by Hazel Jacobs
But she was probably bluffing. Sersha would put it at five to one that she’d been bluffing.
She returns to the side of the stage. Mikayla is still there. Outside, Sersha can see the crowd doing a Mexican wave while Logan sings huskily into the microphone about a boy from New Jersey who picks up a guitar and falls in love. Knowing their history, Sersha can guess that the song is about his brother. She wonders if he’d had any input in the song, but listening to the lyrics for a moment is enough to tell her that it was all Tommy. Now that she’s gotten to know the band, she realizes that many of the songs are about them. Either in a round-about way or in a direct, ‘this is the story of my life,’ way. Tommy seems to write about whatever is occupying him.
She can see him there on stage, his eyes are closed, his body rocking as he plucks out the bassline. Beside him, Dash is grinning like a loon, enjoying the lyrics as much as he appears to be enjoying playing. Slate’s bashing away at the drums behind them all.
How many of Black Lilith’s love songs are about Danielle? How many of their breakup songs? Will Tommy write a song about Sersha when she moves on, and their work together is done?
Mikayla spins around when Sersha taps her on the shoulder.
“There you are,” she exclaims. She needs to shout so that Sersha will hear her over the music. “Where did you disappear to?”
“Danielle snatched me,” Sersha shouts back, deciding right then and there to adopt a policy of full disclosure. Mikayla’s eyes widen as Sersha moves in so that she doesn’t have to raise her voice. “You will not believe the shit I just had to endure.”
Mikayla was suitably horrified when she heard that Danielle threatened Sersha.
“Unprofessional isn’t strong enough,” she muttered while the band came off the stage at intermission. “Batshit crazy might be a better word for it.”
She hadn’t told the band about it, at least, not then. Sersha would have been a fool if she’d thought that Logan wouldn’t hear about it later.
There’s a week between the band’s performance in Central Park and the next leg of the tour in DC. Sersha had wondered why they put so much time between the dates. Usually, bands do back-to-back shows, hurrying between cities in an effort to get through them faster. But Mikayla had explained that the band liked to breathe between performances.
“Bass Note understands… and it makes the crowds feel special,” she’d said.
So they have a week to relax after the show in Central Park. Sersha had noticed a couple of lovely young women lounging in the green room tent between sets. Two of them appeared to be there for Dash, which had made Sersha raise her eyebrows at him, while another had hung off of Slate’s arm. Sersha had been gratified to see that Tommy had forgone the company of a groupie that night. She couldn’t tell if it was because he was still hung up over Danielle, or if he’d gotten to the point where he didn’t need to bury himself in some strange woman in the hopes of forgetting her. Sersha hoped that it was the latter.
After the gig at Central Park, Sersha takes the train home, curls up under her blankets, and tries not to imagine what it would feel like to be kissed by Tommy. She keeps picturing the kiss he’d shared with Danielle, substituting herself in the place of the other woman, until finally her mind begins conjuring images of what could happen after a kiss like that.
She imagines Tommy holding her flush against his chest, kissing down the nape of her neck. She imagines him taking his time and making her feel appreciated because that seems to be his style. And even though Sersha’s always had a bit of a wild side she thinks that getting taken care of would be nice.
Or maybe he’d thrust her against the tree, devouring her mouth, pawing at her clothes—yes, her body responds to that image much better, even though it’s an unlikely one.
No matter how hard she tries, those images won’t leave her be. Eventually, the tension and want coils in her body until she dips a hand between her legs and allows herself to think as much as she likes. When her body is still shaking with her climax, it’s Tommy’s name on her lips.
On Monday, she goes to the studio as usual, expecting to find Tommy ready for their writing session. But he’s not there.
“Family emergency,” Mikayla says when Sersha enters the room to find the rest of the band getting set up. “He’s had to go home.”
“I hope everything’s okay?” Sersha asks.
