by L. B. Dunbar
“What do you need, Guinie? I’ll give it to you. I’ll get it for you. Anything. You can have it.” He paused. “I’ll give up the kingdom, if I can get you to stay.”
“I don’t want the kingdom, Arturo. I only want you. I’ve only ever wanted you.”
We stood staring at one another at a total impasse. Maybe we were only a moment in history. Maybe we weren’t meant to be forever lovers, only a tragic romance. Arturo was destined for great things. I only wanted to be destined for something. My calling lay with three women, and that’s where I was headed. I was going home to focus on the 4Gs and me.
A day later, I stood there facing the girls, wondering how I could explain it all. How I reached for Arturo and held him tight in the concourse of an airport. How I told him I’d love him forever, but we’d passed over whatever was meant to be. I wanted to be with him, but we had too many forces against us. He was to finish his tour and I wanted him to do it worry free. He didn’t need to call me at all hours. He didn’t need to fight off the women. I wasn’t giving him a free pass. I was giving him freedom.
I even went so far as to remove my rings, releasing Morte from my grasp only momentarily.
“Don’t you dare take them off,” Arturo snarled at me. “Don’t you dare.” He kissed me again, hard. I felt that kiss in the curl of my toes, the pulse between my thighs, the vein that ran up my neck, and the beat inside my heart.
“We are not over. You are still My Future.” With that he strode off, and I boarded a plane for home.
“I’m here to practice,” I said to the girls. “I want to prove we’re serious about this thing.” I waved my hand around the bar. “Let’s rock these strings.” I smiled, encouraging them to join me on a different quest. I couldn’t take their blunt stares. I needed them to jump in with both feet.
“Okay,” Trinity smiled, slowly, nodding. “Okay.” In an unprecedented move, she reached for me. She pulled me into a brief hug and released me quickly. “Let’s do this.”
I was a dead man set out to sea to perish without her. The arrow of fire was aimed at me and death was coming in one quick assault of flame on water. I was adrift in a boat with no direction, and I needed the tide to change. I needed to get back to her.
We moved onward from city to city in Europe and parts of Asia. I lost track of where we were as we wandered. My mind was aimless, as I drank too much and partied too long, in hopes to drown her out.
I will wait no longer for you. Her words haunted me. I had been away from her longer than I’d been with her, and I could not fault her distrust. If I had walked in to see her touching another, I would have burned the place to the ground with her assailant inside. I wanted to strike out at my own son for holding onto her so tight in the airport. He had no right to touch her, even if he was a child. She was mine.
She made no mention of any other child, and I assumed my plan to impregnate her before the tour had failed. I wanted to give her a gift. Restore the one thing she lost while I was away. The way she looked at me, as she said goodbye, lead me to believe she’d lost more than our child. She lost her faith in me, in us. While we couldn’t live every second together, being apart was driving a deep wedge between us.
I’d already decided this was the last tour. The guys agreed, as well. While Tristan had been the most on board to travel, he was becoming the grumpiest of us as his wife labored on back in New York. She travelled with us for two weeks, but some drama back home returned her to her parents, despite the split with them over her marriage to Tristan.
Perkins had held out so long from women, he didn’t seem half as irritable, but he spent more time than normal in showers and privately on Skype with his wife. He didn’t wish to miss the daily changes in his growing twins either, and the snapchats were constant.
Lansing remained removed from me. While the others would joke, when I entered the room, the jesting shifted. There was a rift between he and I, and I sensed the others were more comfortable with Lansing. He isolated himself from me, as much as possible. I didn’t have as much to say to him. The damage to our friendship had been done. He didn’t agree with my behavior toward Guinevere. I couldn’t get past flashes of him with my fiancée.
The Nights were falling apart. As Mure Linn had projected, Guinie was the salt in a wound. What happened with Lansing had dented our friendship. The trickledown effect included his remaining on good terms with the others, who didn’t know how to respond to the new chasm within the band. Mure also predicted my son would be the death of me, and in many ways, he had. His pleasure in telling me that Guinevere left with Lansing was pure evil. His intention had been to break my heart, and he did. He was the one who escorted my love home and left me behind to ponder my actions.
