Chapter Nineteen
“Tell me something embarrassing.”
Liam started from his post-bliss blissing out. Something embarrassing? Like about how he was falling for her? Maybe that was just the sexual bliss talking. And it was talking loud, because he had no idea what she was talking about.
He felt her shift. He opened his eyes and found himself face-to-face with a mussy-haired, kiss-swollen Joanna and it was all he could do not to grab her and ravish her like in those old-school romance novels he got from interlibrary loan for Mrs. Wilson. Instead, he listened.
“There must be something wrong with you,” Joanna said, sliding a finger across his chest.
There were many things wrong with him. He was a terrible listener. Or he had forgotten how to speak English. What was she talking about?
“You have your shit together. It makes me feel inferior.”
That got his attention. He started to sit up, but she put a gentle hand on his chest and he stayed down. She settled her head on his chest while her fingers continued their wandering. He put one arm behind his head and the other on her hip. He heard her sigh and felt her sink deeper into his side. He forgot all about her feeling inferior. He just loved this.
“There must be something wrong with you,” she said. “Tell me.”
“I can tap-dance.”
Her fingers stopped. Her head came up. “Really?”
“Not very well. Probably not at all anymore. But I used to take lessons when I was a kid.”
She snorted into his chest hair.
“Hey, my mom wanted me to.”
“Oh, so you didn’t have dreams of being a big-time hoofer?”
“You laugh, but look at Gene Kelly.”
“Yeah, Gene Kelly was hot, but that was, like, a hundred years ago. If I was a hundred years old, I would have hit it.”
“Or Channing Tatum?”
“Channing Tatum is not a tap dancer.” Pause. “Wait, can you dance like Channing Tatum?”
He lifted his arm and attempted a pop and lock robot.
“So . . . no.”
* * *
Joanna thought about the other guys she had dated. The last one, Troy, wouldn’t even get on the dance floor with her because he thought it was too . . . well, when he said what he thought it was, she probably should have dumped him right there. But she was determined to convince him that dancing could be sexy, that it could be like sex, but with clothes on and in public. No good. And Bobby, who got pissed when she even suggested going to see a touring musical with her. She told him she didn’t expect him to enjoy it, and she promised copious oral sex afterward. That was quite a blow to her self-esteem, that he would rather forgo blow jobs—plural!—than be caught in a dark theater watching a musical.
Then she thought about little Liam in tap class, surrounded by girls in frilly skirts. Maybe he wore a sparkly vest and bow tie. And a jaunty cap. And the idea of his earnest face—the same one he used to chop tomatoes—concentrating on the steps and keeping time with the music, it filled her with so much glee that she had to lean away from him and put her hand over her heart lest it beat out of her chest.
“Are you laughing at me?”
She wiped her eyes and took a deep breath. She hadn’t even realized she was laughing. She thought she was having a cuteness overload heart attack.
“No,” she gasped. “I mean, sort of. But in a good way.”
He leaned over her. “How is this a good way?” He narrowed his eyes at her, but he wiped a tear off her cheek and her heart melted.
“I’m just picturing little Liam in his bow tie . . .” She couldn’t finish. She was dying of laughter.
“Hey, I never said I wore a bow tie.”
“I know, I just . . .”
“I mean, I did wear a bow tie. And suspenders.”
Suspenders! She threw her head back. She couldn’t breathe. Suspenders!
“Hey, now,” he said. But she couldn’t stop laughing. Every time she looked at him, all she could see was that sweet, earnest face highlighted by a sequined bow tie. His eyes narrowed, and she tried to stop, really, she did, but then he threw the covers off them and nudged her legs apart and finally, finally she stopped laughing.
* * *
“Now you tell me something.”
Joanna didn’t want to talk. Her muscles were rubber. Moving her jaw was too much work.
“I know you’re not asleep.”
“Yes, I am,” she muttered into his chest.
“I can feel you thinking.”
She sat up, pulling the sheet with her. She wasn’t sleepy, just a little dead. She crossed her legs, and he put his hand on her knee.
“Tell me something embarrassing,” he said.
“Where to begin . . .”
“Tell me about Bunny Slippers.”
Her head dropped to her chest. Of course he wanted to know that. “You don’t already know?” She felt his thumb rubbing a lazy circle on her leg.
“I want you to tell me.”
She took a deep breath. What did it matter? She’d be gone soon anyway.
“We recorded one album ourselves. It wasn’t great.”
“Yes, it was,” he said. “I have that album. It’s raw and loud and great. It makes me want to smash things.”
“Yeah, okay. It was pretty great. And it was so fun to make. God, we tore up that studio. Not literally, of course.”
“Of course.”
“We were just touring around, working crappy day jobs, nothing major. But Mandy—the lead singer— she was talking to this record company guy. He came to one of our shows . . . We had a lot of band meetings. God, so many meetings. I didn’t want to sign, Mandy did. I thought this guy wanted us to tone it down way too much; Mandy said it wasn’t a big deal. So we signed with him. It all happened so fast, but I barely noticed the change. It would just be little things—tone down Mandy’s shouting vocals, cut my damn guitar solo.”
“That’s cruel.”
“I know. I’m a damn rock genius.”
“Your guitar solos are the only good thing about Bunny Slippers.”
She looked down at him. He was serious.
