Dirty Little Secret by Jennifer Echols
Inside, I wound around knots of bawdy frat boys and giggling fashionistas to find Sam and Ace in a dark corner. When Sam glanced up at me and stopped talking, I knew they’d been conferring about me. As if that wasn’t obvious enough, Ace turned to look at me, too, and his eyes widened.
I stood in front of them. “Can I have a minute with Sam?” I asked Ace.
Ace cut his eyes to Sam, who looked like he wished Ace wouldn’t abandon him there with me. Ace didn’t dare stay after he saw the look on my face, but he did tap his watch. “We don’t have much time,” he said as he dove back into the crowd.
I turned to Sam. “Now,” I said, “tell me about your girlfriend.”
Some small part of me held out hope that Charlotte had been wrong, or lying, and Sam would have no idea what I was talking about. But he knew exactly who I meant. My heart sank into the pit of my stomach as he eyed me and said, heartbreakingly serious, “I told you about Emily.”
“No, you didn’t,” I assured him.
His brow furrowed. “I didn’t want to mess things up between us.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t have screwed me and then broken up with me.”
“I did not screw—” His eyes flew to the girls in clubbing dresses who turned to look us up and down. Then he whispered to me, “You can’t do this to me right now.”
“I can’t do this to you?”
“At a gig,” he explained. “We’re still in this band together.”
I could tell from the blaze behind his eyes that he was not backing down. Nothing mattered except this gig, until the gig was over.
I wasn’t backing down either. Not this time. “You need to get over that,” I said. “What if the next girl you take advantage of confronts you right before you go onstage at the Opry?”
“No,” he said firmly, forgetting that he was trying not to attract attention to our fight. “Do not go there. Girls always say guys took advantage of them or talked them into something. Guys say girls seduced them. What you and I did was mutual. Don’t you dare say it wasn’t.”
“You have some kind of problem,” I told him, “and you used me to try to get over it, like you’ve used a hundred other girls in the past year.”
“A hundr—” He stopped himself with a grimace, glanced around at the crowd, and started again. “I don’t want that kind of excuse. The truth is, Emily and I dated for a year. That’s a long time for me, longer than I’ve ever dated anybody. At first she was really excited about my gigs, and I was excited about her being excited. But we started to get on each other’s nerves. She never seemed to have her own . . . not a gig, exactly. She didn’t play gigs. But she never had her own metaphorical gig. A thing. An event. A sport she played, something she did so I could come watch her. Maybe I should have been flattered by that, but it got to be too much. I felt suffocated because all her attention was on me all the time, and I didn’t feel the same way about her.
“I’d decided to tell her that and break up with her, but I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, because we’d had a lot of fun together and I still liked her. Then she wanted to go to a party and I refused to go. Sometimes I skip parties if there’s drinking. I don’t mind other people drinking, but at parties the assholes want to get me drunk for the first time because they think it would be hilarious. So I told her I wasn’t going, and I planned to tell her the next time I saw her that it was over between us. At the party she got drunk. She didn’t have a ride home. She crashed her car into a guardrail and died.”
He said all of this matter-of-factly, with no change in the tone of his voice. But his fists tightened, and the muscles moved in his forearm.
“Her family wanted me to sit with them at the funeral, which I did. All her relatives and friends were telling me if only she hadn’t died, we would have been together forever.”
“They said that to you?”
“Yes, which . . . you forgive people for saying weird shit when somebody dies. The thing is, none of it is true. She wasn’t the love of my life, and I’m not going to pretend she was just because she’s dead.”
He peeked out from under his cowboy hat at the crowd, like he was about to get caught with his hand in my dress. I wished now that our problems were that simple. I wished for the fight from our first night together.
He said, “And then sometimes I think I’m being really weird about that because as long as I’m angry about the whole thing, I can’t panic.”
“What would you panic about?” I asked. “That you weren’t there?”
