by Lili Valente
I hate to think that, in a few years, once the new has worn off and he’s tired of living up to the expectations of a woman who has her shit together, Cutter might be the asshole bad-mouthing his woman in a bar.
And that woman will be my Theo.
Only she’s not mine anymore. She’s his. It’s another thing that’s changed, another way my world has turned upside down, and enough to put me in a confrontational frame of mind even before I step out the back door into the alley behind Chippy’s to find Fernando pissing against the wall on the other side.
“This isn’t a toilet, asshole,” I growl. “The deli next door has a restroom.”
Fernando glances over his shoulder, but doesn’t stop pissing as he slurs, “Go fuck yourself, Zack.” He laughs. “Yeah, I saw you there. Acting like you weren’t listening to every fucking word I said. Why don’t you go tattle to Colette? Maybe she’ll suck your dick like a good whore as a reward.”
For a second, I consider punching him between the shoulder blades. But I’ve never started a fight, let along sucker-punched a drunk while his back was turned, and Fernando isn’t worth a blow to my integrity.
I should turn and walk away.
And usually, I would. Old Zack wouldn’t waste another second of his time on this loser.
But Old Zack wouldn’t leave the band or miss his best friend’s wedding celebration, either. I don’t know where Old Zack is right now as I reach out a flat hand, but he isn’t here in this alley. He remains conspicuously absent as I give Fernando a gentle shove, sending him stumbling into a puddle of his own warm piss.
“What the fuck?” he cries out, his arms flying out to his sides as urine splashes onto the legs of his pants, but I don’t stick around to see what other thoughtful reflections he might have to share.
I’m already on my way down the alley, headed for the park and the apartment buildings on the other side. I’m not sure when I learned where Colette lives—or why that information stuck in my head when so many things about my hometown slip through the cracks in my awareness—but that’s where I’m going.
Someone should check on her.
Her best friend is out of town, and she’s just been through an ugly breakup.
She could probably use a friendly ear right about now.
And that’s all it will be—a friendly ear. I’ll see if I can help somehow, and then I’ll leave. At least, that’s what the Old Zack would do.
Hopefully, he’ll be back online before I get to Colette’s place.
Chapter Two
Colette Claude Blanchett
A woman looking for sperm in all the wrong places.
* * *
The doorbell buzzes, but I stay on the floor with my jumbo jar of Jet-Puffed Marshmallow Creme and ten thousand used tissues scattered around me like melting snowflakes.
My misery doesn’t like company.
It’s odd and contrary, just like the rest of me.
Why can’t I be a normal person with normal body parts and normal feelings? If I were normal, I would be engaged to Fernando and trying for a baby the old-fashioned way. Instead, I’m crying over lost sperm and wondering how on earth I’m going to afford in vitro fertilization now that I’ve lost my job.
Oh God…my job.
I almost forgot about that part.
Shoveling another spoonful of sugary fluff into my mouth, I ignore the second zap of the doorbell. I don’t know who’s there, but it’s no one I want to see. All my girlfriends are out of town, and I honestly wouldn’t even want to see one of them at this point. I’m too low for girl talk.
I’m too low for anything but sitting on the cold tile, leaking tears and shoveling sugar into my mouth until my tongue goes numb.
I smack my lips.
Nope.
Not numb yet.
I’m scraping my spoon along the side of the now mostly empty jar when a male voice rumbles from the other side of the door, “Hello? Are you all right in there?”
I huddle closer to the ground, hunching my shoulders around my ears, hoping whoever it is will go away if I’m quiet. I pull in a breath and hold it until my lungs begin to ache.
“I know you’re there, Colette,” the voice says, surprising me. “I heard you crying on my way up the stairs.”
The voice knows my name, which means…
I knit my forehead, making my tear-swollen eyes ache. “Zack?” I croak.
“Yeah. How are you?”
“Fine,” I lie, my voice cracking in the middle of the word.
“You don’t sound fine.”
I sniff, struggling to pull myself together. “Summer allergies. They’re bad this year.”
He grunts, and silence falls for a moment before he says, “I ran into Fernando at Chippy’s.”
