“Oh, and you’re the best person to make that assessment, are you? Who asked you to be his judge and jury?”
He stood up and laid his hands on her shoulders. “Kittycat, just think for a moment. I know you’re angry at me, and that’s understandable. But how do you feel about him right now? Do you feel he acquitted himself well?”
She evaded that question. “Dad, I’m not the one making him run the gauntlet. This is your game, and he doesn’t know how to play it.”
“It’s not that hard. All he has to do is stand up for what’s important to him. Which ought to include you,” he added with a shrewd look, and she finally retreated, unhappy, having nothing to say to this.
When Tanner returned ninety minutes later, red-faced and drenched in sweat, she let him find her in his own time. Which he did, after taking what she thought was an unnecessarily long shower.
“Hey,” he said, dropping down next to her on the sofa. “I’m sorry I bailed.”
She leaned against him, smelling his herbal shampoo, feeling the heat radiating from his skin after his run. She felt so secure when they were together like this. But it wasn’t that simple. “I wish you wouldn’t leave in the middle of conversations,” she said, as gently as she could.
He shifted uncomfortably. “When things get intense it’s like I shut down, and I just want to be somewhere else.”
“Well, if you need time to cool down or collect your thoughts, I can understand that. Just let me know that’s what you’re doing, okay?” She didn’t want to say, I worry that you’ll never come back.
“I’m not used to this family stuff,” he muttered, and her heart contracted.
“It’ll get easier. The thing about Dad is that he likes to test people. He did it to me, last year, when he was away. He wanted to see how I’d manage on my own, without his help or advice.”
In his confusion he looked much younger. “I don’t get it. What does he expect from me?”
She couldn’t say that her father expected the worst, and that he was doing his best to bring it about. “Dad is used to debate,” she said instead. “He doesn’t understand that not everyone argues the way he does. And he’s, you know, my dad. It’s his job to be protective of me.”
“Okay,” said Tan after some thought. “That makes sense. At least now I know where I stand.”
“But I don’t,” she said. “Tan—I get the feeling sometimes that you don’t want to be with me.”
“What? That’s ridiculous! I just don’t see the rush to get married.”
That wasn’t encouraging. Maybe she’d made a mistake in thinking that Tan would want the same things she wanted. She’d just made the decision and swept him along with her, when it was something they should have decided together. “I guess I shouldn’t have assumed you felt the same way I do,” she said slowly. “I never even gave you a chance to propose.”
“Does that matter so much?”
He sounded like he genuinely wanted to know, but she couldn’t very well say yes now. And it wasn’t the main issue. “As far as rushing goes,” she said, “I’m thinking about when Rose is born. I’ll still be a minor. If anything goes wrong at the hospital, you won’t necessarily get to stay with me unless you’re my legal husband. And if any decisions have to be made…” She didn’t want to even put the idea out in the universe, but she couldn’t take anything for granted, not after realizing what it could mean that her own daughter hadn’t known her when they met across time. “If it’s a matter of having to choose whether to save me or the baby, or if I end up a vegetable and need someone to make the decision to pull the plug, you won’t have a say in it as my boyfriend. You’ll need to be my husband.”
He gathered her to him. “Don’t talk like that. Nothing like that is going to happen.”
“You don’t know that.” She pushed back from him so she could look into his face. “Having a baby isn’t a hundred percent safe, Tan. Things happen, even now. And Rose is kind of a wild card. I want to know that you will be legally, formally on record as her father and my husband. I don’t want anyone else but you to have the right to say what happens to us if there’s an emergency, not even Dad.”
“Joy, stop. Just stop.” He tightened his arms around her and buried his face in her hair. “I can’t stand the thought of anything happening to you. It won’t happen. I won’t let it happen.”
That’s all very well, she thought, but you still haven’t said you’ll marry me.
Chapter 14
Maybe it was true, William thought, what they said about there being no such thing as bad publicity. Right after their forced apology for “She Says Yes”—a statement carefully worded to avoid directing attention at any particular girl—the whispering and staring started. Anyone who hadn’t heard about the band before knew all about them now.
Dr. Aysgarth had ordered the band to report the bootleg video of their performance on YouTube as copyright infringement, but as soon as it was removed, someone else would post it again. After only two public performances, “She Says Yes” had taken on a life of its own.
And Aerosol Cheese was suddenly the hot thing on campus.
Swarms of students surrounded them in the halls. William was actually getting autograph requests, and looking across the classroom at the beginning of history he saw that Blake and Jeremiah were too; Mrs. Minish had to call the class to order more forcefully than usual and order all the fans to their seats.
And it didn’t even settle down when the news got out that Eric had left Aerosol Cheese and started his own band, Monster of the Week. Droves of students still wanted to hang out, or ask about the band, or get autographs. The number of their Facebook fans tripled, then tripled again. The same thing happened with their Twitter followers. Fan sites were already cropping up. Downloads from their official site were bringing in impressive amounts of money.
“It’s not just the kids on campus, either,” said Jeremiah. “Last time Tasha and I were at the movies, these girls from Murphy High came up wanting me to sign their boobs.”
“What did you do?” asked William, curious.
