Slower

by Deana Birch

  Delicately, I began the sweet trill of Yves Montand’s “Rue Saint-Vincent.” When I turned and sang the lyrics—in French—her mouth gaped, and she quickly covered it with her hand. I winked, focused, and kept singing and playing for the woman who warmed and filled my heart.

  I’d spent an hour every morning learning the song since I’d gotten the idea. I wanted to show her I understood. The French side of her, with all its memories, was what made her complete. I accepted, embraced, and celebrated it. Especially now, after a weekend of seeing her with her mother.

  While I played the rest of the song, I could only look at her in glances. I spotted tears puddling in her eyes and wouldn’t let my own emotions ruin her moment. I used them instead, willing their weight to travel from my voice to her heart.

  The last few notes fluttered out, and I paused. Had I ruined the French? Maybe my voice had cracked. Maybe I sucked.

  Before I could flip through another doubt card in my head, she was in my lap, and the piano gave a thump as she sat down.

  I wiped away a tear from her lovely olive cheek. “I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

  “Best tears of my life. And best gift ever.”

  “Happy birthday, beautiful.”

  She said a quiet “thank you” into my neck and nuzzled in with a sniff.

  “Did I butcher the French? Was it a Dracula ballad?”

  “It was perfect.”

  As I lay in bed, with my greatest love curled into me, I replayed the song in my head. Was it enough to show her how much I loved her?

  With the album all but mixed and the capricious moods of the band settled on all fronts, our manager, Phil, had started planning our next tour. Or, as I referred to it when I’d seen the plan for overseas, “impending doom.” Six months away from Los Angeles with a small return before Easter.

  Louana’s career had taken off with the unfortunate circumstances of Bob’s wife being ill, and she spent more time traveling to New York as her responsibilities grew. It all made her happy and me proud, but I couldn’t imagine not seeing her for the half of the year we would be on tour. It wasn’t like a weekend jaunt to Amsterdam was going to happen.

  The money I was earning off “Faster” kept rolling in, and every time I passed a jewelry store, I had to fight off the urge to buy the biggest diamond and ask my girlfriend to be my wife. Whenever I’d bring up the future—with rings on our fingers—Louana would smack me and say, “Don’t you dare make me a young bride. I refuse to even think about being married until I’m thirty.” I could never tell if she was kidding, but I didn’t press it. Even though I wanted to.

  We hadn’t fought for a long time, but we also hadn’t talked about what would happen when I went on tour. But mostly, we hadn’t discussed the fact that she was going to France without me for New Year’s.

  A week before Thanksgiving, Bob’s wife, Karen, lost her battle with cancer. She died at home, in her husband’s arms, with her two dogs sleeping at her feet. Louana had been dropping food at their place in Malibu for weeks, all the while covering for Bob at the office. I honestly didn’t understand how she made it all work, but Fern and I never missed a meal.

  At the funeral, I wrapped my arm around Louana and watched Bob’s breakdown from a distance. Their daughter, Kate, who was five months pregnant, gave a gut-wrenching eulogy that ripped out every heart in the church. She traced the life of her mother from girl to woman. Then mommy to mother. Along the way she threaded through the love story of her parents’ marriage. It was a strange sentiment to aspire to something that had ended too soon, surrounded by tragedy.

  In the back of the church, Louana excused herself to talk to Kate, and I stood with my hands in my pockets. It was the second time in a month that I’d worn my black sports jacket, and as uncomfortable as it made me, I couldn’t help but think that if Louana hadn’t entered my life, I would never have bought it.

  Mario approached—it seemed he was as out of place as I was—and we shook hands. I couldn’t think of anything to say to him, so I chose the only subject we really had in common.

  “Hey, you know, I just wanted to say it was really cool, the way you took Louana’s side with the Vincent thing. I know he’s your bread-and-butter.”

  With a furrowed brow, Mario blinked several times. “I’m not sure I follow.”

