by Susan Ward
He gestures toward the open foyer door. “May I come in?” he asks, his eyes now betraying just a hint of his amusement over me.
“Of course you can come in,” I say, laughing, pleased that my voice is sounding normal again. “What are you doing here?”
He follows me into the house. “I’ve got some time off. I decided on a road trip up the coast. It didn’t seem right to pass Santa Barbara and not stop and see you, Chrissie. I did try to call first. But then I thought, fuck it, I’ll just stop.”
I don’t even want to try to figure out how he knows where I live or why he’s decided to just descend without warning. I shut the door so he can’t see my face. “I’m glad you did.”
“Then I am, too. I wasn’t sure if this was OK with you in the driveway.”
When I turn toward him, I realize he’s been watching me. “No. It’s nice to see you, Alan.”
I let out a breath. I said that with just the right hint of welcome and reserve.
His eyes move over me like a wandering caress. “You look beautiful, Chrissie. Are you doing well?”
My cheeks turn deep red over the compliment. “I’m doing really well, Alan.”
“It’s soon, isn’t it?” he asks, in that happy for you way.
“Two weeks.”
He smiles, and his stare pauses on my middle. It’s nothing new. Everyone fixes their eyes on my baby bump at some point, but Alan doing it makes me feel grossly uncomfortable.
I change course. “Would you like some coffee? Or something to drink? I don’t keep a lot of booze in the house but I’m pretty sure I have scotch somewhere.”
He smiles at me. “No. I’m not staying long. I don’t want to be a bother.”
He starts moving around my living room—shit, I wish I could drink—and I amble down the stairs to join him in my embarrassingly slow way.
He’s staring out the wall of glass. He looks over his shoulder at me. “Interesting place to live.”
I laugh at the way he says interesting. “Not exactly a comment I’ve not heard before. Some people think we’re crazy to live up here. Linda definitely does. And other people think it’s perfect.”
He smiles and turns back to the glass. “I don’t think you’re crazy and I don’t think it’s perfect either. I understand why you live here. You can stare at everything you love, always, and never have to risk being a part of it. So you, Chrissie.”
My heart freezes. A subtly put jibe at me and how I screwed up our relationship. Direct hit. Trepidation over him being here now wins over all other emotion.
“Actually, I picked this house for Neil. He loves it on the mountain surrounded by forest. We both do.”
I retreat from him to the only chair in the living room I can still get out of quickly. I sink down and wait for Alan to follow. I watch him as he settles himself in his own uniquely graceful way on my sofa.
His gaze moves around the room. It pauses at my coffee table and locks on the magazines there. “Neil is certainly all the talk these days.”
“Neil hates being on that cover. He thinks it makes him commercial. Mainstream. He hates the publicity. And definitely that cover.”
Alan arches a brow. “Mainstream is good. Commercial is good. That’s where the money is. I’m glad for your sake that things for Neil are going well.”
It sounds like he means it. But there is a slight edge to his voice I can’t read.
It seems like I should say something about him. “You’re looking good, Alan.”
He smiles. “I’m off the road for a year. It feels good to just be someplace for a while.”
He sounds slightly impatient over something. Restless being here with me, even if he looks relaxed and at ease. He stands and my heart skips a beat as I wonder if he’s leaving so soon. Slowly, almost leisurely, he starts roaming around the room again.
He pauses at the fireplace. He looks at me. “Jack doing well?”
Neutral topic. Benign pleasantries. “You know Jack. He’s always doing well.”
That earns me one of those smiles, the kind that never fails to shoot straight to my heart. I’m feeling flustered and fretting over why he’s here again. Maybe Alan is as unsure as I am the current state of us. Maybe he’s waiting for me to clarify things.
“I meant what I said on the phone,” I tell him. “About wanting us to be friends. I meant that, Alan.”
“Me, too.” His voice is nearly silent, breathy and unthreatening. His gaze, however, is intense and the effect travels all through me. “I should probably go.”
