by Ren Benton
Was his twitchiness that obvious? Doubt had been stalking him for weeks, whispering prophecies of doom from the deepest shadows of his mind. He hadn’t heard Gin’s distinctive voice issue the invitation. Email was easy to spoof. She had no idea he was going to show up at her door, and he hadn’t picked up the phone for two months because he didn’t want to hear the truth from her lips.
The voice of reason sounded suspiciously like his shrink and whispered in counterpoint to the doubt: Ethan had been unsurprised to see him — one might even say pleased, if multiple spine-cracking hugs and dewy eyes were any indication — and Ethan’s lips were attached to Gin’s ear. She had to know he was coming.
Lex didn’t expect hugs or dewy eyes from her. A hi would be nice, but lack of even a tepid greeting at the instant of his arrival didn’t necessarily signify ill will. The woman ruled an empire, and at this stage of production, the demands of the treasury, diplomacy, and propaganda consumed her time. A lowly bard rolling into town didn’t warrant personal attention from the queen, even if she had summoned him.
Even if the lowly bard used to carry the queen to bed when she fell asleep on the job.
“I thought he was joking at first, but now I see he knows you better than I do, and I’m jealous.” Matt’s lower lip rolled out. “I thought we had something special, man.”
“You can be replaced, you know.”
Four years was unprecedented longevity for a G&F drummer. All the betting pools predicting the kid’s expiration date had dried up by now, and towers of speculation about what kind of incriminating dirt he was holding over Lex had sprung up in their place. The mystery kept people talking, but a lineup change a few weeks before a tour would inspire even more chatter.
A cheeky grin reflected Matt’s unwarranted complacency about his job security. “I’ll tell Gin you’re being mean to me.”
Gin knew all about purging those who outlasted their utility. The example she set had made Lex bloodless in his tie-severing. His previous method of starting with maybe it’s best if you leave only wasted everyone’s time when staying wasn’t really an option. “Why do you imagine she’d care?”
“She doesn’t have to care, as long as you care about looking like an asshole to her.”
Lex would never win in the court of public opinion if he tried to defend himself against that baby-faced hellspawn’s whimpering. “Well played. When did you become so manipulative?”
“I learned it by watching you!”
“Are you even old enough to get that reference?”
“It’s a meme. Are you too old to know what a meme is?”
Auditions could start tonight. Somebody within driving distance was dying to leave his garage band and become a rock star. Sure, that was how Lex found himself stuck with the current smirking brat, but the arrangement worked just fine when Matt was eighteen and malleable. The mistake had been keeping him past twenty, when he suddenly thought he was a grownup and knew every damn thing. Now twenty-two, he was an insufferable smartass.
The only traveling companion who hadn’t exhausted his tolerance days ago was Piper’s fetus. By Ohio, he’d have traded either of his hands for a mute button for Piper. The first time she passed out in the passenger seat, he melted with relief — until she started chattering in her sleep about turkey sandwiches and roller coasters. Matt carried on as if completely unbothered by the relentless noise, presumably because years of beating things with sticks had destroyed his hearing.
Piper’s sleeptalking almost made Lex miss her endless questions about Gin. The only ones he hadn’t answered were the ones about Perry-Greene as a couple. While they were together, he’d been fiercely protective of Gin’s privacy, which had been under attack since her television debut at age five. Now, he protected his memories, which dissolved like burning celluloid when examined under the unforgiving light of sobriety.
Matt was right to call him a coward. He’d rather run into the woods than see confirmation in Gin’s eyes that the happiest time of his life had been nothing but torment for her because of him.
But why extend the offer if he’d been as much of a nightmare to live with as he suspected? She could have offered this job to a thousand other songwriters and let them fight for the privilege. Hell, she could have written the music herself. The movies layered with her own music had, by far, the greatest resonance as a result of the creator’s hand shaping every sight and sound. A madman may have cut her singing voice from her throat ten years ago, but she could still write a song as well as Lex could.
Possibly better since fear, historically, had not enhanced his creativity. Heartache? Sure. Anger? Even better. Fear? His policy was to avoid it as long as possible, race through the ordeal to get it over with, and then marvel at the gullibility of critics whose harshest criticism for cowardly work was a lateral move rather than the creative leap we’ve come to expect from Lex Perry.
Lateral movement was better than sitting on his ass. Time to face the boogeyman — not Gin, but the image of himself she would reflect back to him.
He stood, stretched his cramped muscles, and turned a weary eye toward the cargo. “To the office, then.”
“Yes!” Matt hopped out of the back seat. The slamming door rocked the Suburban. Mischief glowed on his face as he walked toward the back of the vehicle. “Hey, Gin!”
Every muscle in Lex’s body, from his toes to his scalp, pulled taut. Stiff as a rusty gate, he pivoted toward the toughest audience he had ever faced.
So little had changed, he could easily pretend he’d come home to her after a five-week road trip rather than a five-year split. The same fame-be-damned uniform of leggings and body-swallowing shirt. The same looping, whimsical curls sneaking one by one from the strict confinement of a ponytail to play around her face. The same serious green eyes staring through his skin to assess the state of his soul.
