Sweet Reunion

by Melanie Shawn

  Noah’s face brightened. “My teacher Mrs. Rossmore says if you feel sorry about something you should just tell the person because they probably feel sorry too but they’re too embarrassed to say it. She said you should do it to be bigger than them, but I think you should do that with littler kids, too.”

  Justin smiled. “Is what she said that you should be the bigger person?”

  Noah nodded, “Yes! That’s what she said!”

  Justin smiled wider, “That doesn’t mean being older or actually bigger than them. It means that inside, you’re the more mature one. The more grown up one. And, kid, when it comes to you and me, I may be the big brother, but you are definitely the bigger person.”

  A smile spread slowly across Noah’s face as a new realization dawned. “You mean...you did it wrong? And I did it right?”

  Justin wrapped his arm around Noah’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze, then playfully ruffled his hair. “Absolutely. And the longer that I’m here, and the more time you and I spend together, I think you’ll be surprised by how much that happens.”

  Noah looked afraid to ask, but plunged ahead. “Does that mean...are you staying? Like, to live here? For good and forever?”

  Justin laughed. “For good and forever. And since I am, I have something very special in mind that only you can help me out with. Do you think you could?”

  Noah’s head bobbed up and down as he excitedly jumped to his feet, and – of course – pumped his fist into the air. “I’m your man!” he shouted.

  --- ~ ---

  The evening was winding down, and Amanda savored the quiet, contented, satisfied feeling that came with that part of the night. Dinner had been eaten. Presents had been opened. The cake had been cut. Sleazy ex-boyfriend had been hauled away in handcuffs. She smiled. Ah, yes. Everything a girl could want on her 27th birthday.

  She saw Justin and Noah over on the other side of the room, cutting glances toward her and whispering conspiratorially. She wandered over with a smile.

  “What are you two boys planning without me?” she beamed at them.

  “Well...” Justin began, and then looked around. He raised his voice a little. “If I could have everyone's attention?” he called, surprising Amanda, who looked around, confused.

  When the rest of the room was quiet and looking in their direction, Justin said, “Thanks, everybody, for giving us a moment. I think Noah has something he'd like to say to Amanda.”

  She looked down at Noah, pleasantly expectant but still slightly puzzled. “Yes, buddy?” she asked.

  Noah took a deep breath, screwed up his courage, and then said in a strong voice, “Will you be my sister-in-law?”

  Amanda felt shock go through her as she comprehended the words, and turned to look at Justin. When she pivoted to face him, she found him down on one knee, holding out a ring to her. Tears flooded her eyes and her hands flew to mouth to cover her gasp.

  “Amanda,” Justin stated earnestly, “I've loved you pretty much the entire time I've known you. You're the most spectacular woman I've ever met. I could talk about how beautiful you are, but that's something anyone can see just by looking.

  “What I want to tell you is how I miss you when we're apart for even two minutes. When you walk into the other room I start counting the seconds until you come back. I want to tell you how every time you open your mouth, I get a thrill of anticipation, wondering what you're going to say next. I want to tell you about how, anything that happens to me – good, bad, or indifferent – the first thing I think about is what words I'm going to use when I tell you about it.

  “The biggest things in life are meaningless without you, Amanda. But the smallest things in life have infinite meaning with you. I love you, baby. I want to be with you every minute of every day, for the rest of both of our lives.

  “Exactly ten years ago today, you were brave enough to make yourself vulnerable to me by declaring your love. Right now, I want to do the same thing for you.

  “Amanda Jacobs. Will you do me the incredible honor of being my wife?”

  Justin knelt with bated breath, waiting for her answer. Her hand shook as she held it toward him to accept the ring, and relief and joy flooded through him. As he slipped the ring onto her perfect finger, she shouted, “Yes! Yes! Oh my God, Yes!”

  He laughed with pure pleasure as he rose and took her in his arms. They kissed as the rest of the room clapped and cheered, and then he drew his head back, pulled her to him, and held onto her as tightly as he could ever remember holding onto anyone or anything.

