried to drive and pacify my girlfriend who thought I was cheating on her while I was on the phone with her.”
“Molly’s in love with you?”
He shook his head. “She was high on X. It heightens your senses and makes you think you love anything that isn’t nailed down.”
“Okay, now I get it,” I said, finally connecting the dots. “So Amy was pissed.”
He nodded. “Yeah, so I was on the phone with her until five this morning, which is when she finally decided I wasn’t lying and she could trust me, and then I got woken up at nine by mom asking if I could give Randy a bath and mow the grass because the guy who was supposed to do it is sick today and can’t come until next week, and that won’t work because mom and dad are having some friends down for the weekend, so I can I please mow the grass since the mower is too hard for her to work, and if the grass doesn’t get mowed it will look unsightly. It was fucking awesome. For future reference, I don’t do well on less than eight hours of sleep a night.”
“I can see that,” I said, rubbing his shoulder.
He shrugged me off in annoyance.
“Okay, whatever,” I said, glaring at his unnecessary hostility. “Go pass out on the beach for the rest of the day. It’s not like you have anything else to do.”
“I still have to wash the dog and mow the grass!” he said, as if I were dense.
“And kill Molly,” I reminded him, letting it go that I assumed he’d already done what Mom had asked.
“That too,” he grumbled. “Mom went shopping with some friend of hers, and she’s going to expect everything to be done by the time she gets home.”
He was being a little dramatic. The yard wasn’t that big. He would just have to mow the front and part of the side yards. It couldn’t take more than an hour, but I was empathetic. He’d had a rough night.
“So we’ll divide and conquer,” I suggested, and Chase raised his eyes to me. “I’ll wash Randy, you mow, and then we’ll crash on the beach – or I’ll go help you kill Molly if you still want to.”
“Thank you,” he said, and I could see the relief on his face before he scrunched it up and sighed.
Man, he was cranky.
“So what’s new with you? I heard you come home around four. Out with Zack again?”
I nodded, unable to keep the grin from creeping onto my face. “Yeah, I was.”
“Man, that’s like three nights in a row. I thought you guys were keeping things casual.”
“We are,” I insisted, but it didn’t sound convincing.
It wasn’t my fault Zack had kept wanting to hang out. I had every intention of keeping things casual, but he wasn’t making it very easy when he kept calling me. Not that I was objecting.
“Be careful,” Chase said, catching me off-guard. “He’s not like the guys you date. He’s not Ben.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “I thought you hated Ben?”
“I wasn’t his biggest fan, true, but I know he was good to you. He cared about you.”
I raised my eyebrows. “And you’re saying Zack doesn’t care about me?”
“I didn’t say that,” Chase said. “I just know a little bit about Zack’s past, and I think you need to be caref
ul. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
As much as I appreciated Chase’s concern, it irritated me that he didn’t trust Zack, or me for that matter.
“How do you know about his past?” I asked, suddenly wary of my brother’s knowledge. Did he know more than I did?
“I asked Molly.”
“You did?”
He nodded. “I also asked her about Jared. I want to be sure my sisters are hanging out with good guys. She filled me in on a few, let’s say, unsavory things, about Zack’s past.”
I sighed. He was being sweet, and he wasn’t completely out of line.
“I know about his past, Chase,” I said calmly. “I also know he’s a different person now, so I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.”
“I know, Molly said the same thing, but I just don’t want you to get hurt.”
He got up and carried his empty bowl to the sink.
I turned to face him. “I don’t want to get hurt either,” I said, emphatically. “Trust me, I’ve got my guard up.”
“Good,” he said, and I couldn’t help smiling. My brother really did care about me.
“Chase?” I called after him as he was leaving the room.
“Yeah?” He popped his head back in into the kitchen.
“Thanks for looking out for me.” I smiled.
He returned my smile. “Anytime.”
***
For the next three weeks, I saw Zack as much as I could. It was like we couldn’t get enough of each other, and regardless of what either of us said, there was something between us that was more than just a casual relationship. I was slowly falling for him, as much as I hated to admit it, because I truly didn’t want to get caught in something so serious after getting out of a five year relationship, but I couldn’t help it. I loved how he let his guard down around me, especially when we were alone. I got to know the Zack that no one else did, and that guy was pretty amazing.
I noticed that for the most part, he was pretty reserved in public, aside from his gigs at Phil’s when he had to be the life of the party, which I knew was an act. The real Zack wasn’t a big fan of crowds. He preferred to just play his guitar or talk to his family when we were out at parties. Mostly though, he just liked to hold my hand or wrap his arms around me and steal kisses until he could convince me to leave with him. Once we were alone, he was a different person.
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