Music of the Soul

by Katie Ashley

  AJ shook his head. “Damn.”

  “Yeah, pretty fucked up, huh?”

  “How did you ever get something like that in your head?”

  I glanced down at the table and prepared to tell AJ something I hadn’t even told Abby. “One night after my parents divorced, my dad was drunk. Really drunk. It was one of the first nights I’d ever stayed with him at his new apartment. He and Nancy weren’t married yet. When I went to get something to eat, he cornered me in the kitchen.” I closed my eyes as the memory that had haunted me for years overcame me. “He said, ‘I know you hate me because of what I’m doing to your mom. But everything was fine between Susan and me until you came along. She always loved you more and put you first. I always came second, so I went to find someone who would put me first’.”

  When I dared to look up at AJ, his eyes were wide with shock. “That’s fucking…ball-busting.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “But damn, man, he was drunk when he said those things.”

  “Isn’t there a little truth behind every drunken statement we make in anger?” I countered.

  “Maybe.” AJ scratched the stubble on his chin. “But for the most part, Mark isn’t a major douche. I doubt he seriously felt that way. The man was drunk, and his whole life was imploding around him.”

  “Whatever,” I muttered, wishing for a bottle of Jack right about now.

  “Have you ever talked to your dad about it?”

  “No. Never.”

  “I think you should.”

  I snorted. “You think if I have some magical Dr. Phil chat with my dad, that all my fears about being a father will just go away?”

  “No, but I think it’s a good place to start.” He rose out of his chair. “I’m going to go back and lie down with Mia and Bella. That’ll give you the privacy you need.”

  “AJ, I don’t think this is the kind of conversation you do over the phone.”

  “I agree, but I think you’ve waited too long to do it in person. Might as well do it now.”

  I watched his retreating form go down the hall and into the bedroom. I warily eyed my phone on the table. With a ragged sigh, I picked it up and scrolled through my contacts. When I got to my dad’s, my thumb hovered over the send button as I debated my decision. Finally, I manned up and pressed the button.

  My dad answered on the third ring. “Hey, it’s Jake.”

  “Hey son, how are you doing? Abby still doing okay after her surgery?”

  “Uh, yeah, I’m fine…she’s fine.” I swallowed the knot of emotions forming in my throat. “Actually, Dad, we’re not okay.”

  “Did you have a fight?”

  “It’s a little more serious than a fight.”

  “Whatever it is, I know it’s worth working out. Abby’s a wonderful, caring woman, and she loves you very much.”

  “I know.”

  “Then, what is the problem?”

  “I need…I need to talk to you about some pretty heavy shit that happened in the past. With you and me.” There was a pause on the line. “Are you still there?”

  “I’m here.” Dad sighed. “I’ve been hoping you would want to talk to me for a long, long time.”

  “I doubt you’ll be thinking that in a minute.”

  “I’m serious, Jake.”

  “Fine. Here it is. I’ve hurt Abby because I’m not ready to be a father, and it’s all because of you.”

  Dad sucked in a harsh breath that hissed over the line. “No beating around the bush, huh?”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t know how to talk about this—I never have. But having kids and being a father is about to ruin my marriage.”

  “I wish I could be there with you right now, son.”

  Before I could stop myself, I blurted, “Wanna hop a plane or drive and meet me in Birmingham?”

  “If you want me there, I will.”

  My brows shot up into my hairline. “You’re serious?”

  “Of course I am.”

  “But why would you do that for me?”

  “Because you’re my son. There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you.”

  It took a moment for his words to set in. I knew from the tone of his voice that he was serious. It was just hard to imagine after all the years that have passed and all the shit between us, he really did love me. It was a lot to process with everything else that had happened today, and I felt myself shutting down. “It’s okay. We can talk when I get back.”

  “I know I made a lot of mistakes when I divorced your mother—I said and did things that I know hurt you. I wish I could take them back, but I can’t. The worst thing in the world would be to know that I hurt you so deep you wouldn’t become a father. At the end of the day, you aren’t me and you aren’t Susan. You’re just yourself, your own person.”

