Endless Summer Nights (18 page)

“New Sound?” I asked before she explained that the whole point of the trip was to bring the label’s divisions together to expose and feature new talent.

Whispering that everyone was really just there to get a free vacation, she asked why I was there and seemed surprised that I was working with Megatron.

After I untangled myself from her conversation, I walked around the complex for a few minutes to clear my mind before I made my way back to the studio.

“Oh, my God, Sunny Bear!” Kimya shrieked.

I winced at the the familiar voice when I walked in.

Dressed in a black bikini, retro biker shorts and gold chains, Kimya was posted up in the booth beside Megatron and reaching for me as if I was a long-lost twin sister.

“I can’t even believe it! What are you doing here?” Kimya embraced me dramatically. I could smell marijuana in her poofy red weave. She looked like every twenty-something pop star I could think of and she was even skinnier than I’d recalled.

“What are you talking about? I told you she was—” Megatron started but Kimya stopped him, hugging me just long enough to cut him off.

“Of course I knew she’d be in Brazil. But here at the studio? With us? How—just uncommon.” She winked as though I’d snuck in after the front gate was left open.

As much as I wanted to find the right words to put Kimya in her place forever, my eyes left her and zoomed in on Pilar at the microphone in the recording booth because she was standing beside a face that robbed me of all air.

There she was with Marlo, laughing and running lyrics on a sheet of paper she was holding with him. Marlo pointed to invisible notes in the air and Pilar tried to catch them. Megatron had the booth sound off so I couldn’t hear them, though I knew it was my love song.

“Oh, you noticed my sister-in-law and big brother?” Kimya noted, following my stare and stepping behind me to become a narrator in surround sound. “Cute, right? They’ll make divine babies. Too bad, Sunny Bear. Can’t win them all.”

The crazy in me snapped on. “Cute indeed,” I said, smiling at Marlo and Pilar shoulder-to-shoulder in secret conversation. “Can’t wait until the wedding. Where are they registered?”

“Umm... Ummmm.” Kimya and her silly, high self was flabbergasted by my lack of pain.

I decided not to await a retort. I switched to Megatron. “Let’s make music. I’m inspired,” I said cheerily.

I darn near pranced over to the table, bent over Megatron and flicked on the sound myself. I could see Kimya watching me, confused. “Hey, y’all. Let’s get back to work!” I said into the microphone broadcasting into the recording booth. I flashed my teeth in a grin and plopped down into the newly empty seat beside Megatron that Kimya had been in. “Kimya, you staying or playing? We have history to make in here!”

Kimya rolled her eyes and Megatron cheered on my enthusiasm.

Pilar went back to looking simple and oblivious to the situation, waving as Marlo looked out at me.

“Sunshine?” he said, breathily, as if I was so much farther away and not just on the other side of the glass in the studio. As much as I fought not to feel him, his tone easily vibrated through me. He was wearing a thin white T-shirt that revealed his muscles quite deliciously, low-sitting stressed jeans and a simple green plastic rosary that seemed so opposite to the chain he’d been wearing that first night in the Hamptons.

“Hey, Marlo,” I said passively.

“You two know each other?” Pilar asked. “What am I talking about—” She corrected herself, flicking her forehead. “Of course you do. Sunshine worked with Kimya.”

Kimya was still standing in her stun. “Why don’t you two let Sunny hear your song?” she said cheekily, obviously still trying to get a sad response from me. “That
love
duet.
”

“Duet?” I copied.

“Yes!” Pilar pointed to Megatron, who was sitting silent and clearly trying to piece the situation together. “Can we do it again?”

Megatron started the fade-in of the track he was considering as the background for the last love song I’d written after that night in the basement.

Pilar started the first verse, then Marlo joined her.

As they fell into the chorus, gazing into each other’s eyes, Megatron leaned into me whispering, “I know you meant for this to be a solo. It was Kimya’s idea to split it just now. We don’t have to do it—”

“I love it,” I cut him off.

“What?” Kimya said behind me. “You hate it! You don’t want them to sing together.”

“No. It’s really great. This is how it’s supposed to be sung. This is what it’s about. It’s not just a love song,” I said as Marlo began to turn away from Pilar and look at me with frustration in his eyes as he began the second verse.

