So Much for My Happy Ending Page 6

  I sat there mesmerized for the rest of the set. I didn’t have to worry about carrying on a conversation with Caleb since he had zoomed in on the bartender’s bisexual tendencies. Several of the songs were a little too hard-core, but about one out of three was fantastic. Jeremiah was fantastic. At one point he let out a guttural moan and I felt a certain throbbing in my groin that I usually only felt while watching Brad Pitt movies. I bit down on my lip. No way was that man singing at my wedding.

  At the end of the night Allie and I abandoned Caleb so he could help the bartender “close” and went to an all-night burger joint so we could fulfill our daily allowance of saturated fat.

  Allie leaned forward over a plate of fried onion rings, putting her chapped nipple at risk of exposure. “Tell me those guys didn’t rock?” The Long Island ice teas she had consumed before leaving the club had left her diction with something to be desired.

  “They rocked,” I confirmed. “They must be playing pretty regularly if Jeremiah can afford a two-bedroom in your building. Or does he have roommates?”

  “He has four.” Allie dipped an onion in ketchup. “He’s so hot. All dark and dangerous, kind of disturbed…God, I’d love to use him as a weapon against my parents.”

  I smiled and chewed on an ice cube. “He looks Mediterranean or something.”

  “Italian, I think…He’s got those dark intense eyes. The kind of eyes you want to look into while being tied to a bed.” Allie’s eyes took on a kind of glazed look before she brought her attention back to clogging her arteries. “Speaking of which, how much time did Liz give you for your honeymoon?”

  “I’m taking eleven days off, so after you subtract the wedding and travel time we’ll have eight days in Spain.” Now, that was something I was looking forward to.

  “You should’ve chosen France.”

  “We’ve been over this—Tad’s fluent in Spanish, and I’ve always wanted to see Gaudi’s cathedral. Spain will be perfect.”

  “When planning a major vacation you should always pick the location that’s best able to cater to your passions. You’re passionate about art and fashion, so you should go to France.”

  “Ah, so does that mean your next vacation spot will be a liquor store?”

  I gasped as I felt Allie’s foot make contact with my shin. “That hurt!”

  “Yo, Allie, thought that was you.”

  Allie almost spit out her onion ring at the sound of Jeremiah’s voice.

  I looked up and tried not to seem awestruck. He was so not my type. He was too short (five-ten, tops). He needed a haircut, a new pair of jeans, some dark glasses to hide those insanely sexy eyes…I shook myself slightly and looked to Allie to see how she was going to respond, but she appeared to be choking.

  Jeremiah bent down a little. “Hey, are you all right?”

  “She’ll be fine.” Serves her right for kicking me. I thrust my water in her direction and offered my free hand to Jeremiah. “I’m April.”

  “Uh, hi.” He accepted my hand but still seemed a little preoccupied with Allie’s struggle for life.

  “Allie, can you say anything?” I asked.

  “I think I’m dying,” she wheezed between coughs.

  I turned back to Jeremiah. “You see? If she can talk she’s not choking. Really, she does this all the time. Your band was great tonight.”

  “We’ve been better.” He looked uncertainly at Allie, who was quickly recovering and using her regained strength to glare at me.

  “Would you like to join us?” I waved my hand toward the seat next to Allie. He might have been off-limits for me but if Allie could get him naked she could give me enough details to flesh out my fantasies.

  Allie managed a flirtatious smile and scooted over. “Where’s the rest of the band?”

  “They’re at some lame-ass party. Not that I got anything against smokin’ a little weed and listening to Bob Marley, but the guy throwing it has some serious issues. I figured I’d just grab a bite and chill for a while.”

  Well, this was perfect. I had found a guy who could have been spectacular wet-dream material and he had to screw it up by speaking. When was I going to learn, never let them talk.

  Allie gave him an understanding nod. In her world, adolescent drug addicts were acceptable dating material. “So, Jeremiah’s an unusual name. What’s your last name?”

