Rhythm in Blue (7 page)

Entering the Disco Sirocco, Rick opened the door for Eva, and she reached out and gently ran her hand down his cheek. She seemed genuinely sweet, but Rick still couldn’t warm up to her. He decided to act the part, even if he didn’t feel up to it.

They found a table and sat. “How about some shots to get things started?” Rick suggested. Anything to lessen the tension. Only Eva agreed, so he ordered them each a shot of Tequila. It didn’t help, so he ordered them another.

Eva didn’t want hers, and whispered, “You don’t have to get me drunk.” He smiled and tossed back her shot, and then excused himself to use the restroom. On the way back, he hit the bar for a few more shots, not at all comfortable with the situation. If they’d been back home, it might have seemed a little more routine, in fact, he probably would have already had the woman by now, in some dark corner, hidden away, or in the bathroom. But things were different now. One of the best things about the island was being able to get away from that kind of thing, not just continue on, business as usual. He wished he had never agreed to the drink, that he’d just stayed at the Islander.

Eva kissed his ear and neck while the others danced. She still had her hand attached to his thigh and Rick was beginning to get irritated, but didn’t rebuff her advances. Instead, he tried to appear coy. When the others returned from the dance floor, he jumped up, away from her, and suggested that they move on to the next club. Everyone agreed, so back out to the Paralia they went.

Rick was glad to be up and moving, but more relieved to have her hands
off
him. A little dizzy from the tequila, and the three rum and cokes he’d already had, the night air felt good, but it was short lived. The next club was only a quick walk down the road. Once they took their seats, Rick repeated the routine, ordering them each a drink and a shot. Before Eva could decide if she was ready for another, Rick picked up her glass and downed it.

Randy looked at him and asked, “What the fuck are you doing?”

“I’m having fun, baby.”

This time, Eva went with the others to dance, leaving Rick alone. He sat, smoking one cigarette after another, and downing several more drinks. As his head swam, he wondered if he’d stayed at the Islander, maybe Shelby would have come and he could have danced with her again, a slow dance even. He craved the healing effect she had on him. Years on the road took their toll. Burned out, exhausted, and feeling so much older than his age, somehow, she was reversing the damage he sustained playing the role of a rock star.

He ordered two more shots.

The loud music made his head hurt, and the flashing strobe lights pushed him away from the here-and-now. Eva came back to check on him, and it took him a minute to remember who she was. As he watched, her figure appeared to split into multiples, all rapidly changing places.

“Are you okay, Ricky?” she asked.

He stared for a minute, the blinking lights making it hard to focus, but finally smiled at her. “I’m good, you can dance,” he heard himself slur as he motioned her away. She left, but returned moments later with Devon.

“Is it time to move on?” Rick tried to sit up. The room began to spin.

Devon shook his head. “Come on Ricky, let’s get you home.”

Chapter Seven

As Rick showered the next morning, the incessant pounding in his head painfully reminded him of the previous night’s antics. He tried to push it from his mind, ashamed of how he behaved toward Eva. She certainly didn’t deserve that kind of treatment. Even as he chased other thoughts, a nagging in the back of his mind wouldn’t go away – something about last night.

At the café beside their hotel, he found Devon alone at a table, enjoying a cup of coffee. Rick pulled out a chair.

“You don’t look too bad, considering the mess you were last night.”

“Don’t remind me,” he said, but the nagging feeling continued to prod him as he sat down. “Where are they?” he asked, nodding toward the two empty chairs at the table.

“I haven’t seen them, so I’m guessing
they
got lucky.”

“I’m sorry. You know, you could have gone back,” Rick said, knowing he was the reason Devon sat here instead of lying in bed with Gretchen. The waiter came, and Rick asked for coffee.

“Well, by the time I got you into bed,
and
walked Shelby home,” – Boom! That was it – “it was pretty late. I don’t think she was very impressed with you last night, by the way.”

Rick’s memory of the previous night came slowly, as did the nausea. Only, he couldn’t remember all of it. They were walking along, or staggering in Rick’s case, and Devon heard something coming from an alley they passed. Some kind of ruckus – Shelby with a boy or something, and Devon chased him maybe? He racked his brain.
What the hell happened?

