“Are you seriously telling me that you’re dumping me over this?” she spoke so slowly, so disbelievingly, he turned to look at her. “Is that what you’re saying? We’re having the time of our fuckin’ lives together, and you’d throw me over for some circumstantial bull shit? Without even talking about it? Just like that?”
He stared at her without speaking, then slowly turned away.
Fiona leaned back on her right leg and looked at him with her head cocked to the side. “That’s it?” He made no answer. “That’s it for me?” Her voice rose an octave. “You drop me just like that, after all this lovey-dovey mess, family bonding and every fuckin’ thing else. That’s it for me?” she asked again, voice cracking. “Over an asshole I didn’t even fuck.” She walked around and stood in his face. “All of a sudden you don’t care that I love you?”
He didn’t respond.
“You can’t even hear me, can you?” she whispered.
There was an electric moment after she spoke, a thick, meaty pause that grew sharp with a palpable sadness. Then Fiona snatched up her purse. She shoved her feet in the shoes that had fallen off while she was crying in his arms.
“Fiona,” he said, softly.
She shook her head, jamming her sunglasses on her nose to hide the sheen taking over her eyes. He snatched at her arm, but Fiona could move fast when she wanted to. She was through the house, out the door, down the block and in a cab before he could even pick up his scattered wits.
Daney sat down and shook his head like a man waking up from a deep, deep sleep. What had just happened? She’d told him it wasn’t true. She’d been in his arms, smelling of Chloe Narcisse perfume and filling his hands with her soft flesh. He could still see her tearful face, could practically feel her full lips quivering against his while she cried.
She’d seemed so sincere. Like her heart was breaking. What if, and he hated himself for even thinking it, but what if she was telling the truth? He thought back to this morning.
He’d been whistling softly when he came in and put away the juice and rolls he’d picked up at a Mexican bakery. He’d been looking forward to crawling in bed beside her sweet warmth, and then crawling in between her soft thighs. Imagine his surprise to see his side of the bed already filled with that fucking actor she was currently doing make out scenes with on HBO. The one everyone called his look-alike and insisted she was two-timing him with.
Fiona had always laughed off the rumors and innuendos, the suspicious pictures and well-meaning ‘friends’ who dropped soft, bitter little sound bites in their ears and those of the eager press. She’d also agreed to a pared down version of the infamous new love scene, arguing successfully that her image did not allow for that kind of short lived filth. He’d been proud of the way she’d handled it, refusing to knuckle under to a not inconsiderable amount of pressure, and more than a little pleased when she confided to him that she just didn’t want to get that close to another man.
“You know that shit’s fake as a three dollar bill. Besides, momma don’ want nobody else,” she’d say of the rumors as she snuggled up to him. She’d lay down one of her hot, wet kisses, the ones she’d perfected to prime him in a hurry, and the moment would pass because he believed her.
“How many times have the papers reported some shit about you that wasn’t true?” she’d ask him whenever they got wind of salacious gossip.
A lot. But every once in a while, his conscience reminded him now, what the papers reported was true. Goddamn it! He’d trusted her. It had taken her less than a moment to turn his life inside out. Seeing her snuggled up to that fucking bastard a few hours ago, he had fought the urge to puke. He’d fought the urge to reach out and strangle the prick for daring to even touch what was his.
But then his anger had shifted. It grew cold as his hot eyes switched their focus. His clear green gaze ran almost mechanically over Fiona in sleeveless peach silk, the sheet bunched around her narrow waist where that asshole’s arm rested.
Had it really meant nothing? Could it? Had they just been fucked up and the bastard had crawled into bed with her? He’d caught the distinct scent of weed clinging to her skin, which was unusual since she always cleaned up after smoking and seemed to indicate she’d passed out.
Lord knew he wanted to believe her. Since he walked out of her place his guts had yet to stop churning. He was itching to go to her. It was ironic. He left her first, but she was the last to walk out. Now he rubbed his arms in an unconscious gesture of protection. They felt empty.
