Dissonance

by Drew Elyse

  “It’s nice to meet you, sir.”

  “James, please,” he insisted. “And can I just ask what a pretty thing like you is doing with my jackass of a son?”

  For a second, I was so overwhelmed with shock at his words, that I had no idea what to do. How could he not think his son was incredible? Only when Logan’s hand came back to my side and pulled me to him did I notice the teasing smile on James’ face.

  “Well, you know, he’s alright,” I replied. “For now.”

  James threw his head back laughing, and I was jerked into Logan’s hard chest.

  “Alright for now?” he asked with a raised eyebrow. At my shrug, he tightened his embrace, bringing his lips to my ear. “I’ll show you alright,” he whispered devilishly. Chills rolled through my body and I could feel Logan’s smile against my neck. We both knew I thought he was far more than alright.

  “Now, now, none of that,” James broke in.

  I pulled away from Logan almost franticly, feeling the blush in my cheeks. Some impression I was making. Keeping my eyes trained to the floor, I waited and hoped someone would bail me out of another awkward situation.

  “Come on, Dad,” Logan insisted, “stop making her blush. I’m only so strong.” That wasn’t the shift in conversation I’d been hoping for.

  Luckily, Katherine came to my rescue. “Stop it you two, don’t tease the poor girl.” she admonished. “We need more classy ladies around. I’ve been stuck with these Neanderthals alone for far too long,” she said to me.

  “Neanderthal, huh?” James replied.

  “Nothing more than a caveman in a suit,” she replied tartly.

  James eyes shown with mischief. “I’ll show you a Neanderthal,” he countered, snatching his wife into his arms and lifting her quite effortlessly from the floor. The two kissed like they might still be newlyweds.

  I wondered what it was like to see your parents be affectionate in that way. As far back as I could remember, my parents scarcely interacted unless it was about bills or my father criticizing something Mom had done. Logan’s expression was akin to amusement as he looked on at his parents, though he tried to pass it off as repulsion.

  The doorbell echoing through the house broke them apart.

  Katherine slapped her husband’s chest playfully as she pulled herself away. “These Westfield men are all trouble,” she told me directly as she hurried to the door.

  I was glad to hear Eli and Alex’s voices carry through the hall a moment later. Logan’s brother, Caleb, was supposed to be coming to dinner as well, and I did not think I could handle another introduction just yet.

  Alex was talking animatedly with Katherine when they came in the room, telling her to come by the salon later in the week. Eli immediately came up to me, wrapping my in a hug.

  “Happy Thanksgiving, Lottie,” he greeted me. It felt strange to me, that we would actually be having a true Thanksgiving dinner together for the first time in years. A pang of sorrow hit my heart when I remembered the last one we had with Mom. She’d still been healthy then. By the time the holiday came around again, she was gone.

  Eli released me to share one of those one-armed, quick, man-hugs guys seem so accustomed to with Logan, and a handshake with James. Alex hugged me as well, before embracing James.

  “How’ve you been, Al?” James greeted her. “I haven’t seen you in months. You need to come by the office to visit that boy of yours more often.” He seemed almost paternal towards her, something Alex had never received from her own father.

  Suddenly, I was feeling like an interloper around the only two people I considered family. Neither Alex nor Eli had mentioned how close they’d become with Logan’s parents. I knew that they’d come over for the holidays in the past, but this all seemed more familiar than that. Clearly everyone in the room was close, comfortable together, and I was not so sure I belonged.

  Everyone moved into the living room to sit while Katherine doled out drinks. Conversation moved easily, James and Katherine asking the others about what they had been up to, Eli and Alex returning the same questions back. All the while, I just sat silently next to Logan, feeling desperately out of place despite the three most important people in my life being right beside me.

  “What about you, Charlotte?” James brought me into a conversation I had otherwise checked out of. I must have looked as lost as I felt because he continued, “What do you do?”

  Well, this was bound to make a great impression. “I work at a bookstore downtown right now.”

  Logan cut in, championing me. “It’s a specialty store that finds and sells rare books.”

  “That sounds fascinating,” Katherine interjected, sounding genuinely interested.

  “I don’t do anything all that exciting. The owners are really the ones that do the work to find rare editions, I just work the counter,” I explained, choosing to leave out the fact that I only did that part-time. That probably would not do much for impressions.

  For the first time since I’d started my job, I was sort of ashamed of it. I had actually been quite proud of myself. After all, I managed to only work part-time and not struggle with the lack of distraction. I kept myself busy, content. That was a first for me. But telling Logan’s parents about it hardly made me seem like the sort of girl you want to be dating your son. Especially with all the James had accomplished. The last thing I wanted was for them to think that I was with Logan because I thought he could support me.

  A beeping sound took attention away from me. James fished his cell phone from his pocket, frowning when he saw the screen. He stood, apologizing for the interruption, but said he had to take care of something.

  “Logan, can you come with me for a minute?” he asked.

  Following Dad into his study, I could not help but wonder what was going on. It seemed unlikely it had to do with work. The office was closed on Thanksgiving. End of story. Dad refused to have any of his employees working on holidays.

