My Life as an Album (Books 1-4): A small town, southern fiction series

by LJ Evans

  “So, you said you had news that you couldn’t share over the phone?” Wynn couldn’t help her eyes journeying down to Mia’s stomach, and Mia caught on.

  “I’m not pregnant!”

  Wynn laughed, “Are you sure?”

  Mia huffed out. “Why does everyone automatically assume, now that I have an official ring on my finger, that I’m going to get knocked up?”

  “Because everyone knows that Derek wants to knock you up and that you go at it like bunnies.”

  Mia flushed. “Crackers and cheese!”

  “Okay. So, what then?”

  “Zack Trudeau bought a house out past the Abbott’s place.”

  “Really?” Wynn asked, examining her fingernails.

  “So, I guess your chance for a bang-and-run just disappeared,” Mia needled her.

  “You know it wasn’t going to happen anyway.”

  “Because you aren’t ready for anything with anyone, or because you have it bad for a redheaded idiot?”

  Wynn shook her head. “Neither.”

  “So you don’t have it bad for Lonnie.”

  “No! We haven’t even kissed.”

  Mia looked at her doubtfully. “You haven’t kissed him? You practically live together.”

  “It’s not like that. I keep saying it so much I’m like a video on replay.”

  Mia looked at her like she didn’t believe her.

  “Look, I know that it seems like we have all this…I don’t know…chemistry. And I’m not denying it. It’s there. But I don’t know if I want him to kiss me. I don’t know if he wants that either.”

  “Trust me, the way he looks at you, he wants to kiss the bejesus out of you.”

  Wynn curled her feet up on the couch and leaned her head back. In truth, she knew he wanted to kiss her, just like she wanted to kiss him. The physical piece was always there between them, but beyond that physical aspect, she didn’t know if he really wanted to kiss her. Because what they had now was good.

  What would kissing do to the friendship they’d built? Did she want him to really kiss her? Start another relationship with another man who might trample all over her again? Even when this one seemed so right. Seemed to fit so well into her world. Seemed like someone who could never hurt her.

  Wynn sighed, speaking her thoughts aloud to one of her best friends, “I think we both know the truth. That it would ruin everything. We have a great friendship. I like being a part of their lives. If we did more, it would eventually end, and that would suck for all of us, including Edie.”

  “Lonnie isn’t Pete. Or Grant.”

  “I know.”

  Derek entered the room and squeezed in next to Mia on the couch, kissing her neck. He fit there like they’d been made for each other. Like she felt sometimes with Lonnie. It made Wynn’s heart ache even though she was happy for them both.

  “What’s this about Lonnie and Pete and Grant?” he asked.

  “Wynn was just saying that Lonnie may not want to kiss her.”

  Wynn gasped and shot daggers at her friend. “Oh my God! I can’t believe you just told him that. You realize he’s going to tell Lonnie, right?”

  Derek chuckled. “He and I have already discussed it. I’m going to tell you the same thing I told him. You’re both idiots. It’s clear as day that you two are crazy about each other. Stop being worried about what might go wrong, and just go with what you feel.”

  Mia looked like she was trying not to laugh. “Hold on. He’s going to quote Johnny Cash now.”

  Derek smiled his huge smile down at her. “Hey, the man was a genius, and you know it.”

  Wynn stood up. “I can’t go into this with you two. And now, if he ever does kiss me, I won’t know if it’s because you told him to or if he really wanted to.”

  She grabbed her bag and made her way toward the door.

  “So you do want him to kiss you,” Mia said just as Derek said, “He wants to kiss you.”

  Mia followed her toward the door.

  “Ugh. I hate you sometimes,” Wynn complained, even as she hugged her.

  “No, you don’t,” Mia replied as Wynn headed for the door. “Are you sure you don’t want to wait for the brownies?”

  “No!” Wynn called back but then added, “Love you.”

  “Love you back!” Mia replied.