Fresh tears sting the back of my nose. “Did he…?” I swallow, but I can’t keep the words from my lips, “Did he ask you to check on me?”
“Um…no. But I heard about the breakup. I’m sorry.”
My lips turn down hard. I should have known better. Fernando doesn’t care if I’m sad anymore. He made that abundantly clear when he shouted at me for an hour and then stormed out, taking everything in his overnight drawer with him.
I scrape another bite of fluff from the jar and stick it in my mouth, talking around the spoon. “Yeah. We broke up. He hates me more than cheeseburgers.”
Zack grunts again. “I didn’t know he was a vegetarian.”
“He’s not. He thinks they’re symbolic of everything that’s wrong with our out-of-control consumer culture.” I go back for more sugar, adding in a thin voice, “He also hates donuts.”
“Yeah, well, he’s a piece of shit. No offense.”
I shake my head. “No, I’m the piece of shit.”
“You’re not a piece of shit.” He sighs. “Can I come in?”
“No, I am a piece of shit, Zack. I am. I ruined everything. I returned the diamond bracelet he bought me for my birthday to the jewelry store and used the money to buy sperm.” I swallow hard. “Because I’m a sperm junkie who will do anything to get my fix.”
“Yeah, I heard that, too. Or something like that, anyway.”
I jerk my head up, the words penetrating my misery haze.
Creaking to my feet, I pad across the kitchen and down the short hallway to my apartment’s front door, pulling it open to reveal a drop-dead gorgeous rock star in a sky-blue tee shirt and faded black jeans that cling to his muscular legs. Zack’s wavy auburn hair is tousled and standing on end, but even rumpled and sporting at least a day’s worth of stubble, he’s take-your-breath-away handsome.
He’s going to make some woman very happy someday.
The sight of him—so lovely, with concern in his kind brown eyes—only reminds me of what I’ve lost. My own beautiful man dumped me so hard I’m still reeling from the blow twenty-six hours later.
Oh, and apparently, he hates me so much that he’s regaling the town with news of my spooge betrayal.
“He told you that I went to the sperm bank behind his back?” I rasp in a grief-weary voice.
Zack shrugs. “Not exactly.”
I squint up at him, confused. I need to stop crying. It’s affecting my ability to process information.
“I overheard him talking to someone else,” Zack says. Glancing over my shoulder, he adds, “Would it be okay if I came in? I’m pretty sure your neighbor is listening at her door. She had it cracked a second ago.”
I sniff, shrugging in the general direction of the nosy but very sweet Mrs. Simpson’s door. “I don’t care. I don’t have any pride left. I cried it all out.” I lean around Zack, adding in a louder voice, “Did you hear that, Mrs. Simpson? Fernando broke up with me, and I can’t stop crying.”
“Sorry to hear that, sweetie.” The older woman’s door opens a smidge, and her wrinkled face and dark brown eyes appear. “But he was never good enough for you anyway. You’ll find someone better, no doubt in my mind.”
My face crumples. “Thanks.
But I don’t think so.”
“Sure you will,” Mrs. Simpson says, cutting a sharp look Zack’s way. “But not that one. He looks like trouble.” Her gaze shifts back to me. “You want me to call the police? Report an intruder?”
I shake my head. “No, thank you. Zack, meet Mrs. Simpson. Mrs. Simpson, meet Zack. He’s one of the good ones.”
“Hi,” Zack says, lifting a wary hand. “I’m not here to cause trouble. I promise. I just wanted to make sure Colette was all right.”
“Well, she clearly isn’t,” Mrs. Simpson huffs. “The girl might want to cry in peace, you know. Not everyone wants someone up in their business while they’re grieving a loss.”
I refrain from pointing out the irony there—Mrs. Simpson has been all up in everyone’s business for as long as anyone in town can remember. At least as far back as the early 70s when she wrote a gossip column for the local paper. “It’s fine,” I assure her. “I’m glad he’s here. He might keep me from finishing the entire jar of marshmallow fluff.”
