Daisies & Devin

by Kelsey Kingsley

  “Oh look. It’s the muse behind my next song,” I replied, setting my duffel bag and guitar on the floor.

  Her head of platinum blonde hair lifted, and her eyes widened with surprise. “You’re writing a song for me?”

  “Oh yeah,” I said, narrowing my eyes, staring off toward the exposed beams along the ceiling. “It’s called, ‘Penis and Peroxide.’”

  Brooke groaned, dramatically rolling her eyes as she dropped her head back down to look at the table. “Why must you be such a dick?”

  “It’s a nice song, I swear. It’s just a tribute to your favorite pastime and hair color.”

  “I’m gonna tell Trent you say this shit to me, and then he’s going to disown you,” she said, scrubbing furiously.

  I gasped and flattened my palms over my heart. “He would never!”

  Kylie entered the room, wiping her hands on her apron. “Do you really have to torture her?”

  “She’s just so easy,” I responded, shrugging apologetically as I turned back to the agitated Brooke. “Which might be why Trent’s with her in the first place ...”

  “Dammit, Devin!” Brooke’s voice was shrill, and her now thrown back head, told me she was two seconds away from shoving a broomstick up my ass.

  That was my cue to leave her alone. Until next time. “So. How’ve things been here?” I asked, looking between Kylie and the angry Brooke.

  Brooke stood up tall, cocking her head at Kylie. “Well, our favorite purple-headed slut shamelessly flirted with a very married cop earlier …”

  I laughed. “You need to cut that shit out. His wife is going to kill you one day.”

  Kylie sighed, clutching her hands over her heart. “I can’t help it. He’s so hot.” She had been pining over the guy since we first walked into town, and I still hadn’t gotten used to the jealous tick in my heart. “Besides, it’s innocent—his wife knows that. She also knows that he flirts back.”

  “Uh, he doesn’t flirt with you,” Brooke said, shaking her head.

  “Sure, he does.”

  “I’m pretty sure he thinks you’re delusional.” Brooke tossed her gaze at me and pleaded for backup with her eyes.

  “Sorry, KJ. There’s no way Patrick Kinney is flirting with you. I don’t think there’s ever been a more committed man in the fucking universe,” I said, not including my heart in the equation.

  Outnumbered, Kylie pursed her lips, putting the subject to rest as she went about her business of stocking cups and napkins, refilling sugar shakers and milk canteens. She was getting ready for Wind Down Wednesday with Devin O’Leary, and I smirked to myself again at the name she had given my show.

  The original plan was to serve wine and call it Wine Down Wednesday—ha, ha—but we never bothered to obtain the liquor license required.

  “So, ladies, I guess I’ll just be going upstairs to change,” I said, dismissing myself as the two of them worked.

  “Or, you know, you could just strip right here. You’re easy like that, right?” Brooke teased with a mocking glare. “Ky? What do you think? We could throw on some Backstreet Boys, get him—”

  “Whoa,” I said, putting a stop to that suggestion with the raising of my hands. “Wait a minute. I’m not opposed to putting on a show, but if I’m stripping, it’s not going to be to the fucking Backstreet Boys. I need something like, uh … Kylie, help me out here.”

  She glanced up from piling Sweet & Low packets into their cannister and pursed her lips. “Hmmm …” Her enchanting blue eyes narrowed, taking me in as she dug her teeth into her full bottom lip. My gaze dropped to that lip, and imagined it between my own teeth. “I’d probably go for something sexy with an edge. Like, uh … ‘Closer’ by Nine Inch Nails.”

  “Sexy with an edge?” I laughed, bringing myself to look back to her eyes. “God, you know me so well. I could definitely rock that.”

  “Yeah, except you’re not rocking anything,” she backpedaled. “You can get changed upstairs.”

  Brooke pouted. “You’re such a killjoy.”

  “His ego is big enough,” Kylie responded, never taking her eyes off me.

  I laughed as I winked at her and grabbed my duffel bag from the floor and crossed the room to the stairs.

