Crazy For You (9 page)

She hoped that was a bridge she’d never get to. Not
so soon, anyway. When it did happen, she wasn’t prepared to deal
with it. She did the only thing she thought would help. She headed
for Sunset Beach.

As the sun slipped behind the horizon, the
beach-goers headed home. All but Roxanne. She sat there quietly
with her arms draped across her knees. A cool ocean breeze blew in,
and she observed the surf, listening for something. Anything.
Anything that could let her know everything would be okay. She
needed something, or someone, to come along and cleanse her soul.
Free her of all her anxieties.

After a while, something from within appeased
her.

Just don’t lose control
. She couldn’t let all
the jumbled up thinking get in the way. Then the confusion set in.
She didn’t know if she should run and hide—or run to Frank and beg
him not to go.

What am I supposed to do when he’s gone
?

“I thought I’d find you here,” Frank’s voice wrapped
her in comfort, albeit temporary, but comfort nonetheless.

She tried to smile, but continued to stare straight
ahead.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, sitting on the
ground beside her.

“Thinking,” she said, still staring into the
darkness.

“I guess you know…I have to go back out on the road
again.”

“Yes, I do.”

“And we both know that you can’t afford to go with
me this time.” He cleared his throat, as if that’d drive out the
nerves. “I wish I could afford to take you with me.”

“But you can’t.”

“No. I can’t,” his voice hardened, in a
self-condemning way. “And I wish I didn’t have to leave you behind
either.”

She tangled her fingers around his. “When I met
you…” She looked at him and tried to smile, failing pitifully. “You
were already a musician. This was already your world.” She looked
back out at the ocean. “I didn’t have a complaint coming.”

“So why’d you stay?” he asked, feeling her squeeze
his hand gently. “There was just something about me?” He laughed
nervously.

“Yeah…there’s something about you all right.”
Helplessness spilled out in her voice. “And it haunts me every
minute of every day.”

“At least it won’t be easy for you to forget about
me.”

Roxanne laughed helplessly. “I don’t think you’re
going to have to worry about that.”

Frank touched her cheek, guiding her face to meet
his gaze. “Roxie…I love you more than anything in this world.”

More than music?
She looked into his hypnotic
blue eyes. “Me too.”

“You will be in my thoughts every day and every
night.”

Sure
. Roxanne’s gaze fell upon the ocean
again. “I really don’t want to talk about this anymore.” Besides,
he’d stay if she asked him to. Wouldn’t he?

“Will you be here when I get back?” he asked,
hopeful.

“You can’t get rid of me that easily.” Helpless
laughter poured from her.

Finally, that dreaded day came and everyone gathered
at Glen and Glenna’s house. Roxanne, Candy, and Glenna lounged in
lawn chairs on the front lawn, getting high while the guys loaded
the equipment on the truck.

With the truck packed full, Ronnie closed the doors
and Frank went to Roxanne’s side.

“Let’s take a walk.” He reached for her hand and
pulled her to her feet. She followed him willingly.

Frank tried hard to find the right words. No matter
how much effort he put into it, he could only think of one thing to
say that would ease the pain of their impending separation. “I love
you.”

“I know.” She looked at him. He could tell her smile
was forced. “I love you, too.”

“I’m so afraid of coming back and finding out that
I’ve lost you.”

“Frankie…I’ll be here waiting for you.”

“Don’t you let me come back here thinking you’re
mine…if you’re not.”

“Frankie…”

“Please.” He searched her face for some hint of what
she might be thinking. “Wait for me?”

Roxanne jerked her hand away, turned quickly and put
some distance between them.

“Roxie…” He followed her. “Please don’t do
this.”

“We’re okay,” she said, with her back to him.

Roxanne looked across the road at the cozy, green
meadow.

Where is the ocean
? She needed to hear the
rushing waves rolling back and forth. Somehow it had the power to
calm her mind and soothe her soul. “Just go away,” she said. “I’ll
be here when you get back.” A storm raged behind her eyes. “But for
now…please, just go away.” Silent tears slid down her cheeks.

He was leaving her behind. The one thing she never
wanted to face, but now she had to. She couldn’t deny it any
longer.

