Just a Girl (6 page)

“I said I was sorry!” Kenzie said.

“It’s okay,” I called, sitting up and clamping the sheet tight to my chest.

The door eased open and Paul peeked in at me.

“It’s fine,” I said. “It was an accident.”

Paul rolled his eyes. “Or my sister is nosy.”

“You didn’t even close the door all the way!” Kenzie protested from behind him. “How was I supposed to know you have a naked girl in your bed?”

“I thought James would have told you I have company.” Paul moved awkwardly through the door and turned to close it on his sister’s face, but she must have blocked it because it stopped a few inches short of the frame.

“So who’s your friend?” she asked, the top of her head popping up over his shoulder.

Paul sighed and stepped back far enough to let her get a quick look. “This is Presley. From the store.”

“Oh,
Presley
!” Catching her brother off guard, she pushed the door open suddenly and barged past him. “Hi, I’m Paul’s sister, Mackenzie. Kenzie. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“No you haven’t,” Paul said, then looked at me. “No she hasn’t. I swear.”

“Hi.” I tightened my grip on the sheet with my left hand and gave her a little wave. She had dark hair and the same amber eyes as her brother. There was a definite resemblance between them, though Kenzie didn’t have the masculine definition to her jaw. She was tall and the arm she’d raised to return my wave was covered in a full- sleeve tattoo made up entirely of flowers.

“Nice to meet you. You’re the tattoo artist?” I asked.

“I am.”

“You’re really good,” I said.

“Thank you.” She looked delighted. “Oh, that reminds me! That’s why I’m here. Paulie, I can work on you for half an hour tomorrow at eleven-thirty. Can you be there?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. Can we have a minute here?”

Kenzie shook her head. “I’m just being friendly, you don’t have to be so pushy.”

“Clearly I do.” Paul caught her by the arm and gave her a yank toward the door.

“Nice to meet you!” she called.

“Same here,” I called back.

Paul closed the door and leaned against it, frustration giving way to relief. “I am so sorry.”

“It’s fine, I promise.”

“She’s…tenacious.”

“You
have
met my parents, right?”

He chuckled softly. “Right. So…are you tired?” I thought he was going for casual and neutral with the tone of his voice, but it didn’t really work.

“I’m okay if you are,” I said, glancing at the clock. It was a little after eleven. I wasn’t ready to say good night yet. “Maybe we should see if—James, was it?—still has any of those beers.”

He smiled. “You sure you want beer that’s been in the shower with my roommate?”

“Maybe different beers.” I held out my hand. “Throw me my bra, would you?”

“Do I have to?”

“Play your cards right and I’ll take it off again in a bit.”

June 7

Liv

So, was it a date?

Me

I’ll let you know when it’s over.

As soon as we’d emerged into the living room, Kenzie was on her feet, this time with both arms extended as if to hug me. I froze, unsure what to do, but she wasn’t going to be stopped.

“Now that you have clothes on, I have to hug you.”

In case I was wondering if everyone else in the apartment had figured out what was going on in Paul’s bedroom, I now had confirmation. Kenzie wrapped her arms around me and squeezed.

“Um, thanks?” I said.

“Kenzie, back off.” James grabbed her by the back of her shorts and pulled her away from me. She lost her balance and fell onto the couch beside him.

“You’ll have to excuse my sister. She has zero boundaries.” Paul gestured for me to take a seat in an oversized chair. It was definitely big enough for both of us, but he stayed standing, which made me feel like an idiot for some reason.

“I am friendly. People like friendly,” Kenzie retorted. “Besides, be nice to me. I’m going to be making permanent marks on your body tomorrow.”

“You should be nice to me,” he said. “I’m the one letting you use me as a canvas.” He looked at me. “Did you want that beer or something?”

I glanced at James. “Were they
all
in the shower?”

He burst out laughing. “No, there are more in the refrigerator.”