His words take me by surprise and disappointment shoots through me in an impossible-to-ignore way. I don’t want him to go. I don’t even know why he visited me.
He crosses the room as if to kiss me goodbye. I stare up at him, blinking. “Can I ask you something before you go, Alan?”
He pauses and his expression changes, becoming something more accessible. “You can ask me anything, Chrissie. Always.”
The voice inside my head says don’t do this but I’ve wondered and we didn’t talk about that on the phone and having him here, now, and me this way makes it painfully present inside me.
“Why did you go to Jack’s party to see me?” I ask in a rush before I lose my nerve. “What did you want to tell me in the pool house, Alan?”
I take in a steadying breath of air and wait. Alan smiles, unruffled by the questions, and lightly brushes my cheek with a thumb. “It doesn’t matter, Chrissie. Not now. Not for either of us.”
What the heck does that mean? I stare up at him. “It matters to me.”
He doesn’t say anything, but he sits back down on the sofa. He lets out a ragged breath. “I went to Jack’s to tell you I love you.”
I search his face, and in dismay, I realize he just lied to me for the first time ever. I don’t know how I know it, but I’m positive of it and it makes dread move through my veins. There is only one reason Alan would lie to me.
“How did you find out?” I whisper.
He shakes his head, eyes locked on a vacant space in the room. “Is this really where you want to take us today, love? We’re moving forward together. As friends. A good thing. Why take us back there?”
He looks as discomposed as I feel. Apprehensive. Grim. But I can’t brush this under the carpet between us, though every cell in my body warns that I shouldn’t take either of us back to that part of our history. Alan is here. We may never be face-to-face again, and staring at him, I am also positive I won’t ever have closure, not on this, unless I see this through.
I take a moment to organize what I need to say into a semicoherent speech. I make a snap decision. I move from my chair to sink down beside him on the sofa. Close, but not touching.
“I know you just lied to me two minutes ago. You didn’t go to Jack’s to tell me you loved me. That’s a lie, Alan, but I know you lied because you don’t want me upset or anything. But I’m the one who decided to discuss this. You don’t need to protect me from this. And I want to know who told you about my abortion in April after we broke up and what you came to Jack’s to say to me. I want to know. I want you to tell me today.”
Alan’s face snaps toward me. I’m not sure what I’m seeing. “What the fuck are you talking about, Chrissie?”
The earth falls away beneath me. He didn’t know.
“I thought you knew,” I say, my voice breathy and toneless.
His eyes are rapidly flashing as if he’s trying catch up with my words. He looks almost in shock.
“Oh fuck. Damn it, Chrissie. Is that why you called me so many times after Malibu? You were pregnant?”
I stare at him, mute.
“Damn it, answer me.”
I nod.
His eyes are blazing in a way I’ve never seen before. I can’t look at him. Just feeling him beside me is almost unbearable because there is something raging through him that I’ve never felt before in Alan.
“Oh fuck,” he exclaims on a shuddering growl that makes me jump. “This is all
my fault. If I’d called you back you wouldn’t be married to Neil now. If I hadn’t been so angry. If I had known…oh fuck.”
He seems unable to finish the train of his own thoughts. When I finally look at him, he is sitting elbows on knees, face in hands. I can’t begin to decipher what’s pulsing through him, what this reaction is. It terrifyingly consumes the air around us both. The room is painfully pulsing with Alan.
His eyes, burning and intense, lift to fix on me. “Is that why you went back to Neil? Don’t lie to me, Chrissie. Is that why you married him? Because I was a first class asshole and he was there for you? Tell me the truth, damn it. Is that why you married him?”
The way he grinds out the words turns my insides numb with fear. “It doesn’t matter,” I say after a long while.
His eyes flash. “It will matter to me for the rest of my life.”
The force of his voice makes me jump again. And his eyes. There is too much to see in them, even though I don’t understand everything I’m seeing.
He seems shocked. Alarmed. Horrified.
I start to cry.
He lets out a deep, long, shuddering breath. “Don’t cry, Chrissie. Please don’t cry.”