“To drive her home. Yeah. I had told a couple of friends that I was going to break up with her. After the wreck, some people were saying she’d heard about that, and she drove off the road on purpose. In another version, she just got really drunk at the party because she was so upset about me, and that’s what caused her to have a wreck later. Either way, it’s my fault. Maybe I was put on this earth to do one thing, to get her home safely, and I didn’t do it.”
I looked around the bar, at the girls sipping beer and laughing. The way they eyed Sam, I knew any one of them would be glad to comfort him in his grief and loss. Maybe valuing myself as much as I valued him made me strangely cold. As his friend, I would have been glad to help him get over his problems. I didn’t appreciate being surprised by them as his lover.
“You date a girl until you start to have feelings for her,” I told him, “and then you break up with her. But you never got very far with anyone. Which means one of two things for me. Either I’m incredibly easy, and you knew that and took advantage. Or, you felt less for me than you’ve ever felt for anybody, because you were able to get so far with me before you got uncomfortable and ended it.”
His nostrils flared in distaste, and he stood up straighter against the wall. “You think I’m a nice guy and you can say anything to me, but there’s a limit to how much bullshit I’ll listen to from you. Emily doesn’t have anything to do with you. I didn’t break up with you because of her. I just realized we can’t ever be together. You’ll always wonder whether I’m just using you for your sister’s connections.”
“And you really will be using me.”
He looked down, half an acknowledgment.
“Anyway,” I said, “I’m not saying you broke up with me because of Emily. Charlotte also told me that when Emily died, that’s when your emotional problems started.”
He looked sharply at me.
“At first it seems like you feel more than other people,” I said. “But I’ve finally figured out Charlotte’s right. You feel less. You’re numb. And you’re trying to get some of that emotion back, even if it hurts. Even if it hurts other people. I really thought you and I had a connection. I know I didn’t always show it. I tried not to. But when you broke up with me, you broke my heart. And I swear you made it worse on purpose. You wanted to make it the ultimate breakup by consummating our love first.”
“The way you acted, I honestly didn’t think you cared,” Sam said. “Not like I did.”
“I see.” I nodded. “You’re telling me I’m an emotionless bitch.”
“Not a bitch,” he said levelly, ever the gentleman.
“Really,” I said. “Here’s how much I care about you, Sam.” I opened my purse and pulled out my illustrated notebook of songs. I flipped through the pages and ripped out four together. “Here’s a song about you screwing me and then breaking up with me, thus trapping me forever in a fucking country song. This is how I felt about that last night.” I shoved the pages at his chest.
He opened the pages in his hands, but I didn’t watch him read them. I was already searching backward through the notebook for another choice song. “Here’s how I felt when I first met you, since that obviously wasn’t clear. Oh, wait.” I flipped in the other direction. “Would you rather know how I felt when we couldn’t get along, but I knew we’d be onstage together the next night anyway? Or how I felt when you undressed me in your truck?”
“Bailey,” he said sternly, like I was a little girl making a
“I beg your pardon,” I exclaimed. “A gig! There’s nothing more important.” I yanked the torn pages from him, folded them inside the notebook, and shoved the whole thing back into his chest. “Here are my songs, my emotions about you, that I will never have again. Take them and climb to the top with them. I have no use for them or for you.”
I spun on my boot heel and pushed through the crowd and the stuffy air to the rooftop. As I emerged under the stars and the twinkling lights strung along the walls, I saw Charlotte and Ace at the guardrail where Charlotte and I had talked. She was on her tiptoes, about to kiss him. The hair on my arms stood up.
“Oh, don’t do it,” I said to myself, but I meant it for her. Whatever was standing between them, they hadn’t worked it out, and she was about to ruin everything.
He stayed stock-still for a moment. Then he slipped one hand behind her head and kissed her deeply. Just as suddenly, he stepped away from her. He was angry at her, pointing his finger in her face, pointing out at the crowd. I saw him mouth, “Sam,” and Charlotte burst into tears.
