Red Hot Blues
Authors: Rachel Dunning
Tags: #womens fiction, #nashville, #music, #New Adult
BY RACHEL DUNNING
Copyright © 2014 Rachel
Dunning.
The moral right of the
author has been asserted.
Book Cover Male Model
photo, Copyright 2014 "pudi studio"
Book Cover Guitar
photo, Copyright 2014 "mekCar"
Book Cover Design,
Copyright 2014 Rachel Dunning
Smashwords Edition.
First Edition.
ISBN: 9781311097156
No part of this book
may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written
permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations
embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This book is a work of
fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real
locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and
incidents are products of the author’s imagination, and any
resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead,
is entirely coincidental.
Dunning:
Know Me, #1 Truthful
Lies
Find Me, #2 Truthful
Lies
Need Me, #3 Truthful
Lies
Finding North, #1 Naïve
Mistakes Trilogy
East Rising, #2 Naïve
Mistakes Trilogy
West-End Boys, #3 Naïve
Mistakes Trilogy
Like You, #1 Perfectly
Flawed Series
Christmas Comfort, #1
Hot Holidays Series
Easter Sundae, #2 Hot
Holidays Series
Girl-Nerds Like it
Harder, #1 Girl-Nerd Series
Girl Nerds Like it
Faster, #2 Girl-Nerd Series
Girl-Nerds Like it
Deeper, #3 Girl-Nerd Series
Girl-Nerds Like it
Longer, #4 Girl-Nerd Series
For news of upcoming
releases, visit:
http://racheldunningauthor.blogspot.com
Or connect with me
on Facebook:
http://bit.ly/RachelDunning
To all the beautiful
people I met in Nashville while researching this book. Thanks for
answering my questions, for showing me a good time, for introducing
me to Jack Daniels Honey Whiskey, and for having me experience the
incredible feeling of watching sixty-thousand Americans lighting up
their phones and lighters, standing in the pouring rain, and
listening to them all sing along to Darius Rucker’s
Wagon
Wheel
at LP Field.
It’s five days I will
never forget.
-1-
There's nothing sexy about me, except my
voice.
You seen that series,
Nashville
, where
all the people live in big houses with large lawns and drive big
cars with tinted windows, and have rich daddies that are mayors or
CEOs or property developers; and every girl has blonde hair and
striking green eyes and a physique to make you drool and a pair of
conkers to poke an eye out?
That’s not me.
My name is Gin, short for Ginger. Last name
is Waters. Yeah, I get a lot of jokes about that. Especially in
Nashville, whiskey and hard liquor capital of the world.
Waters was my dad’s name. So I kept it. I
lost my dad when I was five.
I don’t like to talk about it.
People smile a lot in Nashville city, just
like in the series, but in real life they do it mostly ’cause
they’re drunk. Real drunk. So drunk they can’t stand. Every night.
Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday.
Every
night.
Welcome to Nashville.
I’m not from here.
I’m not big into Country Music. Been to the
Grand Ole Opry—didn’t do it for me. And if y’all get offended by
that, I’m sorry.
See? I’m even saying
y’all
now. It’s
contagious, this place.
I moved here about a year ago, with my mom.
My mom married a cowboy, who loves country, and whiskey, and drives
a big truck.
Again, welcome to Nashville.
Why did I stay here?
Music Row. Music City.
You can’t love music and not love
Nashville.
But the two top things about Nashville are
not things you will find in a Google search. The two top things, in
my books, about Nashville, bar none, are these: Honey Flavored Jack
Daniels, and a tiny little bar in Printers Alley (the de facto home
of the Karaoke bar and local Strip Joint) called the Bourbon Street
Blues and Boogie Bar.
The Bourbon Street Blues and Boogie Bar plays
the blues, all the blues, and nothing but the blues.
I love the blues.
I love John Lee Hooker, Z.Z. Hill, B.B. King,
The King of Rock n Roll, and
Walkin’ King Snake, baby
. I
love sippin on a Honey Bourbon on the rocks and swaying my head to
the tune of a cream colored Gibson being played by some dude who’s
way past his prime but who is hard-rock sexy because he’s
feeling it
while he plays. I love getting up on stage in an
overly air-conditioned room so that my head hurts because it’s so
damn cold and my skin’s rocking the goosepimples, and then singing
Aretha Franklin’s
Respect
or
I Never Loved a Man (The Way
I Love You)
or, my favorite,
(You Make Me Feel Like) A
Natural Woman
.
I’m twenty-one, been drinking honey whiskey
since I was twenty. Sometimes I got carded, most times I didn’t.
Been singing the blues since I was five, maybe four, maybe even
one.
My momma’s not a big blues fan. (There I go
again, saying things like “momma!” Urgh!) She’s not much of a fan
of anything. She’s a fan of finding a guy, getting married, getting
divorced, finding another man, and basically keeping us out of
trailer parks that way. She’s done good so far. In keeping us out
of trailer parks, that is, not in finding the right man.
Dad was probably the right man for her. But
we’re not gonna go there.
The guy she married that brought us to
Nashville is no longer with her, but he gave her a condo. Yes,
gave
, as in,
purchased
. No rent. No fees. No
strings—except one: It’s a short story having to do with the fact
he’s a well known local celeb (everyone is in Nashville, especially
at the bars) and there was a little sumthin-sumthin he did on the
side which led to momma getting the condo so she would keep her
mouth shut and he could keep his hard-earned Christian Country
Musician reputation. (Either that, or to keep his mistress from
taking a shotgun to his ass.)
Welcome to the NRA-Loving Bible Belt.