  “So I won’t feel tied down and cheat like you did?” I questioned softly.

  Dad was silent for a moment. “Is that what is bothering you?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Oh Jake, what’s going on in that head of yours?”

  “A lot of bullshit, I guess.”

  With a nervous chuckle, Dad said, “I would like to think it’s just bullshit, but I know you too well. All I can say is we’re our own people and make our own decisions—good and bad. If I were to speculate long term about you, I don’t see you cheating.”

  “And how can you guess that?”

  “Because you know what a good thing you have. Before Abby, you were with enough women to know what is real and what is good. Deep down, you know you don’t need to go anywhere else to find the greatest love of your life—the woman who completes you, challenges you, and makes you get up in the morning.”

  Like a pansy, tears stung my eyes at his summation. He was right—I could never find another woman who meant as much to me as Abby did. After all, she is my world.

  The biggest question that was going through my head was on the tip of my tongue, and I knew I needed to ask it. Even if the answer was one I didn’t really want to hear. Finally, I drew in a deep breath and croaked, “Do you think I’ll be a good father?”

  “I know you’ll try as best you can. When you fall short, and trust me, you will, you’ll beat yourself up. No one is a perfect father—some are better than others and some make less mistakes, but no one is perfect. You live and you learn.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “All you can do is try your best, son. Regardless of how you see yourself, you have so much love to give to a child. I know that, and Abby knows that as well.”

  The shuddering of the bus’s wheels slowing down alerted me that we were getting off the interstate and heading into downtown Birmingham. “Listen Dad, I gotta go for now. I really appreciate you talking to me.”

  “I’m here for you anytime, Jake.”

  “Thanks.” I hesitated at the next words, hating myself for how hard they were to say. “I…I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  After I hung up, I sat in silence just staring at my phone. I didn’t know if I should try to text or call Abby. Part of me knew that what I had to say needed to be said in person. Because of Lucy’s birth, we were heading straight into a show, rather than having our usual rehearsal times. I wasn’t going to have a moment before going out on stage to talk to Abby unless I cornered her in the dressing room.

  Any thoughts I had of getting to her on the bus was shot to hell when I saw her brothers walking her into the arena. I sighed and went to get a shower. When I was finished, Bella was bouncing around the kitchen waiting for me to come out.

  “Guess you had a good nap, huh?”

  She grinned. “I did.”

  AJ rolled his eyes. “She never sleeps long enough.”

  Mia yawned. “No, she doesn’t.”

  “I’ll see you later, okay?”

  AJ and Mia gave me a questioning look, and I nodded. They both smiled. “Go get her,” AJ said.

  I laughed and then headed down the aisle.
After pounding down the bus steps, I headed into the arena. As I started in the dressing room, Marion was talking with Frank. He must’ve asked her how Abby was because she was shaking her sadly. “Poor thing. She was an absolute mess. I never thought I would get her ready and out on that stage. Her eyes were so bloodshot and swollen I wasn’t sure I could make them look okay. I must’ve used two tubes of concealer.”

  At the sight of me in the doorway, Marion clamped her lips shut and whirled around. “Ready for me?” I asked, when I caught her gaze in the lighted mirror.

  “Sure,” she replied curtly.

  It goes without saying that she was firmly Team Abby. She raked her nails a little harder into my scalp than she usually did, and the times when she usually patted on the stage makeup, she smacked my face instead. “I’m going to make it right,” I said softly.

  She glared at me for a moment. “You damn well better.”

  “Or you’ll take my balls?”

  She grinned wickedly. “Yeah, something like that.”

  I laughed. “Then I better do it fast, huh?”

  “Exactly.”