He grinned. “Well, we don’t want to disappoint our fan base, do we?”
“I’ll bet Tasha wasn’t too happy about that.”
“She’s got nothing to worry about. Hers are nicer.”
“The fans really do seem to be coming out of the woodwork,” said Blake. “I’ve even got a couple of girls trying to recruit me to the other team. But mostly everyone just wants to gush about the band and ask when our next gig is, when we’ll be doing more new material, all that.”
“It’s kind of cool,” William admitted. “Now every day when I get to theory class, there’s a sophomore girl who brings me a latte.” More important, they suddenly had lots of guys interested in auditioning as drummer, so they wouldn’t have to rely on prerecorded tracks much longer. When Mo announced that AC would be opening the solstice festival, it just seemed like one more awesome development in a month already full of them.
The prestige of being the opening act cemented their popularity on campus. Some of the Cheeseheads had followed Eric to his new band, but so far there wasn’t any rivalry between the bands. Monster of the Week rehearsed off campus, and Eric didn’t confide in his former bandmates about what he was up to. “It’s not that I’m trying to blow you guys off,” he said once. “It’s just that, you know, I’ve got more important stuff to do now than play in the kiddie pool with you.”
“Always the sweet talker,” said Blake. “How will we ever get along without him?”
As it turned out, they got along better than before. Tanner joined the group.
William had secretly had doubts about what he’d be like to work with; Aerosol Cheese didn’t need another diva, especially with their most important gig of the year coming up, and as a celebrity Tanner might be used to having everything his way. Since Jeremiah had stepped into the role of lead guitar, leaving Tanner the less glamorous bass position, William braced himself for some temper
tantrums.
But they never materialized. Tanner was almost plug-and-play: on the quiet side at first, but serious about his playing, receptive to suggestions. And his musical instincts were dead on—whenever he offered input, it always strengthened their work. As he got more comfortable with the guys, he began to relax and join in the jokey camaraderie. In less than two weeks it was as if he’d always been part of the group.
The best part, though, as far as William was concerned, was that the gigs multiplied. Performing live always gave him an incredible high, and now Aerosol Cheese was so much in demand that they sometimes ended up playing four gigs a week. Mo cut them off at that, not wanting their academic life to suffer. But that still meant four nights a week feeling the kick of that excitement, that thrill that never got old.
It was like no other feeling on earth. And the better the audience, the greater the thrill. These days the audiences were getting bigger all the time—but also more responsive. He could feel them with him as he played, feel them following the path he was creating with melody and the rush of delight when he resolved a phrase. If he was having a good night and produced some strong solo playing or improv, they went wild.
And Sheila was cheering him every step of the way—something else that he was happy to have to get used to. He found himself whistling “She Sheila” so often that he finally gave in and wrote a new arrangement of it for AC to record. And that, too, became a hit.
One afternoon she dropped by the chorus room on her way to practice. William had promised to walk over to the studio with her, but he was running late working on a project for Joy.
“It’s music for her to think about for the wedding,” he explained. “I’ve just finished a new arrangement of an old ballad for their first dance, and I wanted to get it done before she comes by this afternoon. Want to hear it?”
“Sure.” She sat down on a riser and folded her long legs up beside her as he cued up his arrangement of “Barbara Allen” on his laptop. Sheila didn’t speak while the song played, but she made a face as the last verse ended. “Why did it have to end with them dying and stuff growing out of their graves? That’s so morbid.”
“A lot of folk ballads end tragically.”
“Why would they want to play it at their wedding, then?”
“They may not. I just thought it would be a nice shout-out to the night they met, is all. The rose, the lovers, and the grave.” And also a tip of the hat to the song that had reunited them—the faux folk ballad that he and Joy had written to send a message to Tanner when Melisande had been keeping them apart.
Sheila clearly wasn’t convinced, though. “You should really find something that’s less of a downer. Tons of songs have roses in them. Even something cheesy like ‘Kiss From a Rose’ would be better—at least no one dies in it.”
“That could work,” he said, pleased with the idea. It was actually in waltz time, now that he thought about it, and that would be perfect for their first dance. “But the lyrics never made much sense to me.”
“For god’s sake, it’s just a pop song,” she said, rolling her eyes. “It’s not like they’re supposed to actually mean anything.”
He was a little offended by this. Pop songs were poetry, or at least the good ones were—and not the highbrow stuff like in literary magazines, but poetry for everyone.
But he didn’t say so. He had learned that Sheila was often quarrelsome like this before dance practice. He usually tried to save touchy subjects for afterward, when she was more relaxed and agreeable, but he hadn’t expected something as trivial as music selection to get her riled up.
“What was that you said about the night they met?” she asked now. “What does that have to do with roses and graves?”
“You know,” he said, surprised that she had to ask. “You dared her to take a rose from Josiah Cavanaugh’s grave, and Tanner found her there.”
“You’re kidding me. That’s when they met?”
She sounded upset. Puzzled, he said, “Yeah, what’s wrong?”
“The only reason she was there is because of me,” she said blankly. “So they might never have gotten together if it hadn’t been for me.”
“I guess you could say that. Why are you mad about it? It’s a cute story. It would actually make a nice toast at their wedding.”