Mikayla glances at Logan, who’s muttering and drawing all over some sheet music with his back to them. Slate and Dash are in the booth arguing about who would win in a fight—Billy Kaplan or Kate Bishop. When Sersha takes a seat next to her, Mikayla leans over so that Sersha is the only one who can hear her speak.
“I talked to him after the show,” she tells Sersha. “He said that he and Danielle talked, and that she kissed him. He says that he needs some time away.”
“Away?” Sersha asks.
“Running into her all the time is hard for him,” Mikayla says. “She’s always around. It must be a nightmare, trying to move on from someone so… aggressive. He’s staying with his family for a week to try and get his head on straight.”
“He just told you this?” Sersha asks.
Mikayla smiles wryly. “He was high at the time. Word to the wise… if you want Tommy to open up to you, just give him a bong and play with his hair. No secret is safe.”
Sersha thinks that over. “Not, like, hard drugs?” she asks.
“No, no,” Mikayla says. “Just pot.”
Sersha doesn’t mind that. Her mam once dated a guy who was heavily into heroin, and Sersha had vowed to herself to never get involved with someone who stuck needles in their arm. Even Slate’s cocaine situation made her a bit uneasy. If she were interested in him romantically, it might even be a deal breaker. As it is, she’s just glad that she’s never seen him high. But Tommy on marijuana? Sersha hopes that he doesn’t need it to write. She’s sure that he doesn’t. They’ve worked together enough times and he’s always seemed straight during those sessions. She hopes that it’s just recreational. Just a hit to wind down after a stressful day of fending off an ex-girlfriend’s advances.
“Will it help, though?” Sersha asks suddenly. “Him hiding out with his family for a week? I know whenever I’ve got shit going on, being away just gives me a chance to stew in it.”
Mikayla sighs. “I don’t know,” she says, “I really don’t know.”
They watch the rest of the band rehearse. Without Tommy to keep the bassline the band sounds thin, less connected, though the music is still very good. They’re all good musicians. But it seems wrong to not have Tommy there. They only practice for an hour or so before they call it quits.
Sersha stays the whole time. She doesn’t have anywhere else to be. When the rehearsal is over, Slate saunters over to her with a cheeky grin.
“Beautiful as ever, Galway Girl,” he says. He whips an iPhone out of his pocket and starts playing with it.
“Flirty as ever, Slate,” she replies easily. “Say… what’s your real name?”
He raises an eyebrow. “I promised my mother I’d save my real name for my wedding night.”
Sersha laughs at him. Dash and Logan clear away the instruments and together, the band, Mikayla and Sersha, head out of the studio and into the frigid New York air. The street is clogged with traffic and smog, horns blare despite the fact that none of the drivers seems to be in a particular hurry. People bustle past, running to nowhere, as her mam would have said. Sersha loves watching New Yorkers. It’s like seeing meerkats in their tunnels on the Discovery Channel. They’re all on high alert, rushing from one point to another, but you’re never quite sure what they’re waiting for, what they’re running toward or from, or whether any of them are even sure themselves.
“Have you ever been to New Jersey?” Slate asks. He’s got Sersha’s hand tucked into the crook of his elbow and a scarf around his neck.
“I have not,” Sersha replies. “I’ve seen Jersey Shore a few times.”
“That’s an entirely accurate representation,” Slate tells her. “Anyway, I only ask because I was hoping you’d do me a favor?”
She looks at him curiously. Dash, Logan, and Mikayla all stand on the curb and try unsuccessfully to hail a cab.
“What’s the favor?” Sersha asks.
Slate hands her the iPhone he’d been fondling. “Tommy left this at my place,” he says. “I can’t make it out to Trenton today. I have a very important sex thing…” Sersha snorts, “…so I was wondering if you’d mind running it over?” He glances over at Mikayla. “Also, I think he could use a friendly face, you know?”
Sersha takes the phone without even thinking about it. “Sure,” she says. “What’s the address?”
Slate tells her. She quickly takes her own phone out and types up a note. It doesn’t occur to her to feel put out by it. She would have just gone home to write all day or, more likely, she would have gone home and worried about Tommy all day. Maybe even tried to work up the courage to text him. What she would text him, she has no idea.