  Justin laughed again, and felt a warm, peaceful glow growing inside him as he held Amanda, and saw the joyful glint in his little brother’s eyes. Oh, he thought to himself, now I understand. This is why people stick around. This is why people work it through. This is what makes it worth it. This is what’s on the other side.

  It was better than he could have ever imagined.

  Check out Chapter One of “Sweet Harmonies”

  Coming December 2012!

  Karina Blackstone freed her long dark hair from where it had been trapped in a ponytail atop her head and ran her hands through it in frustration. It cascaded down over her olive-skinned shoulders in glossy black waves, and brought out the drama in her deep onyx-colored eyes.

  She turned to gaze out the large picture window of Sue Ann's Cafe in her small hometown of Hope Falls, and took a deep breath. She tried to let the lovely scene she witnessed on the other side of the glass in the small storefront cafe calm her nerves.

  Directly outside the window was Downtown Main Street, a quaint section of town characterized by a wooden sidewalk and small, family run shops and restaurants. Beyond that immediate view rose the mountains surrounding Hope Falls, a small town located about 30 miles away from Lake Tahoe in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Pine trees of deep forest green filled Karina's vision, dotted with fiery yellow and red aspens, adding spice to the woodsy landscape.

  It was Karina's favorite view in the entire world, and she ought to know – she had traveled through most spots on the globe. Her career as a highly successful pop star had taken her to every corner of the earth, and given her the means to make any one of them her home. However, when it came down to it, she had realized that this humble spot, this small burg of only 5,000 souls, was the place that had nurtured her as a growing child, and was the place that nurtured her soul still.

  So Karina Blackstone was moving home.

  This seemed like a fairly straightforward proposition to her. She wanted to return to the roots of who she was as an artist, dig down deep and bring forth music that truly expressed her soul.

  To do that, she needed to return to the place where she could get in touch with herself, with the person she had been before all the madness of fame had started. She needed to come back to the Sierra Nevadas and reconnect with the simple life that inspired her, to clear away all the bright lights of the city and revel in soft glow of the stars in the mountains. She needed to spend time with people who knew her as Karina Blackstone, her rightful name, not Karina Black, the milquetoast whitewashed stage name she had been assigned for her career as a radio-friendly pop princess, conveniently airbrushing out her identity as a Native American. She needed to be with people that knew and loved her as their smart-ass and ultra-loyal friend, not worshiped her from afar as a superstar without actually knowing her. She needed to come home to Hope Falls.

  Simple enough to understand, she thought.

  The person who absolutely, unequivocally didn't understand, however? That was her manager, Bernie Kaplan, who was sitting across from her at the table in Sue Ann's. The 70-year-old Bernie was short and excruciatingly thin, with tufts of white hair sprouting wildly in a ring around his bald crown. His round and buggy eyes were magnified behind the oversize lenses of his thick-framed glasses, and he had the odd affectation of having a cigar forever in his mouth, albeit unlit. Bernie had been her manager for 8 years, and she didn't think she'd ever seen him smoke the damn thing.

  B
ernie, for all his harmless quirkiness, was the cause of her current frustration, which was rapidly devolving into despair. She seemed to be getting nowhere in her conversation with him, and it was beginning to tie her shoulders and stomach up in knots.

  “I don't know what to tell you, Bernie, I think I've expressed this as many ways as I know how. I just feel like I need to do this in order to return to the kind of music that's me. Something more stripped down. Just instruments and my voice, and songs that I write...”

  “You write your songs!” Bernie protested, interrupting her.

  “Bernie!” she let out a frustrated laugh, “I don't know whether to take issue with the accuracy of the word 'write' or 'songs' in that sentence! I mean, I make up cutesy little rhyming phrases and set them to catchy, hooky melodies, but it's not what I would consider actual songwriting!”

  Her face took on a sarcastically cheerful expression as she snapped her fingers and bopped her head, singing,

  “I was thinking maybe

  You'd be my baby

  Feeling's right

  Come out tonight

  With a kiss, you could save me...”

  Bernie looked confused, “I don't recognize that one, is that one of yours?”