  Wynn left, heart and mind swirling. Frustration. Hope. Fear. Back to resignation. She knew that what she felt for Lonnie was stronger than friendship. And maybe there was a chance that someday, when they both got past the upheaval that was their lives these days, it could turn into something more. But right now, she felt like they needed to stay in the friend zone. It was easier. It would last longer. Her friendships had always lasted longer than her relationships.

  Birthdays & Kites

  STRAWBERRY GIRL

  “She’s a strawberry girl.

  And she’s mine.

  In a crazy mixed up world

  She makes things right.”

  Performed & Written by Bart Hafeman

  It was amazing how easy it was to slip into a routine that included the tour and Wynn. Edie seemed to accept the fact that our life was a constant twirl of places and people as long as Wynn or I were there. As long as we had a schedule that we tended to stick to as much as possible. The room we slept in at night might look different, and the place we had dinner might be different, but pretty much everything else was the same. Edie. Wynn. Me. The weeks blended together until we were almost done with the first leg of the tour and Thanksgiving was approaching.

  One day, Owen asked me how I was doing with the whole Edie thing, and I looked at him confused. “Man, you went from a bachelor to a family man in a matter of days. Most guys would be spitting mad about all of that.”

  He was right. And I had had moments of anger, but they were always directed at Lita, for leaving me and Edie, more than at the loss of my bachelorhood. If you’d asked me a year ago if I’d miss being single, I would have said, “Hell, yeah!” I would have protested that I wasn’t planning on being serious about anyone for a long time—if ever. And definitely no thoughts of parenthood.

  Now, here I was with two females in my life that I felt like I couldn’t live without. The paperwork to make Edie mine for good had been filed, but it was going to take a few months to be official. In the meantime, I had two goals for what remained of this year.

  Both of the goals were related to my girls. That’s how I thought of them now: my girls. Even though Wynn wasn’t anywhere close to a girl, she was still the gorgeous Strawberry Shortcake that had twisted my guts to shreds way back in July. And I knew she would have protested at my silent words about her being mine.

  After all, we hadn’t even shared a goddamn kiss. Not one. Not because I didn’t want to kiss her more than I wanted pretty much anything else in my life, but because I’d been forced to wait. Derek had told me about his conversation with Wynn and Mia. About how Wynn wasn’t sure now if I’d kiss her because I wanted to or because Derek had told me too. I’d been about ready to kill Derek and Mia for interfering, because I wouldn’t have had to wait so long if they hadn’t put doubts in her head.

  But when I did kiss her, I didn’t want there to be any doubts about why I’d done it.

  I was willing to wait. I’d waited this long. I’d wait until she’d completely forgotten the asshole who’d left her and until she wanted to kiss me so badly that she’d forget everything that she’d said to Mia and Derek. I’d wait until the kiss would be more than a first experience after the divorce.

  It was hard, though. The not kissing her. Especially when I was around her pretty much four to five days a week, almost twenty-four hours a day. It was hard not forcing the redheaded beauty to see that us making babies the old-fashioned way was something in her future. Not that I wanted more kids any time soon. Edie was enough to almost give me a need for semi-permanent birth control. But when I thought about Wynn, and making love to her, a
nd having babies with her, my heart would constrict in happiness.

  Derek had been right. But I’d never tell him that. The guy already had a big enough ego.

  So, I was waiting. Being the friend. Being the guy she was working for without getting paid. Being the person who needed her. Building her trust so that she knew I wouldn’t ever leave her. Never hurt her like the men in her past had.

  I was also waiting because of Edie. Because Edie needed the force of my full attention at the moment, while I tried to get her over the loss of her mom. If you didn’t spend as much time with her as I did, you wouldn’t know that Edie even missed her mom. She was happy most of the time, giggling, smiling.

  But if you asked her about the cape, or tried to get her to take it off, she’d become a storm of tears and screams that would make anyone think you were cutting her open. And it probably felt like that to her. That she was being cut open from the inside out at the loss of her mom.