This is a convenient excuse to go and see him. Just to check in and make sure that what happened between him and Danielle hasn’t hurt him too badly. To make sure that he’s not wallowing. Maybe if she’s sneaky she could even draw him into a writing session that will take his mind off of his love life.
And then there’s the fact that she just wants to see him. She likes being around Tommy. She likes bouncing ideas off of him, seeing him laugh, and laughing with him. That would be the same even if she didn’t have a massive, almost high-school style crush on him.
She waves the others into a cab and catches a bus to Pennsylvania station. She ducks through the crowds, clutching her satchel so that her laptop doesn’t draw the attention of some pickpocket, and climbs onto the train for Trenton station. She spends the next two hours staring out the window and wondering if this officially makes her a creeper. As the train crawls toward its destination, the buildings become less dense but more lived-in. There’s a sense of well-used affection in the lines of the city. At least, that’s the sense Sersha gets as the train passes through New York, Linden and Edison, and along the Northwest Corridor. There are well-maintained patches of nature in between all of the human habitation. One thing Sersha misses terribly about Ireland is how green everything is. Here in America, gray seems to be the dominant color, though things may be different in the summer.
She thinks about texting Tommy to warn him that she’ll be coming around, before she remembers that she has his phone. Curious, she clicks the screen on, but it’s passcode protected. The screensaver is a selfie with the band and Mikayla.
Sersha likes that picture. She stares at it as the train pulls into Trenton and the voice on the speakers announces that there’s been an electrical fault on the tracks ahead, so the train will be delayed. She climbs off of the train, weaves through the slightly less crowded platforms to the cab ranks, and hails the first one.
He drives her downtown, toward the Delaware River, checking in with her every few minutes to make sure that he’s got the address right. He finally drops her in front of a very quaint little house in the middle of the suburbs.
“Have a nice day, lady,” he says when he’s finished counting out his own tip and handing Sersha her change.
Sersha waves him off. Then, before she can change her mind or talk herself into being nervous, she walks down the footpath toward the front door. The front yard is looking lackluster, but Sersha recognizes the bones of bushes and shrubs which would bear beautiful flowers in the spring. The house seems to be newly painted—a crisp white to match its neighbors.
There’s a bell, but just beneath it is a handwritten note that says, “Please do not ring me.” She knocks instead.
Muffled footsteps. Tommy opens the door. Sersha feels her lips pulling into a smile the moment she sees his face, and his adorably confused expression when he sees her. But her attention is immediately seized by the creature on his hip.
“You have a kid?” she asks incredulously.
Tucked in the crook of his waist, held securely by one looped arm, is a baby. She can’t be more than a year old. Sersha assumes it’s a ‘she’ going by the pink bow adorning her wispy blonde hair. The baby has huge blue eyes, the same color as Tommy’s, and her pudgy feet kick out as she stares at Sersha in that way babies have when they’re trying to figure out something new.
“What?” Tommy looks down at the baby as though he’s just noticing that she’s there. “Oh, no… this is my niece.”
“Oh… that’s… oh… She’s really cute,” Sersha says. A sigh of relief escapes her. For a brief flash, she’d thought that Tommy was a father. That somehow the tabloids hadn’t caught wind of the fact.
“Thanks,” Tommy says. They shuffle awkwardly for a moment. “So… what brings you here? Not that, you know, it’s not nice to see you. Just a surprise.”
Sersha jumps and pulls the phone out of her pocket. “Slate says you left this at his place?”
Tommy reaches out and takes the phone from her. “You came all the way to Trenton to give me my phone?”
“I… yes, yes I did,” she says.
She wonders if she should be honest.
“Plus, you know… you’re my friend,” she adds. “So I just wanted to make sure everything is okay? Mikayla said you had an emergency?”
There. That’s not technically a lie.
Tommy’s face softens. He hoists the baby up on his hip in a well-practiced gesture that nearly makes Sersha melt. “That’s really nice of you,” he says giving her that soft smile.
