Page 43 of The Making of Mila and Blake
I press my hands to the counter behind me and bite down hard on my lip as I gaze across the tiny staff room at Blake, the music from the third floor beating distantly around us. “So, about Teddy. . .”
Blake tenses slightly and I notice the tightening of his jaw despite the neutral expression he’s forcing himself to maintain. “Teddy. . .” he echoes. “What are you about to tell me, Mila?”
“So, I kissed him at the pool party.”
“I know. I saw,” Blake cuts in sharply.
“Okay, but. . .” With a mortified laugh, I bury my face in my hands. “It wasn’t real. I just wanted to see if you still cared about me.”
Blake’s sigh fills the room, but I hear the playfulness in his words. “Damn, Mila, I accidentally stormed into one of my aunt Patsy’s vases that night. I had to cough up fifty bucks for a replacement,” he groans, and then his pitch rises with hope. “So, you aren’t interested in him like that?”
I drop my hands from my face to look Blake in the eye when I tell him, “No.”
“Hmm,” Blake says. He strums a couple more notes and then folds his arms over the top of his guitar. “I think he’s interested inyou,though.”
My stomach knots. It was only Monday that Teddy kissed me for real. “What makes you think that?”
“C’mon, Mila. You were there when he saw us together at the ranch. The guy had major issues,” he scoffs. He decides his guitar is ready to rock and he stands from the couch, the guitar by his hip, his eyes smoldering. “I can’t blame him, though,” he murmurs. “It’s hard not to like you.”
My breath hitches and the intensity in our gazes forms an unspoken understanding that we might just lean forward and let our lips find each other, but a thunderous rap at the door kills the moment.
Marty, the owner who has sprouted a thick mustache since I last saw him, shoves his head into the staff room. “Oh, good, you’re in here. Let’s get moving, Blake. You’re on in five.”
“Alright, let’s do it,” Blake says, and he follows Marty back out into the bar with me by his side.
We head downstairs to the first floor where the two-man band is finishing up their set with a roof-raising country rock cover and Marty disappears to the side of the stage. Blake and I remain back at the bar and his hand nervously moves around the headstock of his guitar. He analyzes the crowd, gauging whether or not they’ll be tough to impress, and then suddenly stiffens.
I follow the direction of Blake’s eyes and realize what he has spotted. At a table by the open windows, Jason sits alone with his face shielded beneath a cowboy hat.
“Hey, look! Your dad came!” I exclaim cheerfully, but Blake doesn’t have the joyful reaction I expect him to. At his gig here two years ago, he was disappointed when his dadcouldn’tmake it.
He brushes past me, his eyes zeroed in on only his father, and marches across Honky Tonk Central with a purposeful stride. People even move out of the way for him, and I trail behind, wondering why there is such anger radiating from him.
As we near Jason’s table, he notices us approaching and hops off the bar stool to greet us with the dip of his hat.
“Hey, son!”
“Why the hell are you here?” Blake snaps.
My eyes widen in surprise. “Hey. . .” I try, touching Blake’s arm, but he shrugs me off. There is one thing about Blake that I wish I could change, and that’s his short fuse. When he’s angry, he can’t focus on anything else. There is no reeling him back from the edge.
Hurt flashes in Jason’s eyes and he removes his hat, twisting it around in his hands as he shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “Can’t I see you perform? I’m here to support you, Blake.”
“I don’t want you here,” Blake says, and when he gestures to the bar where the bartenders are handing over bottles of beer, mixing up cocktails and dunking lime wedges into vodka sodas, I get it. “There was a reason I didn’t invite you. You can’t be here, Dad.”
“I’m not going near the bar,” Jason says.
“It doesn’t matter! Just being in here isn’t going to do you any favors.” Blake pinches the bridge of his nose in exasperation and then points at the round of drinks on the next table over, enjoyed by a group of friends in their late twenties. “Look! Are you seriously telling me you haven’t been eyeing those drinks?”
Jason lowers his gaze with a shamed gulp. “Blake. . . just let me watch you and then I’ll leave. I promise. Here, take my wallet.” Desperate to remain in the bar, he frantically grabs his wallet from his pocket and thrusts it into the center of Blake’s chest. “See? Now I definitelycan’tbuy a drink.”
Blake catches the wallet before it falls and promptly forces it back into Jason’s hand. “Just leave, Dad. Please.”
Jason’s shoulders sink in defeat and he catches my eye, perhaps hoping for a semblance of backup from me, but I only frown. He tucks his wallet away, nestles his hat back over his untamed rockstar hair, and makes for the door.
Blake doesn’t tear his eyes from Jason until he is completely out of sight, but his breathing remains shallow and tense. He is on stage in a matter of minutes now, but his focus has clearly been thrown off. I wonder how Jason even knew he was performing tonight.
“Wasn’t that a little harsh?” I ask, unable to ignore the sympathy I feel for Jason. He seemed like he really meant it when he said he wasn’t going to drink tonight, that he just wanted to be here to support his son, and I can’t shake the image of his wounded expression as Blake rejected him.
