by Holley Trent
The truth was that she was half afraid that no one really cared that she’d left. She didn’t want to scroll through her inbox and be pelted with the evidence. The worst mistake she’d ever made was to mold her life around the desires of people who cared more about their happiness than hers. She was through with doing that.
“I’d appreciate any help you can give,” Lisa said warmly. “I’ve racked my brain over it, but I think I’m just too rigid a thinker. Maybe you can come up with something outside the box.”
“Like your business?” It was a hideaway for burnt-out professionals. Kind of like Everley was at the moment.
“Yeah. I guess just like the business.” Lisa set her pitchfork aside and pointed to the building that contained the property’s office as well as Lisa’s on-site apartment. “We can chat it out over lunch. You’ve got that look on your face like you’ve already got ideas churning.”
Everley laughed. “I guess I do. It’s amazing how much freer the ideas come when you’re doing something you want to.”
“It’d be great if you could get that guy Raleigh to help. Didn’t you once tell me that he was the most agile thinker you’d ever encountered in a publicity position?”
There was no chance at all that Lisa didn’t see Everley’s graceless stumble over her own feet or her flinch, because she stopped on the path, hands on hips, and pointed a scolding stare at her.
“What was that?” Lisa asked.
“What was what?”
“I said his name and you got a look on your face like you just realized you’d sat on a wet subway seat.”
“Just startled me, is all. I don’t expect to hear names from work outside of work, especially since I no longer work there.”
“Nuh-uh.” Lisa shook her head and got Everley moving again. “It was more than that. I know you had a hard time with the staff at Athena, but I don’t know if it’s normal for you to have a tiny panic attack at the mention of a coworker’s name. Did he antagonize you?”
“No,” Everley drawled out. She cleaned her soles on the mat outside the office and crossed the threshold before Lisa could study her face again.
“So he was no different than any of the others, is what you’re telling me? No special animus?”
“Stop using SAT words.” Everley knelt in front of Margo, the ancient basset hound Everley’s cat had been antagonizing for days, and scratched her between the ears. “And no,” came her strained reply.
Lisa knelt right beside her. “You’re full of shit. You never figured out how to lie. I’ve been trying to teach you how to look like less of a babe-in-the-woods since college. Have you learned nothing?”
“Apparently not.”
“Is it embarrassing? The thing you’re not telling me.”
“No, I wouldn’t exactly call it that. More like... confusing. Emotionally shredding.”
Lisa cocked a brow. “You had a thing?”
Everley grimaced. “Yeah, I guess so. At the end. I liked him a lot, but... I couldn’t...we couldn’t do that. After so many years of hostility from him because of what he thought I wanted, I knew I couldn’t really pursue anything. I didn’t say anything to him about leaving. I knew I had to do a complete break from the place until things settle down a bit, and it’s just...awful, because I got five or six years being generally disinterested in the men I’ve gone out with, and then I get two in a row who I adored but couldn’t keep. Why even try?”
“Two in a row in a just a few months’ span is pretty damn good odds.”
“Only you would think that.”
“Maybe so, but my dating prospects out here in the wilderness of New York all tend to be pretty scant. Did I tell you that around Thanksgiving, I relented and went out on a date with the mayor’s son?”
“No!” Everley gasped.
Like Everley, Lisa didn’t date much, though for entirely different reasons. The lady was inordinately picky and her tastes tended to be ephemeral.
Lisa shrugged. “It was awful. He kept talking about bass fishing and tax rates, and the degeneration of the institution of marriage.”
“Ew.” She got a sneaking suspicion that was a button of Lisa’s that guy wouldn’t ever press again.
Lisa shook a few kibble bits out of the treat bag for Margo. “I told him that I, personally, didn’t ever plan to marry. I was just going to collect lovers and swap them out as my moods changed. Then I asked him for his sister’s number. I was joking, of course, but unbeknownst to me, we were actually at the lady’s restaurant at the time.” She scoffed. “That cheap bastard was counting on her to comp the meals. Anyway, we were sitting near enough to the kitchen door that she heard me. She came out in an apron all covered in marinara sauce and slapped a sticky note on my purse with her number on it.”
Shaking her head in awe, Everley stared speechlessly at her friend.
“He got up and stormed out.” Lisa shrugged. “I haven’t called. That’d be weird, right?”
“There are so many parts of what you just said that were weird.”
Yet again, Lisa shrugged. “Small town life for you. I’m trying not to be a scandal here. No reason you can’t put yourself out there, though. If you like either of those guys, there’s no reason you shouldn’t pursue them when you’re done with this woman-in-the-woods phase of your life, which I’m completely certain will only last for about three weeks, by the way.”
“I don’t appreciate the insinuation that I can’t hack it away from the city.”
“I’m not insinuating that. I’m saying that you’re a smart lady and you won’t need long to figure out what your path forward is. It’s not here. I mean, I’d love to have you here as my full-time partner-in-crime, but this is my dream. I don’t want to turn you into a supporting player in it when you have to be the leading lady in your own epic story.”
