“Give me your hand,” he said. I didn’t put one out right away and in a mock wounded voice he said, “You don’t trust me?”
“What do you want my hand for?”
“You really don’t trust me,” he said. Annoyed with him, I put out my hand. He sat the shell on my palm and said, “Hold still for a sec.” I held it still for quite a few seconds before something tickled my hand and I saw the shell start moving slowly towards my fingers. “Look at those tiny little legs,” he said. “When you asked if people ate them I just had this image of someone using a cracker and trying to get meat out of them.” I just gave him a look. I had the same image now and it was so ridiculous it was funny, but I wasn’t going to admit that to him. All of a sudden I felt a sharp pain.
“Ow! It bit me!” I said as I tossed the little crab back down into the sand and watched it scurry away.
He laughed again and said, “It pinched you.”
“Same difference,” I said, trying to see if he’d drawn blood on my hand.
Tristan reached over and pinched my shoulder.
“Ow! Now you pinched me.”
“Exactly,” he said, “That was a pinch.” He leaned forward then and lowered his head to my shoulder. I felt the gentle pressure of his teeth on my skin and then he bit down. “That is a bite.” I shivered and, with a gleam in his eye, he said, “Are you cold?”
“No, it was just…never mind.”
“That bite turned you on, didn’t it? We could go use your bed and I could bite you more…all over….”
“Let’s keep walking.” I told him. I was becoming fond of having sex in strange places since I met Tristan, but sand in all of my crevices was not an appealing thought at all. Besides, I’d never done it out in the open before when anyone could walk up and see us in all of our glory. He hadn’t made me quite that twisted…yet.
I took off walking further down the beach, and he followed me. The water kept coming out further each time and after we’d walked a few feet it was up to our ankles. It was cold and my feet were getting numb. I looked down and saw something pink. As I bent down to get it, Tristan held onto my waist with his hands. It wasn’t sexual at all, it was to steady me. It was nice. He’d never actually touched me for the sake of being protective before. I liked it. I was thinking about how much I liked it and then I chastised myself for it. He wasn’t my boyfriend, he was barely my friend…I had to stop thinking about him like that. It was only going to lead me to getting hurt.
The shell I picked up was coral in color. It was perfectly shaped and intact with its condyle’s and spirals twisting around its outer surface.
“Look,” I told him, “a perfect seashell.”
Tristan stepped closer and I held it up towards the moonlight so that he could look at it. I could see the reflection of it in his eyes and feel his warm breath on my hand. I felt my stomach flutter, and for the second time that night, I wondered what we were becoming to each other.
“Nice,” he said. “You ready?”
“Yeah,” I said, putting that wondering what we were to each other stuff out of my head for now. We got back on the bike and just when I thought we were headed back home, he turned onto Sunset Blvd. and then parked in front of a bowling alley. I got off the bike and said, “Bowling?”
“Nope, karaoke,” he said.
I laughed, I thought he was kidding. He took me by the hand—that was another first, and it didn’t do anything for me being able to tell myself that we were nothing but fuck-buddies to each other. He led me into a dark little bar that was attached to the end of the bowling alley. There were only about ten people there, four of them were belly up to the bar and the other six were spread out across three tables. There was a tiny little stage in front of the tables and a big sound system.
Tristan led me up to the bar and said, “Two club sodas.” I had to smile at that. It was something I was sure I’d never hear—Tristan ordering soda in a bar. The bartender poured our drinks and we carried over to a little table next to the stage.
Once we sat down I said, “You’re kidding about the karaoke, right?”
He laughed and said, “Why? Are you a virgin?”
“What?”
“A karaoke virgin. You’ve never done it before?”
“No,” I told him, “I have stage fright.”
He laughed again and said, “A week ago you sang in front of nine million people and now you’re nervous about singing in front of ten? Besides, look at them. They all look about half dead anyways.”
I shook my head. “It’s worse this way, I can see them looking at me.”