With another suspicious glance Zack’s way, she nods. “All right. But call for help if you need it. I have my hearing aids in.” She arches a brow and points a warning finger at Zack’s chest. “Both of them. So…” She slowly closes the door, keeping Zack in her sights the entire time.
As it clicks shut, Zack laughs under his breath. “She’s a character. I’ve never been called trouble before.”
I turn back to him with a sigh, and whisper, “Don’t take it personally. She doesn’t get out much. Last time she was a regular in society, men in black jeans and motorcycle boots probably were dangerous.” I flop a hand toward my apartment’s open door. “You want to come in for a beer or something? The house is a mess, but…”
“I don’t care.” He gives my shoulder a gentle squeeze. “I like messes.”
“Then you’re going to love me right now,” I joke, gesturing toward my bed head and puffy, makeup-free face. Leading the way inside, I head down the hall to the kitchen where I slump back onto the tissue-scattered floor and grab my jar of marshmallow goo. “Beer’s in the fridge. Help yourself.” I lift the fluff in Zack’s direction. “Or you can share what’s left of this with me. Clean spoons are in the drawer by the sink.”
“No, thanks, I’m good.” Shoving his hands in his pockets, he glances over his shoulder toward the living room. “Would you be more comfortable on the couch?”
I shake my head and dig for more sugar. “I don’t deserve comfort. I’m a horrible person.”
“You’re not a horrible person.”
“I am. I’m selfish and stubborn and awful.”
Zack crosses the space to squat beside me, bringing his face almost level with mine. “It’s your body and your life. If you want to have a baby, you have every right to take steps to make that happen.”
I wince. “But Fernando was my boyfriend. We were planning a future together. I shouldn’t have done that behind his back.”
He arches a brow. “From what I heard, it sounded like you told him exactly what you intended to do. It’s not your fault he didn’t take you seriously.”
My bottom lip quivers. “But I knew he thought I was bluffing. I should have made sure he understood that I wasn’t.”
“That’s not your responsibility. You told him the truth, and you kept your word. If anyone’s a horrible person, it’s him for thinking you were playing games about something so serious.”
“Maybe.” Letting my spoon rattle into the sticky jar, I slump against the cabinets. “The worst part is that it was all for nothing.” I wrap my arms around my ribs, holding myself together. “It didn’t work. I didn’t get pregnant.”
“I’m sorry.” Zack settles onto the floor beside me. “You can still try again, though, right?”
“No,” I whisper, hating the word. It seems like all I’ve heard for the past year is no. So far, trying to have a baby has ended in one door after another slammed in my face. “My doctor thinks I’ll need in vitro fertilization, but I can’t even afford another round of artificial insemination, let alone fifteen thousand dollars in IVF fees. If I still had a job, I could maybe save up enough money before it’s too late, but Summer and Salt declared bankruptcy last week. Theresa had to let everyone go.”
Zack makes a sympathetic sound, but I cut him off with a raised hand. “Don’t feel sorry for me. I don’t deserve sympathy. I knew it was coming. I saw the warning signs in the financials months ago and ignored them. I’ve been so focused on trying to have a baby that I haven’t been paying attention to anything else. Not my friendships or my boyfriend or my job. And now…” I press my lips together, refusing to cry again. I sip in a breath, willing my throat to relax. “Now, I’ve lost everything. Including the baby dream.” Zack’s quiet for a long moment, making my lips curve as I add, “I like that about you.”
“What’s that?”
“The way you think before you talk.”
He smiles a little shyly, which is adorable. I doubt most men who have been famous as long as Zack’s been famous remember what “shy” feels like. But he’s a special guy. I knew that the moment my best friend, Theodora, introduced us at a pool party the summer after I graduated from college.
Zack was the only man there who wasn’t hitting on the Brazilian models who crashed the gathering halfway through. He spent his time catching up with Theo and meeting her friends, seeming genuinely interested in her ordinary life even though he’d just had a single hit number one and was headed out on a world tour in the fall.
“Thanks,” he says. “I like to say what I mean and mean what I say.”
“That’s a lovely quality.”
