“Thank you.”
More cheers.
One of the boys threw out the beginning of “It’s So Easy” and I went right back to the mic, drawn to it in a way I didn’t even try to resist.
We hadn’t cleared the first verse when I looked out the sides of my eyes to take in the audience to my right and I saw him.
Deke head and shoulders above the back of the standing crowd pressed close to the tables.
No.
Shit, no.
The show went on. It had to.
No matter what.
So I kept singing, turning my head and staring at his blank face.
His expression showed nothing but his eyes were glued to me.
It was a great song. I loved that song. My mother loved, then hated (due to Dad and what that song turned into), then loved again that song.
But right then, staring into Deke’s eyes, it said way too much.
I kept singing it right to him. I couldn’t stop. Music was moving from me, communicating through me (this time right at Deke), and I was a Lonesome. That was in my DNA. If I could use it to say what I had to say, I would do it and my brain couldn’t stop it.
You’d have to rip the guitar from my hands and gag me.
And “It’s So Easy” didn’t have a lot of different words.
But for Deke, it still said it all.
I managed to tear my gaze away during the twanging guitar solo.
But during the harmony at the end and my final notes, my hair flew everywhere as I yanked the guitar strap over my head, holding the guitar out to no one, saying into the mic when the song was done, “Thank you. Thanks for listening. Now keep enjoying this awesome band.”
I did this because Deke was prowling out.
One of the guys in the band took the guitar. I quickly mumbled my thanks and other musician brethren stuff and ran off the stage, jumped down, pushed through the applauding, shouting crowd and hit the door to hit the chilly night and see nothing but a full parking lot.
I looked left. I looked right. And lucky for me (or not, as the case I would have to find out would be), he was a man who was easy to see, even at a distance.
“Deke!” I shouted, dashing that way, my long, spangled gypsy skirt flowing back, my cowboy boots hitting the pavement not drowned out even if the music inside was leaking through the concrete walls of Bubba’s. “Deke!” I shouted again as I saw him throw a long leg over a bike. I was no longer dashing, now I was sprinting.
He looked at me and watched me make it the last fifteen feet, stopping on a near-skid at his side and taking in a huge breath.
I peered into his impassive face.
“Deke,” I whispered.
“Shouldn’t’ve cut the set short,” he replied.
“I—”
“Get it, Jus,” he stated, his words clipped. “You bein’ Jus. Just Jus. That bein’ important to you, ’specially at a time like this. Get it. Probably not easy bein’ you. Dad like that. People wantin’ a piece of you.”
I moved closer, not sure whether to lift a hand and touch him, watching his face intently.
“I was gonna—”
He jerked his head to the bar. “You got what your dad had. You should do something with it.”
My mouth snapped shut.
He didn’t know me.
Or at least the Justice Lonesome part of me.
Then he proved me wrong.
Partially.
“Gettin’ this out there, we met,” he announced.
“What?” I was again whispering.
“Years back. Night my ma had her first heart attack. We met at a bar up in Wyoming.”
He remembered?
Wait.
The night his mother had a heart attack?
Again.
Wait.
Her first one?
His eyes went to my hair then back to me. “Bad night, heard word, took off, nearly lost her,” he stated emotionlessly. “It’d be her third heart attack few years later that finally did her in but that first one shook me. Your hair. Those eyes. Knew I knew you from somewhere, musta blocked it because that night and the next however many fuckin’ sucked. Saw you today with your notebook. Came to me. Met you that night and you had a notebook almost like that. You were at a dude ranch. You don’t remember but we met.”
“I do,” I told him quietly. “I just thought you didn’t.”
He nodded, sussing it out immediately.
Maybe.
“So no Justice.”
No, dammit.
I didn’t give him Justice.
I got closer. “Deke—”
“I get it. Must be hard, bein’ you.”
“There’s more to tell.”
“Not really. Got a famous dad. Shit ton of money. Even more talent. He’s gone, don’t pay attention to that shit but still know the media feeds off anything just as long as it’s shitty. Go into a frenzy they got the shot to feed off your grief. Your brother bein’ an asshole, more fuel to that fire. You disappear in the mountains. I get it.”
Actually, thankfully, the media had not yet locked onto what Mav was doing.
I didn’t share that with Deke at that juncture.
“It’s that and it’s other stuff, Deke,” I told him. “Can we go somewhere? Talk?”
“’Bout what, Jus?” he asked. “I get it.”
“The other stuff,” I repeated.
“You don’t gotta give me what you don’t wanna give me. Got no call to own it. Don’t want that call. Made that clear so you know that.”
At his words, I took a step back.
He looked down at my feet then up at me.
It was late. Dark. But Krystal and Tate didn’t mess around with lights in their parking lot.