by Aubrey Irons
The notes come easy, and so smoothly from the Fender, and I do what I’ve loved to do since forever - I tell a story, and I sing.
One song bleeds into another, and it’s like the crowd is mine. I’m telling jokes, and candid anecdotes on the songs, and singing my damn heart out, and they’re loving it. The feeling is warm, and a glowing goodness inside of me, and for one brief moment, I can pretend it’s almost as good as the feeling I thought I might have found, back in the place I swore I’d never go back to.
Back with the broken boy I swore I’d never see again.
And really, it almost is.
Almost.
I’m buzzing, feeling high on this entire night like a drug as I thank everyone and launch into my last song. The song for no one. The puzzle piece I’ve been trying to cram into the wrong puzzle.
Notes strum from the guitar, blood pumps in my veins, and I’m opening my mouth to sing the words that’ve taken years to finally come together when I suddenly freeze.
My eyes lock.
My mouth goes dry.
My heart clenches up tight in my chest, and my whole being tingles as the whole world tips on its axis around me.
I don’t know if I somehow missed him, or if he’s moved, but suddenly, two rows back, front and center, I see him.
Bastian.
I start to free-fall before I stop myself, forcing myself to look away.
Forcing myself to breathe.
Just play.
I do, and it all comes out. ALL of it. And like a match being lit, the song for no one suddenly takes on a new meaning. The words cut deeper, the chords ring out truer. My voice breaks in the right places - anguish, and hurt, and want, and need, all bleeding together. And I realize for the first time that the song isn’t for no one.
It’s for him.
The song is Bastian.
I just keep playing through the tears blurring my vision, almost heedless of the crowd cheering and lunging to their feet as I finish. I wave quickly, flashing something like a smile as I run from the stage before the tears can fall.
“Ana.”
Backstage, it’s the sound of his voice behind me that has me freezing in my tracks, a shiver sliding up my spin.
“Look at me.”
I shake my head.
“No,” I whisper.
“Ana.”
I feel his hand touch my arm, and I jerk away, whirling on him.
“How did you even get here,” I hiss angrily. “I was under the impression that house arrest means you can’t fly on airplanes.”
“I’m free of that,” he says grimly. “In light of the evidence against Brent and all.”
“Well good for you,” I say sarcastically. “You're free to go drink and drive all over again.”
“Stop it.”
“What,” I hiss.
“Stop pretending nothing’s changed with us.”
“What has changed with us?” I yell in the relative silence of the backstage hallway. “You’re still you, Bastian!”
“I’ve always been me, and you’ve always been you,” he growls. “The difference between now and then is that now we actually see each other for who we really are.”
I laugh bitterly. “Oh, I think I see quite clearly, actually.” My voice drips with venom as I force myself to glare at him even if I want to melt into his chest.
“So do I,” he says quietly.
I want to hate him. I want so badly to hate him. And yet that hatred is slipping through my heart like sand through fingers.
“What do you even want, Bastian? You got what you wanted, right? You got your money, you got your privileged, easy little life back.”
His jaw tenses.
“You think that’s all I wanted?”
I throw my hands up. “What else!? Jesus, what else could you possibly—”
“You.”
I try and bite back the tears brimming in my eyes.
“You know,” I say, my voice breaking. “I seem to remember you getting that too.”
“Not the part I wanted.”
He moves to me, and though I make a vain attempt at pushing him away, a part of me breaks and melts as his hands slide up my arms and pull me closer.
“Goddamnit, Texas,” he mutters softly.
I raise my angry eyes to his glaring at him through blurry vision.
“You’re what I wanted,” he hisses fiercely. “You, over all of it!”
I look away, squeezing my eyes shut.
This isn’t how I fall again.
This won’t be how I let him break me all over again.
“Bastian, you can’t just show up and decide now’s the time to be a nice for once in your—”
“There were no pictures, you know.”
My eyes quickly dart to his, watching his jaw tighten as he swallows thickly.
