The Happy Ever After Playlist

by Abby Jimenez

  She looked down at the water in her kitchen. “This is so messed up,” she said, still giggling.

  “Do you have a shop vac?”

  “I don’t know.” She put a hand to her forehead. “Brandon might have had one.”

  “Where’s your garage?”

  She pointed to a door. I went into the garage and immediately noted the man cave–like interior. Professional tools and an impressive workbench. A few neon beer signs on the walls. A dusty man’s jacket hung on a hook by the door and an empty open beer sat on the counter.

  An old Corolla sat in the middle of the two parking spaces, with a duct-taped side mirror and a door that didn’t match the rest of the car.

  After poking around, I found a shop vac. When I got back into the kitchen, Sloan was sweeping water out the back door with a broom.

  The next half hour was spent sucking water off the floor while Sloan wrung out towels and set up fans in the doorway. We worked without talking. The vacuum was too loud. But we kept stealing glances at each other.

  I helped her carry a huge armload of wet towels to the washing machine. When the door to the laundry room opened, Tucker spilled out, and I dropped my towels and crouched on the floor, laughing and letting him lick my face. God, I’d missed him. He made crying noises at the sight of me and all I could think was, This guy’s getting a major finder’s fee later.

  Sloan watched us with a smile and started the load. When she closed the lid and turned to me, I leaned in the doorway with my arms crossed. Tucker stood between us and looked back and forth with the same proud face he always made when he’d retrieved a duck for me and dropped it at my feet.

  “Thanks for all your help.” She looked up at me through her long lashes. “This house is a mess. It’s really old. Things keep breaking.” She seemed unsure what to do now that the crisis had been dealt with.

  I smiled. “Go to dinner with me.”

  She blinked.

  “Dinner, tonight, a date. Not an appointment, a date.”

  She studied my face.

  “I want to take you out,” I said. “Let me.”

  If she said no, I was pretty sure I was going to beg.

  “Okay.”

  I grinned. Good. Finally. “I’ll wait for you to get ready,” I said. “We’ll leave Tucker here and I’ll get him when I drop you off.”

  “But what about you? You’re soaking wet.”

  “You get ready, and then I’ll drive us to my place so I can change.”

  She gave me a wide-eyed stranger-danger look and I laughed. So that was the face she made every time I asked her probing questions on the phone.

  “Here.” I pulled out my soggy wallet and fished out my ID. “Take a picture of my driver’s license and send it to Kristen.”

  I handed it over and she looked at it. “You really are an organ donor.”

  “And not a creeper or a pirate. I hope you’re not disappointed.”

  She laughed, and I couldn’t even take my eyes off her.

  She smiled up at me. “Give me a second to get changed.”

  Chapter 11

  Sloan

  ♪ Name | Goo Goo Dolls

  This place isn’t as crappy as I thought it was going to be,” I said, loud enough that Jason could hear me through the door.

  Jason lived in a silver Airstream trailer parked behind some music executive’s mansion in Calabasas. An Olympic-size pool glistened within ten steps of Jason’s front door, surrounded by birds of paradise and waterfalls. The whole place was green.

  I could only imagine how much it cost to water everything in the drought. There were penalties for using too much water. My lawn was dead. I’d like to say this was due to my support of water conservation, but my sprinklers were broken and I couldn’t afford the fix or the water to bring the grass back to life. Whoever owned this place must be loaded.

  His trailer was small, but neat and comfortable. No frills. Kind of exactly where I would have expected Jason to live. He was a bit of a minimalist, from what he’d said to me during our talks.

  He’d driven us over in his black truck, and that was practical and functional too. It was older but clean. Not like my car. I made a mental note to never let Jason in my car.

  He laughed. “And why were you expecting someplace crappy?” he said from the other side of the bedroom door.

  “Because you said Tucker chewed up everything.”

  I picked up a picture frame from the counter and studied the photo of Jason in thick winter clothes, smiling with his dog. A snowy backdrop as far as the eye could see spilled out behind them. Not my favorite shot of him. I liked the ones where I could see more skin. I set it down hurriedly as he opened the door of his room.

