I will buy you a new car
Perfect shiny and new
I will buy you that big house
Way up in the west hills
I will buy you a new life
Yes I will
Melody opened the front door before I ever made it up the porch stairs. She looked me up and down.
“Are you alright? I’m sorry I didn’t call you,” she said. “I would’ve, but we’ve been so busy since it happened.”
I dropped my gym bag full of gear on her welcome mat. Mondays were my busiest days — clients from six in the morning until six at night, with barely enough time for lunch in between. It was unlikely that I would get my own workout in today, but I consoled myself with the thought that schlepping all the equipment I needed from client to client had to count for something.
Functional weight training, I thought wryly.
“Why would I not be alright?” I asked, confused. Had Karen told Mel about our fight? But no. Karen and Melody weren’t friends.
“You didn’t hear?” she said. “About the shooting on Saturday night?”
Shooting on Saturday night…
I flashed back to the tail end of the story I’d heard on NPR that morning, before my first client.
“The concert shooting?” I said. “I think I heard something about it on the radio. Why?”
“Oh. You don’t know.” Melody’s face changed.
“Know what?”
“Jules… that was Hope’s concert. She was shot.”
A wave of vertigo struck me, and for a brief instant, I thought I was going to be sick. The world spun; I reached out for something to grab onto but found only air.
Mel put a steadying hand on my shoulder. “She’s alright. But she almost bled to death before they could get her to the hospital. And the doctors say she would have, too, if the bullet had hit the artery in her leg.”
I needed to sit down. I still thought I might throw up.
“I stopped calling her,” I said faintly. I wasn’t sure if I was talking to myself, Melody, or someone else. “We were talking again for a few weeks. And then she found out about Karen…”
“I know,” Mel said. “That was my fault.”
“…and she stopped calling after that. And I tried to call her, but she didn’t call me back and… I stopped calling her.” I looked up at Mel. “The femoral artery,” I said. “That’s the big one in the leg. Right up against our thigh bone.”
Melody squeezed my shoulder.
“The last conversation we’d had was about how all the squats and lunges her trainer was having her do.” I let out a shallow laugh that sounded more like a gasp for air. “That could’ve been the last conversation I ever had with her. About stupid squats and lunges. I stopped calling her.”
“It’s not all your fault. Hope’s stubborn. And you didn’t know what was going to happen,” Mel said. “Come in and sit down. I’ll get you a glass of water or something.”
Sitting down sounded like a good idea. My legs felt shaky; my head felt light. If I didn’t sit down soon, I’d probably fall down.
#
Dinner with Karen that night was a quiet affair, the absence of conversation underscored by the scraping of utensils against plates. There was nothing comfortable about the silence that hung between us. But for once, my dinnertime preoccupation had less to do with the constant fights I’d been having with Karen and more to do with what had happened to Hope. I needed to call her, to reach out to her, but she probably had a million people bothering her right now. Would hearing from her ex-girlfriend, ex-best friend make things more stressful for her? Adding stress to her life was the last thing I wanted to do, but on the other hand, I —
Karen interrupted my thoughts with uncanny timing. “I assume you heard about what happened to Hope? I saw them interviewing people on the news today.”
Her tone was wary.
The topic of Hope had always made Karen uncomfortable and insecure, despite the five-and-a-half years I’d spent trying to convince her that Hope and I were ancient history. But at least when it came to Hope, I could understand why Karen was so uneasy. If her ex was an internationally renowned, one-name pop star, I’d probably be insecure, too.
I nodded, patting my mouth with a napkin as I looked up. “Melody told me about what happened when I went over to train her and Andrew this evening. Terrible.”
“Did you call her? Hope, I mean?”
I shook my head and looked back down at my food. “No.”
Karen and I had been together for almost six years — almost exactly the same time Hope’s music got really big and the two of us stopped talking. I’d cried on Karen’s shoulder more than once about what Hope had put me through during college and in the years immediately after — cheating on me, breaking up with me, getting back together, cheating on me again. Then the music career. The way her career took precedence over everything, the way she was never home.
The way we decided it was finally over, yet somehow always found ourselves falling into bed together each time she came home to see her family.
It was Mel, ironically, who’d finally told me to stop letting Hope break my heart. Hope loved me, that much was true, but she wasn’t going to change any time soon.
“You’re the kind of person who wants to settle down, get married, go to your high school reunion every year,” Mel told me. “Hope — God love her — she’s never going to do that. Or maybe she will one day, but not now. She’s not in a place where she can commit to what she’s going to have for breakfast the next day, let alone a relationship.”
Mel was right. I wanted Hope to be someone she wasn’t. And it was hurting both of us. So I made a choice. I stopped talking to her altogether. It was the only way I could do it — I knew the moment I picked up one of her phone calls, the moment she told me she loved me and missed me and could she see me the next time she was home? we would fall into the same old heart-breaking patterns all over again.
I met Karen almost immediately after that. It was like God or the Universe or Destiny or whatever was waiting for me to finally admit it wasn’t going to work with Hope.
