Just as I was passing one of the newer lounges on the street, my feet stopped moving. All on their own. I found myself turning to look inside the lounge. Of course, the lights were low, making it difficult to fully see around, but the sound coming from the center stage was what pulled me closer.
Before I could tell what was happening, I entered the lounge as if I was being pulled in. The smooth, soft sound of the voice coming from the front of the room held the entire audience captive. She wasn’t belting out the song, but the way her vocal cords wrapped around every single note, as if they were her own little playthings to dance over, held all of our rapt attention. And I hadn’t even seen her face yet. Once I did, it was as if someone punched me in the gut.
“Grace,” I whispered, saying her name for the first time.
She was no longer dressed in those electric blue scrubs all the nurses wore. This Grace was dressed in a skintight, black mini dress that stopped inches above her knees. The dress was sleeveless and the lights on the stage perfectly reflected off the tawny brown skin of hers. Those hickory eyes were enhanced by the dark eyeshadow she wore, and her heart-shaped lips were lined in a blood red color. This wasn’t Nurse Young on stage.
This was a woman singing on stage, begging her lover not to judge her. Her voice was cooing in a way that wasn’t a turnoff, which I didn’t understand how that was even possible. She swayed her perfect hips in time with the music, slowly and hauntingly. The heels on her feet gave an additional four inches to her five-foot-six height. I took every inch of her body in. From the top of her head, noting the bouncy curls hanging around her shoulders, to the smooth tops of her perfectly formed shoulders, over her collarbones, down to her adequately sized breasts which were outlined by the tight dress. The way her small waist gave way to her hips reminded me of the images patients would often bring to my office asking if I could make them look like this model or that one.
This woman had a body my patients paid thousands of dollars for. And I would bet dollars to donuts she hadn’t spent any time on a surgeon’s table to earn it.
Somehow, I found myself much closer to the stage than I’d anticipated. Luckily, I was able to get ahold of myself within seconds of her finishing the song. I backed away from the stage, not wanting to take my eyes off of her until the very last moment. She didn’t see me due to the fact that she was busy bowing and receiving hugs from some of the band members on the stage. I took that opportunity to slip out the same door that’d allowed me entrance.
I shook my head as I turned and reversed my steps to carry myself back to my home. I don’t know how long it took to get back because I was too busy replaying every second of Grace’s performance in my head. Whenever I came to the end, it was almost like I’d hit the rewind button and replayed the tape all over again. I did that over and over until I arrived home, making it behind closed doors.
Pressing my back against the door, I closed my eyes, and again she was there, crooning her fucking heart out. She’d kept me hypnotized—so much so that the surgery from earlier, the Underground, and everything else fell away. However, she’d held my attention from the first moment I laid eyes on her. It was the way she looked at me. She didn’t show the signs of fear that other women did. Even women who I dated in the past tried to get me to open up to them, but I refused because I could see the fear in their eyes. They’d never say as much, but I saw it. The storm clouds I often found staring me back in the mirror in my eyes, the emotions that sent me to the Underground to fight, and my off-putting demeanor struck fear in them.
But not Grace.
I found myself smirking as I remembered the stubborn way she lifted her chin at me in defiance. How she mouthed back when I put her on the spot in the OR. She wasn’t afraid of me, and that pulled me to her just as much as her siren voice drew me to the stage in that lounge.
“Fucking pull it together,” I growled at myself, starting to feel pissed off. I took a walk to work out the energy from fighting only to return with a different type of energy moving through me.
I huffed some more as I pulled my shirt over my head, tossing it into the grey laundry bin I kept right next to the door of my master bedroom. Moving to the bathroom across the hall, I took a long, steamy shower, hoping that would help. It did, but just enough to wash away most of the events of the day.
Once I dried off, put on a pair of running shorts, and climbed onto my empty mattress, save for one uncovered pillow, I was almost ready for sleep. My final act of the night was to reach for the remote I kept on the far nightstand and turn on the large flat screen mounted on the wall directly across from me. I pressed a couple of buttons, pleased to find that the NFA fight I scheduled to be recorded earlier that night was saved.
As usual, I’d already looked up the result of the fight but wanted to see the actual fight for myself. I sped through all the commentator talk and other bullshit that didn’t hold my attention, to get to the actual fight. I stated at the screen as one of the top NFA fighters, Luke McConnell, took on another, much less skilled opponent. I kept the fight on mute because the voices of the fucking commentators had my fingers inching to get them in the ring. All of the shit they talked, asking whether or not Luke was passed his prime, washed up, or just lazy pissed me off.
Once I saw him place his adversary in a very similar leg chokehold I put on Brick a few hours earlier, I knew it was over. I pressed the power button, turning off the TV before the official bell rang. Like I said, I already knew the results.
Tossing the remote back onto the nightstand and turning over on my side, I closed my eyes and let the exhaustion of the day do the rest.
****
Grace
“That was a great set tonight, Grace.”
I inhaled deeply, forcing myself not to roll my eyes. Plastering a big smile on my face, I spun around and thanked Jackson for his compliment. And I silently prayed that that’s where he would leave it. Unfortunately, he just couldn’t.
“We make a pretty good team on stage, don’t we?”
I couldn’t help the ballooning of my eyes that was caused by that statement, but again, I relaxed my face and nodded.
“Yeah, sure.”
We had just gotten off the stage together. While Jackson was a very good saxophone player, he also had a nice voice. And sure, it did match well with mine when we sang H.E.R’s “Best Part”. But that was where it ended … for me, at least.
“So, I was thinking our union didn’t need to end once we got off the stage.”
Lifting an eyebrow, I cocked my head to the side, and suddenly a burst of laughter fell from my lips. “I wasn’t expecting that,” I snorted.
“Come on? You weren’t expecting me to ask you out?” he retorted good-naturedly.
Shaking my head, I held my hand up. “No, I mean, yes. I was expecting you to ask me out but not with that type of pick-up line.” Though a saxophone player, Jackson came across as actually pretty shy where women were concerned. At about six-foot, caramel-colored, smooth skin, and a bald head, he wasn’t a bad looking guy either. You’d think women were falling over themselves to get to him, and yet he seemed to be unaware of his good looks and charisma afforded to him by his career.
“Ron told me that one. He suggested I give it a try.” He smirked.
