Welcome to Last Chance (Last Chance #1)(13)
Author: Hope Ramsay

“Yes, ma’am,” he said on a long sigh. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”

He moved to the bar, where Dottie handed him a beer. Bubba Lockheart took that moment to connect his iPod to the battery-operated boom box someone had brought along for the Hurricane Party. Predictably, the latest Tumbleweed hit song started playing.

Clay felt something snap inside, and he turned toward Bubba, who had taken a seat at the end of the bar. “Damn it, why’d you have to play that stupid song?”

Bubba shrugged. He was already looking halfway wasted. “It reminds me of Rocky,” he said.

Well, that was predictable, too. Rocky, Clay’s little sister, had broken Bubba’s heart into a million pieces a number of years ago. The big man still carried a torch for her, and truth to tell, most of the folks in Last Chance blamed Rocky for the demise of Bubba’s potential as a future NFL linebacker. Of course, Bubba was a loser, and Rocky had probably been right to dump him when she did. At least Rocky knew a bad boy when she saw one.

“Bubba, Rocky ain’t never coming back. You know that. I know that. The entire town knows that. And my momma is as heartbroke over it as you are. But it’s time to move on.”

“Right, Clay, I know.” Bubba nodded and lifted his beer as the Tumbleweed song played on. There was no mistaking the sarcasm in his voice.

“Clay,” Dottie said, “don’t take your misery out on Bubba. He’s got plenty of his own. And while I’m at it, it was unfair of you to take your sorrow out on Jane, too. As far as I’m concerned, she has a voice like an angel, and I, for one, would not have minded hearing ‘Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under?’ In fact, Clay, you should tell Kyle about that girl. She might bring some real class to the Wild Horses. You owe her an apology.”

“Yes, ma’am.” When Dottie got to handing out advice, it was best not to argue. Besides, Dottie was right. He did owe Jane an apology, but he didn’t feel like running right out the door after her. Instead, he turned toward Ray, who was eating a bowl of hash as if there were no tomorrow.

“You want to explain those questions you were asking Jane and Dot?” he asked.

Ray looked up, his cheeks filled with food. He chewed vigorously for a couple of moments, then swallowed. “I realized this afternoon that the matrix we started didn’t have enough dimensions.”

“You want to put that in language I can understand? What matrix?”

“You know, the list we started of eligible women. We didn’t have enough dimensions on it. So I came up with a list of questions designed to determine the suitability of any woman to be your wife within an acceptable standard deviation.”

“Of course.” Clay ground his teeth together but held himself back while he counted slowly to ten. “And where did you come up with these questions?” he finally asked when the initial fury had passed.

“Oh, here and there. The questions about games of chance are to determine if she has any mathematical abilities and likes the kind of stuff you like. And, of course, she needs to know how to bake a pie, Clay. You can’t hitch yourself up to a woman who can’t bake a pie.”

He leaned in. “Listen, Ray, you leave Jane alone, and you stop asking women these questions, you hear me?”

“But Clay, I—”

“I mean it. If there are any questions to be asked, I’ll do the asking myself. You got that?”

Ray looked up at him. “Sure, Clay. I hear you.”

“Good.” He took a deep breath. “Well, I guess I need to go find that little gal and apologize for being a jerk, and while I’m at it, I’ll apologize for you, too.”

He turned, snagged his heavy-duty flashlight from the top of the piano, and headed toward the door. He stopped before he stepped through it and turned over his shoulder, pointing the unlit flashlight at his best friend. “I mean it, Ray, no more questions.”

“I hear you.” Ray ducked his head a few times like he was nodding.

Clay turned and pushed through the door into the dusky October evening. He found Jane five minutes later, sitting on the bottom step of the stairway that led to the apartment above the Cut ’n Curl. She had her chin planted in her fists.

He had this horrible feeling that she was crying, but he wasn’t about to shine his flashlight in her face to confirm it. So he doused the light as he approached, putting them both in the safety of the deepening night.

“Go ’way.” She sniffled.

Yup, he hated himself. It was not an unfamiliar feeling. “I’m sorry about what I said back at Dottie’s. I didn’t mean it the way it sounded.”

“Okay. Now get lost.”

“No.”

Jane looked up at him, and he could almost make out the spark in her dark eyes. “You know, you are a stubborn pain in the butt.”

Clay let go of a bitter laugh. “Yeah, I know.” He paused for a moment, wondering how to continue. “Uh, look, Jane, the thing is, my life has been crap the last few months.” He couldn’t speak without a little waver, and it made him feel about five years old.

