Page 80 of She's Like the Wind
CHAPTER 27
Gage
The Fair Grounds were already half-mud, half-beer by the time we pushed our way toward the stage. Naomi wore a straw hat, giant sunglasses, and a sundress that made my brain stutter. She had a flask of water, which she handed to me between songs like we’d done this a thousand times.
And maybe we had. In some other life. In which I didn’t ruin us.
It’s not over yet, Gage, she’s here with you. Make the most out of it.
We’d had an early dinner at Café Degas, tucked under the live oaks on Esplanade Avenue, where the wine was crisp and the candlelight soft enough to make anything feel like amaybe.
Part Parisian bistro, part New Orleans dream, the restaurant was open-air and intimate. We shared theEscargots à la Bourguignonne for an appetizer and their excellent salad Niçoise as an entrée.
It was like being back to when we didn’t have my stupidity to deal with—just two people enjoying each other’s company. Naomi was open, like before, which I was grateful for and knew I didn’t deserve.
Was I taking advantage of her big heart and the fact that she loved me?Yes.
Was I feeling guilty?No. Not about wanting her back—but yeah, I was wrestling hard with the way I’d handled things when she told me she loved me. I’d thrown it in her face, stomped on her feelings, like they didn’t matter. That guilt lay heavy.
Now that I’d admitted how I felt about Naomi—and was feeling the sting of her rejection—I could finally imagine just how deeply I must’ve wounded this remarkable woman.
“They’re about to come on.” She gave me a look full of unfiltered delight. “Still time to run if you’re secretly not a Stones fan.”
I wrapped an arm around her shoulders and brushed my nose against hers. “Baby, I spent half my childhood stealing my old man’sSticky FingersLP. I’m not going anywhere.”
When The Rolling Stones hit the stage, the crowd roared like a living thing.
People screamed.
Danced.
Cried.
Naomi…laughed so hard I thought she might actually explode from happiness.
She nestled into me during the slow songs and hopped around during the fast ones.
The hell with the Stones—I watchedher, falling more in love with her every second. I now knew that I fell for her a long time ago—maybe that first time I’d seen her. Now that I was moving past my pain, my trauma, thanks toAuntie Griselle, who was seeing me once a week, I was allowing myself to break down the walls I’d erected so I could feel honestly.
“That was exhilarating,” she announced when we walked through the crowd after the concert to make it to the Jazz Tent, where Aurelie was performing.
We sat together, wrapped in each other and the music, as Aurelie and her band, Bossa Bayou, took the stage like they’d been born to it.
She wore a beaded flapper-style slip that shimmered under the low lights, her voice warm and smoky as she slid into a set of French jazz from the 1920s and ’30s.
Josephine Baker, Django Reinhardt, Édith Piaf—songs that felt like they’d been pulled from the faded corners of Parisian cafés and smuggled into New Orleans with opera gloves and lipstick-stained cigarette holders.
The soft thrum of the upright bass rolled under every note, the accordion sighing between verses like it knew heartbreak personally. I kept my arm drapedaround Naomi’s shoulders, my fingers tracing absent circles against her skin in time with the rhythm.
The noise of the world fell away, leaving only this—the music, the heat, and us.
Later that night, when I kissed her outside her apartment, she let me.
She let me hold her, feel her, show her that I loved her.
Then, almost shyly, she bid me goodnight. I waited until the lights were on in her place before I went to find my truck.
For a while, being with her, I’d forgotten everything else. The past. The wreckage. My crimes against Naomi. I’d felt whole for the first time since she’d left, since I’d pushed her away.