  Karina cried, exasperated, “Bernie! I just made up that nonsense off the top of my head, are you kidding me?”

  Bernie smiled widely and spread his hands in front of him, palms up, “What did I tell you, sweetheart? You have a gift! You should jot that one down, I smell top ten single...”

  “The fact that you couldn't tell the difference between that off-the-cuff idiocy and one of my actual 'songs' actually explains my predicament better than I can.” Karina shot back.

  Bernie sighed and looked out the window himself. Karina could tell he was getting exasperated. He had always made a point, when dealing with Karina, of cajoling her into doing things she didn't want to do in a cheerful and non-confrontational manner. Karina had, by and large, been compliant – often she would protest initially, but ultimately give in to what Bernie thought was best. After all, he was an extremely savvy manager. He had taken her from being a virtual unknown to being a mega superstar in the course of only one year, the first year after he had taken her on as a client. And, in a feat that was actually much more impressive in the fickle world of pop music, he had kept her on top – throughout all the changing trends of not only the music scene but the music industry, when many artists were crash landing or throwing in the towel, Bernie had kept Karina's career consistently growing and thriving. And she was grateful – good God, was she grateful – but she had to be true to herself now.

  Bernie sighed deeply and shifted his gaze to the table top, “What you are talking about is the complete destruction of the brand that we've spent years building, polishing, perfecting, protecting...after all we've been through...”

  Karina put her hand on top of his. With tears in her eyes, she said, “Bernie, look. This isn't personal. It was your acumen that got me to where I am today. Both your intellect and your instincts are brilliant, almost frighteningly so. This is not about me not trusting you. This is about me reaching a point where I have no choice but to follow my heart. The persona you built for me, it's not bad. It would fit a lot of people. But it's so far from who I actually am.

  “I feel like that old Ben Folds line, 'I juggle one-handed, do some magic tricks, and the best imitation of myself.' That's what my life has been distilled to. If I'm with another person, any other person, I'm performing. I am constantly 'in character' as Karina Black.

  “If I continue down this road of pretending, of being fake literally ALL of the time – I feel in danger of losing who I actually am, and I am so scared I would never be able to get it back, not fully. Can you understand that?”

  Bernie shook his head. “Not really, to be honest. My game is business. My tools are numbers. I'm not about the emotions of a thing. But I respect you, sweetheart, and I respect your decision.”

  Karina sighed a little in relief, “Thanks, Bernie. I just really need to be here right now. I need to be with my grandmother, I need to be with the tribe, I need to be with my friends. I need to find me again. The real me.”

  Bernie shook his head, “If that's what you need to do, that's what you need to do. But don't make the mistake of thinking that the label is going to take so kindly to your transformation. You're talking about a complete, total, top-down rebranding effort...”

  Karina interrupted, with what she hoped was a charmingly bright smile, “See? You say REbranding, but I like to think of it as UNbranding...just stripping away all the adornments, and what you're left with is me...”

  Bernie barked out a cynical laugh, “You call it what you want, sweetheart. But the label has put millions of marketing dollars into creating and maintaining the Karina Black brand, and they're not going to take so kindly to you wanting to just toss it out like yesterday's garbage.”

  Karina's lips set in a grim line, “Bottom line it for me, Bernie. What are we looking at? They won't support the albums?”

  Bernie shrugged, “You'll be lucky if they don't sue you.”

  Karina's jaw dropped, and she sat back against her chair, “Is that a serious possibility?”

  Bernie chewed worriedly on the end of his unlit cigar, “Nah. I don't think it is. It would frame them as the big evil enemy in your fans' mind, which would hurt sales of your back catalog.”

  Karina sighed, “OK, good...”

  Bernie stopped her, “Not so fast, buttercup. Don't make the mistake of thinking that they're going to make it easy for you, either.”

  “So, you think they'll stop supporting my albums? No more tours, no more press?”

  “I think they'll shelve your albums and refuse to release them until you give them something they like. I think that when the production costs aren't recouped by the album sales, because they never put the record out, they'll bill you, which they are within their rights to do.”