Thinking of Mure, he’d disappeared again. He had a habit of doing that in my life. He took me as an infant and placed me with Hector Kaye, my foster father. Mure found me when I was twelve and in need of solving a problem. When I picked up that guitar and played, he decided it was time to become my mentor. He was present when I met my mother and missed out on my father. He disappeared, as the band grew larger, while we were in college, then reappeared around the time of our first album and tour. He seemed know when I needed him and faded when I didn’t. He was gone when we returned then showed up again shortly before I met Guinie. It was then that he made his prediction. Love would destroy me.
I’d heard from Leo that Guinie and the girls were making the promised CD. They had studio time and a selection of songs to play. Kaye had expedited the necessary permissions to play songs already copyrighted. What the girls would be recording was an upbeat rendition of popular songs from several modern artists, including some of our favorites. They even had permission to use one of The Nights’ songs on the album. I was proud of her for taking what she wanted. For finding a goal and working toward it. For making what started as my attempt to keep her near me into a career away from me.
I missed her. My fingers hovered over the phone twice as often as the texts I actually sent. I kept it simple.
I love you.
I miss you.
You are still My Once. My Future.
She didn’t reply until one day around the middle of December. We only had a few days left of the tour. We were dragging but drink kept the energy going. Tristan, who’d hit the hard stuff in the past, had slowed down. He flirted. We all did, but there was no sexual release like we craved. It was making us all irritable.
The text came through on one of these bad-tempered moments. Perkins wanted to be home by Christmas. A year ago, this had been a rough time for him, and he wanted to give Hollister a good holiday. Lansing seemed to have his own private thoughts about the past holiday. He only said he wanted to repeat a new tradition he’d started with Lila and Fleur. Tristan was especially annoyed and wasn’t partaking in our typical banter as we had a day to fill before the evening’s show. I was in silent torture, as I’d not had a Christmas with Guinevere. My phone binged.
It was a voice text from Guinie. She’d never sent me one before, and my heart leapt to hear her. I stood and left the room to give myself privacy. I also needed a moment to prepare for the sound of her. I stood inside the bathroom, pressing play when a noise filled the speaker of my phone.
whomp-whomp-whomp-whomp-whomp
My eyebrows pinched as I stared at the phone in my hand. There had to have been a bad connection. I couldn’t understand if she said anything. It was only one minute long and the sound stopped. Message over. I played it again.
whomp-whomp-whomp-whomp-whomp
What the hell? Pissed off, I returned to the main room.
“What’s up with you?” Tristan asked. I flung myself down on the couch and threw my phone on the table before me. I slammed a foot on the wood surface and let my head fall back, covering my eyes. My head was starting to ache. My heart already did.
“Guinie sent me a voice text,” I muttered into the hand that held my eyes shut.
“What did it say?” Tristan asked, hi
s voice a bit too interested. His teasing enthusiasm rubbed me the wrong way. I sat up abruptly and picked up the phone. Throwing it at him, he caught in with fumbled hands. I fell back on the couch and resumed my sulking. I pinched my eyes shut again. He must have pressed play because the dull noise was in the room. It wasn’t loud in the larger space of this lounge area.
whomp-whomp-whomp-whomp-whomp
The noise was double time, a rapid rhythm. It beat too fast for time.
“Holy shit,” Tristan said.
“Is that what I think it is?” Perkins spoke.
“I think it is,” Lansing answered for them.
“Do I need to be part of this conversation?” I breathed. They obviously thought it was something, but it made no sense to me. Silence filled the room, after a repeat of the message. I looked up to three sets of eyes staring at me; two with a gleam of happiness, one set with concern.
“What?” I snapped. The smile on Tristan’s face grew and Perkins lopsided grin was added to his shaking head.