“That night, on the boat.” He shakes his head. “I kept my thumb over the front of the phone. There was just a flash and a few totally black shots.”
I blink, slowly shaking my head at him.
“What I did was fucked up, Ana.”
I laugh a brittle sound.
“Oh, you think so?”
His jaw clenches.
“Bastian, I’m not some fucking damsel in distress or some Disney princess who needs rescuing, all right?” I bark out a bitter laugh. “I never was, and believe me, you’re no prince.”
“Trust me,” he growls. “I’m aware of that.”
I shake my head angrily, and I go to pull away from him when he stops me.
“I did what I did because I knew you and I could never be. I had too much painful shit burning inside of me, and when you came to South Neck right before my parents crashed…”
He looks away.
“I knew that way was shut. That bridge was burned before I even realized I wanted to cross it.”
He turns his eyes back to me, the pain and the rawness in them blazing into mine.
“There was a chance I could live without your heart, Ana, but I was sure I couldn’t if it was someone else’s.”
I swallow back tears as the words slice through me.
“Ana, it was always you.”
“Please stop,” I whisper tightly.
“Goddamnit,” he hisses, pulling me against him. “I’m trying to tell you that I fucking love you.”
“Stop it.”
This time, I do pull away. This time, I break the contact, stepping away from him as I shake my head slowly.
It’s weird seeing him like this - the two sides of him naked and exposed. There’s the angry, broken little boy who shushes his nannies and forbids people from entering his home. But then there’s the side I’ve only ever glimpsed before, even when we were skin-to-skin, breath-to-breath, and heart-to-heart - as close as two people can be.
The other side, which I’m seeing open and fully in front of me, is the man he could be. Strong. Passionate. Driven. Fearless.
Capable of love.
The vision is tempting, but I know that’s all it is. I know that’s all he ever is - a sweet, dangerous temptation. The charm that pulls you in, and the beast that bites.
And I’m done walking into the same trap over and over again.
My eyes drag up to his, and slowly, my heart breaking, I shake my head.
“I- I have to go,” I say softly.
His shoulders drop.
“Goddamnit, Ana—”
“I can’t do this right now,” I say quietly. “I can’t do this ever, actually.”
I look up at him, feeling cold.
“I’m meeting someone, Bastian.”
I don’t say it to be mean, I say it to remind myself. Jack. I’m meeting Jack. The man who’s the opposite of Bastian. Jack who’s the obvious, sensible, smart choice here, if we’re picking one path to follow.
And it’s time I found a new path.
I take a slow breath and tuck my hair behind my ears before I look up at him, four feet away.
The boy wh
o broke me and the man who finished the job.
I sling the guitar off my shoulders and set it against the wall.
“That’s yours. Goodbye, Bastian.”
I turn, and I walk away.
I make it three steps before his voice cuts me like a naked blade.
“Jill.”
Time stops.
My heart jumps a beat.
Slowly, I turn, my face white.
“What did you just call me?”
I barely breathe the words. Bastian’s eyes burn right into mine as he steps forward. He doesn’t look angry, or broken, or dark, or hateful. He looks almost lost, and it’s then that I realize I understand the expression on his face.
He’s scared.
“I fell down,” he says quietly. “In fact, I’ve been falling down for most of my life.”
I realize I’m shaking, trembling as the whole thing starts to unravel and crack around me. Tears fall freely down my cheeks as I slowly shake my head.
“Jack and Jill went up the hill, to fetch a pail of water.”
Bastian’s words cross the divide between us, shaking me to my core as I cry.
Hate, love, lust, pain.
“I fell down, I broke my crown,” he says it fiercely, his voice breaking as he steps forward toward me until he’s right in front of me. He looks me right in the eye as his hand comes up to tilt my chin up.
“But Jill?” he smiles sadly. “Well, she came—”
“Tumbling after,” I finish in a whisper.
His breath crosses the last divide between us.
Our lips break the last wall.
And the kiss is everything.
“You know, I think they’re going to be okay.”