“Picture them in their underwear,” he said. He was still teasing me.
“You too?” I asked him.
He grinned and said, “You can picture me in mine any time you want. I picture you in yours all the time.” He was always one ahead of me. “You’ll do fine,” he said.
I started to protest again when loud music suddenly blared out of the speakers and a man came out of the door at the back of the stage.
“Hello all and welcome to Kyle’s Karaoke night! How are ya’ll doing this fine evening?”
There was a low rumble of response across the bored audience. Kyle, if that was who he was, would not be deterred,
“I said how is everyone doing tonight?” That time he yelled it and people clapped just to keep him from asking again. “Great!” he said, once again overly enthusiastic. “We have some great prizes tonight for those of you who are brave enough to come up on the stage. The audience will vote after each performance, and the end, the person with the highest number of votes wins. He hit a button and there was a drumroll—it was all very cheesy. I looked over at Tristan. He was looking up at Kyle, but he didn’t seem to be watching or listening to him. I couldn’t help but wonder what he was thinking.
“What I need now, are guinea pigs…ah…I mean volunteers…”
Tristan must have been listening. He put his hand in the air and looked over at me. I shook my head at him. He reached over and picked up my arm.
“Tristan!”
“Elly!” he grinned again. He loved to antagonize me.
“Perfect, I have two fine volunteers; anyone else?” Kyle ended up with two more. He handed the song choices out to us and wished us good luck.
After he walked away I said, “It will be good luck if I don’t puke or faint. What if I faint?”
“I wouldn’t just leave you lying there,” he said. “What kind of person do you think I am? I’d move you over far enough so the next guy could sing without stepping on you.”
“You’re so good to me,” I told him, sarcastically. “I have no clue what I would do without you.”
“I know,” he said, “I’m glad you have me to look out for you too. I can’t imagine all the trouble you might get yourself into if you didn’t.”
He was talking to me while looking at the song list. He looked like he was concentrating on choosing a song as if it were for Fresh Voices. I looked down at mine. The song choices were all cheesy wedding songs and I didn’t know all of the lyrics to any of them. I’d have to stare at the monitor. It was going to be terrible.
When Kyle got back on stage and he asked who wanted to go first, a large, drunk man who had taken a list of songs volunteered. He looked a little wobbly as he climbed up the steps to the stage. He was definitely buzzed, if not drunk. He cleared his throat and the music for Staying Alive came on. He cleared his throat again and then he started singing. He wasn’t terrible, and the music was so loud you could hardly hear him. But what I found the most entertaining was that he started disco dancing. He even ripped off his jacket and did a John Travolta thing over his head with it.
Tristan whistled and hooted and egged him on. It was hilarious to watch both him and Tristan. I’d never seen him that animated over anything other than sex or his own performances. That jacket swing thing, by the way, was the man’s only resemblance to John. When he finished and I was clapping for him, I realized that there wa
s suddenly a lot more noise in the bar than I thought there should be. I looked behind us and there were at least a dozen more people now than when we came in. The last group was comprised of about five or six biker-looking guys. One of them winked at me.
I turned back around and told Tristan, “I really can’t do this…there are too many people….”
“You’ll be fine,” he said. Then, he stood up.
“Where are you going?”
“It’s my turn,” he told me. I watched as he went up on the stage and picked up the mic. He smiled at me and then the music came on. He started singing Johnny Cash’s Folsom Prison Blues.
He opened his mouth and I couldn’t believe my ears. The fact that he wasn’t looking at the monitor told me he knew all the words. What was even more impressive was that somehow he had made his voice sound just like the Man in Black.
The whole bar was silent as they listened to him. I couldn’t take my eyes off him myself. I felt someone step up next to me. I didn’t pay much attention to them until I saw the chair next to me move and then I saw one of the bikers drop down in the seat. I looked at him and then back up at Tristan. Tristan was still singing, but his eyes were on the guy sitting next to me. He had a strange look on his face, I couldn’t tell if he knew the guy, or if he was just pissed that the guy was sitting in his seat.
