The Liar

“I want a Coke,” she decided. “Do you want a Coke?”

“I wouldn’t turn one down.” Especially since it meant he got a little more time with her. “So what’s the job?”

“Now, that’s much too direct for around here,” she warned him as they started downstairs. “We have to work up to how I went about getting it.”

“Sorry, still shedding the Yankee.”

“Well, don’t shed it all, it works for you. What were you listening to?” She tapped her ears.

“Oh, it’s a pretty eclectic playlist, I guess. I think it was The Black Keys when I cut that ten years off your life. ‘Fever.’”

“At least I lost a decade to a song I like. Now to your question. First, I got my butt kicked and my ego flattened when I tried for a job at The Artful Ridge as my high school rival, at least in her mind, manages it.”

“Melody Bunker. I know her. She hit on me.”

“She did not.” Amazed, she stopped short, gaped up and gave him a chance to look close. Her eyes really were almost purple.

“Did she really?”

“She’d had a couple of drinks, and I was new in town.”

“Are you going to tell me if you hit back?”

“I thought about it,” he said as he walked to the kitchen with her. “She’s great to look at, but there’s that mean streak.”

“Not everyone—particularly those who are male—notice that.”

“I’ve got a pretty good eye for mean. She was with another girl, and there was a lot of . . . How do I put this without saying ‘meow’?”

“You can say it, it fits her. She’s always been catty. And she does have a mean streak, deep and wide. She tried her best to make me feel stupid and useless today, but she didn’t manage it. She’s following after a superior act in that area of mean, and fell short, well short.”

She caught herself, shook her head as she got out Cokes, glasses. “Doesn’t matter, and it was for the best. For more than the best.”

“What did she say to you—or is that too direct?”

“Oh, she started with snide little comments about my hair.”

“You have amazing hair. Magic mermaid hair.”

She laughed. “That’s a first. Magic mermaid hair. I’ll have to use that with Callie. In any case, Mean Melody got in a few jabs about my current circumstance, which I tolerated as I wanted the damn job. She moved on, though, trying to scrape me down to the bone, how I wasn’t qualified, didn’t have enough class, basically, or intelligence, and it was clear I didn’t have a cherry snow cone’s chance in hell of working there, so I landed a few jabs of my own, with, I will say, more subtlety and style.”

“I just bet.”

With a cool, sharp smile, Shelby poured Cokes over ice. “She was so steamed up when I was leaving she shouted out how she’d been second-runner-up Miss Tennessee, which is her spotlight of fame. To that, I ended the encounter with the southern woman’s sweetest and most pitying insult.”

“I know that.” He pointed a finger. “I know that one. You said ‘Bless your heart.’”

“Haven’t you caught on fast?” After topping off the glasses, she handed him one. “I knew that one landed, but I was so fired up, I marched over to the bar and grill. I was going to ask Tansy to hire me on as a waitress. I met Derrick—and doesn’t he look like an action movie star.”

“I hadn’t thought of it.”

“You’d be looking at him as a man does. From a woman’s eyes?” She laughed again, waved a hand in front of her face. “Lucky Tansy—and lucky Derrick because she’s a sweet, smart, sensible woman. So after I apologized for being rude to him, because I was fired up, they didn’t want me for a waitress.”

“Sounds like a rough day on the job hunt.”

“Not at all. They wanted me for Friday nights, to sing. I’m going to be their Friday night entertainment. Or, as Tansy’s calling it, I’m going to be Friday Nights.”

“No kidding? That’s great, Red, seriously great. Everybody says you can sing. Sing something.”

“No.”

“Come on, a couple of bars of anything.”

“Come into Bootlegger’s a week from Friday, and you’ll hear plenty.” After lifting her glass to him, she took a satisfied drink. “Then, because that’s not all, I went in to tell Granny before I hit a couple other possible places for day jobs, and she cornered me into working part-time there. She made me believe she could really use me, so I’m hoping she meant it.”

“In my shorter experience, Miz Vi usually means what she says.”

“It’s true enough, and Crystal swore to it they’d already talked about hiring someone part-time. So, I didn’t just get a job, I got two. I’m employed, gainfully. God, it feels so good.”

“Want to celebrate?” He watched her eyes go from sparkling happy to just a little wary. “Maybe we could get Matt and Emma Kate, go have dinner.”

“Oh, that sounds like fun, it really does, but I need to buckle down, work out a playlist. Tansy wants to change it up every week, so I’ve got some research to do. And there’s Callie, though it’s likely to be more of a weight on me leaving her for hours at a time than for her leaving me.”

“Does she like pizza?”

“Callie? Sure she does. It runs a close second to ice cream on her favorites list.”

“Then I’ll take you both out for pizza one night after work.”