Everything We Are

by Janci Patterson

  I roll my eyes. “Could he be more of a dick?” Then I pause. “Never mind. We both know he can.”

  “Was it that bad?” Felix asks, rubbing my back. “He was okay at practice today. Still Alec. But okay.”

  I sag into him. “No, it wasn’t bad, exactly. It’s just . . . it’s like we’re pretending to be friends now. And he’s pretending not to be pissed at me, and pretending he doesn’t care that everyone hates him, even though we both know he does. Pretending to be his girlfriend was bad enough, but this—it’s worse, somehow. I mean, not worse than that week when I thought I’d have to wait four years before I could be with you. But you know what I mean.”

  Felix laughs and kisses the top of my head. “Yeah, I know. But you guys will figure it out. We’ve got five shows with him, after all.”

  I hope he’s right. I hope it’s just a matter of time and figuring out what our friendship looks like after all we’ve done to each other.

  And I wish that was the only worry I had right now.

  Those deep blue eyes of his study me, and I can tell he’s about to ask if anything else is wrong. He’s been doing that a lot lately, and I’ve been doing a lot of avoiding the question.

  He shouldn’t have to deal with the nightmares that have been haunting me these last few weeks—the ones I wake from, and the ones that hit me at random times when I’m already awake. He shouldn’t have to deal with that fear I still have—deep down, really deep down—that all this will be too much for his sobriety.

  It’s not that I don’t believe in him. I do. And he hasn’t done a single thing to make me doubt him. I know he fights to stay clean with everything he has.

  But I’m still so scared that one day it won’t be enough. I’m scared to lose him. To lose us.

  And I sure as hell don’t want to make that fight any harder than it is.

  I snuggle closer to him. “Not to prove Alec right, but we do have a few minutes . . .”

  Felix presses his forehead to mine, his lips twitching into a smile. “I’m all for it, but there’s a possibility you’ll have to cut me out of these pants.”

  “Mmmm,” I say, my hands wandering to feel just how tightly the denim clings to his backside. “Probably something we should save for after the show, then.”

  He kisses me like he wishes I’d talk him into it a little more, and a delicious flood of heat washes over me. But there’s still this undercurrent of tension, and when he pulls back, I can still see the concern in his eyes.

  I squeeze his hand tightly, and we head up to join the others at the stage.

  The concert starts out as usual. Felix and I greet the fans, and do a shout-out to Boston, today’s city. Then we play “Seven Deadly Sins,” which is quickly becoming a fan favorite. Live versions of our songs hit iTunes after the first concert, so by now the crowd can sing along from the very beginning, and they do.

  The worries and stresses fade away, replaced by the high of the music, of the fans, of doing all this with Felix beside me. We do several more songs, breaking in-between for some banter, and for letting Leo and Roxie show off their solos. Then we play our last video, the one about our wedding. Screen Felix laughs when he talks about the sign directing everyone not to be a jerk.

  Even his sister Dana—who just days before had told me I was a negligent parent for even considering letting Felix adopt Ty and giving him full parental rights—managed to oblige, which was good, because we’d designated Roxie as our bouncer, and Roxie meant business.

  On-screen me describes how I felt when Felix sang to me at the wedding—I’d never heard him sing a single note before, and had no idea that he could. On-screen Felix looks at on-screen Jenna, in that way he does, like he’s the lucky one. that just makes me melt,

  Across the stage, I meet eyes with him, and he’s looking at me the same way. And for that moment, it’s like nothing exists outside the two of us. Not the arena of fans, or the mistakes of our pasts. Just my husband and me.

  “We even invited Alec,” on-screen Felix says. He turns to the camera. “Do you think that was a mistake?”

  The crowd murmurs as the screen fades to black and then erupts in animated flames.

  And Alec himself strides onto the stage, guitar in hand.

  There’s this perfect moment of shock, and then the crowd goes nuts. Some loud boos, but mostly just excitement for whatever the hell this is.

  I can’t help but grin as Alec takes the microphone from me.

  “I don’t know, guys,” he says. “Are you glad they invited Alec?”

  The crowd erupts again, screaming and cheering.

  This just might work to save Alec’s reputation, after all. I smile over at Felix, who winks back at me and readies June.

  Alec doesn’t bother with any pre-song banter. He gestures to Roxie and Leo, who start off. The song he’s doing is “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” and Alec launches right in like he’s done this a hundred times instead of just practicing it with the band for the first time a few hours ago.

  Confidence was never Alec’s problem.

  Alec starts out as the narrator, with Felix, naturally, as the gifted fiddler—though playing his cello, of course. It starts out great, but the best part comes when it’s the devil’s turn—

  And Alec pulls one of those cheap novelty headbands with light-up devil horns from his leather jacket and puts it on, giving the crowd one of his signature cheeky grins that will very likely bring more than a few fangirls back around to Team Alec—or at least get him laid after the concert.

  And then Alec, as the devil, plays his guitar and battles Felix on the cello. It’s fantastic, this epic musical pissing match that both embraces and mocks the narrative surrounding their “fight” over me, with Alec as the straight-up villain who’s one mustache-twirl away from tying me to some train tracks.

  It’s a narrative we’ve been doing our best to clarify, through our videos and songs. There was never any fight over me, and the truth is, I have as much responsibility in the lies Alec and I told as he does—at least until that whole surprise engagement thing.