The biker leaned in close to me. He smelled like alcohol and cigarettes. “Hi there pretty girl,” he said.
I didn’t know what to do. I definitely didn’t want to encourage him. I didn’t want to piss him off either though. He was a big son of a bitch.
“Hi, that’s actually my friend’s chair,” I told him.
“Well, your friend shouldn’t leave his pretty belongings lying around.”
I folded my arms tightly. “I’m no one’s belonging. I’d appreciate it if you just left me alone.”
“Let me buy you a drink, darlin’.”
“I don’t want a drink,” I told him. “I’d like you to go back over there with your friends and let me sit here and wait for mine.”
He reached his arm around me and I heard Tristan stop singing. I looked up and saw him coming down off the stage. The look on his face told me clearly that now he was pissed.
I stood up when he reached the table and quickly said, “It’s okay, Tristan.” The biker guy’s friend’s saw there was something going on and started over. The music stopped.
“That’s my fucking seat,” Tristan told the big guy. The guy stood up. He was almost a foot taller than Tristan and a whole lot bulkier.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize,” the guy started to pick up the chair and Tristan still stood his ground.
“Tristan, please. Let’s just go.”
“Tristan? Bounty Hunter, hang on there a sec,” one of his buddies said.
“Are you Tristan Rogers?”
Tristan looked at the other guy. He was older with a fuzzy grey beard and a black bandana tied around his head. “Yeah, who the fuck wants to know?”
The man busted up laughing. His friends were all looking at him strangely, but he must have been the leader or the boss or whatever you call him; they still weren’t making a move.
“Name’s Bill,” the old man said, “And I been watching you on that show, what do you call it?”
“Fresh Voices!” One of the other guys shouted it out; he recognized him too.
“I’ll be damned,” another one said.
“You’re the fucking bomb man!” a young skinny one added.
Suddenly they were our five new best friends. They tried to buy us a round of drinks; when Tristan said we were drinking club soda, they got a big kick out of that. I did my karaoke, and I didn’t know if it was good or if Tristan’s new friends just didn’t want to hurt my feelings. They voted for me and I won two free bowling passes. Whoo Hoo!
It was a fun night though. It gave me a glimpse of the Tristan that didn’t have to be on for the show; the one who wasn’t horny and the one who wasn’t high. This guy was fun…I liked him.
Chapter Eleven
Tristan
Every nerve ending in my body felt raw and on edge as I got ready for the results show. When Elly and I got back from the beach the night before, she helped me pick out what shirt I was going to wear. I slipped it on and wondered if we made the wrong choice. I didn’t want to look like everyone else and the shirt was just kind of…blah. I took it off and put another one on. That one looked like shit. It looked like an old man shirt. I took it off and put the one Elly and I picked out back on. I rolled up the sleeves and left it unbuttoned at the collar. It looked a little better.
Once I’d been I the bathroom for over an hour, I heard a tap on the door.
“Tristan?” It was Elly.
“Yep.”
“I have to pee.” She killed me sometimes.
“Okay, thanks for sharing.”
“Tristan!” I smiled; I could hear the agitation in her voice. I don’t know why it amused me so much, but it did. It was like wrestling with a puppy over his squeaky toy.
I opened the door and said, “Are you about to pee your pants?”
“No, you’ve just been in here for a long time and my bladder is full.”
She tried to step around me and I moved over. She stepped to the other side and I moved again.
“Excuse me!”
“Oh, I’m sorry, did you want in here?”
“Yes, damn it! I need to pee!”
“Oh wow, then I guess I probably shouldn’t do this….” I grabbed her by the waist and tickled her. She squealed and screamed and cussed at me until I finally let her go. “You still have to pee?”
