Softer Than Steel (A Love & Steel Novel)

by Jessica Topper

  As they turned onto First Avenue, Rick’s eyes widened. “What is that place?” They were approaching a storefront lit by hundreds of tiny chili pepper lights. “It’s a bit over the top, isn’t it?”

  “It’s two places, actually.” Sidra could see the red lights reflecting in his spellbound stare. “Rival restaurants. They’ve been there for years.” She laughed, thinking of their identical interiors, with their gaudy lights dripping down like red-hot icicles and their similar, competing Indian menus. “Keep walking,” she warned, not making eye contact with either of the gentlemen standing in their respective doorways at the top of the shared staircase. “Or they will begin to fight over us.”

  She steered him onto the next block, tentatively watching for his reaction. She wanted to see it through his eyes. New eyes. Capturing that feeling of seeing something for the first time. When you grew up in a place, you saw it, but didn’t really see it, day after day.

  Rick’s steps slowed. She gazed around as he did, eyes drawn to more twinkling lights, although not as manic or abundant as those they had just passed. “This is Little India.” She sighed. “Or what’s left of it. Isn’t my village pretty?”

  Rick

  Rock Steady

  Rick turned and rested his lips gently on her forehead. “No, you’re pretty. Your village is magical.” In his head were a hundred words to describe what he saw before him, but he wanted to keep it simple.

  She smiled, bumping a hip against his leg to get them walking again. “It’s like carnival meets curry. There used to be thirty different restaurants on this one block. Now there are, like, nine.” She pointed out a red awning on the opposite side of the street. “My grandparents owned that restaurant for years. It was the jewel of Curry Row.”

  “What happened?”

  “Rents kept going up. Insurance after 9/11 skyrocketed. The novelty wore off.” Sidra bit her lip. “And the city never was the same for them after my mother died. They’re retired now, down with my great-aunt in Florida.”

  Rick thought of Jack’s rant about women leaving via a pine box. “Oh, luv. I’m so sorry.”

  “She was only thirty-five. Pregnant at the time.”

  “How old were you?”

  “I was ten.” She paused by one of the merrily lit shopfronts, reaching up to finger a single bulb on the strand that had burned out before the others. “A young Indian woman dying in childbirth . . . that’s something you think would only happen in Third World Calcutta or something, not here. Not in the eighties in the United States of freaking America.”

  Rick detected bitterness beneath all the sadness, but her eyes—all shades of tiger iron—revealed fear and guilt as well. He collected her to him, and her head found his shoulder. He pressed the towel, damp and cool from the long-gone ice, against her cheeks, dabbing at the tears.

  “Aortic dissection. It’s rare, and almost always fatal to mother and fetus. The doctors didn’t know if it happened during that pregnancy, or . . . one before. And it went undetected.”

  Rick stroked her hair off her face and gently kissed her temple. “I know,” he began gruffly. “The loss feels . . . unending.”

  He couldn’t tell her about Simone’s stomach cancer, not now, with her own health in question. But her eyes were searching his face, seeking out something: assurance, acquittal? Her words sunk into his thick skull and embedded their guilt-tipped talons: She had been the prior pregnancy; she thought she was to blame. Maybe someone had told her she was, or had implied it in a rash moment of sheer grief and utter despair. The enormity of that notion slammed him sideways, like a wave on the Na Pali coast. His own children came to mind once again, clinging to his legs and arms like barnacles in the bubbling surf. Simone bending to peel them away from him, her laughter carried with the wind as the waves slammed the backs of her knees, almost taking her down. You want to protect your children forever, even when you cannot protect yourself. Who had been protecting Sidra?

  He was aware of his own breath roaring in his ears, like in yoga class. “Stay in the present.” The words were ones Sidra had shared in class, but he heard them leaving his lips in a soothing mantra as he held her close.

  “But what if . . . what if I brought all of this on myself?”

  “Shhh, no. Let’s get you home.” Rick threaded his arm behind her and led her back around the block. As they rounded the corner, he had a queer feeling of déjà vu. Compared to the deadweight burden of her father, Sidra was featherlight. Rick allowed himself to dig deeper in the comparison. Jack blotted the pain by getting blotto. Sidra masked her pain by flitting above it all, like a bird tending to her various nests: her father, her brother, her yoga studio. Him. He had thrown himself at her mercy, had thrust himself into her life as another project.

