“Glad to hear it.”
Lucy and Joni had a long road to fertility, including two heart-rending miscarriages, and now she’s pregnant with twins. For all of the drama leading up to this, she’s had one of the easier pregnancies we’ve seen this year, and I’m grateful for it.
“So, what’ll you have today, sugar? The special today is fantastic.”
“Girl, you’ve never steered me wrong. Give me that and iced tea.”
Mac slaps down her menu. “Make that a double and call it good.”
“You’ve got it,” she says, then leans in. “I’ll make sure Charlene doesn’t post anything. Y’all deserve a little bit of privacy and don’t need your business all over the place.”
“Thank you,” Mac says, her smile genuine. “That really means a lot to me.”
We watch as Lucy carefully waddles away, then go back to grinning at each other like a bunch of lovesick fools. It’s, of course, way too soon and far too stereotypical to talk about love, so I try to bring the conversation around to something less heated than the look in Mac’s eyes.
“So, you’ve been dropped into a tiny town in western Colorado, home to bossy PAs and old lady taxidermy. I bet this is one of the weirder places you’ve ever been to.”
She snorts. “Hardly. The weirdest place I’ve ever been to was a small town in Germany. Even though they were in the middle of nowhere, the venue was oddly big, like maybe it was a central place for all the other misfit towns.”
“They know about you in rural Germany?”
“Apparently so,” she says, nodding as Lucy drops off our teas and some waters. “The craziest thing was skinheads showed up.”
“Oh my God. That sounds terrifying,” I say, reaching for her hand.
Squeezing my fingers, she shakes her head. “Initially? Sure. Then a small group of exceptionally terrifying lesbians went after them with shovels and pipes.”
I bark a laugh, and she nods, cracking up with me.
“They sent those little boys crying back to their mothers. It was the most hilarious thing I’ve ever seen. And we still had a show to play.”
“How could you even play after all of that?”
“How could we not? It was one helluva show, too. The audience was singing along to every song, louder than some of the venues I’ve played in Nashville.”
“Really?”
Damn. I’ve been missing out on her this whole time. How did I manage that?
“Yeah, Kin. Really. Some people are, in fact, aware of who I am,” Mac jokes, patting my cheek.
“I’m sorry! I caught up as quickly as I could.”
“You don’t get it, do you?” she asks, kissing my fingers again.
“No, I guess I don’t,” I answer, feeling a little embarrassed and behind the curve.
“You weren’t looking for anything from me that night. You were only there because someone gave you a ticket. You didn’t need anything from me. You weren’t trying to pull one over on me. You weren’t trying to get anything from me. Far too few people in my life are like that. I’m glad you didn’t know who I was. Though…gotta say…I’m glad you’re a fan now.”
“Ha. Way more than a fan.”
“That you are.” Mac looks off to the side, a smile teasing her lips. “So yeah, that was the weirdest place I played. And that’s still not the whole story.”
“There’s more?”
She cracks up, her eyes drifting off to the side again as though remembering something fondly. “There was an after-party that me and the band were invited to. It was at some farmer woman’s house, and we didn’t feel like we could say no, but we also didn’t know what we were saying yes to, you know?”
“Oh my God. I mean, you clearly survived it, but that could have gone all kinds of wrong.”