  The staircase held a whimsical flair—black, wooden, and spiral. It was what I immediately fell in love with, when I first laid eyes on the place, and the rest of the pieces came together naturally. Kylie had lit the stairs up with fairy lights wrapped around the bannister, giving the old world charm a new edge vibe, and it suited the place perfectly.

  I rounded my way up to land in the upstairs loft. Kylie kept a couch up here, a big wooden desk, and a few bookshelves for her files and things I keep my nose out of. The railing overlooks the shop, and when it got too crowded downstairs, she allows customers to overtake the upstairs too.

  Whenever I play at B&B, I liked to give people the impression that I am someone. “Fake it ‘til you make it,” my grandfather always told me, and I keep the phrase tacked to my heart. I held tight to it, living by it, with my band t-shirts, combat boots and well-fitted jeans. The leather jacket I wear to complete the ensemble, had once belonged to my grandpa. He took it on the road with him, in his heyday as a successful musician, until he married my grandmother and hung it up to have a family. I love the history that jacket hold, and for as long as I’d had it in my possession, I hoped to add some of my own to it.

  So far, that history had extended to Black & Brewed, and stopped.

  There were footsteps on the stairs as I pulled the worn Nirvana t-shirt over my head. I knew the footfalls belonged to Kylie, they were a permanent impression on my mind, and I glanced over my shoulder as she stopped at the top of the steps.

  “What’s up?” I asked, shaking out the Red Hot Chili Peppers shirt I brought to wear that night.

  “Brooke is running down to the diner to grab some dinner. You want anything?”

  I turned around to face her, and thought for a moment as I slipped my arms through the short sleeves of the shirt. I caught the smirk on Kylie’s lips and quirked a brow in question. “What?”

  She sucked on her teeth and shook her head. “Oh, nothing,” she said, pulling her lips back into the little smile that never ceased to drive me crazy. She grabbed her phone from her pocket, tapped over the screen and within moments, the opening notes to “Closer” by Nine Inch Nails were coming through the speakers. The voice of Trent Reznor filtered through the loft, and I rolled my eyes with a biting grin at the dirty song. “Well, if you’re going to put on a show, you might as well do it right.”

  “You said I wasn’t allowed to put on a show,” I retorted, hitting her with the flirtatious tension we’d both grown so accustomed to.

  “Maybe I wanted it for my eyes only,” she threw back, teasing and biting her lip.

  “I’m not stripping for you,” I said, my voice hard and sincere, but I was a liar.

  With tantalizing intent, I let the t-shirt slide from my arms, allowing it to dangle from my fingers before dropping it to the floor. My eyes were fixed on her face and her resolve to not react as I gripped my hair with one hand and moved the other over my stomach to the waistband of my threadbare jeans. Slowly, I worked the zipper down, rolling my hips seductively in time with the music. I let the fly fall open, let the jeans droop on my hips, and I took a step forward. To test her. To watch her lips part. To see her pulse flutter at the base of her throat. And then, I stopped and bent over to pick up my shirt.

  Pointing a finger at her, I said, “That’s all you’re getting out of me. I’m not a piece of meat you can just snap your fingers at.”

  “But I snap them at you all the time,” she countered, her breath noticeably labored.

  “Not for your own entertainment,” I shot back with a laugh, and she sighed.

  “Fine,” she said, grinning and turning the music off. “What do you want to eat?”

  “Hamburger. Pickles. Fries.” I enunciated every word, marking them off on my fingers.
>
  “You got it,” and she turned, heading back down the stairs. I watched her go, winding to her descent, and I couldn’t help but notice the crimson flush blanketing her cheekbones.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Kylie

  After the fiasco at dinner last night, I still hadn’t called Nate. Nor had he called me. As childish as it might have been, I felt he owed me an apology, and stubbornly, I refused to be the one to call him first.

  So, instead of worrying about him, I sat there, in the front row, waiting for Devin to go on. Seated at a table with Brooke and Trent, we drank glasses of my home-brewed iced tea and watched him set up on the little platform stage in the front corner of the shop. The rest of the lights had been dimmed, leaving only the spotlights over the stage, and a cheesy fluorescent guitar on the wall to light his way.