  As she sagged against him, he heard Thor’s words about not knowing a sure thing when he saw it and fucking up every good thing that’d come into his life. The thought of the blueprints and his involvement flashed before his eyes. Am I the predator, destroying her nests one by one? In the past, such thoughts would have dripped cold panic until it froze into a sharp icicle that needled at his nerves until they were frayed. But the heat of her body in his arms, the warmth of her breath against the hollow of his neck, caused all anxiety to dissipate. She needs a rock. She needs you. To hell with everything else right now.

  “Stay the night?”

  “Of course, luv.”

  She led him through a bottom door, tucked under the brownstone’s stairs. “It’s small,” she explained, “but it’s all mine. And Seamus’s, too, when he’s home.” Rick took in the cozy nook of a living space. “I know, I bet it’s the size of one of your walk-in closets,” she mumbled. “You’ve probably got something modern and sprawling on a cliff overlooking a beach, right?”

  Rick gave a chuckle. “You’ve got the beach part right. But no, it’s . . .” He thought of his bungalow back home, which had been an old Buddhist mission before being converted into a house. How he and Simone had fallen in love with it upon first sight. How she had insisted it had chosen them and not the other way around. It had been compact, for the five of them.

  And then there were four.

  Then three. Then one.

  All alone, he had felt like the walls were closing in around him.

  Being with Sidra in her place, as tiny as it was, didn’t feel like that at all. More like an extension of the lounge space of her yoga studio, warm and peaceful.

  The first thing he noticed was a small statue of a dove with its young nestled under its wings. With a gentle steady hand, Rick reached to stroke the small smooth head of the mother dove. Its glaze had crackled over time, but the cool solidness was a comfort.

  “My mother was a sculptor.” There was pride in Sidra’s low voice.

  He turned to her and looped a thick lock of hair behind her ear with a smile. “She had amazing models to work with.”

  Sidra picked up the small bird and brought it to her lips, kissing it with a tenderness and grace that completely blew Rick away. “I’ve studied up on its symbolism,” she explained. “Trying to get to know the woman who was my mother. The dove represents sexuality in Indian culture. Lust and life. But look at its wings.”

  Rick’s hands eclipsed hers, bringing the sculpture closer to inspect it. The pattern on the feathers took on a familiar shape.

  “It’s a triquetra . . . the Celtic knot.” She gazed up at him. “And the Celts say the dove coos to the softest sides of our awareness. She pays a visit after a time of suffering because she recognizes our need for sanctuary.” Her voice was barely above a whisper, and her hands shook beneath his. Together, they placed the mother dove back where she belonged.

  Gathering the woman before him into his arms was a wholly new experience. He felt her hands, warm on his back, her chest expanding to fill the space left when his contracted. Life, lust, sanctuary . . . How could the universe grant him another glimpse at the greatest gift, then threaten to take it away?

  Over h
er shoulder, Rick spied an open doorway leading to her bedroom. Sidra squeezed him. “Come this way.”

  Sidra

  Fall in Light

  She stared at her lover, naked in the moonlight. Together, they had slowly undressed each other, taking the time to marvel as the layers were shed and skin was exposed. Seeing, perhaps for the first time, beneath the sheen of lust and excitement. Accepting each other’s offerings for what they were: a blessing, a gift. Taking their time.

  Sidra ran her thumb over the hard ridge of skin in the crook of his elbow. She had never noticed the scar there before. It was strange to think that healing could harden parts of you, while it softened others. She loved the hollow of his throat, its pulse vulnerable under her kiss. And the way his fingertips ghosted against her earlobe and traced her jawline, as if treasuring something priceless.

  “I don’t know if I’ll be able to sleep tonight.” She felt the warm breath of her admission as she pressed her lips into the caress of his hand.

  “I’ll be keeping watch over you if you do.”

  She turned in his embrace, gingerly touching his regal shoulders. “Don’t worry.”

  “Don’t you worry, luv.”

