Winter Blues (15 page)

When he pulls out chocolate covered strawberries for desert I propose eating them on the sofa with the accompaniment of a movie, like we used to. I let him choose and he picks Coyote Ugly. I have to laugh. Reid claims that he first laid eyes on me while I was singing
Can’t Fight The Moonlight
, and he says he was hooked from that very moment. I tell him he’s a romantic fool but inside I swoon.

When we take our seats Reid pulls me to him and I fall automatically into the nook of his arm, as if no time or tantrums have passed. We pick at strawberries despite our full stomachs and we finish the last of the wine. I can’t concentrate on anything other than the circles Reid is stroking over the skin of my bare shoulder.

“Are you cold, Darl?”

“Huh?” I reply
, sleepily.

“You have
goosebumps.”

I don’t tell him that the goose
bumps are the result of him stirring feelings in me that I have longed to feel for weeks. Instead, I shrug. He pulls the blanket from the back of the sofa over us both and squeezes me even closer. With my head on his shoulder I am exactly where I want to be.

“Let’s do this every night,” Reid says, kissing the top of my head.

I chuckle lightly. “That’s highly impractical.”

“Okay, let’s do this whenever it’s practical.”

“Deal.”

Reid holds out his hand and I press my palm and fingers against it.
Promise
. I lift my head to look at Reid directly and find such warmth in his eyes that I can’t help but kiss him. His lips are soft and tender as he sighs into my mouth. When Jersey starts to sing ‘
But I do Love You
’ Reid holds back. “Sing to me.”

“What, now?” He nods his head
while I shake mine. “I’ve just eaten chocolate.”

“You’re such a perfectionist.”

“Tomorrow?”

I nod and rest my head back on his shoulder. I’m totally dreading tomorrow. I can’t imagine that Blue will even want me there and if he does then I don’t look forward to having to pretend that all is okay for Reid’s benefit. I could have called and checked if I hadn’t already deleted Blue’s number from my phone.

Reid’s swirling fingers begin their slow circles again, teasing me into a peaceful sleep. When I wake I am being carried to bed. I sigh happily when I am pulled back into Reid’s arms and I feel his breath against my shoulder.

“Night, d
arling,” Reid says and I drift to sleep with a smile on my face.

23

Reid

W
ork is a much happier place when I am sent there with a kiss. Darlene ran with me again this morning and seemed to take to it easier, even admitting to me that she was enjoying it a little. After that, not even James’ inane chatter can dampen my mood.

Everything seems to be slowly righting itself and after my gesture last night I feel like we’re at least looking d
own the right road, even if we’re not yet riding it. However, we still have to overcome tonight’s gig. I kind of expected Darlene to say that she wasn’t going to perform, but when she didn’t I told her I wanted to watch. I don’t want to watch. Not at all. Not if they’re going to eye-fuck through the entire performance again. But I can hardly leave them to it and sit at home sulking and imagining the worst. Or the truth.

I breeze through a few manuscript proposals, finding myself naturally drawn to the more romantic of the bunch, before heading home
. I’m lucky to not have any work to take with me so I can go tonight without feeling guilty.

When I arrive home I am welcomed with a wide smile and the smell of chicken in the air. Darlene is wearing an apron and has her hair pulled back. She looks every bit the fifties housewife and I can’t help but appreciate h
er. Something about a woman in the kitchen gets to me. Especially when it’s the woman I love…and she’s barefoot. I imagine her with a swollen belly, but I don’t say anything. Not after last time. Instead, I kiss her lightly on the cheek and privately fantasize about her bearing my child.

“You smell amazing,” I say, lingering at her c
heek.

“I smell like bread.
I baked,” she replies, sounding overly proud. My eyes close of their own accord and my nose trails down to Darlene’s neck, longing to breathe her. She doesn’t push away. In fact, she tilts her head to allow me better access. When I graze her skin with my lips she lets out the faintest of moans. Encouraged by her response, I deepen my kiss, pulling her body flush against my own. Our embrace is ripped apart by the sound of a shrill bell.

“It’s the timer,” she breathes into my neck, inducing a noticeable twitch in my pants.

“Leave it.”

She pulls back a little. “I’ve been slaving over that bread for the last hour. I am not leaving it.” I think I’m in trouble, but then she reaches onto her tiptoes and kisses my cheek.

