Page 9 of Nashville Cowboy
How many more nights like this would there be, after all, before Lincoln was tethered to the ball and chain? There was the fishing trip/bachelor party coming that Jackson planned. It would be a day filled with worms, fish guts, and beer and then it would be all over for Lincoln. Tied to Sadie. Forever.
Jackson wished him good luck with that.
“I’m in,” Lincoln said, grabbing his keys. “You need to cool off.”
Cooling off was a damn good idea. He’d been in town an hour. How was he going to get through two weeks of this fresh hell?
Hedidn’t want to get married? Who the hell showed up at the church? Even though a week before their wedding, the band he’d played with on and off for years was suddenly headed to Nashville that summer. Jackson would stay behind. Get hitched. His twenty-one-year-old self didn’t know any better. And yeah, he’d loved Eve, like he imagined everyone did their first love.
She’d looked different tonight. Her coffee-colored hair was still wavy and long. But her hazel eyes…he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. They weredifferentsomehow. No shimmer. They were almost…hollow. Empty.
When he’d tried to fire her, it shocked him to the marrow that she’d backed off. Definitely not the girl he’d fallen for. That woman would have fought back immediately. Giving him hell. True, he didn’t know Eve anymore. Over the years he’d been sent a family photo or two with her in it. Always with either Sadie, or Lincoln and Sadie. Mostly his family knew better than to bring her up. She was still a sore subject.
Lincoln pulled into the bar and grill’s parking lot. Jackson knew even before stepping inside that the large dance floor would be empty and there would be mostly men in here, nursing away their sorrows over a cold beer. Far too many love stories in this town gone south.
He tipped his Stetson low as he entered behind Lincoln. Priscilla Longmire, the owner and part-time bartender was still behind the bar. She’d owned this place for decades and given Jackson his first chance at performing before an audience. She’d be around sixty now and still wore her dyed platinum blond hair teased out nearly two feet on either side of her head.
“Hey ya, ’Cilla,” Jackson called out.
“Oh my gawd, it’s you. Our hometown boy returns.”
Jackson accepted her hug across the bar and took in the strong smell of aerosol mixed with the scent of stale beer. He was fond of Priscilla, who’d allowed him to play every other Friday night when he was starting out.
“Missed you around here, Mr. Nashville. We lost the best man of all when you left town.”
“Still the best man,” Lincoln joked. “This time the best man in my weddin’.”
“I didn’t think anything would bring you back to our neck of the woods, after…” She blinked quickly, as if she’d accidentally stumbled upon a sticky spider web. “Uh, well, you know. Tell ya, some girls don’t got themselves a lick of sense.”
“Maybe she had the only sense out of any of us,” Jackson said, realizing he was being generous. “I realize now there’s a whole world out there, with plenty of you beauties around.”
“Aw, now, ain’t you sweet.Andslick.” She threw a towel over her shoulder and eyed him from under obviously false eyelashes. “When’dyouget so slick?”
“Two drafts,” Jackson ordered, not willing to indulge any further conversation into his slickness.
Hard-won, that’s what. He’d been considered a country bumpkin his first years in Nashville. Not anymore.
Priscilla poured, then nudged her chin to the direction of the far wall nearest to the dance floor and mock-stage area. “See there. Still got your first ax.”
Jackson’s first guitar still hung from the wall in a place of honor on ’Cilla’s Wall of Fame. It was a cheap secondhand he’d found at a thrift store when he was sixteen. He’d long since upgraded. Still, Jezebel was special. Gratification pulsed through him to see she hung just above framed and signed photos of Johnny Cash, who Priscilla claimed crawled in one night many years ago and performed for a small crowd.
“Hey, I’m somehow above Cash. Can’t complain.”
One of the Henderson brothers wandered over on their way out and clapped Jackson’s shoulder, welcoming him back to town. Jolette Marie Truehart seemed to be one of two women in here tonight.
Jackson paid for their drinks and he and Lincoln settled in at two of the stools. A few down from them, two men sat talking. Jackson didn’t recognize either one of them.
“I don’t know what I did wrong,” one of them said. “Treated her right, never cheated.”
The other man clapped him on the back. “We need to move out of this town.”
Seemed nothing much changed around here, which should not surprise him. The only work was ranching work, and hobbies included hunting and fishing. Didn’t bring a lot of women into town.
“I’ll tell ya. I promised I wouldn’t come back until I’d made a name for myself.” Jackson waved the beer in Linc’s direction. “Only came back for you.”
“I thought things were going good for you in Nashville.”
That was pretty much the party line he’d sent home because no one wanted to hear him whine about his problems when there was a cattle ranch to be run. But truthfully, he’d been writing songs for other musicians because that was the most lucrative. Fans loved his songs. Eventually, he’d get another recording deal but so far, he managed a living writing songs for much bigger artists and playing honky-tonks and some larger halls as an opening act.