“It’s about love deferred. Being in love with someone and that love on hold,” I bared, feeling I was somehow singing with Marlo then. “But it doesn’t matter that there’s nothing there to receive the love you want to give. It’s about the emotion. Inviting in. Nothing else matters.”

“Whatever,” Kimya snarled vacantly.

Pilar started her response to Marlo’s crooning, but Marlo pulled off his earphones and walked out of the booth, leaving her alone to record.

“The hell?” Megatron said, stopping the track when Marlo busted into the sound booth.

“I can’t do this,” Marlo said, walking past us quickly.

“But, Marlo, we need to finish the song,” Kimya forced, following behind him as he walked toward the door that led out to the deck.

“No! I won’t do this!” He looked at me. “Y’all want this. Y’all do it without me.” He nearly kicked the door open and disappeared into a flash of dazzling sunlight.

Kimya growled theatrically and gave chase.

“What’s going on?” Megatron asked.

“Wish I knew,” I answered.

Pilar had stopped singing and was back on her phone giggling as if Marlo hadn’t just randomly walked out.

“Um...Pilar, hate to interrupt,” Megatron said into the microphone so she could hear him.

“I’m sorry. You guys want to move on to the next song?” she chirped, unfazed, holding the phone to her chest.

“Is that Marlo on the phone?” Megatron asked. “Can you get him back in here?”

“No. It’s not him. You want me to try calling him?”

Megatron looked at me confused, but I could only shrug.

Pilar got through two more songs I’d written. While she seemed as though she was at her best on the first recording, she still bested her best and with little effort. She turned sermons out of songs I’d just given Megatron as examples of what I could do. She improvised and arranged so organically and in tune with the entire production of what we were doing that there was little more instruction for Megatron and me to impose other than congratulations that were always in order.

Once it was clear there was no way we could avoid the blooming poolside party any longer, Megatron called the session to a close. He asked if I wanted to join him and some of the other producers for drinks in downtown Rio, but I declined. Truth be told, my armor was fading. I wasn’t bulletproof. Not even in Brazil.

When night caught us, I went back to the hotel and put on my favorite prawn sarong for a lonely walk on the beach where I could clear my head and patch my exterior for the next day in the studio.

I’d learned long ago that the real beauty in Rio’s beaches wasn’t in the sunlight. The moon was its most true illuminator. Every stone, pebble and grain of sand on the beach that had been warmed by the sun all day became a glittering diamond at night. Walking on the beach in the darkness that was only broken by the warmed stones afoot was like padding over a constellation.

I walked along the shoreline for a long time, watching people in love and listening to the bands playing in the clubs up on the strand. Soon the bottom of my sarong was as wet as my cheeks from tears that escaped my eyes without reason. I was about to turn back to the hotel and seek warmth, but I decided to get my entire self wet. To walk into the water—not away from it. To invite it in. I wanted to laugh. I needed to laugh. And just be free to get wet for a second. I turned and looked at the ocean and dared myself to step in. Three times, I dared, poking my big toe into the cooling tide water. I declined and dared and tried again.

Finally, “Freak it!” I ran into the water kicking and splashing like a kid.

“I did it!” I said to the water. “I did it!” At first I was talking about entering the ocean, but soon I was talking to the sea about everything else I’d done. “I did it!” I was so far into the water that the cooling waves lapped against my thighs. I started jumping and cheering myself on. “I did it!” More tears came, but with reason. In happiness. In claiming happiness that I’d invited in.

“What are you doing here?”

I turned, and there in the sand, Marlo appeared charging toward me shoeless and clearly on his own night walk over the sandy constellations.

“What?”

“Why would you leave me on Long Island and say you never want to see me again and then come here when you knew I would be here?”

“I didn’t know you would be here,” I said.

“It’s my label.”

“It’s my career. I have a right to be here,” I said, stamping out of the water like a misbehaving mermaid. “Why would you care about me being here anyway? You’ve obviously moved on with your life.”

“I could say the same about you. You know? First you sleep with me. Then you don’t want to speak to me. What kind of shit is that?”

“Like you give a damn,” I said, trudging through the sand toward my hotel. “You didn’t call. You never even tried! And now I’m supposed to listen to you?”