It’s funny to see Ana’s dad in something other than jeans or Carhartts and a T-shirt, but I have to say, the man looks pretty damn debonair in a tuxedo.
The cowboy hat is his insistence. Ana fought him on it. I think it’s awesome. Hell, it’ll lend some needed character to this event, that’s for sure. I’m similarly dressed as Hank, in a full black tuxedo - sans cowboy hat, though I do make a mental note to see about buying one.
I turn and grin as I bring my lips down to kiss the top of Ana’s head, my arm sliding around her waist. I thought she’d fight me on what I got her to wear tonight. Hell, I expected it. I figured she’d insist on some sort of “vintage” bargain-rack Pretty In Pink Molly Ringwald shit instead of the silver and white custom-fitted Valentino I bought her.
But she loved it. Hell, she even loved it after I told her the price I paid for it.
…I’m kind of all about honesty these days.
“They look fantastic, Dad,” she says, reaching out and pulling one of the Ophelia blossoms close to smell it. “They’re back where they belong.”
“Thanks, Hank. Honestly.”
The master gardener himself shrugs as he turns and grins at me. “Eh, you did all right keeping them half alive, kid.”
He frowns, smoothing the dirt around the freshly planted roses with the toe of the two-thousand-dollar shoes I bought him for the event.
“Except for that French fossil shit you kept dumping on them. I don’t even know what the hell that stuff is.”
I mutter under my breath, making a note to piss on that horticulturalist’s front door the next time I’m in Paris.
The three of us are standing in the greenhouse - the freshly rebuilt, freshly planted new greenhouse. The very same turn of the century gilded-age design, the same wrought iron structure, and it’s even in the very spot where the old one stood.
The filtration systems have been updated. Also, there’s a fire suppression system now.
My mother’s Ophelia roses are small and frail, but Ana’s right - they’re looking way better than they were up in my quarters. They’re in the right place now, and Hank is confident they’re going to come back strong as ever too. Burned, broken, half starved, and smothered in “that French fossils shit,” and they’re going to bounce back just fine.
…This could be a lesson to all of us, really.
“Well, we oughta get to it, shouldn’t we?”
I smile - me, actually, really smiling - nodding at her dad, as I pull Ana close and kiss the top of her head again.
I do that a lot these days.
“Yeah, let’s head over.”
We turn, me leading Ana and helping her navigate the dirt beds in her heels. Hank claps me on the back, in this real fatherly way that brings another grin to my face as I think about our first run-in after Ana and I officially got together. The one where he cornered me in the gardener’s office, told me if I hurt his little girl he’d be the worst thing that ever happened to me, and then clipped the fucking banana out of his own lunch bag clean in two with a pair of gardening sheers.
That’s the sort of image that stays with a man.
The cool November air is a brisk change from the heated greenhouse as we step outside. Ana shivers, and even if we’re not going that far, I shrug my jacket off and drape it over her shoulders, even as she protests.
“Stop being a pain in the butt,” I mutter.
She grins. “Stop being so bossy.”
“Except I am the boss.” I smile widely at her. “I’m your boss.”
“I haven’t signed yet.”
“You will.”
Her eyes twinkle at me in a way I’m still getting used to as she looks up at me.
“You’re awfully confident about that.”
I make sure her dad is a few steps ahead of us before I let my hand drop to her perfect ass and give her a full-palm squeeze through her gown. She laughs, but it’s when I push my hand deeper, down between her legs, that she drags her teeth across her lip and shoots me a warning - and yet hungry - look.
“You’ll sign.” I grin, eyes ahead as we make our way across the lawn of my estate to the party.
We’re celebrating tonight. There’s a lot to celebrate these days, what with me being cleared of charges, Dylan being alive, Brent behind bars, and somehow, beyond all rational probability, me getting the girl and convincing her to marry me.
For real reason, not perjuring ones.
I squeeze my fiancée’s sweet ass again for good measure as we head across the frosty grounds.
