Regrets Only (22 page)

“Well,
I know it sounds silly, but I’m thirty-three, and I’ve never really wanted to
get married, but I’m starting to get concerned that I haven’t had a
relationship last for more than a couple of months since…”

“Since
when?”

She
hesitated, and then told him. About William and his proposal. About her
conflicted feelings, and how she was now searching for him to try to understand
it all better. She didn’t mention the part that was so far just a glimmer of
something in the back of her mind—the hope that finding William would not just
be insight into why she pushed men away, but that a rekindled relationship with
him could be an answer in itself.

“So
this guy was the beginning? After him you started chewing men up and spitting
them out?”

“You
make me sound like a monster.”

“Not
a monster. Maybe a praying mantis,” he said. She kicked him under the table. “Ouch!”

The
waitress brought another round and Suzanne licked the foam of the fresh
Guinness off her top lip. “I don’t chew men up and spit them out. I’m…picky.
You don’t know what it was like, to let things get that far and then hurt him
so badly. I never want to make that kind of mistake again. So I don’t stay in a
relationship unless I feel really sure about it.”

“I
know,” he said. “I saw the list. Poor bastards.”

“What
about you?” she fired back accusingly. “You’re not exactly living like a model
of monogamy yourself.”

“True,”
he said, “but I think girls know what they’re getting into when they’re with
me.”

“That
is such a typical male way of seeing things,” she said, her Southern accent
becoming thicker with her slight buzz and sense of outrage. “It’s such a
fucking double standard.”

He
laughed, and pretended to back away from the table, holding his hands up in
surrender. “Whoa, there, Scarlett.”

“Well,
it is. You can do what you want and you’re a playboy; I do the same thing, and
I’m a slut. How is that fair?”

“I
don’t think you’re a slut,” he said seriously. “I would never call you that.”

She
had hit a nerve. “Sorry,” she said, though why
she
was apologizing to
him
,
she wasn’t sure.

“I
have five sisters, remember? I don’t do that word. The guys around me don’t use
it either.” His face was full of conviction, and then he added more playfully,
“Besides, now that I have a feminist friend in my acquaintance, I have a
feeling there will be plenty of other politically incorrect words I’m not allowed
to use anymore either. I’m assuming you’ll provide me with a list or something?
Or will I just have to run into each one as I go?”

She
smiled. No one had referred to her as a feminist in a long time. It was a mantle
she had taken up in college with some amount of seriousness, but somehow pushed
aside as the years went on. Could you still be a feminist if you were in the
Junior League and flirted with men to get discounts on facility rentals for a
living?

Then
something else struck her. Feminist
friend
. Dylan considered her a
friend, and she realized she thought of him that way, too. How odd.
If
someone had told me two months ago that my newest friend would be a twenty-six-year-old
country superstar with a high school diploma and friends who still got drunk
and played video games….
It felt like the weirdest dream ever. Maybe none
of this had actually happened, and she was still passed out on her couch with
her arm in a cast having painkiller dreams.

The
lead singer came to the mike as they finished a song Suzanne didn’t recognize.
“Thanks,” he said to the smattering of applause. Sixty or seventy people were in
the bar now, about ten or fifteen of whom seemed engaged with the music. “We’re
Rickenbacker’s Revenge. Taking a break for beer; we’ll be back in ten.”

“I
get it, I really do,” Dylan said, grasping her hands across the table. “I think
it’s admirable that you’re trying to figure out why your relationships haven’t
worked so far. But maybe, just maybe, you ought to consider that you’re an
exceptional woman. Why would you want to settle for someone who doesn’t deserve
you?”

Her
heart lurched.
What was he saying?
She looked down at their hands,
linked on the table between them. His grip was warm and firm, but not
necessarily romantic. She met his eyes, and he held her gaze with sincerity.
She felt as if she was in a staring contest with Marci back in middle school,
and had to fight the totally inappropriate urge to giggle.

Dylan
broke the spell, laughing good-naturedly. “I fold. Again,” he said, standing to
exit the booth. “I definitely wouldn’t pass the Suzanne Hamilton perfection
test. Poor bastards.”

He
signaled the bartender as he left the table, who glanced at Suzanne and nodded.
She watched him walk to the restroom at the back of the bar, shaking his head
theatrically as he went. It was remarkable how her conversations with Dylan,
whom she had known for just a few weeks, could be so like her conversations
with Marci, whom she had known nearly her whole life.

Marci.
It was Friday
night, and Marci was home. Suzanne pulled out her phone and sent a text:
This is stupid. I’m a jerk. I love you and I’m SO sorry. Can we be friends
again? PLEASE?

She
wasn’t expecting an answer. Marci had probably gone to bed a couple of hours
before, but maybe she would see it in the morning. Surprisingly, her phone’s
text notification lit up just a few moments later. The response had come not
from Marci, but from Jake:
Suze, it’s Jake. M’s asleep. Please come
over tomorrow. Take her for a pedicure or something. My treat. She’s driving me
insane.

Suzanne
laughed. She looked up when another round arrived at the table, but it was only
her beer. The waitress took the other one directly to Dylan, who was standing
across the room, where the band was taking their break by the pool tables. She
watched him shaking hands with a couple of them as they returned from a smoke
break outside. All wore broad smiles, and as they talked, she watched Dylan
sign autographs for one or two of them, who looked grateful and a little
sheepish.

She
couldn’t hear what they were saying, but once or twice the whole group laughed.
The lead singer was showing Dylan his guitar, in which the latter seemed to be
showing appropriately polite interest. He looked over at her and waved, but did
not seem to be inviting her over. She pulled her phone back out and played
Tetris while she waited.

