“
I know.” I sighed. I really
didn’t want to think about this right now. “But I don’t have a
choice.”
“
Of course you do!” he
exclaimed loudly. He lowered his voice at the curious faces that
turned and looked at us. “Of course you have a choice. Just forget
it. It’s not the end of the world if you don’t complete this show.
There will be other chances. It’s not worth risking your life over,
Perry.”
I shook my head. He didn’t
understand at all. But I guess that wasn’t his fault.
He looked at me with the
most regarded expression. “Think about it. I’ll be leaving in the
morning. You can stay in the hotel with me. You’ll be safe, missy.
We’ll get out of this darned town and you can focus your efforts on
something else. Something, say, that won’t get you maimed by some
Navajo supernatural beast.”
“
And then what about Dex?”
I pointed out. I turned my head and looked over at him. He was
putting quarters in the jukebox and being chatted up by more
women.
Maximus followed my gaze
and chuckled. “Dex will be fine.”
“
What if he’s not?” I said.
“I can’t just leave him here.”
“
Yes, you can. If he doesn’t
want to leave, there’s nothing we can do about it.”
“
OK,
I
don’t
want to
leave him here then,” I said begrudgingly.
“
Perry. He’d leave you if he
had the choice,” he remarked. That stung. It wasn’t true, was
it?
“
No, he wouldn’t…,” I
trailed off despite my brave face.
“
Look. Though it’s been
years, I reckon I know him better than you do. I’m sure he’s
changed in many ways, but he’s still the Dex that I know and the
Dex that I know is a selfish son-of-a-bitch who has no regard for
anyone else, ever.”
That also stung. It really
cut me to hear him say that, even though I wasn’t in any place to
counter his opinion.
“
You said…he’s been through
a lot,” I started.
“
He has. I told you that so
you’d have a tiny bit of understanding but it doesn’t explain
everything. It’s no excuse. Yeah, things in life suck sometimes and
they can bring you down and set you back. But all that did was give
Dex an even greater excuse to continue being an
asshole.”
That was it. I had enough
of this top secret mumbo jumbo bullcrap. I stopped dancing for a
second and stiffened my limbs. I looked him square in the eye,
demanding the truth.
“
What the hell did he do to
you?”
Maximus glanced uneasily in
Dex’s direction. He was back at the booth, drinking and laughing
along to something with Bird and the two cougars who had sat down
with him. One of the cougars, the more attractive blonde in overtly
pink lipstick, had her hand on his leg.
“
I’ll consider going with
you if you can give me an example of all this bad blood that
doesn’t seem to stop gushing all over the place,” I goaded, hoping
he would take the bait, hoping he wasn’t going to say something
that would actually want me to leave Dex behind.
“
He slept with my
girlfriend.”
So it finally came out.
Figures it would be that.
“
I see,” I nodded. “No
wonder he was so possessive of Abby. He was just projecting
himself.”
“
He did
this
after
what
happened to Abby. When I was really there for him, helping him
through all his shit. He just went and slept with her.” From the
tone of his voice I could obviously see it was something he hadn’t
gotten over.
“
It’s been, like, ten years,
hasn’t it? Let it go,” I told him.
“
You’ve obviously never been
cheated on,” he sulked.
“
I have, actually. I know
very well. And yeah it makes me angry but people make
mistakes.”
“
You’re excusing
it?”
“
No. I am not. Not at all.
I fucking hate my ex-boyfriend for doing that to me but, you know,
I moved on. I don’t forgive him for it but I can’t let it eat me up
inside either.”
“
We were so close to
actually getting somewhere. Then he just…blew it for all of us,” he
sighed and twirled me around.
I was pulled into his
chest, confused. “Blew it?”
“
The band.
We were so close to making it, and then he had to go and get
himself…he just lost it. Lost himself. And left us. We could have
been something. I mean,
really
something.”
“
Wait, so what you’re
really upset about is the fact that your stupid band broke up?” I
didn’t mean to call the band stupid but the conversation was
getting stupid.
He didn’t say
anything.
I went on, “His girlfriend
dies.
Dies
. He
blames himself. He sleeps with your girlfriend. Then quits the
band. Before you said it was because he, well, kind of lost it
–”
“
Oh, he lost it,” he
interrupted.
“
Yeah. And
understandably.”
“
We were so close,” he
repeated. I wasn’t sure if he meant this time about the band’s
path, or his relationship with Dex, but he probably meant
both.
“
And now what are you
doing? Are you playing in a band? Are you practicing
music?”
“
No,” he mumbled. He was
starting to look uncomfortable, maybe ashamed. I didn’t want to add
to it but someone had to be the voice of reason. I wonder if this
is what Ada felt when dealing with me. The fleeting thought of Ada
made me feel warm inside, stronger almost.
“
Maximus. I admit I don’t
know you. And I don’t know Dex as you say you do. But if you’ve
been harboring some…futile…grudge all these years, why the hell did
you contact Dex to come out here?”
At that, the song ended and
the dancing came to a halt. He was pondering it over, his eyes
anxiously roaming the space above my head as people came on and off
the dance floor.
“
I really wish you’d come
with me,” he said carefully and with sincerity, sidestepping the
question entirely. “Dex really isn’t the person you think he is. I
don’t want you to find that out the hard way.”
Now that I knew what was
what, I had to take everything Maximus said with a grain of salt. I
sighed, rolled my eyes and walked back to the table. Why couldn’t
Maximus have been the normal, much-needed, no agenda foil to Dex? I
suppose his job title of
ghost
talker
should have told me a lot to begin
with. I didn’t think I was ever going to meet anyone normal as long
as I was filming ghosts for a living. Then again, that was people.
