by L. J. Greene
“Okay, Mr. Charming, tell me, did you have pets growing up?”
“Once,” he nodded. “Just for a brief time when I was seven.” He paused for a moment, and I couldn’t tell if he wanted to continue.
“Foster was his name. He was a mutt. Complete shite of a dog, really,” he said with affection. “Barked incessantly, dug in the yard, ran away every chance he got. But, God, I loved him. He was sweet. And if you sang anything, he’d howl along. Every damn time.”
“He sounds awesome. What happened to him?” The moment the words left my mouth, I had an odd sense of dread.
“Don’t know,” he said simply. By this time, Atticus was in full submission mode. He had rolled over on his back like a pot-bellied frog, his legs splayed out in every direction. Jamie rubbed him from throat to abdomen, absentmindedly, as if looking back in his life. “My da hated that dog. My da is a bit of a brute, you see. A drunk,” he shrugged. “And one day I came home and Foster was gone.”
“Where did he go?”
Jamie glanced up at me, as if he could hear the unease in my voice. Then he reached out and brushed a hair off of my face with a faint smile.
Shaking his head, he said, “Never asked. None of us did.”
“Why not?” I was trying not to sound judgmental of a family I did not know, but I couldn’t understand a dynamic so dysfunctional that you couldn’t even ask what happened to the family pet. That was seriously fucked up.
“My da was always threatening to put a bullet in him. Or take a fry pan to his head.” Jamie paused at the thought. “Anyway, it seemed better not to know. At seven, I just wanted the hope that he ran away and that one day he’d come home.”
“But he didn’t.” No, of course he didn’t.
“No,” he said simply.
I could see the pieces of Jamie beginning to come together. I knew he’d had a very different upbringing than mine. But it’s no less shocking to imagine what it must have been like to be seven years old and faced with the reality that your dad was as likely to have killed your dog as he was to have just opened the door and let him run away. What kind of anger would that breed in a child? What kind of survival skills did a seven-year-old need to develop in order to live in that kind of environment? To some extent, I had always known how lucky I was to have such an incredible family, but I’m not sure I fully appreciated it I until that very moment.
Jamie had said I was nurturing. Maybe that was among the highest compliments he could have given me.
I leaned in to kiss him over the belly of the dog–not out of pity, but because this man deserved so much more than he’d been dealt in his life. And I’d been given so much more than anyone should keep to herself.
The kiss started briefly, but, as was the nature of our chemistry, quickly escalated into something so much more. I got lost in it, in the way his hand wound into my hair, wordlessly declaring his deep affection.
A scrambling of limbs between us broke the kiss. And scratched the hell out of Jamie’s chest. Atticus wriggled like an earthworm until finally righting himself.
“Jealous little bugger, aren’t you?”
Atticus sneezed in response, and then shook himself from nose to tail.
“Does he need to piss?”
“Probably.”
“I’ll take him out and make us some pasta, yeah?”
It would have been hard to argue. He was up and out of bed remarkably quickly for a man of his size. And I was completely awestruck by his utter nakedness. He was a masterpiece: tanned skin pulled tightly over the rolling expanse of muscle, the deep indentation of his quadriceps as he bent to retrieve his jeans, his perfectly round ass, and the definition across his back.
Jamie turned, bare chested, and caught the look. The result in his face, one eyebrow half-cocked, was the epitome of male smugness.
“Hungry?”
“As if I haven’t eaten in weeks.”
§
We ate pasta half dressed over a bottle of wine, and what felt like the whole night stretched out lazily in front of us. We tried a couple of times to clean up the kitchen, but found ourselves getting downright dirty instead–against the refrigerator, over the couch, and finally down the hall once more to my bed. Sleep came very easily after that.
I woke to the sound of clothing rustling in the darkness. There was a glow of nighttime coming in through my window, and I could just make out the silhouette of Jamie, dressing quietly by the door.
“Are you leaving?” I had no idea what time it was–we’d knocked the clock off the nightstand hours ago.
“I am.” He came over to sit next to me on the bed, stroking hair from my face. “Have I upset you?”
I didn’t really know how to answer that. I was still a little disoriented, and I didn’t like that it was too dark to see his face.
“Were you going to tell me you were leaving?”
“Of course I was. You just looked so peaceful. I wanted to let you sleep as long as possible.”
I pushed up in bed, and I knew for a fact that peaceful was not how I looked. If I had to guess, I’d say Medusa, crossed with a raccoon and exhibiting exceptionally bad breath.
“Why do you have to go?”
“I’ve got to meet my mates at Nash’s place at around 11:00. We have an A&R guy coming to the show next weekend, and Greg wants to pull in a new song to our set list. It sounds like shit, though. We’re going to rehearse for a couple of hours, is all.”
‘A&R’ was an industry term that stood for artists and repertoire. They were the talent scouts for the record labels. In fact, you could consider them the gatekeepers to the music industry because it was their job to find new artists for the label to sign. But there were precious few of them compared to the number of undiscovered bands vying for their attention. And most A&R guys would not accept unsolicited demo tapes. They were simply too inundated with material from their own trusted sources. So, getting in front of one of them was nearly impossible, and there was no other way to break in.
