Sweet Forty-Two Read online

  “What was what?”

  “That look you gave Regan. Your go look. I thought you weren’t into him.” Lissa stepped back and looked down her long eyelashes at me.

  Before she could respond, CJ struck the snare drum, as Bo started a familiar tune on an electric guitar. “Smooth Criminal”.

  “What the...” I looked past Lissa just as Regan raised his bow and struck it across the strings.

  Holy shit...

  Regan

  She didn’t look back when she returned to her station at the bar. I don’t know how I missed it earlier in the day, but she had a third tattoo on the back of her neck. It looked like a rocking horse of some sort. I’d already spent far too much time staring at Georgia’s body for one day, so I looked away. Though, the way she attempted to pass off that scant piece of fabric for a dress, it didn’t seem that she wanted me to look away.

  Or anyone else for that matter.

  I didn’t know what Georgia’s game was, but when she challenged me about my ability with the violin, it lit something inside me. I don’t even know why I cared what she thought. I’d met her only hours earlier and had made kind of an ass out of myself.

  Still, when she asked me to make a believer out of her, I asked Ember to sit the first song out while Bo played the electric guitar, and we started “Smooth Criminal”. It’s my go-to “wow” piece for people who have an attitude about classical instruments.

  Then, her jaw dropped.

  Yeah, that’s what I thought.

  Just as I pulled the corners of my lips up into an I told you so grin, Georgia’s seemed to curl into a sneer and she abruptly turned around and got to work behind the bar. Mission accomplished. I’d regained my social footing from my breast-staring fumble earlier and was on even keel with her again.

  As the song went on, I looked around the bar. It was an eclectic mix of customers. Hippies, hipsters, and hip-replacements all mingled together, drinking and enjoying the music. I planned to spend some time after the set mingling with the crowd to see if anyone had any leads on apartments or sublets. Anything.

  “Smooth Criminal” ended, and as the cheers rose to a roar through the bar, Georgia’s eyes found mine. I watched as her tongue ran across the front of her top teeth with her mouth closed. The look on her face was unreadable, but the guy’s hand riding up her arm as he ordered another drink was loud and clear.

  She looked down as if she’d caught two people having sex, turning her attention and smile to the guy with a buzz cut and black-rimmed glasses at the bar.

  “Dude.” Bo interrupted the jealousy that had no business brewing in my stomach.

  “Sorry. Uh...” I cleared my throat and looked back at CJ who was shaking his head and grinning. He never missed a thing.

  “Ha,” Bo continued, “she is intriguing ... but we’ve got a set to finish. You and Ember do “Foolish Games” next, okay?”

  “Sure. Ember, you ready?”

  Ember’s eyes drifted between the bar and me. Curiosity mixed with concern. “Yep ... are you?”

  It made me uncomfortable when they made comments about me and other girls in the same sentence. It had been several months since Rae died, but I couldn’t tell if my moving on would give them permission to, or if it was the other way around.

  Either way, I wasn’t ready for anything, and as I heard Georgia giggle purposefully from behind me, I knew I certainly wasn’t ready for anything with a girl who had a boyfriend.

  I had to get her out of my system. Fast.

  “Just give me a second.” I set my violin on the stool and weaved through a group of girls making out with each other before reaching Georgia at the bar.

  She walked toward me, and despite the noise around us, I could hear each dedicated click of her heels on the sticky wood floor.

  “Takin’ a break already?” She folded her arms on the bar in front of her and leaned toward me like she’d done earlier in the day. This time, though, I remained fixed on her eyes.

  I chuckled. “I figured before I continued I should check in to see if I made you a believer.”

  Any look of surprise that showed on her face dissolved into a grin. “Regan ... I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

  That’s it. That was her only response before slowly lifting her chest off of her folded arms, turning, and strutting over to a guy with spiked hair and a black t-shirt with “Pink Floyd” across the front vying for her attention.

  With my eyebrows pulled in, I returned to the stage in a daze.