“That sounds like something Bruce would say,” Everley said on a self-pitying groan. “He has the loveliest way with words.”
“Well, it’s true. Stop hiding behind your own self and figure shit out fast. You’ve already wasted enough time being miserable.”
“And that sounds like something Raleigh would say.”
“Well, shit, just keep them both, and maybe between the two, they can talk some sense into you.”
Everley laughed so loud that Margo scrambled up on her arthritic legs and bayed at the ceiling. “Sorry, doggy. Your mommy is super silly. I think all the horse shit fumes have gone to her head.”
“You laugh now,” Lisa said, “but guys do that shit all the time. They keep a side chick on the hook until they’re sure their main chick will be their future chick. Trust me. I was a dude’s side chick for three years.”
Everley did that math. Lisa hadn’t had many long-term relationships, so that could have only been one person. “Dwight?”
Lisa’s eyebrows raised ominously.
“But he was living with you.”
“Because his other girlfriend was still living with her parents. But we’re talking about you, so let’s not dive into that right now, okay?”
Everley put up her hands in defeat. She had no idea what she’d say, anyway. The fact Lisa had kept the betrayal such a closely held secret meant she didn’t want the situation dissected, even by her best friend. Everley could certainly understand the motive of not wanting to be harshly judged.
“You know I’m not really suggesting that you rock the boat like that,” Lisa said, “but don’t assume that you have to throw either away yet.”
The possibilities swarmed in Everley’s mind. Having two men wouldn’t be the worst thing ever, especially given their considerable differences. Bruce’s companionship was all about touch and words and feeling better. Raleigh’s was more about movement and primality and, in an odd way, motivation. She learned so much from both. Adored them both, and realized the two of them should never, ever be
put in the same room together. They’d get on like water on a grease fire and yet there she was, bridging the two of them. If she could keep them from arguing themselves into states of asphyxiation, she’d certainly have a damned good romp in bed.
And she’d probably laugh a lot, too. It was all pointless without the laughing.
On a needier level, there were worse things than being the focus of two men’s attention when she’d gone for so long pretending that she didn’t need anyone. It would probably take two just to get her back to a state of equilibrium. She certainly wouldn’t consider her role in the middle to be such a hardship. In fact, she’d never believed love was such a rigid thing that it would break rather than stretch to accommodate needs.
But it wouldn’t happen. Bruce was in the wind and Raleigh didn’t trust him, anyway. There was no way in hell they’d share.
“You’ve got that ideas face on again,” Lisa said.
Everley smoothed her features and went to the sink to wash her hands. “Bad ideas this time, and it’s all your fault. All right. Give me your computer. I want to see how you’ve been marketing this place.”
Chapter Twenty-One
A few weeks later, Raleigh was sitting at his desk squinting at a book tour itinerary when his desk phone rang. Technically, it was his lunch hour and no one would fault him for ignoring it, but he glanced at the display screen, anyway.
The call was coming from the reception desk.
Instinctively, he lifted the handset. If there was something he could quickly resolve rather than keeping it simmering on the back burner, he wanted to get it done. He’d made a New Year’s resolution to get the hell out of the office every day by five.
Plus, it was Friday, and he had someplace to be.
Everley’s defection had seriously jarred him, and he’d had to do some serious meditation on why that was. He hadn’t wanted to like her. Attraction was fine. Fucking her was fine. But feeling like there was another layer of compatibility he’d ignored truly bothered him. Connecting was hard for him because trusting was. She was a woman who’d keep his secrets and he’d keep hers. They both understood what it was like to have to be so cautious.
That was a rare find.
“This is Raleigh,” he told the receptionist.
“Hiya. There’s a gentleman here who wanted to see you. Didn’t know if you had anything scheduled with it being lunchtime. He insisted on seeing you, though.”
“Who is it?”
He heard the muffling of a mic and then her query of, “Tell me your name again?”
Raleigh couldn’t hear the speaker, but the receptionist came back on and said, “He says his name is Theo.”
Theo.
Theo was Bruce.
Raleigh muffled the phone mic with his thumb and spat, “Fuck.”
He didn’t want to see Bruce.
Only in the past week had he finally gotten to the point where he didn’t grind his teeth every time he passed the life-size cardboard band member mockups at the end of the hall. He’d managed to shove that piece of the past into the “educational mistakes” part of his brain.
Seeing him would drag all the bad faith back to the surface.
But he also didn’t want Bruce to make a scene.
After lifting his thumb from the receiver, through gritted teeth, he said, “I’ll come get him.”
“Thanks!”
By the time Raleigh had made it to the waiting room, he’d shaken the fists out of his hands and more or less flattened his scowl.
He managed to greet the receptionist without baring his teeth and nodded at the visitor.
“Theo” was wearing head-to-toe black with the exception of the chunky fuchsia scarf tied around his neck and up to his chin. In spite of the dimness of the florescent lights in the building, he still had his sunglasses on and his wool cap pulled down low on his brow. A few bits of dark hair escaped from the bottom.
