Hadley
OH, MY WORD. I needed to get a handle on my attraction to this man. “You’re insane.”
“Doesn’t mean I’m wrong,” he countered.
He leaned just a little closer and I swallowed convulsively.
“Jack!” Rex called. “Ready?”
“Yep,” he said, still staring at me. “We’ll continue this conversation later. I have several questions for you, Hadley Simon.”
He grinned and pushed away from the wall. I slipped out of the room unnoticed and used this break in the action to hightail it back to the hotel. Lucy and I were done for the day, and since I had a few things to do from my side, I chose to do it out of the presence of the sexy as hell Jack Henry.
I let myself into my current home away from home and flopped onto the bed for a few minutes of emotional TLC before forcing myself to open my laptop.
* * *
The next morning, I arrived at the studio before everyone. I had just checked out of my hotel and picked up keys from Bam and Lucy, as I would be watching their home (and their dog) for the next week while they headed home to pack the band up and be back in Seattle before the first show in three weeks.
I saw light in the mixing room, so peeked my head in and saw Vic already setting up. “Hi, Vic.”
“Hey, Hadley. How are you?”
“I’m good. I’m going to make a much-needed coffee run, what can I get you?”
“Coffee black and a bagel would be great.”
I smiled. “I can do that.”
I stepped back into the lounging area and jotted down Vic’s order just as Rex walked in, Jack and Robbie following.
My heartbeat sped up a little when Jack gave me a sexy smile. “Hey, Hadley.”
“Hi,” I breathed out, then cleared my throat and tried to speak without sounding like a sex starved school girl. “Um, I’m going to make a coffee run. What can I get you guys?”
“I’ll come with you,” Jack offered.
“You will?” Rex challenged.
I didn’t hear his answer as I dropped my head to rummage in my purse for my keys.
“I’ll drive,” Jack said.
“Oh, it’s okay. I’m sure you have a lot to do. I’m happy to go.”
He smiled again. “I’m driving, Hadley.”
Glancing around the room, I found us alone and I really had no reason to argue, especially since I’d appreciate the help, so I nodded.
“Ready?”
I nodded again and we walked out to the parking lot where he ushered me into his gigantic pick-up. No joke, I had to climb it to get inside.
“You good?” he asked once I was in the passenger seat.
“I think that qualifies as a workout,” I retorted, and he chuckled as he closed me in.
“Sorry. Sometimes my photography takes me off the beaten path enough to need this monster.”
He climbed up beside me and we headed to Flick’s Beanery, Jack’s favorite local coffee shop. He helped me down and we walked up to the counter to order. I gave the young girl behind the counter my name and order but barley saw signs of life register on her face. I was surprised when Jack ordered a chai tea and I said as much while we waited.
“I’d imagined you ordering something a bit stronger,” I said.
“I’ve had my first cup of rocket fuel this morning, so should probably ease off a little.”
“That leaves room for a bit of a sugar rush then, doesn’t it?” I gestured towards the display counter filled with pastries.
“My body’s a temple,” he explained. “I try to eat as healthy as possible.”
“Yeah, well, my body’s a temple, too, but I’m working on an addition.”
Jack dropped his head back and laughed, causing me to blush when a few people looked our way. “Damn, you’re funny.”
I smiled. “Am I?”
He knocked his shoulder gently against mine. “Very.”
“Thank you.”
“You and Lucy workin’ on more tour plans today?”
“Lucy and Bam left this morning.”
“Right… they’re prepping the band. I thought that was tomorrow.”
“Nope, they left this morning.”
“Sully flyin’?”
I nodded and then sighed. “Private jet. Such a glamorous life.”
A shadow crossed his face. “Trust me, there’s a price to pay, and few are able to pay without it costing them everything.”
“Sorry,” I whispered.
“Don’t be. It’s all good.”
I bit my lip and forced myself not to pry. Admittedly, I was kind of a nosy nelly, but only if I cared about the person. Jack was quickly becoming that for me, and I needed to shut it down before I became too attached to him. Our relationship was that of a short-termed business nature, and although I enjoyed his company, I had to remind myself not to get distracted. We waited for what seemed like forever for our order as the line stacked up behind us. I was starting to feel the effects of this so-far caffeine free morning, and my mood would not be improved by the sloth-like pace of the shop’s only barista on shift.
“Henley,” the blue-haired girl behind the counter called out in what I could only assume was the voice that took the least amount of energy. “Henley,” she repeated again to no one’s response. “Henley,” she said a third time now in an annoyed tone and looking directly at me.
