The Break-Up Album

by Lauren Blakely

  The waiter appears. “Can I get you started out with something?”

  Matthew gestures to me. “The lady can go first.”

  Lady. Of course, he’d call me a lady, being a baron and all.

  I opt for the beet salad and fingerling potatoes. He chooses the braised short ribs.

  “No lamb on the menu. The Queen will be so sad when I tell her.”

  “Tell me about this article you have in mind,” I say after we finish eating.

  He leans forward, resting his elbows on the table. “Beat magazine loves the idea of this dark horse who came out of nowhere, the little engine that could.”

  I hold up a hand, a mischievous glint in my eye. “Just Beat? What about you, Matthew?”

  “Of course, I love the idea, too. It so happens that my editors love it as well. The whole internet buzz and marketing that Jeremy masterminded was genius. Now, the big question is—how can you top it? What do you do for an encore, a follow-up?”

  I groan inside, flashing back on my three blah songs. I’m going to need to find a club and beat some inspiration out of myself soon.

  “But wait. We don’t just want to do that. That’s just the starting point. I want to follow you, spend time with you as you embark on this next album. I want to sit in on some of the recording sessions, observe as you and Owen brainstorm and create. To really dive into the creative process.”

  “You want to know how the sausage gets made.”

  He quickly taps his nose and points at me as if to say, You’ve got it.

  “You want to sit in on our recording sessions and have the freedom to write about all the dredge that comes out before we maybe write something remotely decent?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you want to have total access to Jeremy and Owen and me?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you want to know what goes into this—how we plan the album, the songs?”

  “Yes. You’ve already started, right?”

  “Of course.” Three mediocre songs that I can never use. But hey, there was that little melody I stitched together this afternoon on my couch. “And would you like to know which brand of toothpaste I use, too?”

  He shrugs playfully. “Suppose it couldn’t hurt. Jane’s Tips For a Brilliant Smile has a nice ring to it.”

  “You’re asking for a lot.”

  “I know. So what do you think?” There’s a childlike glimmer in his eyes.

  “Why me?”

  “Because Glass Slipper is redefining how independent music is marketed, because Jeremy doesn’t give a crap about appearances and corporate accouterments and rules. And because I fucking loved your album and I can’t wait to hear what you do next.”

  I don’t say anything immediately. I want to bask in the glow of his compliment for a moment. I want to savor the fact that he likes my music. But hell, I don’t have a goddamn clue what I’m writing next, so how can I let a journalist into my creative process when it’s on a standstill? And even though Jeremy wants this, I’m going to need to keep Matthew at bay until I get a grip on some words and music.

  “Maybe,” I answer.

  He leans in closer across the table, looks me straight in the eyes, and when he does that my resolve starts to weaken because his eyes are so beautiful, and he doesn’t break my gaze. “When you were younger, when you were a teenager, did you read the music magazines?”

  “Of course I did.”

  “And did you read those in-depth features where you really get to know a musician, how she works, how she operates? And did you ever wonder, ‘When I am a famous rock star someday, will they do this kind of feature on me?’”

  “Did you get a hold of my diary from high school or something?” I ask playfully. Because, though I didn’t keep a diary, Matthew is uncannily hitting all the right notes.

  “I have a hunch you didn’t keep a diary,” Matthew fires back.

  I smile at him this time but don’t let on that he is right. “I will think about it. When do you need to know by?”

  “How’s a week?”

  “Fair enough.”

  Matthew raises his glass to toast. “To my hope that you’ll say yes.”

  I clink my wine against his vodka tonic.

  He adds, “So you’re doing Stephen Colbert before your Roseland show on Friday. And I also saw on CRB Radio’s website that you’re doing Words and Music Sunday morning with Max Cohain.”

  “Wow. Colbert, Roseland, CRB Radio. You are thorough.”

  “I’m trying to impress you. Win you over with my encyclopedic knowledge of your career now. But listen, watch out for Cohain. He loves the pretty birds.”

