Софи Келли: A Night's Tail

Since it seemed we were going to keep dancing this close, I decided to just enjoy the warmth of his hand against my back and the way he smelled like citrusy aftershave and Juicy Fruit gum.

“Thank you for handling that drunk,” I said. “What did you and Brady say to him?”

“I pointed out that I could arrest him for public intoxication and Brady added that I could add a charge for animal cruelty. He wasn’t so drunk that he couldn’t see if things went badly for Derek they’d also go badly for him.”

“Did he know you recognized him?” I asked. “I can’t help thinking that it doesn’t exactly make his case for the town to give him a deal on that piece of property down on the waterfront if he’s going around getting drunk and kicking service dogs.”

Marcus shrugged. “I don’t know. I asked him his name and he just laughed. Brady is the one who recognized him. I didn’t want to escalate things by pushing for his ID. He probably thought it was funny that he was able to get away with acting like an idiot. And to be fair, maybe he was just having an off night. It happens.”

He pulled me a little closer. “You know, I think I would have liked middle school clinch songs if you’d been at my middle school.”

“I would have danced with you,” I said.

“Even with my quasi–Tom Petty haircut?”

“That was the look you were going for?”

He reached over and tucked a stray strand of my hair behind my ear. “I was. I’m not really sure my mother even knew who Tom Petty was.”

“Even if you’d had a haircut like Richard Petty the race-car driver I would have danced with you,” I said.

He raised an eyebrow and a slow smile spread across his face. “For future reference, flattery works on me.”

I gave his hand a squeeze. “Good to know,” I said.

Off to my right I could see Maggie dancing with Brady. To my left the boys were still around the table, talking. I could almost see the energy radiating from Ethan, one hand wrapped around his beer, the other punctuating his sentences with sharp movements slicing through the air. He was like our mom. Performing energized them both.

We stayed for the band’s second set and then headed home. Brady offered to drop off Milo and Derek at the bed-and-breakfast where they were staying but it was a nice night—clear and just a couple of degrees below freezing and they decided to walk down. Marcus, Ethan and I squeezed into the front seat of my truck.

“Is there going to be kissing?” Ethan asked, when I pulled in the driveway at Marcus’s house. He squished his face and pulled his shoulders up around his ears. He was sitting in the middle between Marcus and me.

“Yes, there’s going to be kissing.” I leaned across him, covering his eyes with one hand, and gave Marcus a quick kiss.

“I’ll call you after practice,” he said.

Marcus was helping coach the girls’ high school hockey team. They were just one win away from making it to the state finals.

I nodded.

“Good to see you, Ethan,” he added and climbed out of the truck.

“Is it safe to look?” Ethan asked. I’d already dropped my hand. He opened one eye, squinting at me. “I don’t want to see anything that might scar my psyche. I’m very sensitive.”

“You’re very something,” I said. I straightened up and put the truck in gear.

Ethan slugged my shoulder with a loose fist and laughed. “C’mon, Kathleen, you know you’ve missed me.”

“Like a root canal,” I countered as I backed out of the driveway. “Like fingernails on a chalkboard.” We’d been doing this routine for years.

“Do they still have chalkboards?” Ethan asked.

“Like a colonoscopy. Like Mom’s hot cross buns.” Our mother’s hot cross buns were legendary. They looked like they belonged in an issue of Bon Appétit . But they were harder than a concrete paver. Dad had literally chipped a tooth on one of them, although as far as Mom was concerned the tooth had a weak spot and the fact that it broke when he took a bite of—or at least tried to take a bite of—one of her hot cross buns was just an unfortunate coincidence.

Ethan narrowed his eyes at me. “Ooooh, Mom’s hot cross buns. Burn.”

I glanced over at him, head back against the seat, fingers tapping a rhythm on his leg that only he could hear, and I was hit with a wash of homesickness, like someone had just upended a bucket of water over my head. I missed them: Mom, Dad, Sara and Ethan, even though he was right here beside me.

It wasn’t easy being so far away from Boston, from all of them. Not that my family were always in Boston. Ethan was on the road a lot with the band. Sara’s work as a makeup artist and filmmaker had her traveling more and more, and while Mom and Dad were teaching, they still went where the acting jobs were, which in my mother’s case meant Los Angles a couple of times a year for a recurring role on the daytime drama The Wild and Wonderful .

On the other hand I had a life now in Minnesota, a life with Owen and Hercules, my cats, with Marcus and Maggie and a group of friends I’d miss just as much as I missed my family now, if I went back to Boston.

“Hey, I never did ask,” Ethan began. “Did you know that dipwad in the bar?”

I shook my head. “No, I don’t know him, at least not personally. He’s here in Mayville Heights to maybe start a business.”

“You get some interesting people in bars,” Ethan said. “When we played in Chicago this woman got up on her chair, whipped off her shirt and started dancing. Then she yelled at me to come give her an autograph.”

“I think that makes you a certified rock star,” I teased, “being asked to autograph a woman’s bra.”

Ethan raised an eyebrow just the way I sometimes did, à la Mr. Spock from Star Trek . “I didn’t say she had a bra on under her shirt.”

“Ewww,” I said with a shudder. “Now my delicate psyche is scarred.”

Ethan shook with laughter. “She was wearing a tank top. And I signed the back of it!” He spent the rest of the drive home sharing all the weird things he’d been asked to autograph, including a bald guy’s head and the top of a toilet tank. I laughed so much I got hiccups and I forgot all about drunks in bars.

chapter 2

When I left for the library in the morning Ethan was at the table eating an omelet stuffed with ham and cheese, not even trying to disguise the fact that he was feeding bites to the two mooching furballs sitting at his feet.

“C’mon, try to pretend you’re not sneaking them food,” I said as I put on my shoes. “The least you could do is try to give me plausible deniability when Roma asks what they’ve been eating.”

To my amusement Hercules immediately moved around to the far side of Ethan’s chair so he was not so much in my direct line of sight. Ethan then made an elaborate show of “sneaking” a bite of ham to the cat, which was, of course, way more obvious than what he had been doing.

I checked my messenger bag to make sure I had all the papers I needed.

“So what’s your friend Roma’s problem with Owen and Hercules having a bit of egg once in a while?” Ethan asked.

Owen immediately gave a loud and somewhat indignant meow.

I rolled my eyes at the cat. “The problem is that it never stops at just a bit of egg once in a while. It starts there and all of a sudden it’s an entire slice of pizza.” Owen immediately licked his whiskers and Hercules leaned around the chair looking like he suddenly expected a fully loaded slice to materialize on a plate next to him on the floor.

“So please don’t feed them any more people food,” I continued. Owen meowed again. “Because no matter how much he may try to convince you otherwise, Owen is a cat.”