  “You okay?” Ember settled onto her stool and adjusted the guitar over her shoulder. “What’d she say?”

  “I...” I looked back at the bar and watched Georgia thread her fingers through the spikes of the Pink Floyd guy’s hair. “I have no idea.”

  “What were the words she said, Regan?” Ember chuckled as she tuned.

  “They made no sense.” I tuned with her as she looked over my shoulder, undoubtedly at Georgia.

  “Well,” she shrugged, “it’s probably for the best, anyway. Her eyes and hands have been all over everyone in this bar.”

  Defensiveness overrode common sense. “Isn’t that just ... her job?”

  Ember’s eyebrow hooked incredulously. “That’s not her job.” She nodded, and I followed with my eyes to see Georgia leaning all the way forward as a different guy whispered something into her ear.

  He tucked a piece of paper in between her breasts and she set herself back on her heels and kept working.

  I wanted to kick his ass, and it made no sense.

  I shook my head. “God, whatever. Let’s play. Ready?”

  Ember’s look relaxed. “Mmmhmm.”

  As we settled into the song, I reminded myself that girls like Georgia were good at making guys want them. Crave them. With skin-baring clothing, wicked eyes, and a bottom lip pinched between their teeth, they owned us. All of us.

  Through each piece, Georgia’s hips swayed to the beat, but she never pulled her attention away from her customers. Her tips. Once every other song, or so, her eyes would flash to mine, and I’d look away. She was scrambling my sense of reality with one stone-blue gaze. One smile. One laugh.

  It was clear why she and CJ were such good friends as I watched her move with seductive determination through the bar with a tray of drinks in hand. Each time she set down a glass she’d bend a little further forward, inviting eyes to places they had no business being.

  Her game bothered me just as much as CJ’s did, maybe even more since I knew how men perceived women who behaved like that. I hadn’t seen her take a drink all night, and I was pretty sure drinking on the job as a bartender was barely tolerated, so she couldn’t even use intoxication as an excuse.

  She was intentional, this girl with a rocking horse tattooed on the back of her neck.

  She was intentional and made absolutely no sense.

  We finished our set and packed up our gear with an hour left before the bar closed. I just wanted to get out of there and go home. It was the first set of that length that I’d played in some time, and I was exhausted. The finger pads on my left hand screamed for a break.

  “Great set, Ceej.” Georgia met us on the stage, kissing CJ on the cheek.

  “Thanks, kid.” He smiled as he held her waist for a second.

  It was then that I got a better look at the tattoo on the back of her neck. It wasn’t just a rocking horse. It was one with wings. More confused than I’d been before, I shook my head and slung my violin case over my shoulder.

  She and CJ were engaged in quiet conversation about something CJ appeared to take seriously, given he was paying attention at all. I wandered to the bar and sat next to Ember.

  Ember bumped her upper arm into mine. “That was good, Kane. Real good. You’re back on top of things, I’d say.”

  I grabbed her beer and took a sip. “It felt good. Two weeks and we start recording, right?”

  Bo laughed from the other side of Ember. “I knew the bug would
bite you in due time.”

  Even though I’d agreed to come record, I wasn’t sure if my heart was in it. But, Bo and Ember could see the desires of my heart written across my face. I was all in.

  Ember tilted her chin to where CJ and Georgia were still talking. “What’s with her? How does CJ know her?”

  I filled them in on what little details I knew.

  “Dunes?” Ember crinkled her nose at the mention of the bar Georgia’s dad used to run. “That place is such a hole.”

  “Yeah, she’s been out here for a few years. I don’t know anything about her, really.”

  Ember raised her eyebrows. “She really does leave little to the imagination, though, doesn’t she?”

  I leaned to the side and saw Georgia and CJ walking toward us. Georgia’s breasts bouncing as she moved.

  “Be nice,” Bo mumbled.

  “I intend to,” she shot back.

  Georgia cocked her head to the side as she wiggled her way between Ember and me. “What’s the matter, Regan? You look ... lost.” She bit her lip. Her eyelashes swooped down for a fraction of a second before she looked back up, red in her cheeks.

