“Is there a bar around here?” he found himself asking, as he met the eyes of the driver of the Escalade over the top of the pump.
The driver raised his eyebrows in surprise and gave Finn a quick once over, as if making sure he was club material, worthy of the information. Finn must have passed because he answered without much hesitation.
“Yeah, man. There is. Hear that?” He stopped, listening, and Finn assumed he was referring to the throbbing bass he’d noticed. The man pointed in the direction of the music.
“That’s Verani’s. It’s a club. They stay open until three a.m. Down the block on your left. It’s completely dark on the outside, except for the big, red V. Parking lot in back, basement entrance. No cover charge, good food, and anything else you might want.” His eyes flickered away when he said this, and Finn knew he wasn’t talking about beer.
Finn nodded, hanging up the nozzle. He wasn’t interested in “anything else.” But music, darkness, and food sounded just about right. And he needed to hold Bonnie, now that the rage had passed. He’d told her he loved her. Now he needed to show her. Maybe they could dance in the shadows, maybe pretend they were a normal couple and not outlaws or runaways for an hour or two. They had time.
“Thanks,” he nodded to the Escalade driver, who nodded back.
Bonnie had flipped down the visor, which lit up accommodatingly. She was smoothing a makeup brush over her face as he slid back into the Charger. She didn’t comment as he pulled back onto the road, her gaze on her reflection, reapplying the shadow around her dark eyes, but she looked at him, her brow creased, when he pulled into the parking lot behind the black, windowless building with the slashing red V and turned off the car.
“I don’t want to be Bonnie and Clyde. I want to be Bonnie and Finn. Just for a little while. Okay?” It was all the apology she was going to get—he was still angry. And he was still very, very afraid. Afraid of loving her, afraid of losing her, and mostly, afraid of losing himself in the process. But he did love her. And that emotion was stronger than all the others.
She nodded, her eyes wide. “Is this a club?”
“Yeah, it is. Hopefully it’s dark and smoky and full of criminals who never listen to country music or watch entertainment TV. People who would never make a concerned citizen’s call to the cops or the news channels, even if they happened to see a famous singer eating at a table next to theirs.” He stopped, wondering if he was being an idiot. He decided he was, and he didn’t care. “I’m guessing you love to dance. I don’t. But I’m thinking I might like to dance with you.”
The smile—the big, beaming one that had started it all, stretched across Bonnie’s pretty face. She turned and added a couple strokes to her eye makeup, deepening the effect. She slicked color on her lips and ran her fingers over her hair. She even dug some earrings from a little, plastic, Walmart sack she’d tucked into a pocket of her purse. The dangling loops made her look dressed up, and when she pulled off her heavy sweatshirt and tucked the black tank top beneath into her snug jeans, he grabbed her brush and ran it through his hair, deciding maybe he’d better spruce up too. He gathered his hair into a tail and unzipped his leather coat so he didn’t feel so buttoned up, but he grabbed Bonnie’s from the back seat, a whim he would be grateful for later, though he didn’t know it then.
They descended the stairs into Verani’s, and no one stood by the door to greet them or to turn them away, so they slipped inside, the murky light welcoming, the music deafening. Finn snaked his arm around Bonnie, looking around for a place to sit. A long bar stood to his immediate left, and they sidled up beside it, waiting for the bartender to look their way.
He was a young guy with gauges in his ears and a hair do that was severely short on the sides and swooped back, Elvis-style, on the top. He was non-stop motion, filling and fixing, sliding and squeezing, his hands sure beneath the never-ending orders. But when he looked at Finn his eyes skittered away as if he was amped on something and couldn’t hold still long enough to maintain eye contact. Someone called him Jagger, and when Finn asked him if they were still serving food, Jagger called out to one of the girls all in black, weaving in and out of the crowd.
She led them to an alcove that had a lousy view of the stage and the dance floor, which was probably why it was still unoccupied at after one in the morning. The waitress plopped two slim menus on the table and promised she’d be back. She wasn’t very friendly or chatty, which was fine with Finn.
There wasn’t a large selection, but he and Bonnie had been eating pretty simply since they left Boston—the last meal where they had actually sat at a table was the spaghetti in Shayna’s little kitchen in Ohio.
It didn’t take them long to decide, and the waitress came back with their water and took their orders. Finn wanted a beer in the worst way, but he didn’t want to be carded, so he and Bonnie both abstained. As they ate, Bonnie kept looking toward the stage and the little sliver of dance floor that she could see better than he could.
Her nose was wrinkled, and she had a perplexed look on her face.
“Maybe it’s because I’m a hillbilly, but I hate this music. It’s like being in a maze, or in one of those little hamster wheels, where you just keep spinning and spinning, and you never get anywhere.” She had to shout at him in order for him to hear her, and he ended up moving to sit by her side instead of across from her, so that they could speak into each other’s ears.