The fact that an A&R guy was coming to the show was a very big deal. Cadence needed to hit it out of the park. They could not afford a misstep. I knew this, and decided to be a big girl about it.
“Oh. Okay.”
But I didn’t really feel okay. I flipped through the channels on my emotional dial, but none of them felt quite right. I guess I had assumed that after what we just did, he would stay the night.
But his leaving reminded me that we weren’t officially a couple, and in fact, I didn’t really know what we were. I pulled the sheets up tighter around me.
If he could read my thoughts, he was careful not to acknowledge them directly. But he ran a hand down my cheek and into my hair. Then, he leaned forward and kissed me softly.
“Next time, I’d like to stay all night.”
I nodded and he rose to head for the door, his broad back cutting a swath through the darkness. Then he turned abruptly as if he’d just thought of something.
“Ever heard of MySpace?”
I shrugged.
“Some band called Arctic Monkeys?”
“No. Why? Who is that?”
“No one,” he said, waving it off. “I don’t know why I listen to the opinion of a teenager.”
§
True to his word, Jamie came to my place two days later to stay the night. Of course, it was one o’clock in the morning when he arrived. He was amped up from rehearsal, and his enthusiastic lovemaking actually dented my wall. And afterwards, we curled up together, his arm draped around my body with his hand cupping one breast. One of my legs insinuated itself between his and our feet entangled together.
“Love you,” he said, yawning widely.
It was nearly pitch black in my room, and quiet except for Atticus’s snuffle and a rustle of the covers as Jamie shifted sleepily in my bed.
I wondered at first if I had heard him correctly. Or maybe he was sleep talking. There was no pomp or circumstance at all.
It wasn’t even an ‘
I love you.’ It was so off-handed. It was as if he’d just said it for the millionth time plus one. By the time I’d worked through the shock of those words, so casually spoken, I realized I hadn’t responded. But it was of no consequence. His breathing was steady and rhythmic. He was already asleep.
§
When I awoke the next morning, he was gone.
I didn’t see him again for close to two weeks. He left me one voicemail in the middle of the night on a Wednesday, asking me to meet him on Sunday night for a gig at the Great American Music Hall on O’Farrell Street in the Tenderloin. All business–that was it. Otherwise, it was radio silence.
I told myself, sometimes even successfully, not to make too much of the fact that following a night of passionate sex and a possible ‘I love you,’ Jamie dropped off the face of the earth. I spent a good deal more time than I care to admit, analyzing what this meant and what it foreshadowed for us. I didn’t need to see him every day, but if this was actually a thing between us, it might be good to know that he was alive, and not crushed under a pile of pavers. And maybe he was thinking of me. Just a little.
Chapter 9
Mel
“WHY AM I JUST HEARING about this now?”
It was a totally fair question–and one I had over-prepared for. In fact, my best friend, Hope McClellan, and I had had this entire conversation during my shower this morning–well, in theory we had. She wasn’t actually present for it, but I thought I had represented her position quite well. In any case, we were having it again now over lunch.
“Well, it’s sort of a funny story, if you want to know the truth,” I started. “He’s…um…he’s a musician.”
For a moment, she just sat like a stone, blinking. In my shower this morning, Hope had found the story very funny. Now, in real life, she didn’t seemed quite as entertained.
“I’m sorry,” she said, leaning over our table in an exaggerated manner. “Did you say magician? Because I’m pretty sure that I was there when you vowed to stop dating musicians.”
And this was the part of the conversation that was tricky. Hope, of course, was right. She and I had met as first-year law students at Hastings, and she had had the pleasure of seeing me through my last relationship with a musician that had ended in a classic episode of drunken/high coitus interuptus with some random girl in a backstage dressing room–so ridiculously clichéd that I hate to even mention it.
Hope had seen me heartbroken, and she wanted something better for me than that. For that reason, I was pretty sure I knew how she would view my starting a relationship with another musician, and that’s exactly why I had waited weeks to tell her.
I sighed heavily. “You were, and I did. Are you disappointed in me?”
She leaned back in her chair and studied me for an uncomfortable amount of time. Setting her fork aside, she folded her hands and looked at me straight on.
“I’m disappointed that you didn’t tell me sooner.”
“I’m sorry. I should have–” shrugging– “It just sort of happened fast.”
“Right,” she said, deadpanning. “Because you’re such an impulsive person. How could you possibly have had time to tell me?”
She had me there. Honestly, there was nothing I could say to defend my withholding. I had been a chicken, straight up.
“I’m sorry,” I said again sheepishly.
“You are definitely consistent in your choice of men, I’ll give you that,” she said, trying for censure, but ultimately failing. She loved me too much.
I set my fork down and closed my eyes, letting my head loll back in exhaustion.
“Believe me, I was not looking for this. But he…he’s different.”
