Eli, who had always been her biggest champion. “Your happiness just contributes to the world’s happiness, Glory,” was how he’d put it once. “You have go for it.”
She wondered if he was sorry he’d felt her up under that ponderosa pine now, and even now her body hummed, remembering.
She’d been about fourteen years old when she discovered suspended fourths and back-strums, magical ways to make a guitar chord sound huge and ethereal. She put them to use right away on a song it seemed she’d been holding inside for ages. She sang it to herself now, softly.
Oh, insecurity
Obsessed with sex
Obsessed with purity
Not the most compatible blend
Wide awake and wondering
In what way I’m blundering
For I sense that I am blundering again
Then a thought emerges, pulls your name
Like a banner through my head
I am comforted
You are my featherbed
It was a little literal, a little wry, a little melodramatic, wholly heartfelt. She’d called the song “Featherbed.”
She might as well have called it “Eli.”
She stopped singing. Music was like heat on an ache. Or a nice little hit of opium. Writing it, playing it, listening to it meant a few minutes of surcease these days. But once the song was over the truth settled right back in and hurt again, and she supposed—here was yet another irony—the point of hurting was so music could come into being in the first place.
“That’s a pretty song.”
She gave a start.
Oh hell. It was Leather Vest. Who had clearly followed her out the door. And apparently he’d all but tiptoed over here while she’d been singing.
That didn’t bode well.
“Got a light?” he tried next. When she just stared. He brandished a cigarette.
She’d only called him Cheekbones to make Eli jealous. It had worked, that much wasveryclear, but there hadn’t been much satisfaction in that. Leather Vest was definitely good-looking, but then, a lot of venomous snakes were pretty, too. Growing up in the country meant she could tell the venomous ones from the benign ones. He was the former.
“I don’t smoke.”
He’d planted himself with what felt like strategy between her and the back door of the Plugged Nickel. In front of them a few dozen yards away was an expanse of forest and Whiskey Creek, and over the hill from that was where she’d grown up, right now looking black and woolly with trees. Houses and cabins were tucked in there, but not a single light was on. It was going on two a.m. After all, even in the Whiskey Creek settlement, people had to sleep—or pass out—sometime.
Leather Vest put his cigarette away. “I had four queens.”
“You telling me about your poker hand or what you did last weekend?”
It was a risky joke. But that was the mood she was in.
It took him a second to get it.
“Funny.” He didn’t sound amused. “I won tonight’s poker game with that hand. Hey, you must be a little chilly...” The long thorough look he gave her settled on her skin like grease. “...in that top.”
