by Lisa Gillis
“I’m just resting.” Drawing up the leg closest to me, she angles it enough to cover her southern exposure. With one arm, she makes a lackluster attempt to partially conceal her chest.
I avert my eyes even though most of her body is obstructed by the shower curtain.
Resting? Sopping wet in an empty tub in a strange house? And how is she in here? I’d locked the bedroom door.
Whirling around, I see a door on the wall that would be between the bathroom and hall. That explains that, but I continue to feel uneasy at finding her in the next room, and I wonder how long she’s been in here.
I do a scan of the room and find her messenger bag on the floor, propped against a wall with a pile of discarded clothing beside it.
I really haven’t seen her enough tonight to notice how much she might have drunk. In the duration I’ve known her, she’s been smashed only a couple of times. This seems like another one of those times.
Taking a folded towel from a stack in the cluttered linen closet, I offer it to her. “C’mon. You’re gonna get cold in there.”
She accepts the towel, but instead of drying herself and getting out, she uses it like a blanket, covering her body and tucking the edge beneath her chin.
“Sash!” My voice rises when her eyes close. And then just as quickly, my next words are quiet, and as tender or even more so as a moment ago with N-girl. “Sash, sweet, let me help you get dressed.”
“I said ‘I’m sleeping here.’ I don’t care if you piss. Just do it and get out.”
“You’re not sleeping here.” I don’t argue about what she did or didn’t say.
Her lashes suddenly lift from her cheekbones, and scorn drips from her next words. “Well, I’m not sleeping in there!”
An apprehensive feeling rolls through my veins. She didn’t look behind me at the door to the bedroom, but I know that’s what she’s referring to.
“Next time you get your rocks off, make sure it’s not in our bed!”
“Our bed?”
She wraps the towel to herself. “Yeah. Our bed. That’s where we were supposed to sleep.”
An apology is on my tongue. But just as much, I’m overcome with mortification and embarrassment.
Sash—the woman I’ve run hot for since the second I laid my physical eyes on her—apparently walked in on me doing the deed with two meaningless sluts.
In my mind, I’d rarely degraded even the skankiest girls to that word, but now I feel it with every essence of my being.
Sash is mad at me over some sluts.
Inside, I’m damning the insane floor plan of this home, but defensively I lash out. “The tweet said two guest rooms. Why didn’t you just go to the other?”
“Because THAT was mine! I already had my stuff in it!”
I snap to attention and drop my eyes again to her bag. Seriously? I’d overlooked her bag before hitting the bed? Worse yet, she had come inside the room to get it?
Fresh shame has me wanting to be as far from her as I can get. I rip my eyes from hers as I’m turning away, and a speck on the tile beside the tub draws my focus.
Freezing, I eye the syringe. Right away, I can tell she knows what I’ve seen. Her eyes grow wide, vulnerable, and wary before her expression closes off becoming unreadable.
Kneeling, I use my thumb and forefinger to lift it gingerly from the floor. The pump is depressed, the cylinder empty. “This yours?”
“Get out, Trey.”
There’s no shouting this time, but her words are concise and cold. I barely see a golden hue. Wanting to escape everything that just went down, I twist open then relock the door and let myself out, leaving Sash in the tub.
Robotically I respond to anyone who speaks to me. The cooler is mostly melted ice, and I grab one of the few remaining beers. The closest exit is the back door, and I slip through it. I make my way around to the front of the house, pausing in a dark area to water the shrubbery.
My intention is to sleep in the van now that my bladder is no longer bursting. However, when I near it, I realize it’s occupied. The shrieks are muffled, but leave no doubt as to what’s going down.
Obviously, Sladen or Mark was smarter than I was, by taking their business outside to the van.
Suddenly I just want to slide down the side of the van and sleep here on the ground. I’m dead tired from the workweek, then today the drive, the setup, the show, the takedown, and now this rave of fans.
Maybe that’s how it had been for Sash. Maybe she just slid down the tub after a shower—and her fix. The syringe invades my thoughts, and I squeeze my eyes closed as if that can make it go away.