  Matthew smiles at me and I can’t think of anything to say as a tingling feeling sweeps through my body. Pretty. Does Matthew think I’m pretty? I swallow, a touch of nervous hope racing through me. Maybe this isn’t a one-way street. Maybe he has a thing for me, too. Because he’s holding my gaze, almost as if he’s waiting for me to say something. But I haven’t a clue how to respond. All I know is my body is buzzing, alive with possibilities. Something shifts, too, in his expression. His eyes are usually so playful, and they seem to twinkle. But now there’s an intensity to them, and they’re darker. Neither of us says anything, and the electric quiet makes my brain feel blurry and my blood turn hot.

  “Pretty birds?” I ask carefully, in an uncertain voice.

  “Yes. Like you,” he answers, looking me straight in the eyes. I don’t want to look away. I don’t want to move. I don’t want to do a single thing to ruin this moment.

  Then the waiter brings the bill, and the moment and whatever it was turning into is broken. Before I can reach inside my bag to retrieve the gift certificate, Matthew has already handed the waiter his credit card and sent him on his way.

  “I was going to pay. I told you I had a gift certificate. The meal was supposed to be on me.”

  He waves his hand in the air. “I love that you offered and you’re very generous. But we have a policy at Beat. We can’t accept any kind of gifts. I’ll be picking up the tab for the next few months.”

  I smile at him, giving him a flirty tilt of the head. “You’re presumptuous.”

  “Optimistic, I like to think,” he says as the waiter returns his credit card and he tucks it back into his wallet. “Besides, even if we were just having dinner I’d want to pay then, too.”

  “You would?”

  “Of course,” he answers and his voice is stripped of all the teasing, all the toying, even all that journalistic seriousness. He seems so completely sincere in his tone, in his features, and then he does that thing again—where he reaches for my hand, clasping his on top of mine. I’m suddenly aware of the pressure on my wrist. How his skin feels hot on my skin. I’m dying for him to slide his fingers through mine, because that would be a sure sign, right?

  “Of course, I would want to take you out, Jane.”

  I am warm all over with his words. Does he mean them? That I’m pretty, that he’d want to have dinner even if it were just dinner? I don’t know how to read into his words, or if I should. But I want to read into them. I want to believe in this hand on mine. That he wants to be touching me, as much as I want this trace of contact with him.

  “You would?” I start to say, but then I swallow the words because I can’t trust him, and I certainly can’t trust myself. “Hey, I have a wild idea.” I gesture in the general direction of his back pocket where he put his phone. “Turn off your phone. Let’s try to find our way out of the Village without Waze.”

  He reaches for his scuffed-up, well-worn leather jacket and pulls it on over his long-sleeved white shirt. He retrieves my coat and helps me put it on, always the perfect gentleman. We leave Café Cluny and stand on the corner outside the bistro in the chilly air of the late February night.

  “Okay, we ought to just close our eyes, turn in circles a couple of times and then go whatever direction we wind up pointing when we open our eyes,” he says.

  “But what if
we wind up in different directions?”

  “You mean, what if I spin faster or slower or something?”

  “We can’t really be assured that we’d spin at the same speed.”

  “You’re right, you’re right, of course,” he says, stroking his chin as he goes along with our game. “I hadn’t considered the possibility of speed variations.”

  “I know. You close your eyes and I’ll spin you. But I’ll close my eyes, too, and then just to be fair, you’ll be the one to say stop.”

  He closes his eyes instantly. I reach up to place my hands on his shoulders. He’s taller than me—I’m guessing six foot two to my five foot seven. Still, I catch a faint scent of his aftershave, a cool, crisp smell. I’m so tempted to lean in and inhale deeply. But I resist, instead sniffing him quietly for just a second, letting him linger in my senses, letting him drift up into my mind and down into my body. For a moment, I shut my eyes, too, and I feel like a wild racehorse, with a little bit of heat and a little bit of aching mixed together in the belly of the beast. I open my eyes quickly and start turning him around. Once, twice, three times. Four times. Five times.

