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Cody 1
I hadn’t seen Em or rather Emily Jennings since we were in our late teens. Back then, I’d had a crush on her as big as the moon, but she and my sister Natalie were best friends, which made Em totally off limits. The way Natalie had explained it, if we broke up or if I broke Emily’s heart, their friendship would be over, and at 17, Natalie’s whole world revolved around her friends.
Now that we were all grown up and racing towards thirty, my sister had moved past the terrifying idea of not having a best friend. She and Em were still friends but not quite as close as they were back then. Still, she wanted me to keep my distance; only this time, it was for completely unwarranted reasons, at least that was my thinking on the subject.
“If you two hookup, and she thinks it’s more than a casual thing, she could ruin my entire wedding,” Natalie reminded me once again as her wedding day loomed even closer… like tomorrow. “Maybe not on purpose, but she’ll be more focused on you than me. And that’s completely unacceptable.”
“I’m not going to have sex with Emily Jennings during your rehearsal dinner. Never going to happen,” I reassured her for the millionth time. “Besides, I’m dating someone now.”
“I thought you said that relationship was over… that you broke up with Shirley?” my sister asked as I watched her on my phone. She didn’t like to call someone without seeing their facial expressions. Nat said it was the only way she could tell if someone was bullshitting her or not. Plus, when it came to friends and family, seeing their faces counted more like a visit rather than just a call.
“Sally. Her name is Sally, and we’re on an extended time out,” I told her. “We did not break up… at least not officially, anyway.”
In truth, we had ‘officially’ broken up, but my sister didn’t need to add that perceived complication to her already stressful life.
“Yeah… Whatever,” she groused. “If you say so. Either way, I know the life you lead. You’re on the road more than you’re home if you still call Houston home. Hell, I don’t even call it home anymore. Not since I met my honey. Napa’s my home now. Napa and Carmel, which you would know if you ever came to visit me, which you have not.”
“You know we’ve been on the road a lot this year,” I reminded her. “I don’t know where I call home anymore. Spent a few months in Nashville. That was great. Rented a big-ass house. Might call that home. Makes the most sense, at least for now. But we’re here for the next ten days. I can visit you now.”
“I’ll be on my honeymoon, and tonight I’m staying with Aunt Tammy and Uncle Jimmy in the main house. Mom and Dad are there as well. You can’t see my homes without my being there. And it’s not just my… or should I say our homes, mine and Bernard’s. He’ll be staying at our house in Napa tonight. It’s an entire environment, the other estates, the wine tasing rooms, the grapevines, the ambiance of Napa. Besides, it’s more convenient for you to stay on Aunt Tammy’s compound in one of her guest cabins when you’re playing at Dirty Coyote. No commute. They transformed their estate just for that purpose, to make it more convenient for the bands that play at their dance hall. Tammy and Jimmy are both smart when it comes to over-serving both their customers and the bands.”
“Too bad Mom and Dad can’t be lured out of Texas.”
As we spoke, a young women applied makeup to Nat’s face, while a male hairdresser blew out her hair, and another young woman gave her a manicure. My sister was one of those multi-tasker kinds of people, who could never do one thing at a time. There had to be at least two or three things going on in her world at any given moment, or she’d get overwhelmed with her To Do List, and the world would stop… her world, everyone else’s world continued on without any consequence to her.
“Bullshit,” she said with certainty. “They’re just stubborn. Besides, I can tell they love it here. Mom’s loving Napa, and especially Cricket, a small town about an hour up the road. Dad loves Sweet Whiskey, but that’s because it’s a town that should be in Texas rather than California. Mom’s so happy to be back with Aunt Tammy, she wears a constant grin.”
Nat, a nickname she didn’t like my using in mixed company, believed in stacking tasks. The higher the stack, the more empowered she felt. Good thing for her she met Bernard Ashcroft, a highly successful motivational speaker with several books under his belt and aspirations to be the next Tony Robbins. Bernie, or Ber-nard, with the emphasis on the “nard,” thought of himself as the king of stackers and gave several talks a year that brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars, probably more like millions, on the wonders of stacking tasks for more free time. Apparently, the world was desperate for the concept of guilt-free, free time, or “my time.”
Not that neither my sister nor Bernie actually used any of that my time to relax.
Nope.
They merely stacked fun events together into their already crowded days and weeks. The fact that they’d planned a traditional wedding seemed impossible, let alone the honeymoon in Malibu. I thought for sure they would be honeymooning in a big city somewhere they could visit a museum while they brokered a real estate deal for a local apartment building, as they entertained the mayor and planned their next big speaking event.
“Maybe it’s because they haven’t seen each other in years. Must be nice for both of them. And it’s the first time Mom’s seen Dirty Coyote, Aunt Tammy’s pride and joy.”
“And whose fault was that? Aunt Tammy’s. All she would’ve had to do was invite Mom out, but she didn’t. Their last argument kept them apart far too long. She can be even more stubborn than Mom, but we’re getting off topic. We need to focus on you and Emily. Mom’s relationship with Aunt Tammy is between them. It’s your potential one-off with my wedding planner, who I know from the past can be easily distracted by your baby blues. Not unlike all the other women you’ve been with then discarded ever since your music took off and your songs started hitting number one. Just because Wilder and Days won a Country Music Award or two…”
“Three… We’ve won three CMAs,” I corrected her, but she hated to admit that I could do anything on my own. She was my big sister and liked to think I was lost without her guidance. Obviously, I wasn’t, but she refused to admit it.
“Whatever… You need to keep it in your pants, please.”
Where she got the idea that I was some kind of ruthless womanizer was beyond me. I tried to tell her not to believe everything she read about me, but she refused to listen.
“I told you, I’ve got a girlfriend… sort of.” I hated lying to my sister, but these were extreme times, which called for extreme actions.
“Just don’t mess this day up for me. I’m depending on you, Emily, and Aunt Tammy to come through for me, which you know I hate to be dependent on anyone… except for Bernard. He’s my hero!”
In reality, she did this kind of thing all the time, including begging me to play for one of her events, which I usually did, even if the rest of my band couldn’t make it. In this case, if it wasn’t for our Aunt Tammy’s generous offer of her dance hall, Dirty Coyote for the wedding venue, and Bernard’s latest stepdad’s offer of his beachfront Malibu place for their honeymoon, they probably would be honeymooning in London or New York City. Of course, Ber-nard could more than afford either one those cities and more, but stacking up your savings, then investing those savings to make even more money, was also part of their belief structure.
Which turned out to be the reason why my band would be playing at their wedding… for no cost to the happy couple. Not that I would’ve charged my sister, but I might have preferred it to be my idea, not a money-stacking scheme on Bernie’s part.
“All I’m saying is that when you and the guys meet with Emily later today, remember that she used to be my best friend, and treat her accordingly,” she warned, staring at me with one eye decked out with long fake eyelashes, her thick, black hair in total disarray around her face, and her mouth outlined in deep red. She looked a little like one of her old baby dolls after she’d given it one of her fierce makeovers. All she needed now was a bright-green tattoo on her cheek, and she’d be a perfect reincarnation.
I couldn’t help grinning at her image and thinking back to those times when she and Em would play for hours with their dolls. Their friendship began when they first met in kindergarten and remained steady until they both went off to different colleges.
“Why are you grinning at me like that?” she asked. “Do you already have something planned with Emily that you’re keeping from me?”