  When Marion finished with me, I didn’t lounge around in the backstage room. Instead, I made my way to the stage. I needed to see Abby. It’d been a long time since I’d actually just watched her perform. Just the sight of her in her sparkly, ice-blue stage dress and silver cowboy boots made my heart race. To the average eye, no one could tell there was something off with her performance tonight. She shimmied and shook her hips as she danced along with the music while her smile remained bright. She had the audience laughing in between songs at her little jokes and stories. But when she turned away from the audience, the pain on her face was visible. The consummate performer within her wouldn’t allow for her to give anything less than one hundred percent.

  “We’re going to do a cover right now of an artist who means a lot to me and my brothers. Growing up, our mom was a huge Emmy Lou Harris fan. Even in the remote jungles where we were living, she had old records she would play. If I Needed You was one of the first secular songs I learned to play on the guitar. So Eli and I would like to sing it for you now.”

  Eli eased down on the stool beside her with his guitar, and then they began harmonizing together. As I took in the lyrics of the song, I realized how much they were mine and Abby’s relationship. But the one that meant the most was “If you needed me, I would come to you. I would swim the seas for to ease your pain.”

  Abby had always been there for me in my darkest times. Then when she was going through her own, I hadn’t realized her suffering. She’d had to go it alone, and that was so wrong. I’d vowed at our wedding to love her in the good times and bad. Regardless of what she had done with going off birth control, she had needed me, and I hadn’t been there. I had to make it up to her. I knew what AJ and my dad said was true.

  After the song ended, applause and cheering rang throughout the auditorium. I knew this was my usual cue to get to the wings to await her announcing our duets. She took the microphone. I noticed her boot tapping on the stage floor, and I knew she was nervous about seeing me.

  “And now, I want to bring someone to the stage to sing with me. I think you all know him pretty well. And that would be my husband, Jake Slater.”

  While the crowd went wild, I stepped out on stage, my guitar slung over my shoulder. I waved to the audience as the roadies fixed the stools for Abby and me to sit on during our first song. Once they scurried away, I sat down. “Hello Birmingham! How the hell are you?”

  Deafening applause and whistles erupted around me. “You been treating my lovely wife and her brothers well?” Once again they clapped and screamed. “First up tonight, we want to sing one of the first songs we ever did as a couple. It’s called All I Ever Needed.”

  I strummed the opening chords, and Abby came in with me. Instead of looking at me, she kept her eyes down. When we got to the musical break, I stared intently at Abby, willing her to look me in the eye. But she kept staring down at her guitar. Pushing the microphone out the way, I took her chin in my fingers and titled her face up. When her gaze met mine, I smiled. “I’m so sorry, Angel.”

  Her eyes widened. “Y-You are?”

  When we didn’t pick up with the second verse, Eli and Gabe kept playing through the song. I’m sure they wondered what in the hell we were thinking for having a conversation in the middle of a performance. But I had no other choice. It was kind of weird have a musical interlude during your big apology scene.

  I nodded. “Can you ever forgive me for the things I said? For lying to you?”

  “Can you forgive me? For deceiving you?”

  “I’ll forgive you, and you can forgive me.”

  The corners of her lips quirked up in a smile at my words, but her expression remained grave. “Just like that?”

  “I had a long time to think on the bus. And I talked to my dad.”

  “You did?”

  “Yeah, I did. Things are…good now.”

  Tears pooled in Abby’s baby blues. “Oh, Jake.”

  When I glanced out at the crowd, I saw their puzzled expressions. “What do you say we finish this song, and then we’ll talk about it after the show?”

  She grinned. “Okay, I think that sounds good.”

  I took the microphone back and stared into the audience. “Sorry about that, guys. My wife and I just needed a moment. Hope you didn’t mind?”

  At their roaring approval, Abby and I both laughed. I counted us in, and then we started the song where we had left off. I don’t think I’d ever enjoyed performing with her more. Well, maybe the night at the Grammys before we won best duet. But tonight was special too. Nothing meant more than reconnecting. Nothing meant more than knowing she still loved me, despite my all my bullshit hang-ups and issues.

