Sweet Forty-Two(30)

Thankfully, it was football season, so Monday nights at the bar rivaled the crowd size of a summer Saturday night. Hungry and thirsty sports fans would prevent me from staring at the unmoving clocks.

“What was your car doing here this morning?” Lissa couldn’t look me in the eyes, even as she arched her eyebrow.

“What were you doing noticing?” I knew before I finished the inquisition. Lissa’s car was left in the parking lot of E’s at least two nights a week, depending on where she decided to sleep.

“No need to get defensive, I just thought you always brought them back to your place. You weren’t drunk last night, either, right?”

“Nosey, much?” I snapped as I slammed the tray of fruit garnish on the bar, sending several orange slices to the floor.

“Sorry.” She rolled her eyes and her tone rang of an elementary schoolyard.

I sighed, discarding the victimized orange slices into the trash. “No, I’m sorry. It was a long night. I went home with CJ. Not with CJ, but we just caught up. Then I had to show Regan the apart—”

Shit. Lissa hadn’t known I was showing the apartment to him. Or anyone.

“You. Slut.” She whipped my butt with a wet bar rag.

“Ow! What?”

“I saw the way you were lookin’ at him all weekend. Clever move, though, to have him pay you for ... that.” She wiggled her eyebrows and I realized exactly why she and CJ never made it out of the bar together. They’re too much alike.

“He needed a place, I needed a renter. Stat. That’s all. Besides, he’s CJ’s cousin, I couldn’t...”

It was a last-minute decision to ask him to take that apartment. Hanging on to it meant that I was still planning on encouraging my mother to move in there. For six months she and I had the same discussion. I had to honor her wish to live alone as long as she physically could, considering other wishes of hers were becoming harder to grant.

Regardless of having to root my heels in the floor as he leaned toward me lips-first earlier in the day, I still couldn’t. I needed normalcy. Consistency. Something about his eyes—no, that’s cliché—something about the way he moved as he played on stage told me he was safe. Passionate and disciplined. Intense, maybe, but it was harnessed. Released only on stage and, I assumed, in practice.

“Well save your couldn’t speech for another time. Here he comes.” Lissa’s lips curled up in guilty pleasure.

Walking toward me in a march-like manner was Regan, followed by an evidently irked CJ, whose shoulders were tense, like he’d just been turned down by a girl. I took a deep breath, and plastered on my “Welcome to E’s” smile.

“Hey, boys, what can I—”

“Can I talk to you for a minute? In the back or outside?” Regan’s hands hung at his sides, but I watched the rhythm of his thumbs rubbing against the pads of his fingers as he waited. He was nervous. If his hands hadn’t given him away, his voice would have. It bordered on overconfident. Overcompensation.

I looked to CJ, preemptively furious that he’d told Regan everything, and Regan was going to back out of the theoretical lease. CJ simply shrugged and pointed to the Guinness tap.

Looking at Regan as I handed CJ his beer, I drudged up some confidence of my own. “Sure, can you give me a few? This game’s almost over, then it’ll die down here for another hour or so until the next one starts.”

“Yeah, no problem.” He dropped onto the stool next to CJ and laced his fingers together, turning every other knuckle white.

On my way to deliver food to my table, I slid him a pint of Guinness without him asking. I needed him to mellow the hell down.

Fifteen minutes later the crowd at the bar started yelling in frustration.

“What the hell happened?” I asked Lissa as I came up the stairs from changing a keg.

“Damn Patriots game is delayed an hour. Snow. Where on earth gets 6 inches of snow in a couple of hours?” She gestured to the snow globe that encircled Gillette Stadium splashed across every TV screen in the bar.

“Great,” I groaned.

“What?” CJ and Regan spoke in unison in front of empty pint glasses.

“Game delay. Now the people who are staying to watch the game are either going to get disruptively drunk ... or just leave.” I heard my bank account plead for mercy.

Regan shrugged. “Want me to play something?”

“Thanks, Regan, but I don’t know if this crowd is really the fiddlin’ type.” I set a hand on my hip, delighting in the offense on his face.

CJ laughed, but set his sticks on the bar. “We could come up with something. Willow’s on her way, too. I think she sings, or plays something...”

Regan put a hand on CJ’s shoulder. “I’m surprised you got that much information out of her, given you spent most of your time in the sound booth staring at her breasts.”

“Nice one. He must have learned that from you, Regan.” I laughed as CJ and Regan whipped their gazes toward me.

“Burn!” CJ hollered, drawing attention from both ends of the bar.

“Whatever, want us to play, or not?”

I’d waited half an hour to see him smile, and when he did, he did it right. His eyebrows lifted, revealing soft creases in his forehead as his slightly imperfect teeth briefly seized my sense of reason. I had to say something.