Far Too Tempting (12 page)

He gives me a crooked smile. “I can’t imagine any scenario where that would be the answer.” His hand is still on mine. Another small squeeze, and it’s so tender and caring and sends a warm rush through me. How can he kiss me senseless in the elevator and then hold my hand as if he’s my guy and he’s worried that I won’t make my deadline? But he manages both sides—the sexy one and the considerate one—and if he keeps this up, my mind just might turn to mush because I am dangerously close to this being more than a crazy kind of chemistry, more than a fun bit of flirting. I could see him as the man in my life.

My muscles lock up when it hits me what’s happening. That the physical has transformed. That when I said I want
more
, I wasn’t only referring to more contact. I want more of him. I want more moments. More time. More talking.

Which scares the hell out of me.

“Do you usually work this way? Are you the type of artist who thrives off that last-minute pressure?”

“Um…” I start but don’t answer because my mind is elsewhere.

Prickles of worry race over my body. I glance down at my watch. It’s nearly two o’clock. I must get out of here. I need to escape from him to sort through all the questions that are smashing into me at once. I don’t answer him, because I’m awash in a new sensation, but one that’s far more precarious. One that I don’t know how to account for.

“Are you going to be able to make your deadline?” he asks once more.

“Are you going to return to England and reclaim all your land?” I counter to shift the spotlight off me.

He raises an eyebrow, as if to say I’m onto something. But he is silent. He’s never admitted he’s a baron. I return to the question. “Don’t worry. It’ll all work out. Hey, I hate to cut out of here, but I need to pick up Ethan from school in a little bit.”

“Are you okay?’ he asks, furrowing his brow.

“Absolutely,” I lie.

I help him clean up, but we’re quiet now. The easy banter has been erased.

Soon, I catch an uptown train and try hard to focus on my new album, the songs I’ll need to write as I head for Ethan’s school to pick him up. I close my eyes and ponder notes, melodies, words.

But I draw a blank and open my eyes because my mind isn’t really on music. Instead, I’m staring out the scratched, grimy, dirty windows of the subway, watching the walls of the tunnels rumbling by, and I’m thinking about summer fruit, about honey-kissed peaches, sun-ripened apricots, sensuous warm cherries, bursting with their dark red, almost burgundy, hues.

And Matthew. I’m thinking about Matthew. The man I want in more ways than one.

…

I spend the rest of the day blotting out Matthew and music and the madness in my heart. Instead, I focus on my son, because he is the only constant in my life. We visit our favorite diner for French fries and chocolate milkshakes for an after-school snack, and I ignore my phone and all my messages and I silence the thoughts in my head for a while as Ethan shows me a drawing he made in art class of a dog wearing a wizard’s cape.

“Let’s go find a book about a dog wizard,” I propose.

His eyes light up, as if I just revealed I possess a map to buried treasure. “They have books about dog wizards?”

“I don’t know. But there’s a big, beautiful place called the library and I bet we can find out there.”

A helpful librarian tracks one down, and I read it to Ethan before he falls asleep that night, doing my darndest not to worry about my stupid deadline that I’m not even close to making unless I can knock out a song tonight about magical dogs.

Once he’s in The Land of Nod, I grab my acoustic and my notebook, and I try and I try and I try to fashion a song from that
stupid kiss.
But nothing works, and I feel more spent than after a long run with my sister. I am wrung dry, and all my muscles ache. But it’s a pointless sort of ache because I didn’t exercise them. I accomplished absolutely zilch in the music department and I’d really like to kick myself in the face right now. Knock some musical sense into me.
Something. Anything.

Writing is my heart’s desire, and I can’t get my arms around it anymore. And this ache—it’s a constant reminder that I’ve misplaced something important.

Something vital for my very survival, like air, like breath. Because writing songs is my oxygen.

Maybe I need to borrow someone else’s oxygen mask for a bit. Maybe I need a song to get my muscles moving for this workout. I reach for my phone and call up one of my favorite playlists, popping in earbuds to listen to Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing,” Queen’s “We Are the Champions,” and The Beatles’s “Here Comes the Sun” as I straighten up for the day. They remind me to believe in myself, that if I made it through the breakup of my marriage thanks to music, that surely I can celebrate what’s on the other side with a handful of songs too.

I’ll try again tomorrow. Today is fading away, and I need to let it go. I flop down on my couch as “Here Comes the Sun” ends, and finally check my e-mail. The first message I see arrived minutes after I left Matthew’s office this afternoon.

from: [email protected]

to: [email protected]

time: 2:14 PM

subject: Are you okay?

