Finny
Music pounds in my veins like a heartbeat. It’s quick and consuming and I’m so damn hot that I’m turning myself on, and all I’m doing is dancing.
My personal security guard is standing over by the bar, pretending to nurse on a Jack and Coke, but I know it’s just diet soda. I don’t always need a security guard, but when I go out in a crowd and I’m alone, it’s best to have someone to help if things go bad. Jason’s gaze wanders around the room, and he scowls when he sees the guy I’m dancing with get a little too close. He starts to get up, but I shake my head at him. He narrows his eyes at me in a silent question.
No, I don’t need for you to come and pull him off me. This is not the one I want. The one I want smells like baby spit-up and talcum powder.
“You want to go to my place?” the guy asks, his mouth close to my ear.
I shake my head. “I just want to dance!”
Before Tag, I would have said yes to him. I would go and not think twice about it. I might come twice. Maybe more if he’s any good, but I wouldn’t even have to think about it. Yes, I might orgasm. But something tells me I would still feel empty inside after I get home. I’d shower off the scent and the feel of sex, and then I’d wrap my arms around my pillow and fall asleep.
The live band stops playing and we all clap.
“We’re taking a five minute break,” someone says quietly into the mic.
“Thanks for the dance,” I say over my shoulder. The guy clutches his chest like I’ve stabbed him, but I walk away. I start toward the bar so that I can get something cool to drink.
Jason, my personal bodyguard, pretends like he doesn’t know me, so I lean into his side. “So, are you ever going to fuck me or what?” I smile and bat my lashes at him.
He grins a sideways kind of smile. “I don’t think my wife would appreciate it, Fin, but thank you for thinking of me.” He rolls his eyes and sticks his tongue out at me. Jason is pushing fifty, and he has been happily married for twenty-five of those years. He mumbles something about jailbait as a scantily clad young woman walks by us.
“How’s Norma?” I ask.
“She’s pissed at me. Apparently, I was supposed to have been a mind reader or some shit.”
I bump his shoulder with mine. “What did you neglect to do?”
He pretends to look offended. “What makes you think it was me?”
I look down toward his lap. “Because you have testicles, dude.”
He pushes his knees together. “Stop talking about my man parts.”
“I didn’t say I want to lick them or anything, Jason,” I say with a grin.
He looks down his nose at me. “Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?”
I freeze. He realizes his mistake immediately, because he reaches to grab me when I pull away.
“I’m sorry, Finny. I didn’t mean it.” He pushes me back onto the barstool. “I meant Marta.”
“Yes, I do kiss my mother with this mouth,” I toss back. I wave my finger around the room. “And I kiss other people, too. Some people happen to like my advances.” I glare at him. I like to mess with him but, truth be told, he’s like a comfortable old uncle. He’s been on my detail long enough that he feels like family.
“When you going to settle down, Finny?”
“Never,” I tell him, and I suck down the last of my water.
Someone taps the mic at the front of the room, then clears his throat. I look over at the stage. “I just heard a rumor that someone famous is here,” the club owner says. He shades his hand with his eyes and starts scanning the area.
Oh, shit. Jason grabs my arm and gets ready to pull me toward the back exit.
“Wait,” I say. I hold up one finger. He doesn’t let me go.
“You’re going to get both of us killed,” he murmurs at me. “And Norma will chop my balls off if I let you get hurt.” But he stands still and lets me see what they want.
“One of the members of Fallen from Zero is here. Their lead guitarist. Finch Vasquez,” he says, searching the crowd. Then he places his palms together like he’s praying. “Finny, the last time you were here, you graced us with a song.” He holds up a guitar. “Will you do us the honor?”
“What do you think?” I mumble at Jason.
“I think you’re stuck now,” he mumbles back. He walks beside me, presiding over me like I’m the most important person on the planet. Someone reaches out to touch my shirt, and he brushes the arm away.
I walk up to the stage and take the guitar. I hold the mic away from me. “Just one song,” I tell him.
The club owner grins and nods. “Just one.” He leans over and kisses my cheek.
“I have one condition,” I say into the mic. I reach over and take a hat off a guy’s head in the crowd. “If you want me to play, you guys have to fill up the hat. I’ll give the money to the homeless shelter on the way home. Deal?”
I wait to hear their enthusiastic responses. The hat starts to move around the room, and people drop cash into it. I see Jason clear it out and stuff the money in his pocket, and then start it moving again.
I settle on the edge of a stool and balance the guitar on my lap. I pluck at it.
“I can’t believe Finny Vasquez is playing my fucking guitar!” the owner of the instrument crows.
I grin and start to play. I have a new song I just wrote, so I might as well try it out, right? I suddenly clap my hands over the strings and stop.
“My sister Peck just had a baby boy two months ago,” I say into the mic. “This one is for her.”
I start to play again.
Sometimes when I see my sister with her baby boy, I watch them together. Her eyes fill with so much love and joy that it makes me ache. I never had that. Not for a moment. Not until I met Marta did I know the definition of unconditional love.
In the first minute,
I wondered how you could be so perfect.
In the second minute,
I wondered how you could be so small.
In the third minute,
I wondered how you could be so fragile.
In the fourth minute,
I wondered how you could be so bald.
In the fifth minute,
I watched you breathe.
In the sixth minute,
I watched you cry.
In the seventh minute,
I watched you stretch.
In the eighth minute,
I watched you love.
You were born knowing
That you were loved.
You were born knowing
That you were adored.
You were born knowing
That you would be cared for.
And in that moment,
Her dreams came true,
Because she was loved by you.
I repeat the beginning and the chorus a couple of times, and by the time I’m done, I’ve upset myself a little, because I wasn’t born knowing I was loved. In fact, it was just the opposite. I was born knowing I was hated.
You were born knowing
That were you loved.
You were born knowing
That you were adored.
You were born knowing
That you would be cared for.
And in that moment,
Her dreams came true,
Because…she…was loved by…you.
My voice goes quiet and I wait. The audience blinks at me and then they start to clap. A few women at the front wipe their eyes and someone else proposes marriage.
I pull a felt-tip pen out of my pocket and hold it over the guitar, silently asking the owner with my eyes if he’d like for me to sign it. He pumps his fist and shouts, “Hell yes!” So I sign it with a flourish. I stuff my Sharpie back in my jeans pocket and hand him his guitar.
He tries to hug me, but Jason gets between us. The guitar owner holds up his hands like he’s surrendering to the cops.
Jason leads me off the stage and we walk back to the bar, I can’t stay here now that everyone knows who I am. I’m aware of it, and so is Jason. He’s hyper-aware of it, if the way he’s clutching my arm is any indication. “We need to get out of here,” he says.
And that is when things go ridiculously bad.