“Well, I’m not always lovely,” he says with a sigh. “Shoving Fernando into a puddle of his own piss in the alley behind Chippy’s wasn’t lovely. Not even close.”
My eyes go wide. “What? Why?”
“I didn’t like the way he was talking about you.”
“I meant why he was peeing in an alley, but…” I trail off, warmth rushing to my cheeks. “But thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” His gaze locks with mine, setting something humming to life in my chest, something electric that I haven’t felt around a man, not even Fernando, in far too long. “The men’s room was closed for cleaning.”
“What?” I’m so distracted by that forbidden hum that I’ve lost the thread of the conversation. When I find it again, I shake my head and wince. “Right. Sorry, I was…momentarily insane.”
Yes, Colette, you are insane. Zack isn’t into you, and even if he were, a relationship with a rock star would never work. He’s gone all the time, and you want to start a family. Not to mention the fact that you just broke up with your boyfriend. This would be a fun rebound fling at best and a disaster at worst, and you can’t afford anymore disaster in your life.
The inner voice is genius.
I should listen to her.
I really should.
Instead, I lean closer to Zack, eyes searching his as I whisper, “It was sweet of you to check on me.”
“I like you,” he says, the words intensifying the hum until my bones tingle. “I was hoping I could cheer you up a little before I go.”
“Go?” I ask, trying not to think of all the naughtier ways this beautiful man might be able to cheer me up. “Where are you going?”
“Upstate New York to work on songs for a solo album. I, um…” His breath rushes out. “I quit the band earlier today.”
My jaw drops. “What? Oh my God! What happened? Did you guys have a fight?” I bite my lip, a more upsetting possibility leaping to mind. Zack has been close with my best friend, Theodora, since they were kids, but I’ve always wondered if he might secretly want something more than friendship.
Hopefully not, seeing as Theo just eloped to Vegas with Zack’s bandmate.
I try to hold back my next question. I don’t want to jab a raw nerve. But then again, what if he needs to talk about it in a safe space?
“Is it because of Cutter
and Theo?” I ask gently. “Are you…upset that they’re married?”
His lips quirk. “I’m not thrilled about it. I mean, they seem happy, but I have a hard time believing an asshole like Cutter and a sweetheart like Theo are going to be able to make it work long term.”
I wrinkle my nose. “But he’s not an asshole when he’s with her. He’s very thoughtful and…” I trail off, searching for the word. “Invested. You know? Not just in love but committed to the daily business of loving. I get the feeling he’ll do whatever it takes to make their marriage work.”
Zack’s mouth purses into a dubious shape. “Maybe you’re right. I hope so. But no, my decision to leave the band had nothing to do with that,” he says in a way that makes me believe him.
My shoulders relax, and the tension seeps from my neck. I’m a little too relieved to hear that, but I tell myself it’s just because I’m happy that Zack isn’t heartbroken over losing the love of his life. “Then what was it?” I ask. “I mean, you guys are still so successful. Why walk away from that?”
He shrugs. “It’s time to do my own thing. I started playing with Lips on Fire when I was sixteen. I’ve never written a song that wasn’t revised by three other people. I’ve never sung lead vocals, only backup. I’m just…ready for my voice to be heard. If that makes sense.”
“It absolutely makes sense. It’s also very brave.” I narrow my eyes, peering behind the calm. “And maybe a little scary?”
“Terrifying.” He laughs as he drags a hand through his messy hair. “Maybe that’s why I’m losing it.”
“How are you losing it?” I ask, shifting on the floor to face him.
He arches a brow. “Did you miss the part where I pushed a man into a puddle of his own piss?”
I bob a shoulder. “Worse things have happened, and I know how Fernando gets when he’s angry and running his mouth. He probably had it coming.”
“I wouldn’t talk about my worst enemy that way, let alone someone I used to love.”
“Well, you’re a better person than Fernando,” I say, my stomach tightening as I feel compelled to admit, “or me. I confess I liked that side of him sometimes. The fire and passion and….” I let out a shaky laugh as I drop my gaze to my tangled fingers. “I mean, I hated fighting, but making up after was fun.”