Sleep. I need sleep. The high of the show had worn off, despite the ongoing party, leaving me listless.
At a loss of what to do next, I gaze at the baroque porch light. There’s more than one bathtub in that joint.
Back inside I head for our crash room, the one I’d apparently defiled and ruined any chances of Sash sleeping there. She’d said it was our room, but if it’s not still available, I’ll find our other room—or another tub. I nod politely to anyone speaking to me, including N-girl, but don’t slow my steps.
I enter the bathroom from the hall. Thankfully, Sash and her stuff are gone.
Stripping, I adjust the shower temperature. The warm water pulls a satisfied groan from my throat as I soap up. Trying to forget about Sash’s wrath and her drug paraphernalia, I hum a song from our set as I dry and redress in my already-worn clothing.
Cracking the door to the bedroom, I peek into the dim room. Someone is in the bed, a lump beneath the covers. At this point, my body has quit caring who. I’ll sleep on the floor if I have to.
Sash must have felt the same desperate need for sleep; enough to overcome her earlier bias regarding where. Or possibly, she’d noticed the bed hadn’t been unmade, which had been tacky of me. Even so, I was glad now to pull back the spread on the opposite side and slip into what smelled like freshly laundered sheets. Making sure to keep to my side, I turn away from her and fall into an instant slumber.
Chapter 21
Rough Ride
“Sweetie, don’t do that!” Marissa admonished her youngest daughter while snatching the spoon from her hand. “Cats don’t eat with utensils. And Fredo has already had supper.” Hopping up from her seat at the dining nook, she crossed the kitchen. The spoon clinked as she dropped it into the sink, and she extracted another from the kitchen drawer.
Tristan Jack, do NOT feed Bally with a spoon! The memory was fleeting, yet it cut her to the core. Lately she was having a lot of memories of a preschool J.J.
Zoë reached with one tiny hand, grabbed the clean spoon without a word, and dug into her oatmeal. Marissa dropped back into her chair and picked up her own spoon.
“What’s a utensil?” June asked before taking her next bite.
“A fork, spoon, or knife.” Marissa sent the oldest daughter a smile for not talking with her mouthful. But the expression was robotic.
She had very few real smiles these days. When June’s eyes lit up, a maternal string tugged at her heart. She winked and June’s lashes squinted when she tried to copy. This time, Marissa did smile for real.
She finished her cold cereal before they were done with their instant flavored oatmeal. Returning to the sink, she settled her bowl atop the mass of other dishes and ran water into it. Their housekeeper was due the next morning. It was lazy, but all weekend she hadn’t loaded even one dish into the dishwasher. They had also eaten takeout, sandwiches, freezer food, and instant food during the last few days.
Her emotional levels with J.J. being gone fluctuated. Some days, she cleaned and cooked with a frenzied energy level, and then for a few days, she barely moved from the couch or a pool lounger. This weekend had consisted of barely move days. She hadn’t prepared even one meal. Hence, cold cereal and oatmeal tonight.
Now what about Jack? Despite the silence from a hallway just off the kitchen, she knew behind the closed door of his studio, he was shredding one
of his guitars without mercy. It was the same every night, as well as almost any hour of the day that he was home and not helping with the kids. As she scanned the kitchen, her gaze paused on the bread she’d left out after making the girls’ toast.
With a twist of her wrist, she flicked the twist tie off. Separating four pieces from the loaf, she pulled them from the sleeve and four-squared them onto a paper towel. A few squirts of mustard and several ham slices later, two sandwiches were ready. She wrapped each in its own paper towel and set them both on a plate.
Picking it up, she turned to the girls. “Just leave your bowls. Momma will clean them up this time, okay? So when you’re done eating, come tell Daddy good night, and we’ll read a story.”
June nodded but added, “I can put our dishes by the sink, Momma.”
“That’s nice of you to offer, but I want you to leave them. I don’t want you carrying glass when I’m not watching you.”
