by Ren Benton
“Just make sure that guy shows up.”
His lack of faith in Lex pissed her off more than his conviction she’d be his downfall. “He’ll be there, and he’ll be in like-new condition.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it.” Jim disconnected without a farewell.
She reached across the desk to return the phone to Ethan. “You are a lousy gatekeeper.”
“My job is facilitating access to you, not enabling your hermit tendencies. You’re just spoiled after your friend Lex went full Cerberus for you.”
That example made a poor case for romantic interest. “My friend Ethan would have done the same yesterday.”
“Yeah, he would.” He gave her a soft-eyed smile. “But now we’re on the clock, so you talk when and to whom I say.”
“At the next company meeting, I’m making a motion to change your job description.”
“I’m making a motion to rename the company Bayou Pussy Voodoo.”
“Good luck sneaking that past the purity police at the trademark office.”
He deflated with a little whine. “You never let me have any fun.”
“We’re on the clock, so you have fun when and as rarely as I say.”
He looked her dead in the eyes as he rolled his chair toward the window. “It’s getting stuffy in here. This calls for fresh air.”
Since she’d never followed through on ordering a space heater, Ethan won that round.
Lex stalked past Ethan — who had come down to the dungeon to release the prisoner for his nightly feeding — through the dining room, and into the kitchen. He scowled at Gin across the island, where another meal prepared without any help from him awaited serving. “I’m cooking dinner tomorrow.”
“Good. Make enough for leftovers so you get credit for a lunch, too.” She bumped the faucet handle with her elbow and washed her hands. “I don’t want you wasting too much of the next nine days slaving over a hot stove.”
His eyes narrowed at her pointed mention of information she hadn’t possessed a few hours earlier. “Who leaked?”
“Your manager called this morning to make sure I have you home before curfew.”
He’d stay until he finished her music, Jim be damned. “They can always rehearse without me.”
“But you’d be so grouchy when you showed up on opening night and found out they rehearsed it wrong.” She pushed a platter of pork chops in plum sauce toward him. “There will be more survivors if you’re there to make sure everything lives up to your expectations.”
Jim had been wise to delegate the task of reasoning with him to her — everything sounded sensible when Gin said it. He wouldn’t necessarily be sensible, but he’d think long and hard before disappointing her. “Doesn’t it bother you that everyone is enlisting you to be my handler?”
She carried the salad toward the dining room, leaving him to follow with the platter. “I can deal with Matt and Jim, but if Patty calls me, you are all the way on your own.”
7
“Do you have an official statement about the casting controversy?”
If Gin had to listen to one more question about a nonexistent love triangle this morning, her response would have to come with a paper bag for her PR executive to breathe into. Given a shortage of available paper bags, she tried to divert the inquiry before it formed. “I know Olivia’s a Kiwi, but she brought her own dialect coach and was speaking like a native Louisianan by the time filming began.”
An uncertain laugh dribbled from the phone. “We’ll come back to Olivia in a second, but I meant casting Tambara Zakari, a Nigerian actress, as her sister.”
Oh, that casting controversy. She should make a spreadsheet to keep track of them as they were invented. “Tambara was the first actor cast because she read the hell out of the part, which is always my primary concern as a director.” Ability to afford the talent was a self-solving problem — most possibilities eliminated themselves before that concern ever crossed Gin’s desk. “After that, I did have a brief, beautiful dream about Taraji P. Henson for the lead role, but she’s a busy woman.”
“So you had to settle for Olivia White-Church.”
“Yeah, that was a devastating setback.” Irony was easily misrepresented in print, but what the hell. She and Olivia were playing antagonists in real life, right? “When you see the movie, you won’t question the relationship between these two women. Regardless of how they came to be sisters, there’s no mistaking their dynamic for anything else.”
“Your movies have been lauded for portraying the most true-to-life siblings on film, but aren’t you worried the audience will get hung up on the racial question?”
It sounded like somebody already was hung up on it. “After all these years, I would hope the audience for a GemGam film understands we’re about the journey, not the skin tone of the travelers. A moviegoer troubled by that issue might be less distracted watching whatever’s playing in the neighboring theater.”
Ethan pounced the instant she extricated herself from the call. “Next time, I think you should be less ambiguous about not wanting idiots and racists to buy tickets for our movie.”
Gin tapped a finger to her temple. “Good thinking. Everyone will buy two tickets to prove how smart and not-racist they are.”
Ethan wheezed, nary a paper bag in reach.
Served him right for all the times he’d ganged up on her with Lex. “It’s your fault for not giving reporters a list of questions that won’t piss me off.”
“You’re not that famous.”
“That’s hurtful.” She’d never aspired to the level of celebrity where being an asshole was expected and preemptively forgiven, but Simone would be beside herself with vicarious ecstasy at such a peak.
Gin vicariously seized the excuse of wounded pride to take a break. “I need to ice that burn in peace, so I’ll make the post office run today.”
“There should be a package for you. Take Lex.”
“Unless you found another elk online, I’m sure I can carry it myself.” She paused at the door. “You didn’t buy an elk, did you?”