  He ducked his head to her breast and gently kissed each ripe mound, where areola met skin. An overwhelming surge of tenderness came over her as she watched him. Her fingers stroked the curls at the crown of his head, as if he were the one who needed comforting and protecting.

  Sometimes the lightest touch conjured the heaviest of emotions.

  Rick

  Light of Day

  Rick’s mobile was like a wasp, buzzing overhead, pestering relentlessly. He waved an arm up and finally knocked it off the shelf to the floor, waking Sidra in the process. She sighed and rolled lazily across his chest. “You’re in high demand.”

  “Apparently so.” He stroked her hair, loving the way it pooled across his belly and tickled at his ribs. Reality could wait a few moments longer.

  “Rock star.”

  Rick smirked. He was probably public enemy number one up at the studio right about now. He could picture Sam cussing him out, Adrian pacing. Thor seething. The captain had jumped ship. But for the first time in a long time, he felt no sense of “what if” or impending doom. The King of Doom was content.

  Sidra sighed.

  Oh yeah, that.

  “Your appointment today . . .”

  “Noon. Fiona is coming with me.”

  “You’re sure you don’t want—”

  “I want to stay in bed. Right here with you.” He could feel her lips pouting against his sternum. “Probably too much to ask for you to stay here until I get back, right?”

  “Is that all you want of me?” he teased. “You’re asking too little.”

  “I’m pretty low maintenance.” Sidra sat up with a grin. She pulled the orange ribbon, shiny and familiar, from the nightstand and absently wound her hair up.

  “Do you have an endless supply?”

  She didn’t answer right away, turning her back to him to pull on her tank top. Catching the satin between thumb and forefinger, he pulled gently and freed her thick mane once more. “Hey!” Sidra playfully grabbed the slippery length of ribbon back and went to work tying what curls of Rick’s she could gather into a ponytail, then twisted it into a tight, knotted bun. “Cute. You look good in orange.”

  She rolled out of bed and padded barefoot to a high dresser, fetching something from the top drawer. Rick could see it was a flat paper wheel—a spool of the same ribbon. He watched as Sidra carefully unwound a good measure and snipped it with a pair of tiny gold scissors. Methodically, she set the supplies back into the drawer and again slowly and deliberately drew back her hair. Her fingers shook as she tightened the bow. “I don’t have much of it left,” she said softly, and busied herself in the drawer again.

  Twisting the bedsheets around his naked torso, Rick sat up fully now, somehow aware that a great gift was about to be bestowed. It was a bittersweet gift of memory and trust swathed in delicate tissue paper that faintly smelled of spice and rain.

  Sidra smoothed the creases out of two identical silk dresses after laying them gently on the bed near Rick. The golden fabric was intricately festooned with tiny multicolored jewels, and at the hems were borders of the silky orange contrast. “My mother was making us matching saris,” Sidra said softly. She held up the miniature replica of the full-size. “For me and the baby.”

  She didn’t have to go on. Rick could see the larger of the two was unfinished. But she swallowed hard and pressed forward anyhow. “I was so busy that summer, I couldn’t be bothered with my mother lumbering after me, pestering me to try it on. So she set mine aside and worked on the baby’s.”

  Sitting cross-legged on the bed in just her panties and tank top, Sidra held the tiny swath of fabric to her chest. I want to take it all away from her, Rick thought. All the pain and guilt and grief. And I want to give her everything good in its place.

  He felt an odd stirring; it was out of place and inappropriate. Everything? his loins mocked. Sidra had seemed pretty adamant about her decision to not have children, yet watching her made him ache to change her mind. Or to at least have fun trying. Vasectomies could be reversed. Yes, you egotistical bastard. As if she doesn’t have enough on her plate already without you trying to sow your seed.

  “She never got to finish what she started,” Sidra said flatly. She methodically began to refold the fabric. Rick could tell it was something she had done time and again, her fingers rubbing over the uneven beading and pulling on the hems so they lay flat.

  “She would be so proud of you, you know.”

  She kept her eyes down, making a production of wrapping the delicate fabric in the rustling tissue once more. With a muted plat, a tear hit the paper and blossomed into a dark circle as fat as a quarter. Rick watched helplessly as another one fell and the paper thirstily soaked it up.

