Broken Fairytales (39 page)

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 one
time 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 del
ighted
audience
s
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 Cre
e
dence 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 w
hen 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 in
to
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 watchi
ng 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 h
ave 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, an
d 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 flamin
g 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 and 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 playfu
lly until I threw my hands up and said, “Oh, alright!”

Pulling all of my courage, I j
umped 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 w
ith Zack
.
He had a way of bringing it out of me, a
nd 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 s
he 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 unbu
tton his pants, which was a good thing
, but it also didn’t deter me for kicking the shit out of hi
m 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 cryin
g and telling me she loved me and kissing my face as I tried to
drive and pacify my girlfriend w
ho 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.”