God, he was sweet.
“So, okay. He got us on this tour with the Penny Lickers. At first I thought he was joking. I mean, those guys are nothing like us.”
“They’re terrible, for one thing.”
“Yeah, and it’s just a totally different sound, you know? They’re more traditional rock, and we’re, like, the second coming of Sleater-Kinney.”
His thumb kept circling the spot right above her knee. It was comforting. And she needed comfort, because this was the worst part.
“So it’s the night of the first show. I’d been feeling like this really wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, but I’d signed the contract, right? So I had to do it. Then, just as we’re about to go onstage, Jeff gives us these . . .”
“These what?”
“It’s too embarrassing.”
“More embarrassing than a sequined bow tie with matching suspenders?”
“Yes.”
He tugged her down so her head rested on his shoulder. He snaked his hand through her hair and massaged her scalp. She got goose bumps, it felt so good.
“Bunny tails.”
He stopped massaging. “Bunny tails?”
“White fluff balls. They attached with Velcro. To our butts.”
Her head was shaking. She realized it was because Liam was shaking.
“Are you laughing?”
“No,” he said, but then he snorted and rolled on his side away from her.
“Stop laughing at my pain!”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t. I can’t. Bunny tails?”
She shoved him farther to the edge of the bed, but he caught her arms and held on.
“Okay, okay, I’m done laughing. Tell me the rest.”
She settled back onto his shoulder and closed her eyes. She could still feel it, all these weeks later. The adrenaline as they stood in the wings, the roar of the crowd pulsing through her veins when they stepped out onstage. The thwack on the ass Jeff gave each of them right before they went on.
Not a thwack on the ass. A thwack on the tail.
Mandy was eating it up. She paraded out onto the stage, her arms outstretched, taking in the screams. As Joanna and the others followed her, she bent down and stuck her tail in the air. “How do you like our new look?” she shouted into the mic. Deb and Harlow gamely turned and wiggled. Joanna looked out over the deafening crowd. This was the biggest show they’d ever played, exponentially bigger. This would expose them to thousands and thousands of new people who would download their album and make them stars.
“All I had to do was get onstage and shake my tail,” she told Liam.
“And it didn’t feel right?”
That was exactly it. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to—although she didn’t—it just wasn’t who they were as a band. It wasn’t who she wanted to be as a musician. Women in rock had a hard enough time being taken seriously as musicians, and now Jeff wanted them to have a piece of fuzz up their asses?
“It’s because I saw this girl in the front row. I don’t even know how I was able to pick her out. The lights were blinding, the whole thing was sensory overload. But there she was.”
“The girl in the front row.”
“She was wearing a Bunny Slippers shirt, one of our old ones. Those were the ones that Mandy screen-printed in her dad’s garage, one at a time. They were so crappy, these cheap white T-shirts that just said ‘Bunny Slippers’ in this crazy font that was totally illegible. But I knew that shirt. I’d sold those shirts at the merch table in many crappy bars.”
“A real fan.”
“Yeah. Only she wasn’t smiling. I’ll never forget it. All these people jumping and screaming around her, and she’s just standing there, staring at me and my fluffy tail, like I’d betrayed her.”
“Not very nice.”
“That’s when I knew. That’s when I knew this had all gone too far, all the little compromises we made to be palatable to all these jumping people made us look like fools to the people who cared about our music when no one else did. And I was one of those people. I didn’t care that this was going to be our big break. If this was what we had to do to get big, I didn’t want to do it. So I didn’t.”
“So, what, you just left?”
“Didn’t you see the video?”
“No. I wanted to, but . . . I don’t know, I thought I’d just wait for you to tell me.”
“This would probably be easier if you’d seen the video.”
He reached around her for his phone, charging on the nightstand.
“Wait, really?”
“You said I should see it.”
She took a deep breath and Googled.
She was relieved to see that it wasn’t the top result for Bunny Slippers. First, there were news stories about the album making the charts and the hot new guitarist who wore ears and a tail. Finally, she found the video and handed the phone to Liam.
“You don’t want to watch?”
She shook her head, but then she lay back down on his shoulder where she could see his face and the screen.
There it was: the screams and the tails, and Joanna, frozen on the side of the stage. There was Mandy, giving her a playful wave. Then Joanna shaking her head, and Mandy shouting something the mics didn’t pick up. Then Joanna walking off the stage while the guy taking the video said “Holy shit, she just left!”
And that was it. The end of her rock-and-roll career, over in a minute and thirteen seconds.
Liam made a funny sound in the back of his throat. “Have you seen this before?”
She shook her head.
“Don’t read the comments.”
“Ugh. Let me guess: that fat chick with the guitar is a total loser.”
Liam put the phone down. “Never mind.”
This time, he didn’t go back to his side of the bed. Instead, he hovered over her, pushing her hair out of her face.
“So. That’s your most embarrassing moment.”
“So far.”
“It’s a pretty good one.”
“Thanks.”
He leaned down and kissed her. It was soft and sweet and it kind of made her want to cry. “Thank you for telling me,” he whispered in her ear.
This guy was strange. She peeled back her skin to show him the darkest layers of her soul, and he said thanks.
If she wasn’t careful, she thought as he leaned down to kiss her, more thoroughly this time, she was going to be in real trouble.