  He was bristling as he walked straight to his desk. Whatever was going on was bad, and fuck if I wanted to deal with it at the moment when I’d left Charlotte clearly uncomfortable in the living room with Mom. I had thought she would be more at ease when Alex and Eli showed up, but she had seemed to pull into herself entirely until Dad had asked her a direct question.

  One problem at a time, though. The sooner I sorted out the issue with Dad, the sooner I could get back to her.

  I waited for him to start talking, but was met with tense silence as he rubbed his temples rhythmically.

  Finally, I spoke up. “What’s going on, Dad?”

  “That was Caleb. He’s not coming to dinner,” he informed me.

  Well, shit. Mom was not going to like that one bit.

  “Did he say why?” I hedged.

  “Does he need to?”

  No, probably not. Dad had told me a few weeks ago that the private investigator found evidence of heavy abuse of prescription drugs. From what I understood, Caleb was conning several doctors into giving him the scripts he needed.

  “I confronted him about his work issues a few days ago, told him I needed more. I asked him point blank if he was using. He insisted he wasn’t, tried to claim that he needs the pills he’s on. I gave him an ultimatum, told him he needs to clean himself up and improve his performance, or he would be job hunting soon enough. I also made it clear to him that I expected him here tonight,” Dad explained, giving an uncharacteristic shrug that just said look how that turned out.

  We both sat in silence for a while then. What was there to say? My brother was giving up everything he had strived to for a bottle of pills.

  After a while, Dad spoke again. “Have you thought about your place in the company?”

  How could I not? It had been on my mind constantly since our last talk. “I have.”

  “You know I don’t want to pressure you, son. But I have been promising your mom that I would be releasing the reigns, spending less time in the office and more time at home. I don’t want to be runni
ng this thing single-handedly forever.”

  I held a hand up to stop him. “I get it, Dad. I do. I’m still thinking about all of it, but it’s hard to let go of that dream I had for so long. I’ve got Charlotte now though, so even if I got offered a contract with a label I could actually accept, I don’t know that I could just get up and go on tour. She’s more important than all of that, but I still have trouble just moving on,” I told him honestly.

  All those images that had been swimming in my head of leaving Charlotte behind while I toured for months at a time, they were a nightmare. Music was and always would be my passion, but not all passions are meant to be careers. Maybe I was meant to follow a different path.

  Charlotte seemed more relaxed when we returned. Apparently, Mom had started asking about her Master’s work, being a pretty avid reader herself. Charlotte may not be all that confident in much, but literature and music always pulled her from her shell. She was still reserved, particularly when it came to Dad, and she wasn’t leading conversation, but at least she wasn’t completely silent anymore. Small victories were key with Charlotte. If she could bond with Mom somewhat, I’d take that and run with it.

  When Mom started asking Alex about wedding plans, I knew it was the perfect time to get Charlotte alone and figure out how she was feeling about everything. Char discreetly rolled her eyes as Mom and Alex chatted excitedly about something. Dresses, maybe. They said something about taffeta. That was a fabric, right?

  I leaned in to her, breathing in her scent for a second before whispering in her ear. “Want to see the rest of the house?” She nodded vigorously, ready for anything that got her away from wedding talk.

  “I’m going to show Charlotte around,” I announced to everyone else. Mom and Alex hardly cared about what I said. Dad and Eli seemed to take my cue, deciding to go into the other room and check the football score.

  We wandered the house while I pointed out different things. Char got a kick out of all the pictures Mom had displayed around the house.

  “You were adorable,” she giggled at picture of my wide, toothless, 7-year-old face. At least Mom didn’t feel the need to display the bathtub photos. Not that they did not exist, but she was kind enough to keep them off of the walls.

  I really had no intention of showing her each room. What I actually wanted was a moment alone with her, so I led her right up to my old bedroom.

  “And now we arrive at the most important room,” I told her with my back to the door.

  “The bathroom?” she replied cheekily. God, her feisty side was my kryptonite.

  “Very funny,” I said, leading her inside. “This was my room.”

  She took it in for a minute. There wasn’t much to it, particularly since most of the belongings that used to fill it were back at our apartment. Shelves sat largely empty, though a few old trinkets remained. The corner where my guitars had always sat in their stands was empty besides the mural Mom had painted on the wall.

  “Wait,” Charlotte looked at the mural with a twinge of confusion on her adorable face. “Isn’t that your…” she trailed off, turning to point at me.

  The tree that ran from floor to ceiling in my old bedroom was the same one that had been permanently inked into my back. “Yeah, it’s the same one.”

  “Why that tree?” she asked.

  “When we first moved here, I was still pretty young. That tree was in our old backyard. When I was little, I was terrified of the damn thing. It cast these terrible shadows in my room at night. My mom insisted that that tree was old, not scary, that its gnarled branches were because of the storms it grew in, the animals that crawled around on it, and the little kids like me that had climbed it. She told me that life always leaves marks, and that old tree was just full of stories,” I explained.

  “After that, I kind of grew attached to it. I used to look at it and imagine all kinds of things about how each bend was made. When we moved, I hated that we were leaving that old tree behind. I’d begged my parents to bring it with us, but they told me we couldn’t. That tree was too old, its roots went to deep for us to try and pull it out. We’d kill it if we tried.