“Then, sure.” I didn’t really need another drink after taking the lion’s share of the whiskey, but I was thirsty and I hadn’t been well and truly drunk in a long time. It didn’t sound like the worst thing in the world.

Paul disappeared into the kitchen for a second, and I tried to pretend his friends weren’t all staring at me.

“So, um…you’re giving Paul another tattoo?” I asked nervously.

“Just working on what we’ve got.” Unselfconsciously, she lifted her left arm and indicated the side of her rib cage. Tattooed there was the other half of the glorious tree I’d finally seen, and I made a mental note to check it out later.

“Cool,” I said.

“You used to have blonde hair,” Greg stated, squinting at me from over his monitor.

“Greg,” Kenzie warned.

“She did. Look.” Greg turned his monitor to show that he was watching a Luminous 6 video.

“Greg!” Kenzie said more intensely.

Nerves fluttered in my stomach. Luckily Paul chose that moment to return with two beers in his hands. When he saw the scene, he gave Greg a look of death. “Not cool.”

“All right, all right. I’m sorry.” Greg didn’t sound terribly sorry, but he closed the window.

“Sorry,” Paul said to me, handing over one of the bottles. The top was already off it and I took a drink just for something to do.

“We’re not always this awkward,” Kenzie said nervously.

James snorted. “Yes we are.”

“We are not!” She elbowed him.

“It’s okay, you guys,” I said, mostly to be polite.

“You’re an idiot,” Greg muttered.

“He’s talking to the customer,” James was quick to inform me.

“Finish up already. I’m tired of listening to you bitch,” Kenzie told Greg.

“I’m trying,” he growled.

Paul twisted the cap off the other beer and sat on the arm of my oversized chair. “Welcome to Friday night at my place.”

I gave him a small smile and tapped the neck of my beer bottle against his. “I’m glad to be here.”

It was true. Despite the initial awkwardness and their internal sniping at one another, I was really happy to be there. It felt so good to be hanging out with people my own age again. I hadn’t realized how much I missed friendship. My L.A. friends had mostly chosen the rest of the band over me, except Liv. And Paul’s roommates were nice, friendly, funny. Even Greg, once he finished his online tech support shift. It didn’t take long for all of us to be laughing together.

I felt content for the first time in a while. Okay, so maybe I was still a little high off a multiple orgasm–inducing bit of sex with Paul, but the company wasn’t hurting.

By the time I finished my beer, it was definitely time for a bathroom break, so I offered to get Paul another bottle from the kitchen while I was up.

“If I have another one, I won’t be able to drive you home, so…” he trailed off, looking at me as if to say “Ball’s in your court.”

I nodded and excused myself to the bathroom to consider my options. There was, surprise surprise, an empty beer can on the sink. A leftover from James’s shower, no doubt. I leaned into the mirror to check myself over. My red dye job was growing out to expose my ashy-blonde roots and fading to an orange color similar to that of the girl in that movie
The Fifth Element,
which was suboptimal, to say the least. But my cheeks were flushed with alcohol and laughter. And I found I didn’t really care that I’d smudged my eyeliner. “Should” and “shouldn’t” were not of concern for the moment.

With that in mind, I finished up in the bathroom and slipped into the kitchen to retrieve a pair of beers. Back in the living room, I found Paul sitting in the chair I’d vacated, laughing over something I’d missed. I set one bottle on the coffee table—an obvious cast-off that was now covered in bumper stickers—and used my shirt to get a grip on the cap of the other. I made eye contact with Paul as I handed him the open bottle. He didn’t say anything, and neither did I, but I caught the slightest lift at the corner of his mouth before he took a drink.

I was staying for the night.

So I squeezed into the oversized chair with him. He didn’t put his arm possessively around me the way Brendan used to, but he rested his fingertips on my back, tracing small circles there.

“You should come to our show tomorrow,” James said to me suddenly.

“Show?” I had no idea what he was talking about.