For a moment, she reconsidered leaving the two alone for the five minutes it would take them to finish eating. The plastic bowls were all dirty, and that’s why she had used the regular tableware. At least she’d rinsed out two of their cups from earlier in the day. Shaking off the bit of paranoia, she entered the short hall off the kitchen that lead to Jack’s studio room on the garage side of the house.
She pushed open the door, and the fury of the current guitar lick shook her eardrums. His hair hung in his face as he bent low to the instrument, intent on the lightning motion of his fingers. One foot tapped, much slower, possibly once for every measure. Bending slightly, she set the plate on a table, and the movement caught his attention. Without missing a chord, he looked up. His fingers continued to glide along the fretboard, mashing and strumming strings by feel alone.
It wasn’t unusual when he didn’t stop once she was in the room. Most of the time, she enjoyed listening and would settle in a chair next to or across from him. But tonight the noise assaulted her psyche, and she felt her teeth clench as she extracted a drink from the fridge in the corner bar. Reminding herself that the kids would be in within a few minutes and then he would have to unplug, she managed to keep from screaming at him to stop. Turning, she held up a beer and he shook his head. When she extracted a bottle of water, he nodded, and she set it next to the plate.
“What’s this?” The blissful sound of silence accompanied his question.
His eyes were on the sandwich, and because he hadn’t picked it up yet, she suspected he was about to make an issue of that being considered supper.
“Ham sandwich.” She replied unnecessarily, knowing he could see the layers of ham, cheese, and lettuce between the bread.
Jack Storm the spoiled rock star persona had made only rare appearances over the last decade or so. But she remembered the tone of his voice, the look in his eyes. And at this moment, she was seeing Jack Storm. His next words founded her suspicion.
“That’s not dinner, right?” He propped the guitar in a nearby stand.
“It is. The girls had oatmeal, and I know you’re not a fan.” She didn’t want to fight with him. Not only because she hated when they had words, but also because she felt tired and sluggish. On that note, she gave in to her achy knees and sat.
“I’m starving…” He took on the tone of a petulant child—sounding like either of their daughters when they weren’t getting their way.
“I can fix you another?” She pushed her brows up, deliberately misunderstanding.
He took a giant bite of the sandwich and continued to glower somewhere beyond her.
The seconds ticked by, and she exploded. “If you’re so damn hungry, YOU could’ve covered supper!”
“I know, honey.” The arrogance disappeared, and his stern expression relaxed into humility. “This is good. Best damn sandwich I’ve had in forever.”
He continued shoving the sandwich into his mouth, practically inhaling the food. Watching him eat pricked at her with guilty stabs. He had lost significant weight over the last few weeks.
The door eased open, and June paused with her head in the crack before pushing it open enough for her and Zoë to come through. She was an observer, always scoping things out before committing, even when entering a room.
Jack finished the first sandwich with one last bite and tickled the girls when they approached. This turned into a full out tickling match while he ate the second sandwich. He promptly stopped the craziness when they began to get too wild.
The studio was hallowed grounds. No pets. No unruly conduct. No smoke. No eating or drinking in certain areas. And no rough play.
So they moved the fun across the house to the girls’ room. He carried one on each shoulder, letting them drape down his back. They giggled all the way, and she followed, wearing another real smile.
Halfway down the long hall, they all passed the closed door to J.J.’s room, and they all pretended they didn’t see it.
She knelt, picking up Fredo, the family cat, and scratched his chin while watching as Jack dropped their daughters one by one onto matching pink princess beds. After two stories were read, she dropped the cat to the foot of June’s bed and left Jack tucking them in. With a pained glance at J.J.’s door, she turned the other way and went down the hall to their bedroom.
Methodically, she gathered what she needed and stepped into the shower. Just as mechanically, she bathed, twisting her head so that the spray didn’t splash into her pinned up hair. And as she had done in times of anguish since her young teenage days, she released her tears to mix with the water.
