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“You flaunt your body shamelessly, nena. It’s a wonder you haven’t gotten yourself pregnant by now.” My mami gives the black dress I’m wearing a discerning look, crooking one eyebrow up. “Me cago en na!” She shakes her head and I smile at her.
My mother is nothing if not feisty and clearly, straight to the point. A spitfire of a woman, she never leaves people wondering what she’s thinking, and I’d like to think she passed that straight on down to me. She’s old-school Puerto Rican, the best kind, and she grew up on the island. My sister and I have never lived anywhere aside from Chicago, and while Mami uses phrases like Me cago en na, we’re more likely to use our father’s phrase he says when he’s mad, goddamn it. My dad is from California, he’s old-school too, but think more old-school white surfer dude than beautiful Puerto Rican woman. I’d like to think my sister and I were raised with the best of both worlds.
Mami smooths her long, dark brown locks and takes a compact mirror out of her clutch to examine her olive complexion. “Mami, you’re beautiful. Put that away.” I playfully swat at the mirror as she sets down her compact and picks a stack of mail up from the coffee table, sorting through it. When she shuffles to a glittery, opal-white envelope and stops, I know there’s an issue before she even tells me what it is.
“Mmm,” she says, and then makes a tsk sound with her tongue. “That boy.” Her dark eyes narrow, focusing intently on the envelope as she turns it around and opens with one slice of her crimson red nail. My heart sinks when I see his name as she turns the paper over in her hands.
Manuel Rodriguez.
My ex-fiancé.
“Is that a fucking wedding bell stamp?” Veronica stands behind me, gawking at the mail in Mami’s hands, her jaw slack. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she says dryly as I try to come to terms with what she just said.
A wedding bell stamp? Holy actual shit.
My cell phone vibrates against the wooden table, an unknown number flashing across the screen. Normally I’d let an unknown call go to voicemail, but because I know my voice mailbox is full, I answer, “Hello?”
The voice that meets mine on the other end is deep, smoky, and undeniably sexy. “Can I talk to Isla Robles?” A professional, clearly. No one asks for me by my first and last name. Too bad this voice probably belongs to a bill collector or someone looking for a donation I don’t have the means to give.
“Speaking.” God help me if it’s really a bill collector. Did I pay my credit card bill? I try to think back, wondering when the last time I paid it was. I need to get better about that. Or, you know, just stop putting things on credit cards. That might be a good option, too.
“I’m calling from The Vinyl Kitty. You applied here last month.” Apparently, the voice doesn’t have a name. I almost forgot I applied at the Vinyl Kitty on a whim. I was having one of those days where I was saying, Fuck it, I’m going to work at a record store and listen to bomb ass music all day for a living. Fuck college, I’m out.
When I don’t say anything, he continues, “I was wondering if you’d wanna come in for an interview today?” His voice floats through the phone line, making me melt into a mess. I don’t think, in all of my twenty-one years, I have ever been smitten with a voice over the phone. But, Jesus Christ, talk about short notice. I really wouldn’t mind working there though; I could use the extra cash to pay off that credit card bill and beggars can’t be choosers.
“Sure,” I tell the voice. “I’d love to. What time?”
“Come as soon as you can. 110 Hawthorne. We’re open until nine, but I’ve got a lot of things to sort through today.” The line clicks, signaling the call is over, and it immediately rubs me the wrong way.
Okay, then.
Three
Bordeaux
Nepenthe (n.) something that can make you forget grief or suffering.
___________
The bells hanging over the entrance door chime, signaling a customer walking into the shop. I peek my head out from behind the counter to let them know I’ll be right with them, and my eyes meet those of a drop-dead gorgeous woman.
I see beautiful women all the time, often nightly when I’m touring, screaming my name from a crowd—screaming my name in bed. But holy fuck, this woman. My eyes refuse to leave her, roaming all over her figure without giving my brain a second to catch up.
A black dress hugs her body, nearly matching the color of her dark, long, flowing hair. Thick strands cascade down and around her shoulders, messy, wild, but beautiful. I think there’s more of her olive-toned skin showing than there is fabric on that dress. She catches my eye after looking around the shop, and I quickly look down and back up to meet her gaze. There’s no fucking way that worked, and she definitely knows I was just undressing her with my eyes.
“Hey. I’m Isla,” the woman says, stepping toward me and holding my gaze. She stands straight, her shoulders back and confident as hell.
Jesus Christ on a goddamn cross. Of course, this is Isla. My applicant is the wearer of that dress. A dress that leaves damn near nothing to the imagination. I can’t be mad about it, but it isn’t usually a first-choice type of outfit for an interview—at least, not any interviews I’ve conducted. Which isn’t many, so maybe this is normal.
She doesn’t seem at all phased when she sees me, but she has to know who I am. I’m not thinking it to be full of myself; I’m anything but. There’s just no way. I am so not used to this. She’s not screaming and fan-girling all over the place. Why haven’t her eyes grown wide? Why isn’t she blushing? Who is this foreign, normal acting woman?
I realize I’m still squatting behind the counter, sticking my neck out, gaping at her like a fucking half-wit. Standing, I force my eyes away from her body and gulp down my sudden onset of stupidity. I look directly into her eyes, threatening my own to not wander down her body. My breath catches sharply in my chest when her deep copper eyes gaze right back at me—tiny, golden honey specks illuminate their dark hue, bringing a whiskey-colored light out in them.
She reaches her hand out first. “Isla Robles, here for the interview.” My eyes fall to the prettiest pout I have ever seen. This isn’t a groupie, this isn’t a one-night stand in a tour bus. This is Frankie’s business. Get it the fuck together, man.
“Bordeaux Daniels.” I grasp her hand and briefly meet her soft palm before pulling back. “I’m helping Frankie, the owner, out for a bit. We talked earlier.” Who the hell, in their sane mind, would have ever thought an Isla would look like this? Not me, that’s for goddamn sure. I don’t even remember what I pictured in my mind, but it certainly was not a goddess of a woman.
I hear the familiar swoosh of the curtain that separates the store from our stock room as Kennedy comes back from his break with a stack of records in hand. Isla’s eyes leave mine as she spots him, and I watch as she takes him in. Blinking slowly, just once, her eyes quickly find mine again. “Nice to meet you, Bordeaux.” Again with that accent. It’s not incredibly heavy, but I pick up on it nonetheless, and the sound of my name from her full, cherry-stained lips evokes some kind of emotion inside me that hasn’t been awakened in a long, long time.