  She was flirting with me.

  No.

  “Just tired.”

  A tiny groan of a noise fled from her throat as she smiled. “Well, rest up. Janice wants you back here tomorrow.”

  “Janice?” I asked.

  “The owner. Customers told her they want more.” Then she looked at me in a way that was so intimate, I felt like we should be alone. “I want more, too.”

  “I don’t know...” I looked between my friends, who all seemed eager to accept.

  Bo shrugged. “It would be great practice before we hit the studio.”

  Ember eyed me cautiously before nodding in agreement with Bo.

  CJ slapped me on the shoulder. “Come on, dude! I’m only in town for a week. Then how much will we get to play together?”

  “What the hell...” I sighed as CJ cheered. He was easy to please.

  “See you tomorrow, then.” Georgia smiled, and for the first time since I met her a few hours before, it reached her eyes.

  I nodded. “Tomorrow.”

  I ordered a drink from the 6-foot, too-skinny bartender with spiky black hair. She set the Guinness in front of me while looking me over, suspicion lazily forming her lips into a half-grin.

  “What?” I asked, the noise of Bo and Ember asking Georgia for details about tomorrow lost in the background.

  She just shook her head, looking behind me for a split second before looking back at me with a full smile.

  “Enjoy the ride.”

  “What are you talking about?” I shook my head.

  “You’ll see.” Her eyes flickered behind me once more. I knew Georgia was still standing there. I could smell the brown sugar perfume I remembered from earlier in the afternoon.

  “I doubt it,” I challenged.

  She chuckled, and as she walked away she said in a sing-song voice, “We’ll see.”

  Turning around, I found Georgia linking arms with what had to have been the fourth or fifth customer I saw her get that cozy with over the course of the night.

  No, I thought.

  We won’t see.

  Regan

  The gang and I had some sound-check issues we wanted to correct before Sunday night’s gig, so we showed up at E’s around six o’clock. CJ had insisted on staying until closing to catch up more with Georgia, and I didn’t see him until he rolled in around five in the morning. Needless to say, he was moving slower than I would have liked for someone that needed to move a multi-piece drum set across the stage to accommodate our set-up.

  “Come on, Ceej, you slept till we woke you up to drive over here. Get your ass in gear or get off the stage.” I set a coil for sound cable on the stool and went over to his set, pushing the bass drum with my foot.

  “Pull the bow out of your ass, Regan. And, don’t touch my fuckin’ drums.”

  Bo shook his head with a smile, moving stools to the side. But, Ember wasn’t about to let me get away with my attitude.

  “You’ve been kind of bitchy all day.”

  I loved when she used the word bitchy to describe Bo’s attitude, sometimes. But not mine.

  She was right, though.

  “Sorry,” I sighed, “I guess the stress of trying to find a place to live is grating on me.”

  “No luck last night, huh?”

  “No. I talked around the bar for like an hour, but no one knew of anything available right now.”

  “Craigslist?”

  “You mean Crazylist? I’m good.”

  Ember snickered and picked up the cord I’d been winding and deposited it in its appropriate place. “You know there’s no hurry, Regan. Don’t stress it, okay?”

  I nodded. I was stressing it. I loved both Bo and Ember, but soon we’d be spending 12-18 hours a day together in the studio, and living with them on top of all of that would become a challenge. Especially with Bo suggesting to me each week that I go to his therapist with him one time. To, you know, he’d say, talk about Rae and stuff. There was no stuff. Why couldn’t they just let me move on in peace?

  Once we were all set up, Bo and Ember left to go grab some dinner before we went on around eight.

  “You want to go get some food?” I asked CJ.

  He crossed his arms around his broad chest. “Are you off your period, now?”

  I had to laugh. “You’re a dick.”

  He nodded. “I accept your apology. No, though, to dinner. I’m going to go sleep in your car for another hour.”

