“Yeah, it is,” said Gina, setting four beers down on the table. “He's being a real dick to her, and all her friends believe him. He needs a punch in the face.” She slid one over to Kathy. “That's on your tab, Eddie.”
“Thanks,” Kathy said, even though she hadn't drunk any beer since she started making enough money to buy good bourbon whiskey, and had never liked the taste.
Eddie smiled at her and raised his beer for a toast. “To man troubles.”
Kathy managed a half-smile in response.
*****
Gun Metal wasn't that bad, Kathy decided. When Gina went to work, and the place started to fill up a little, Tony and Eddie laughed and joked with her and generally kept her spirits up. Then Tony had to help Axeman with something, and Eddie sat a little closer, and she found herself forgetting about Mark for a while.
It wasn't that she didn't feel hurt anymore, but a couple of drinks and good company in a new place, with no reminders of him, made it easier – even if she didn't really like the drinks in question.
Eddie had her in stitches with a story about a singer with halitosis he had met once, then gestured at her with his beer. “Alright, beautiful, how about you tell me a little about yourself?”
Kathy stared at the table for a moment. “Well... I work in insurance. I spend most of my time in front of a computer looking at numbers. It's like, you know, working out the odds of things happening and all that.”
“Sounds boring. How'd you get into that?”
“I studied it in college. My parents wanted me to do something useful. How did you get into heavy metal?”
He laughed at that. “I just like the music. I stayed because the money is good.”
“Really? For drumming?”
“Oh yeah, around these parts anyway. Good drummers are hard to come by, and there's plenty of gigs for a drummer who's reliable and mostly sober, or a roadie who can toss amps around.” He held out his arm and flexed the muscle. “Gives you a great upper body workout too, so I moonlight as a bouncer here sometimes.”
Kathy ran her fingers over his forearm. It felt rock hard, with every tendon clearly defined. He could probably punch someone through a wall, which was completely at odds with his easygoing nature. Maybe it was precisely that; he knew his own strength, and he knew how to be gentle. She found herself wondering what it would be like to be held by him.
Oh my god, she was attracted to him – to a tall, hairy, heavily-built drummer with a beer belly. The sudden realization almost took her breath away. Mark's cheating had done more than shake up her world; it had dropped her into the damn Twilight Zone, where up was down, left was right, and Eddie looked good to her.
He caught her hand. “Hey, you okay?” he asked.
She gulped, feeling a lot more light-headed than she normally would be after a few beers. “I'm fine. I was just thinking about my boyfriend – my ex-boyfriend, I mean.”
Eddie didn't let go. He held her hand in both of his. “Do you want to talk about him?”
“He's a jerk,” she said bitterly. “I came back from a conference late last night just so we could be together on our one year anniversary, and I found him in my bedroom with another woman. All the people I know were friends with him before they were friends with me, so of course they believed him. I just wish...” She began to choke up again. “I never suspected for a minute that he was sleeping around. He could have been doing it all the time, and I didn't know. I don't even know if anything else he said was true.”
“Hey,” he said, “you know now, that counts for... wait, is that how you know Gina? She was the woman he was sleeping with?”
Kathy went red. “Yeah, it is,” she said quietly.
“And you guys somehow got talking?” he asked incredulously.
“It wasn't her fault. He lied to her too, and then he suggested a threesome when I showed up. Then she came back today to find her phone, and she told me about what he'd been doing, and... yeah.”
Eddie whistled under his breath. “And she brought you down here. I swear, that girl gets the strangest ideas.”
“No! No, I'm glad I came,” she said, giving him a weak smile. “I didn't want to face Mark or our friends right away. I'm actually kind of happy I met Gina, and you.”
He squeezed her hand. “For what it's worth, I think a guy would be nuts to cheat on you.”
He looked so sympathetic that Kathy teared up. She stifled a sob. Eddie patted her shoulder while she began to cry again. The loss of Mark she could probably accept, but she couldn't help questioning herself, and her judgment. It hurt that she didn't know where to go or what to do without him.
“I'm sorry,” she said, “I'm sorry...”
Eddie stood and tugged on her hand. “Come on, you can stay in one of the dressing rooms for a while. It's okay, Kathy.”
He slung an arm around her shoulders and brought her back behind the stage. The first dressing room had a few clothes racks, a mirror, a chair and a couch, and it smelled like dust and stale beer. Eddie set her down on the couch and got her some tissue from the restroom.
“It's not your fault,” he said, rubbing her back. “Your boyfriend's an asshole, and you're not responsible for that. It's just bad luck, that's all.”
She blew her nose and sniffed. “I just don't feel like I can trust myself any more,” she said tearfully. “I mean, my boyfriend's been cheating on me for who knows how long and I never worked it out, and now I'm in a heavy