The same towering talent, mind, and heart compressed in a lossless format that required a mere five and half feet of slender vertical storage.
For a moment, he pretended she looked as unmoored and desperate as he felt.
Then Matt stepped between them, slung his arms around her, and swept her feet off the ground.
Whatever her expression had been shifted to thinly veiled horror. “You brought two huggers.”
Dammit, both of them? Before he even had a chance to open his mouth and say the wrong thing, he’d visited a plague of handsy strangers upon her. “They’re not with me.”
Matt returned Gin to her feet and stepped back, hands raised in peace. “Sorry. I know better. I’m just so pleased to finally meet you in person.”
The internet had convinced everybody they were buddies with the famous. “You haven’t met her otherwise.”
“She tweeted at me after my first big-boy concert to tell me I did a good job. She seemed to think you wouldn’t pat me on the head.”
Lex hadn’t always expressed his appreciation for others, believing they should know their continued presence in his sphere signified approval, but since rehab, he’d been working on using his words. He could have been more supportive when Matt was puking his guts out before that show, but it was also his first big-boy concert in a couple of years and his first ever sober, and stopping himself from washing away his anxiety with the plentiful booze backstage had demanded every bit of his attention.
That part of the night was beside the point. His gaze locked with Gin’s. “You were there?”
Her chin ticked up a fraction of an inch. “Big fan.”
If he’d known she was in the house, would the show have been worse because of his fear of fucking up in front of her or better because his music, at least, always gave its best to her?
Either way, he’d have sold his soul to get that message instead of Matt. “I know a guy in the band. I could have gotten you backstage.”
The sly curve of her lips acknowledged the private joke. “If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard that ‘I’m with the band’ line.”
She
could have a nice shopping spree funded by the variations thereof she’d gotten from him, starting with the night they met. She remained stubbornly, ego-crushingly unimpressed by his superstar status throughout their relationship. To woo her, he had to resort to the most desperate measure of all — acting like a fully functional adult.
The performance eventually took its toll.
Matt rocked back on his heels. “And then there was the time she talked me out of smothering you with a pillow.”
She made a production of scratching her chin with three fingers, provoking a twitch of Lex’s lips. Fair enough. No one had ever accused him of being easy to live with.
“And the time she told me it wouldn’t work unless the pillow was wet.”
In response to his raised brow, she took a sudden interest in the atmospheric conditions overhead.
“Lucky for you, having the urge to murder you validated by the person usually responsible for saving your life calmed me right down.” Matt extended his arms. “Since you no longer appear to be in danger of bolting, load the mule.”
Lex slammed a suitcase into the bigmouth’s chest. “It will be good training for your next job.”
“Is this uncharacteristic display of trust my only reward, or can I expect a tip?”
“Here’s one: I suggest not telling your next boss about your murder plans.”
“If I’m lucky, my next boss will inspire kinder sentiments.” Matt winked at Gin and headed for the house.
She watched him go, then turned wide eyes back toward Lex. “I can’t believe he’s that lippy to your face. How did he make it through his audition alive?”
“He kept his mouth shut until he had the job.”
“And he’s so good you didn’t dump him by the side of the road when he finally opened it?”
Matt did his job, but so had every G&F drummer who had come before him. Skill was never the problem, and it wasn’t the reason Matt had lasted four years. “He’s all right.”
Her gaze snared and held his when he tried to pull away. She knew him. She knew there was a vein to mine. There was a time she would have whipped out her pickaxe and gently chipped down to the truth.
But the distance between them now was greater than the two yards of driveway separating their feet. She let his reasons remain encased in stone. “Piper seems great.”
The mere mention of her name set off an echo of her voice inside his skull and a corresponding eye twitch. “She’s a good kid.”
“She mentioned the baby. Congratulations.”
He rubbed his forehead. He’d made all the socially acceptable noises in response to the announcement while mentally tallying all the ways it was going to fuck up his life, starting with scheduling a tour around her due date.
He also didn’t welcome a fresh source of anxiety about mother-baby health. “Her diet is shit. Can you talk her into eating something that doesn’t come out of a greasy paper bag while she’s here?”
Gin’s brows canted. “I can try, but after my last conversion attempt, I’m not optimistic.”
After he quit drinking, when his body began reacting violently to everything he put in his mouth, he wished he’d paid more attention to the food restrictions he’d harassed Gin about. Piecing together a semblance of her clean diet from fragments of his shoddy memory while every quack he saw pitched the fad du jour had been a pain in the ass he could have spared himself if he’d simply listened while he had her. “Even I learned my lesson eventually.”
“Good. It will be easier for her to eat well if you’re not tempting her with nachos.”
That’s not the kind of temptation you succumbed to when I used your body like a platter.
As if she shared his thought, her cheeks flooded with pink, mirroring the fever rushing under his skin. Dammit, if every innocuous reference summoned a spirit from their past, he could kiss any hope of a professional association goodbye. She’d know he was mentally ranking methods of making her moan rather than doing his job.