  “What if I don’t get to finish?” she choked out, practically keeling over off the bed. Rick was up in a flash after her, but the bedding ensnared him like a thick vine of two-hundred-thread-count cotton. He tumbled, swearing, to the floor and took the teary, gorgeous mess that was Sidra down with him. Half laughing, half kissing him through her tears, she managed to get out, “Thanks for lightening the situation, but oof, you’re heavy!”

  “Sorry, my love. I am so sorry.” He blotted her tear-stained cheeks with his stubbly own, murmuring against her hair. “Don’t you talk like that, though . . . you hear me?” he gently scolded her, bestowing a necklace of kisses around her throat.

  “Hey, Sid, I’m just gonna—Okay, whoa, didn’t see THAT coming!” A whirl of perfume and leopard print hit Rick’s senses: Fiona. She was in and out of the doorway so fast that they barely had time to react, except for collapsing and laughing again.

  “It’s okay, Fi. We are decent. Kinda.” Sidra wiggled out from Rick’s embrace and fashioned a flowing loincloth for him from the top sheet. “There,” she said, pulling him to his feet. “It’s a dhoti. Hot.” She bit her lip to keep from laughing.

  “Hot like Gandhi?”

  She tucked a loose end around his navel so he wouldn’t trip again. “Nice abs, nice butt,” she commented, giving him a pat. “Must be all those stacked side planks someone’s been making you do.”

  “My yoga instructor is a real slave driver.”

  Fiona appeared in the doorway again, her long, airbrushed fingernails drilling impatiently against the woodwork. “Like I was saying. I was gonna suggest we grab a cab so we won’t be late.” She cracked her gum and gave Rick a knowing once-over.

  “Give me ten?” Sidra asked. “I just need a quick shower and to put on a pot of coffee for my dad.” Turning to Rick, she pulled at the ribbon that was still in his hair. From the same dresser drawer where she stowed the saris came a key, which she tied to the ribbon. “You don’t have to stay here all day,” she said shyly. “But promise me you’ll come back?”

  “Absolutely.”
/>   “I’ll brew the coffee for the papa bear hibernating upstairs,” Fiona said. “Just get ready already, wouldja?”

  Rick stood in the doorway, as proud as a prince in his pima cotton finery, smiling as he overheard Fiona whisper loudly to Sidra, “Well, I wouldn’t kick him out of bed for eating crackers. Unless, of course, he was better on the floor?”

  Rick

  Shop Boy

  Freshly showered and key in pocket, Rick contemplated his morning. He could head uptown to Adrian’s apartment for a change of clothes. Or over to the studio to show his face. The band’s two-month lockout to get this album recorded was almost up, yet half the tracks still needed work.

  The bright sunshine stopped him in his tracks. Something about the morning was totally different on the Lower East Side than on the Upper West. Its scents and its energy, its sights and sounds. Buildings were lower and older. And despite the noise and number of mammoth construction vehicles already biting into the last small parcels of available earth around them, the neighborhood had a small-town community feel.

  He’d missed a text from Thor last night and had barely glanced at his mobile since. Pulling it from his pocket now, he saw the message:

  I’ve made an offer. Last chance to redeem yourself.

  Guilt followed him like his shadow did, impossible to escape. Doggedly there, mimicking his every move. Gloria was pulling strings downtown to expedite his request. But he still needed to tell Sidra. How? And when? Furious with himself, and with his so-called colleague, he thumbed back:

  I meant what I said. Don’t touch that property, Thor. If you fuck with the beast, you will get the horns

  A line snaked out a door, two-deep. Heavenly scents of bagels and Scottish smoked salmon caused Rick’s feet to join the crowd, shuffling inside Russ & Daughters Cafe. Talk about your mosh pits! But all the jostling, shouting, and chaos were worth the coveted spot he was awarded at the counter of the New York institution. Rick went full-on, even ordering a frothy, sugary egg cream with his meal. Which, in fact, contained neither egg nor cream, but a rich concoction of chocolate syrup, seltzer, and milk.