“Oh, me? Hadley. I’m Hadley.”
“The order says Henley, it’s written on the cups,” the barista said flatly.
“I’m sure it is,” I responded. “Is it a large black coffee, a medium latte, a Chai and two bagels?”
“Uh huh.”
“Okay then that’s my order and I’m Hadley,” I said smiling, happy to finally clear up any remaining confusion once and for all.
“The cups say Henley,” she said.
I stood silent, in pure un-caffeinated disbelief for at least five full seconds before finally asking, “Who took my order?”
“I did.”
“Right, and who took my name?”
“Me.”
“Great, now who’s in charge of writing the name of the customer down on the cups?”
“I am,” she said proudly, cracking her first and only smile of the exchange.
“Super, so do you think it’s more likely that I don’t know my own name, or that you simply didn’t dedicate enough of your limited attention span to learning my name and correctly writing it down?”
“Well…”
I awaited her response as if awaiting an answer to an earnest prayer.
She held one of the cups up. “The order says Henley.”
I turned to look at Jack who was standing three feet behind me choking back laughter. He was clearly not going to offer me any assistance and seemed to be enjoying himself immensely.
I leaned down to look at her nametag which read Tabitha.
“Look Tabitha,” I started.
“It’s pronounced ta-bee-tha,” she said, now using her snotty tone again.
“I’m sorry, what the fresh hell did you just say?”
“My name’s not Tabitha, it’s Tabeetha,” she repeated.
“No, that can’t be right, because your name is spelled like Tabitha, which is a completely normal, real name,” I corrected. “Your name has an ‘I’ in it, not two Es, making it Tab-I-tha. You can’t just go making up new pronunciations of perfectly normal names and expect society to just go along with it! So, just because your parents were confused about how names work, and then passed that down to you, doesn’t mean I’m confused about my name.” I stood inches away from her face, my hands now clutching the cardboard tray containing ‘Henley’s’ order.
Tabeetha paused for a moment, and then burst into tears.
“I—” Was all I could manage to get out before she ran off to the back of the shop. I wasn’t sure what or who was behind the swinging double doors she’s just disappeared through, but I didn’t care much to find out.
Jack stepped up to the counter, quickly pulled a fifty-dollar bill from his wallet, and threw it on the counter. He grabbed our drinks, then my hand, and high-tailed us out of the coffee shop.
“Well, I guess we won’t be going to Flicks any more for coffee,” he said with a laugh as we climbed back into “Bone Crusher” and sped out of the parking lot.
I let out a frustrated squeak, partly because I was mad at myself for making another woman cry, and partly because I was still irritated at said woman for making me make her cry.
“You okay?”
“Yes,” I said with a sigh. “At least we got the coffee.”
“Forget the coffee,” he said. “Nothing in the world will wake you up better than roughing up a nineteen-year-old barista.”
“You could have helped,” I snapped.
“You seemed like you had her on the ropes all by yourself there, champ. There was no need to tag me in.”
I huffed. “Now I’m going to have to go back and apologize.”
“Wow, doesn’t take you long to snap back to your good girl southern self, huh?”
“Mediocrity drives me to a level that I should probably get a handle on.”
“Or, maybe people need to learn to do better.”
I rubbed my temples. “It’s not her fault she’s a product of a society that just doesn’t give a shit.”
He chuckled. “Okay, Hadley. Give yourself a break, huh? She’ll get over it.”
I nodded and stared out the window. Jack turned on the radio and ‘Pour Some Sugar on Me’ came blaring through the tuck’s cabin.
“Now we’re talking! A soundtrack is now rolling to our little Bonnie and Clyde story. A little Def Leppard!”
I laughed. “There’s no way you like this music.”
“What are you talking about? I love Def Leppard,” he said with a straight face.
“What? I thought all you grunge guys were supposed to hate hair metal,” I challenged.
“First of all,” he said, turning down the music. “We weren’t a ‘grunge’ band, whatever that means, and ‘hair metal’ was an equally horrible name to pin on musicians. A ton of us suburban rocker kids cut our teeth on Motley Crüe, Van Halen, and Whitesnake. Sure, it all got silly and over the top, and us and bands like us were more than happy to help usher in new sounds, but we respected those guys for what they did.”
“Wow, I never would have thought,” I said smiling.
“How do you know this song?
“My mom loved it and played it around the house when my daddy wasn’t around, so I grew up loving it.”
“Your dad not a big Leppard fan?”
“No, he wasn’t a big fan of ‘fun of any kind,’ unless it involved Jesus or judging people. I suppose his favorite kinds of activities involved both.”
