The Complete Tempest World Box Set

by Mankin, Michelle

  I set down my spoon. My stomach cinched tightly just from thinking about him. He had been gone so long. I missed him so much. So much had changed for me. Would he understand? Could we pick up romantically from where we had left off? I was starting to entertain hope. Every nightly phone call seemed to strengthen our bond along with my longing, but hope was an elusive thing. I had been filled with it at Sugarloaf when I had stood at the top of the mountain, but it had escaped me amid a tangle of limbs and orange safety netting. I was still too tentative to reach for it again.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  Sager

  “Hey,” Melinda answered on the first ring. The tension from our separation gnawed at me constantly now but always lessened when I heard her voice.

  “How’d your day go? Did you eat?”

  “Yes.”

  “Breakfast, lunch and dinner?” I asked pressing for clarification.

  “Yes. Stan is almost as hard on me as Mary.”

  Good, I thought. Maybe if the two of them stuck together they could continue to prevail over Melinda’s stubbornness.

  “I had a good session with the psychiatrist today.”

  “Oh, yeah?” I kept my tone casual, but I sat up in the hotel bed I had been sprawled out on. That she was volunteering that information seemed significant.

  “We talked for the entire three hours this time. I almost missed my appointment for...” She blew out a breath into the phone. “She says a lot of the same things you and Mary tell me.”

  “She must be a smart lady.”

  “Yeah,” she replied. Was that a smile in her voice? If so it was the first one I remembered since the accident. “Dr. Clifford says I don’t see myself clearly. That my mental mirror got all fogged up because of unresolved issues. My mom’s death. My dad’s neglect. My attempts to be perfect to compensate for those things. The competitive sports and the modeling only exacerbated things. So did...well...” She trailed off.

  “What? You can tell me,” I offered gently.

  “Almost losing you was another big factor. For the first time I had met someone who seemed to see the real me, someone who didn’t care that I wasn’t perfect or a couple of pounds too heavy. But I convinced myself that my weight was the root of all of my problems. That if I could control it everything else would eventually fall into place.”

  “That’s pretty messed up, babe.”

  “Yeah it is, but not uncommon apparently. Talking about it, getting it out of my head and into the open makes me realize how warped my thinking was...is...It’s going to be a while before things are normal. But I feel like I took a major step today. I’m going to have to keep seeing her, of course. Keep wiping off my mirror and commit long term to good habits to replace the bad ones, but she’s very positive. She doesn’t think that I need to come every day anymore. She says I can do fine with weekly meetings.”

  “I’m so happy for you. Proud, too.”

  “Thanks,” she whispered. “But what about you? What did you do today?”

  I told her about the bumpy flight into Kansas City. About Jude wading his way through the second Cronin novel. About how much I was looking forward to hanging with him in Seattle. About the huge hotel we were staying in right now that was packed with insurance salespeople having their annual convention. And about the radio interview I had gone to with War.

  “Did they ask him about Shaina?”

  “Yeah. Everywhere he goes they wanna know about Pinky from Pinky Swears. But the DJ also asked me a few questions.”

  “About what?”

  “The album cover. My art. You.”

  She got quiet. “Why me?” she asked eventually. It almost seemed as though she were afraid of my response.

  “Because of the song ‘Beauty’.” I rubbed my thumb across my lips. “It’s actually the number one song off the album. It’s climbed three slots up the Billboard this week. It’s the number one single download on iTunes.”

  “Wow. That’s incredible. I had no idea. I’ve been too caught up in my own stuff and dragging you down with it, I’m sure. Congratulations. That’s something to really be proud of.”

  “I’m more proud of you and all of the progress you’ve made. You’re beautiful, Blue. And beauty isn’t just in the eye of the beholder. It also springs up from what’s inside your heart. Don’t let the bullshit expectations of other people define how you see yourself.”

  • • •

  Melinda

  “Can I join you?” Mary asked.

  “Sure.” I tucked my cane tighter under my arm making more room so she could sit on the small bench outside beside me. The wooden slats creaked under the additional weight. She didn’t speak, and I tipped my face back up to the sky. It was a nice day with only a slight breeze. The warmth of the sun seeped into my skin, and the wind stirred the finer strands of hair at my temples.

  “This is one of my favorite spots. It’s the reason I bought the property.”

  “Hmm,” I replied, reluctant to talk and surrender the Zen moment I had achieved. My therapist was trying to get me to focus more on moment to moment pockets of tangible contentment like this rather than on indefinite things. Plus I was exhausted. I was attempting to learn Braille. It was as difficult to master as it had been relearning the activities of daily living without my sight. I found clothes that matched by using handwritten labels and my KNFB reader app. Shampoo, toothpaste and lip gloss I learned to recognize by feel. I had taken many simple things like these for granted. I didn’t any longer.

  “I come out here quite a bit to think about things,” she added. “It’s pretty far from the house. How did you find it?”

  “I followed the path.” I shrugged. “The cane helps. It’s quiet. I like listening to the birds and the bubbling of the brook.”

