LITMIR.BIZ

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guy met me halfway across the dance floor, having taken advantage of the momentary distraction of a passing hors d’oeuvre tray to deliver a good-old-boy whack to Groom Daddy’s back, bark a fond farewell and then half sprint away. It had worked. I could see Groom Daddy leaving the bar, storming up the hill toward the luncheon tent, hunting for less agile prey.

      The guy walked me through the dancers to an empty corner at the dance floor’s edge.

      “Thanks doesn’t quite cover it,” I purred as I tried to arrange myself back into bridesmaid propriety. I made a swipe at my forehead, repositioning wanton curls, brushing sweat salt from my hairline—probably Groom Daddy’s…Yuck—and wiping away any mascara tracks running up my forehead. All with—I hoped—one casually elegant stroke.

      “Yeah, you looked like you could use a break out there,” he said, turning to face me, still grinning out of the corner of his mouth, a mouth just bold-ass begging for kisses. “You’re Dylan, right? I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Brad. Brad Davis.”

      I’d like to say that I believed in love at first sight. It kind of went with the whole soul mate thing: when you meet him, you will know. I was sure that’s the way it would be. But if I’m truthful with myself, I don’t think I was thinking right then about love or sight or souls or anything else. I wasn’t thinking; I was on fire. Consumed. That was not an everyday occurrence for me. I was usually quite calm. Other girls could go on and on about a guy’s this or that—his lips or abs or some damn thing. Blah, blah. I never got it. To me, a mouth was a mouth, like a knee was a knee. I was an eye chick. I didn’t have a color preference as long as they were deep, soulful and carried thoughts without words. Eyes spoke to me.

      But here was this crooked smile. Lips you could take a nap on, lips that could undo buttons…And then his name wormed its way into my thinking brain. “No!” It was a yelp.

      “‘Scuse me?” he asked at the damsel’s ungrateful response.

      “The Brad Davis? Brad Davis of Dallas?”

      “Well, not the Brad Davis. There’s prob’ly more of us up there, if that makes you feel any better. But—” he flicked his hand in the direction of a group of my guy friends standing now at the bar, all sporting goofy smiles as they watched us “—we do seem to have some of the same friends.”

      Damn. I’d been avoiding this guy forever. There I was thinking about hot lips and they belonged to Brad you-two-would-be-just-perfect-together Davis, the blind date I was never going to have. My guy friends were always trying to set me up with him. Poor old Dylan. And they knew I didn’t do blind dates anymore. I’d eventually figured it out that lonesome was loads better than loathsome.

      “But,” they said, “you’d love Brad. Y’all would be great together.” I knew what they meant by that. They loved Brad. All of them. He was a man’s guy. All rough and tumble, dirty fingernails from fixing stuff and not very successful. Not the kind of guy who would threaten their egos, but good to hang out with, good to hunt with or bowl with or some damn thing. Perfect for good, old low-maintenance me. It made me mad that they’d think I’d want someone like that. He didn’t even live in Austin, but up in Dallas. On top of every other bad thing, he was G.U. Geographically undesirable. Hardly Mr. Perfect.

      And here he was, in all his glory. Manly Man himself.

      “Oh, um, sorry. I, uh, just wasn’t expecting…Well, I mean I’d heard about Brad Davis and thought…” Get a grip! I grimaced at him and extended my hand, intending to introduce myself.

      Instead, he took my hand in both of his and held it. His hands were strong and hard. Not gravelly like sandpaper, though. Smooth and tough. More like an old shoe. Ooh, romantic. At least his nails were clean. “You’re not exactly what I pictured, either. Lemme see. Shapeless clothes, thick glasses. Long stringy hair. Earnest and a little intense.”

      I pulled my hand back with a jerk. “They said that?” “Nah.” He laughed as he lifted my hand again, pretending to study my palm. “They said I’d love you. A free spirit. Said you’d be purrrfect for me.”

      “So why stringy hair and shapeless clothes?” I asked, but I knew. It was the usual response to my name. I’d been born in ’79, aka the reckless years of my mother’s life. Her decade of free love, peace and the noble, all-consuming quest for self. She’d named me in one of those classic flashes of seventies free thinking. An innocent act of whimsy and she’d guaranteed—for my entire life—that complete strangers would feel compelled to hunch up their shoulders, squint at me knowingly and exclaim, “Your folks were hippies, right?” I quit answering. The truth was I didn’t know. When I was little, I’d once asked my mother if we were hippies.

      “Hippies?” she’d giggled, rolling her eyes. “Dylan! Nobody’s ever called themselves a hippie. They might say, ‘I’m into peace’ or ‘I seek enlightenment.’ But—” She stopped and balanced on one leg with her other foot pressed into the knee. She tilted her head to her shoulder, put on a dopey face and raised four fingers in twin peace signs. “Oh, wow,” she droned. “I’m a hippie.” Then she unwound, laughing her luscious laugh and dropped down so she’d be right at eye-level with me. “Dylan, love, ‘hippie’ is a word used by people on the outside.”

      I didn’t ask again.

      Over the years I’d tried out different responses to the hippie question, trying to discover the one that most effectively discouraged further inquiry. I’d abandoned the humiliated silence that I’d used in elementary school when the Jennifers and Ericas first heard my name and sang, “Sky-dle is a hippie. Sky-dle is a hippie.” Outsiders, I thought. By the time I was in college I was affecting a world-weary shrug and an ironic grin anytime anyone brought it up. But no response had been half as effective as my latest reply, which not only halts the line of questioning, but usually puts an abrupt end to all further conversation. “Oh, no!” I say, fixing them with my best wide-eyed gaze. “We’re from New Mexico.” The question marks form in a bubble above their heads as I make my escape.

      Brad kept his head tilted down, peered at me from under his eyebrows and grinned. He looked quite guilty. And sooo fine.

      “It’s my name, right?” I asked him.

      He didn’t say anything. I could tell he wasn’t about to get tricked into saying something wrong. He was probably thinking this was a hot spot. Guys are never really sure where the land mines are so they try to be really careful to avoid setting one off accidentally. At least in the beginning, they try.

      But I had no hot spots. Not anymore. Just lots of little frozen places. “Don’t worry about it. It’s my own fake ID, my camouflage. I love my name.” And just how dumb did that sound?

      “Me, too,” he said with not a hint of irony. “Dylan’s great.”

      Now what? I was stuck to the spot. Manly Man appeared to possess some kind of magnet, an intense gravitational pull. I couldn’t budge. It always took me a while to get a rhythm going when I was first talking to a guy, even one I wasn’t so sure I wanted to be talking to. Or maybe especially then. I just knew I was a whole lot easier with a breezy tempo. I made a stab at it. “I guess I should properly introduce myself. Glad to meet you, Brad Davis. Sky Dylan Stone,” I announced, turning my hand into his palm for a shot at a breezy handshake. “Sky with no cute little ‘e’ on the end.”

      “Sky Dylan Stone.” He rolled it around on his tongue, tasting it and laughing at the same time. I watched his mouth as he said it. All other issues aside, it really was an incredible mouth. It was saying now, “Where’d it come from? Your name.”

      I took my hand back and looked away from his lips, off to the side. So I could concentrate. “Who knows?” I shrugged. “My mom’s been typically vague on that point.” I laughed a little then, thinking about it, about her, seeing her again in my head.

      “Oh, I don’t know, Dylan,” she’d said, laughing, when I’d asked about my name. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.” Which was her favorite explanation for the stuff she did back then, her only excuse

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