“Ah, one of those guys.”
“No, he was the guy they based those guys on. Remember the dad in Footloose? That guy was laid back compared to my daddy, I’m not joking.”
“Wow. How the heck did you go from no Rock and Roll in the house to hitting the road with us filthy animals?”
“I started out singing and playing piano, or whatever else needed to be done at the church we went to. My father was an elder in the church and so our whole family was expected to serve the church, and serve we did. But it always bothered me that I wasn’t allowed to play drums… because I was a lady.”
“Well, now we have something else in common,” he said.
“You were a lady who couldn’t play drums?”
He chuckled. “I didn’t grow up religious or anything, but I did go to church youth group as a kid and that’s where I discovered the drums.”
“You’re kidding?”
“Nope. Totally serious. I was twelve years old and my best friend dragged me there with the promise of lots of cute girls.”
“Were there a lot of cute girls?”
“A couple, but that didn’t matter once the band started.”
“That good, huh?”
“Oh, god no, they were horrible. They were all guys in their forties with skullets.”
“Skullets?” I laughed.
“Yeah, you know. Mullett in the back, balding on top. Anyway, they were basically playing bad classic rock with a lot of Jesus thrown in, but the minute I heard those drums I was transfixed. I’d never been that close to a full set of drums being played and I knew right then and there I had to play them myself. The drummer was really cool and he let me try them out after youth group was over.”
“Did you ask your parents for a drum set that Christmas?”
“No way. At that time things were pretty tense in my house, and even if we had the money, there was no way it was going toward a drum set for me. My parents were fighting all the time and on the verge of divorcing, so I hung around the church and those drums as often as I could. Eventually, they asked me to start playing in the youth band and from then I was off and running.”
“Drumming for the Lord, huh?”
“Amen sister!” He smiled. “But then when I was sixteen, my parents divorced and my mom moved us from sunny California to rainy Portland.”
“No more church?” I asked
“Not so much. More like more drumming, more chasing girls, a lot of smoking pot and a hell of a lot of being generally pissed off at the world. Typical child of divorce stuff, I guess. Who cares about that? What about you? How did you end up playing the drums?”
“The church secretary was a sweet lady that had a soft spot for me. She’d let me into the sanctuary when I knew my father wasn’t around.”
“He’d really have a problem if he knew you were playing the drums?”
“A problem? No. More like, he’d disown me.”
“No way,” he said in disbelief.
“We barely speak now because he disapproves of my ‘choice of occupation.’”
“Wow, I guess he missed all those parts in the Bible about love, forgiveness, peace and grace.”
“You don’t know the half of it. My mother, on the other hand, was a little more tolerable, at least on the music front. She gave me her old CDs and I’d get behind the church drums and play along to all these great 80’s bands in my earbuds.”
“That sounds adorable.” Jack grinned from ear-to-ear, which was some sort of wake-up call to the butterflies in my stomach.
I continued, “The older I got, the more I sang in church and my father eventually started to really push me into a career as a Christian country singer, or as he called it a ‘ministry.’ I did as I was told and hated every minute of it.”
“Why do it then?”
“To make my daddy happy. To make God happy. To make people who heard me sing happy.”
“Everybody but you,” he deduced.
“Something like that, yes.” I glanced out the window again. “Now I don’t really speak to either of my parents and I can’t seem to find the energy to give even one shit about it.” I shook my head. “I can’t believe I’m telling you this.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s not really like me. I don’t share.”
“I like you sharing,” he said as he pulled into the studio parking lot.
“Well, we’re back.” I smiled and pushed open the door.
“Hold up. Don’t want you to fall out.”
I rolled my eyes, but waited for him to climb out and walk to my side of the truck. He lifted me down, then grabbed the coffees, and I followed him inside.
My heart reeled with emotions I’d never really experienced, which was quickly followed up with my brain reminding me I was here to do a job and flirting with a man more than a decade older than me was not part of said job.
Gah! I needed to slow this down.
I spent the rest of the day making sure our interaction was friendly, but highly professional, and I snuck out when they went back into rehearse their final song of the day. I had all the notes I needed for Roses for Anna, and the band had my number should they need something Lucy couldn’t handle from Alabama.
I slipped into Bam and Lucy’s apartment, grabbed their toy poodle, Mammoth, and took him out for a walk. I decided that since their apartment was so close to a couple of good restaurants, I’d order food and take it back to eat while I worked.
It gave me some time to get my head together… even if my heart still objected.