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One Saturday Freddie got us tickets to the Grand Ole Opry. It was great. Some of the legends were there, along with established acts, and talented newcomers. Freddie had played there three times.
We talked, we held hands, we kissed, sometimes pretty intensely, but we slept in separate rooms.
I think both of us wanted to be really sure.
I did insist we go home once a month. We stayed in my house and spent most of time with my parents. Dottie loved her. She would smile at me when Moira wasn’t looking, and the first visit we had she slipped a small note in my pocket.
“Read it when you’re alone.”
It was three words. “She’s the one.”
I still have it.
…………………….
In a bar band, you usually play a place three or four nights in a row, so the pace is pretty slow. Get there, set your equipment. Leave the big stuff and secure the instruments at night, and you were set.
In a tour band, you usually arrive in town the day before, sometimes the day of, the show. Your crew sets you up, you come onstage, fine tune your instruments, and play. Then you hang around backstage or go back to your room.
When the show is over, your crew tears it down, packs it up, and the next day you do the whole thing in another town. After awhile it stopped being an adventure, and unless you were on stage it was pretty boring.
It was getting harder and harder to sleep in the same room. At first it was pajamas, but it gradually changed to silk gowns and shorty pajama sets. There was always a steamy goodnight kiss. The feel of her firm body under those gowns didn’t help me sleep well. I took a lot of cold showers and used a lot of hand lotion.
It all came to a head in Oklahoma City, the next to last stop as a warmup. They had tornado warnings out, and that’s a big deal in Oklahoma.
The show was over, and we had just gotten to bed when there was an enormous flash of lightning followed by a deafening boom of thunder. I was mostly asleep when Moira dove into my bed, scooting under the covers and hugging me tightly.
“Did you see that?”
She sounded like a little girl.
I put my arms around her and held her.
“Relax honey, it’s just a storm. We’ll be fine.”
But we weren’t. The wind was blowing so hard you could feel the building sway, and we were seventeen stories up. She had flipped on the TV, and there were reports of multiple tornadoes in the immediate area. Moira started to cry.
I had read somewhere the safest place to be in a tornado was the smallest room in your house, because the smaller it was, the more structurally stable it would be. I got her up and carried all the blankets into the bathroom, putting them into the tub. Thankfully, it was a big tub.
I snuggled us down and wrapped her in my arms.
“Hush now, I won’t let anything happen to you. I have too many plans for you.”
I gave her a big kiss and she returned it. I was rubbing my hands over her back, her smooth arms, and the sides of the body under the satin gown she was wearing. After a couple of minutes she pulled back and hugged me tighter, murmuring into my chest.
“What kind of plans?” It was spoken in a flirty voice, but had undertones of seriousness.
I had stopped caressing her, and she took my hands and started moving them again. I was more than willing to continue.
“Sure you want to hear them?” I tried to keep it light, while at the same time trying to force love through my hands and voice straight into her heart. She nodded into my chest.
“I plan on loving you for the rest of your life. I plan on making your life so happy you can’t wait to see me or hear my voice, and never being out of arms reach for the rest of your life.”
I felt the trickle of tears slide down my chest. I lifted her face up until we were nose to nose.
We felt the building lurch and she flinched and burrowed deeper into my embrace.
“Most of all, when this night is over, I plan on you wearing the ring I’ve been carrying around in my pocket for the last two months. Marry me, Moira, make us complete.”
She was so surprised she forgot to be scared.
“Are you sure?”
Not the answer I wanted.
“Well, since you put it like that, let me think about it for a few more years. I’ll get back to you.”
I had forgotten how large the hands were on that small body. She started pounding on my chest.
” Out, out, get out of the tub! I want my ring, and I want right now! Move your ass.”
“But honey, what about the storm?”
“Fuck that storm! Ring! Now! Move!”
I went back into the bedroom and got the ring out of the suitcase I had hidden it in. I messed with her head a little.
“Damn, I could have sworn I put it in the dresser. maybe it’s in my jeans, no, no, maybe it’s in my suitcase.”
She was standing in the door of the bathroom, literally hopping from one foot to the other, flinching every time she saw it lightning. I started feeling a little guilty so I held the box up for her to see.
“Ah, found it.”
She grabbed me at the door and dragged me back to the tub. After we had settled in with her more or less on top of me. She tilted her head back and kissed my cheek.
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“Are you going to give me my ring?”
“No, it’s not yours yet.”
“What do you mean it’s not mine yet? Why not?”
“Because I’ve haven’t heard an answer yet. All I’ve heard is ‘I want my ring’. That’s not an answer.”
She wriggled around until we were face to face.
“Ask me again. All this talk made me forget the question.”
‘Well in this case I can’t get down on one knee, but Moira O’Sullivan(she had taken her maiden name back after the divorce), will you marry me?”
“OH, that question. I’d like to think about it for awhile, but since that pretty much all I’ve thought about for the last four months, I believe I can make an informed decision.”
“Yes, Wiley Patterson, I would love to marry you.
Now give me that ring, and I mean right this second.”
So we got engaged in a bathtub on the seventeenth
floor of a hotel in Oklahoma City right in the middle of an F2 tornado.
It wasn’t candle light around a king size bed, but we made do.
I slid the soft gown over her head, it was the only garment I had to remove. Her breasts were small, firm, and were capped by the most sensitive nipples I had ever encountered. She told me later they were so sensitive that she would sometimes have small orgasms when Erin fed.
I didn’t get to explore her fully that night, but I did learn she was a true redhead, reaffirmed but her soft, neatly trimmed bush. I also learned the trips we made to the gym in various cities had paid off with a nice firm butt.
She loved being nibbled and licked. When I ran my tongue from just below the back of her knees to the tops of her thighs it sounded like she was purring.
I also found her hands to have a lot more talent than guitar playing, and her mouth could do more than sing.
We were cuddled in exhaustion when she noticed the storm had passed, but we were happy where we were.
……………………
We were late getting to breakfast. Everyone stopped eating and stared.
Cheers broke out. Nikki, our violin player, was dancing around, singing.
“I won, I won! Pay up, suckers.”
We kind of stood there, with the deer in the headlights look, before Moira asked what she was talking about.
Jimmy was grinning.
“The ‘When are they finally gonna do it’ pool. I
thought it wouldn’t happen this soon, you guys are kind of slow sometimes. On the bright side, it looks like I win the engagement pool.”
All the girls immediately went into full marriage mode, and dragged her off to admire the ring and start talking about wedding plans.
We gave our last performance as a warmup band the next night and went home. The headliner wasn’t sorry to see us go, we kind of tore the crowd up. Papers and magazines were interviewing Freddie more and more, and he gave a lot of credit to us.
By then he had released ‘Walking After Midnight’ and it became his third top ten hit in just seven months. He was suddenly the ‘hot’ act in country music. and his management team was already putting together his first headliner tour.