  God, he was easy to look at. I felt my face flush. Again.

  When he’d walked into my kitchen, my body had turned on like a house coming out of a two-year-long power outage. Everything switched on until the entire place was lit and all the appliances were running. Heart, cheeks, lungs, eyes, the tips of my fingers, the butterflies in my stomach, ringing in my ears, weakness in my knees. All alive, all buzzing with electricity.

  He looked from me to the picture frame. “That’s in Minnesota,” he said, leaning on the counter, his arm almost touching mine. I swallowed hard. He smelled good. Really good. Something crisp and clean, like pine and fresh laundry. It made me want to lean in and take a deep breath.

  His luggage sat in the small sitting area, and a guitar case rested on a bench by the tiny table. It reminded me how short a time he’d actually been back. He’d flown in, had about an hour to himself, then had gone to meet me.

  “Aren’t you tired?” I asked, peering over at him. “You just got off a fifteen-hour flight.”

  “I can sleep just about anywhere. I got enough rest on the plane.”

  He leaned well inside my personal bubble. I think he did it on purpose. I could actually feel the heat coming off his body. My conservative side, the side that couldn’t forget I’d been engaged to another man, wanted me to take a step back. But the side that suspiciously sounded like Kristen ran out of breath yelling at me to hold my ground.

  I held my ground.

  I was single and was allowed to feel like this. I was permitted to flirt and get butterflies when another man stood too close. And I was definitely getting butterflies now.

  “Are you here permanently? In LA?” I asked, trying to keep my voice from betraying my reaction to his nearness.

  “For the moment. They wanted me here for the soundtrack I was working on. My recording studio’s here, and it was just easier to coordinate everything with me living locally. Plus, it puts me close for the events I have to attend.”

  “What events?”

  “Well, there’s the movie premiere,” he said. “And I went to the Grammys.”

  “You went to the Grammys?”

  “Yeah, it was kind of a broad industry invite that I got in on,” he said dismissively. He looked at my lips. “So, do you like my place?” he asked, somewhat distantly, talking to my mouth.

  “I didn’t know what to expect. I thought maybe there’d just be a hammock between some trees or something.”

  He laughed and his piercing blue eyes creased at the corners. I hadn’t anticipated those eyes. There were some things photos just couldn’t do justice to.

  “When my label moved me to LA, they included housing. But I like my trailer. My agent, Ernie, offered a spot on his property. He’s got a gym in the pool house and I have free run of the laundry room.”

  I smiled. “This place is a compound,” I said. “Those are what? Thirteen-foot gates? Are you sure you don’t want to ride out the zombie apocalypse here?”

  He laughed. “I’ll give you the gate code in case you want to drop by.” He nodded to the back. “Come see the bedroom.”

  I was interested in seeing the whole place. He let me go first and I stood just inside the door and looked around. No bedspread, only gray sheets and a soft-looking blanket folded do
wn at the end. He must sleep hot. Lord knew he put off enough body heat.

  Simple beige curtains hung on the windows, and a cell phone charger was plugged in on the nightstand. The room smelled like him, and being in such a personal space made my heart flutter a little. It was weird to talk to someone so much on the phone and then realize he was a real person with nice smells and a bed.

  Jason had come up behind me, and he leaned into the room with his hands over his head on the door frame. “Look, I got you in my bedroom on the first date,” he teased, and I glanced over my shoulder and shot him a look.

  “Is that where Tucker sleeps in his little dungeon?” I pointed to a crate wedged between the bed and the wall.

  He chuckled. “I wonder how he’ll take being back in his crate now that he’s been spoiled by sleeping with a beautiful woman for so long.”

  I turned to him. “Are you just going to flirt shamelessly with me now that you’re on this date that you wanted so much?”

  “Of course.” He grinned.

  The room was small, and with him hanging in the doorway, I was backed up to the mattress. With his hands over his head like that, his arm and chest muscles pushed against his T-shirt.