Dear Jane,

You left so quickly that I wanted to make sure you were okay. You seemed frustrated when I asked about your deadline. I hope you know I have to ask these questions. I want to do the story justice. I want to do you justice. Sometimes my questions might irritate you. As a journalist, I am completely fine with irritating someone I interview every now and then. It’s the nature of the beast. But taking off my reporter hat, and speaking only as a man now, I am sorry if I upset you. Perhaps you think it’s easy for me to turn it off for you. I assure you, it’s not. I’m still berating myself for kissing you in the elevator when I am desperately trying to focus solely on writing and reporting in the only way I know how—fairly. But I’m not going to pretend I want to erase that kiss in the elevator. Or the time I spent with you in the kitchen. Or hearing your stories about getting on the radio. Even if I weren’t reporting about you, I’d want to hear them. The more I know you, the more I want to get to know you. I am fascinated by everything about you, and you have to know it takes all my resistance to stop at kissing you.

Matthew

Suddenly, I don’t feel so sore. I don’t feel so hollow, either, and though the part of my heart that is owned by music is gasping for air, there’s this other part that is starting to fill. I lie back on the couch, my mind drifting to how I want to know him more, how I want to hear his stories too.

Then, to all the ways I want to break down his resistance.

Chapter Fourteen

One week later it’s snowing, a bitter, bone-gnawing kind of cold that the wicked month of March is known for.

To top it off, it’s frosty inside Ethan’s karate studio where I’m watching my son finish up his class before Owen joins us. I have a notebook in hand, ready for any song ideas that might strike.

Like lightning hitting me. Because the odds feel about the same. Especially since
stupid kiss
turned into a stupid mess.

I suck.

Plus, Matthew’s been out of town on another assignment, so I haven’t seen him in several days. He’s in Los Angeles, and he’s also visiting his younger brother, who goes to college there. Technically, his absence is a good thing.

But only
technically.

Because I miss him.

Owen walks in. “I know there is brilliance stirring in there. I can just feel it.” He places a hand on my head and is gently digging his fingers into my scalp.

“You’re gonna have to dig pretty deep,” I say with a heavy sigh.

He pulls up a white plastic chair and removes his baseball hat, shaking the snow from it. “I don’t believe that for a second.” He runs his hand through his golden-brown hair to get rid of his temporary hat head.

He’s come into the city from Brooklyn ostensibly to have lunch with his nephew and me. Ethan likes to say he’s having a “special guest” whenever Owen or Natalie join us for lunch or dinner. Ethan was thrilled to learn Owen would be his special guest today. Owen adores Ethan, but I also bet he dragged his ass all the way in from the other borough on a snowy Saturday morning when he’d much rather be working on his novel to nudge me along.

“Believe it, Owen Stanchcomb, believe it,” I say then turn to him and hold up my empty hands. “I’m scared. I don’t know what to do,” I whisper, and tears sting the backs of my eyes. “I’ve never had this kind of trouble writing.”

He doesn’t let my worry faze him. “It’s okay, champ. We’re in this together.” He mimics a boxing trainer and throws a few pretend punches, then rubs my arms as if he’s prepping me for the fight. “C’mon. First words that come to mind.”

I peer through the glass at the class. “How about something about movement,” I say, improvising.

“Movement.” Owen nods as if what I just said is pure genius.

“Or action.”

“Action. That’s good.”

“Maybe stretching.”

He glances at the glass. “Or kicking,” he offers, picking up the baton easily.

“Kicking and screaming?”

He nods and claps. “This is it. It’s coming together.”

I tap my head with the pen. “It’s in there, percolating, marinating.”

“Maybe that could be a song,” Owen begins, singing in a low voice. “I want to percolate, marinate, ruminate, remediate.”

“That does sound like a song. Like an INXS song!”

Owen laughs. “You got me there.” He stares up at the ceiling as if in deep thought. Then he snaps his fingers. “I know what we need to do. Get a quick lunch and go the studio. You need to be around microphones and soundboards. You need to get those headphones on and be in the heartbeat of making music. I have the keys for the studio, it’s a Saturday and no one is using it, so let’s do it.” He holds up his hand to high-five.

I slap his palm back. “You are the most awesome producer I have ever had. And you’re not too shabby as a brother either.”

Ethan runs out of the karate class. He rushes to Owen first. “Uncle Owen!”

Owen picks him up and ruffles his hair. “Dude, what’s up?”

“Did you see my front kick?”