  That was my second goal, though. To get her to not need the cape. To realize that even though her mom would never come back, she didn’t need the cape to remember her. She didn’t need the cape to feel close to her.

  The cape was pretty disgusting by this point. It had been almost brand-new when I’d first found her in the hospital room at the end of July. But now, in November, it was falling apart. It stunk to high heaven. Wynn and I had taken to spraying it with Febreeze and washing it in the bathtub when we knew we could stick Edie out in the sunshine and have it dry fairly quickly.

  But it was no longer summer. Autumn had kicked in to Tennessee quickly. The leaves were falling. The nights had become cold. There were sporadic days of warmth, but most days stayed in the sixties now. It was harder to wash the cape and keep Edie from catching a cold at the same time. It was going to be hard to keep the cape on over the winter coats that she’d need soon. So, I wanted to see Edie get rid of the cape.

  One day, when she complained about tomato sauce that had spilled on her shirt, I took advantage of it.

  “You know, Eeds, your shirt isn’t the only thing that needs to be washed.”

  She looked up at me curiously, but I tried to play it off like it was an afterthought. “Your cape could use a good wash, too. I think there’s still a grass stain on it from playing at the park the other day.”

  She pulled the cape around so she could look at it. And sure enough, there was a green stain built into the bright red.

  “Wash it in the bath?” Her words were coming along. She hardly ever added the ‘s to things like she had when I first took her in, but she still had a ways to go. Like her little body still had a ways to go to reach anything close to the average range. At least, that’s what Doctor Mallard and the speech pathologist we’d started seeing said.

  “Well, the best way to clean it would be to wash it in the washer like the rest of our clothes.”

  She didn’t scream no, and just that felt like progress to me. “Why don’t we go down to the laundry room, and you can watch it while it’s in the machine?”

  “Tay,” she said, and I wished Wynn was there to share a secret smile and a high five with me.

  We took a laundry basket of clothes and a deck of cards and made our way down to the apartment laundry room. When we got there, I loaded up the washer before turning to her. I lifted her up on the washer next to ours and put my hands on the strings of the cape.

  “Are you ready?”

  She hesitated. She seemed fearful. Like if she let it go, it would be gone like her mother had been.

  “I promise you’ll get it back. It won’t be gone,” I choked out.

  She let me untie it and unwrap it from her shoulders. Then I handed it to her. “Do you want to put it in?”

  She took it from me and placed it gently down into the washer. When I closed the top, she reached out and put her hand on top of mine. “I see it.”

  “Sure, Chicken Lips.” I opened the lid back up so that she could see it was still right where she’d left it, on the top of the other clothes.

  “Tay.”

  I closed the lid, slid in my card, and hit the start button. The washer rumbled to life. I joined Edie on top of it, dealing out the cards. We played quietly while we waited for the buzzer that said it was done.

  It was a long time for even me to wait, so it probably felt like a year to the little girl who’d finally had the courage to take it off. When the washer finally buzzed, and I lifted the lid, it wasn’t on top and Edie panicked. “Gone?!”

  “No, no. It’s here. It just got mixed up with the other clothes.” I dug it out and handed it to her. She put the cape up to her face, not caring that it was wet.

  I put the other clothes in the dryer and then looked at her clutching the cape. “You think it’s ready to get dry now? You can actually see it this time in the dryer window.”

  I pulled her off the washer, and she put the cape in. I started the dryer, and she stood there in front of it, watching her cape twirl and whirl around with the other clothes. A flash of red amongst the other bright colors.

  “Want to play cards again?”

  She sat down on the floor in front of the dryer, and so I brought the cards over and joined her there. My long legs had gotten accustomed to being on the floor in the last few months.