Why did I even pick up the phone when Hope’s name popped up on my caller ID a few months ago? I should have known better than to pick up. I should have known everything with her immediately gets complicated.
And I should’ve told Karen that we’d been talking again. I had planned to tell her, I really was, but then Hope stopped answering my calls, so I let it go. There was no need to make Karen freak out over nothing. And it had been nothing, right? Just two old friends getting back in touch with each other. Nothing.
So why did it feel like those phone calls were… something?
Across the table, I could feel Karen studying me. I concentrated on my food and tried to put Hope out of my mind.
“How was work?” I asked without looking up.
“Good. Busy, but good.” There was a pause. “Are you sure you’re okay about this whole Hope thing?”
Of course I’m not okay, I thought. “Yeah,” I said. “I’m fine.”
“I heard her bodyguard died trying to save her,” Karen said.
Mel hadn’t told me that, and the news came like a punch in the gut. I knew how much Charles had meant to Hope.
“I hadn’t heard that,” I said evenly.
“My coworker told me the shooter had been stalking Hope for months,” Karen continued. “Sending her death threats and stuff. Even showed up backstage at one of her concerts over the summer and had to be hauled off by security staff.” She shook her head. “It’s bizarre that they even let him into the concert in the first place.”
“Yeah. Bizarre.”
All I wanted to do was be at Hope’s side. The thought was like a fishhook in my gut, and I could feel Hope reeling me in from her hospital bed in Chicago.
She needs me.
Under the table, I clenched a fist until my nails bit half-moons into my palm, as if somehow the gesture would relieve the pre
ssure on my heart.
“I had a busy day, too,” I said lightly in an attempt to change the subject. “Picked up a new client, so on Mondays now I’m seeing eight people.”
“That’s good,” Karen said. But she didn’t sound particularly enthusiastic. And in her next question, I heard the beginnings of a fresh argument. “How much money is that, with eight clients in a day?”
Here is the money that I owe you
Yes so you can pay the bills
I will give you more
When I get paid again
11
Mid-November: Kid Cudi, “Pursuit of Happiness”
“How was physical therapy today?” I asked. I glanced at the navigation on my phone, put my left turn signal on.
“Not bad,” Hope said, her voice filling the car. But even through the tinny Bluetooth I could detect her discouragement. “She said I don’t have to use crutches anymore.”
“That’s progress,” I said brightly. “Make sure you keep doing whatever exercises she gave you to do. Don’t skip a day.”
“Aye, aye, Captain.”
I made my left turn. “What’s wrong? You sound more like someone who’s been told they’ll never walk again than someone who just got off her crutches.”
“I didn’t say anything was wrong,” she said.
“You didn’t have to.”
There was a pause. “You know me too well.”
I waited in silence. It took another few seconds for Hope to answer my question.
“I can’t stop thinking of them,” she said at last. “All the people who died at my concert. Their names get stuck in my head on a loop. Like getting a song stuck in your head… and the dreams…”
“You’re not blaming yourself again, are you?”
“I’m not. Or at least, intellectually, I know it wasn’t my fault. But it feels like it was my fault, you know?” She paused. “Especially Charles.”
“It wasn’t your fault. And you didn’t kill Charles. That man did.”
“But Charles was — ”
“Was doing what anyone who loved you would have done,” I finished for her. “I would’ve rushed onto that stage to get you, too. And if the situation had been reversed, you would’ve done it for him. Or for me.”
There was a long silence on the other end.
“So the inevitable result of love is death,” said Hope.
“That’s definitely not what I said.”
“It just seems so pointless, Jules.”
My brow furrowed. I didn’t like what I was hearing. “What seems pointless?”
“Right now, everything seems pointless. Music seems pointless. Physical therapy seems pointless,” she said. “But dying at a concert… that seems especially pointless. People’s deaths should mean something. If they get shot, it should be because they were fighting for something important. Something they believed in. Not because they went to a stupid, meaningless pop music concert.”
I wanted to argue her out of her funk, but I knew it wasn’t what she needed right now. She just needed someone to listen. So I bit my tongue, waited for her to say more.
“I feel like I used them all,” Hope said. “I used them to make money and be famous, and they paid me with their lives. That’s what’s pointless.”
“Hope… ”
“Money is pointless,” she said, not letting me interject. “Being famous is pointless. I don’t even have any real friends anymore. Thirteen people died because I thought getting rich and famous would make me happy.”
I searched for the right thing to say.
“Have you thought about seeing anyone?” I asked. “A grief counselor?”
“I don’t need a grief counselor,” she said.
A beat passed. “Are you sure about that?”
“I don’t need a grief counselor,” she said again, more sharply this time.
“But you don’t sound like you’re very happy.”
“Maybe not, but you know what? I don’t think I’ve been happy in years. Not really. The shooting just made everything worse. Just reminded me of how hollow my life has become.” She sighed heavily. “Now I can’t even pretend like I’m doing this for a good reason.”
I parked my car in my client’s driveway and turned off the engine.
Be careful with what you say next, I told myself.