My tongue is throbbing from being bitten so hard after Darlene emerged from our bedroom wearing that outfit. It’s not obviously sexy, just jeans, a loose fitting cami
sole, and an open sweater, but in my opinion it’s too revealing. The jeans are tight to her perfect ass but I can hardly chastise her for wearing jeans, and the cami is loose but it still highlights her breasts for the world to see. Correction, for Blue to see. Shit, tonight’s going to test every bit of the thinning restraint I have.

I went for a
nother run after dinner, and I know it’s ridiculous but I worked extra hard with some push-ups on my return. I wear a sweater that is tight to my arms in the hope of looking bigger than I am, and while I know I’m in shape, I know that I still won’t be able to compete with Blue’s bulk.

Doesn’t mean I couldn’t take him in a fight though.

I’m scrappy.

I need to feel comfortable for this game that is about to go down. I know that I’m going to have to remain silent about
what I know and I know that in itself is going to be difficult, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not going to want to prove to Blue just how much Darlene belongs to me. I’m ready to commence the biggest pissing contest of all time.

We leave with Darlene’s guitar on my back and her hand in mine. I think she’s nervous
, although she won’t say why. She couldn’t. She remains tight to me as we enter and tighter still when she sees Blue behind the bar. He looks completely shocked when he sees her, probably because I’m next to her, but for some reason it’s her he shoots looks at.

Fire flows through my veins when I see him. I am reminded of how much I hate him and my restraint is at its very thinnest. I work hard to relax my brow and unclench my fist, not wanting to alert Darlene to my rage.

“What did you want to drink?” I ask her, brushing my lips against her ear and wrapping a hand around her waist. Yes, I have possession in this little game.

“The usual
.”

“Two Corona’s, please,” I call to a startled redhead behind the bar. She smiles weakly before saying hi to Darlene and getting our drinks. She accepts my cash and I let her keep the
excessive change. I don’t know why. I guess I’m trying to impress.

“You’re here.” We turn to see Blue has made his way from the bar to stand behind us.

“Of course,” Darlene says, looking noticeably flustered.

“Great.”

There’s an awkward silence that hovers between us all, giving me time to clock the cut on his lip.

“Cut yourself shaving?” I ask, praying that Darlene is the assaulter but then worrying about why she would need to.

“Oh this? Just an accident. My mistake.” He’s eying Darlene when he speaks and I want to rip his eyes out. My jaw is hurting from too much tension so I swig my beer and try to loosen up again. It’s not going to happen until I am far from this asshole. Thankfully, Darlene pulls me away.

“Come on, you can sit at the front.” She puts our bottles on a table near the stage. There
is an old couple already sitting there but they smile warmly at Darlene when she asks if her husband can sit with them. After five years you’d think that I’d have grown used to hearing myself being referred to as her husband, but when it has felt like such a delicate title of late, it means so much. I warm under her gaze and kiss her cheek before she takes to the stage.

The room immediately falls silent when the noise of the guitar and amp pops to life. She takes a seat and all eyes are on her. I feel immensely proud already and she has yet to sing a wor
d. She smiles at me as she tests her guitar and I see her nerves. She’s not nervous for her performance, she never is. No, she’s nervous because of Blue and I being in the same room. I don’t feel guilty. Not now that the adrenaline of his presence has been lit.

“Good evening
, boys and girls. I’m going to kick off with a song that means a lot to me. It means a lot to me because apparently it means a lot to someone else, someone very special.” She brings her eyes to mine as she strums the opening to
Can’t Fight The Moonlight
.

I laugh and she smiles with me. She sticks a Spanish twist on the chords and alters the arrangement a little to suit a slower pace. It’s incredibly sexy
and with her focus on me my unease is cooled.

It’s the first song I ever heard her sing and from that moment I vowed to not let it be the last. I’d been dragged in off the street by her melody and I stood with a crammed bar full of people who were
just as captivated by her as me.

Piecing her voice with her physical beauty meant that she was a double threat to my heart. A heart that had vowed never to fall victim to the cons of
relationships or marriage. But with no more than two minutes in her company I knew that I had to try. And when she singled me out of the crowd, smiling a wicked smile, I knew that I would.

Maybe I didn’t fall in love with her at first sight, not to the power o
f what I feel for her now at least, but there was definitely something that bound us together that night. The second I found her I knew I would never let her go. I never have and I never will.

So much has transpired between us since that moment over seven years ago and yet nothing has changed. She still owns my heart and what’s more, I still want her to. No fleeting affair will change that, not as long as it’s my bed she comes back to. I’m still competing and the longer she sings at me the more I feel the odds fall in my favor. Whatever her and Blue have been stupid enough to slip into is nothing compared to what we have, and the sooner she is reminded of that then the sooner they will be history. His feelings for her travel no further than his pants, and surely that’s not enough for him to want to pursue her anymore. Not now that he sees us as a solid unit.