Once again, he was that irrepressible enigma Raleigh had been so captivated by back at the Hollywood Bowl. The star who’d been hiding in plain sight and yet had managed to enthrall all the same.
Bruce picked up his bag and his battered guitar case and trod to Raleigh.
Raleigh didn’t say a word until they were halfway down the main hall and past all the open conference room doors. By then, he was sure he could speak without yelling. “Where the fuck is your coat? It’s twenty degrees out.”
“Lost it somewhere. Coffee shop, maybe. Shouldn’t have taken it off there. Was already carrying too much stuff. Did you know that one of the most expensive coffees is sourced from beans scavenged from civet shit? I haven’t tried it, but—”
Raleigh pushed him into his office and closed the door. “What do you want?”
If Bruce got started with all that diverting trivia, Raleigh was going to forget why he couldn’t stand the sight of him. He was just going to stand there and stare like an asshole while marveling over how he hadn’t recognized those famous lips the first time they met.
“Everley.” Bruce shifted his weight nervously and took off his sunglasses. There were dark circles under his eyes and a certain gauntness about him that hadn’t been there before. With all the film promotion amping up, he’d probably been burning the candle at both ends. Raleigh certainly understood the feeling. “Where’s Everley? They said she’s not here.”
“That’s why you came to see me? To ask about Everley?”
“I don’t know where she is. I was in South Africa dealing with bureaucrats for a month and then London and she said she wanted to see me when I got back, but...” Without completing the thought, Bruce dropped his gear on the chair on the other side of Raleigh’s desk and drifted to the wilting poinsettia atop the low bookcase. He gave it a few curious pokes.
“Bruce,” Raleigh snapped.
Bruce spun on his boot heel, eyes wide with something like surprise. It was as though he’d forgotten whose office he was in.
“You’ve got to come to my thing. I’m supposed to...do a thing. Everley’s not here.”
“If it’s a book thing, call Joey or send him an email.”
“No, it’s a preview thing. Supposed to be there in two hours. I made some songs for a show. I just need a second head.”
“And you’ve just spontaneously decided that in absence of Everley, I should volunteer? Maybe I need a second head, too.”
“I don’t have anyone else to ask.”
Ah.
Raleigh let out a dry laugh. He hated being the person people called on as a last resort.
“Don’t you have a manager?” he asked wearily.
“I set it up. I can do it. It’s just, this first time, I wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. I don’t want to get so focused on one part of it that I miss something that might bite me in the arse later.”
“I don’t know anything about the music business, Bruce.” A copout, perhaps, but still honest.
“It’s not the music industry. It’s a stage production. I’m working on the score. Kinda in a hurry. The last guy quit halfway through. Money issues. I don’t have those. Please.” Bruce’s words sped incrementally with each passing syllable, and there was particular panic in that last word, spoken in a rasp.
Please.
It was such a dangerous little word. It was a word that insinuated that the hearer had some power, and Raleigh didn’t want any.
Not over Bruce.
“I don’t have anyone else,” Bruce continued in a cadence of hesitance—a cadence of please. “People don’t always tell me the truth.”
That raw admission hit Raleigh in the chest like a sharpened brick, and the voice in the back of his mind screamed at the irony. “I have that same problem,” he found himself saying. He braced himself against the edge of his desk and stared at his calendar.
And sometimes people told the trut
h but omitted so much that their honesty felt like lies.
He understood why Everley had done what she had. He was just angry that it had to be that way. She’d been afraid of rocking the boat.
Perhaps she was still afraid. He’d find out.
He’d found her and that was why he needed to get out of that office on time. There was a lot of road construction between the city and upstate. He had hours of traffic ahead of him.
If nothing else, he’d make sure she was well, but he was also sticking his neck out. She’d joked that she wanted a boyfriend, and he thought he could be far more successful in that role than in the one he’d played as her coworker.
“I understand you’re put off by me,” Bruce said. “I’m sorry I put you in a bad place. It was rude of me. That didn’t mean that all the stuff that happened before wasn’t honest.”
Raleigh wasn’t in the mood to wrestle with other people’s ideas of honesty. His had always been so clear cut, and he had little mercy for people who changed rules as they went along. “I don’t want to have this conversation right now.”
Bruce put up his hands. “Okay. That’s fair. I just needed to say it. Really. If there were anyone else around who I thought had the right kind of gumption for this, I’d ask them. I’ll pay you in signed guitar picks, if you’d like. I hear those sell pretty well on eBay.”
“Save the picks for Joey. He might be able to do something with them.”
“So, you’re going?”
Raleigh shook his head, even as his mouth started to shape the word yes.
He considered going just to get Bruce out of his office.
He considered going because he was an imperfect, vain creature who didn’t hate the idea of walking beside a man that beautiful.
And if he were being truly honest with himself, he’d admit he would go because he couldn’t trust anyone else to do what needed to be done.