Chapter nine
They say the first 24 hours is the hardest after a breakup, Fiona reminded herself for the fiftieth time as a sob crept from her throat. She’d been victim to a number of mini-breakdowns in the past few hours. In defense she turned up her music and cleaned. So far the bathroom and bedroom were sparkling. She’d changed and washed the bed linens and vanished every other dirty thing into piles for the laundry – the washer was churning it out even now.
Her bedroom phone rang. She lunged for it and forced herself to take a calming breath.
“Peace.”
“Baby girl.”
Her shoulders slumped in disappointment. Natty. “Was’ up, pimpin’?”
“The single’s comin’ out in the clubs this weekend. We gon’ be on the radio soon.” There was a measured pause. “You need to start thinking about another album. You told me, and I quote, ‘I’m just takin’ a break with this acting thing.’ That was a few years ago.”
“You want me to jump back into that game? Ain’t nobody tryna hear what I’m sayin’,” she laughed softly, falling easily back into their old rhythm.
“You know that ain’t true, girl! The scene ain’t been the same since you been away. This new crop of music hoes are just that. Hoes. Untalented ones at that. It’s all weave and designer gear and poppin’ champagne. You at least can fuckin’ sing!” he claimed so righteously she laughed. “I miss you, you know,” he said.
“I miss making music,” she admitted. “I didn’t even know til’ I went in the studio witchu’ recently. Whatchu’ got?” She could use a distraction right about now.
“I’ma send you something by Lloyd. He had to go out to the apple on some business, and I asked him to chauffeur this over to you. I woulda done it myself but I’m living in the studio right now. I swear I ain’t been out this bitch but to get food and weed in almost a month, and half the time I have all that shit delivered! My family thinks I’ve gone crazy. But I’m busy, you know? Everybody keep callin’, and the beats are just pouring out of me.”
“Well, you gotta hit it while it’s hot. You sure you gon’ have time to mess with me?” she teased.
She and Natty had come up in the game together. He’d worked on every one of her five albums, and aside from Cleo, Netty and Mechante, there was no one Fiona trusted more. He was one of the people she’d thanked when she won her last Grammy. “You can send Lloyd over here when he get home ‘cause I’m in Chicago.”
“Yeah? Damn. Lemme call and tell him. I wanna get you in here this week,” he told her, changing tracks.
Fiona laughed. “I’ma have to get my voice together.” Shit. She’d been smoking since she raced out of Daney’s earlier.
“Yeah. Though it does sound interesting. Why you talkin’ anyway?”
Fiona hung up and looked around. She took the plastic gloves off her hands and threw them toward the bathroom. The tip of one of Daney’s shoes was sticking out from under the bed. She pulled it free. Her eyes filled with tears, and she plopped down on the bed to indulge in yet another of the teary little episodes that followed the demise of her and Daney’s short relationship.
I really liked him.
Fiona sighed as she gathered his things.
Daney was cool, smart, funny, and he enjoyed taking her out and showing her off. He didn’t just wanna come sit on her couch, fuck and fart, lay up and ask her a bunch of dumb ass questions.
Daney had his shit together. He was always working, going here or th
ere, doing this and that, and he always looked good. Better than good. Yet he wasn’t hung up on his looks. He took care of himself mechanically, the way she did, for work and because it made him feel good health-wise.
He held doors, always kept his word, and the sex, after months of steady fucking was still amazing. Daney was a rare combination of virile, but sensitive, strong, but unafraid to let her take the lead occasionally. He was also one of the most open minded people she’d ever met. He hadn’t been perfect. Sometimes he was too bossy. He had that alpha male way of saying some shit and expecting her to jump to it like a soldier, but he had a truly generous spirit. Most of the time she hadn’t minded jumping through a few hoops for him. The rewards were fabulous, sexually and otherwise, and he’d do the same for her. And now he was gone.