  He had the most amazing body. He wasn’t bulky. He was lithe and toned and he stood easily a foot taller than me. He filled the room with his presence, even from the door.

  My eyes flickered down. The bottom of his shirt had ridden up, and I could see a line of hair running down the middle of his stomach into the top of his jeans. My breath hitched, and I looked back up at his face quickly, hoping he hadn’t noticed my wandering eyes.

  His amused expression told me he had.

  It didn’t escape me that an hour ago I had been completely opposed to meeting him anywhere other than Starbucks, and now, if he took half a step forward, I’d have to sit on his bed.

  I cleared my throat. “So, what if I hadn’t agreed to this date?” I asked, looking up at him.

  He gave me a mischievous eyebrow. “Then I was going to go with my backup plan.”

  “Which was what?”

  “Same as my original plan, only with more subterfuge.”

  “Subterfuge?” I tilted my head.

  “Yeah. I was going to take you on the date anyway, let you call it an appointment, and never tell you it was a date the whole time.”

  I laughed.

  He nodded over his shoulder. “Come on. Let’s go eat.”

  * * *

  Jason wanted me to pick where we went, so I took him to a hole-in-the-wall Mexican place I liked down the street from my house. A red-boothed, small restaurant with trumpet-heavy ranchera music playing over the speakers and paintings of matadors on the walls. They gave us a quiet booth in a corner at a table with a sombrero hanging above it.

  “I figure you haven’t had Mexican in a while,” I said. “Australia probably isn’t known for its carne asada.”

  A busboy slid two ice waters in front of us.

  “We don’t have very good Mexican food in Minnesota,” he said. “It’s one of my favorite things about LA.”

  “What else do you like about California?”

  “Well, the dog-sitters are hot,” he said, winking at me over the laminated menu.

  I narrowed my eyes at him playfully as I pulled my vibrating cell phone out of my pocket. “Oh no,” I said, looking at the screen. “I have seven missed calls from Kristen. Hold on, it might be about Oliver.” I must have not felt it going off when I was in Jason’s truck. I pressed the phone to my ear. “Kristen? Is everything okay?”

  “Please tell me that you googled Jason.”

  “What?”

  “You did google him, right? You know who you’re on a date with?”

  My stomach dropped. Oh my God. I’d sent Kristen a picture of Jason’s ID. She’d obviously found him online. Was he a registered sex offender? A felon? I looked up at Jason, who eyed me from across the table, looking concerned.

  I cleared my throat. “Um…I need to take this. Excuse me for a minute?” I slid out of the booth before he could reply. I practically ran to the ladies’ room and locked myself in a stall.

  “Okay, I’m alone. What did you find? He wouldn’t tell me his last name unless I told him mine, so I couldn’t google him!”

  My heart pounded. What had I done? He knew where I lived and everything. I’d given this stranger my address like an idiot! I paced inside the stall. I almost deserved to be murdered, I was so stupid.

  “You’re seriously telling me you don’t know who he is? I thought you guys talk like twenty-four seven. How did this never come up?”

  “Kristen, what?”

  “Uh, he’s Jaxon Waters? The singer? The one with that ‘Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald’ animated viral music video you watched like two hundred times?”

  My heart. Stopped. Dead.

  “What?” I breathed.

  “If anyone could make that song cool, it’s that dude.” Kristen snorted. “I’m on his Wikipedia page. Indie rock music. He got famous from that cover. Then his self-produced album went gold, and he got some big record deal. He’s doing the entire soundtrack for that movie The Wilderness Calls with Jake Gyllenhaal. He got the Best New Artist award at the Grammys last year. Jason Larsen, grew up in Ely, Minnesota, birthday November seventh, six foot one. Mom is Patricia, dad is Paul, a brother named David—how did you of all people not find this shit out? You’re like the most paranoid person I know.”

  I let out a quivering breath. “I mean, he told me he was a musician, but I just thought he played backup or something. He didn’t tell me!”

  “Wow. Major cyberstalker fail.”