  “Bullfrog.”

  Allie and I were silent.

  “Nah, I’m just shittin’ ya. It’s Ramano. My dad’s Italian. How ’bout you guys? Wait—” he pointed a finger at Allie “—I know your last name. It’s O’Riley, right? I saw it on your mailbox.”

  “Gosh, usually I wait until the third date before I let a guy check out my box,” Allie teased. I wanted to slap her.

  “My name’s Silverperson.”

  “Silverperson? Now who’s shittin’ who?”

  “You do realize that shittin’ isn’t actually a word.”

  Allie gave me a warning look but Jeremiah started cracking up.

  “It really is Silverperson,” I said. “My mom changed it to reflect her feminist ideals.”

  “No way, are you—”

  “Please don’t say it.”

  “—kidding me? I was gonna say kidding me.”

  He waved over a tired-looking waitress, her 1950s-style uniform bunched slightly at the hips. “Do you need a menu?”

  “Nah, just get me a cheeseburger, garlic fries and a milk shake. Thanks.”

  I discreetly took inventory of Jeremiah’s fit physique. To find evidence of God’s favoritism toward men one need only look to the difference in the metabolic rate between the two sexes. I sneaked a peek at my watch. I might be able to hurry Allie out of here if I helped eat her onion rings. I was tired, and curling up next to my tall, sexy, literate fiancé was sounding pretty great right about now.

  Allie dipped her finger in my ice water and sucked off the liquid suggestively. Jeremiah seemed unmoved. “So, Jeremiah’s a cool name. You ever go by Jerry?”

  “Nah, people hear Jerry and they think Seinfeld. Or Garcia if they’re a former dead head or something. And, you know, Jeremiah is a better name for a rock star.”

  “Oh, so now you’re a star?” I asked.

  Allie threw me another glare but I ignored her. If I ended up driving him off, she could thank me after her brain cells started working again.

  “Nah.” Jeremiah grinned and propped his foot up on the booth he was sitting on. “But I’m a great wannabe and that’s got to count for somethin’.”

  I laughed. “Kind of like the—”

  “Offspring’s song,” he finished. “I’m pretty fly for a white guy. That pretty much sums it up.”

  Allie giggled. “Have you always wanted to be in a band?”

  “Since I was a kid. As soon as I heard Hendrix I knew what I was all about.”

  Allie shifted so that her body was fully pivoted in his direction. “Then, how come you only play your guitar for a handful of your songs?”

  He flashed a broad grin. “’Cause I suck at it.”

  I burst out laughing. He hadn’t been bad but he certainly wasn’t the best in his band. “So maybe the question needs to be reversed,” I offered. “If you think you suck, why do you play at all? You have two other guys in the band who can really play.”

  “Dallas and Gary, yeah, they rock. I play because I love it.”

  I blinked. “I don’t get it.”

  “You don’t get it?” Jeremiah repeated. He paused as the waitress brought his food. “What’s not to get?”

  “Well, I assume you want the band to hit it big.”

  “Ideally.”

  “And you have a great vocal style and you have two great guitarists, so why would you want to lower the band’s performance level by playing an instrument at which you don’t excel?”

  “April!” Allie chastised.

  “It’s okay, even my biggest fan has gotta admit that I’m no Hendrix.” He turned his attention back to me. “You know
, I got a college degree. You know what I majored in?”

  “I’m guessing it wasn’t English.”

  “I majored in accounting,” Jeremiah said. “You’re looking at a fully licensed CPA.”

  “You’re shittin’ me.”

  “No, I’m not kidding you. It was my dad’s idea. I always had a good head for numbers and I’ve been doin’ his taxes since I was sixteen, so he figured, ‘boy should be an accountant.’ I got my degree at Sac State. I made the dean’s list and everything.”

  Now even Allie looked worried.