As one, James, Kenzie, and Greg all let out sounds of exasperation.

“You didn’t even tell her?” Kenzie demanded, throwing a bottle cap at Paul.

He snatched it out of the air before it made contact. Which was pretty fucking sexy, to be honest. “No, I didn’t tell her.”

“You are the literal worst,” James said, then turned his attention to me again. “We’re playing a show tomorrow night. You should come.”

“Jukebox Bleu?” I asked, looking at Paul.

“Mmm-hmm.” He avoided my eyes.

“He’ll never tell you,” Kenzie said.

“Why not?” I was still talking to Paul, but of course the others heard me. I’d never met a musician who wouldn’t offer you a vital organ or his firstborn to get people to come to a show.

“I’m amazed he even told you the name of the band,” James said.

“Or that there
is
a band,” Kenzie added.

“Guys.” Paul’s fingers tightened around his beer. This was clearly not a topic he wanted to discuss. And as curious as I was, I didn’t want to pry.

“Where are you guys playing?” I asked instead, looking at James.

“The Drafthouse. We’ll go on about ten.”

“Cool.” Best to stay noncommittal, in case Paul really didn’t want me there. “Greg, are you in the band, too?”

That made them all burst out laughing, thank God. I really wanted them to get off this obviously tense subject.

By the end of the night, I had managed to piece together a good chunk of their story. Jukebox Bleu was actually James’s band, formed with a few friends. But their guitar player had quit to move to Nashville. It was Kenzie, James’s longtime girlfriend, who recommended they use Paul. Slowly the current lineup of the band had come together. Greg was a friend of Paul’s from college, and had nothing to do with music, although he did help the band with their website and a bit of video editing.

Thanks to the whiskey and beer, I probably told them all a bit too much about my exit from The Luminous 6. I had hardly talked about it with anyone. I hadn’t wanted to. And dumping it all on these people I had just met was so embarrassingly Drunk Girl of me, I wanted to shut myself up. But it was so fucking cathartic.

“Can I ask you something?” James didn’t wait for me to answer before proceeding. “Why the hell were you in a band like that anyway? You don’t seem like a metal kind of person.”

I sighed. “When we started, it was a lot more Zeppelin and a lot less Iron Maiden. There was still a bit of blues in it.”

“Now
that
I can see.” James pointed at my Black Keys shirt.

“Somewhere along the way, it changed. I don’t know exactly when…” That was bullshit. It was Dixon and Shawn. Those guys didn’t give a shit about where music came from. They’d probably never heard a Bessie Smith record in their lives. They didn’t know who W. C. Handy was. Brendan didn’t either, really, though he’d sometimes humor me and “listen” to my old records. And at least he’d appreciated blues rock—a little.

I shouldn’t have talked about Brendan but I couldn’t seem to help myself. And Kenzie was a little too encouraging to resist.

“What an asshole!” she kept saying. “I can’t believe he’d be such a fucker!”

Oh my God, you are not supposed to talk about ex-boyfriends on the first date!
my better self was shouting at me from the recesses of my brain, but I didn’t want to listen.

As I talked, the beer bottles accumulated on the sticker-covered coffee table, along with two pizza boxes that had arrived at some point. We all slowly slouched down in our seats as the hours passed, until I was practically lying on top of Paul. His arm was around me now, but in a sleepy slump, and more to make room for me to lean against him than anything else.

Kenzie yawned widely. “I can’t take it anymore. I’m going to bed.” She got heavily to her feet and circled the room, planting a kiss on top of Greg’s head, then Paul’s, then mine. “I’ll see you all in the morning.” At last she grabbed James by the wrist and gave him a yank. “Bed!”

“Right.” He let her haul him up with a groan.

“I’m going to bed, too.” Greg grabbed four beer bottles from the table, then looked at the rest of them, changed his mind, and set them back down. “Tomorrow,” he muttered. He gave us an absentminded wave. “Nice to meet you, Presley.”