  It was hard to imagine he’d forgotten, but maybe it wasn’t the first time Mario had needed to say something to Vincent about bad behavior. Louana had said on more than one occasion that Vincent was sexist. “You know, the whole ‘wear more skirts’ thing. She was really upset about it.”

  “Oh, that. I’m sorry she was upset, but for the record, she smoothed that out herself. That reminds me—now that we’re done with the film, I’ve been meaning to ask how she got Vincent to flip like she did. He went from hating her to loving her.”

  Loving who? What now? I gave a quick shake of my head. Mario had done nothing. His failure to act was a tiny pebble of anger compared to the mountainous fact that Louana had flat-out lied to me. Actually, had she? When I’d asked her how things had gone she’d just said it was settled and that she wanted to put it behind her. So what had she done to make Vincent, buddy to her ex and a man she loathed, “love” her?

  My manners would never be on par with my girlfriend’s, but I had enough class not to bring this up at a funeral. However, as we drove back to Hollywood, I stewed and stewed. Fuck, maybe I did brood. It didn’t matter. There was something she’d intentionally kept from me. I was sure of it.

  When we got home, my previous, grief-consoling self had been fully replaced by a man who was convinced his girlfriend had given her client some kind of sexual favor. It was illogical. It was irrational. I knew it couldn’t be true. But it was too late. The jealous and sometimes angry beast I’d successfully caged for months had reared his ugly double head.

  I slammed the door to my Jeep, didn’t bother to wait for her, and marched back to our apartment. Louana came in a minute later, eyes wide, and lingered at the door.

  In a small voice—fuck I hated when she cowered—she said, “I’m not quite sure what’s going on here.”

  “What did you do to convince Vincent Renier to love you?”

  Her jaw dropped. Fucking dropped. Little liar. And the monster in me congratulated himself for being right.

  I crossed my arms. “Did you fuck him? Blow him, maybe?” Someone, anyone, needed to make me stop.

  “Fuck you.” She didn’t yell. She didn’t cry. What she did do was stare back with a look of disgust.

  “Ah!” I slapped my hands against my face and pulled them down. Wrong way, Riley. If I wanted to get to the bottom of her blurry story, I needed to calm the fuck down. I went over to the couch and sat down. In a much more suitable tone, I said, “Mario told me he didn’t say anything to Vincent after the dress debacle. He said you made it better. That Vincent went from hating you to loving you. Why?”

  The color left her normally bronze face. She stood, still at the door, completely frozen. A battle of fiercely quiet wills fought between us with every second of her silence. I had to look away. Either she didn’t trust me enough to tell me, or she’d been caught red handed.

  It took what seemed like too long for her to come over and sit next to me. When she did, her head bowed, and one of her knees bounced up and down.

  Faintly, far too faintly, she said, “Dimitri was behind it.”

  My heart pounded against my sternum, and I fought to breathe. I almost wished she’d said she’d fucked her client. Because, knowing Louana, the details were worse than the headline.

  “And?” I must have been some kind of sucker for getting my heart shredded. I’d actually asked the girl to keep going.

  A little bit of her spunk returned, and she met my gaze. “I called him and asked him to cut the crap, and he did.”

  It was too easy, and the jealous fucker inside me, whom I was slowly starting to understand was actually a part of me, needed the fucking details. “How?”r />
  She swallowed. “How what?”

  A beat passed. Did she really need me to spell it out? “How did you get that fucker to stop? How?”

  Her bottom lip trembled just slightly, and her little nostrils flared. The white in her eyes turned pink, and tears appeared under her lashes. “Why are you making me do this?”

  I stood up and paced the room. “All this fucking bliss. These last few months were a total fucking lie. All of it.”

  The stubborn, beautiful woman had kept the crying at bay and she said forcefully, “That’s not true. I didn’t tell you because this is what happens. One mention of his name, and we fall apart.”

  Maybe, maybe not. Most likely, in all the layers of her running or hiding or avoiding, there was more.

