Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 91783 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 459(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91783 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 459(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
Josie leans forward and keeps her voice low. “I want to go to the water tower, make out like teenagers and bounce—”
“Is there anything else I can get you?” the waiter has impeccable timing. Josie’s smile is wicked and gleaming, and she leaves me to answer.
“We’re—” I have to clear the lump away. “All good for right now.”
He smiles and tells us he’ll back.
I run my hand over my face. “I need to use the restroom.”
“Don’t you dare rub it out.”
My eyes widen at her words. “Josephine Westbury!”
“Don’t call me Josephine and I know you, Liam.” She stares me down and I swear I can feel the daggers stabbing me.
“I won’t. I promise.” I stand, lean toward her, and pull her chin up with my finger so she’s looking into my eyes. “I would never deprive you.” I kiss the tip of her nose and stalk off.
The night is exactly what I wanted for us.
It happens on the way back from the restroom. A woman stops me between the tables. Pleasant, well dressed, a little bright in the eyes. She says she doesn’t want to bother me, and then she does. She listens every night, she says. She tells me she was in a bad way and my voice got her through it, that some nights it felt like I was talking straight to her, like I knew. She’s got my show times memorized and watches my social media for replays of the clips my team has put together. She knows the song I closed with on Thursday and tells me I used it before and then asks why I didn’t choose something different.
“It’s how I felt in the moment,” I tell her. “I’m glad I was able to help. Thank you for listening.”
She sticks her hand out. We shake. I smile and start to let go. She doesn’t ease her grip until I tug my hand away. “Have a nice evening,” I tell her and walk back to my table.
None of this is a crime. Is it wrong to approach someone like this? Maybe. I can make an argument that I want my privacy but then people like her are the people who gave me the grace to be the persona I am.
Still, there are times, like now, when I want to be Liam Westbury. Where I want to have a nice night with my wife without having to be on.
I get back to the table and Josie’s watching the whole thing over the rim of her glass.
“Fan?”
“Listener.” I sit back down. “Says I helped her through a tough time.”
“That’s sweet.”
“It is,” I agree, and I let it go, because it is sweet, but it sits with me a little longer than it should.
The piano player starts something slow, and I do a thing I haven’t done in longer than I care to remember. I stand up, hold out my hand, and ask my wife to dance.
She looks at the other couples, none of them dancing, and then she looks at me, and she takes my hand anyway. She learned a long time ago; we don’t want to waste time being shy. If we can, we set an example for others to follow. There’s no floor, really. Just the space between the tables. We use it. She fits against me easy, my hand at the small of her back and hers up around my neck, and we turn slow to the song. Part of me’s braced for the fan to join in with her date or ask to cut in. I mentally prepare for what I’ll say or how I’ll react.
Thankfully, we aren’t interrupted and it’s just us and a piano man playing a song neither of us knows the words to, and all I can think is there nowhere I’d rather be.
After dinner, we decide to walk. Josie tucks her arm through mine and we walk the little main street with our shoulders together, no place to be, the shop windows dark.
“You going to tell me what you and your mother talked about the other morning,” she says. “Or are you going to make me guess. Because I’ll guess, and I’ll be right, and then you’ll be annoyed I didn’t let you say it first.”
“How’d you know we talked?”
“Because she stopped by the café and said I may need to be a sounding board.”
“And you’ve waited all week?”
She shrugs. “I figured if you needed to vent, you would. I’ve been patient, now I’m asking.”
I walk us another half a block before I answer.
“The man that called,” I say finally. “The one where you texted me to come home.”
“I remember.”
“My mother thinks it was my father.” The word comes out of me strange. I don’t use it much. I don’t have much use for it. “She’s sure, actually. The voice, the way he talked around the hard parts. She lived a lifetime with the man. She’d know.”