  “After I took the exams I went on all these interviews and I got a couple of good job offers for some serious bucks.”

  “Is that CPA-speak for a competitive salary?”

  “Something like that. I could have had a good income, decent hours, benefits and as much job security as you can get nowadays. But the more I thought about it, the more down I got. It’s not that I don’t want to have the money and weekends off, but if I have to choose, and let’s face it—” he shook a fry at me “—we all gotta choose, I’d rather be poor and performing. So I got another certification, this time as a personal trainer. Now I work part-time for shitty wages and play full-time for really shitty wages. So, after giving up all that security, I am going to stuff my guitar in some storage unit all because some guys in my band are better than me? Fuck that. I’m strumming that motherfucker until I get to the level I wanna be at.”

  Allie had scooted over to the edge of the booth farthest from him; I knew she hadn’t gotten over the accountant thing. I was more shocked by the philosophy behind his lifestyle. “What if…” I faltered, not even wanting to utter the words on the off chance my question hadn’t occurred to him. “What if you fail?”

  “I can’t fail. I’ve already succeeded.”

  “But you just said you weren’t making any money.”

  “It’s not about the money. I’ve succeeded because I’m pursuing my dreams, man. And even if I never cut a record with Maverick I still got that. I’m never gonna do that ‘what if’ shit. I’m fucking living the ‘what if’ right now.”

  I stared at him in bewilderment. “What planet did you say you were from again?”

  “Didn’t you read the book, babe? We’re all from Mars.”

  FIVE

  Five weeks had passed since that late-night dinner with Allie and Jeremiah. This meant there were only three weeks before D-day. I tried to breathe out the stress as I sorted through the ecru-colored envelopes that had arrived the day before. I placed the acceptances and the rejections in separate piles on the empty seat next to me on the Muni train. I had read in Modern Bride that every bride should designate a special place to work on her wedding planning. I looked around me and studied the teenager with the pink-and-green Mohawk sitting in front of an elderly woman clutching a grocery bag full of not-so-fresh fish. I might be able to find a less smelly special place if I had even a second of spare time. Thanks to the holidays and an upcoming inventory count, I had been able to take all of two days off in the last month, and if that wasn’t enough to make wedding planning difficult I was also in the process of moving. One of Tad’s acquaintances was relocating to San Luis Obispo and he was renting his Laurel Heights home to us for the low-low price of twenty-five hundred dollars a month. It wasn’t a horrible rent considering the area and the fact that it was a house instead of an apartment, but it was still a big change from the eleven-hundred-dollar rent I was used to paying. I had thought that moving in with Tad would have been more of a monumental occurrence. Since the first night—he had made me a spectacular dinner that we had eaten picnic style while sitting amongst the large cardboard boxes on the dining-room floor—we had been working so much that it didn’t feel like I was seeing him any more than I had before. That was a week ago and all the boxes were still there. I had gotten up this morning at five so that I could go back to my empty Castro apartment and clean it before the beginning of my closing shift in hopes of earning back my full security deposit. But just focusing my eyes seemed to take more energy than I had left.

  The train pulled to a stop at the Civic Station exit and I glared at the woman entering, who was eyeing the seat next to me. Let her sit with the fish eater; I needed the space.

  Stupidly I double-checked the mail to make sure I hadn’t missed a return-address label with the name Showers on it. The chance of that was pretty low considering no one from Tad’s family was invited. His decision, not mine. Any objections I had to the omission were silenced two weeks earlier. Just thinking about that day made me squirm in my plastic seat.

  Tad and I had been at the Beach Chalet enjoying a late-Sunday lunch. From our table we could see the restaurant parking lot and the waves crashing onto Ocean Beach across the highway. I remember thinking it was the perfect moment to broach the subject.

  “Maybe you should send your parents a note telling them about me—about us,” I had suggested. “Even if they refuse to come at least you will have given them the option.”

