Hold (Gentry Boys, #5)(5)
I was making some headway toward the exit and so far had managed not to kick anyone in my way. Then some wiry chick with a thick streak of magenta in her brown hair grabbed me around the waist and started to climb like she was scaling Camelback freaking Mountain. I could have shaken her off with ease but I was trying to figure out how to do it without being rough enough to hurl her to the dirty tile.
“Holy shit,” breathed the girl, exhaling a cloud of peppermint Schnapps, “Sick. You’re like a damn wall of muscle.” Then she wrapped her skinny legs around my waist and started acting like I was the bucking bull at a rodeo so I decided I was done being pleasant.
“Get off,” I growled, pushing her legs away.
But no, this one decided such rejection was merely an opportunity. She duck-faced her thin lips and rubbed her bony body harder. “I’ll get you off, baby.”
No thanks. I smacked her hands away from my crotch and leveled her with a stern you-ought-to-be-ashamed-of-yourself kind of glare. “Have some god damn self respect.”
She was like a human octopus. Seriously, it was sick. Octo Girl took the arm I’d just detached myself from and wrapped it around my neck while she pushed her other hand down my waistband and flicked her tongue next to my ear. “Self f*cking respect? You sound like someone’s f*cking dad or something. Makes me so wet.”
Gross. Disgust. On every measurable level and beyond.
I would never hit a female but I was done being molested tonight so I wrapped my right arm around the body of Octo Girl and unmerged her parts from mine. She slipped down and landed on the floor with an unfortunate ‘Oof!’ and then swiveled around to glare at me. I knew that glare. It had a ‘Can’t believe you passed this shit up’ kind of flavor. I’ve become immune. I come out to play music and that’s all. The other performers can decide a * collection is part of the after-show and that’s their business. I’m not interested. If everyone could see what I’ve got waiting for me at home they would know better than to even try.
One of the bouncers, a gruffly bearded pit bull named Edgel, got his act together and decided to clear a path. He urged the girls to one side of the hallway and stood in front of them like a hairy velvet rope.
“I got ya, Creed,” he shouted with a grin full of capped gold teeth.
“Appreciate it,” I grumbled as I squeezed past.
If this were a crowd of men I’d have no trouble barreling my way through the horde, but fists and brute force aren’t really in order when you’re up against a pack of drunk twenty year old girls.
The original tit flasher gave it one more try and then offered me the same baffled glare as Octo Girl before her friends hauled her away from her own humiliation. The sight of her made me sad in a weird way. She probably had doting parents somewhere on the planet and they wouldn’t be excited to see how their little princess was behaving. In my head I pictured some sallow middle-aged couple from Iowa or somewhere wringing their plump corn-fed hands and wailing, ‘Oh honey, how could you?’
Yeah. I really must be getting f*cking old.
I waved to Edgel just before stepping out into the night, grateful to realize that the keys to my truck were still in my back pocket because I sure wasn’t going back in The Hole tonight for love or money.
My truck was parked on the next block, like it always was. There’s too much risk of getting boxed in somehow by parking in the small lot beside the bar. I never wanted to hang around longer than I had to. Right around the corner I passed a quartet of men and women who looked a few years older than the university crowd. They were dressed like they’d spent a gray cubicle kind of day inside one of those towering downtown Phoenix office buildings.
“Great show, man,” one of the guys said and the others murmured in agreement.
“Thanks,” I muttered with my head down because, like my wife says, I still don’t know how to take a damn compliment. I probably never will.
When I finally got inside my truck and set the guitar carefully on the seat beside me I managed to exhale and relax a little. I loved performing as much as ever; I just had some trouble handling all the shit that came with it sometimes. That was why I’d never taken any of the touring offers and couldn’t bring myself to return calls from that California music agent.
I turned the key and the buttery sound of the engine revved up immediately. I’d bought it about two years back, the first semi-new vehicle I’d ever owned. Sometimes I got nostalgic for the old, rambling pickup I used to share with my brothers, Cord and Chase. Those warm feelings probably didn’t really come from the rusty eyesore that got towed to the dump some time ago. But that old tin pile signified an era of liberty when the three of us managed to bust out of our childhood and find something better than the Gentry curse we’d been born to. We’d done it together, which was how we’d done everything, ever since the first spark of life twenty-six years ago. When we were kids Chase used to claim that it was inevitable that we’d all die on the same day. That was bullshit of course, like so much of what came out of Chase’s mouth.
I chuckled over the memory of my brother’s crazy declarations. God, I missed my boys. Cord and Chase were still here in town and even though I saw them whenever I could we all had our own business going on. I’ve got nothing to complain about though. Life has been pretty damn good to me for no reason at all.
After carefully nosing the truck around the pedestrians littering the street, I headed toward University Drive and switched the radio to the CD setting. Alan Jackson immediately started belting out his best and I smiled because he was Truly’s favorite. She must have had this playing the last time she used the truck. The thought of her all sprawled out and sexy, waiting for me on our bed, caused my heart to perform a little flip in my chest, like it always did when I was on my way home to her.