by Kait Nolan
“Just stating a fact,” he said, curling his arms tighter around her as she burrowed in.
There was, he realized, so much more here for him than there had been, even at twenty-two. He wanted the time and the opportunity to explore it, to nurture it. Quite simply, he wanted the life he and Tyler always dreamed of. With the Babylon project quickly winding down, that was going to take an even bigger feat of mental acrobatics to sort than the financial problems of the Madrigal. Which meant that he had a lot more than punch out work to discuss with Gerald when he arrived later this week.
At the thought of his boss, Brody’s mind sparked. The first niggle of an idea began to take shape.
“I think I’m going to have a bath before bed,” said Tyler, tugging away.
“Sure.”
As she started toward the back of the house, Brody began to turn over details, making mental lists of things to research, specifics that would have to be worked out.
“I wouldn’t mind some company,” she called.
“I never turn down such an invitation from a gorgeous woman.” Brody headed back, deciding he wouldn’t mention his idea to her. It was crazy. A long shot, at best. There was no reason to get her hopes up. But if he could come up with the right angle, the right pitch, there might be a way to save the theater.
~*~
“Can I get you anything else?” asked Tyler.
“Oh no, we’re coming up on winter,” said Patty Spruill. “The projects are slowing down at Casa Spruill. I just wanted to pick up the parts to fix that leaky shower faucet in the guest bath before all the kids come home for the holidays.”
Tyler bagged up the O-ring cartridge replacement kit. “This will do it. And if you have any trouble, you give us a call. Or if you end up needing a plumber, I can recommend Ray Gentry or Leroy Dubois.”
“Ha, that’ll be the day,” said Patty. “Sheldon Spruill does not call repairmen for things he can most certainly do himself. But thanks for the recs. If he breaks something, it’ll be nice to have someone on reserve.” Patty picked something up from in front of the register. “What’s this?”
“Hm?” asked Tyler, offering the bag and shifting to see what she had in her hand.
Patty held up a manila envelope. Frowning, Tyler took it and opened the clasp, shaking out the contents. A flight itinerary with confirmation numbers lay on top of the stack. She skimmed the details. Memphis to Dallas to Portland. Departure on January 3rd. Brody Jensen.
What are you up to? she wondered, laying the papers aside. “Brody must’ve left it behind at lunch. I’ll get it to him later.”
“It’s good to see you two back together,” said Patty with a smile.
“It’s good to be back together,” Tyler admitted.
“Well, we’re all looking forward to your performance. I bought tickets for the whole family for opening night.”
“Should be a good show. I think you’ll enjoy it.” Tyler tamped town the twinge that it would be the last opening night she’d ever have at the Madrigal.
Once Patty was out the door, she picked up the papers again and began to shuffle through them. She hadn’t realized that she’d expected to see her name on an identical flight itinerary until she didn’t find it. Instead, she found lists of addresses and contractors and a letter addressed to Brody on Peyton Consolidated letterhead. Tyler’s eyes picked up isolated phrases.
…exemplary work…wrap up of Babylon project…exciting new opportunity…head up project from the beginning…expect you in Portland…
The papers fluttered down from Tyler’s suddenly limp fingers. She barely heard the jingle of the bell over the roaring in her ears as two more customers entered the store.
Brody’s leaving.
“Can you help us?”
She blinked at the young couple and struggled to pull her focus back. “Of course.”
Her heart was pounding, her chest cranking tight like a vice around her lungs. Somehow she managed to get through the next fifteen minutes, giving advice on paint finish and paint colors before mixing two gallons of eggshell in a shade called Sierra Mist. As soon as they were gone, Tyler grabbed her keys and did something she absolutely never did. She closed the store in the middle of the afternoon and walked out.
