Behind the Label by Lorna Schultz Nicholson

Author:Lorna Schultz Nicholson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Red Deer Press
Published: 2022-08-11T18:18:36+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

Willa

“Max is having some people over,” said Calvin.

We were hanging out on my sofa watching television. I leaned my head on Calvin’s shoulder and inhaled to absorb his smell. Since I’d apologized, he’d been super nice to me and was being the Calvin-I-liked. When he was like this, I couldn’t get enough of him. I didn’t get an apology for the horrible things he had said about Gloria and my song, but . . . tonight he was being sweet. I took that as an apology. We were watching a documentary on WWII, but the credits had just started rolling. He loved watching war documentaries, and he knew details that he spewed out through the entire show. Just listening to him talk so intellectually had made me cuddle closer.

He kissed my neck. “Movie is over. We should go. I want to show you off.”

“Show me off?” I laughed.

“Yeah. You’re mine.”

“Go on,” I laughed and kissed his neck.

He touched my cheek. “I mean it,” he whispered in my ear. “You’re the best girlfriend a guy could have. And you’re mine.”

Something inside me swelled and I wanted to be close to him, touch his skin, inhale his scent.

“Yes, to Max’s?” he asked, nuzzling his lips on my neck.

“Yeah, okay.”

We got ready and I said goodbye to Clara, who was leaving anyway, by the looks of her dark, nicely pressed jeans, and flowered silk blouse. She looked good. Another hot date, I guessed, by the way she was jingling her car keys too, anxious to be gone, have us gone.

“Be home by eleven, no later,” she said. “It’s a school night.”

“Does that mean me too?” Calvin winked at her.

She shook her head at him.

“You look like a million bucks, Clara.” This time he raised his eyebrows.

“I see right through you,” she said.

“You’re a tough act, Clara.”

“I know.” She turned and walked away. “Home by eleven, Willa,” she said over her shoulder.

We got in Calvin’s car and he put on a tape of us, our band, the Kicking Demons. We called ourselves that because our first few rehearsals were at Calvin’s, and it was a dark summer night, thunder blasting away above us, lightening ripping through the black sky. We had sat outside after our rehearsal, where we’d just rocked it big time, discussing a name, because we were sure we could be a band. I thought the sky had looked like kicking devils, and we came up with Kicking Demons. Months later, after mega rehearsals, Calvin had organized a taping, in a studio that he’d been able to rent through some rich friend of his. It was the most exciting thing I’d even done in my life.

I closed my eyes and listened.

“That’s us,” said Calvin. He put his hand on my shoulder.

I opened my eyes and rolled my head toward him. “Incredible when you hear it with all the proper acoustics.”

“I think we’re due for another recording. We win the Battle of the Bands and that’s one of the prizes. Plus, a small tour.

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