I could hear her sigh and met her eyes again. That was clearly not the right argument. I tried a different tack.
“Jamie is serious about his career, Hope. He’s not into drugs or crazy behavior. And there is something really enriching about spending time with someone who puts his passion at the center of his life. When I’m with him, I feel like I’m actually living mine, not just planning for some eventual outcome. Does that make sense?”
Hope took a deep breath and nodded, studying me with what I knew to be a mixture of happiness and concern. She was always after me to be more in the moment. She would have just far preferred that my living in the moment didn’t necessarily include another musician.
“He has dimples,” I added just for fun.
“Dimples are good.”
I watched as she generously abandoned her disappointment in me in favor of a renewed interest in scoring some real details.
So, I summarized the essential facts about Jamie and did not skimp on the particulars of his ridiculous body and sexy accent. I even copped to the great condom caper, and how he nearly cried tears of hilarity at finding a drugstore quantity in my nightstand.
“He’s one of the good ones. I promise. You’ll like him.”
“Great. When can I meet him?”
“Soon, for sure.”
I exhaled heavily as my thoughts drifted for a moment to the disappearing act that Jamie was currently performing. And that hesitation was my tell. I knew it, and Hope knew it, too. She cocked her head to the side, waiting for me to elaborate.
Sighing, I told her honestly, “The truth is, he may also be a magician.”
She lifted her brows in a way that compelled me to want to spill every detail. She had a real gift for facial expressions; I thought she might have missed her calling in criminal interrogations.
I proceeded to share with her the one downside that I could see to Jamie–how he sometimes just vanished, went off in his head or whatever it was he’d been doing. I didn’t really know what to make of it.
“We know this about musicians, Mel.”
“You’re absolutely right. And yet, I don’t think this is just about his being a musician, or being self-absorbed, or anything like that. I think there’s more to it.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know yet.”
The truth was, not knowing why he kept pulling back meant that I also didn’t know if this behavior was something that would change. Hope seemed to be making the same calculation.
“Are you happy with him?”
“I am. I truly am, except for that. And part of the reason I think it gets to me is that everything in my life just feels so up in the air right now. What if I don’t pass the bar exam? What if I have to give up my provisional employment? And, yes, I worry that this thing with Jamie is more complicated than I can handle. I guess I’m just used to having a little more predictability in my life.”
That was a gargantuan understatement, and it made me laugh at myself. Hope laughed, too, and then her face grew serious.
“You both seem to have a lot going on right now. Promise me you’ll be careful. He may very well be a great guy, but you have to make sure you’re getting what you need.”
“I’ll be careful. I promise.” I didn’t know how you could really promise such a thing. And the truth was, careful hardly described who I was with Jamie. But I also knew there was no going back on my feelings for him. So I picked up my fork and smiled with more reassurance than I felt. She returned the smile in the very best way.
“So, what’s our strategy?” That one question exemplified everything I loved dearly about Hope. If I was in it, she was in it with me. She may or may not have agreed with my decision, but, because I’d already made it, she’d have my back. Always.
“I can’t say I really have one. But this thing with Jamie aside, I know for my own sanity that I need to broaden my interests beyond just work. I need an outlet for everything that’s going on, and I don’t feel like I have one right now. I know it’s my own damn fault for letting my life get so small.”
She shrugged and took a bite of her salad. “Are you saying you think you should take up a hobby?”
“I guess I’m saying that if work is my only interest, I’m not even that interesting to myself.” Honestly, I was for
mulating thoughts on the fly, but they felt like the right ones. “I like the idea of doing something that’s creative. And something that’s just fun.”
“My God–who are you?”
I laughed, and threw a crouton at her, which she caught like a ninja and ate.
“What kind of thing were you thinking of?” she asked, serious again.
I didn’t really have anything specific in mind. I began making a mental list of the activities from my youth, but none of them seemed right. My future as a gymnast was always dubious at best. Soccer, too, was pretty much out. But there was one thing that had long gnawed at me.
“I kind of want to take a cooking class.”
As the words came out, they felt good.
“Cooking? Really?” I could see a hundred thoughts crossing her mind as she blinked and nodded absently, and none of them too credible to my achievements in the kitchen thus far. Still, she was the epitome of supportive.
“Cooking…yes, you should definitely do that. Definitely,” she added one more time with feeling. I thought that last one might have been more of an effort to convince herself, though.
I laughed. “It’s a completely practical skill–one I’ll use my entire life. I think it’s perfect.”
“It is perfect,” she said with alacrity, and meant it sincerely. Then, her face changed a little as she reached forward and took my hand across the table. “Promise not to leave me out of things from now on?”
“Yes,” I said, and also meant it sincerely.
“Then how about we tackle this cooking thing together?”
Chapter 10
Mel
WHEN I ARRIVED AT THE Great American Music Hall, I followed Jamie’s hastily given instructions and asked for someone named Bill. The band was doing a final sound check, and Bill showed me to the wings, where I could hear the disembodied voice of the man who had turned my world upside down in record time.
