When it comes to you, I wish I would've taken a few more chances, spun you round the room a few more dances, just for once look past these fences, followed your heart over that horizon [lady a]
x
Her fingernails are fire truck red against her early spring kissed skin, bronze and smooth like sea glass washed fresh up on the Bama coast. She runs a hand over the rugged oak of the lip of the bar, sweat silently dripping from her chardonnay, gives a tight lipped smile more out of polite courtesy that she never could have ever mimicked so well before her heels dug into southern soil.
His own mouth grimly puckers like he's been eatin' lemons out the tree in his father's back yard, a flash of white teeth barely peekin' between his lips. Licking his mouth nervously, he shrugs his shoulders feeling the soft navy flannel pull against his collarbone. She scoffs and struts away, one high heeled foot followin' the other not bothering to look back.
He turns in place behind the bar, wipin' another mug and draws in a shallow, shaky breath.
x
Tossin' out the drunks around two or three, his own father sits on the tailgate of his truck, smokin' a cigarette and swillin' a bottle of warm beer in the April air, light breeze liftin' the tails of his shirt. It smells like salt and sea, branches flowin' in the dead wind that gusts itself around his torso, wrappin' him up.
"Shoulda done somethin', boy," Earl says, his voice garbled and slurred. Wade can't even argue, just throws the man in the front seat, drives the long country backroad, dodgin' pot holes and listenin' to the sound of his muffler. Earl is already out like a light in the seat, heavy snores floatin' in the silence of the cab of the truck. Wade helps the man he calls father in the house, covers him with an afghan, and sneaks out of the squeaky screen door, work boots weighin' heavy on the floor.
"I know," he tells no one and watches as his words fall short and escape into the crack of light on the sky.
x
She teeters like a spinnin' top, flyin' out in any which way, he can see the certainty dangle by a string, how her confidence is shakin', and some part of it might be the way he ran over her heart with a MAC truck, but damn almighty, it weren't like she didn't do the same thing to him.
His sentences catch in his throat and he chokes on the words watchin' how she walks through town, dimmer and not as bright as she used to be. How that bastard golden boy shines like somethin' she latches onto and tries ta hold on for dear life. The whole town glares at him as she takes her coffee [ two creams, no sugar, not that he remembers] and whirls out of the Rammer Jammer.
x
He pretends that he don't stare out his window at her as she descends the steps in mornin'. Her hair is straighter, neater than it was when she was rollin' out of his bed in the days and weeks past. It don't mean she still isn't so beautiful that it kinda of makes him feel even worse.
Since she's gone, his sheets have slowly lost the scent of rain and that fancy New York shampoo that caught on the pads of his fingers and sifted into his skin. Contrary to popular town lore, not another woman has entered the bedroom and sullied those coconut and rain tasted linens. Each night and day when he wakes up, the sun light hittin' his face, he prays that she suffocates him with the remaining bits that he clutches as tightly as he can.
x
Her wit bites more than he lets on. Those carefully constructed barbs that she weaves and tosses at Tucker flow like water off the man's back. He ain't never realized what it's like to have her, hold her, and lose her like Wade has. It's the way that she scoffs in a way that comes to her naturally when she flips that curtain of hair and narrows those [cocoa] eyes, purses that [not so tart he once reckoned] cherry mouth and erupts with all the words she might have wanted to say between their bed sheets and in backseats. It slices and lands the way she wants it to, triumph lightin' a dangerous fire in her eyes.
But there is also that laughter he can catch when he flies somethin' right back at her, how it not ever once gets her off guard, like she was expectin' it. Like they never stopped to begin with. The smirk pulls across his face.
x
There are things he never got to tell her that he wanted to. Stories about his mother, how she made his father a decent man, taught Earl that feelins' were fine to have and to act on just so long as they were placed in the right place and time for the right person, how she was the one that placed a beaten down guitar in his bedroom next to his football gear and never said anythin' about it, never confessed to it, but continually "forgot" about lists of song requests that always landed near his backpack, how his mama was the only woman he thought was worthy of lovin', how she was the only person in the whole world that knew about his future, believed in his future, had faith. Or at least she was until a big town doctor lady with sucklin' [bronze] skin and lively [cocoa] eyes and a mouth on her that shamed half of the Gulf coast.
x
That there light that she had given to him when her confidence outsped his is still sittin' in the house, reflectin' its blue glow in the windows, a sickly eerie reminder of what he has recently pulled the plug from. Next it to lay hundreds of sheets of paper with his chicken scratch, borrowed words that he stole from the fancy texts of poems that she kept on her lavender bookshelf next to the medical journal she swore up and down that she only had to look professional.
