The Break-Up Album

by Lauren Blakely

  He breaks the kiss for a moment, giving me a sly raise of the eyebrow. “Your legs wrapped around me? I could get used to that.”

  But yet, I know I’m not ready to go any further. My body might be screaming to be taken right now, but I can’t fully trust my hormones or my brain or my heart. I put on the brakes. For now. “Me, too,” I say. Then I place my hands on his chest. “And I am so immensely turned on right now, but if we keep doing this I’m not going to be able to stop.”

  “Okay. I’m completely fine with whatever you want to do,” he says, breathing out hard, his eyes still full of lust. But he inches away slightly, and I find myself even more attracted to him, since he’s such a gentleman.

  I glance around once at the surroundings. Here we are in his friend’s bar, grinding against each other with our clothes on, making out so hard that I have whisker burn from his stubble, and he has thoroughly tousled hair. And it hits me. He’s here with me even though there’s no story. He might have wanted a story, but he also wanted me. The mixed messages aren’t so mixed anymore, and besides, the first decent song I wrote came from the first kiss with him the other night.

  Maybe this is the right step. For my career, for his career, for my record label, for my fans. For me.

  “Matthew, I’m going to do the story.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Matthew

  “You are?”

  I ask carefully, wanting to be certain. This is insanely fucking exciting. Not as exciting as the way she was grinding against me, but hey, I’ll take it as a distant second.

  She nods, her brown eyes sparkling.

  “Seriously?” I do my best to keep my enthusiasm in check, since I don’t want to let on how much this thrills me. Work invigorates me. My job enlivens me. This kind of story is what gets my professional blood pumping.

  Jane shrugs happily. “What can I say? You were convincing.”

  I pump a fist. “Apparently I’m pretty damn brilliant at this stalking thing.”

  “And the kissing thing,” she adds.

  I straighten my shoulders. “So I won you over with my kisses?” Not that I’d mind one bit if she said yes. Wait. Scratch that. I’m a professional. I can’t win over sources with kisses. But hell, do I ever want her to like mine.

  She shakes her head. “You won me over because you kissed me anyway. But I have one condition. I don’t want to tell the story about my gay ex-husband. I want to put everything with Aidan behind me.”

  I nod several times. “I completely understand and I’m going to be totally straight with you. No pun intended. I’d be lying to you if I said the story will not mention how your marriage ended. It probably will. In one line. I can’t ignore it, but your ex-husband is not why I want to do this story. He will not be the focus of this story. You will. Your story, who you are, your music. What makes you tick. What makes all these fans connect with you.”

  “Good. That’s what I want.”

  “Jane,” I say softly, pinning her with my eyes, needing her to know what I have to say. I want her to feel this deep in her bones. “You have to know, you are more than your marriage. You are more than what happened to you. You are so much more than the way your marriage ended. You are an engaging, captivating, and insanely fucking talented rock star.”

  She beams, ear to ear with a grin.

  “And listen,” I add, excitement driving me on, “this will be about the future. It’s about what’s next. It’s about you in the studio making an album. It’s a behind-the-scenes story about how art gets made.”

  Then awareness smacks into me like an anvil. Decimates the last vestiges of those kisses. I hate to do this. Or rather, my body hates to do this, but my professionalism must be stronger than my desire to take her home, and spend the night making her feel amazing. I cup her cheek. “But the thing is, we should probably cool it while we’re working on the story.”

  Her jaw drops. “What?”

  “I know. I know.” I sigh heavily, letting go of her face, wishing this didn’t twist my gut. “Trust me. I don’t want to cool it with you. And it’s not as if this is some company policy at Beat. But it’s important to me. I want to be above the board when I do my job.”

  I hope to hell she understands. I pray she doesn’t think I’m a total wanker.

  “I get it. I do,” she says, and that’s enough for me for now. And enough for me to be honest and forthright for the future. This woman has had enough jerking around of her heart. The least I can do is be 100 percent truthful.

  “But then, when we’re done with the story, I would really like to take you out and date you and do all sorts of other things to you that hopefully result in you calling out my name at the top of your lungs with your hair in that wild crazy mess, like it is right now.”

  She swats me playfully. “Why don’t we go have our beers, and then I need to sing my dirty, lusty heart out over at Roseland?”

  I give her gorgeous face a once-over. “I cannot wait to watch you perform, knowing I gave you that rosy glow in your cheeks, and that I fully intend to bring that look back in a few weeks when we’re done with the story.”

  “I’ll take that time travel machine now, thank you very much.”

  I laugh. “Yes, I’d like it, too, but those damn flux capacitors.” I offer a hand to shake. “To articles? And then to proper dating?”

  She takes my hand, and we shake as I wish and hope the article will be finished quickly.

  As in, as soon as fucking possible.

  Chapter Twelve

  Jane

  A few days later, I race down the subway steps, holding the banister as I fly around the corner and swipe my MetroCard through the turnstiles. I’m supposed to meet Natalie for a Sunday morning run in Central Park. I jam onto the train. It lumbers for a minute, threatening to crawl the whole way uptown. But then it picks up speed and I make it to the stop ten minutes later.