  Fuck. I hated fighting with her. And deep down, I knew she was right. Every time he came up, I fell into the deep well of insecurity. Because she was mine. I didn’t want to share her with any other man on the planet. There were times I’d even convinced myself that she’d never loved the douche-hole before me.

  “Are you gonna tell me or not? How?”

  She stood and looked me straight in the eyes. “I said please.”

  The lightness of her honesty was quickly overtaken by the weight of the implication.

  She turned to the hallway and said, “I’m going for a run.”

  “Shocker.”

  10

  LOUANA

  * * *

  Thanksgiving dinner was meant to be small with just Fern, but Shane’s family was all on the East Coast and he was going back for Christmas, which left him alone for the holiday before. Because of this, Jake had invited him to join us. Jake was trying to promote goodwill in the band before they went on tour, and apparently that meant Shane eating my food.

  I had promised both Jake and Fern a traditional, non-cholesterol-counting meal, complete with gravy, buttery mashed potatoes, and pies, which meant I was in the kitchen for the better part of the twenty-four hours leading up to the main event.

  Shane came over early so he and Jake could watch football. Over the course of several weekends, Jake had finally completed the shelving for the TV, and when he wasn’t around, I was able to pull a sliding door to hide the eyesore. Sometimes I wondered if I shouldn’t embrace technology more, but the truth was that there was too much of my mom in me.

  I loved curling up with a good book like she did; spending time watching sports or stupid programs about people’s lives did not appeal to me. Films, on the other hand, I adored. And, after a serious tickling—which had almost left a stain on my couch—Jake had gotten me to admit that movies were indeed better with the flat-screen and sound system he had installed than with a laptop in bed.

  I left the duo of hot rockstars on my couch, put my earbuds in, and concentrated on my meal. When Shane came in to grab two more beers, I gave him a clipped smile and went back to mashing my potatoes. So far, he was free of innuendos and inappropriate comments. Maybe he and Jake had talked it out.

  When we finally sat down to eat, the entertainment was as abundant as the food. With the two greatest storytellers in Hollywood at our table, Shane and I sat back and enjoyed the Fern-and-Jake show.

  After months of being together, those two had formed a solid bond, and they were a bona fide comedy team. Jake was the perfect Dean Martin to her Jerry Lewis. Every now and again I would catch Jake watching me, and he would shoot me a little wink in return. Six months into our relationship, and I was still a sucker for his winks. He’d seemed to have let go of the Vincent-and-Dimitri episode after Karen’s funeral and was focused on planning a vacation with his family and me for Christmas.

  Fern decided to walk off a bit of the meal, and Shane offered to go with her as she took Archie around the block. Jake and I finished the dishes and packed up leftovers for our two guests.

  “How much longer before I can kick those two out?” he asked.

  “You’re a terrible host.” I swatted his hand away from my waist with a giggle.

  He moved to me and tugged me close. “No, seriously, I want you all to myself.”

  “Greedy, greedy. But I’m so full right now, I don’t think it’s wise to put anything more into my body.”

  “Jesus, Louana. It’s not always about sex.”

  I pulled back, shocked from his pissy tone. “Whoa. Sorry. I obviously read you wrong. You really want to kick out an old lady and an orphan on Thanksgiving?”

  “We need to talk about the tour. I emailed you the dates last week.”

  He had. And I had stared at my laptop for a full fifteen minutes without reading the color-coded spreadsheet Phil had put together. We’d barely survived his last tour, and we’d only been dating then. The prospect of flying around the globe on weekends just to see a man exhausted and depressed me. Even if it was the man I loved.

  But I wasn’t ready to go that deep. “I was busy. Christ, Jake. Karen died.”

  “You just don’t want to talk about it. Stall or run away—your tactics are miserably predictable.” He dug through the bottom drawer and swore. “Why the fuck are there no matching lids?”

  “Wow. I just cooked you an amazing meal and you thank me by picking a fight. Fantastic—and par for the course, really.” I threw the dish towel on the counter and propped my hands on my hips.