Reluctantly, Frank moved slowly away from Roxanne.
Every couple of steps, he turned to look back at her. Part of him
wanted to run to her and comfort her. Tell her he could never leave
her.

Yet, something else was calling out to him. Music.
The music had been his whole life for so long. His need to perform
called to him stronger than ever now, luring him away from
Roxanne.

Frank had made his choice. Sadly, it wasn’t her. He
continued to walk toward the house, each step taking him farther
away from her.

She could feel him slipping away. Somehow, she knew,
things would never be the same between them again.

***

Chapter 9

R
oxanne moped around the
condo for a few days after Frank left, until finally she’d accepted
that the time had come to go to work. With Candy’s help, Roxanne
landed a job at the restaurant where she worked.

Roxanne’s first day on the job went fine. Somebody
even commented that she’d taken a lot of orders for someone who’d
never waitressed before. Everyone assumed she was going to be a
natural.

Beginner’s luck.

The next few days went horribly wrong. She didn’t
have Candy, who worked a different shift, to fall back on. Instead
of getting better at the job, she found she had no flair for it at
all. She could never remember which orders went with which tables.
If by some small chance she did somehow manage to bring an order to
the right table, she could never remember who got what.

And people were so rude, like that family who spoke
very little English. The man’s broken English, tolerable at best,
did not make him the fluent bilingual he thought himself to be. His
wife had apparently wanted mashed potatoes with her meal, but
that’s not what her husband ordered. Sadly, Roxanne had to bear the
brunt of the woman’s anger since she was the one who’d placed the
baked potato in front of her.

Roxanne didn’t need to understand the foreign
language being hurled at her in shrieking tones to know she was
being cursed out.

I don’t need this crap
. But she had to take
it if she wanted to keep her job.

She did have the day off tomorrow though, thank God.
She looked forward to it because she and Glenna were going
shopping. It was the only thing keeping her sane.

At the end of her shift, Roxanne tried to get out of
the restaurant without any more hassles. But Terri, the head
waitress on the graveyard shift, got a hold of her before she made
her getaway.

Terri had a hundred and one different ways to set up
a table. Every day she picked a new one for Roxanne to use, causing
her to have to stay behind another twenty minutes or so, every day,
rearranging tables.

Terri had a motive for her spiteful treatment.
Revenge. Terri had a thing for Frank Garrett. She’d been one of his
favorites until Roxanne came along. But now, Frank wouldn’t give
her or any of the others the time of day. He acted like he didn’t
know who any of them were. Roxanne was the only one he cared about
now, and that pissed Terri off. Somebody had to pay. The way she
saw it…hell, it might as well be Frank’s precious little Roxanne.
It may turn out to be the last thing she ever did, but Terri
intended to see that little-miss-goody-two-shoes paid for stealing
Frank from her.

Shopping with Glenna the next day proved to be much
more fun for Roxanne. Helping Glenna pick out stage clothes for the
band, she almost forgot her problems.

“How’s your job going?” Glenna wondered, perusing a
rack of clothing.

“It sucks.”

“That bad, huh?”

“I just can’t seem to get the hang of it.” She
readily confessed her shortcomings. “And then there’s Terri.”
Roxanne rolled her eyes. “She really wants to smack my fist with
her face.”

“Yeah…” Glenna let out a laugh. “She has that effect
on most people.”

“Just what did Frankie ever see in her?” Roxanne
didn’t get what had attracted Frank to Terri in the first
place.

“She’s a slut,” Glenna said without much
thought.

Throughout the day Roxanne watched Glenna spend a
tremendous amount of money on the band. Aside from the clothes, she
also sent them a four-figure money order. The last thing Roxanne
witnessed Glenna doing—preparing to mail out a monthly payment on a
hefty bank note—confused her most of all.

“What’s that for?” Roxanne asked curiously. “If you
don’t mind my asking?”

“The payment?” Glenna looked at Roxanne. “It’s for
their equipment,” she added dryly.

Glenna had laid out a lot of money. For
Garrett-Hollander. But the kicker was when Roxanne realized Glenna
always spent a lot of money on the band. A band that her husband
didn’t even have a hand in founding.