“That’s right,” I told her, though she still couldn’t hear me and it was none of my business, anyway. “You should never start something when you haven’t finished the last thing. People feel used that way.”
“What?” Sam demanded. He’d caught up with me.
“Absolutely nothing,” I said, grasping the hand that Ace offered me from the stage. Charlotte still stood against the guardrail, sobbing.
“Well, this will be a fun set.” As I grabbed my fiddle and tuned up, I noticed that the manicure girls stood near the door, talking with Aidan Rogers. He gazed up at me and opened his mouth in utter amazement. Immediately he pulled out his phone and thumbed the keyboard.
I muttered, “And here comes Toby.”
I had no doubt Aidan really texted Toby then, but it took Toby three songs to reach the roof, probably because he was three sheets. Despite the fact that he’d changed his hair from dyed black to bleached blond and gotten a second eyebrow piercing in the week and a half since the wreck, I recognized him right away because he was so tall and thin, a head above the crowd. He stood next to Aidan for a moment, talking with Aidan but never taking his eyes off me. Then he started to move in my direction.
I had nothing to worry about. He could stare all he wanted, but I felt safe several feet above the crowd and him. I turned away from him and watched Sam for the signal to start the fourth song.
The next time I looked around, Toby was alarmingly close. Despite the tightly packed crowd, he’d managed to push within three people of the stage. He locked eyes with me. I lifted my chin and looked at the Nashville skyline, concentrating on my solo.
Then when I looked down, he was right next to me. My heart jumped, but I didn’t. I didn’t even glance over at Sam for help. I didn’t need his help. Toby would never intimidate me again.
Even though I’d made an effort not to signal to Sam about what was going on like a helpless female, somehow he knew. “Next we’d like to do an easy Johnny Cash tune for you,” he said into the microphone. “ ‘Cocaine Blues.’ ”
I had no time to check for Toby’s reaction. “Cocaine Blues” was a doozy, not the kind of song that the lead singer of a band should drop into the playlist and spring on his fiddle player, especially after he’d lulled her into a false sense of security with Justin Timberlake and Ke$ha. We got through it okay, though, because we were professional musicians. And then when I glanced down at Toby, he was looking straight up at me and licking his lips.
I pulled Sam’s handkerchief from the pocket of my dress and wiped both my sweating palms, holding my fiddle and bow in the crook of one elbow and then the other.
“Switch places with me,” Sam called. His voice didn’t register with me at first because he’d said it outside the range of the microphone. When I understood what was going on and looked over at him, he nodded toward Toby, then moved his finger between himself and me.
I hadn’t asked for his help, but I wasn’t going to refuse it, either. Obediently I switched places with him. We took a moment to detangle our cords while the crowd whooped impatiently. Sam glanced behind him at Ace and Charlotte, who must have been motioning that they wanted to know what was going on, because Sam put up his hands and shrugged. His one-night stand’s leering ex was hard to explain during a set. He signaled to Charlotte to start the next song.
I tried not to look toward Toby. I kept my chin up and my eyes above the crowd. But he was so close to the stage that I couldn’t miss his white-blond head and the angry curses from other guys as he pushed his way from Sam’s side of the stage to my new side.
When the song ended, Sam took a moment to stare Toby down silently. Don’t do this, I messaged telepathically to Sam. Challenging Toby would only make things worse. But Sam and I had no psychic connection. The crowd got restless. Someone yelled, “Play ‘Freebird’!” Sam glared at Toby for a few seconds more and finally signaled to Charlotte, who started the song.
And Toby grabbed my ankle.
I never stopped playing. The crowd didn’t notice mistakes. They noticed hesitation. I could play right through this number and then deal with Toby.
His hand slid up my calf to pause at the back of my knee.
Now I was shivering, afraid he would yank me offstage and forward into the crowd. My fiddle might get scratched, and my mother would never forgive me.
His hand moved up the back of my thigh, under my skirt.