  Tad took a long sip of one of the restaurant’s original brews. “Trust me, it’s not an option they want, and I have no intention of sitting back and listening to them insult the woman I love.”

  “Maybe they won’t. Maybe your estrangement was the push they needed to see the world differently.”

  “Racists don’t change.” Tad seemed more concerned about the seagull perched on his car than our conversation.

  I used my fork to push the remnants of my salad around on my plate. “You loved them once, Tad.”

  “That’s not the point now, is it?” I hated it when Tad became angry—he always got so…intense—

  “Maybe you should just call them. Tell them that you’re marrying a woman who…well, who appears to be black and is most definitely Jewish, and if they can accept that then you would really like it if some of those burnt bridges could be rebuilt. I mean, what could it hurt?”

  “Jesus Christ, April, what the fuck is wrong with you? These are people who blame the Jews for everything from the death of Christ to the loose morals of Hollywood. They refer to Dr. King as an immoral troublemaker and they think César Chávez is some kind of specialty salad.”

  “Yeah, I got that, but—”

  “Do you think this is easy for me? They’re my parents, for Christ’s sake! I loved them—part of me always will—but I can’t stand by and idly watch them act superior based on some accident of birth.”

  “And I totally respect that, but—”

  “And now I’m at a point in my life where I’ve finally accepted the situation for what it is and here you are dredging it all up again by questioning my judgment.”

  I had fallen back in my chair and stared at him as he stabbed his steak. At what point had my good intentions turned into an assault on his judgment? “Tad, you know I believe in you, and of course I trust your judgment…”

  “Then why do you have to question everything I fucking do? My God, do you really think so little of me? How could you think that I would turn my back on the people who raised me if I hadn’t exhausted every other avenue? I’ve spent every moment we’ve had together learning about you, trying to know you the way only a soul mate could, and now I find out that you haven’t bothered to get to know me at all. That’s great, April. That’s just fucking great.”

  The woman at the next table had looked at him pityingly and leaned over to whisper something to her friend as I slipped farther down in my seat. The worst part had been that, although I thought the anger directed at me was unfounded, I was so confused I didn’t know how to challenge him. Or, maybe he was right and I was pushing too hard. At this point, I just wanted the conversation to end.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to insult you or attack your character. I do know you, and of course I trust you. I’ll try…I’ll try to make sure that always comes across.”

  Tad had reached across the table and stroked my cheek. “I love you, April, more than I ever thought possible. It’s just that sometimes you make things
more complicated than they need to be. From now on it’s just you and me. My parents are not a part of that equation.”

  So there would be no replies from the Showers family. I was now one stop away from Union Square and I quickly stuffed the cards into two large manila envelopes and used the silver bar next to my seat to pull myself into a standing position.

  It was only 11:00 a.m. when I walked into my department, which was just sad since I wasn’t scheduled to leave until 9:30 p.m. Sally and Laura were busy with their customers. Laura was trying to convince a pudgy middle-aged woman that it really was perfectly acceptable to wear a sheer nylon top that was two sizes too small. “You’ll look like you’re coming down a runway,” she gushed. She caught my eye as I headed to the back room to put my purse down. “April, Blakely’s back there. She’s kind of in a weird mood.”

  Spectacular. I tried to brace myself for the unknown and went back.

  Blakely was going through the customer holds, scrutinizing the tag on each item and then violently thrusting them aside. “They’re all up-to-date,” she spat. “Every one of your holds is up-to-date!”

  “Um, thank you?”

  “And the back stock is perfectly organized. Your whole stockroom is perfect!” From her tone it was clear that perfection wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

  “I usually take a few minutes before opening to go through this area,” I said carefully.

  “You’re even a minori—You’re…you’re…You went through sensitivity training.”

  Well, at least one of us had. “Blakely, is there a problem?”

  “Yes, the problem is that you would make the ideal assistant buyer! Goddamn it!” She pressed her palms into her forehead, apparently trying to push her brain back in.