  Josh spoke up in the background. “Tell her I hope she shaved her legs for this date.”

  “Yes, you need to get naked with that man,” Kristen added.

  I fanned my face with my hand. “Oh God. I’m freaking out. How do I act normal now? I have like seven of his songs in my playlist, right now. I’m a fan! I’m like a groupie! I cannot be cool, Kristen!”

  “Okay, but did you shave your legs?”

  “No! I didn’t! I shaved none of the things! Because I’m not getting naked with him, nor did I have any plans to! How can I go back out there, Kristen? I’m going to have a panic attack!”

  Jason had just been catapulted from a man I was really into to someone I was literally starstruck by. “I can’t breathe. I stole his dog. He sent me flowers,” was all I managed to say. My brain was misfiring, shooting off realizations as the information repositioned Jason in my mind.

  “Uh-huh. Well, you have nobody to blame but yourself. You should have used the Google. Now get back out there.”

  “Have fun!” Josh shouted from the background, and they both snickered.

  I made a pitiful groaning noise and hung up. Then I googled “Jaxon Waters” and hit Images.

  There he was.

  There were shots of him in a tuxedo on a red carpet. Then another picture of him sitting on a rock in the woods, playing his guitar. Oh my God. A still frame of him holding a Grammy. A fucking Grammy.

  I grew up feeding celebrities out of my mom’s food truck. They didn’t fluster me. I rarely got nervous around them. But Jaxon Waters was different. His music haunted me. It spoke to my soul. It was ethereal and beautiful and I could not be nonchalant about this.

  I came out of the stall with shaking hands and stood over the sink.

  “Calm down,” I whispered, willing my body to comply. It didn’t listen. I think I would have been less panicked if I’d found out I was on a date with an escaped convict.

  When I finally walked back out to the table, Jason smiled, a look of relief on his face at seeing me reappear. He’d probably wondered if I’d escaped out a bathroom window by how long I was gone.

  “Everything okay?” he asked as I slid into the booth. “Do we need to go?”

  “It’s fine,” I said, my voice a touch too high.

  He raised an eyebrow. “You sure? What did Kristen say?”
/>   My mouth had gone dry. I picked up my glass of water and downed it. He watched me with a mix of amusement and concern and I wondered if Jason found women who needed to breathe into their hands and lie down in restaurant booths sexy.

  I set my glass down and cleared my throat. “I just got some news.”

  “What’s wrong? Tell me.”

  “You’re Jaxon Waters,” I blurted.

  The amused smile that crept across his face confirmed my accusation. “Have you heard of me?”

  “You said you play bass.” I glared, and my eyelid twitched ominously.

  “I do.” He shrugged. “I also play guitar, I sing…” His grin got wider in proportion to my growing eyes.

  “But…but I went to your house!” I said breathlessly. “Where was your Grammy?”

  Another shrug. “In the pantry?”

  “Jason!”

  He laughed. “What? It’s a trailer. I don’t have any shelf space.”

  Oh my God.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I demanded. “I…I…why?”

  He’d done this on purpose. He’d purposely sandbagged this. I had been catfished, only the catfish was ridiculously good-looking and famous, and I was actually pretty impressed with what I’d reeled in.

  This was too much.

  Acting like a lunatic when nervous was my signature move, and I didn’t disappoint today. My eyelid dove into a full-fledged twitching rebellion at the stress of the situation. I let out an exasperated sigh and pressed my finger to my eye. My face went either sheet white or bright red. Maybe the colors were rotating. There was no telling. I was so embarrassed. I don’t think I could have looked crazier if I tried.

  “My eyelid twitches when I’m nervous,” I said miserably, trying to explain my weirdness.

  Jason studied my face. “Don’t you think I’m nervous too?”

  I stared at him with one eye.

  “I like you. And I get nervous around beautiful women I have crushes on.”

  Surely he knew this was not even remotely the same thing. The man had a fanbase. My face called bullshit and his eyes danced like this was the most fun he’d had all year.