James was having no luck. Braxton and Gabbi’s cell phone numbers, as well as those of Tristan’s closest high school friends, had been monitored since his disappearance. Their email accounts had been hacked in a search for correspondence. But so far, the only sign of J.J. was in daily emails to the family account she and Jack shared. These always originated from temporary accounts.
James had explained these types of accounts were untraceable, moving as ghosts through several servers. As of yet, Tristan hadn’t powered his phone on. However, it gave her a small measure of comfort to know he’d taken it instead of leaving it on the table with his bracelet.
The bedroom was still empty when she exited the bathroom.
A washed-and-worn-to-the-threads XXL Jackal tee shirt hung off her shoulders and almost down to her knees. She had worn it almost every day through two pregnancies, and now it was a favorite sleep shirt.
More often than not over the last several days, she’d worn jeggings or yoga pants through the day, all the way to bed and through the next day. Tonight though, these garments were in the laundry, so her legs were bare.
She made one last trip down the hall to peek into their daughters’ room. They were already sound asleep, both on June’s bed. Jack was between them, his head propped against the wall above the headboard, his long legs stretched atop the comforter, an arm around Zoë, and the other hand resting on a still-open book. The cat had moved and was curled up on Zoë’s empty bed.
Either sensing her or because she’d made a small noise, Jack’s eyes blinked open, and he returned her gaze, seemingly disoriented for a moment.
Of their own accord, her feet moved from the tiled hallway to the plush carpet. Crossing the room, she braced with her arms over June, leaning enough to touch her lips to his. She used a forefinger to hook a strand of his bangs, dragging it from where it hung over his brow to the side of his face. Easing the book from his grasp, she returned it to the bookshelf on her way out of the room.
Leaving the door open, she retraced her steps to the master bedroom. She hadn’t made the bed all weekend, so she took a second to pull the covers into some order before slipping between the sheets.
A search for the tv remote turned it up underneath one of the pillows on Jack’s side of the bed. With the press of a few buttons, the television rose from the footboard. She kept the volume low, only wanting to break the silence of the house.
Settling her head onto the pillow, she closed her eyes and w
ondered where J.J. was sleeping. She felt, more than heard, Jack enter the room. Cracking her eyes open, she saw him push the door to. Her lids were heavy and she closed them again.
Every night since J.J. had been gone, they’d left their bedroom door open, but that thought was fleeting. They had the same nanny-cam setup they’d had when J.J. was small. And if Jack had automatically closed the door, she knew he would turn the tv on the appropriate cam channel.
Through her closed lids, the shadowing in the room brightened when he switched the bathroom light on. Soon the sound of the shower mingled with the tv. Fortunately, he spared her his shower music. Pulling in a deep breath, she tried to fall asleep, but ten minutes later, she was still awake enough to notice when the room went darker.
The bed dipped with his weight, and the scent of orange and vanilla soap wafted as he settled. His arm weighted her waist, and from behind her, his breath stirred her hair. Easing back some, she relaxed into his embrace.
His fingers moved, stroking her hip, and drifted up. When they brushed the under curve of one breast, her eyes flew open, and she stared unseeingly into the dark room. Gliding up some more, he gently squeezed. “You awake, Mariss?”
Scrunching her eyes tightly closed again, she remained quiet. He moved again, and the warmth of his chest heated her back. His lips buried in the crook of her neck and he used one leg to wrap her from the waist down.
A groan of protest left her lips, and she twisted her head away from his kiss, into her pillow. Maybe he misunderstood her moan, because one hand burrowed beneath the shirt, and she flinched to feel his callused fingers on the bare skin of her body. Up, and up to her bare breasts, where he lingered, playing.
“Jack, stop!”
Giving up all pretense of being half-asleep, she tried to wiggle from his embrace to no avail. He was half on her now, his weight making it impossible to move. All she felt was skin against her skin, and she realized he hadn’t dressed after his shower. His arousal pressed against her hip, and his fingers dipped beneath the lacey waistband of her undies.