Under the rays of a late winter moon, she had confessd' with her fingers playing figure eights on his chest that really, she did, love her some blue grass, how honest the words was, how they resonatd' well with her. When he had laughed at her, chuckle dyin' on his lips with her crossd' eyes narrowin' hard, he immediately regretted it. The damn Lady Antebellum tracks play on repeat, even though he got it on mute.
x
He hasn't been in the main house alone with her in weeks, and when it finally happens, there are sunflowers on the table and fresh fruit in a bowl on the counter, both of them surprisd' to see the other. Him in a navy blue wife beater, hair askew and in need of a cut. Her in her pencil skirt and purple silk shirt, clingin' in a way that should be illegal, her lips set in a thin straight line, an insult flowerin' on 'em at the instant she locks her [cocoa] eyes on his [evergreen] ones. Her feet are bare, high heels in one hand, empty mug in the other.
She opens her mouth and nothin' comes out. He laughs a little, tries to hide a creepin' grin that's blossoming on his face. Her face betrays her and she smiles, then realizin' what she done, storms out, Lavon's forget me not blue coffee mug slammed on the island of the kitchen, hurricane windows clangin' in her exit. He never takes his sight off the door. Ya know, just in case she comes back.
She never does.
x
The thoughts that had been brimmin' on his tongue come out with brute force that almost knocks Lavon to the ground, and the man's expression of pity and disbelief is almost more than he can stomach. For Wade's entire life, he's been the bad guy. That one dude that you mess around with the night before your wedding in the open tailgate of his truck, feverish desire running its course as the girl fixes her skirts and smooths her hair, that roguish grin glintin' in the beams of a Bama moon, and no one ever asks how he feels afterwards. Love 'em and leave 'em indeed, but that was never his intention.
From the second he laid eyes on her in that stitch of nightgown, how her [cocoa] eyes were kissed with fires he ain't never seen before on a woman, that [bronze] skin beggin' to be touched, those lips so deliciously [not so tart, he reckons] cherried and waitin' to be bitten. How she took one glance at him and judged him in under thirty seconds all the way down to his Christmas lights in August and the worn well flannel shirt ridin' up his chest, unbuttoned without care, clever smile crooked on his cheeks. He knew right then and there that he had to have her and he'd take it at any cost. Just never anticipatd' the cost bein' so high.
But he gonna pay it well over.
x
You're still in love with her, Lemon tells him. It's more of a command than a suggestion but still he ain't lyin' to her face, watches as her nose crinkles delicately, her eyes cloud over with mist, and sweet Jesus, he don't want her to cry for him, don't want anyone to cry for him. His face betrays him how his once cocky grin falls short, how the fire has burnt out of his eyes, the way his shoulders sag, sallow and greyed. The radio plays a slow melody, twang of a man's voice filling up the empty cab of the truck, Lemon's words hangin' there in the thick air, the muffler still needin' to be changed, and his eyes in a rearview mirror watchin' the newly sprung world evolvin', growin' around him in each moment.
Evolve or die, he recalls, laughin' at the conversation starter book and the wine and the fancy crackers, how she snorted when she giggled, the bottle up to her lips and her bare feet in his lap, that switch on her face of maybe I could, maybe I would, maybe I will.
He jerks the wheel, flyin' into the right lane takin' a crazy ass U turn back to town. Daffodils bloom on the side of road, the sky is blue as a bitch, and Lemon is starin' at him from the passenger seat with a look that appears to be admiration. Reaching for the dial, he boosts the volume, let's the damn bluegrass settle in comfortably.
x
baby I'm not movin' on,
I'll love you long after you've gone