Brody would be at the hotel job site this time of day. Her body was trying to shake, but she wouldn’t let it. Ruthless, she fought back her growing panic and the tears that wanted to fall as the full impact of what she’d read began to sink in. This wasn’t the time to jump to conclusions. There might be a perfectly reasonable explanation for the fact that he hadn’t told her. Just because his boss wanted him to go to Portland for this job didn’t mean he was going. Did it?
It gave us us back. They hadn’t actually talked about this being more than a temporary thing, but when he kept saying things like that, didn’t it mean something?
A sick, roiling sensation settled in Tyler’s gut as she shoved through the plastic tarps hanging over the front of the building. The front desk had been installed, she noted. Furniture had been delivered to the bar area, still wrapped in plastic and foam. The swanky globes hung glittering over the long, glossy bar and looked every bit as gorgeous as she’d imagined. Everywhere around her were signs of the project drawing to a close. Brody had said Gerald intended to do a soft launch for New Year’s.
“You can’t be in here!” A harried man Tyler didn’t recognize rushed down the stairs. The clipboard under his arm and the wire rim glasses told her this had to be Gerald Peyton’s assistant.
“You must be Louis. I’m Tyler Edison. We’ve spoken on the phone.” There. Her voice was calm and even, without a glimmer of the fact she was falling apart on the inside. Still an actress after all. She offered her hand.
The man relaxed, giving her hand a perfunctory shake. “What can I do for you, Ms. Edison? Is there a problem with any of our orders?”
“No, no. Everything’s fine for the project. I’m looking for Brody Jensen.”
“He’s not here,” said Louis. “He and Gerald are looking at some new commercial property down the street.”
There was only one new commercial property down the street. The Madrigal. Tyler absorbed that blow, wondering that her legs didn’t just give out on her.
“Do you want me to let him know you were looking for him when he gets back?”
“No, I think I’ll just see if I can’t catch up with him later.”
Tyler wanted to run straight to the theater. But her feet felt like lead and her chest was clamping down even tighter, until she could hardly breathe. It couldn’t be true. There had to be some other alternative to what she was imagining. She couldn’t have gotten things with Brody so horribly wrong.
The Madrigal’s lobby door was unlocked. Tyler slipped inside with no more than a whisper of footsteps on the worn red carpet. Hearing the murmur of voices in the auditorium, she edged to the door and tugged it open just wide enough to slip inside. The aisle lights were on dim and the stage was lit up as if for production. Brody and Gerald stood in front of the set for the Ed Sullivan Show. The acoustics of the stage were such that she could hear their conversation all the way at the back where she stood in the shadows.
“—wanted to show the place to you without Sally so we could actually talk about the possibilities without it getting all over town,” said Brody.
“As always, I value your discretion. It’s a unique and interesting space with lots of possibilities. The location is prime and would fit in perfectly with the rest of the conference facilities I want to put in up the block. Of course all the old stuff would need gutting and modernizing. The carpet and seats are worn out. We’d want to install a state-of-the-art projector system for presentations up here and update all this backstage space with all the nice behind-the-scenes amenities that help conferences run flawlessly. Unseen efficiency.”
With every word, Tyler felt like vomiting.
“This was a marvelous idea,” continued Gerald. “There simply wasn’t the commercia
l space anywhere else in the downtown area, and with the zoning restrictions, we couldn’t actually build anything to suit. This will enable us to expand the conference facilities to not only rival the Alluvian but outstrip them. And that means profits, my boy. You’ll be long gone by that point, of course. As soon as things wind up here, I want you in Portland to deal with the retrofitting of the hotel I acquired last month. I sent you the specs already. The construction team is already in place, and their projections just aren’t going to work for my schedule. I need your particular brand of management to get the ball rolling.”
“Thanks Gerald.” Brody’s voice sounded far away. “Your faith means a lot to me, and the hotel is an amazing opportunity—”
Tyler couldn’t stay another minute. Fighting tears, she slipped silently back the way she’d come, walking away from the man who’d shattered all illusions that he’d be making a life with her.
