Years, Love

The Beginning

1968

It was the coldest month of the year. The wind howled and cut through the night, swirling around and stealing every lick of warmth from the market town. The evening wasn't one to casually stroll and admire the star freckled blue-black sky or stop for an ardent kiss under a streetlamp. The bracing gusts were the sort to make souls seal coats tighter, tuck chins downward, and quicken their pace, seeking refuge in the warmth of a home or a lover's embrace. Some believed the winter changed a person's temperament. For some, the falling temperatures darkened an individual's mood. For others, the winter chill kindled a spark, a need to set a heart on fire.

He found himself drawn to her after the gig. Fate kept his path crossing with hers, and he had conversed with her more and more. He knew she was two years older than him, and he shared the same first name as her older brother. She despised her last name. Her mother was a self-proclaimed psychic and faith healer while her father was a concert violinist and music lecturer. She grew up near Birmingham and had studied sculpture. Her love for Fats Domino was her brother's fault. He'd learned all those facts over sitting in pubs and drinking barley wine. She didn't have to tell him that she was one of the finest blues pianists in England; he knew that the first time he heard her play.

Her soft voice drifted to his ears, breaking him out his thoughts. As soon as he met her eyes, the boisterous crowd faded from his mind. It was him and her alone at a corner table in the Thames Hotel.

"John, where've you been?"

"Right here, Christine," he answered. A grin tugged at his lips upon hearing her infectious giggle to his response.

She shook her head. He was different tonight. Perhaps she was too. During the performance, she had found herself focusing on him instead of the charismatic, dreamy guitarist. Christine never imagined she'd pay more attention to the quiet bass player that huddled close to the drums and kept his eyes on the floor. John had come into her thoughts at the oddest moments like when she washed her hair or folded laundry. She didn't need to ruminate about his good looks or speculate if his mustache would tickle her face if he was daring enough to kiss her. The man didn't need to plague her; he was spoken for. She bit her bottom lip and pulled a cigarette out of the white packaging. "Have you got a light?"

He bowed his head, striking the match and lighting her cigarette.

"You surprise me, John," Christine confessed. She crossed an arm over her chest and held the cigarette between her fingers as her thumb tapped the bottom of the filter.

"I do?" he questioned disbelievingly, lighting his own cigarette. No one ever told him he was surprising. John assumed he was ahead of the field in dull and uninteresting. He waved the burning match out and inhaled deeply, feeling the nicotine buzz.

"You're not with the boys like usual," Christine remarked on his break in routine. The pair would chat between sets, but he never returned to her after a show was finished.

John shrugged his shoulders and exhaled the smoke from his lungs. "I can leave," he suggested, hoping she wouldn't send him away. He wanted to know more about her even if it was simply what she'd done since he'd seen her a week ago.

"No, no. Don't be silly," she told him, reaching out and brushing her fingers over his arm. "Stay. I have a story to tell."

He ordered a round and listened to her, chuckling at her tale of taking in a stray kitten. He thought she was insane for venturing out in freezing rain to rescue a homeless feline stuck in a garbage bin, yet the act exposed how big her heart was to him.

"You should see him. He's a scraggly thing but loud. God, so loud," she complained. "Meows all the time," she added.

"Have you named him?"