“I think you should come home for a while.” I paused, giving her a chance to digest my words. “Stay with Mel until you feel better.”
“No. I can’t be around her and the kids like this.”
“Then come stay with me and Karen,” I said.
Stupid. I regretted it the instant it came out of my mouth.
“I don’t want to meet your girlfriend.”
“So stay with me because you want to meet Wilson and Spalding,” I said, trying to turn it into a joke. “They’re good dogs.”
“I can’t stay with you,” Hope said. “You know I can’t. And I don’t want to meet anyone.”
She wasn’t talking about the dogs, of course.
“Yeah,” I said, surrendering. “I get it.”
Without needing to discuss it, we both knew that Hope and Karen in the same room as each other would lead to absolutely nothing good.
“It’s eleven,” I said. “I’m sorry, but I have to go see my client now.”
“Alright,” Hope said. The word was heavy with disappointment. “Will you call me when you’re finished? Please?”
“Of course I will.”
And I did call her as soon as I got back in the car, but she didn’t pick up. I left her a message and put Pandora on instead, switching from my 90s alternative station to one of my hip hop stations. Kid Cudi’s “Pursuit of Happiness” came on. The lyrics made me think about Hope. Hope and the nightmares that pursued her each night.
Tell me what you know about dreamin' (dreamin')
You ain't really know bout nothin' (nothin')
Tell me what you know about the night terrors every night
5 A-M cold sweats, waking up to the sky
Tell me what you know about dreams (dreams)
Tell me what you know about night terrors nothin'
You don't really care about the trials of tomorrow,
Rather lay awake in the bed full of sorrow
I'm on the pursuit of happiness and I know
Everything that's shine ain't always gonna be gold (hey)
I'll be fine once I get it, I'll be good
12
Thanksgiving Eve
It was late on the night before Thanksgiving when I got the text from Melody. I was lying on the couch, Spalding draped between my knees and a bowl of popcorn balanced on my stomach. When the phone buzzed, I reached carefully towards the coffee table where it rested, trying hard not to spill the popcorn or startle the dog.
I know this is late notice, but what are you and
Karen doing for Thanksgiving tomorrow? Are
you in town?
I am, I wrote back.
Karen went to Augusta to spend the
weekend with her mom, dad, and brother.
Come to our house tomorrow, Mel texted back immediately.
The pressure worked. She came home.
My heart flip-flopped. Mel didn’t need to say who “she” was; we’d both been working on Hope for weeks to get her to come to Calvin for Thanksgiving. The latest I’d heard was that Hope was going to a “Friendsgiving” that her personal assistant was putting on. I liked Nigel; I’d gotten to know him in the weeks since the shooting, but he wasn’t family. And I didn’t care how many times Hope argued that Los Angeles was home; it wasn’t. Calvin was.
We’re trying to convince her to stay longer.
I could use your help.
What time do you want me there?
And should I bring a side?
Karen wasn’t going to be happy that I was spending Thanksgiving Day with Hope and her family. But I would deal with that later.
13
Tha
nksgiving Day: “Thanksgiving Theme,” Vince Guaraldi Trio
Hope’s eyes went wide with shock when she saw me standing on the porch.
“Hi,” I said. I held up my paper Whole Foods bag. “I brought some… uh…” I peered inside the bag. “I think it’s wild rice and edamame.”
Her face split into a grin and she snorted out a laugh. “Edamame? You brought edamame for Thanksgiving?”
I felt a blush creep into my cheeks. “I figured Mel would have all the traditional stuff covered,” I said. “Plus I, uh, kinda picked it up at the last minute yesterday night before they closed. It was all they had left.”
“You’re ridiculous,” she said.
“I know.”
Our eyes met; I instantly felt the familiar old electricity crackle between us. How was it possible for that spark to still be there? — after growing apart, after five years of silence, after we’d both moved on to other people?
Yet it was undeniable. Talking to her over the phone was one thing. Seeing her in person? The connection, the attraction, the bond: It was all still there. It was like we’d made a fire together, and it burned us up, but it left one small ember behind. And that ember had been waiting for only the smallest encouragement to reignite.
Karen, I reminded myself. I dropped my eyes away from hers, into the depths of my Whole Foods bag.
“I should probably heat this up,” I mumbled.
“Is it actually supposed to be served hot?” Hope asked.
I looked back up, but Hope avoided my eyes. Did that mean she’d felt it, too? Probably. That one gaze we’d shared had held a whole tsunami of history, emotion, and possibility.
“It’s, uh…” I coughed. Cleared my throat. “Maybe you’re right, actually. I think it’s supposed to be served cold.”
She smirked. “I’m always right.” She stepped out of the doorway, giving me room to enter. “Come on. Let’s find a dish for it.”
I followed Hope into the kitchen, observing her gait and the way she favored her left side. I almost asked about the leg, the exercises her PT was having her do, but I stopped myself. It was too soon to bring it up. Too soon to tell her about the scheme Mel and I had hatched about having me take over her physical therapy and rehab so that she could stay in Calvin longer.
Winter Love Songs Page 6