  “Are you ever going to say ‘stop’?”

  “No, I ridiculously enjoy being spun with my eyes closed. It’s a fetish of mine. I’ve been to rehab, but apparently, I’ve just relapsed.”

  I laugh and he says, “Stop.”

  He opens his eyes, feigns wobbling, and grabs hold of my shoulders as if he’s about to fall. I smirk at him. “You’re just playing around.”

  Then he parts his lips, and he has the slyest smile on his face. “Playing around, you think?”

  He’s returned to that tone of voice I can’t read. It’s neither his toying one nor his serious one. But the look in his eyes is full of hunger, and then I feel the softest touch on my hair. He’s fingering a strand of my curly hair and I am so far out of my element that I’m not sure what to do next. All I know is I’m leaning closer to him, because this kind of touch, so clearly the way a man who likes women touches, is both foreign and extraordinary to me.

  “Yes, I would.” His soft voice borders on a whisper.

  My body is racing, and the moment is full of so much anticipation, so much possibility that I could bottle it. But still, I feel like the sidewalk under my feet is swaying, and I need to know which way is up.

  “You would what?”

  “I would want to take you out. Much like how I want to kiss you.”

  I can barely process his words. They’re so heady, so woozy, so utterly foreign to me. No one has wanted to kiss me in the last seven years.

  “May I?” he asks, and I am in a blissful bubble of his accent, his blue eyes, and his total classiness in asking me, like a proper gentleman, which turns me on even more. I want this sliver of time to be suspended so it lasts, but I desperately want to be kissed. I want to be kissed by someone who wants me, by someone who knows what he’s doing, and by someone I am immeasurably attracted to.

  By Matthew.

  Who’s holding me tight with those dark blue eyes, the color of a lake in my perfect Maine, and I can’t let go. I can’t look away. I can barely speak. This feels so unreal, but yet here he is—wanting to kiss me. I would go into shock if I weren’t completely tingling all over.

  “Yes,” I say, grinning, but then my smile is erased by his lips as he presses gently against mine with such softness, such sexiness that my knees go weak, and I loop my arms around his neck so I don’t fall.

  He wraps a hand around my waist, tugging me closer as he kisses me, and I’ve lost all awareness of my surroundings, of the city, of the last several days of my life because the second Matthew’s lips touch mine, I know it is one of those kisses.

  The kind you could write a song about.

  I hear the word amazing press into my brain. Amazing lips, amazing kiss, feels amazing, you’re amazing. At one point, I actually murmur the word in his mouth. Kissing him is like a Chris Isaak song. It’s not frenzied or frantic or a mad dash to the end. It’s slow and unhurried, dreamily unfolding over and over. It’s desire stretching out.

  His lips exploring mine, his tongue tangling with mine, his hands lacing through my hair. His sexy sighs that tell me he’s savoring this kiss as much as I am. He brings me closer, his long, lean frame terribly close to mine. For a brief second, I can feel him pressed hard against my thigh, and it’s thrilling to elicit this kind of reaction from a man.

  Arousal.

  Then he breaks the kiss, and I stumble. He catches me. “You okay?” he asks, and he’s back to that playful voice I know from the Grammys.

  “I’m okay.” It feels like I’m waking up, because everything feels hazy and warm, as if morning light is streaking in through the windows at dawn. As that image flicks past me, it occurs to me that it may be more than a metaphor. It may be an apt description of the first kiss in seven years that feels like a two-way street.

  “I’m terribly sorry.” Matthew takes a step back and assumes a proper, poised stance.

  “What?” I ask, bewildered. Now the dream is ending, and real life awaits.

  He clears his throat, speaking oh-so-properly. “I should not have done that. I don’t kiss people I want to do interviews with. I don’t get involved with sources. I can’t do that. I can’t go there,” he says, so quickly that the words come out in a jumble. But I can make out every confusing one of them. “I don’t want to do anything to compromise the story.”

  Right. The story. We’re back to the story. “But we haven’t even agreed on the story.”

