Surrendering to Us (9 page)

But we had to suffer through several terrible singers first. There were a few who might not get eliminated in the first round of
American Idol
, but most were pretty awful. There was much booing and throwing of napkins and so forth.

If there was one thing that was true about Bostonians, it was that we would ALWAYS tell you what we think. It’s in our DNA.

It was finally Lucah’s turn and our table cheered him on, and there were wolf whistles and several inappropriate comments. Some of them may have come from me. I neither confirm nor deny it.

“Hello everyone. Tonight I’ll be singing an oldie, but one that’s still true.” He sat on the stool and settled his guitar on his lap. He began strumming and I didn’t recognize the song until he started singing. “Forever Young” by Bob Dylan. He looked at me and winked. Lucah’s voice wasn’t anything like Dylan’s, but it didn’t really matter. He took the song and made it something new and fresh, but it also stayed true to the original. A few guys at one of the tables started singing along, and a few more people joined in and before we knew it, there was a bar-wide sing-along happening. I didn’t think that was anything I’d seen before. But that was Lucah. He could make things happen like that.

There was a round of applause and lots of cheering and hollering when he finished. And of course I was beaming with pride. So much so that I almost felt like I was going to cry. Ridiculous, I know.

He headed right for me when he came offstage and I put my arms around him and gave him a kiss that had the potential to turn into something much, much more. It didn’t matter that there was a bar full of people. Hey, they could get dinner and a show.

“You’re getting rewarded for that later,” I said in his ear and squeezed his ass.

“I heard that,” Sloane said.

“Good. I meant you to.” She probably wasn’t going to remember this in the morning. More drinking and bad singing followed, and Lucah was asked to sing again, this time he did the Matt Nathanson song he’d sung the first time. If he was trying to get in my pants, it was working. Not that he hadn’t JUST been there a few hours before.

I stuck to water and soda, and watched as my friends got more intoxicated. Gotta admit, it was pretty fun when you knew you were the only one who was going to remember anything the next day. Chloe got so drunk that we were even able to talk her into going up and singing. Her voice was reminiscent of Dolly Parton with a Nora Jones twist. That sounded like a bizarre combination, but when Chloe sang, people listened. She had that same quality as Lucah did. Mesmerizing. It also caused her to get hit on by men, which was one of the reasons she preferred not to sing in public.

There was a moment of stunned silence when she finished as everyone came back from wherever she’d taken us all.

She stumbled back to the table, which was shocking, because she’d been completely lucid for the song.

Lucah cut everyone off, to the tune of many boos and lots of soggy napkins being thrown at him. We got all the girls into cabs and made sure they were getting where they were supposed to go. Lucah had only had the one whiskey, and I hadn’t had any, so we walked for a little bit, enjoying the cool nighttime air. The city was still alive and kicking, and music and laughter spilled out from the restaurants and bars into the streets.

“You ready for tomorrow?” I’d almost completely forgotten about going with Lucah to meet his family. That was probably a good thing, because I hadn’t had much time to fret and work myself up about it. In contrast with everything that was happening at work, it wasn’t that big of a deal, actually.

“I hope they like me,” I said, and I knew what his answer would be, but I needed him to understand how seriously I took this step, and how much I valued it.

“I’m not even going to dignify that with a response, because you’re being ridiculous again, Sunshine.” He put his arm around me and pulled me close as we walked.

“But I want you to. I like it when you reassure me.” He gave me a look.

“You want to walk home? Or take a cab?”

“Walk all the way home?” It was quite a trek. I’d never done it before, but I’d probably never been sober when I’d left the bar before either.

“We could try. But you might have to carry me.” I was used to wearing heels, but walking a long distance on uneven sidewalks was different than walking on tile floors and carpeting at the office.

“The things we do for love,” he said and picked me up. I squealed.

“You didn’t have to do it right now! I don’t want you to hurt your back.”

He just shook his head and carried me a few more feet before setting me down.

“Rory, you would never break my back. There’s not enough of you. Shit, sometimes I wonder how it is that women have such warped perceptions of themselves.”

“Well, we could get into media and how it brainwashes us with an ideal that doesn’t even exist outside of Photoshop, but let’s not go there.” He smiled and we just kept walking.

“Are you sure they’re going to like me?”

“It looks pretty like that,” Lucah said the next morning when I took my hair down. I’d left it in the braid all night, and now it was beach-wavy. Lucah ran his fingers through it and separated some of the waves. It did look pretty good. I should do it like that more often.

I was fussing about my appearance. I didn’t want to look too formal, but I also wanted to make a good impression. I finally settled on dark jeans, a pair of my red heels (for confidence) and a black and white nautical-looking t-shirt with a pair of silver hoops for my ears. Lucah was also casual in another pair of distressed jeans and a Jimi Hendrix shirt.

“You’re so cool, Lucah. You’re like, way too cool for me.” That earned me another slap on the ass. I definitely wasn’t going to let him make us late by getting me naked again.

“Should we bring anything? Oh my God. I should bring something, right? Can we stop somewhere so I can get something?” My mind started racing, trying to think of what little girls would want, and remembering what I had loved when I was little. Ponies? Mermaids?

Lucah put both hands on my shoulders. I was being much more neurotic than usual, and I was afraid I was going to lose it one time too many and he would realize I was too much work . . .

There I went again. Freaking out about freaking out.

“I’m okay,” I said, putting my hands up. “I’m good. Had a moment of weakness. Resorted to my old ways, but I am going to change and try to be less of a worrywart.” That was the nice way to put it.

“I’m proud of you. That is a very worthy goal. And no. You don’t have to bring anything, but if you want to stop, we can stop.” I got a kiss on the forehead for that one.

