Page 8 of Lady Sings the Blues

3.

Elise

Though I’m glad to be out walking with Mark, as he’s managed to turn what started out as a craptastic day into something tolerable, I can’t shake this prickles on the back of my neck feeling. A being watched feeling.

By who? Who knows? Too many people have grown tired of my presence, despite my only arriving this morning, and would like nothing more than to lay claim to being the hero who ran thetraitorbitchwhoreout of town.

What I do know, I’m here for the week whether they want to run me out of town or not. And I’d like nothing more than to let Mark help me forget, even for a short while, that it’s because I have to bury my father. He’s the first man I’ve felt such a strong attraction to since my heart was broken by a Hollister man so many years ago. And not by the one who should have. That ship had sailed. The one part to the story the town actually got right. Although I was never the traitor, bitch or whore the town accused me of being. No one would listen to the truth, no one that is, except for Beau. Too bad we had so many strikes against us.

Too bad the same goes for me and Mark. Poor timing, poor location. We’re a Shakespearian tragedy waiting to happen. He’s a Montague and I’m a Capulet.

Maybe he’d be willing to visit me in Chicago. Long distances can work, right? Especially in the face of such an immediate connection. I feel it. He feels it. I see it in the way he looks at me. His eyes convey that same heart stuttering, knees buckling, hard to catch a breath sensation I’ve been plagued with since our first meeting. Though, it’s more than that. When we talk, when I held his hand for the first time, he brings with him a sense of history aside from the obvious physical attraction. One I really don’t understand, but if he were willing, I’d be willing to try too.

Scarily, it’s the same kind of connection I’d felt locking eyes with Lo seven years ago, only without the history. Apparently I’m a sucker for a bad joke. That’s when it happened, I connected with him the minute “A duck walked into a bar.” Thank goodness Mark’s a bartender and not a comedian, or I might never get myself to leave.

Sure I started dating again, I mean, once I actually began leaving my apartment. But most of those were first dates only. Not because any one of them came to the date with exaggerated quirks. Not a one still lived with his mother, only ate yellow food or owned an abundance of “kitties” he had to run home and tend to. Generally speaking, they were perfectly fine men, just… Sitting through dinner made me feel more like I’d been dining with a distant cousin than a potential mate. Mark’s the first man I’ve met in five years who I’ve felt like touching, and not in an innocent, ‘Welcome to Thanksgiving dinner, Cousin Jackie’ kind of way.

I actually never thought I’d entertain the idea of sex again, either. But honestly, if Mark asked me home with him right now, I don’t know that I’d turn him down. What does that say about me? Probably that I need to get laid.

As we walk back toward my dad’s house, Mark pulls a smooth, black rock from his pocket. He continues to hold my hand while flipping the rock up in the air and catching it in his other hand on a continuous loop. Or action. Whatever you want to call it, he does it.

“What’s with the rock?” I finally venture to ask, tearing my eyes away from the hypnotizing movements.

There’s something fun and almost naughty the way he leans into me. “It’s my sex rock.”

I totally stop walking. A sex rock? I’ve never heard of a sex rock. “What exactlyisa sex rock?” I ask in a low voice, ready to be let in on his secret.

With his crooked smile growing, doubling in size, I wait.

The anticipation just about to kill me when he opens his sexy mouth to speak again. I know I’m about to be let in on something big.

“It’s just a fuckin’ rock,” he says, and he winks at me.

“Asshole!” I shout, drop his hand and stomp off, more upset with myself that I’d fall for something so obviously stupid. But I don’t get far as he snags the back of my shirt pulling me to a stop.

“Wait. Wait. I was just teasin’ you, darlin’.”

“What did you just call me?”

“Darlin’. Why?”

“Someone used to call me that a long time ago.”

“Well, you are quite the darlin’. But if you don’t like it, I won’t do it again.”

“It’s fine. You just caught me off guard.”

“You still mad at me?” He quivers his bottom lip, flutters his eyelashes.

“No. But my car’s just there.” I point to the street where I’d left my car parked while we went to lunch. I wish we hadn’t gotten here so soon. “I have to find a hotel before I do anything else. Had been hoping when I rolled into town that Hadley would let me stay with her. She wouldn’t even let me in the house, so I really have no choice now.”

“Okay, come to the bar when you’re checked in.”

Mark pulls me closer resting his hands on my upper arms, not a hug but it could be if he shifted those arms just a bit more. His eyes scan my face, watching my eyes anticipating his kiss then they drop to my lips which suddenly become so dry I have no choice but to lick them. Then his gaze drops lower to my chest raising and lowering with slow exaggerated movements mirroring that same anticipation he sees in my eyes. Finally. Finally he bends his head in a slow descent, and I just know I’m about to get my first kiss in five long years to actually mean something. Look at him, how could a kiss by this man not mean something wonderful?

But then he stops, lips hovering a good five inches from mine, he closes his eyes, swallows hard then shoves back away from me, dropping his hands from my arms and everything. What just happened?

I’m still standing in stunned silence when he clears his throat. “Right…” he starts. “Go find your hotel.”

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