The tears come stronger. This conversation has deteriorated in a way I didn’t imagine. I am breathing heavily, hurt, acutely aware I’ve unleashed something tormenting and ugly in Alan, and that I’ve probably fucked up even having a friendship with him.
My wounded eyes fix on him. “I didn’t know you didn’t know. I assumed you did, that that was why you came to Jack’s party. I would have never brought this up if I had known you didn’t know about the abortion. I’m…sorry…”
I can’t get any more words through the lump in my throat, and after a minute or two of my only getting more discomposed, Alan pulls me against him, his face in my hair, and his lips touching in kisses. He’s trying to comfort me. I can feel that I’m scaring him with the intensity of my emotions. But the way he stared at me—nothing in my life could have prepared me for that. Emotions I’ve never seen before, anguish and other things complex and beyond me.
I should never have brought up that part of our history. I should have left it alone. I’ve hurt Alan and didn’t want that. His muscles shudder as they hold me, and my heart clenches and I cry harder.
I don’t know what is happening here. I don’t know why Alan is crying, too. We are together in some dark, shadowy place that I don’t understand, alone and together. I can’t seem to calm for either of us. And Alan can’t seem to calm for me.
~~~
I lift up my head from the cushion. I grow aware that it’s night and I’m alone on the couch and I fell sleep in Alan’s arms.
My gaze flitters around the room. Is Alan still here? I try to pick up clues from my house. My eyes lock on the open door to the lower level, and then I notice very faint music playing in the studio down there.
Alan stayed and for some reason he’s amusing himself with my very inexpertly recorded tracks. Shit. This afternoon was emotionally draining. It would have been better for us both if he’d left while I was sleeping.
I sit up, running my hands through my hair, debating whether I should go down there. Then I hear the music shut off and footsteps on the stairs. Alan enters the room, closes the door and settles in a chair across from me.
“What are you still doing here?” I ask.
“It didn’t seem right to cut out on an upset, sleeping pregnant woman alone on a mountain. Even I am not enough of an asshole to do that.”
He says that with just enough elegant inanity to save us both from this extremely awkward moment. He’s here, but tentative and cautious about how to deal with me. Somehow that makes me feel less off-balance.
“I’m OK, Alan. You don’t have to hang around here because of me.”
Alan smiles, amused. “I stayed because I wanted to, Chrissie.”
I lower my gaze. “Thank you.” I don’t know what else to say.
He lights a cigarette and settles back in his chair, more relaxed. Jeez, he’s not planning on staying longer? Even after sleeping I feel physically depleted.
“While I waited for you to wake I listened to your music, Chrissie.”
My cheeks flush, since I’ve never shared my music with anyone but Neil. “It’s just something I’m doing to kill time up here.”
“It shouldn’t be.” His gaze sharpens. “It’s good. Very good.”
I roll my eyes. He’s just being nice. He can’t be serious.
“In fact, there’s a song down there I would like to record, if you’ll let me.”
I’m caught completely off guard. I stare at him, shocked.
“The music is good,” he continues into my silence. “The lyrics brilliant. The arrangements not so good. I’d like to record—” My world starts to spin. I know it before he says it. “‘Parts.’”
This day has gone off course yet again in a new way I never imagined possible. How does he know that song is about him? I don’t doubt that Alan has figured it out and that’s why he picked it.
“I’m flattered by the offer, Alan, but I don’t want you to record my song. I’m not sure I want my songs even to be recorded.”
“I’m recording your song.” He meets my eyes directly. There is something in those penetrating black orbs that makes me tense. “I don’t need your permission, Chrissie.”
I frown at him. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“We have a contract. It still has four years left on it. First right of refusal for all material you copyright. Recording exclusivity. You signed an all-inclusive contract with me.”
My entire face burns from the too quickly returning memory. Us in bed in New York. Naked and in love. The papers he gave me that I signed without reading and tossed in his face.
“You told me that was a release for the tracks we recorded on Long and Hard,” I accuse.