Fiona swiped at her still falling tears and wondered at the irony. She was constantly dismissing men for one reason or another. They usually got dropped fairly early in the game. Now here she was, fired, for a crime she didn’t even commit.
She sniveled for a good while before she pulled herself together and pulled out her songwriting notebook. She hadn’t looked at it in more than a year, but now she sat down at her desk, turned on her writing light and for a moment, lay her head on the cool, white wood. When she raised it she had the lyrics for her first single.
“Lloyd dropped this off for you,” Netty told Fiona when she emerged from her room the next day. She held out a CD. “Did you know he was coming?”
“Play it for me.”
It was a haunting, bluesy guitar solo. The unknown musician had the strings screaming in pain or anger, maybe both. Then it mellowed. The guitar turned playful, riffing up and down, flipping the notes like musical pancakes before meandering back into the painful keening from the beginning. It wasn’t long. No more than five minutes max, but Fiona could clearly discern the progression the guitarist had taken. It was like a story, and it was one of the clearest, most emotionally inspiring instrumental journeys she’d taken in months.
“Who is that?” Sugar asked, coming in with the makings of a facial.
“Like it?” Fiona asked.
“Shit’s tight.” She gestured for Fiona to sit down. “You don’t hear guitar like that these days.”
******
“Yeah.”
“It’s Lloyd.”
“You delivered it?” Natty asked.
“‘Bout 20 minutes ago.”
Natty laughed. “She should be calling in a few.”
Fiona called him about an hour later. She had to wait for Sugar to finish her facial.
“Peace.”
“Who the fuck is that playing?”
“This new cat I just auditioned for a spot in my band. My older brothers introduced me. You like?”
“Shit. Me, Sugar, and Netty.”
“No Cleo?”
“She ain’t here. You gotta get him to play for me.”
Natty grinned into the phone and gestured for his engineer to make some adjustments on the board.
“You didn’t even wanna sing my hooks. I had to beg you. You even fucked up your voice tryna get out of it. Said actin’ was your thing. Now you want in?”
“Stop lyin’,” Fiona laughed. “I never said acting was my thing. And yes, you clown. I want in. I’ma email you something I was working on yesterday.”
******
When the single dropped two weeks later, Fiona was in New York filming her last episode of Transplants. It was the perfect way to go out. In the script she and Tino were having problems. He was jealous and she was prickly and mean, arrogantly firm in her independent stance. Their stars were colliding, and at the end, when they looked at each other sadly across the camera, they made peace for their real-life beef. It was one of the most poignant moments of the season, a critic would later write.
“Peace,” Netty said, then passed Fiona the phone.
“Is this you on the radio?” Andrea screeched.
Fiona laughed. “How’d you guess?”
“I fucking know you, you little shit! The buzz is already off the fucking hook, and I haven’t done anything yet! Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”
“I wanted it to be a surprise. I didn’t want anyone to know, and you, my dear publicist, have a big ass mouth.”
“That’s what you pay me for, asshole. Are you gonna do another album?”
“Yep, but –”
“I gotta go,” Andrea interrupted, and hung up.
Fiona just shook her head and handed Netty the phone. “She didn’t even say if she liked it.”
She began to write. If she wasn’t with Flora or working on pre-production movie stuff for the next installment of her franchise, Fiona was in the studio.
Natty could feel the urgency even before she told him shooting began soon, and he happily bullied her for hours at a time. She became well known to his new band, the soulful guitarist from the tape and a funky ass drummer who always had a funny story to tell in a deep, whiskey and smoke voice. She insisted that Natty contribute his acoustic and bass guitar.
The music they developed was gorgeous and fresh, the lyrics meaningful, yet utterly relatable. Natty wanted to capitalize on the jazzy rasp her voice had acquired for the crafty, almost folksy ballads, but Fiona was feeling restless and antsy now that her bed was empty and she’d mostly given up smoking.