“Dude,” Tristan said softly. “Don’t you know what that sound is?” His voice was excited but gentle. It pissed me off further.
“No,” I barked. “If I did, I wouldn’t be sitting here.” My foot slammed onto the table again. My temper flared.
“What?” I bit again, as they continued to stare at me.
“Should I tell him?” Tristan teased.
Lansing shook his head in disbelief.
“Put him out of his misery,” Perkins laughed.
“What?” I demanded a final time. Lansing spoke.
“That sound is a heartbeat.”
I remained silent. I didn’t understand. I looked at Perkins like Lansing had lost his mind. The question was forming on my lips, but Tristan cut me off.
“That heartbeat is the greatest song there is.”
I blinked at him. What the…The smile beaming on his face was sappy. Tristan only had that silly look for two things: his wife and his future child.
I hadn’t been feeling well for a few days. I was determined I had the flu. I was run down from the practices, the producing, and the performing. We were booked up through the holiday season. Kaye had taken on the role of our manager from overseas. He was working round the clock in my opinion. My father stepped in at times with the soundboard, but it was Kaye who was filling our calendar. Our biggest show was set for the night before Christmas Eve: a holiday concert at The Round Table. While we were set to perform some rocked up Christmas classics, it was also a time to continue to showcase our music. Our Tournament Round CD was available and we were donating the proceeds of this performance to Ingrid Tintagel’s foundation WomenFirst.
It was the same group that The Nights performed for last year. The same group that Arturo argued over with my father and I had intervened. The same group that brought Hollister to the bar and Perkins to her side. It was a bit of serendipity to perform in honor of them, and yet it felt like the right thing to do. However, I still wasn’t feeling well. The achy sensation lasted days, but I didn’t have a fever. My stomach was ill, but shockingly I was hungry. I was tired, though. I had the urge to nap, but once I lay down my mind would race.
When I returned to the city after Paris, I didn’t know what to do with Morte. Determined to transition him into his new home, I stayed with him in Arturo’s new apartment, hoping to help him gain a familiarity with the surroundings. Arturo had stocked the game room as promised, and Morte’s room was a future teenage boy’s dream. The most exciting room was the music room. I was a bit jealous that I would not be staying to continue to practice in such a grand space. The baby grand that Ingrid sent over for Morte to play on was beautiful. It once stood in the music room of her place. It was a touching gift to give the son of her son. Morte was going to be a musician one day in his own right.
My thoughts of Arturo scattered. His daily texts warmed my heart and set me on fire. I squelched the flames in hopes to remain focused. I couldn’t allow myself to think of him or what he might be doing on the tour: with the guys, with other women. An idle mind was a dangerous thing. So I continued to throw myself into the production of our CD and learn a few things from my father about The Round Table and Camelot Records. The Round Table was my legacy, and although I didn’t want to run a bar, I saw the benefit of knowing the background of the music business that had given me a comfortable life.
I was very excited about our CD project, and with the help of Ingrid, decided to develop my own foundation for girls and music: GirlsRockIT, or GRiT, for short. It was to provide musical instruments to underprivileged girls aged eight to twelve, who wanted to learn to play as a means of escape. I found a small storefront to use as our office and lesson rooms. The girls from the 4Gs helped me out, especially Trinity. For those that could not make it to us, one of us travelled to them. With the school holiday upon us, and most schools closed, we had a short break from the practices.
I’d finally decided to go to the doctor, a few days before the big concert. I’d been sleeping horribly and decided it might be time to prescribe something for me. I recognized the sluggishness, but I fought it. It felt very similar to when I lost Arturo, but I also felt stronger than that first time. That break had been caused by unforeseen causes and the mystery surrounding his potential death was debilitating. Weakness took me down, and lowered me to questionable decisions. Determined not to allow that to happen again; our current break was caused by me, and I had to remind myself I needed to focus on my future. I drew strength from within myself, the 4Gs, Ingrid, and my new project.