  “I’m glad.” The gravel crunched beneath her feet as she shifted her legs. “I’m proud of how hard you’ve been working. You’ve come a long way since you moved in.” She sounded like Sager. I preened in response to her compliments, maybe even a little bit more than his. She was not fond of faint praise. “I want you to come into work with me tomorrow.” I tensed. “You need to return to the things I know you love like music.” She covered my hand, the one gripping the leather wrapped handle of my cane. “You can do it.” She squeezed my fingers encouragingly. “Right now you’re all work and no play.” I think she knew I pushed myself to the point of exhaustion because I wanted to make as much progress as I could before Sager returned. “That’s not a sustainable model for happiness, Melinda.”

  “It works for you,” I pointed out. Living under the same roof with her I had discovered that there was a very warm caring woman beneath the icy facade, but it was also very apparent that she was extremely self-regimented, a creature of habit and routine. She was always working. Phone calls. Texts. Emails. She received at least a dozen during dinnertime alone.

  “That’s a valid point. But if you really think that it works for me, you would be mistaken. It’s a life, but happy would not be a word I would use to describe it.” She withdrew her hand from mine. “I told you not to run from your problems. I gave you that advice from the experience of having done the opposite. It makes for a lonely existence when you keep everyone at arm’s length distance, when you carry your burdens by yourself. Losses shared are halved they say.”

  “I don’t think...I don’t know,” I stuttered. The days were slipping away one into the next. It wouldn’t be long before the tour ended and Sager came back. I was desperate to touch him again, to receive his touch, but I also knew that our reunion might not turn out the way I hoped. If I examined things too closely there were hints that he might be withdrawing already. He had stopped trying to get me to show him my body or face. He had stopped pressuring me to visit him on tour. He had stopped trying to pin me down about future plans. Had I already pushed him too far away with my deflecting to cover up for the lie of omission I should never have perpetuated? I wasn’t going to run, but I had started preparing knowing I might h
ave to face my biggest fear soon…that of losing him.

  “It’s scary to make yourself vulnerable to someone else,” she continued, her tone reflective in response to my expression I was sure. But I also got the distinct impression that she wasn’t talking about just me when she said it. “But I’m hoping that you’ll be braver than I was. Though I enjoy having you here with me and would welcome you to stay indefinitely, it would be selfish of me not to point out that if you don’t take a risk and reach for what you want, you might never attain it. I have hope for you, my dear. Hope that you might find the happiness that has eluded me, even if you don’t have that hope in yourself.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  Sager

  “Righteous. Totally and completely righteous,” Jude exclaimed as he walked backwards to keep me in view. I grabbed his arm and drew him back beside me. The aisle between vendors in Pikes Market was packed with people, and he had almost backed into a father with a little girl. “I’ve been tracking the band on YouTube.” He gave me an excited side glance. “Tempest’s performances are getting tighter and tighter. I can’t wait to see you live on stage tonight.” He moved closer and lowered his voice so his adoptive parents who were walking hand in hand at a discrete distance behind us couldn’t hear him. “It’ll be kickass.”

  “You got that right.” I reached out and ruffled his hair before flipping up the collar on my wool coat. A roof covered the iconic market but otherwise it was open air. We had tried a few free samples from the local vendors. The Chukar cherries and the apple cider had been big hits. It was a perfect spot to hang out with my kid brother, and I didn’t even mind his parents’ presence. They were understandably cautious. I didn’t blame them. They wanted to keep Jude safe. I was completely in sync with that goal. I had agreed to accompany them in a few weeks to testify to the parole board about my older brother. None of us wanted him being approved for early release.

  “I love the way you lean back all cool and how your fingers fly over your strings. You play as fast as Bryan Jackson does.” Jude’s voice rose with enthusiasm.

  “Not quite that fast,” I corrected steering him outside and over to the railing by the water so I could feel the ocean breeze on my skin and watch the tankers on Elliott Bay, glad to be outdoors for a change. The tour was an astounding success, unlike the previous one which had torn the band apart. Even with our issues, this one had felt like a victory lap. The five of us represented the new order in rock and roll. Established bands like Brutal Strength and the Dirt Dogs were going to have to step up their game if they planned to keep pace.

  “Looks that way to me,” he retorted as his parents took a seat together on the bench behind us. “All the press releases say you’re a bassist who plays like a guitarist.”

  I shrugged, but if my younger brother wanted to throw some hero worship at me I was going to take it. Every single ounce.

  “Can I come back stage after?”

  I shook my head. Normally I might allow it, but King’s antics with the chicks lately weren’t anything I wanted Jude to see. Besides that, I was headed straight to Vancouver as soon as I finished the encore. My heartbeat kicked up at the mere thought of seeing Melinda and holding her in my arms again.

  “Awe, come on,” Jude complained. Not one to take no for an answer, at least not the first time.

  A genetic trait, I guessed. I gave it to him straight. “No way. Lots of crazy shit that you’re too young to see goes on back there. Plus, I’m driving straight to Vancouver after the show.”

  “To see Melinda.”

  I nodded. I hadn’t hidden my obsession from him. I expected her to be a permanent part of my life and therefore his, too.

  “She doing better?”

