Page 66 of Caught Up In You

The knock at my door is loud and out of rhythm, like Wyatt’s mind is elsewhere. When I open the door, I find my tiny bartender on my stoop in the smallest pair of denim cutoffs, cowboy boots, and an oversize Dolly Parton T-shirt that’s somehow sexier than a string bikini top. Her eyes are smokey, the dark liner thick like a warning, with only a hint of iridescent shimmer on her lids.

And she’s frowning.

“You look like you’re taking your nine-year-old daughter to a Taylor Swift concert,” she says, eyeing my dark jeans and army-green linen short-sleeved button up. My pants are cuffed, and I’m wearing leather loafers with no socks.

“Thanks?” I say, reassessing my outfit, which I thought looked pretty good until six seconds ago.

She huffs out a sigh and pushes past me into the house. “You look fucking hot and you know it. It’s just not the right vibe for where we’re going.”

She’s in my living room now, pacing back and forth in front of the couch. I have to grab her by her forearms, bend my knees, and make her face me to get her attention. “To be clear, you didn’t tell me where we were going. You just said ‘a concert.’”

She bites her lip, her eyes on the ceiling as she sorts through her thoughts. Then she sets her jaw and looks me dead in the eye like a challenge.

“We’re going to see Griffin Stone.”

It takes me a minute to place the name, and when I finally do, I can’t control my expression. “The guy who sings the song about truck nuts?”

She groans. “Yes. It’s a long story.”

And from the look on her face and the way she’s bouncing in her cowboy boots, practically vibrating with tension, it seems like it’s a complicated story too.

And I want to hear it. But more than that, I want her to be comfortable.

“Do you want me to change?”

She eyes me, a slow appreciation of my body that makes my pants go slightly tight in the crotch. Her gaze lingers on my biceps, where the sleeve of my shirt is tight in a way I’m frankly pretty fucking proud of.

“No,” she finally says, a saucy look on her face. “Like I said, you look fucking hot.”

The urge to drag her into my bedroom and keep her there until tomorrow is strong, but she pivots on her heel, and I can’t not follow her heart-shaped ass in those tiny little shorts.

“I’m driving,” she calls over her shoulder as she strides through the door.

“You sure? I’m happy to drive.” I glance at my truck, just a year old and much bigger than her ancient little Toyota pickup.

She levels me with a look that has me shoving my keys into my pocket as I pull open the squeaky passenger door of hertruck. Wyatt slides into the driver’s side like it’s home, then reaches across the console to grab a shoebox full of cassette tapes and sets them on the dusty floor.

“Feel free to pick one,” she says as the truck starts with a surprisingly robust roar. Grace has mentioned that Wyatt knows how to work on cars, and I try not to linger too long on the image of her, cheeks marked with grease, wearing a tool belt…and nothing else. We’ve got an hour-long drive and a Griffin Stone concert to get through before I can get my hands on her, so I need to get hold of myself.

I reach for the box. Inside is a pile of tapes in plastic cases, bands my dad loves: Heart, Fleetwood Mac, Foreigner, Journey. There are also several that don’t have cases, just words scrawled on their labels.

“Old-school,” I say, holding up a mixtape with a tie-dye design done in marker. “Where did you even get these?”

“Yeah, the old girl has an old sound system,” Wyatt says, patting the dashboard. “Record stores sell used tapes for cheap. I can usually get them for less than a dollar a pop. But my favorite is finding mixtapes at garage sales and estate sales. I can sometimes get a whole box for a couple of bucks.”

“You mean you didn’t make these?”

“Nope. These are all vintage specimens. I love them. My favorite is when they don’t have track listings on the liner. It’s a fun surprise to hear what’s on them, imagine the types of people who made them, what they were going through. Some of them were even taped off the radio, so I get old commercials and DJ bits.”

We hit the highway, and Wyatt drapes her wrist over the top of the steering wheel, her sunglasses perched on her nose as she leans across and digs into the box. She pulls out a tape in a black case with a handwritten track list.

“I went to this estate sale in Columbus a couple of years ago and found a box of mixtapes. Turns out this guy had made them for his girlfriend, a woman named Debbie, and together they told the entire story of their relationship. It was amazing, like this epic musical about the two of them falling in love.” She holds up the tape for me to take. “This one is my favorite. Check it out.”

I lean closer to read the tiny, blocky text.

Jeff Buckley - Lover, You Should’ve Come Over

The Cranberries - Linger

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