~*~
The faint hum of the shower greeted Tyler as she stepped through the front door. She was grateful for the brief reprieve, for the chance to find her composure before facing Brody. Rehearsal had taken so much out of her with all that effort to try and appear normal when she was so raw. Piper hadn’t bought it. Neither had her father. But she’d managed to put them both off, claiming exhaustion from juggling work and rehearsals. It wasn’t a total lie.
Bringing Ollie to the bedroom as she usually did felt too much like fighting in front of the child, so instead she settled him on his bed in the living room with a rawhide chew before moving back to the bedroom to wait. The comparison was foolish and irrational. But she wasn’t feeling particularly logical at the moment.
Brody emerged from the bathroom in a towel and a cloud of steam. “Hey, I can’t find my stuff, have you seen—”
“It’s here,” said Tyler. She picked up the duffel from the closet behind her and heaved it onto the bed.
He looked from the bag back to her.
Her heart pounded a vicious, relentless rhythm in her chest, until she felt like she would explode with the force of it. She needed cold, needed calm to get through this. Walking to the chair in the corner, she imagined a layer of ice coating her from head to toe, freezing out the hot burn of pain that had been lodged beneath her breastbone since she’d opened that envelope.
Brody remained standing in the bathroom doorway, dripping onto the carpet as he held the towel loosely around his hips. His expression hadn’t settled into anything yet—still somewhere between I don’t understand what’s going on and everything is clearly not okay.
“You’re dripping,” said Tyler.
He moved to the bag, peered inside. “You packed.”
“I did.”
“Are we going somewhere?”
“No.”
Saying nothing, Brody pulled out clothes. When he dropped the towel to put them on, she looked away, then glanced back under her lashes. She hated that she had to look. But this was the last time she was going to see him outside of rehearsal, and she needed to memorize the lean, muscular lines of his body.
“Tell me,” he said, shrugging into a t-shirt.
Tyler had spent the afternoon working out this speech, struggling to find the best way to present this so as not to start a fight. She couldn’t handle a fight. She was too close to breaking.
“I thought I could do this,” she said quietly. “I thought I could pick back up where we left off. But we aren’t twenty-one anymore. We’re different people than we were when you left. Different people who want different things, who are in two different places in their lives.”
“What are you saying?”
“It’s done. I’m done.” The words came out with more of an edge than she intended, but it fit with the coolheaded calm she was trying to project.
Brody flinched, his eyes narrowing at the tone. “You want me to move out.”
He’d barely moved in. But then, he hadn’t really moved in. He’d been living out a bag like the guest that neither of them acknowledged he was.
How nicely that fit with her new understanding of him.
“I think that would be best.” God, it hurt her to say it, but rationally, what other choice was there? It didn’t matter that him leaving was the worst possible thing, that it was exactly what she didn’t want. She had to be the one to end this. It had to be on her terms. She couldn’t just wait for him to destroy her again, not in front of the whole damned town, where she’d be the object of everyone’s well-intended compassion. Again. Of the two of them, she was staying. She was the one who had to live with this.
“What if I don’t?”
A spark of hope lit in her chest. Then fight for us, Brody. Fight for me. Tyler couldn’t speak, too afraid that if she did, all she’d manage would be pleas for him to stay. She wouldn’t beg. The scraps of her pride were the only thing she had left.
“I guess you’ve already made up your mind,” he said.
It would be so goddamned easy to bend and give him an in, to let him convince her to allow this to play out a few more weeks. But she couldn’t do that. Couldn’t bear it.
“This was temporary,” she began. “I knew that when I decided to get involved with you again.” A lie. “My life is here, in Wishful. Yours is out there in the wide world. I tried to ignore that, tried to pretend that eight years of becoming different people didn’t happen. But it did, and I’m not interested in pretending anymore. Playtime’s over.”
“You think I’ve been playing with you?” Now it was his voice with the edge.
Tell me. Tell me you haven’t. Tell me this is real. Tell me you aren’t walking away.