  “Yeah.” I could hear it in her voice. She tried to be casual about it, but she was taking positive steps every single day. She had returned to the studio, doing background stuff she said, but the last couple of days she had also asked me a lot of questions about writing her own music.

  “You gonna ask her to marry you?” Jude asked, his brow scrunched.

  Straight to the point. I feigned a kick toward his ass. “None of your business, bro.” The thought had crossed my mind. But was it even a glimmer of an idea in hers? The long separation had planted a few doubts. So my plan for now was short term. Get her naked and in bed, for at least a week straight before I thought about anything else.

  “Sager! Sager Reed.” I turned. Shit. Shit. Two very excited girls just a little older than Jude came barreling toward us at top squealing volume.

  “I knew it was him,” the shorter brunette told the freckle face blonde.

  “Uh-uh, you liar. I’m the one who told you. But you said nuh-uh ’cause you didn’t recognize the other hottie.” Jude turned bright red from the comment that was obviously directed at him. I grinned. Taking him by the shoulders, I turned him around to face them.

  “Ladies, this is my super cool guitar tech. Guitar tech, the ladies.” They smiled and turned interested eyes on him. The bright red turned into deep disturbingly dark crimson. I took the scraps of paper they thrust at me for autographs while Jude stuttered out one word replies to their thinly veiled attempts to win his favor.

  “Ok, girls. Here you go. And I’ll tell you what, if you keep this little meet and greet to yourselves and let me enjoy the rest of my incognito time in the market, I’ll leave you both two free floor tickets to the show tonight at the will call office. Sound like a deal?” They bobbed their heads in unison, and I crooked my arm around Jude and dragged him away while they giggled something about his backside or mine.

  “That happen a lot?” He asked, his coffee colored eyes wide, the breeze tossing around long layers of his hair. I turned my face into it enjoying the scents from the market that accompanied it. Frying dough. Sizzling seafood. My stomach grumbled loudly.

  “The last tour, not so much. This one, all the time. It’s a whole notha level, man. Being the headliners promoting a new album, Black Cat totally behind us. We’re even shooting a music video for ‘Beauty’ when we get back to Vancouver.”

  “That’s cool.”

  “Yeah, I think so, too.” Especially since Mary had talked Melinda into recording War’s part of the vocals. I knew the Queen was considering adding it as a bonus alternative version on the deluxe edition download with some video of my girl working on it inside the studio. I was so glad she had returned to music. Now if only I could talk Melinda into doing a little interview segment to bookend all the other ones I had recorded on the tour. We might have a real positive message to send out there to others like her who thought that their worth depended more on a dress size than who they were on the inside.

  “Is King gonna be in the video?” Jude asked. “I noticed he hasn’t been in a lot of the promo pictures on the tour.”

  “For sure. He better be.” If he showed up late to one more shoot, I was going to kick his ass. If I didn’t kill him before then. I felt the friction growing between us. The groupie nonsense I could ignore, if that’s the way he wanted to roll. But his animosity toward Blue had seemed to escalate as the days had passed, as we approached the end of the tour. I wasn’t really sure why except that maybe he had picked up on my increasing unease, the malady that too often made my temper flare. Being the closest to me, he bore the brunt of it whenever I dealt with Melinda’s all too frequent evasiveness. She had put me off so many times on so many things that I had given up asking. Our relationship seemed to have slipped into limbo since I went out on the road. I was anxious to get home and get it back on track. But was she?

  • • •

  Melinda

  Sweeping my cane side to side in shoulder width arcs, I crossed the floor of recording room thirteen and hung my favorite pair of headphones on the peg on the wall. By tacit understanding this particular recording room had become mine, including everything from the stool I sat on to the mic stand to my guitar and the piano all of which remained where I had left them last so I didn’t have to relearn th
e space each day.

  I turned back around, cane swishing and encountered an obstacle that hadn’t been there just a moment before.

  “Pardon me,” I replied noticing the shadow in front of me and awaiting a response. The thwack had definitely been a shoe.

  “Melinda?” My name was spoken in a question. I couldn’t quite place the voice. “It’s Avery Jones.” She took my free hand and squeezed it. “Sorry I was eavesdropping. I like your style. It’s a little funkier than the straight rock I’m used to with Brutal Strength. But I like trying out new things. Would you mind if I tried a bit of accompaniment on that last song?”

  “No, I guess not.” I shifted and took the headphones off the wall. She didn’t offer to help me as I used my cane to navigate to my stool. I liked that. I knew my visual impairment couldn’t be ignored, but I much preferred the satisfaction of doing things by myself.

  “Dalton, could you replay ‘Sunset’?” I asked.

  “Sure, Bluebelle.” His deep voice rang crystal clear from the attached sound booth to my ear over the wireless connection. “You got it.”

  The previous recording replaying my acoustic as the background, I sang the lyrics again and smiled at how well Avery’s sultry voice sounded with mine when she joined me on the bumpy little chorus. I modulated my voice an octave higher and stayed up there, sliding out of my chair at the half way point, breaking into dance. The rhythm of the tune I had penned to lift my mood was too upbeat to keep my seat.