A little while later we walked to the parking garage where Lucah was keeping his car. I didn’t even know he had one until he told me about it.

“In addition to my stuff, my pictures and everything,” he said as he led me up the stairs of the garage to almost the top level, “this car has been with me through everything. Until you, there was very little, other than my family and my job, that I loved as much as this car.” He paused next to a vehicle covered in a white cloth. I thought it was a sedan, by the shape.

“Are you ready?” I had rarely seen him this excited. Like a kid on Christmas morning who knew he was getting a pony. With a flourish, he whipped the cloth off the car and let it fall onto the concrete. Very dramatic.

Okay, so I didn’t know much about cars. But I knew that this was something special. It was electric blue and looked like a bad boy in an 80s movie would drive it to pick up the young, innocent girl and do wicked things with her in the backseat. I wanted to do wicked things in the backseat. One quick look showed me that they were black leather. Nice.

“It’s a 1985 Chevy Camaro. I won’t bore you with all the details, but it’s a sweet ride.” He put his hand on the hood, like he was petting a dog. Or an old friend. It was both cute and a little disturbing. But I could appreciate getting attached to something like this. I looked down at my red shoes and clicked my heels together. Yeah, I could understand getting attached to an inanimate object.

“Does it have a name?” I said, leaning on the back.

“No, I don’t have a name for my car,” Lucah said, giving me a look.

“What? A lot of guys name their cars. Especially when they’re very important cars.” He just shook his head and came around to the passenger side to open my door for me.

“Ooohh, I like this. We should go driving more often,” I said, and got in. The interior of the car was spotless. I was afraid to touch anything for fear of getting fingerprints on it that he would have to wipe off later.

Lucah got in and smiled at me.

“What do you think?”

“This is a fine piece of machinery you have here. What’s her name?” I asked him again, because I knew, without a doubt, that this car had a name and I was going to get it out of him. It was my experience that whether it was cars or ships, they were almost always female.

He shook his head and then mumbled something under his breath.

“What? I didn’t quite catch that.” I put my hand at my ear.

“Bluebird. Her name is Bluebird.” He blushed as he said it, which made me laugh.

“Well, nice to meet you, Bluebird,” I said to the dashboard. “May you drive fast and true.”

Lucah started her up and she roared to life. He revved the engine and the sound shattered the quiet of the parking garage. Stealthy, we were not. Lucah revved the engine again, and backed out of the space as I buckled my seatbelt. Then he hit the gas and we screeched around the corner. I held onto the door and tried not to scream.

“You’re not scared, are you?” he said as we rounded another corner and burned some rubber.

“Nope,” I squeaked. “I trust you.” It was the car I didn’t trust. And other drivers. And things falling from buildings and rogue construction cranes and cinderblocks and a million other things that could hurt us while we were in this car.

“You ride in cabs all the time, and you trust those guys?” Well, I never really thought of it that way.

“Great, now I have to be nervous about cabbies,” I said as we left the garage and merged onto the busy street. Lucah’s brother and his family lived outside the city in Lexington, one of the nicer suburbs. He and his family had grown up poor, but it seemed as if Lucah and his older brother, Tate, had managed to turn it around and be successful. And then there was Ryder.

“Does Ryder ever come up to visit?” I asked as we sat in traffic to get over the Zakim bridge.

“No. He and Tate don’t get along. It wouldn’t be a good situation, with the girls there, so Ryder avoids it. Which is probably a good thing. If you wanna plug in your phone, you can. I rigged it up to play through the speakers.” I got out my phone, plugged the cord in and turned on the radio. Simple Minds blasted through the speakers and nearly deafened me.

“Yeah, I forgot to tell you that I like to listen to music pretty loud when I drive,” Lucah said, turning the volume down. “What’s up with the song?”

“Sloane and I watched
The Breakfast Club
the other day, so I had the song stuck in my head.” I put the music on shuffle and skipped to the next song, which turned out to be a version of “Clarity”, similar to the one that we’d listened to when we’d danced at the ball. I watched Lucah’s face and he smiled when he recognized it.

“I never saw the appeal of a ball until I saw you coming down the stairs in that dress.” It was at Sloane’s studio now because she could store it much better than I could.

“I could get it from Sloane and put it on again and we could have a reenactment.”

“I like this plan. Can we reenact the part after the ball? Not that the dancing wasn’t fantastic, but the removing of the dress and so forth was more fantastic.” My ladyparts quivered with the memory of that night. We broke some new sexual barriers after the ball, and I was pretty sure I saw through space and time a few times.

“That was pretty fantastic,” I said, putting my hand on his, where it rested on the shifter. Was there another term for it? I had no idea. It didn’t really matter.

We crossed the bridge and hopped on the highway and I realized how few times I’d left the city in the past few months. I’d always wanted to travel, but I’d always been working, so the only travel I’d done was for work, and I’d been either stuck in a boardroom, or a hotel room or an airport.

“We should go somewhere,” I said.

“Isn’t that what we’re doing right now?”

“Obviously, but what I mean is that we should go somewhere, go somewhere. Like on a trip to a faraway place.”

He started laughing.

“What’s funny about that?”

“I just gave up my nomadic existence and now you’ve got the travel bug?” Oh. He did have a point.

“It was just a suggestion.”

“No, no. I’m not down on it. I’d love to travel with you. Most of the traveling I’ve done was by myself, but it would be much more fun with you. Where would you want to go?”

“I don’t know. Have you ever been to Maine?”

“Actually, no. I haven’t. That is one state that I haven’t yet been to.”