There’s a lot to celebrate, but tonight, we’re celebrating one thing specifically. Tonight, I take the step I should have taken a long time ago, where I leave the wandering, aimless, trust fund asshole behind and become something new.
A trust fund asshole with purpose.
It was Ana that put the idea in my head, even if she didn’t know it at the time. Hell, I didn’t know she did at the time either, but the little seed of an idea stuck and grew. And now here we are, at the official grand opening gala.
Ground breaking was a bitch on this place, and it was more than little off-putting to see them start to dig a huge foundation hole fifty feet from the house I grew up in. But it had to be here. Here is where we met, here is where she learned to hate me, and here is where I learned to fight for what I wanted, learned to love, and won her back.
Also, LA is great and all, and New York is unmatched, but Ana put it best: there’s just something about being out here, away from the city out on the ocean that “brings out the muse.”
…That’s creative talk for “Ana writes kick-fucking-ass songs out here.”
Dylan’s not wrong about business ventures like this, but it’s a no-brainer. I mean I’ve got the money, I’ve got the girl, and now it’s time to chase the purpose. And I’m pretty sure I’ve found it.
At first, I thought about just making a ludicrously huge donation to Luminous Records in order to get Ana’s foot back in the door after I ruined her shot there. But then, I went bigger. Bigger, grander, or crazier, depending on your interpretation.
Right, I’m getting ahead of myself.
Tonight, we’re celebrating the official opening of Tumble Down Records.
Ana picked the name.
I fucking lov
e it.
So, yeah, I started a record label. Tumble Down is really two businesses in one - a recording studio here in the Hamptons, and the record label end of things. We’ll keep an office in New York, and maybe in LA or Nashville too eventually. But for now, the whole thing is based here, with me at the helm.
I wasn’t lying when I was, well, lying to Ana about being “Jack” those years before. I don’t actually know how to play an instrument. But I do fucking love music, and it’s that passion that I plan on funneling into this place. I want to find the artists like Ana - the ones that are fucking incredible that other, bigger record companies are too stupid to even take a meeting with.
Actually, through Ana’s connections with the music scenes in New York and LA, we’re already getting a shit-load of requests by bands and solo acts that would seriously floor you to hear.
But I haven’t signed a single person yet. Because who I’m really trying to sign - and she hasn’t yet - is the girl currently at my side, squeezing my hand as we open the front doors.
Yeah, Ana’s being a pill about actually signing the papers, just to fuck with me.
It’s working.
Exploding champagne greets us as we waltz through the front doors of the new - wait for it - thirty fucking million dollar addition to the Crown estate.
And it was worth every damn penny.
It had to be perfect. I wanted it here, but I also didn’t want some douchebag architect from California coming out and trying to build a steel and glass iPhone store in my backyard.
So I had it done to look exactly like the main house it sits next to, down to the brass gutters and the ivy on the stone walls.
The outside, I did. The inside, however, I left to the girl who knows this shit better than I ever could. Ana’s the one that stocked the inside of the five-thousand square foot recording space with probably the most enviable collection of vintage gear and modern recording equipment an upstart studio has ever had. Of course, upstart recording studios don’t usually have the backing of a founder and CEO worth two hundred million dollars.
Oh, right, my trust came through.
…It was pretty fucking huge.
Music and laughter and voices fill the big recording room as the party gets underway. I don’t exactly keep many good friends, and I’ve got a fairly nonexistent extended family. But the ones I do have, and the ones I do care about are all here. Dylan, Ash, Tyler, the wasted sorority girl Tyler brought with him who no one - him included - seems to know. My future father-in-law finds a fellow country fan in Katrina’s girlfriend Angela. Carl and his date for the evening - a good looking dude who looks half his age - play an awesome combo of David Bowie, Talking Heads, and LCD Soundsystem over the studio speakers. René Van Der Haus, and Ty’s sister Kensington drink champagne with Mrs. Tottingham, her biker-boyfriend, Earl, and her niece Charlotte, who’s staying with us for a while from London.