  This, though, makes Alec look good. The crowd is going wild for it. Alec and Felix are both killing it, and though that kind of goes without saying when it comes to Felix, it reminds me what a truly talented guitarist Alec is. The AJ stuff didn’t really ever push his limits any more than it did mine on the piano.

  The song ends with Felix the winner, and Alec gives a little salute of respect, and even works up the crowd to cheer extra hard for him, and then Felix does the same for him. I’ve been standing off to the side for this one, but I head over and give Alec a big hug, which he returns—it’s a clear “no hard feelings,” driving the point home with a sledgehammer, in case bringing him up on stage with us isn’t enough.

  It feels like a stage hug.

  The rest of the concert goes well. We’ve tweaked the set list as we go, having seen the way the crowd responds to different songs, to the classical interludes and the various covers, so the order now is better able to hit the right emotional notes at the right times. Felix performs his version of “Danny’s Song” for me—my favorite part of every concert, by a wide margin.

  Then it’s time for our final song, which now is the one I wrote for Felix, the one out of all of them (except maybe the new “Danny’s Song”) that’s most about us. This one is his favorite, I know, and I love performing it. And even though I’m performing it with him, it always feels like I’m performing it for him. Like it’s this gift I can give to him, over and over.

  I do our usual bidding farewell to the audience, thanking them for being so awesome, and telling them we’ll definitely hit a Red Sox game next time we’re in town, which gets a huge cheer.

  “But we have one final song for you guys,” I say, smiling widely at the mass of faces and cell phone lights. “And I think by now you all know which one I’m ta
lking about.”

  They clearly do. “You Are the Story” is another one getting huge traction on the internet.

  “When I think about the concept of real love, and about what it means to me, this song—”

  My eyes land on a man in the audience, and the words catch in my throat. My whole body freezes, like I’ve had a pail of ice water poured over me.

  Grant. He’s right there, in the audience, just a few rows from the front.

  For the space of one hopeful heartbeat, I think maybe it’s not him. Just some guy that looks like him.

  But no. It’s him all right. The square jaw, the piercing in his right eyebrow, the broad shoulders. He’s not incredibly tall—falling somewhere between Felix and Alec—but he’s well-muscled, and has always liked to show that off, which he’s doing now in a Jenna Mays Real Love Tour concert t-shirt a few sizes too small.

  He gives me this big, mocking smile that sends a chill all the way down to my toes.

  It takes a moment for me to become aware that I’m just standing there, frozen, in front of everyone, and my mouth works to try to make sounds, but nothing comes out, and all I can hear is my heart pounding in my ears.

  Grant’s smile grows wider. I realize I’ve covered up my wedding ring instinctively with my other hand, like somehow by doing so he won’t know I’m married. And he won’t hurt me, and he won’t hurt Felix.

  I look over to Felix, who is watching me with undisguised concern, and glancing from me out to the audience and back. He starts to set down his bow, to set down June.

  I try to swallow, my throat so tight I can’t even do that.

  “This song is . . .” I start again, my voice too sudden, too loud in the microphone, and I wince.

  Felix sits back down, confused. Grant folds his arms across his chest, his pierced eyebrow raised. Taunting me. He always had this demeanor of control about him, and not just because he was thirty when we dated, and I was only nineteen. He controlled me then, and he’s doing it again now.

  This is clearly the reaction he wanted.

  “I’ll just play it,” I say, hurriedly. I feel the need to be behind my piano, not so exposed like this. I don’t think Grant will hurt me, or any of us, not really, not while we’re on stage. He had the whole concert to do so if he wanted to, and he’s not making any threatening moves.

  I walk to the piano, my legs so rubbery I’m not sure how they’re working at all.

  He wants to get a rise from me. He wants me to be afraid. He wants to control me, like he used to.

  Like I let him.

  I start playing, my fingers slick on the keys. I start singing, my voice hoarse and unsteady.

  Worthless slut, his voice says in my mind. Useless cunt.

  Words from his messages, yes, but I hear them the way he used to say them to me, his hands tight—painfully, terrifyingly tight—around my neck as he moved on top of me. Or pushing my face hard into a pillow as he went at me from behind.

  I fight to breathe evenly now, fight to sing. I botch a chord progression, the discordant sound hitting my already taut nerves.

  It’s not that bad, the stuff he did to me, I tell myself, as I told myself then. Some people do that kind of thing for sex, and they like it.

  And now it’s like I can hear Felix, his voice sad. Maybe, but you didn’t.

  Felix.

  I try to channel everything I have into the song. I try to remember the first time I played it for him, back at our house, and the way he kissed me and kissed me afterward.

  But my mind keeps swinging back to Grant.

  Stupid bitch. Who would want you now?

  Afterward, he’d always tell me he never meant it. It was just sex stuff, you know? And I pretended I did know, partly because at the time I was being the Jenna who was cool with anything. And partly because I was afraid of him, afraid he’d take it too far one time.

  Afraid, too, that all the stuff he said about me was true. That it always had been.

  I’m on total autopilot, and it’s not going well—the song is more complicated than most of the AJ stuff, and I haven’t played it nearly as much. The bridge is a disaster, and I’m playing too fast, and then a little too slow to compensate, and I know Felix is struggling to match me.

  I’m trembling by the end, literally just shaking. Breathing hard, my heart pounding like I’m trapped in some race I can never stop running.

  After I play the last chord, I look back out to the audience. I can’t see Grant anymore. He’s gone.

  I’m afraid to even look at Felix, afraid of what he’ll think of me.

  “Thank you, Boston,” I manage. And then I all but run off stage.

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