  “They wouldn't!” Karina protested disbelievingly.

  “Heh. If you piss them off enough, they will. And I think that if you go ahead and pursue that course of action for the next 5 CDs you're under contract to them for, that it's a real good way to burn through your fortune. That's what I think.”

  Karina slumped in her chair, defeated.

  Bernie continued delicately, “I also think that if you aren't getting paid, then I'm not getting paid. And what's the point of that? If I wanted to spend all my time with someone who won't listen to my advice and is costing me money, I'd retire and move back in with my wife.”

  Karina looked up, tears of regret stinging her eyes again “You gonna leave me, Bernie? The first time in eight years I stand up for myself, and you're gonna leave me over it?”

  Bernie twisted his unlit cigar around in his mouth and stood, gathering his papers into his old, battered, leather briefcase. “Yeah, yeah, don't get your panties in a bunch,” he said gruffly, “Let me talk to the label and get their take. Who knows? Maybe they've been just been waiting with bated breath for the next Joni Mitchell to waltz through their doors, and you're the answer to their prayers. I'll call you next week.”

  Karina smiled and stood up, hugging Bernie hard, “You're the best, you know that, Bernie?” she said affectionately.

  “Ha! If I was the best, I would have been able to talk you out of career suicide, I guess I'm not the best. But I'll try.”

  As Bernie shuffled out of Sue Ann's, Karina cheerfully called out, “Bye, Bernie! Talk to you soon!” but his only response was a backhanded wave, for which he didn't even turn his head to look at her.

  “He loves me. I'm his favorite client,” Karina snarked in a mock cheerful tone to her grandmother Renata and her good friend Amanda as they settled into the seats across the table from her, occupying the space that Bernie had just vacated. Karina looked across the table at her loved ones – Amanda, with her unruly blonde curls and wide, innocent blue eyes, accompanied by her Grandmother, with her long salt-and peppe
r braid and ramrod straight bearing. Merely the sight of them made her feel more centered and secure.

  “That didn't sound like it went very well,” Amanda said sympathetically. Karina had enlisted both Amanda and her grandmother to sit at an adjacent table and eavesdrop on the conversation so that she could get their take on it.

  Karina shrugged, “Not ideal, but much better than how it could have gone. It could have been a bloodbath.”

  Renata nodded solemnly, “I particularly liked the part where you assured him that you want to spend more time at home with me, and settle down with a good boy from the tribe. He needs to know how important your community is to you.”

  “Rewind,” Karina said, spinning her fingers back toward herself quickly to illustrate the concept, “I said I wanted to hang out and spend more time with you and the tribe. I think the 'nice boy' bit was creative editing on your part.”

  “We'll see,” replied Renata, unfazed.

  “I just need to focus on my music right now, Grandmother,” Karina said pragmatically, “I don't have room in my heart, or in my schedule, for any kind of romantic entanglements.”

  In an attempt to get the conversation back on track before this oft-discussed topic between Renata and Karina could veer into, what Amanda knew from experience was a well-worn and lengthy argument, she interjected, “I just think it's good that he ended it on a positive note!”

  Karina nodded quickly, “I did too. At least he's going to try and pitch the label. How successful he'll be is anyone's guess. But, as Bernie so correctly pointed out, he doesn't make money unless I make money. So I do know he'll try.”

  Just then Sue Ann Perkins, the owner and proprietress of Sue Ann's Cafe, bustled up to their table with a carafe of coffee, refilling their mugs.

  “Hot pot, coming through!” Sue Ann called cheerfully.

  The three women greeted her warmly. Sue Ann was a longtime fixture in Hope Falls, someone that Karina and Amanda had known since they were born. She was a cheerful woman with springy grey hair and delicate-looking glasses that she wore on a chain around her neck. She always dressed in some variation of a floral skirt/button-down shirt/matching cardigan ensemble. Best of all, she always greeted the patrons of her shop like they were long lost friends, even if they had just been in earlier in the day. She was one of the many, many things that made Karina feel like Hope Falls wasn't just her hometown, it was her HOME.