  “I really wasn’t upset about moving into the new house, but every time I looked out of the window, I missed that tree. Then, one day, I came home from school and my mom was in here, sketching on the wall. It took me a minute to realize that the shape was my tree. Dad had driven out to the house and asked the new owners if he could take some pictures of it, and then Mom painted it there for me,” I smiled at the memory. “I don’t know when I got the idea to get it as a tattoo, but by the time I was old enough, I was certain I wanted it.”

  She just stared at the painting. It seemed like she was looking for something; not a response, but something grander. It was like she was searching for truth in the brush strokes. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen that look in her eyes. She had worn it when she had been staring up into the rain the first day I met her. I had no clue what was happening in her head, but I felt desperately compelled to pull her away from it.

  I grabbed her around the waist from behind and said, “I feel like all my preteen fantasies are coming true. I’ve got a gorgeous woman in my bedroom.”

  My tactic worked, they usually did when it came to distracting her. If only I could figure out how to get her talking instead of always helping her sweep things under the rug.

  “Yeah, I’m sure this is a first,” she snorted.

  “Hey, I have never had a girl in here,” I tried to sound affronted.

  She turned to face me. “You, Logan Westfield, are claiming you weren’t sleeping with girls in high school? I doubt that.”

  “I never claimed anything of the sort. I said I never had a girl in my bedroom,” I clarified.

  Those pretty eyes rolled at my antics. “Don’t tell me you were one of those guys that went for the back of the car.”

  “First you call me a liar, and now you accuse me of having no game? Damn, woman, what do you think of me?”

  “Well, you’re the one saying that your activities didn’t happen here. Where were they happening, then?” God, I loved when she became a little spitfire like that. She was all sass if you got her in the right mood, and it always got me in a different mood. A mood we had no time for when both of our families were around.

  “I was resourceful,” I quipped.

  “I’m sure you were.”

  “I can still be resourceful,” I answered, pressing her tightly to me so she could feel what she was doing to me.

  And what did she do in return? She laughed. Nothing quite as emasculating as a sexy woman laughing at the feel of your erection. Not a big confidence booster. If it weren’t for the fact that I thought that laugh of hers as the fantastic sound in damn world, I probably would have been disappointed.

  “Maybe save that for later,” she said in a voice that, while quite, still carried enough seduction to bring me to my knees.

  “Don’t make promises you don’t intend to keep, baby,” I whispered huskily, stepping away to return to everyone else.

  Her reply was so quite that I was certain that she had no intention of me hearing it. “I try not to.”

  What the hell did that mean?

  Our return to the living room found us being ushered to the table by Katherine while Alex went to retrieve the men from their football. The spread was like something out of an issue of Good Housekeeping. I had never seen such a perfectly set Thanksgiving in real life. Even when Mom was still alive and made dinner, the three of us hardly constituted making a meal of the same caliber as the one before me. The place settings were accented with deep oranges and browns, and each dish matched. No miss-matched plates like we had always used growing up. And the smell… even with my nerves, the savory aroma had my stomach cramping with the desire to dig in.

  “This all looks incredible, Katherine,” I commented.

  “Please, dear, it’s Katie,” she told me, again. “And I can’t take credit for a lick of this. I always bring in a c
aterer for Thanksgiving. I might be able to make a few dishes, but I can’t manage all of this,” she chuckled.

  Logan snorted next to me, burying his face in his hand to hide his laughter.

  “Something you’d like to say, son?” Katherine - no, Katie - asked him in a saccharine voice.

  He turned to me, but eyed his mother in amusement. “Mom tried to do a big fancy Thanksgiving herself the year we moved in here. My Grandma used to do it, but Mom insisted she wanted to do it herself in our new home. We sat down to two burnt casseroles, an empty bowl where the mashed potatoes she forgot to make should have been, and a turkey that was still frozen in the center. Mom’s gotten a caterer ever since. She thought she could fool grams into thinking she’d done it herself, but grams saw through it in an instant.”

  “In hindsight,” James offered as he took a seat at one end of the table, “the roasted acorn squash and mushroom ragout might have been a bit much.”

  Alex and Eli sat across from Logan and I, it was only then I noticed what was missing. Logan’s brother, Caleb had never shown up, and there was not place set for him. I thought Logan had reiterated earlier today that he would be at dinner.

  “Where’s Caleb?” I asked him quietly, trying not to disturb the conversation going on around us.

  “He’s decided not to come,” Logan replied darkly, a frown marring his perfect face. I wondered what was the matter, and Logan must have read the question in my eyes. “It’s a long story, I’ll explain later.”

  It shouldn’t have bothered me that he did not say more. Logically, I knew that it should not have made my stomach tighten and my mood plummet back to where it had been before we escaped to his childhood bedroom, but it did. Somehow, I knew this was not something new he was dealing with, and that made the six inches separating us feel like a chasm.

  Maybe that was what he felt like all the time dealing with me.

  Shifting my attention back to the conversation around me, I tried not to let those thoughts plague me, but the cheer around me was not enough to get me out of my own head.