“All you wanna hear is dance and club tracks,” he groused.
Fiona rolled her eyes and tapped her breast meaningfully. It was their personal signal to let one know the other was in charge.
They managed, in between numerous fights, to create music that was a weird hybrid of everything. Soulful, up-tempo and danceable, the new sound was also progressive and bluesy, or hard and unpredictable, prone to change suddenly in pace or tone.
She told Natty she wanted each song on this album to be its own separate entity. The collection would be just that, a collection. There would no one theme, she stressed. Unless the theme is, it is what it is, she laughed.
Natty just shrugged and said that wouldn’t make a bad album title.
They began to spend so much time together, Flora got to know Natty. Fiona had already noticed that her daughter liked men better than women. In Daney’s arms she’d been utterly content. Seeming to enjoy nothing better than having him carry her around and do everything for her. Around him she was all charm and smiles and gleeful touches. She’d coo her baby version of his name at the most artless moments. With Natty it was more of the same, but she clung to her mother too. Perhaps aware even now that men come and go.
Cleo walked in on one of their many arguments one night when she came to pick her up from the studio. On the ride home she said, “That’s a lot of passion. You’re heads together going at it like school girls.”
Fiona burst out laughing. “Girl, please. It’s Natty. Don’t even start.”
But the truth was Fiona had felt a spark or two of interest in her longtime friend. Natty was gorgeous. Just because they’d been friends for years didn’t mean that she was blind. Close proximity to his tall slender body had stirred feelings she’d thought long gone years ago. And he liked to tease and take the liberties a fine man will when he sees a woman he’d fuck but hasn’t yet.
He’d give her those quick hard hugs that let her feel everything for a heart-thumping second. Occasionally he’d kiss her lips. Sometimes he’d spontaneously lick the side of her face, but that was more goofy than sexual. He was just as prone to break into a little jig while he and the engineer made magic happen for her album. But none of his silly antics stymied her libido’s growing interest.
He loved to drag her around by the hand. This would have reminded her of Daney except that Natty talked to her as he pulled her along. He didn’t just want her presence. He wanted to interact with her. He leaned on her as though she’d always been his counsel. And over the years, in sporadic episodes, she had been.
In restaurants she and Natty often shared one lunch menu, and he squeezed her leg unde
r the table when he wanted her attention, which was constantly.
“You are such a youngest child,” she teased him, and he just rolled his eyes. He couldn’t refute the truth, and he knew Fiona didn’t mind, despite her teasing.
She fell into their camaraderie as though starved, and in a way she was. They hadn’t seen each other in a while, and it was obvious they’d missed each other. Plus there was their affinity over the music. Songs were pouring out of her, and the studio felt like home.
Natty understood that she was compelled to sing right now and was eager to capture that urgency and work it. He was even gracious when she brought beats in from other producers, volunteering to sit in on sessions, even when he had to travel, and then offering suggestions that helped bring a song to the next level.
Fiona didn’t want to enjoy the way he’d squeeze her when she did something to please him, but it felt so good! And couldn’t you suffer withdrawal after being in a sexually satisfying relationship and then being forced to endure loveless-ness too quickly? Besides his hugs were gentle and friendly, and because she’d been pleasing him a lot lately, they were many.
Natty was so off the hook into her album, at first she didn’t even notice his attentiveness. She just shook her head when he came to a store where she and Netty were shopping and pulled her out of a dressing room to listen to some music he’d burned for her. He was that serious, and Fiona loved it. She might wear a lot of hats career-wise, but before she was anything Fiona Love was a singer.
She loved being in the studio and clowning with the other musicians. She hadn’t been lying to Natty when she told him she’d missed it. It was a safe, creative place where she could let it all hang out, and somehow at the end of the day she always had something beautiful to show for herself. The ennui that had plagued her had vanished as the number of completed songs piled up, and the musicians and technicians became an extended family of sorts.
Fiona Love Page 13