“On our way to the hotel last night, we found Shelby…” Devon prompted.

“Yeah, yeah, and she was screwing around with a guy?”

“Well, I wouldn’t call it that. This guy had her pinned up against a wall, kinda looked like he and his buddy were trying to force themselves on her,” Devon searched Rick’s face, looking for a sign that he remembered, “She was crying…you really don’t remember?” 

Rick nodded. He did remember, just not well. He remembered Devon running down the street, chasing the boys off. He remembered hugging Shelby to comfort her, nearly knocking her down in the process. She had to grab him and hold him up.

“She helped me drag your sorry ass back to your room and put you in bed. You know, you’re really an idiot when you’re drunk.”

Rick dropped his head into his hands and nodded. Painfully, he remembered asking Shelby to go to bed with him. Devon was in the bathroom getting him a glass of water. “I don’t want to be alone,” Rick told her.

When he came back into the room, Devon told him, “You wouldn’t
be
alone if you hadn’ta drank so much.”

“Yeah, when I walked her home, I told her she had
no business
out gallivanting around at that hour. She said she’d never had a problem before, and didn’t know who those guys were. They’d just come out of nowhere.”

But that Rick
did
remember, it wasn’t just some guy, it was Takis.

~

Two-thirty and still no Shelby. Rick waited with an embarrassed Judy, as she tried to think of possible explanations for Shelby’s absence. He wasn’t surprised – she was probably angry with him, and had every right to be. It would be a wonder if she ever spoke to him again.

Judy’s apologies followed him out the door as he left to go find Shelby. If she was angry with him, he wanted to talk to her about it and straighten the whole thing out. She wasn’t hard to find. As soon as he started down the steps to the chapel, he saw her – not swimming or sunbathing, but sitting quietly in the shade of the cliff and spindly pine trees.

“You okay?” he asked, sitting beside her on the rock. He could barely choke it out, afraid of what her response might be.

“Yeah, I’m sorry. I didn’t think I could face you today…after last night.” She wouldn’t meet his gaze.

“Look,” he said, “I am really sorry. I was wasted, and I don’t blame you if you hate me.”

“
You’re
sorry, for what? And why would I hate you?”

“For asking you to sleep with me, it’s, uh, it’s unforgivable.”

Shelby shook her head and laughed, “You didn’t try to get me to sleep with you!” She was still laughing, and finally looked up at him. A bruise marred her cheek. “Is that what you think? No, it wasn’t like that. You just wanted me to stay with you. You didn’t want to be alone. You weren’t after sex.”

Rick was relieved, glad she didn’t have the experience to know there was no difference. Seeing he wasn’t convinced, she said, “Trust me, I know.” But so did Rick. He knew exactly what he wanted last night, and it was more than her companionship. She paused for a minute, and then said, “I didn’t want to face you because I was embarrassed, embarrassed of the way you guys found me. Do you remember?”

“Is that from last night?” he gestured to her cheek.

She touched it and turned away, “No, I ran into my dresser this morning.”

“What happened last night? With those boys?”

“I don’t know, they just jumped me. Never saw them before in my life!”

“Shelby…” he said, “I know one of them was Takis.”

She didn’t reply, just stared at her feet. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Nope.”

They sat quietly for some time. He couldn’t force her to open up, but hoped she eventually would. He needed to work on some trust issues with Shelby – he seemed to be knocking her trust down as he went along, rather than building it up. The thought of confronting Takis and knocking some sense into the kid had occurred to him more than once, but Rick knew ending up in a jail cell for assaulting a kid wouldn’t improve the situation.

Finally, she asked, “Why didn’t you want to be alone last night?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. I sorta ended up on a date with this girl last night, and I really didn’t want to be, you know?” He lit a cigarette and offered her one. “She just wanted to get laid, and I wasn’t into it.” Shelby nodded and let him light her cigarette as he continued, “That’s what it’s like all the time back in the States. You tell yourself you must be the luckiest guy in the world, having your choice of beautiful women all around you, all wanting to…do you, all the time.”