The news at the doctor’s office had been unsettling, to say the least. I didn’t need Arturo to make decisions based on something uncontrolled. I had no question as to what I would do. I had no idea what Arturo would think. Regardless, I had to share the news with him. I was farther along than I thought and confirmation of my test results were guaranteed with the sound of a beat. Several beats actually, a perfect iambic pentameter.
ta-dum, ta-dum, ta-dum, ta-dum, ta-dum
“Can I record that?” I asked the doctor.
Christmas Eve Eve, Fleur playfully called the night. We had turned The Round Table into an intimate medieval setting. Hundreds of candles lit the stage. It would be the primary source of lighting. Three excessively dimmed spotlights would enhance the glow. The idea was for the remainder of The Round Table to be dark. The mirrored bar would be opposing light as the bottles of alcohol reflected the candlelight. Another three dim lights would help the bartenders.
We were dressed in black, but it wasn’t formal evening attire. We were edgier in mid-thigh dresses with varying necklines. Mine was completely strapless. Allora’s was over one shoulder; Lace had spaghetti straps; Enid had a jewel neckline, and Trinity had some ripped looking motif over her chest. We varied, as well, in shoes from the tall fuck-me-later pumps of Allora to the feminine combat boots of Trinity. We were unity in black, but our individuality was expressed through fashion preference.
I nervously paced the small room, off the edge of the stage. I’d been in this room thousands of times, but never as the headliner of a show. Tonight was important to me. It proved something to me. I could do this. While Arturo had helped me get the job with the girls, it had been my talent that kept me there. It had been my friendship that made me love the girls. I owed Arturo for the recording deal. A small smile crept up my face as I recalled so many memories of his encouragement, regarding the group. He really had changed my life, in more ways than one.
I held my phone, fighting the daily battle to return his texts. That day’s had been:
Good luck tonight. I wish I could be there. I know you’ll RockIt.
He’d been keeping tabs on me through Kaye’s involvement, I was certain. I didn’t begrudge him. Camelot Records was his company. The 4Gs were an investment. Our success would have an impact on him. In spite of myself, I had to smile at the reference to my new girls’ club.
Lace was wringing her hands as she stood near the door. We could see out i
nto the pit area from this side room. The place was packed, but I believed she was looking for a particular someone. Lace had developed a growing friendship with Enid’s cousin, Finley, despite a crush on Kaye Sirs. I couldn’t keep up with her relationships. Some of Enid’s secrets had come to light in a strange connection with Ireland, and she seemed almost as nervous as me.
“Okay, ladies. Place is packed,” Trinity said cheerfully. Her hair was edgy in her short pixie cut, with deep bangs covering one eye. Her make-up was dramatic and she looked amazing. We had our own P!nk in the group, if only she could sing.
“Five minutes,” Charlie said, as the intern assistant for tonight. My father was the official host as he often was in his bar. He’d be the one to introduce us. The crowd was a bit subdued compared to what he was used to in his place. The tickets had been pricey. The lateness in December made the night less desirable as a local hang out, but a good night for a charity function.
“Holy crap, is that Eryk Bane?” Lace exclaimed, her eyes turning knowingly to Enid.
“What? Where?” Enid stood from making her wild orange hair wilder in the mirror then stopped herself. “I mean, oh really. Eryk Bane, huh?”
Eryk Bane was an up-and-coming businessman, but had the looks of a super model, and had done some cover shoots. He’d earned the face of several clothing lines and a few male fragrances. It was his deep rust colored hair and brilliant blue eyes. An unusual look, but panty melting, despite an uppity attitude. I wasn’t certain what the story was with him and Enid, but there was a story there.
“Okay ladies, stage time.”
I heard my father introducing us, and through muted cheers, we took the stage. The candles encapsulated us. It was intimate and warm. The soft glow highlighted us, and our black silk dresses glistened. We couldn’t see a single figure in the throngs of our audience. The darkness only allowed for the outlines of heads and shoulders. My performance ritual included a deep breath before I placed the cello between my thighs, set the bow on the strings, then we zipped into our first song.
