Page 10 of Lady Sings the Blues

“I’m leaving as soon as I bury my dad.”

“Well…you best leave Beau alone. Caused him enough heartache.”

“Wait—Beau’s in town?”

Shayla shifts on her hip, folding her arms across her chest. The look is made to intimidate me, but I can see through it. She messed up. She messed up and she knows it and she’s pissed. The glare she shoots me is supposed to make me wish I was never born. Jokes on her, I beat her to that punch years ago. Hard to get the blame from an entire town for the death of their one in a million golden boy, Logan Hollister, and all the fallout afterward, and not think everyone’s life would’ve been easier if I’d just never existed.

With the way the town talks, one would think I assassinated the president, not that my ex-boyfriend committed suicide. Though, the ex part he liked to keep under wraps. Apparently “good girl”Elise fit better with the highly cultivated façade he wanted to continue to put out for the town, then the cadre of female companionship he chose to surround himself with once he decided to be done with me. All the lies and half-truths flying around, kept in circulation by Margo and Lenore. Lenore had no idea what her son put me through, what he took from me. Then because Beau had my back, I get the reputation.

I don’t know, maybe it is my fault. Maybe if I’d seen the signs sooner?

Unfortunately my name’s not George Bailey, and my angel Clarence hasn’t come around to set me straight yet. I thought maybe he had with Mark, but what an unfair expectation to put on a man I’d just met. And the way he pushed me away earlier, I was way off base. Or should I say, way off the ‘Mark’? It probably isn’t really him that gets to me anyway, more his jokes. I’m a sucker for a sense of humor in a good-looking guy. I love a man who doesn’t take himself too seriously. And it’s hard to take yourself too seriously when telling lame jokes. Come to think of it, about the time we hit senior year, Lo had stopped telling me jokes. As his girlfriend, shouldn’t I have caught on to that?

The silence hangs between us as Shayla comes to grips with the reality that her body language does nothing to me.

I guess she couldn’t take the standoff any longer as she purses her lips and says, “He’s been back a few years now. Don’t think I’m tellin’youwhere to find him.”

“Have a nice life, Shayla.” I do my best to keep my head up as I walk out the door.

If Beau’s in town, then he knows about my dad, which means he knows I’m in town. I would’ve thought with our history, he’d have reached out to me, tried to get word to me through Hadley or Mr. Delavigne. It doesn’t matter how long I’ve lived away, not in a town like this. In a town like this, everybody goes to church or graduated with you, your brother or sister, or grandmother or aunt. If he still lives here, he’d know exactly where to go to best get a message to me. Since he hasn’t reached out to me, I can only assume he still doesn’t want to see me.

That hurts.

He and I, we were so close once. Hours spent on the phone. His visits home, or mine to Lexington. When everything began to spiral with Logan, he was my shoulder to cry on. My rock. Until he wasn’t.

But now there are more immediate concerns for me other than being ignored by Beau. Namely, I have no place to stay until the funeral.

The park across from City Hall used to bring me comfort when my mom hassled me, or Logan and I had a fight. So I head there. It only takes ten minutes to drive from the Daniel Boone, though it feels as if I’ve been transported back five years, the last time I came here with Beau. The last time I poured my heart out, and he pretended to understand. The last time Logan showed up and Beau stood behind me as I delivered him life changing news.

***

There’s a heavy pounding on my window and I become acutely aware of the hulking figure looming just outside my door. The second thing I notice which should have been the first thing I noticed is that it’s dark out now meaning I fell asleep. Without thinking I reach to the door lock. It’s locked. Then I make the mistake of looking up. Mark. Mark, the hulking figure, stands right outside my window asking me to roll it down. Then I make an even bigger mistake by doing what he asks and roll down my window.

He makes no attempt to talk but before I can register what he’s doing, his face is in my face and his lips are on mine. I tense my shoulders expecting with the way he came at me, a hard, passion-filled kiss. But that’s not what he gives me. He gives me soft, strong lips, pressing gently. He breathes in like he’s breathing me in, locking in a memory to call back up for later, maybe. I don’t want him to have to call up this kiss for later unless I’m with him and we’re reminiscing together. The thought of which scares me because we’ve known each other, what, a day? It just doesn’t make sense. Nothing about he and I makes sense. Like how it is that when I bring my hand up to cup his face, to bring us closer, to deepen the kiss, that he has the wherewithal to break the kiss?

Taking my hand in his, he brings it to his chest pressing both our hands above his heart. Only then does he speak. “I’ve been waitin’ a long time for that.”

“You have?”

“Elise, you know I have.”

“How?”

He doesn’t remove my hand from his or his heart, and doesn’t answer that question but does ask one of his own. “Why you sleepin’ in your car? Weren’t you supposed to check in at a motel?”

“No vacancy.”

“Dammit.” Mark leans his forehead against mine, closing his eyes he sighs as if making a decision, then he pulls back and gives my hand he’s holding a squeeze. “Come on. You’re stayin’ with me.”

“No Mark, you don’t need this kind of trouble knocking on your door. Despite how phenomenal that kiss, or that I’d cut off Shayla’s left nipple to experience you again, the fact is I’m not your problem.”

“Shayla’sleft nipple?”

I shrug.

At first he smiles that not quite white, crooked smile at me. Then emo-boy’s mood shifts, and he pins me with his mesmerizing stare, so many things being said in his stare I can’t keep track of them all. It’s the kind of stare to make you squirm in your seat, or maybe that’s just me. I squirm.

“Darlin’. Now. Follow me.” A quick peck against the tip of my nose and he turns to walk back toward a massive Dodge Ram pickup truck. From the streetlamp illuminating the park he’s parked under, I can tell it’s black.

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