Page 51 of Drilled (Dad Bod Contracting 2)
Sitting beside me, Imogen leans close. “I’ve never actually heard him play before,” she whispers, excited.
“I didn’t even know he was a musician!” I whisper back.
“He mentioned he plays in a cover band sometimes, but I guess they sort of disbanded and he’s been too busy lately with Dad Bod to play.”
After some more noodling, Jesse settles in to play a recognizable melody: “Hotel California” by the Eagles. After a little guitar intro, he starts singing the lyrics, and I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it wasn’t for Jesse’s voice to be so amazing. It’s deep, raspy, charged with intensity, beautiful. After a minute, James joins in, strumming around the melody. His voice is deeper, smoother, providing a harmony to Jesse. They go through that song, and then transition to “Jesse’s Girl”, which makes Imogen blush and snuggle against Jesse’s arm. After that, they do “Fade to Black” by Metallica, and then “Stairway to Heaven” by Led Zeppelin.
The songs they do and the way they play the melodies and harmonize tells me Jesse and James have been sitting around bonfires jamming to those tunes for decades.
Nina, leaning sleepily up against James’s arm, gazes up at him. “Play the song, Papa.”
“No.” A gruff, terse, monosyllabic refusal.
“Please?” Her voice is cracking, sad.
“Dammit, child.” He sighs. “It’s more’n just me and your uncles this time, Nina.”
“So?”
“So…it’s hard.” He scrapes at a guitar string with his thumbnail, making a raspy hum.
“Good thing you’re so tough, huh, Papa?” She nuzzles closer. “Please? And then I’ll go to bed. Promise.”
James sighs again. “Fine.”
“Fuck,” I hear Jesse mutter, under his breath so low probably only Imogen and I could hear him. The word is hissed, bitten out, a sound raw pain.
James plucks a slow, sad melody, and then sings— “Every Time We Say Goodbye”, by Ella Fitzgerald. Jesse doesn’t accompany him on this one, and his expression is neutral, almost shut down.
As are Ryder’s, and Franco’s.
This song is clearly thick with meaning for all four of them, and for Nina.
When the song is done, James lets the strings hum the final note until the sound quavers into silence. The guitars both go back in their cases, and then James lifts a now almost sleeping Nina into his burly arms, while Jesse scoops the long-since slumbering Ella into his. Imogen follows Jesse inside, and Nova follows James. Ryder and Laurel rise, too, and wander off into the darkness beyond the pale orange light of the dying fire, murmuring to each other in low tones—it sounds like Laurel is asking about the song, and Ryder is giving what seems to be the party line for Jesse, Franco, and Ryder when it comes whatever happened with James and the girls’ mother: “It’s not my story to tell, it’s his.”
And, just like that, Franco and I are alone at the fire.
I’m not drunk, but I’ve been slowly drinking all night, leaving me loose and floaty.
“If I asked you about Nina and Ella’s mom, would you tell me?” I hear myself asking.
Franco slowly shook his head. “It’s not—”
“Your story to tell,” I say, in unison with him. “Gotcha. Nina told me she was going to have a baby and went to be with Jesus, and so did the baby.”
Franco blows out a tight breath. “Yeah, that’s pretty much all there is to tell.” He pauses, considering; I finally let myself look at him, and find his piercing blue eyes fraught with sadness and hazed with old memories. “She was Jesse’s sister.”
“Oh my god. I’m so sorry to hear that. I had no idea. Were he and Jesse friends before they got together?”
“Reneé.” This is from Jesse, standing behind me, startling me; I twist and see Imogen hanging on him, gazing up at him lovingly, sadly. “Her name was Renée. James and I have been friends since middle school. We met in seventh grade. We got in a fight during lunch, and my sister broke it up. The three of us were inseparable after that. We met Ryder and Franco a few months later, when all of our parents collectively decided to sign us up to play flag football through the local YMCA. To get us out of their hair, I guess. But yeah, James and I were friends long before he and Renée started dating, which was in high school.” He pauses, laughing. “Franco’s stupid ass had a crush on her too, actually.”
“It wasn’t a crush. Your sister was hot as hell, so half the guys in town had a crush on her. And I knew James was gaga for her, anyway.” Franco says this with good-natured irritation.
“And you were hot for Lacey Wright at that point, too, weren’t you?” Jesse asks, steering the conversation away from Renée.
Franco stabs the fire with a piece of stick. “Who wasn’t? Of course, the problem with Lacey was that she had no problem getting with any guy who’d pay her the least amount of attention.”