“Crap? You mean like someone broke your heart or—”

“No, like someone I care about is really, really sick. With cancer and likely to die.” His voice didn’t waver this time. Instead, it sounded hard and flat and angry. It was so much easier to be angry at Uncle Pete for getting sick than to admit that he was angry about other things: like his broken career or the broken heart that he refused to acknowledge.

“This person who is sick. Is she—”

“He. My uncle.”

“Oh.”

“He owns the hardware store. He’s been like a father to me and my brothers and sister, seeing as my own daddy is… well…”

“What?” Her voice cut through his confusion.

Clay shrugged. He wasn’t about to go explaining his complicated and uneasy relationship with his father. “I already told you about my father.” He turned to go.

She called him back. “So you’re telling me you have father issues and that explains why you’re a big, selfish, stubborn, myopic jerk.”

He stopped and turned. Suddenly, he wanted to laugh out loud. What was it about this girl that called to him?

“Yeah. I have father issues. And a bunch of other complications in my life.”

“Like what? Because my father used to get drunk and beat on my mother. And as for life complications, maybe we could have a contest. Because I’ll bet I win. I only have five dollars and assorted change to my name, I’m wearing an oversized ‘Get Reel’ shirt, and there isn’t a store open in Last Chance where I can get a jar of peanut butter. I mean, that’s bad, Clay.”

He laughed, and the tightness in his chest eased. “I’ll concede the point.”

“Oh, goody, do I win a prize? Like biggest loser in Last Chance or something?”

“You’re not a loser, Jane,” he said. “If I gave you that impression back at Dottie’s, I am truly sorry. The biggest loser in Last Chance is me.”

She looked up at him and cocked her head, and he wished with all his heart that he could see her face. He wanted to sit beside her. He wanted to hold her hand. He wanted to take her up those stairs and make sweet love to her.

“Why’s that?”

“Because I’m living here in Last Chance, just waiting for the moment when I snap and start seeing angels like my daddy does. Because my career in Nashville is over and I don’t really know what to do next.” Because I’m alone and I’m tired of being alone. But he didn’t say that out loud.

“You had a career in Nashville?”

“Yeah. I was a union  -scale side man for years.” He didn’t talk about Tumbleweed or the rest of it. He didn’t want to pour his heart out to this semistranger. “Look,” he said, “there’s something else I need to say.”

“If you’re going to invite me back to your place, I think I’ll take a pass. I’m thinking maybe you’re too needy and high-maintenance, you know?”

He stifled a chuckle. In all his born years, no woman had ever told him that he was needy and emotional. Maybe that was because his exes had all been pretty needy themselves. Or maybe because right now he was needy and emotional.

He put his foot up on the first step and leaned toward her. “Can I give you some free advice?”

She drew her knees up and rested her chin on them, the gesture a pretty clear message that she didn’t want anything from him. “Free advice is worth what you pay for it.”

“Yeah, well, in this case maybe not.”

“Sure. Go ahead. I have this feeling there’s no way on earth I can stop you anyway.”

“I spent years in Nashville, and the thing is… well…”

He paused a moment, trying to find the right words to warn her, to guide her, to give her what she needed to know. It wasn’t that he wanted to discourage her. He wanted to keep her from breaking her heart. Nashville was the capital city of heartache.

“I’ve met dozens of girls like you,” he continued. “Girls who’ve sung gospel in their hometown churches. Girls with pretty faces and killer bodies who know in their heart of hearts that one day someone is going to discover them as the next big thing in country music.”

“For the record, Clay, I never sang in church, so get that right out of your mind.”

“You didn’t? Really?”

“No. I sang in chorus in high school. But not in church. Never in church.”

“Okay, it’s the same deal.”

“So you’re saying we’re all a bunch of dreamers? That we—I—don’t have what it takes?” He could hear the pain in her voice, even though she was trying hard to mask it.

“No, that’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m saying I’ve seen dozens of girls who think that singing in church, or chorus, or in karaoke bars is the same thing as being a musician.”

“So you don’t think I’m a musician?” She was working herself up to angry now, and that was better.

“To be honest and totally frank, no. I don’t think you’re a musician. But you do have talent.”

She didn’t say a thing. She raised her head up off her knees and looked at him in the darkness. He could see a sliver of moonlight reflected in her eyes, and he wanted to lean down and kiss her—hard. Instead, he concentrated on telling her the God’s honest truth. Because he had this feeling that it was the best thing he could do for her. Giving her the truth would be better than taking care of her, or taking her to bed.

“Honey, when you sang ‘Amazing Grace,’ it carried me away. Your voice has a haunted quality to it. A sweetness that’s all backwoods and mountain hollows and illegal moonshine.”

“A mountain voice?”

“Yes, ma’am. The kind of bluegrass voice that would have gotten you right into the Grand Ole Opry a generation ago, before pop invaded the country charts.”