  “You really are a useless pile of shit, CJ, you know that?”

  “You won’t say that when all the girls are cheering,” he called over his shoulder as he snatched my keys off the bar and exited for the parking lot.

  With a frustrated sigh, I turned to the bar and sat on the middle stool. The place was just starting to get busy, and I was hoping for some food before our set.

  “What can I get you?” The skinny tall girl with the spiky hair from last night asked. Though, her hair wasn’t spiky tonight. Or black. Well, most of it was black, but she had bright blue highlights across the top of her head.

  “Do you have food?”

  She looked behind her to a set of double doors, turning back around with a smirk. “We have a kitchen.”

  “Great, food’s that good, huh?” I rolled my eyes.

  “Settle down, I’ll get you the boneless wings. Those are good. You like ‘em hot?”

  “As hot as they make them.”

  She arched her eyebrow. “We’ll see.”

  “You keep saying that.” I challenged her assertion from last night that we’d see about Georgia.

  “I keep meaning it. It’s Lissa, by the way.”

  “Huh?”

  “Lissa is my name.” She stuck her hand across the bar.

  “Oh ... Regan. Nice to meet you.” I shook her hand.

  “You were amazing last night.”

  As she pulled hers away, she let her fingertip drag across my palm. Her inflection suggested way more than my playing ability. One look into her nearly black eyes told me she was trouble. The kind CJ wouldn’t mind getting into more than once.

  “Thanks. It wasn’t my first time.” I couldn’t help it.

  Lissa threw her head back in a light laugh that didn’t match the sharp edges of her frame. A second later she disappeared around the corner, and I rested my forehead on my fists for a minute before a provocative voice lured my eyes back up.

  “What’s the matter with you? Last night’s show rocked.” Georgia dried the insides of pint glasses as she talked. She was in dark, ripped jeans and a fitted purple tank. Her hair was tied back with a black bandana.

  As she set the glass down, I noticed a bruise around her wrist that nearly matched the color of her shirt.

  “What happened to your wrist?”

  She picked up her arm as if she were viewing the mark for the first time.
“Huh, who knows? Anyway, what’s up your ass?” She and CJ seemed to share an idea of where all of the attitude in the body was held.

  “I still can’t find an apartment.” Reluctantly, I continued, “You know of any?”

  She looked up in thought for a moment. “No. I live in La Jolla, so I don’t know much about what’s open around here.”

  “La Jolla?” I sat up.

  “Don’t contain your surprise...” She rolled her eyes and picked up another rack of glasses.

  “That area is ... really nice.”

  “What, I can’t have nice things?” She blew a giant pink bubble, her tongue collecting the sticky gum from her lips after it popped. I studied the way her lipstick didn’t budge, even when her tongue slipped back into her mouth.

  “That’s not what I meant, Georgia.”

  About ten-seconds too late, Lissa came back with my order of wings.

  “Here you go, good-lookin’.” She set the plate on the bar with some napkins and silverware.

  “Thanks.” I looked around her to try to continue my conversation with Georgia, but she was nowhere to be seen.

  “So,” Lissa filled a plastic compartment with cherries, and lemon, lime, and orange slices, “is your cousin as big of a pig as he acts?”

  I snorted, which was a bad idea given how hot the wings were. “Probably worse.”

  She nodded, and with a twisted grin on her face, went about her work. Thankfully I didn’t appear to be on her radar for whatever it was she did with those eyes.

  Several minutes later, Georgia returned from a room in the back. Her relaxed wardrobe had been discarded, and she was wearing tight red shorts—very short—with a black tank top covered in cherries. Her right wrist, the one with the bruise, was decorated with a thick black cuff that had silver squares set through the middle. She looked like a 1940’s pinup girl with her hair tied back with the same red bandana I’d seen her wear the day before.

  She stood at the tap for a minute, filling three pint glasses. She gracefully navigated through the crowd in several-inch high black high heels to a table in the back.

  “See something you like over there?” Lissa took my empty plate from my hands.