“Seriously? What is there to celebrate about it? It screwed up both their lives. Joy’s pregnant and a dropout, and Tristan’s thrown away a spectacular career. If it wasn’t for me they wouldn’t be stuck in a white-trash nightmare.”
“They’re really happy together, Sheila. Anyway, I hardly think that modeling is such a meaningful career to give up.”
“But modeling was just a start. Once he had a following, he could have launched his own clothing line, or fragrance, or home decor—I mean, look at all the ways supermodels are branding themselves these days. He could have starred in a reality TV show, gone into the movies, started a music career—anything! And now, instead of having all these options, he has nothing.”
“I wouldn’t call Joy nothing,” he objected, but she wasn’t listening.
“And to think that all this time I blamed the two of them for Melisande dropping her mentoring project. I was so mad at Joy for driving Melisande away, and it was me who made it all happen.” She shook her head in disgust. “God, I feel like the biggest moron now.”
“Don’t be too hard on yourself,” came an unexpected voice, and Sheila’s head whipped around. Joy stood in the doorway, looking as uncomfortable to be there as William now felt to see her. He wondered how much she had heard.
She didn’t keep them in suspense in that regard. “You didn’t make me and Tanner fall in love, Sheila,” she said. “And you may not believe it, but we’re actually excited about the baby. So there’s no need to beat yourself up about it.”
To her credit, Sheila looked shamefaced. “I didn’t mean for you to hear all that.”
“I just came to pick up some music from William. If you’ve got it, I’ll get out of your hair now.”
“Yeah, it’s right here.” He retrieved the disc from the laptop’s drive and took it over to her. She looked a little subdued, maybe, but she wasn’t flipping out, so he figured she must not have taken Sheila’s remarks too seriously. He chucked her under the chin. “You’re looking great, little momma. Think you’ll be dropping that tricycle motor soon?”
“Apparently it’s not up to me.” She smiled as he crouched down to put his ear to her belly. “If you’re hoping to hear the ocean, I think you’re out of luck.”
“Nah, just checking to see if you’re ripe. It’s like cantaloupes, right? If I thunk you and you sound hollow—”
“William, stop goofing off,” Sheila ordered. “So how is everything? Are you having any weird symptoms? My older sister’s pregnant, and you wouldn’t believe some of the weird cravings she’s had.”
“No, there’s nothing really interesting to report,” said Joy.
“Don’t be silly, the whole thing is super exciting. Have you chosen a hospital? And are they going to induce if you don’t go into labor soon? If you want a girl friend to confide in, I swear I usually don’t go flapping my gums like that. I can be as silent as the grave.”
“Now who’s being morbid?” William couldn’t resist saying, and she rolled her eyes at him again.
Joy just said, “Thanks for the disc, William. I’ll let you know what songs Tan and I decide on. See y’all later.”
When she was safely out of hearing range, Sheila grimaced. “Eesh. Awk-ward. And I was hoping she’d finally agree to get together for a shopping trip, too.” She sighed and resumed her place on the risers. “I guess that’s not going to happen.”
“The signs aren’t favorable,” he agreed.
“The thing is, though, she’s got to face the fact that she doesn’t have a lot to offer Tristan. She’s going to have to work hard to keep him. I know, she’s your friend and all,” she added, noticing the look he was giving her, “but you have
to admit she’s not in his class.”
“What do you mean?”
“Be honest, William. When you see the two of them together, don’t they look all wrong? She’s got a nice personality, but she just doesn’t belong with a knockout like him.”
She seemed completely serious. William said, “You really think looks are that important? I don’t know what you’re doing with me, then. By those standards I’m not in your class.”
“You are so in my class, doofus. And I’m not saying that ugly people don’t have anything to offer. But Joy’s not Eleanor Roosevelt or someone who’s going to change the world.” She took his silence, correctly, as disapproval. “Look, I’m just saying, people are going to say he married down.”
“And you agree,” he said, more shortly than he’d meant to.
“Well, yeah, I do. Now don’t glower at me like that! I’m not saying he’s got it easy. In another ten or fifteen years he’ll probably lose his looks and get all puffy like Alec Baldwin, and he’ll get dropped like a bad habit. That’s why it’s so important for him to grab his chance now to have a career.”
He was trying to follow her logic, but it wasn’t easy—especially when he wanted to jump to Joy and Tanner’s defense. “So beautiful people are better than everyone else right up until they’re not beautiful anymore. And then they’re just, what, trash to be pushed aside by the new beautiful crowd? And you’re okay with that?”
She shrugged. “Okay or not, it’s the way the world works. We’ve got an edge, William. We have to use it while it lasts, to get the most out of our lives. Or else someone else will get what we could have had.”
He couldn’t believe how matter-of-fact she was. “Sheila, has anyone ever told you that you have a really ruthless outlook?”
“Ruthless wins,” she said simply. “Anyone who wants to get ahead can’t afford to be anything else.”
“But…” He tried to find words to explain his unease. “What if I’d rather get ahead in a way I feel good about? What if I don’t want to be ruthless?”
Casting Shadows (The Ash Grove Chronicles) Page 16