  It looked strange to see her without the cape. It was like I’d shaved her head or something. Like she was Edie, but not. I honestly didn’t know how I felt about it myself because I’d come to love this little girl more than I’d ever thought possible. Way more than I had when I’d seen her occasionally as a baby. It made me feel guilty if I thought about it too much. That I’d loved her, but in a loose, family sort of way. I hadn’t been there like she or Lita had needed me.

  That guilt would always be there. But I was also trying not to dwell on it. I knew it didn’t help anything to live a life full of guilt. I’d seen what it had done to Derek and Mia and how they’d fought their way through it to the other side.

  I was putting up my own good fight. To the other side.

  Wynn showed up around dinner time. She was staying with us because we were leaving at five in the morning for the airport and the last gig before the holidays.

  She let herself in with her key. The key I’d given her when we’d started this because it didn’t make sense for her to be here so much and not have one. I wished she had a key because she lived here. That she was a permanent resident in my bed. Ever since Bedjama Day, we’d slept in the bed together whenever she stayed over.

  I hated that I couldn’t reach over and touch her when she was there, but I was just glad to have her by my side. That she’d given me that much without running away.

  She came into the kitchen where Edie and I were cooking. The sauce that had splattered on her earlier was simmering on the stove, and I was dropping the pasta into the water.

  Wynn said, “Hi,” and went to kiss Edie on the cheek and stopped, frozen. “Holy smokes!”

  Edie and I both looked up at her, wondering what had flabbergasted her.

  “What?” Edie and I both said, and Wynn smiled at both of us. A smile so big, so real, so perfect that Edie and I both smiled back without even thinking about it.

  “You washed the cape!”

  Edie grabbed the edge of the cape and brought it up to Wynn’s nose. “It smell good.”

  Wynn smelled the cape and then picked Edie up off the counter and swung her around. “It smells amazing. Glorious. Perfect. You should wash it every week. I’m so proud of you.”

  Edie giggled. When Wynn stopped, Edie demanded, “Again.”

  Wynn spun her some more until they were both dizzy, and I had to put out my arms and catch them both before they ran into the hot pot on the stove. I had my arms around them both when Wynn looked up at me. Her blue eyes sparkled with unshed tears. “I’m really proud of both of you.”

  I moved, without thinking, toward her lips with my own, but at the last second, she realized what was happeni
ng and turned her head, and my lips touched her smooth cheek instead. It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t nearly enough. It made me ache to put my lips on every single part of her. My arms tightened around them before I let go and turned back to the pasta.

  At first, I was frustrated, and it probably showed because Wynn turned quiet after that. But then I realized it was progress, a tiny step toward both of my goals, and I couldn’t be anything but happy at that. I had both my girls with me, and Edie had taken the cape off for a couple hours, and my lips had touched a part of Wynn’s body. It had felt right. They belonged there. On her skin.

  It was going to have to do for now.

  ♫ ♫ ♫

  After the first leg of the tour was over, I talked to Mia about throwing a birthday party for Edie at their house. I was pretty sure she hadn’t had any parties before now. I’d never been able to get her a real live present. I’d barely been able to send money to Lita because I never knew where she’d actually be staying, and there were many times when her bank accounts had even been closed.

  I wanted to change that for Edie. I wanted her to have the full birthday party experience, and I knew my little apartment wouldn’t be big enough. Throwing the party at Derek and Mia’s was a good solution. It would probably be attended by a bunch of adults and maybe baby Mayson, but it was better than no party at all.

  “When’s her birthday?” Mia asked.

  “The thirteenth,” I said.

  Mia dropped the book she had in her hand, and her face went from shock to happiness.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You know that’s Wynn’s birthday, too, right?”

  I felt the shock hit me hard. No, I hadn’t known that. Wynn and I had never talked birthdays. I’d never looked at her driver’s license like a stalker. How would I know?

  Mia laughed. “You didn’t know. It’s adorable. They have the same birthday.”

  “Wow.”

  “Why don’t we make it a Wynn and Edie birthday party?”