His flattened stare suggested offense that she would dare deride his taste in home décor. “You’d find a way to move an elk, stuffed or alive, by yourself. He wanted some groceries, that’s all.”
She made a detour toward the studio. If her composer was determined to put in overtime as a chef, it was only fair she assume the mantle of personal shopper and get a list from him.
She dropped into the empty chair to await Lex’s attention rather than attempt to compete with the notebook being bludgeoned into submission by his ferocious glare.
Olivia refused to settle for second place in anyone’s priorities. She’d escalate from talking to touching to climbing onto his lap and revel in his irritation as long as she won the battle for recognition — and Lex would be irritated. He’d never loved anything, including alcohol, more than music. Coming between him and his beloved was begging to be chest-kicked into a pit, 300 style.
Understanding might not be such an asset in a relationship when one party was a habitual button pusher.
A guitar thrust toward her broke her reverie. Lex grumbled, “Play anything.”
She made Juliet comfortable. After a couple of exploratory chords that earned her an impatient scowl from her audience, she settled into an acoustic rendition of “Sleep Apnea” by Chevelle.
Lex propped his head on one hand and went back to punishing his notebook with unfriendly looks. When she moved into the second verse, he put pencil to paper.
It wasn’t the song that inspired him. “The Wheels on the Bus” would have had the same liberating effect. Gin often did the same thing — immersed herself in the work of others until her mind wandered and her own creativity stepped in to entertain her.
Too bad the method hadn’t worked with her overdue screenplay.
She segued into “Dream Police” by Cheap Trick. She couldn’t sit here all day boring him, but she could spare twenty minutes to support
her movie’s composer. She’d let him borrow her iPod while his phone recharged so he could have music on demand.
Come to think of it, she hadn’t seen his phone lately. He hadn’t left the house with it, but there was little hope of recovery if he’d banished it to the Void of No Return.
The pencil stilled. Narrowed eyes slanted toward her. “What is that?”
Her fingers stalled on the strings, silencing the filler she’d been playing while she tried to think of another sleep-related song she knew well enough to reproduce. “Something I was fooling around with when I thought I’d have to do the music myself.”
“Lyrics?”
A huff of laughter escaped. If there were any, they were corked below her scar. She hadn’t thought in lyrics in a decade. “No.”
“Play it again.”
“You don’t have to use it.”
His eyebrows became belligerent. “Play.”
“It doesn’t fit anywhere.”
The end of his pencil tapped on his notebook. He asked, in a dangerously mild tone, “Who did you entrust with the music for this film?”
Her thighs reflexively squeezed together, cautioning against the impulse to test the sincerity of his menace because now that she gave some thought to the eventual outcome of pushing his buttons, irritating him seemed like a good way to get full-body shushed.
When she didn’t answer, his chair swiveled toward her. He rested his elbows on his knees, the pose reminiscent of a big cat spring-loaded to pounce. “Who, Gin?”
Pull rank. Tell him you’re the boss and your wish is his command.
And that was the problem. Molesting the talent remained out of bounds, even if she goaded him into making first contact.
She took a deep, head-clearing breath. “You.”
His good girl nod loosened the bond between her knees. “Let me worry about whether it’s any good and whether there’s a place for it and play the damn song.”
It was half a song, if that, but she played what she had while he returned to his notebook. When he wiggled his pencil at her, she played it again while he filled in his notations, and again while he listened with his eyes closed and his brows pinched together.
When the last note faded, he said, “You’re right. That doesn’t fit in the movie.”
Six feet four inches of sex appeal didn’t fly across the room when she gave his chair an invigorating kick.
He grinned unrepentantly. “I know what to do with it, though. Gimme my girl before those butter-soft fingers bleed all over her.”
She relinquished the guitar. She hadn’t touched one since asking him to do the job, and it showed in her red, stinging fingertips. “Think of my lack of calluses as proof of how much I wanted you to make the music.”
“You used to play for fun.”
“I used to play because it was fun for you. Otherwise, I’ve never touched an instrument for any purpose other than making or saving money.”
“You’ve played for charity.”
“Making money for someone else.” When she said she had mercenary intentions, she meant it, dammit. “This may come as a surprise to you, but most people need motivation to pursue music further than singing in the shower because it’s hard for everyone who’s not Lex Perry.”
He tipped his head toward the stack of battered notebooks and spent pencils he’d fought to the death. “It’s not easy for that hack, either.”
He struggled to achieve perfection while millions struggled to come up with an idea. His skill and weapons provided a tactical advantage, but his foe was bigger and meaner to scale. “You persevere because your motivation is true love. The first thing you’re going to do when you ‘retire’ is build the studio of your dreams so you can screw around in peace with all the kinky, off-brand noise you’ve ever wanted to make. Have I mentioned this place is for sale?”
“It has its charms, but the studio of my dreams has a maximum occupancy of two. All this empty space feels wasted, and I am not lamenting.”
“If you say so.” He’d moved on to preemptively blocking jabs about Matt. This called for a strategy adjustment. “I’m going to Grayson to show off my not-black eyes in the hope word gets back to the police chief. Ethan said you needed groceries.”