When he was gone, Paul tipped my head up with a finger on my chin and kissed me. It was a sleepy, gentle kiss, but it warmed me to my toes. I smiled against his lips.

“Thank you for tonight,” I said. “Turns out I really needed to be with people who aren’t contemplating Medicare supplements.”

He laughed softly and gave me a second kiss. “You’re welcome.” When he started to pull away, I pursued him, catching his lips again. We kissed for a few minutes, and his arms tightened around me. My toes curled and the now familiar heat started to fill my chest. And then suddenly he broke away. “I can sleep on the couch if you want.”

“Why would I want that?” I climbed out of the chair and held my hands out to him.

He took my hands, but didn’t take my help to get up. He pulled me in and held me to him, kissing me once more. It wasn’t until James came through the room with a completely obnoxious throat-clearing and subsequent snicker that we parted and headed down the hall to Paul’s tiny bedroom.

Inside, he made a show of turning the lock on the door. “I think we’ve had enough of my sister for one night, don’t you?”

“For now,” I agreed. “But I do want to get a closer look at her work.” I grabbed the hem of his shirt and gave him a questioning lift of my eyebrows.

“Go ahead.” He raised his arms, letting me tug the shirt off.

Finally I could stare to my heart’s content at the ink that covered his body. The right side of his chest was a maze of branches and leaves. These were obviously spring and summer, with buds and small white blossoms denoting spring. Although it was impossible to see the entire design at once, each part was so beautiful and so clear in its intention you didn’t need to see it all. The four seasons followed the curves of his muscles, which were a thing of beauty all on their own, I don’t mind saying.

“What is she working on tomorrow?” I asked.

He lifted his left arm, showing me a music staff twisted from just above his hip, along his ribs, to a point near his shoulder blade. The staff looked like a long flag rippling in the wind, and the music notes along it were dense and complicated. They stopped abruptly after three measures. “The rest of the movement,” he said, indicating the blank bars.

“It’s beautiful,” I said.

“Vivaldi,” he said.

“Four Seasons.”
The knowledge hit me with surety. It had to be, with the tree to match on the other side.

He smiled. “Exactly.”

I tilted my head to look more closely at the notes, my fingers unconsciously picking out the corresponding keys on an unseen piano. Without thinking, I hummed the tune to myself. It was familiar, but I couldn’t remember it well.

“Spring,” he said, lowering his arm. “It’s kind of a thing in my family.”

“Yeah?” I didn’t want to pry, but I was definitely curious.

“It was my moms’ wedding song once they were finally able to get married. Plus, the guy they picked out of the catalog to be my father was a concert violinist, and they always say I must have gotten my talent from him.”

“That’s nice.” I smiled at him.

“Kenzie is doing this all on her own, so I pretty much have to show up whenever she has time.”

“Did she design all this?”

“Yes.” He twisted to show me the autumn part of the tree. “I wanted the birds, but that was pretty much the only say I got in the deal.”

“Why birds?” I asked.

“It’s…another thing…transcending, elevation…never mind.”

He didn’t want to tell me more. I wanted to know, but I liked him. I really did. More than I’d realized when this evening started. And I wasn’t interested in doing anything to jeopardize our…what? Relationship? Whatever it was. So, I looked him in the eyes and said, “Okay.”

He looked back at me, curious and possibly confused. “Okay then.”

“Maybe your sister can help me.”

“With what?”

I sighed. This was embarrassing. “I have a tattoo of my own, but it needs to be changed.”

“I didn’t see it, before.”

Without a word, I turned and dropped the waist of my skirt. Deep on my lower back, with only its left-side placement keeping it out of tramp-stamp territory, was a number 6 surrounded by curlicues and swirls. The only saving grace of the thing was that it was done in white ink so it wasn’t immediately visible. I’d chosen white because I wanted it to appear “luminous.” And now I was stuck with the damn thing.