  There were fifteen minutes before he went on, but Dev was a perfectionist. He believed that, whether he was playing for ten people in the shop, or ten-thousand in a stadium, he should always put his best foot, best face, best note forward. And as he sat down to tune his old acoustic, fading a little more with each passing year, I turned to my table companions.

  “How’s the house, Trent?” I asked, taking a sip of my lemon-peach iced tea.

  Trent tipped his head and a few strands of his light-brown hair fell against his forehead. “Well, let’s see, the hot water heater needs to be replaced, there’s some weird ivy overgrowth issue in the backyard, and I fell through one of the basement steps yesterday. But otherwise, it’s just great.” He lifted his glass in cheers and tipped it back.

  I bet he wished it was something stronger. Damn that liquor license.

  Brooke glanced at me, biting her lips between her teeth. Guilt scorched her irises, and I stifled a chuckle. If it hadn’t been for Brooke insisting on buying a “super-cute fixer-upper” a few years ago, Trent would’ve jumped at something a little more move-in ready.

  “You know, it’s not even all the issues with the fucking place,” he continued with a heavy sigh, his glass settling back on the table. “I went into it knowing that there would be problems, because, duh, you buy a crap house, there’s sure to be crap issues that come along with it, right? I was fine with that, it’s just the fact that this one over here,” he jabbed a thumb in Brooke’s direction, “neglected to tell me she didn’t know anything about home renovation, so now I’m left to do everything by myself.”

  “I could’ve told you that,” I muttered apologetically, tucking my chin into my open palm. “Hanging a picture was an all-day project for her back in the day.”

  Trent shook his head and rolled his eyes to the ceiling. Brooke merely shrugged. “Well, babe,” she said, “aren’t you lucky to have your cousin, who is always willing to help you out in your time of need?”

  Devin jumped off the stage to grab my glass of iced tea. “Hey, Penis and Peroxide, don’t go offering up my services without asking me first,” he joked before downing the rest of my drink.

  “Penis and Peroxide?” Trent asked, and Brooke glared angrily at Devin.

  “It’s my new song I’m writing for her,” he explained, setting the glass back down, and Trent nodded with nonchalance. Devin grinned at Brooke. “Told you he wouldn’t give a shit.”

  “I hate you both,” she groused, crossing her arms.

  Over the café chatter, I heard the distinct tinkling of the bell above the door. Devin and I both turned our heads in unison to see Nate saunter in. He was decked out in neatly pressed pants, a Lacoste polo, and loafers that aged him five years over his thirty-three.

  “What’s he doing here?” Devin growled under his breath.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know.” Nate never came to Devin’s shows, and I couldn’t believe that there was no coincidence that he came on this particular night.

  He wanted to make a scene.

  Even as Nate approached the table, Devin kept his stance, guarding me like a dog, and when Nate came to stand beside my chair, he glared with an expression that should have, by rights, killed Nate on the spot.

  “You don’t know when to back down, do you?” he asked Devin, who responded with an unyielding glare. Nate looked down at me and said, “We need to talk.”

  I sighed, not blind to the table of eyes staring at us. At him. “Yeah, but we’re a little—”

  “Now,” he said, stern and patronizing. Devin stood tall, straightening his back and putting himself five-inches over Nate’s modest six-feet. It was an obvious attempt at intimidation, but still, Nate ignored him and took me by my upper arm with a firm grip. I would’ve fought—I should have fought—but not wanting to cause a scene in the middle of the café, I let him pull me from the table.

  Devin flattened his hand to Nate’s chest, lowering his brows and curling his lips. “Let go of her.”

  “Devin, it’s fine,” I said, keeping my eyes on Nate and unsure if I actually believed what I was saying. With a triumphant smirk, Nate led me to the backroom with Devin’s eyes heating our path.

  The door swung closed behind us and Nate crossed his arms over his chest. “So.”

  “So,” I parroted, gesturing for him to get on with it as I stole a glance at my phone. We were already five minutes to showtime.

  “So, I want you to tell me something.”

  “O-kay,” I drawled, resting my hip against the refrigerator door.

  And bless him, Nate didn’t waste any time cutting to the chase. “Are you fucking him?”

  “What?” I asked, squinting my eyes and wrinkling my nose. “Am I fucking who?”