I’ve lived all over the place; spent some
time in Cali, some in New York, even a bit in Ohio. I guess I could
pick favorites, but none of it has ever really been home.
Momma now lives in The Gulch, the Yuppieville
of Nashville. It’s a small section of Downtown that is LEED
certified (“Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design”) and
where people don’t smoke, they “vape.” The Gulch is small, just a
few blocks wide. There are about five boutique stores there, two
new-agey clothes stores (disguised as hipster heavens), a vinyl
shop, and...more live music locations. Yeah, she got it good. Mr.
Christian Country Music Celeb had more than his hand in the cookie
jar if you know what I’m saying.
Only, it wasn’t his hand at all.
And it sure wasn’t a cookie jar...
Momma works at one of the aforementioned
boutique stores as a consultant. She doesn’t do much. Just smiles
and looks pretty. Momma’s been doing that all her life. She’s a
pro. Now she gets paid for it.
I’m happy for her, it’s a nice little section
of town and I can get there for free using the Green Line Bus from
MTA which runs until six p.m. most days. Except Sunday. Nothing
runs on Sundays here, or even opens. As the chick at Walgreens told
me: “This place is like a ghost town to me on a Sunday!”
Welcome to the Deep South.
Me? I don’t stay in Yuppieville. But I do
stay Downtown. On First Avenue, to be precise.
From my apartment (basically a hole a few
floors above the Coyote Ugly nightclub) I look out over the wooden
structure of the historical Fort Nashborough just below me. Beyond
that is the Cumberland River, with LP field on the other side, home
of the Titans and a bunch of kickass music concerts throughout the
year; Gateway bridge deep on my right where you can cross the river
by foot; and right next to Fort Nashborough, on the left, a small
park with a statue of two guys in buckskin clothing shaking hands,
and about seven homeless people who call that little park their
home.
I call this place home now as well.
Music is Music, and Nashville is Music
City.
Sure, I could’ve done like that girl in
The Edge of Never
and caught a bus to nowhere and found love
on the road. But, truth is, I don’t have the guts. Bus stations
scare me. Being alone on the road scares me. And going somewhere
hoping I could make money somewhere-somehow, scares the hell out of
me.
I’m not attractive. I have short black hair
and a plumpy body. Yes,
black
hair. Not dark brown, not
brunette, plain black. I guess my eyes could be called an
asset—they’re blue, a pretty cool blue I might add. But that’s not
much when you’re pushing forty pounds over your ideal weight and
the last time you wore a bikini was six months after you hit
puberty and people made fun of you.
Right, I’m overweight. I’ve been on diets,
cycled, done spinning, Atkins, running, jogging, jumping,
breathing, crash-diet, yo-yo diet, no-sugar diet, no carbs diet,
outright starvation, balanced diet, all-you-can-eat diet, sushi
diet—
I eventually gave up.
I was always a little round but it all just
ballooned when I hit puberty and it never went down from there. And
I didn’t even get the benefit of using my breasts (my second-best
asset, next to my voice) to attract boys because I hit puberty at
such an early age, and most of the boys my age were more interested
in baseball cards than in girls. And, when they did finally catch
up to me hormonally, well, they were into the “sexy” girls a.k.a.
the “thin” girls.
I hate thin girls.
These days I just make sure I don’t overeat
and that I don’t eat like a pig. I don’t eat ice-cream more than
once a month. I have three straight meals a day. If I get hungry in
between, I chomp on some Slim Jims or peanuts, and I avoid beer at
all costs. It doesn’t mean I lose weight, but it means I don’t gain
it...too quickly. Sometimes I go down a pound, sometimes I go up. I
try not to let it faze me. But it does. I weigh myself way too
often, and as much as I try and avoid thinking about it, it’s all I
think about sometimes.
I do cycle. My little bicycle is called
Katie. She’s bright yellow and has a little brown basket in the
front. Katie and I are best friends. I think she’s the reason I
don’t move beyond that dreaded one-eighty mark on the scale.
I love my girl Katie.
If you’ve never been to Nashville, what you
need to know about it is that everything that’s important (the
bars, the Starbucks, Printers Alley, and the library) is all within
the radius of a few blocks. There’s a small uphill from First Ave
up to Fifth (where the Starbucks is) and then an awesome roll back
down to First while sipping on a Caramel Frappuccino through a
straw, with one hand, and holding Katie’s handlebars with the
other.
I said I ate Ice Cream once a month.
Frappuccino’s are not ice cream. I have those considerably more
often. Trust me, I’ve tried the No-Frappuccino diet as well. Didn’t
work, so I might as well get some damn pleasure in life.
Beyond that little stretch of road (Church
Street, to be precise), I avoid the rest of downtown Nashville at
all costs. You’re welcome to come here. But here’s a short
description in case you don’t: From Church Street, go down First,
past Fort Nashborough, until you hit Broadway. Turn right. There’ll
be a bar on the right with live music (Hard Rock Café) and a bar on
your left—across the very
broad
street—that also plays live
music every night. What’s playing? My bet’s on country. Go up one
establishment, bar on the right, live music, bar on the left, live
music. Country. One establishment up, on your right, country, live;
on your left, country, live. This goes on for several blocks.
Large
blocks.
I hang out at the Blues Bar.
All the cops look like your uncle, every girl
wears cowboy boots and Daisy Dukes (you didn’t see
that
in
that TV series, now didya?), and every dude has a tattoo. I mean,
every
dude. As well as the chicks.
Lots
of them. Big
ones. Colorful ones. Everywhere. Now, I’m all for tattoos, have a
small one of a butterfly myself just above my left hip, a little to
the back, but if
everyone
has one, doesn’t it become
boring?