She looked away. The tension snapped. The recoil slammed into his chest hard enough to make him flinch and slapped the image of her writhing under his mouth from the front of his mind.
It settled off to the side to await a better time.
The Suburban held the new recipient of Gin’s attention. “Did you bring Juliet?”
The serrated edge to her voice betrayed that she felt the strain, too — and didn’t want to talk about it. Her discomfort satisfied a twisted need in him. Just the possibility that all those polite emails they’d exchanged had been fraught with things carefully left unsaid in both directions calmed the worst of his jitters.
Being on edge seemed less bad when the company was equally unbalanced.
He slid the most precious cargo out of the lineup and handed over the battered guitar case. “You two have a lot of catching up to do.”
Gin held the case to her chest as if embracing an old friend. “Girl, I have so much to tell you.”
She hadn’t been that happy to see him. That was all it took to make him want to set his favorite guitar on fire.
If nothing else, his shrink would have plenty to work with at their next session.
The stiff set of Gin’s shoulders eased now that she held a barrier between them. “If you need to stretch your legs, you can walk a fair way around the lake, or there’s a boathouse with a pretty view and a lot of quiet. Dinner will be ready in an hour, but it won’t go anywhere if you need longer.”
His mission to convince her he’d changed for the better was off to a poor start if she could still tell by looking at him he needed space. If he was honest, though, one more hyper word piercing his eardrums right now would make his temper snap.
Gin’s voice didn’t have a hyper setting. The scar on her throat made her voice fog, giving her words soft, misty edges that soothed even the most ragged nerves.
An invitation to join him perched on the tip of his tongue, but he was too raw, too close to blurting something rash. This situation called for a performance he was unprepared to give without one more last-minute rehearsal. He needed to be cautious for once in his life, proceed delicately, get his footing right.
His future depended on it. “I should look at the movie first.”
“I won’t throw you out into the cold tonight if you say no. I’d rather feed you and have you in a better mood before you pass judgment.”
“I already know it’s brilliant.”
Her lips slanted. “That would be a lot of pressure if it wasn’t too late to make any drastic changes.”
“Hooray for the point of no return.” He knew the relief that came with handing over every imperfect project. Once an album left his hands, his work was done, for better or worse. All agonizing after that point was purely recreational.
But his work here hadn’t yet begun. Anticipatory agonizing was best done in solitude so his fear of being unable to deliver didn’t infect others, starting with the woman who’d decide if he stayed or went. “I think I will take that walk.”
She half turned to head back to the house but hesitated before taking a step. “I’m glad you came, Lex.”
Steel strings wrapped around his throat, lungs, and heart, tightening out of tune. “I can’t promise anything until I see the movie.”
Don’t expect too much from me. We both know my history of letting you down.
She acknowledged the warning with a slight tip of her head. “Promises turn honest mistakes into lies.”
He took another punch to the chest when she quoted his lyrics back to him. She listened to his music. She went to his shows. Always listening. Always there.
Even if she wasn’t his anymore.
She lifted one plaid-covered shoulder. “Do it or don’t. I’m glad just the same.”
She walked away from him, again. She looked slender enough to blow away if a breeze caught the excess fabric of her shirt, but eyes didn’t see the strength that kept her grounded. Gin made her own gravity. She was the axis around which world
s of her creation, both real and imagined, whirled.
Lex knew her pull better than anyone. The closer he got to her, the less he wavered.
As soon as the house hid her from view, his hands began to shake.
He stuffed his fingers in the front pockets of his jeans to confine the tremors. He strode in the opposite direction, toward the glint of water beckoning through the trees.
Old snow decorated the edge of the woods like brittle lace. He stepped under the evergreen canopy, and the temperature dropped enough to make him miss the sun. The song he’d been flirting with earlier cozied up to him for warmth.
The story needed a hero. Or a villain. A man enchanted from afar who came to claim the beauty that already belonged to him in his mind, only to find he was unwelcome, unwanted, unworthy and would never make it out alive.
If it were a true story, the man would set what he loved on fire rather than admit his shortcomings. A match here, a match there, just around the perimeter to erase the evidence of the damage his presence caused. Blind to the blaze encircling him until it crawled into his eyes.
If it were a true story, the man would remain mute as the flames he struck destroyed his whole world, knowing he had no defense to utter. The world had suffered him in silence; he could only strive to display as much dignity in the end.
No, not the end yet. This song seemed to want a third verse. Not a happy ending — he’d never be able to sing that with a straight face — but at least a clearing of the poisoned air, a resolution that made sense only if it followed a bridge screaming confessions and regret.
If it were a true story, it would take the longest fucking bridge in the history of music to catalog his wrongdoing.
The trees spat him onto a gravel beach. The water rested against the shore, unsympathetic and too lethargic with deep-set cold to rise and extinguish his tortured metaphor.
If Gin’s movie called for a song about an anthropomorphized wilderness bent on vengeance against man, he had a decent start. If she’d stuck with the human tragedy she portrayed so masterfully rather than making a killer-tree movie, there was always the next Gone & Forgotten album.