He peeked at her out of the corner of his eye to see if the information had any effect on her, but her expression didn’t change. He continued, “Every town has a new batch when you’re on the road. When you’re at home, they show up at your door with friends, they wait for you and pop out wherever you go. And it’s great, for a while, but at the end of the day, you come up feeling empty. It gets old, you know?” He finally looked at her, hoping the confession wouldn’t forever alter the way she saw him. The look she gave him was one of concern. “Even before we were famous, at the small clubs, the women always pounced as soon as the show was over. I’ve never been able to figure out why musicians are such a turn on for women.”

Shelby was still nodding. Her silence made him wonder what she must think of him, admitting to a life full of meaningless sex and one-night stands.

“Well, I’m not sure how to say this without sounding stupid or condescending, but, maybe you’re just growing up.”

“Maybe,” he agreed, relieved to receive such a nonjudgmental response.

“I’m not saying you need to settle down and start a family or anything, but, you say you want something more from a woman than just sex. Do you think you could settle for just one woman?”

“If she was the right one, I think it would be great,” he said, but he was beginning to realize that being with the right one might not be possible. He stared straight ahead, into the bay, and wondered how his circumstances changed so quickly.

“Because you have a lot to offer – you have a great sense of humor, you’re very sensitive to the people around you…” He felt himself color at her compliment, remembering his treatment of Eva. Rick could see that Shelby was blushing too, but the look of sincerity on her face as she turned to him was amazing. “When you look at someone, it’s like you try to see beyond what they are willing to show you, you don’t let them hide behind any false pretenses. You really listen when people talk, you’re smart…and handsome.” She had to look away at the end.

“Wow. You’re making me blush,” he said, unsure of what else he
could
say. He didn’t deserve her glowing review, but it revealed just how strongly she felt.

“Well, it’s true.” They were quiet again for a bit, and then she blurted, “I wish I could be your girlfriend.”

Her honesty surprised him. It sounded like something a
little
girl would say. She was always so shy about the crush she had on him, as if she was trying to make sure he didn’t know. His own feelings had to be better disguised, feelings he didn’t want to admit he had. He was confused and in unfamiliar territory. He needed to be very careful in his response.

“Too bad I’m not older,” she said finally.

He put his arm around her and gave her a squeeze, “If you were older, you
would
be my girlfriend.”

Chapter Eight

Erin’s big day finally arrived. Rick watched for days as she frantically ran around, certain something would be missed and the whole thing would be a disaster. Little things sent her into a whirl, like misplaced sunglasses, or a chipped fingernail. No matter how hard he tried to get her to calm down, she couldn’t escape the stress.

Through the entire process of preparing, it seemed Erin felt as though she was carrying the show, and success rested entirely on her efforts, but as things progressed, it became apparent, to everyone but Erin, that Kostas’s mother, Maria, was truly running things. She let Erin think she was in charge, probably as a test to make sure she was taking the whole thing seriously, but Maria made sure nothing was left to chance, was no possibility of embarrassing the family.

Being a distant relative of the owner, she managed to have herself let into Rick’s hotel room, took his suit, and had it pressed. He couldn’t believe it when he walked into his room to find it wrapped in plastic, on a hanger and his shoes freshly shined. She even went as far as to coach him on his duty of delivering Erin to the church, which was comical as Maria spoke almost no English. That was his only job, and Maria seemed convinced that somehow, Rick, the stupid American, would screw it up.

It was tradition for the bride to be delivered to the church by a male relative, preferably her father. When Rick walked her into the courtyard of the church, arm in arm, they found Kostas waiting just outside the main doors. Rick gave Erin’s hand to an equally nervous Kostas without hesitation. She smiled anxiously at him, then turned and walked with Kostas to the main doors, where the priest awaited them.

Rick joined his friends and Shelby, and they waited to follow the couple into the church. The priest asked Erin and Kostas if they were there of their own free will, and if marriage was their intent, Shelby translated. When both agreed, the priest led them into the church and to the altar, while the guests filed in behind them.