“Did he?” His skepticism was probably more related to her apparent dropping of Matt’s campaign than Ethan’s announcement. “I’ll have to ride along. I like to inspect the goods myself.”
He couldn’t possibly be fussier about food selection than she was, but he must be getting restless. It would be inhumane to keep him shackled down here until Matt and Piper returned to transport the prisoner to his next sentence. “Then I guess the warden will have to grant you a day pass.”
It was news to Lex that he needed groceries. He hadn’t thought far enough ahead to make dinner plans, trusting the fridge and freezer to yield inspiration and materials. He certainly hadn’t discussed the nonexistent menu with Ethan, but since neither of them wanted Gin going anywhere unchaperoned, he’d better act like he had a plan at the grocery store.
She expressed doubt before they even got halfway to Grayson. “When did you get so handy in the kitchen?”
So much for his hope she’d be too focused on driving to interrogate him. “Shortly after I realized how touchy my health is in response to food and the virtues of knowing exactly what I’m putting in my mouth. Say ‘I told you so’ and get it over with.”
The sun flickered against her skin like a strobe light as she steered the SUV along the tree-lined road. “I’m happy if it helps to an appreciable degree. No gloating required.”
“You’re a better person than I am.”
“Nope. That first night, I thought about making croissants and getting Matt and Piper to eat them in front of you.”
“Real croissants? Not the kind out of a tube?” He hadn’t known making them from scratch was even possible. His favorite bakery, which was now as off limits as a liquor store, used to order them from a factory. Naturally, for Gin, it was no big deal to whip up a batch of spite croissants. “Hell, do it. Liv will eat them.”
She couldn’t protect all of them at once. A small, weak one would get separated from the herd, easy prey for an opportunistic predator like himself. “God, I’m drooling like I’m getting my teeth cleaned.”
“You know, it’s not vengeance if you enjoy it.”
“Liv will hit below the belt in the fight,” he assured her with more enthusiasm than such a certainty would ordinarily warrant, “and stuffing my face with the ones I escape with will clog me up with gluten for weeks. I’ll bitterly regret every moment of it, I swear.”
“I’m starting to think you’ll suffer more if I leave you in suspense. Was it easy to give up food compared to detox?”
Laughter barked out of him. “You’d think, right? Except when you’re practically having DTs because of sugar withdrawal and your inner addict is arguing nobody ever died of a pie overdose. The motivational divide between avoiding death by booze and avoiding achy elbows by sugar makes it easy to fall off the food wagon.”
The forest abruptly gave way to human settlement. Gin turned onto a thicker artery leading to the heart of it. “Less of a penalty for a lapse, though.”
“Leniency doesn’t make it easier to behave. Painful consequences are much more effective on me than gentle reminders of immeasurably tiny, long-term health benefits.”
He would have kept drinking if his health had been the only casualty. Associating the breath-stealing agony of losing Gin with his alcohol abuse kept him away from the bottle. Booze took the woman he loved away from him, and he hated it like he would a murderer.
Hate kept him sober.
His dietary compliance was less emotionally fraught. “Mostly what stops me from shoveling doughnuts into my mouth is never wanting to repeat the withdrawal period. It was ugly.”
“Yet you wanted me to inflict it on Piper right before sending her off to a family reunion.”
“The important thing is, sh
e’d have been over the worst of it by the time I had to deal with her again.”
Her voice wobbled with amusement. “Okay, I may be a little bit better as a person.”
“I forgive you for doubting me. Not everybody can be right all the time like I am.”
He’d been recklessly stupid not to consider how rough the adjustment would be on a baby, but that was why he’d handed Piper’s care over to Gin. While he saw only his desired result — in this case, better health for mom — Gin broke down every step of the work involved in achieving it, accounted for every roadblock along the way, and devised a realistic timeline for completion. Nothing could ever happen fast enough to suit him, but she would eventually turn dreams into reality.
He’d love to get an estimate on his dreams about her, but his brain screamed, Too soon! He’d always rushed her, frantic to insinuate himself too deeply into her life to be brushed off. He’d grown on her, but the roots had been thin and brittle, disintegrating when the exposed part of him finally showed its rot to her.
He was healthier now but no less greedy and invasive. He’d taught her a harsh lesson about giving him a home once before. She’d be more cautious this time about letting him advance, if she allowed him in at all.
Nature demanded he tell her everything, expose the pulsing underbelly of want and fear, give her all the honesty she needed to be comfortable with her choices, and trust her not to gut him and leave him to die alone.
Experience had a less optimistic take. The truth already fucked this up once, loser. She has to love you at least a little bit before she can stomach the real you, and that’s not gonna happen without playing her your carefully curated greatest hits collection on repeat until she forgets all your amateur fuckups. Play her collaborator. Play her friend. The second you roll out feelings she doesn’t share, it’s Game Over.
He never had figured out which side was supposed to win a scuffle between feeling and reason, but when his head was trying to protect his heart, the victor seemed obvious. Ultimately, existing in perpetual uncertainty was less painful than knowing for sure she didn’t want him.