“Well…” Sersha shrugs, trailing off.
“Thomas!” A woman’s voice calls from inside.
Tommy winces. “That’s my mom,” he says quietly.
“Who’s at the door?” his mom calls.
The baby makes a groping motion toward Sersha. Sersha reaches out a hand and the baby takes her finger, gripping tighter than any child has the right to grip. Tommy smiles fondly at the girl before calling over his shoulder.
“It’s Sersha!” he says. No other information. Just her name. Sersha feels a surge of sudden warmth when she realizes that it must mean that he’s told his mother enough about her that the name is all he needs to offer.
“Well, bring her in. It’s freezing out!”
“You wanna come in?” Tommy asks. “Mrs. Bianchi just dropped off a batch of cannolis.”
“Sure.”
The baby jumps up and down in Tommy’s arms, dropping Sersha’s finger and reaching toward her with both arms. She seems to be wiggling. Tommy has to let go of the door to hold onto her with both hands.
Sersha steps into the house lifts the baby out of Tommy’s arms and settles her right up near her head. Sure enough, the baby tangles her fingers right into Sersha’s hair. Babies always like Sersha’s hair.
“What’s her name?” she asks as Tommy mumbles his thanks and closes the door behind Sersha.
“Emily,” Tommy replies. There’s something in the way he looks at Sersha that makes her cheeks heat up. His eyes flicker from the baby in her arms to her face, to her hair, and back again.
“Hi, Emily!” Sersha says, rubbing her nose against the baby’s. Her nose must be cold, because the baby scrunches hers up, pulls away, and continues playing with Sersha’s hair.
There’s a line of hooks on the wall with coats in various sizes. The wallpaper is a pleasant, calming green, and there’s a scent of baking in the air. Sersha takes off her shoes and adds them to the pile already stacked up in the foyer. Across from her is a staircase lined with framed photographs. Sersha recognizes Tommy at various ages. There’s another boy in the frames as well, Sersha thinks that he must be the baby’s father. She wonders how much older than Tommy he is.
Tommy takes Sersha’s coat, careful not to jostle the baby.
“Thomas?”
“Coming, Mom!” Tommy replies.
Emily coos in Sersha’s ear and sticks a tuft of hair into her mouth. Sersh
a grins at Tommy, who shakes his head at the baby before leading Sersha into the heart of the house.
Tommy’s mom, Claire, is a sweet, gentle little woman with fluffy brown hair streaked with gray. She taps away at a laptop at the kitchen table while she and Sersha talk. Emily sits in Sersha’s lap, toying with Sersha’s wild blonde mane, while Tommy bustles around making tea and a plate of cannolis. Claire, it turns out, is a researcher at the university.
“Although it’s mostly administration,” she tells Sersha once the introductions are made. The kitchen around them is in minor chaos—pots and pans are stacked in the drying rack next to the sink, the fridge is covered in papers held up with magnets, and there are dishtowels on every available surface. Claire takes a bit of the cannoli that Tommy hands her. “I haven’t had real time to research in, well…” she gives the baby a calculating look, “…about thirteen months.”
“So you’re helping Tommy’s brother with the baby?” Sersha asks. Emily is a quiet baby, or at least she is right now, enjoying the feeling of Sersha’s hair in her little fingers and blowing spit bubbles out of her pink lips. She’s a comforting weight in Sersha’s lap, happy to play without needing to be entertained.
If all babies were like this, Sersha would consider making one of her own.
“When I can,” Claire replies. “Which reminds me… Tommy, run and get Geoffrey, will you? He shouldn’t be playing his Xbox when we’ve got company.”
“Oh, no, that’s not necessary…”
But Tommy is already heading out of the room. He winks at Sersha as he goes. Sersha feels her cheeks heating up again. She’s gotten so used to seeing Slate wink at her, she’d thought that she would be acclimatized to it by now. But a wink from Slate feels like a handshake. A wink from Tommy feels like foreplay.