“Why would I try after I got your letter? You told me everything I needed to know,” he said.

“Letter?” I stopped.

“You’re a trip,” he said dismissively. “I can’t do this.”

I turned to see him leaving me standing there in the sand.

“No. Wait! What letter?”

“The one you gave Kimya with your resignation.” He looked at me and started speaking in a voice to imitate mine: “‘I need to follow my dreams. Please don’t contact me. I don’t want to hear from you. I hope you understand.’” He laughed sarcastically after recalling a few lines through angry eyes and finally commented, “At first I didn’t want to believe it was you, but that voice, how you bitterly just tossed me to the curb, it sounded like you.”

“Marlo, I didn’t write any letter. I didn’t send Kimya anything—not a resignation or any letter for you.” The last time I’d seen Kimya was at the house in the Hamptons. I hadn’t even gone back to her penthouse to get my favorite shoes. I’d even had her manager deposit my last check.

“I saw the letter. I read it. You’re saying Kimya—she wrote it?”

“I’m saying Kimya lied to you. She wrote a letter to lie to you. I didn’t write that.”

“No. Why would she do that?” Marlo looked so confused and maybe heartbroken, but his aversion was clearly not aimed at me. “What am I talking about? I know why she would do that. Typical Kimya.” He sighed heavily. “I should’ve known.”

He turned and started walking toward the soft sand in the water, staring out at the stars.

I crossed my arms and watched him pondering as my throat swelled with words I wanted so badly to let out, but couldn’t. I remembered him in the kitchen with the blueberry tea, smiling and telling me about the little sister he had to protect.

He bent down and picked up one of the shiny diamonds and tossed it into the water like a weight pulled right out of his heart.

In most any other circumstance, a brother in this state of confliction needed to be left alone. And I probably should’ve walked away. I had confliction of my own. Anger of my own. Reasons to throw my own rocks. But there was still that tightness in my throat.

“I couldn’t have written that letter,” I said, clearing my throat. “I couldn’t have, because I don’t feel that way.”

“Feel what way?” Marlo threw another diamond.

My throat tickled out, “About you. About us being in contact. I don’t feel that way.”

Marlo scanned my face.

“I waited for you,” I said. “For so long. To just call me. Even in my anger, I wanted you to try.”

“How could I? I thought you didn’t want me. That you were moving on without me.”

“I never did,” I said through a clear throat that didn’t need to struggle. “That night—” I tried, but Marlo stole my words.

“
That night
—was the best gift I’ve ever gotten.”

My emotions limbered into a past where we’d held on to each other as familiar strangers in a night of lifetimes and I’d felt the same thing.

Marlo captured these feelings in his words. “It changed my heart. Opened it. I know that sounds corny, but that’s how I’ve been explaining it to myself. That’s what it did. And I can’t be the same.”

“But you didn’t tell me. You never came to me.”

“You know, even with the letter, I did think of that a few times. That I could just show up at the studio with flowers and tell you everything I knew about you working with Megatron and I’d—I’d tell you how much I love you and ask you to be mine, but—” he looked off “—then I realized something, Sunshine. I don’t think I’m enough for you. Good enough for you.”

“Really? Whatever,” I said in skepticism and anger for every woman who’d ever heard that bold fib before.

“I’m serious. Your father was Sunsiree Embry. Do you know what that means to me as a singer? Who he is to me?”

“He’s my father. He’s not me. You were with me,” I said.

“Well, then there’s you, Sunny. All of you. It’s as though you’re cut out of every lyric he ever wrote,” Marlo said with marked attachment. “You’re scarred but not scared. A beautiful thing.”

“I am scared,” I protested.

“No, you’re not. You think you are, but you’re not. You’re still out here fighting. Trying. Not like the rest of us. We’re moving still,” he said. “Stuck.”

“You’re not. You moved on,” I said. “Pilar. And this engagement. How could I believe any of the things you said when you’ve moved on like that? So quickly. What am I supposed to think? I’m so wonderful, so free, but obviously forgettable.”

“It’s not what you think.”

“I’m thinking you’re engaged, Marlo. That’s what everyone is saying. She’s wearing that ring and you two are together. That’s not it?” I asked.