Then
a cold chill ran over her suddenly, as though someone had scratched their nails
on a chalkboard directly behind her. Almost imperceptibly, her mood changed and
her muscles tightened. She had the faint but distinct feeling that she was
being watched. She glanced at Dylan, but he was engaged in conversation and did
not look up to meet her gaze.

She
pretended to stretch and did a casual sweep of the bar and tables behind her,
half expecting to see Rick there. Or perhaps someone hiding behind a
strategically placed newspaper. Nothing. She saw two men in Vietnam veterans’ hats
having a lively debate of some kind at the bar. A robust girl in a short black
dress and striped knee-high socks with inky black lipstick and pigtails the
same color, talking to a tall, bald man who facing away from Suzanne. The
bartender busy with the remote control and a nearby customer in a polo shirt
and khaki shorts advising him on locating something specific on TV.

Next
to the bar at a long table, there was a group of young black women—one of whom
wore a glittery tiara and wispy veil that were the trademarks of bachelorette
parties—laughing at a shared joke with one of the waiters. A middle-aged couple
in leather Harley-Davidson jackets making out in the corner booth. Four
college-age guys apparently having a drinking contest of some sort.

One
man was sitting alone, diagonally behind her. She did not recognize him at
first glance, but chanced a second look. He was about her age, give or take a
couple of years, with wild black hair and glasses. He wore a short-sleeve
button-down plaid shirt and a wedding ring. A plate of half-eaten food was in
front of him, and most of a light-colored beer. He was writing in a small
spiral notebook.
Was that a popular thing to do in a bar? Sit alone and
write?
She had seen someone doing that recently but couldn’t remember when.
Yet neither the man nor the notebook looked familiar.

She
decided to get a closer look. She stood and walked toward his table, her heart
pounding, pretending that she was actually looking out the window behind him. When
she was a few feet away, he looked up at her, returned the polite twitch of a
smile she’d sent his way, and went back to his notebook. No nervous response,
no blushing, no involuntary sign of recognition crossed his face.

“I
thought I’d left my lights on,” she mumbled as she pretended to crane her neck
to look out into the night, half to herself, but so he could hear. He gave
another polite smile in acknowledgement and returned to the notebook. She could
not see what he had written there, but it appeared to be a flow chart of some
kind, or something with basic shapes and lines. She turned around and went back
to her table.

Shortly
thereafter, Rickenbacker’s Revenge made their way back to the plywood stage,
and Dylan came back to the table with one of their CDs and his now half-empty
beer. “Here you go,” he said, handing her the CD, grinning. “I had them sign it
for you.”

He
didn’t, however, sit down. “Would you excuse me for another minute?” he asked,
patting her shoulder as though she were an elderly relative.

“Sure,”
she said, confused.

He
walked to the stage and stepped up, smiling awkwardly as the lead singer handed
him an acoustic guitar.
Oh my God. He’s going to
play
. Just a regular
guy, eh?
He smiled at her as he hoisted the guitar strap over his head. The
lead singer stepped back and squeezed in next to the bassist, but still called
the count for the band to get started. After a few bars, Suzanne recognized it
as a very slowed-down cover of R.E.M.’s “Don’t Go Back to Rockville,” one of
her favorites from her days at UGA in Athens.

Dylan’s
usual twangy sound was more gravelly and interesting on toned-down college
rock, though he kept the strong Tennessee accent that made him recognizable. He
sang close to the microphone, with barely a couple of inches between the well-worn
bill of his cap and the top of the microphone. His face was largely hidden this
way, but he grinned at the band when he fumbled through a couple of lyrics.

Even
though he limped a little through the words and the timing, the lack of
rehearsal didn’t take away from the polished quality of his voice. In this
setting, it was more obvious, not less, that Dylan made his living singing. His
pitch was spot on, as far as Suzanne could tell, and sounded more authentic
than it had on her iPod. She decided that Dylan was one of those singers who was
more hurt than helped by all the editing and studio mixing that go into an album.

It
took the ever-growing crowd a few minutes to process the change in lead singer.
Some people did not notice at all. But near the end of the song, Suzanne could
see a few whispered conversations and people nudging one another as they
realized, or suspected, who Dylan was. He caught her eye and winked at her from
beneath the baseball cap. He was having fun.

The
song ended, and the band moved smoothly into another recognizable tune. Suzanne
was just realizing what they were playing when Dylan’s voice began the lyrics,
as familiar to her as the worn sweatshirt she’d had since her freshman year of college.
“Fire and Rain” was her favorite song. He’d remembered, and was now singing it
with almost-velvety softness and the garage band accompanying unobtrusively.

He
did not look at her as he sang, but gave a crooked little smile at the mention
of her name in the second line. No one had ever sung to her before. Suzanne felt
a flush spread from her belly up to her cheeks, and down, too.
Jesus, no
wonder all those girls throw their panties on stage at him.
She brought her
hands to her mouth, smiling so wide behind them that her cheeks began to ache.

The
folk song was closer to his usual genre, and by the time it was over, almost
everyone in the bar had figured out who he was, or had it whispered to them by
companions. Applause greeted him as he ended. Dylan gave the room a polite wave
and turned around to restore the guitar to its rightful owner.

The
lead singer of Rickenbacker’s Revenge tossed a dark black mop of hair out of
his eyes as he returned to front and center. “Thanks to our new friend,” he
said to the crowd, gesturing at Dylan with an open palm. Dylan returned to his
seat across from her with a polite “we’re done here” sort of wave at the crowd.
Most people got the hint and turned back to their drinks and conversations,
while a few continued to gaze at Dylan with broad smiles, hoping to catch his
eye. The band, meanwhile, launched into a raucous version the Ramones’ “I Wanna
Be Sedated,” bringing the attention back to themselves.

“Show
off,” Suzanne said.

For
a split second, he looked hurt. “But it was beautiful, thanks.” She put her
hand on his. “Really.”