She was trying to look mad as she pushed past me and stood in front of the toilet but I could see traces of a smile. She kept standing there looking at me. I knew she was waiting for me to leave, but I wasn’t finished messing with her.
“What?” I asked her with a grin.
“Get out!” Messing with her made me feel better. For those few minutes, I’d forgotten how stressed out I was about the show. As soon as I walked out of the bathroom and closed the door, the nerves attacked me again. It was times like this that I regretted my sobriety. Smoking a fat blunt right then would have taken the edge off.
“Okay, I’m finished,” she said as she came out. “You look really nice.”
“Thanks that was fast. Did you wash your hands?”
“Shut the fuck up!” she said. She was picking up my potty mouth.
Grinning at her I said, “I’m done in there. I’m going to take off.”
“You can wait and ride in the car with me so you don’t have to go out on that death machine.”
I laughed, “I’ll be fine,” I told her. “I need some fresh air.”
“Okay, good luck,” she told me with a smile.
“Oh shit!”
“Excuse me?”
“Nothing, I just forgot something.” I found my duffel bag and rifled through it until I found the cross I wear on a chain around my neck. I’m not a religious guy so a lot of people find it strange. I don’t give a shit what they think. When I was a kid and I was about to go out on stage for the very first time, my nerves felt raw like they were right then. I told my producer that I couldn’t do it…I felt sick. While I was talking to him, a lady that was backstage came up to me and held out the cross.
“I’d be honored if you would wear my cross onstage today. It will bring you good luck.”
I took it; touching it made me feel better for some reason. When I came off stage I tried to give it back to her. She told me it had my energy in it now so I would need to keep it. After that, every time I had to go onstage, I wore it. I convinced myself that my success was wrapped up in a stupid necklace. It had accidentally become my trademark back when the boy band was together, and even all those years later, I felt like I needed it before I could go out on stage. I knew it was all in my head, but whatever worked. I slipped it on over my head and waited. So far, it was doing nothing at all
for my nerves.
“Your cross!” Elly said. “When I was a kid, I used to think of you every time I saw one.”
I laughed and said, “Imagine a guy like me being associated with anything holy.” She laughed too. “It looks good with this shirt don’t you think?”
“Yeah, it does,” she said. I could tell that she knew it meant more than that, but she either respected my privacy enough not to ask, or she knew I’d snap her head off. Either way, I appreciated it.
“Okay, see you later,” I told her.
“Good luck,” she told me again. On my way out the door, I saw the little pink seashell that Elly found on the beach the night before. I looked over my shoulder to make sure she wasn’t behind me and then I slipped it into my pocket. A little extra luck couldn’t hurt.
Two hours later, I walked out on stage as my name was called and took my seat. It was the final show, so they were dragging it out for two whole hours. I knew our drama queen MC would take it all the way to the end. I wondered if I could get away with punching him in the mouth if I didn’t win.
I looked over at Ethan. He looked as nervous as I felt. I briefly wondered what he had at stake here, but then I realized that I honestly didn’t give a shit. He was nineteen years old. He’d have a lot of other opportunities. I was getting towards the older end of the spectrum; I needed it. We had to sing our song again, the one we’d sang the night before. Ethan went first and I found myself wishing the voting was happening right then. His voice was cracking and quivering all over the place.
When he finished and took his seat, I got behind the mic. I looked out at the audience and saw Elly, with that encouraging, “You got this” smile on her face. Knowing she was here made me feel a little better. I reached inside my shirt and touched the cross. It didn’t help at all; I guess its magic was gone.
I finally just told myself, “Fuck it, the voting’s over anyways,” and I cued the band. I rocked out to Dream On like no one was watching. I was feeling great and smiling when I went back to take my seat; that lasted about ten seconds and then the doubts started to force their way back in. I was twenty-eight years old and I didn’t have shit. Not even an apartment. Why should I believe that this would be any different?
Dirty Maverick (The Maxwell Family) Page 95