The sound of the zipper closing made Tyler flinch. Brody picked up his bag, slung it over his shoulder in a manner that suggested he’d rather be hurling it at the nearest wall. His eyes were narrowed, his lips compressed. “Good to know. I’ll see you at rehearsal, Tyler.”
She listened to his retreating footsteps, feeling her heart sink with each step. At the sound of the door closing, she shot to her feet and stumbled down the hall toward the front door. There, she stopped herself, wrapping both arms around her middle to ward off the shaking as she stared at the wood panels, willing it to open again. But, of course, it didn’t. Every cell in her body strained toward the door, urging her to run after him, whether he thought her a fool or not. But she didn’t move. And when she heard the engine of his truck turn over, heard the sound of him pulling out of the drive, she fell to her knees and wept.
2 Weeks 'Til Show
The Babylon job was all but done.
There were lists of final details to be tended to—always some kind of last minute, unexpected thing. But by and large, the construction was complete. The interior design crew was kitting out the rooms upstairs with the furniture that had been delivered earlier in the week. The landscape architect was overseeing the planting of the hanging gardens on the roof. As Brody sat alone at the gleaming mahogany bar, he knew he should already be moving on. The portion of the job under his purview was done. Because of his commitment to the show, Gerald was leaving him to take care of the details that Louis normally handled. But even that should be handed off to the new manager in a few weeks. He’d done a hell of a job, beating even his best record for the company in terms of bringing in the project ahead of schedule.
None of it meant a damn thing.
Brody felt none of the usual pleasure in a job well done, no joy over the finished product. Because it all meant he was that much closer to being out the door and on to the next job. And for the first time in eight years, that was no longer enough.
Cracking open a bottle of bourbon from the newly stocked bar, Brody poured himself a glass and avoided looking at the envelope full of details on the Portland job that Louis had sent over that afternoon. Brody had lost the first one.
“You been holding out on us, boy-o!”
Brody looked over his shoulder to see Tucker clomping his way across the room, Cam on his heels.
“Neither of you is supposed to be h
ere,” said Brody.
“We are on a mission,” said Tucker. “And since it’s all of benefit to you, you can pour us some of whatever it is you’re drinking there.”
Brody didn’t relish company for his brood, but he knew his friends weren’t going to leave him be until they’d said whatever they had to say. With a marked lack of enthusiasm, he circled around to the other side of the bar and grabbed a couple more glasses.
“Much obliged,” said Tucker, accepting the glass. He took a testing sip. “Mmm. Smooth.”
Cam took his own glass and used it to point at Brody. “Now, it has become increasingly clear over the last week that you have a bug up your butt about something and, given that Tucker and I have actually seen you on multiple occasions when you have heretofore been joined to the hip with the lovely Miss Edison, we conclude that all is not well in paradise.”
He and Tucker exchanged a look. "What did you do?" they demanded in unison.
Brody glared at them. "Not a goddamned thing. And if you're both going to be assholes instead of friends, I'm not sharing."
Tucker moved his low ball out of Brody's reach. "Let's try this again. What happened?"
"Hell if I know. She came home from rehearsal last week and asked me to move out. Already had my bag packed."
"Did you have a fight? Because groveling is always advisable in that case," said Cam.
"She wasn't angry." If she'd been angry, he would've had something to fight against. But that calm, cool finality gave him no leverage. "She just said she couldn’t do it anymore—that we’d both known it was temporary from the start, and she didn’t see the point in pretending anymore." God that burned. When had he ever given the impression that his intentions were temporary?
"Is that what you were doing?" demanded Tucker. "Because I'm not too gimpy to kick your ass."
The slap of the glass as Brody slammed it down on the table echoed off the high ceiling. "I love her."
"Simmer down," ordered Cam. "It's a fair question. If Tyler said it, then clearly you did or did not do something to spark that thought. So what was it?"