  I pound the concrete and reach our meeting spot near the pond only five minutes late. Fortunately, Natalie knows how to keep herself busy. She’s doing push-ups on the crunchy, cold ground, decked out in running pants and a fleece jacket.

  “Hey, Ironwoman,” I call out.

  She pops up and strikes a muscle pose for me. “What do you think of these guns?” she asks, patting her biceps in a deliberately self-aggrandizing manner.

  “I’ll need a magnifying glass to see them.”

  “I already did buns, abs, and arms, thank you very much,” she says, then starts running, gesturing me alongside her.

  “And wrote a new addendum to the Kyoto treaty limiting carbon emissions, too?”

  “You know it.”

  Natalie is the typical first child, an overachiever. She was the athlete of the family, having excelled at field hockey and soccer in middle school and high school. Owen and I watched her score many goals from the bleachers. She earned impeccable grades and went on to Brown, graduating magna cum laude with a degree in environmental science. Now, she has two kids—Ted is her biological child and Grace she adopted from China.

  Natalie manages to hold a full-time job she loves, running the farmer’s markets in the city; pick her kids up from school every day; spend time with her husband every evening; and work out each morning. If she decided to write the Great American Novel she would find a way to pound it out in three months, not sacrificing any of her other activities. Owen, on the other hand, has been working on his book for three years and he’s single and child-free. Proof that we are all different people, and that’s the way it goes.

  “So today is your CRB Radio interview,” Natalie begins, shifting into the perfect runner’s stride that she learned from her coach, Jill, who trained her for the New York City Marathon last fall. Why do I run with my sister? Oh right. I’m a glutton for punishment.

  “And the most important thing is what you wear. Have you thought about that? Because you could actually wear your pajamas or even that hideous blue T-shirt from Matt Murphy’s that has a hole in the neckline but you won�
�t throw out.”

  “Very funny.”

  She maintains her perfect conversational pace. “But seriously, maybe you should get a PR person to go with you. I keep sending you names.”

  “I haven’t found anyone yet.”

  “Well, you better make that a top priority. I’ve been talking to your booking agent and she has some contacts she’s going to share with me, too, for publicists.”

  “I will, but I’ve managed without one for a long time.” I slow down, forcing her to slow her pace, too.

  “And don’t you think recent events justify the need for one? Like that Star Magazine piece?”

  I drop my speed further so I can actually talk. She narrows her eyes, but knows if she wants to administer her big-sister edicts she’ll have to trot, too. “I know,” I admit as we continue north on Central Park Drive. She’s going to get antsy soon to run at a clip, so I decide to mention my upcoming story with Matthew. It’ll keep her occupied with chewing me out, so she’ll have to run at my sluggish pace. Her jaw drops after I dispense the details and she touches my forehead momentarily, as if I have a fever. “Are you out of your mind?”

  “Why do you ask?” I’m secretly enjoying getting her riled up. Just imagine what would happen if I stole all her Kickin’ Kelly DVDs. She’d rip up her apartment like a Rottweiler on speed.

  She stops running. We walk in the brisk morning air. “I understand you like the whole indie-artist approach. And that’s cool. I totally respect that. I am just saying that with Star Magazine two days ago and now this behind-the-scenes story with Beat, I worry that you’re letting the media in too close. You’re in the spotlight whether you choose to be or not. And this whole ‘I don’t need a publicist, I can do it myself, I’ll talk to any reporter, any time, any where’ thing might have worked fine when you were a rising star, but now you’re a star.”

  “I’m not a star,” I insist. Success is temporal. Fame is mercurial. Tomorrow, I could be nobody again.

  Natalie brushes me off. “You’re a star, and I worry about you. Reporters are interested in you. That, my darling, is self-evident. I bet even CRB Radio won’t be able to resist discussing Aidan’s sexuality. Oh, they’ll frame it in some socially responsible light, but still, it will come up. And this Beat reporter now coming to the recording sessions. When you let a reporter in too far, you lose control.”

  “Would you feel better if you met him first, Mommy?”

  “Jane, now for the moment of truth. Did you say yes to the Beat guy because he’s hot?”

  “How did you know he was hot?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Might it have been when he said hello to you at the Grammys and told you that you looked fabulous? You two were flirting like it’s going out of style.”

  “You were checking him out?”

  “It’s my job as your older sister to keep track of details like this so I can put two and two together when you make these decisions. And he’s British, too. I’m sure that didn’t play a role in your decision, either.”

  I glance away. I’m definitely not telling her that his fantastic kisses that send me into another stratosphere might also have played a little role in my decision. Not to mention his emails and the delicious way he felt when I wrapped my legs around his sexy hips. Nah, I’ll keep those details to myself.

  “You think I’m boy crazy, don’t you?” I ask, because I love egging her on.

  “Jane, I like boys, too. Just be careful, okay?”

  “I will, Nat.” Then I soften. “I know you’re just watching out for me and you can’t help being a know-it-all. But I still love you for it.”

  “And I will now kick your artist ass,” she declares with a smile and proceeds to take off. I do my best to keep up, pleased that I wheedled at least a few minutes at low speed.