Black eyes meet my blue unwaveringly. “I told you to read it.”
I let out a ragged breath. “It can’t be legal. I was in high school.”
“You were eighteen. It’s a legal contract. I don’t have to ask to record your music.”
My brain and emotions are not working cooperatively. “So why did you ask?”
“Because I won’t record ‘Parts’ unless you say it is OK with you. I would prefer that you wanted me to record it. It’s important to me that it is OK with you. I want you to let me do this for you, Chrissie.”
His quiet, raspy plea makes all the junk inside me stir up again. The phrasing was so deliberate. “If I say no, you can’t record it, then what?”
“Then I won’t,” Alan whispers. “But please let me do this for you.”
The husky intensity of his voice brings me to the verge of tears again because I know what he’s trying to do here. Please let me do this for you. It’s Alan’s way of coping with whatever it is he’s blaming himself for because of me. There is something about what passed between us that he is blaming himself for and is very emotionally ravaged over. I felt it when he held me.
Recording my song is like the cello Alan bought me, an Alan ritual of remorse and regret. I shouldn’t say yes. Neil is going to be furious. But that place in my heart that understands Alan aches for him.
Those black eyes burn into me. “I’d like to do this for you, Chrissie.”
I tell myself no, but I am nodding anyway.
Without a word, he disappears downstairs. When he returns I can see he’s taken the tapes and my lyric sheets.
“I should go, Chrissie. You look exhausted.”
I smile and follow him to the door. It occurs to me, belatedly, that he never answered my question about why he came to Jack’s party. It’s funny that I should remember that now. We’ve both been through enough today. This one I should let go and just let Alan leave.
I open the door and then stop him with a hand on his arm. I tilt my face toward his. “Alan, why did you go to Jack’s party? What were you really there to tell me?”
&n
bsp; Alan stares at me. Beautiful. Enigmatic. He says nothing. He leaves.
CHAPTER SIX
I squeeze my fingers around Linda’s hand as I bear down, fighting through this unbearable pain that no one warned me would be this way.
“Push, baby girl. Push. That’s it, sweetheart.”
The voice is not the one I want, but I’m too overwhelmed to try to figure out how I ended up with Linda Rowan as my birth coach.
She wipes my face, shifting her gaze to the doctor before she smiles into my eyes.
Her arm tightens around my shoulders. She kisses me on the side of my head. “You are doing so good, Chrissie. Just a little while longer.”
I stare up at her. “Neil—” I can’t finish the words. It’s starting again.
In between panting with me and keeping watch on the doctor, she says, “Not here yet. Last call Jack got, two hours away.” She laughs in an unsteady, anxious and overly happy way. “I don’t think he’s going to make it and I don’t think there is anything you can do about that.”
“Hold on, Chrissie. Don’t push. Not until I tell you,” the doctor says.
How the fuck am I not supposed to push? I struggle and pant, listening to the medical staff and Linda’s quiet, loving ramblings.
Linda turns my face. “Look at me, sweetheart. We’ll just breathe together.” She sucks in and pushes the air out loudly. “That’s good, Chrissie. Focus on me. Kaley is almost here.”
“Push, Chrissie,” the doctor says. “Give me a good push.”
There is unbelievable pressure, burning pain ripping through me.
“Oh, Chrissie, look at the mirror,” Linda gushes, excited. “Open your eyes. See your baby girl being born.”
But I can’t open my eyes. It hurts too much, but then there’s finally relief to my body. I collapse back against the bed, panting, and there are wails in the room, angry and alive. Linda starts crying.
“It’s a girl, Chrissie,” the doctor announces, turning her toward me then away too quickly as he finishes checking her.
Kaley is laid on my stomach.
“Oh my, Chrissie. She’s gorgeous.” Linda starts kissing me waywardly on my face and I feel tears from her plopping onto me, mixing with my own moisture on my cheeks. “Thank you for letting me be here with you for this. It was incredible. Look at that girl!”