  “I know,” he says with a sigh, then scrubs his hand across his chin. “And maybe this sounds nuts, but would it be possible if we went back in time ten minutes? Erase what happened out here. I’m phenomenally attracted to you, but it’s probably best if I focus on my job.”

  I furrow my eyebrows and am tempted to shake my head hard to the side, as if I’ve just emerged from the pool to see if there’s water in my ears. But yet amidst my confusion, four words bang loud and clear, like a drumbeat—phenomenally attracted to you.

  Because I feel the same. I am phenomenally attracted to him.

  “Here we go again,” he continues clapping his hands together once, briskly, in some sort of getting-down-to-business sign. “Thank you so much for listening to my proposal for the article. I’m so eager to hear if you want to do the story, and I’ll call you in a week, as promised, to touch base.”

  Then he reaches for my hand, shakes it once, and flashes me his best friendly grin, before he hails me a taxi and sends me home—hot, bothered, and thoroughly nonplussed.

  I’ve officially entered the twilight zone.

  An hour later, I’m back at my apartment standing in the doorway of Ethan’s room, flossing my teeth.

  His room is like a snapshot, a moment frozen in time. The chair at his maroon desk is angled out, a piece of red construction paper is filled with crayon images of stick figures on a hill, lining up next to a spaceship. The tip of his white karate belt hangs over the edge of his bottom bureau drawer. His room tells the story of a little boy, happily lost in his imagination before his mom called to him, telling him to hurry up or he’d be late for school. He pushed away from the desk, left the half-finished drawing, hastily closed his bottom drawer, and raced to the front door.

  I miss Ethan on the nights he’s with his dad. I should be used to these stretches without him. But I’m not. I’m still keenly aware of his absence when he’s not here. Because on the nights he is here, even after I’ve put him to bed and I’m reading or listening to music or talking to my mom on the phone, the apartment carries a certain warmth, a certain coziness because of the presence of a sleeping child. I love our new place. We moved into it last summer. It’s our house, really, Ethan’s and mine.

  Yet I don’t even have to be here in our apartment tonight because there’s no sleeping child. I could leave. I could go for a walk. I could go to a bar. I have all the free time I didn’t have in the first five years of his life. But
I still feel just a little bit empty and a little bit naughty being a mom without a kid for the next few days.

  I return to the bathroom and toss the dental floss in the trash can, then head to the living room. I grab my notebook from the table, open up to a clean sheet of paper, and flop down on the couch. I hum a few random notes, stringing together a little melody, then write down some thoughts.

  Dreamy kiss.

  Unexpected kiss.

  Kisses that go on and on.

  I take a deep breath, and a small smile tugs at my lips.

  It’s only a few lines, but I’m writing again! Finally! After months of silence, new chords and notes and lyrics are knocking around in my head. And all it took was a kiss to ignite such musical possibilities. I can picture the next several days, as songs and bridges and choruses unfurl in front of me with reckless abandon, as music pours forth like a rainstorm in the desert. Jeremy will be thrilled. My fans will be happy. But more than that, I’m happy again because making music feeds my soul. It’s my heartbeat, it’s my blood pumping, it’s the air I need to breathe.

  Then my phone buzzes. I grab it from my back pocket and click open a text message.

  Matthew: Dinner was quite lovely. Thank you so very much for your time. All my best, Matthew.

  And that’s it. No mention of the kiss that rocked through my bones. No mention of the phenomenal attraction. No mention of wanting to take me out again.

  Matthew truly did erase those ten minutes on the street, and is now the super-professional reporter.

  I close the message and return to my notebook. I tap my pencil against the paper. I scrawl out a few random words, like Shut it down, all business, then so annoyed right now.

  But the rhythm is gone; the inspiration has slinked away. I write down the words Mixed Messages at the top of the page. If this ever becomes a song it’ll be the perfect title, because that’s what Matthew is sending me.

  And I’m confused as hell.

  I try to write more words, more music, more lyrics. But all I hear is a warped-sounding song that makes no sense. Like my dinner with Matthew.