  There were three facts I knew about fighting with Jake. One, there was a fifty percent chance I could end it just by speaking French. And, two, he hated it when I was ambiguous. So, the last layer of shit frosting I’d added had not helped.

  “What the fuck does that mean?”

  “I’m not doing this, not on Thanksgiving.” I clanked a pan into the sink.

  And, number three, he hated when I avoided talking about things. Why I chose that moment to fall back into all my old habits, I would never know. Maybe I was tired of pretending that the tour was not in just over a month. Tired of acting like his time on the road wouldn’t be hell on our relationship. Tired of walking on eggshells about my ex. And tired of hiding that following a man was one thing I’d sworn I would never do. I loved my mom, but I would not repeat her lack of backbone with men. Not again. Not after Dimitri.

  “When else will we do it?” Jake forced a lid and container together that didn’t work and continued his hopeless quest.

  “How about on the beach in Hawaii, when I spend my Christmas with your family?”

  Shit. That was cold. Horribly honest, and more bitter than the cranberry sauce on my counter.

  He stopped digging and stood. His face fell all the way into the open drawer.

  In an act of terrible timing I chose to blame on the lead singer of The Spades, in walked Fern, Shane, and Archie. I smiled at our guests, and the fight was put on a shelf for later. A huge, low-hanging shelf on which I banged my head hard each time I looked across the table at my boyfriend.

  Shane and Fern did their best to ignore the tension and talked us through dessert. After the meal was officially over, I snuck into the kitchen and grabbed a cigarette and a lighter. I made the excuse that I needed a walk as well and grabbed Archie in hopes of really selling the lie. But when we got out the front gate, I made a quick right, put my back up to the building, and lit up. Archie tilted his head and pulled on the leash—he was used to my constant motion—but he was quickly distracted by the smells of the litter on the sidewalk.

  “You could have stayed in the courtyard to do that—it was beyond obvious you were going to smoke.” Shane Fucking Murphy.

  “Please don’t. Don’t come over here and say something crass about how you’d like to fuck me while I do dishes or reveal another secret of my boyfriend’s. I’m really nine hundred percent not in the mood.” I inhaled my soothing toxins and blew them out as slowly as I could.

  “I hadn’t thought about either of those things, but now that you mention it …” He stepped closer, and I gave him a look that I hoped read as death. “I’m kidding!” His hands shot up. “I was just going to thank you for an amazing meal. My mom is
a shit cook, so that was by far the best turkey I’ve ever had.”

  I flicked some ashes to the ground. Squinting at the emerald eyes that made fans of all sexual orientations swoon, I pondered the ring of genuineness in his words. “I don’t buy it.”

  “Why do you think I’m such a bad guy?” he asked with his head bent.

  I laughed. In fact, I almost choked. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “I’m just trying to be happy.” He leaned on the wall next to me and propped a foot up against the building.

  A hard blink revealed that he was still there and it was indeed Shane Fucking Murphy speaking.

  “Do you think you can stop? You’re not doing any favors to my already strained relationship.”

  “Why? You gonna tell him you know I check out your ass?” He motioned for me to hand him the smoke, which I did, and he took a drag.

  “I don’t want to, but I get mad and shit flies out of my mouth. Like, I don’t get how he can be jealous of a guy who lives in another country and not see the one in front of him being completely inappropriate with me. That’s you, by the way. And Jesus, you should have heard what I said about his mother after the show at the Greek.” I shook my head and silently cursed Fern’s sangria, then reached back for the smoke and mindlessly took another hit.

  “You insulted his mom?” Shane’s eyes grew, then he motioned for the cigarette again.

  “Yeah, and now I get to go spend Christmas with them on a beach with Jake knowing I think she’s as pushy as he is.”

  “You’re not wrong.”

  Was he trying to get brownie points with his compliments and by taking my side? Half of my face scrunched, and I said, “Yes, but these are the type of things we may think but should not verbalize. You could work on that as well.” I took a final hit, smashed the cigarette on the sidewalk, and held it in my hand to take in to the trash.