  “Him.”

  “You’re not helping me here, Nate. At least give me a hint.”

  He groaned and slapped a hand against his thigh. “Devin!” he shouted.

  “Oh, great. Let everybody out there know who we’re talking about. That’s cool, thank you very much,” I hissed, exacerbated. “And the answer to your question is, no. God, no.”

  He shook his head. “You know what? I don’t believe you.”

  I laughed without a shred of humor. “Well, who’s problem is that?”

  “You can pin this on me all you want, but there’s nothing normal about the way that guy treats you.”

  I shook my head, snorting. “God, Nate. This is pathetic. You know that?”

  Nate smirked, snickering. “You really don’t see it, do you? You are really that fucking blind to the shit, right in front of your face.” He jabbed his thumb back over his shoulder. “That guy out there? He wants to fuck you, if he hasn’t already. And I have spent the last six months of my life in an impossible pissing contest over you, and I’m done. Do you understand that? He is ruining your chances of being with someone decent.”

  I couldn’t help myself—I chuckled. “Look, I have no idea what’s going on in his head, but I can tell you right now, if he’s the reason for us breaking up, he’s doing me a favor.”

  “Yeah, I figured you would pick the trash,” Nate said, a look of pompous pride washing over his face.

  A vile taste flooded my mouth as my lips parted, staring at him with disgust and loathing. “You need to get the fuck out.”

  But Nate wasn’t one to follow orders, especially not from me. “After all of this, I’m really not surprised at all that you and your mom had no idea that your dad stole—”

  I didn’t have time to react as the door was thrown open and Devin had Nate by the collar of his shirt, pressed against the side of the refrigerator. Lifting him by the lapels, his feet hovering inches off the ground. I saw a furious fire blazing within Devin’s eyes, and in Nate’s? Panic.

  “What the fuck!” Nate’s words erupted from him in a wheeze, the impact of the refrigerator against his back leaving him breathless. “What the fuck are you doing?”

  “Apologize,” Devin growled.

  “Get the hell off of me! Before you do something you’ll regret. Remember I work for a few of the best lawyers in the state, and you cannot afford to win that fight.”

  Devin dared him with h
is eyes. “I said, apologize to her,” he repeated, his voice calm and controlled while his nostrils flared.

  “No fucking way—” Devin shoved him harder against the refrigerator, the contents inside rattled with the impact and my teeth clenched together. “Okay, okay! I’m sorry!” And with that, he was released and dropped to his feet. “Jesus Christ, you fucking psychopath. Do you always listen in on her conversations?”

  “Only when I don’t trust the piece of shit that’s dragging her away by her arm, like he fucking owns her or something.”

  “Oh, right,” Nate said, shaking his head, pursing his lips like he’d just eaten something sour. “That’s your job, isn’t it? To own her?”

  Devin didn’t flinch. “Get the fuck out of here, Nate, or I’m gonna have my cop buddy out there remove you in his squad car.”

  The threat of Officer Kinney worked, and Nate bid his farewell by telling me I would never see him again. He pushed through the swinging door, leaving Devin and me to stand in the cold, clean kitchen. He turned, casting angry eyes at me as his jaw ticked underneath a layer of stubble.

  “Are you okay?” he asked in a raspy voice.

  I nodded. “Yeah, I’m fine. You really didn’t need to—”

  Devin tipped his head downward, glowering at me. “When someone grabs you like that and hauls you off? Yes. I needed to.”

  “I could’ve handled myself,” I insisted.

  He ignored me as he shook his head, twisting his lips. “And then, he used something like that against you? Fucking asshole … He was trying to intimidate you, Kylie. He wanted to make you feel small and weak against him, but you know what? I’m bigger, and I’m stronger, and I think we established the first fucking night we met, that I won’t ever tolerate someone treating you like that.”

  The reminder of that night, all those years ago, sent a current of reminiscence through my bones. My mouth went dry at the memory of a younger Devin, a stranger to me, wrapping his arm around my shoulder. Staking false claim over me, in defense against the bastard that tried to drag me away. I remembered the polo, the khakis, and suddenly, all of those similarities weren’t lost on me.