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Eight’s musical taste ran to old-school country rock, Skynard and Marshall Tucker, shit like that, but the Venn diagram with that and blues had some overlap. He loved Stevie Ray Vaughn, for instance. He’d dug The Lowdowners’ sound.
And he’d really dug the hot chick up front. Tall and sleek, not skinny or fat, but fit, with world-class tits and ass, and a long mass of black hair that framed her delicate face like a lion’s mane.
She’d dug him, too. For a while, a few weeks, they’d had fun. But Eight had still been mostly feral, so it didn’t last long.
Except in the way it would last forever.
Until he’d started seeking her out recently, Eight hadn’t seen her in person in eleven years, but he’d heard of her here and there, seeing ads for the band, shit like that. She was doing well, it seemed. It wasn’t like The Lowdowners had a big recording contract, but they’d made a name for themselves locally, and their YouTube channel had something like fifty thousand subscribers, which seemed good.
And this place was packed. That seemed good, too.
Eight couldn’t find a place to hole up in back. But a seat at the bar opened up, so he pushed his way to it and dropped his hand down on the shoulder of the dude who was going for it as well.
“No, buddy. That’s mine.”
The dude looked back angrily, ready to tell Eight off, but he rethought that decision when he got a load of Eight. Rather than challenge him, the dude erased any expression from his face and backed off.
Eight sat and caught the bartender’s eye. When he came over, Eight ordered a Jack, neat, and a Budweiser.
While he waited for his drinks, he watched the band. These days, Marcella wore her long hair straight and silky, but her mind-blowing ass was still encased in leather pants.
They’d moved on from ‘Love Me Like a Man’ to ‘Born Under a Bad Sign.’ Now Marcella was playing lead guitar and one of her band members was singing. Her focus was on her playing, but during a stretch when the lyrics were the focus, she looked up, with a big bright grin, and scanned the room.
It was so dark everywhere but the stage, Eight figured she’d be unable to see anything clearly past the dancers right in front of the band. So he watched her and didn’t drop his head or otherwise try to go incognito.
There was no reason to be here if he didn’t mean to speak to her, but he hadn’t completely decided whether he really did intend to poke that beautiful, furious bear. She’d given him her answer twice now, and he’d done nothing in the interim that might convince her to change her mind, so he knew what the answer would be.
Yet here he was.
Her gaze reached the mirrored bar. Eight watched her, thinking he was invisible to her. But her eyes met his and froze there. Her bright smile went dark, and he saw her shoulders lift with a long, deep sigh. A slow, weary shake of her head, and she looked down at her shiny black guitar.
Yeah, he should go. He’d fucked up eleven years ago, and there was no putting that mess back together.
Did he really want to put it together? Why?
Because this last year had been fucking shit. He was well past fifty and had done nothing worthwhile with his life. Until recently, he hadn’t been overly bothered by the insignificance of his existence. He’d had a good time, made good bank, had few obligations to anything but the club, and he had a couple people who truly had his back. One in particular.
But Becker was gone. And nowhehad the gavel.
What a fucking world.
Eight finished his Jack and his Bud. As he reached for his wallet, the bartender came by and lifted the empty whiskey glass, asking silently if he wanted another.
He didn’t want to go home. He didn’t want to ride. He wanted Marcella to give him a chance to do what he should have done eleven years ago.
He nodded at the bartender and waited for his next drink.
CHAPTER TWO
“Thank you, lovelies! We’re Marcella Lewis and The Lowdowners, and we’ll be back after a short break. Meanwhile, tuck up close to your honey, order something tasty from the kitchen, and tip your servers like you just won the lottery.”
As the crowd—they always packed Azure solid—clapped and cheered, the stage lights went dark, and Marcella set her Les Paul in its stand mostly by feel.
Dash Cotter, with whom she shared lead vocal and guitar responsibilities, set his Ibanez in the stand beside hers. “I’m gonna grab a couple pitchers before we go back. You want me to get food, too?”
Marcella looked across the club, to the bar, where Eight Ball still sat, watching her. Seeing her attention, he lifted his glass. That motherfucker. After eleven fucking years of pretending she didn’t exist, suddenly he was in her face every time she turned around.
This was the third time in not much more than a month she’d found him sitting in a club she was working. The first time, she’d figured it for coincidence, and he’d played it as such. They’d been playing a bar that was a bit more country, so maybe it had truly been coincidence. Since then, however, she’d found him watching her, now, twice more. Places that couldn’t possibly be coincidence—like Azure, a blues club in the heart of Greenwood. The clientele here was overwhelmingly Black, and Edgar “Eight Ball” Johnston was not the kind of guy you’d expect to find hanging out with a whole mess of Black folks.
