Arguing is pointless. Two can play this game.
I ease out of the parking lot and take a left, heading in the direction of downtown Nashville. I love this city that I’ve called home for the last nine years. It vibrates with life and vitality. It also vibrates with tourists trying to get in a one-night stand before they fly cross-country back to their fiancées or wives. No thanks. Hard pass.
“Don’t try to hook me up, Carmen. I mean it.”
“Would I do that?”
I press the brakes a bit too hard at the four-way stop, and our seatbelts kick in as the force of gravity drives us forward. “Yes. Yes, you would. You have. You do it All. The. Time. I am happy alone.”
“No one is happy alone,” she counters, believing what she says to be true.
“I am.” I poke my finger into the middle of my breastbone a little too hard. Ouch. “I am happy alone.” Mostly. Sometimes. Fine…someone to cuddle with could be nice once in a while. Definitely not on the regular.
She shrugs, but those large dark eyes belie her If you’re happy, I’m happy speech.
We stay this way, our gazes locked in a duel, until the impatient honk of a horn behind us forces me to move.
I skip the liquor store, eyeing it longingly as we drive past. Our twenty-minute ride to the Gulch ends up being filled with meaningless chatter, and by the time I pull up to the valet outside of Sambuca, I’m feeling marginally better. We quickly spot our friends, Wendy and Yvette, whom I absolutely adore. They gush over my outfit and the touch of rosy posy matte lipstick I swiped on earlier, and I relax even more.
A round of hugs and kisses later, I enter one of my favorite restaurants in the city, all but forgetting the man I haven’t met yet.
2
Nice To Meet Ya
Laurel
Ten Years Earlier
February 9, 10:48 p.m.
I sit comfortably in a worn and oversized armchair that doesn’t match any of the others around me. It wobbles and protests every time I move, and I wonder how many people have sat in it before me, enjoying the wash of smooth jazz flowing through their blood the way I am.
We’re so close to the stage, I could reach out and touch the pianist. He’s good-looking and I’m feeling so sassy in my mustard yellow dress that I might even flirt with him if he were paying me any attention. But he’s not. It’s Carmen who has his eye, though she’s doing nothing to overtly encourage him. She has her Manny and while men may fall at her feet, she does nothing to bring them to their knees. They do that all on their own.
Wendy and Yvette left us after a fabulous dinner. Wendy teaches Sunday school and has to be up at the crack of dawn and Yvette has a two-year-old at home, with another on the way. I was tired and looking forward to getting home early myself, but Carmen insisted that ten o’clock is when the party starts, not ends. Sometimes it’s easier to give in than to argue, so here we are after leaving Sambuca, at one of the best jazz clubs in Nashville in my opinion.
“What can I get you?”
I take my attention from hot piano man to the petite waitress now standing over me. Her skirt is short, and her bulb cheeks are flushed. It’s clear she is hurried and stressed. Her gaze bores into me urgently, making me feel as if I don’t order right now, I will forfeit my right to order a drink altogether.
“Water.”
“Water?” she repeats with no shortage of contempt.
Suddenly I feel pressured. This venue is small. She’s likely living on her paltry tips to pay her rent or perhaps her father’s medical bills, and even though I limit myself to one drink when I’m driving, a free water isn’t going to help her in the least.
“Ah…a lemon drop martini?”
“You sure?” She blinks rapidly. I know she knows she’s capitalizing on my distress.
“Do you have beer instead?”
She heaves a sigh and cocks a hip, clearly annoyed at my stupid question. “Yes, we have beer.”
“What kinds do you have?”
She rolls her eyes toward the ceiling and with an overexaggerated sigh starts reciting your standard list of domestic beers: “Bud, Bud Light, Coors, Coors Light…” None of which I am interested in. I don’t even really like beer.
“Is the martini not good?” I ask after she finishes her beer dissertation, indecision on the best cocktail weighing me down. To my right, Carmen is snickering with a shake of her head.
I do this all the time. I will agonize over a meal or a drink or a pair of sandals before I am forced to make a decision. Which may be the real reason my closet hasn’t seen an influx of new items except for my mother’s in nearly a decade.
“The martini is fine.” The waitress, sans name tag, glares down at me. She’s about over me. I don’t blame her. “Best martini in town,” she adds, unconvincingly, before throwing a glance to a table about six feet to my right. They are starting to get impatient waiting on me to make up my mind so they, too, can get their drink on, though it appears they’ve had a few too many of those already.
“You know what, just surprise me.”
“Surprise you?”
Wow. You’d think I’d asked her to donate her only remaining kidney to a serial killer.
“Yes. House special is fine.”
“Okaaaay.” Without a second glance, our brusque waitress bounces off on her high heels, relieved to be rid of me. I’m slightly worried what she’ll bring back.
“What’d you go with?” Carmen asks me, voice pitched low as to not interrupt those around us.
This isn’t a traditional downtown Nashville bar. There aren’t throngs of people packed wall to wall like sardines. There is no drunk groping or girls puking in bathroom stalls. There aren’t hookups in dark corners on rooftops or dirty dancing around the stage to music so loud you’ll end up hoarse by the end of the night trying to scream over it. Rudy’s Jazz Club isn’t what I’d call classy, per se, but it is eclectic and intimate and, in my opinion, the best place in town for Louisiana-style red beans and rice and incredibly talented musicians who simply love their craft.
I shrug in response to Carmen’s question. She smiles that engaging smile of hers before fishing her phone out of her clutch. By the way her entire being lights up, it has to be Manny. Her fingers fly across the lit screen, clearly replying to a text, and as she easily slips the phone back into her purse, she swings her eyes to me.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“Nothing, chica. Everything is fine.”
She taps her fingers in a quick rhythm against her leg. I know that particular fidget. And I generally don’t like what follows it.
I squeeze my eyebrows together, my forehead bunching up as I scrutinize her. “What are you up to?”
“Why do you always think I’m up to something?”
“Because you always are,” is on its way out of my mouth, but there is a lull in the music at the tail end of Carmen’s reply as the band ends one song and starts up another, and Carmen’s high-pitched “something” echoes off the walls in those few empty seconds. I sense eyes from the entire room fall upon us in judgment. Someone whispers a rather uncalled for, “Shut up, bitch,” and Carmen slowly turns around in the general direction our little scolding came from.