Everyone had their baggage. God knows I was at the top of that
heap.
Just as we got back to the
table, the blonde cougar gave me a territorial glare and quickly
grabbed Dex’s hand and yanked him up with her.
“
You’re dancing with me
sugar,” she cooed. She put her arm around him and he laughed,
clearly enjoying the attention.
“
Like I have a choice,” he
grinned at her. I don’t think she picked up on the sarcasm. She
dragged him off as “Crocodile Rock” came on.
He winked at me as he
brushed past and I stifled a laugh. I had to see this.
Maximus and I sat down with
Bird. I guess the other cougar had gone off somewhere.
“
This will be interesting,”
Maximus commented as he plowed into his next beer. I wasn’t sure if
that was a guess or a statement.
I took a sip of my own beer
and watched the scene.
On the dance floor Dex
actually blended in. He had on his red Charlie Harper-esque bowling
shirt and had plucked a black cowboy hat off of someone and place
it on his own head, giving him that spiffy, cleaned up rancher
look. Not that it was my cup of tea but I had come to the
conclusion that you could dress Dex up like Steve Urkel and I’d
still find him attractive. Sigh.
The dancing was something
else. The cougar was a quick mover. Obviously she spent a lot of
years dancing at bars and manhandling young men. But Dex…that was
the surprise.
He moved like…I don’t know.
Using Gene Kelly as an example was pretty outdated but that’s the
first thing that came to my head. The man could dance. And to Elton
John, no less. He was doing a bit of line dancing, a bit of swing,
a bunch of something else I didn’t know, and mixing it all together
in some bizarre act that would have easily draw applause on
So You Think You Can Dance
.
It at least drew applause
from the people watching. Even Bird was mighty
impressed.
“
Your husband is quite the
dancer,” he commented while adjusting his own hat.
“
Yeah,” I breathed. I stole
a peek at Maximus. He didn’t look surprised at all. I suppose he
already knew this trick that hid up Dex’s sleeves, one of many I
was sure. And then I understood. Maximus was jealous of Dex, always
was. Maybe he wanted us here to use Dex (that seemed to be what Dex
thought with his “fifteen minutes of fame” comment) or maybe he
wanted to destroy him. Either way, I could see it in his eyes,
which turned such a cool shade of jade as he watched Dex, that
there was a lot of hate. And some love, too. Dex seemed to have
that affect on a lot of people, myself included.
I looked back at Dex. The
song had finished and already he was with some other woman. This
one was younger, maybe mid-twenties, with a shapely figure and a
cute face. A twinge of jealousy ran through me. Ugh. Maybe I had
more in common with the Cajun than I had thought.
“
That doesn’t bother you?”
Bird asked.
I looked up at him sharply.
This was the one circumstance where I could admit the truth. I
could sense Maximus eyeing me expectantly.
“
It does,” I said slowly.
“But I suppose I’m the jealous type.”
I looked at Maximus and met
his eye with all seriousness. “And who isn’t?”
He nodded. He was going to
draw his own conclusions from that and I couldn’t say that he’d be
wrong.
I sighed deeply and found
myself peeling the label off of my own bottle.
Then I stopped. To hell
with that.
I drank the beer
instead.
The song ended and I could
see a bunch of women approaching Dex, probably asking him to dance
or offering to buy him a drink. He was like the Cary Grant of the
Red Fox dance floor. OK, also an outdated reference.
The next song came on.
Billy Joel. “She’s Always a Woman.” It’s like the jukebox knew.
This was our song, or at least our singer. Well, not really. But in
my head it was. It reminded me of Oregon, when I was first getting
to know him. When I found out he could sing. When I found out we
were in for so much more that we thought.
My heart sank a little bit
over those first few piano notes. But Dex shook his head at the
ladies, said something to them with a smile, and flashed his ring.
Then he pointed at me. And my heart, my stupid heart,
stopped.
He walked off the floor,
grinning at me, like he had some fantastic present behind his back.
He stopped in front of our table while the disgruntled women looked
on. He tipped his hat (or whoever’s hat that was).
“
It’s our song,” he said. He
held out his hand. I took it, as if in slow motion, and let him
lead me onto the dance floor.
He put one arm around my
waist, holding me snuggly against him. It was a different kind of
awkward than it was with Maximus. It was a wonderful, head-spinning
awkwardness that made my heart beat out of my chest and my knees
turn to putty.
He held my hand with his
other one and grinned at me, our faces so intoxicatingly close that
he grazed the top of my head with the felt brim of his hat. I kept
my eyes on those cocoa brown orbs of his. It wasn’t
hard.
And then…then he started
singing along with Joel’s voice. Softly, quietly. I was such a
sucker right there and then and he knew it, that bastard. If he
wasn’t holding me up, my spine would have collapsed in a warm
puddle of blissed-out nerves.
He leaned further in and
sang into my ear, a deep murmur that sent shivers through me that I
tried to contain. Why was he doing this to me?
We didn’t say anything else
to each other. We just moved as one, gliding through the night. It
was like a telephoto shot, he was the only thing in focus.
Everything else just slipped away, a blur. It was wrong in so many
ways, but it felt so right. I felt whole, as stupid as that sounds.
I felt like nothing else mattered but this moment right now. Fuck
the skinwalkers, the filming, the ranch, the show. I just needed
this. I wanted this.
I closed my eyes and,
despite trying to save face, I laid my head on his shoulder.
Everything that was cooped up inside, all that crap, all those
worries were gone and it was just us. He smelled like aftershave,
that sweet tobacco and something else that made my blood pump hot
with desire. He sounded like roughed up velvet. He felt like I
never wanted to take my hands off of him.