  I stared intently at her when I got to the line, “Tell me it’s not my fault.”

  Smiling, Abby shook her head and sang, “Tell me it’s not my fault.”

  With a wink, I continued singing melody with Abby harmonizing. When the song finished, I popped out of my stool. After laying my guitar down, I pulled Abby into my arms. She abandoned her guitar to wrap her arms around me. Grabbing her under her ass, I hoisted Abby up to wrap her legs around my waist. The audience went wild, but I could have cared less. This moment wasn’t about giving them a show. It was about repairing my marriage and making things right with the woman I loved. Even though I should have moved us off stage, I couldn’t wait one moment to make things right with her. “I love you, Angel.”

  “I love you, too.”

  I stared intently into her eyes. “And I want you to have my baby.”

  She gasped. “You do?”

  “Yeah, I do. I want us to make lots of babies together. I want them to have your sweet smile, your caring spirit, and your sassiness. I want them to be as beautiful on the outside as they are on the inside, just like their mother.”

  Abby’s emotions overcame her, and she started sobbing. “Don’t cry, Angel.”

  “You’re so sweet, Jake. But what if…” Her eyes closed in pain. “What if I can’t get pregnant?”

  I shook my head. “You don’t know that yet. The doctor said we might have to try other means to make it happen.”

  “You’re willing to do that?”

  “I’ll do anything for you.”

  She brought her lips to mine for a frantic kiss. “Thank you, Jake. You’ve made me so happy.”

  “You make me happy every day, Angel.” I kissed her again before pulling away. “What do you say we finish this show, so I can take you back to the bus and show you just how much I love you?”

  She laughed. “I’d like nothing more.”

  With my Atlanta Braves cap pulled low over my eyes, I hunkered down in my chair in the waiting room of ARMC or the Atlanta Reproductive Medicine Center. It was thirty minutes after closing, and the place was pretty much a ghost town, except for a few patients straggling out from their appointments. Each time someone came out t
o the front desk, I tensed, fearful they would recognize me. Abby, who sat beside me, would squeeze my hand reassuringly. As I cut my eyes over to her, I couldn’t help snickering at her disguise.

  Her beautiful blonde hair was hidden underneath a jet-black wig. Her usually long hair was only chin length. Tortoise shell glasses were perched on her nose, and her usually sparkling blue eyes were hidden under dark contacts. Of course, the disguise had been my idea. She hadn’t given two shits about whether or not we were spotted a fertility clinic. “A lot of our fans suffer from this too, Jake,” she had reasoned. But the prideful side of me didn’t want to see our faces splashed all over the tabloids—our private agony on a grocery newsstand as people checked out with their milk and bread.

  The ARMC’s Perimeter location had become a familiar fixture in our lives since I’d finally decided not to be a selfish prick and consent to having a baby. Usually you had to go a whole year of not getting pregnant before you were referred to a fertility clinic. But because of Abby’s surgery, we were a special case, and we got to cut the line.

  She had been through a whole gamut of below-the-waist tests that I didn’t begin to understand. I was sure that more people had seen her vag in the last two months than in the entire time she’d been on this earth. As modest as she usually was, she didn’t seem to care her hoo-hah was on display for various specialists. For me, it helped that our doctor was a female, as were the technicians.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Moore?” the nurse called.

  It took Abby smacking my arm for me to move. For a minute, I didn’t recognize the name. And then I remembered I was even more of a bastard because I had us under an assumed name—my mother’s maiden name.

  I scrambled out of the seat to follow Abby and the nurse down the hall. Once we were closed into the room, the nurse took my blood pressure and temperature. All the while, she and Abby chattered to each other while I remained silent. When a plastic cup was thrust into my hands, I totally froze. Even though there were words and sentences coming out of the nurse’s mouth, I couldn’t hear anything. I didn’t nod in acknowledgment or reply. My gaze bounced back and forth between her and Abby. While Abby nodded along, I remained rooted to the floor, unblinking and unmoving.