  …

  The CRB interview is a blast. Max Cohain, the host for the station’s weekly Words and Music show, asks me all the questions any musician yearns to hear.

  “Tell me who you listened to growing up, who influenced you when you were a kid?” he asks, leaning back in his chair, a thoughtful look on his face as he listens.

  I am not wearing jammies or the T-shirt I can’t throw away. Instead, I have opted for skinny jeans, slouchy brown suede boots, and a long-sleeved olive-green V-necked shirt made of that soft, thin material that sort of hugs your body. Not that anyone sees the getup besides Max, but my mom always says the way you dress should show people that you respect them. This does the trick. I look casual but put together.

  “All the great divas, of course. Aretha was my girl. I could play ‘Chain of Fools’ over and over again. I wore out the grooves on that record. And I loved Billie, I loved Ella. Is there anything better than Billie Holiday on a summer night?”

  “Give me a glass of lemonade and I’m good to go,” Max tosses back, his dreadlocks swinging a bit as he nods his head in admiration. “Is your family musical, too?”

  “My mother runs the Maine Musical Theater. She probably would have loved it if I were a soprano and angling for roles like Christine in Phantom of the Opera. But I was never that into musical theater, except I did love the Supremes. I practically begged my mom to let me play Effie in Dreamgirls, the show she was casting when I was seventeen. I even showed up at her auditions. I put down a fake name. As if that would fool my mom. But want to hear something I’ve never told anyone about the fake name I used?”

  Max smiles broadly. “I would love to hear something you’ve never told anyone,” he intones into the microphone in his deep baritone.

  “The fake name I used became my stage name. My real last name is a clunky mouthful, so I glanced around, noticed the curtains were black, and I put down Jane Black. First time I ever used it, and my mom rolled her eyes when I walked onstage. But she let me sing ‘And I’m Telling You I’m Not Going.’” I sing a line from the song, giving it my best throaty, big, bluesy voice.

  “Please tell me she cast you as Effie, because you were made to sing that song.”

  “No. I didn’t get the part. It might be okay to let your little girl play Annie or Cossette, but there’s no way she could pull off casting me as Effie. But my mom told me she had a feeling she’d see Jane Black on stage somewhere else.”

  “And she was right. So with all you’ve accomplished, the big question is,” he begins and I tense. “What’s next? How are you going to top Crushed?”

  I relax. Whew. I’m glad he didn’t ask about my marriage. But then, is this question any easier?

  “Where will you find inspiration this time?” he asks.

  I scan the studio, the equipment, the mike, the boards. I’d never sing about a radio station, but the quick visual inventory gives me a way to answer. “The world around me,” I say in a too-bright voice as I improvise.

  “What inspires you about the world around you, Jane? Sunny days? Love on the horizon? Or maybe just the sweet smell of success?”

  I laugh, mostly because I haven’t a clue how to write about love. When I was in love with Aidan, my music was mediocre. My songs were average. I’ve never been known for writing the kind of over-the-top love songs that make you want to stand in the rain and twirl in circles, like Matchbox Twenty’s “Overjoyed.” I would love to write a song like that. I would love to sing about chemistry, too, like Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m on Fire.”

  But how would I even begin? That’s not my forte. I know the jagged terrain of the heart, but not the repaired one. All I’ve managed is “Mixed Messages” and it’s not exactly a love song, nor is it my best song. “Exactly. That’s exactly what I’m going to write about,” I answer happily, practicing more darting and dodging.

  “I believe I speak for all our listeners when I say I can’t wait for your next album. Let’s thank Jane Black—and her mom, for inspiring that stage name—and how about a little Effie right now?”

  Max nods to the microphone, and I need this song right now, because sometimes music is my only savior from uncertainty. I jump right into
one of my favorite big, brassy songs about heartbreak, giving the listeners about thirty seconds or so of the chorus and feeling the way I usually do when I sing—as if I’m on top of the world and no one can hurt me.

  When the show ends, Max walks me down the hall to the elevator. “I really liked having you on the show today.”

  “I had a great time.”

  He leans against the silver pad with the up/down buttons for the elevator, preventing me from summoning it.

  “So, Jane.” He reaches out to push my hair off my shoulder. The slight touch of his hand on my body does nothing for me. “Maybe I could take you out. Hit a jazz club, hear some blues, I could even show you my vinyl collection. I have all of Aretha in it.”

  I give him a sweet little laugh, but then shake my head. “Thanks, Max. I appreciate the offer, but I’m going to pass. My mind is elsewhere these days.”

  “Can’t fault a man for trying.” He leans in to kiss me on the cheek. I say goodbye and step into the elevator as Max disappears down the hall. Max Cohain is a good-looking guy. We like the same music. But I’m already into someone else. And once I like someone, I only have eyes for that person.

  …

  The bright, cherry chorus from The King and I’s “Shall We Dance” sounds from my phone.

  I answer immediately. “Hi, Mom.”

  “Hello,” she says, her voice crisp, light, and professional. “This is the director of the Maine Musical Theater, and I’m calling to see if you’d be interested in auditioning for our upcoming spring musical.”

  “Why, I’d be ever so delighted,” I say as I walk home from my CRB interview past the midday crowds on Lexington Avenue.