Roxanne was almost curious enough to vaguely wonder
where Glenna got all her spending money. But she had other things
to worry about. Like her job for instance. And Terri. Not to
mention Frank and what he might be doing out on the road without
her. Yes, she had far too much to concern herself with, without
worrying about why Glenna had more spending money than she did.

Roxanne’s next day at work didn’t go any better than
her previous days. Everybody from the cooks to the customers rode
her ass all evening long. By the time Terri came in, Roxanne’s
patience had run its course.

“Roxanne…” that irritating voice of Terri’s rang
out. “You’ve set the tables up wrong again.” She gave Roxanne a
harsh glare. “I’m only going to show you how to do this one more
time. Then I’ll have to go to Mark about it.” Terri threatened her
with the manager.

Granted, Roxanne could never be described as
waitress-material, but she did set those tables up exactly the way
she’d been shown—every day.

Okay
.
That’s it
. Roxanne had had just
about enough. She stormed behind the counter and grabbed her purse.
“You know what?” she said to Terri in a less than friendly manner.
“I have a really good idea…and Frank says I have some great ideas.”
She added that last bit simply because it would piss Terri off.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Terri said in a
lofty tone.

Roxanne pretty much ignored her, bolting for the
exit. She did stop at the door long enough to tell Terri about her
idea. “Why don’t you take those tables and shove them up your ass!”
Roxanne smiled, turned and paraded out the door, extremely pleased
with herself.

For the next few days, Glenna’s expenditures clung
tight in Roxanne’s mind. No matter how much she tried to forget
about it, it kept creeping back into her thoughts, troubling her
until she couldn’t take it anymore. She set out for Glenna’s to
find out what was going on.

Glenna smiled, seeing Roxanne standing at her door
and gestured her inside.

“I really need to talk to you,” she said with a bit
of urgency and followed Glenna into the living room where they both
took a seat on the couch.

Glenna took a joint from a tin on the coffee table.
“So what’s up?” she asked, lighting the joint and toking on it.

“I quit my job,” Roxanne said calmly.

“That bitch gave you a hard time once too often,
huh?” Glenna offered the joint and Roxanne took it.

“To say the least.” Roxanne paused, getting lost in
the marijuana’s near-instant effect. “You know…I tried so hard at
that job.”

“Some of us just weren’t cut out for that kind of
work.”

“Can I ask you a personal question?” Roxanne asked,
handing the joint back to her.

“Sure. I don’t know that I’ll answer it,” she said,
“but you can ask.”

“I was thinking about all that stuff you did for the
band the other day when we went shopping. Do you do that
often?”

Warning signals went off in Glenna’s head.
You
ought to keep your mouth shut
. But she couldn’t stop herself.
“Often?” She laughed dryly. “Try always. Hell, if it weren’t for
me—” A distinct bitterness invaded her tone. “—There wouldn’t be a
band.” She tried, in vain, to contain her frustration. “Instead of
Garrett-Hollander…it should be called Glenna’s Band.”

“But how can you afford to do that?” Confusion
crinkled Roxanne’s brow. “Where do you get that kind of money?”

Don’t do it
. Glenna heard the warning voice
inside her head, and again, she ignored it. “It’s not something
that I’m supposed to talk about. Especially with you.”

“Says who?”

“Your boyfriend,” Glenna said.

“What?” Roxanne began to wonder who was pulling the
friendship strings between herself and Glenna. “I thought our
friendship was based on a little more than Frank and Glen being in
the same band?”

If that made Glenna feel the least bit guilty then
Roxanne would do it to get what she came for.

“If Frank ever finds out that I told you about
this…” Glenna’s voice trailed off as a frightened look froze on her
face. “All hell will break loose.”

Obviously, Glenna had something to hide. Roxanne
meant to find out what it was. “He’s not going to hear about it
from me.” She paid no mind to those little voices inside her head;
the ones telling her not to get involved.

“Roxie…this is a taboo subject with the band.” The
stress of disclosing her secret had frazzled Glenna’s demeanor.
“They don’t talk about it, but they condone it,” she said with a
hint of bitterness. “So you can’t say anything to anyone,
okay…?”