Sam’s voice and guitar riff disappeared. He’d stopped playing and was staring at Toby. Slowly I lowered my fiddle like Toby was a snake I didn’t want to startle with any sudden moves.
It took Ace and Charlotte another few seconds to stop playing. Even the crowd noise slowed to a halt. Into the dead silence on the rooftop, Sam growled into the microphone so that his words echoed against the brick walls, “Get your hands off my fiddle player.”
Holding my fiddle and bow, I didn’t have a hand free to defend myself. I could only shudder as Toby’s hand crept higher.
Sam dropped his guitar. I felt a spike of adrenaline and the urge to leap forward and catch it. But before the electrified strings’ earsplitting complaint sounded over the speakers, Sam was off the stage, shoving Toby.
Guys shouted. Girls screamed. I reached blindly into the crowd to grab Sam and only succeeded in dropping my bow. Ace leaped past me. The entire crowd shifted to the left, then parted, drawing Toby and Sam away from each other, despite some idiot hollering, “Fight!”
The door to the interior of the bar burst open. “Break it up!” a burly bouncer yelled. Two even bigger men followed him. The crowd stopped moving toward Toby and Sam then and began to drain sheepishly out the door. One of the bouncers grabbed Toby by the collar of his T-shirt and made a show of muscling him out, even though Toby had gone limp. In two minutes, nobody was left but a couple of older men who probably owned the bar, and the band.
I jumped down from the stage to retrieve my bow, which didn’t seem any worse for wear after I’d retightened the screw. Then I sat down on the edge of the stage, crossed my legs primly, and listened to the owners cuss Sam out because they’d had to clear everyone into the first and second stories until the next rooftop band set up, and a lot of those people would probably leave.
“Your patron had his hand on my girlfriend’s ass!” Sam shouted right back at them. “I won’t start a brawl if your security people do their jobs!”
That’s when Ace walked over. “Please excuse us for a moment,” he told the owners. He put his hand on Sam’s chest and pushed him backward across the floor, all the way to me on the stage. Then he hissed, “Shut up. Let me handle this.”
“Ace,” Sam cried, “they—”
“Shut. Up!” Ace insisted. He gave Sam one last glare, then sauntered back to the group of men with his hand out for introductions like he was selling them a car. Sam scowled after them for a moment, then took out his phone and scowled at that.
“Sure,” I said with lots of fake enthusiasm, “if they’ll fit in my car.”
“Ace isn’t talking to me,” she said. “I think I fucked up.”
“I think you did, too,” I said.
“Thank you,” Ace called to the men, who were retreating through the door into the bar. “See you soon.” When they’d disappeared, he turned to us with rage in his normally placid face. “Well, we’re not blackballed,” he said, “but we have five minutes to clear out before the next band. I swear to God, I’m not sure I even want to be in this band anymore. I am sick to death of you.” He pointed at Sam. “And you!” He had a special scowl for Charlotte. Then he turned to me. “And . . . I don’t know what the fuck you’re doing half the time. The way things are going, I’d just as soon quit.”
“That’s too bad,” Sam said quietly, handing Ace his phone with an e-mail message open, “because tomorrow night, we’re playing on Broadway.”
The next afternoon, at the end of a long four hours touring the mall with Mr. Crabtree and Elvis, I slipped into Ms. Lottie’s chair.
“Well, hon,” she said by way of greeting, “I didn’t think your face could get any longer than it already was.”
Suddenly angry and tired of her teasing, I burst out, “Remember when you told me Sam Hardiman was a heartbreaker?”
She stared at me in the mirror with two hairpins in her mouth and two hands on my ponytail wig.
“I am done with all the sage advice Nashville has to offer. If you’re going to hurt, not help, what are you dispensing advice for?”
Frowning, she spat out the pins, which made the smallest clinks as they hit the floor, and spun me around in the chair to face her. She towered over me with her hands on her hips. “Sam Hardiman is a good man,” she declared angrily.