Bar Crawl(22)

For the next hour, CJ read to me from his manuscript. Sometimes he’d read a whole section, and sometimes he’d just give me pieces, claiming that he hadn’t ironed it out yet, or that he wasn’t sure if he wanted to include that particular story.

In truth, I was completely infatuated on every possible level. From the way his voice smoothed as he considered his own words, to the stories themselves, I was blown away. He didn’t have a stock list of adjectives and potential stories that he pieced together in random assembly. CJ had crafted stories that considered facial expressions, body language, frequency at which bar, and what people ordered when—and that was just for starters. The maniac drummer who seemed to have a hard time focusing on any one person in the crowd was anything but. He considered everyone and was interested in their stories. Enough to write happily ever afters and tragedies into each one.

“Did that kid really die in the car accident?” My lip trembled as CJ closed his laptop.

He tilted his head to the side and winced. “Yeah, that part was real. The details are taken from lots of stories like that that I’ve seen over the years, though. I didn’t want to offend anyone by writing someone’s direct story, but the tale needed to be told. Bar life isn’t all glamorous.”

I snorted. “I’ve always thought it was anything but.”

CJ grinned. “Some of it is great. Take away binge drinking, okay? Going out and having a few drinks with your friends at the end of a long day or week is great. Inhibitions are just slightly lowered to let people laugh. People don’t laugh enough.”

“You laugh all the time,” I countered. I realized, looking back, that I’d always seen CJ with a smile on his face or in the middle of a laugh.

He shrugged. “I love my life, Frankie. I get to do everything I’ve always wanted.”

He looked off for a moment, gazing just past my shoulder and seemingly out my french doors. I knew there was nothing of consequence back there—nothing ever was. He was looking somewhere else. Sometime else.

“What else do you want?” I questioned quietly, shifting slightly so my knee grazed the denim on his thigh.

CJ drew his eyes back to mine, swallowing hard before his gravel-like tone returned. “You.”

I had no moisture left in my mouth to swallow. “I think that’s been…established. But why?”

“I don’t know.” He exhaled and looked down.

“Thanks,” I mused.

“No. Not like that, Frankie.” He looked up with a plea in his eyes. “Jesus, I wish you’d stop shitting on yourself.”

I sighed. “I don’t… I don’t shit on myself, CJ. I’m just observant. You’ve never been, um, around anyone who wasn’t a breathing version of a Barbie doll.”

CJ’s face contorted. “What the hell are you talking about? Oh,” he cut himself off as his eyebrows lifted, “I get it. You just don’t pay attention to when I’ve been with anyone who is like you. You made me out to be the guy you thought I should be by paying attention only to the things that would fit in that box.”

My jaw dropped. “I don’t do that!”

He laughed. The roaring room-filling laugh that he alone owned. “You do. I’m telling you. I find all kinds of women beautiful, Frankie. You have a slammin’ body. That aside? Your personality is…”

“Is what?” My heart sped up, leaving me to take an extra breath.

Without another word, CJ’s face seemed to pale slightly and he shot to standing—letting his laptop slide onto the couch. “I need some air.”

“Are you okay?” I stood, studying his suddenly panicked face.

“Yeah, just…” He paced the length of the living room before spotting the door he’d stared out of only minutes before. “I’ll be right back,” he huffed as he barreled through the door and into my backyard.

The confusion and tension of the day caught up with me, and I collapsed back onto the couch, catching my breath and watching the behemoth of embodied sex pace erratically around my backyard.





CJ





Shit. Fuck. Shit.

I flattened a good square of perfectly mowed grass in Frankie’s backyard before having enough sense to reach for my cell phone. I couldn’t turn and go back into the house after making such an ass out of myself. Not yet anyway. So, I dialed my emergency number.

“Hellooo,” an overly chipper voice sang into the phone.

“G,” I nearly shouted back.

“CJ,” Georgia greeted, “what’s up?”

It was clear she didn’t hear the panic in my voice. Why would she? I’d never shown an ounce of panic in her presence in the ten years we’d known each other. Evidently I was all about showing things about myself today.

“I’m…in trouble. With a girl.” I ran a hand through my hair and forced myself to sit in the still-warm grass. The sun had only begun to think about setting.

I heard what I figured was a stainless steel bowl crash into the matching stainless steel counter in her bakery’s kitchen. It was still early in California, and Georgia would be working at her bakery, getting ready for the Sunday “post-church sugar praise” as she liked to call it. “Christ, did you get someone pregnant?”