Darlene sticks with country for the next few songs and I feel myself getting lost in the storytelling before reliving my own story. I can’t deny that this drama with Darlene hasn’t prompted me to look at my reasons for not walking away from an obviously failing marriage. I don’t need a psychiatrist to tell me that it is seeing my own parent’s marriage break down that has prompted this reaction. I never wanted a marriage, seeing it as a dead weight of a strain on a relationship, but when I found the one person who I wanted to be bound to in every way I knew that I could never let it fail. I wouldn’t be another statistic. My grandparents made it work and we could too.

I don’t even know if I believe my own psychoanalysis. My parent’s relationship was doomed from the start and the best thing
they ever did was split up. But we aren’t them. This is a minor bump in a very long road. And at the end, we will barely even remember it.

As if in sync with my inner ramblings, both the lights and the music cut out sharply. I can’t see a thing in front of me
, let alone Darlene. After a second of stunned silence the bar is filled with confused chatter and Blue is trying to talk over the top of the noise. I ignore the lot of them, focusing entirely on getting to Darlene. I hear her faint voice and use it to guide me to the stage edge. I call her and she finds me. I lift her down to the floor, but not before she makes sure to have Cash with her.

“What’s going on?” she asks, clinging tightly to my arm.

“I don’t know. Let’s go find out.”

We hear Blue telling people that the whole street is in darkness. He can’t get any power. The redhead and another guy are lighting candles as he speaks but the light doesn’t travel much further than the immediate area around the bar. He explains that the cash register is out of use but they are willing to keep serving if people have the correct change. Immediately the b
ar starts emptying. A few stay glued to their seats, waiting out the power outage and looking at Darlene expectantly.

“What do you want to do?” I ask Darlene, hoping that she is ready to leave.

“You can still play,” Blue interrupts. I wasn’t even aware that he was listening in.

Darlene looks between the two of us.

“I don’t think so.” She shrugs lightly. “Who would I be singing to? Nobody is listening.”

“Don’t then. I’ll sing.” If Blue had long hair it would have been whipped over his shoulder with the force of his turn. He stalks off
toward the stage, but he’s halted by an arm on his shoulder. The blond guy is at least a foot shorter than him and half as wide, but that doesn’t stop him from speaking with conviction. They must be friends, I think, until Blue crushes him into the wall, his forearm at his throat. I react instinctively, wanting to separate them, but then I’m reminded of my hatred for the big fucker and I sit back, hoping that the little surfer guy is about to unleash his black belt and murder him.

He doesn’t.

He holds his hands up in defeat. Blue promptly walks away, appearing on stage a moment later as if the altercation was just my imagination. Darlene seems just as confused as me.

Sitting
on a stool that looks small in comparison to his frame, Blue is hunched over a guitar, looking beaten before he’s even begun. The only light comes from beneath him and it flickers sinisterly.

“Shall we go?” I ask Darlene, optimistically. Blue’s eyes are locked on her and I want her away from him before he does something that rids the last of my self-discipline.

“Sure, let’s finish these.” She lifts up her full bottle of Corona and flops against the bar. Great.

Blue has no amp or microphone as he plucks the strings of his guitar, but with the emptiness of the bar comes the ability to hear him. His song echoes across the room, trailing over to us and wrapping around us hauntingly. He’s looking down as he begins to sing and it takes me only a second to decipher what
his chosen song is. Chris Issac’s
Wicked Game
.

Th
e words are an ode to Darlene. That much is obvious.But even without the words that speak of an uneasy desire it’s clear that this is a desperate bid for her. Gone is his cockiness, his attitude portraying nothing but sincerity.

I hate him more with each word. 

At the chorus his eyes lift to meet Darlene’s, ignoring my own gaze that sits between them. When I look at Darlene she is staring straight back. Her face is a contortion of confusion and upset as he sings rounds of, “No, I don’t want to fall in love.”

He sings about wicked games played by Darlene, I assume, and it’s becoming clearer and clearer that his affection for her transcends anything merely physical. With the second chorus, Darlene casts her eyes down. She’s embarrassed as she tries to lose herself in the last of her bottle. I want to drag her away from what is clearly a declaration of his love. I assume that she sees it too, but knowing Darlene’s ability to overlook the men that fall at her feet I wouldn’t count on it.