“It was fu—I mean, freaking awesome,” Owen says admiringly.

“Hi, Mom. I need some water,” Ethan says and walks off to the water fountain while Owen and I gather our hats, coats, scarves, and other supplies to brave the tundra for a quick lunch at Wendy’s Diner, then over to the studio.

My brother may have had the right idea. Because the first day back in the recording studio is like the start of spring training. When I flip the light switch just beside the door of Gnarled Sunrise Studios, I feel that same sense of starting anew, as I walk into the live room, touching the microphone, look through the familiar window into the control room.

This must be what baseball players feel when they walk into the locker room for spring training in Florida after a winter away from the game. It’s the feeling of dusting off, stretching your muscles, getting back into the swing of it. Maybe here, in my element, I will find inspiration. If the best music comes from the heart, then maybe this is where I should be searching.

“This is so cool!” Ethan does laps around the room and banging the walls with his palms. He runs to the middle of the room and grabs the microphone. “Be careful,” I say, but still click it on for him.

“Uncle Owen! Can you hear this?”

Owen nods his head vigorously from the other side of the glass. He’s sitting in the control room, the equipment spread out before him.

“But I thought it was supposed to be soundproof?” Ethan asks.

Owen’s voice pipes into the room. “It is soundproof. But it’s so people
outside
the studio can’t hear, like someone walking down the hall.”

Ethan smacks his forehead. “Duh! I thought
no one
could hear.” He then walks around the studio, his squeaky sneakers rendered practically soundless on the hardwood floors. Not only do the hardwoods Jeremy installed add to the ambiance—I love the warm, homey, intimate feel of the blond wood—they also do an astonishing job absorbing sound. I’ve worn my loudest boots in the studio, the kind with wickedly high heels, and it’s like someone turned the volume all the way down on the soles.

“All right, Ethan. I’m going to sing. Want to play air guitar?” I ask.

“Yeah!” He breaks out his imaginary pick, poised to strum.

We run through “Mixed Messages,” then “Physical.” Owen gives me a thumbs-up from his perch inside the control room. “Now, we just need, oh, say, at least six more songs.”

“But no pressure, really.”

“None at all.”

“Actually, I was planning on doing a two-song album. Oh, wait, that would be a single with a B-side, wouldn’t it? And some would say that’s the future of the business,” I add, teasing him, teasing myself. And though I’m not suddenly belting out a new tune, I do feel better being here.

My cell phone rings then. It’s Aidan. “Hello?”

“Hi, Jane. How are you?”

“Fine. What can I do for you?”

It’s not as if he’s calling to chitchat. We don’t do that anymore. I no longer call him to share cute Ethan stories, like I did when we were together. Back then, I would leave messages during the day when he was teaching. I’d say, “Did you know his preschool teachers call him the Mayor of Manhattan Day because he knows all the kids and all their parents and says hi to everyone?” Or “Ethan insisted on making me breakfast today, so I had raisin bread stir fried in milk and brown sugar. Yum.”

It’s not that Ethan stopped being adorable. It’s that you cease sharing the cute little stories when you’re divorcing.

“I wanted to check in again about the meeting. The one I asked you to attend. You said you’d consider it,” he says.

I step into the hall. I’d nearly forgotten his request. “I’m going to be honest here, Aidan. I have a lot on my plate. My record label needs an album I’ve barely written, I have a few gigs coming up, and then there’s that little matter of raising our son half the time.”

“I know,” he says sympathetically. “And if you want to say no, I completely understand and respect that. I simply wanted to ask.”

“Ugh,” I moan, and his routine reminds me of how our marriage was. “Why do you have to be so fucking nice and considerate all the time?”

“Because I care about you, Jane. You’re the mom of my kid. And you’re kind of a cool person too,” he says, as if the answer is obvious. “I’ve always cared about you. I always will.”

I feel a hitch in my throat, and the tears that pricked my eyes back at the karate studio well up again. I hate that I still feel this way. I wish for just a moment that he could make it easier for me to hate him. Couldn’t he at least have had the balls to cheat on me? Couldn’t he at least have given me the satisfaction of having had a quick screw in a bathhouse? A long and sordid affair with Tom?

But he’s not that person. He’s a good guy. He’s a kind man. He’s a great dad, and yet sometimes all I want is to go Alanis Morissette on him.

Like the night I showed up at his new place a month after he left me. The early shock had worn off and anger had set in. Natalie had come over for Chinese takeout, and after I ranted—and moaned and cried—I asked her to stay and watch a sleeping Ethan because I needed to visit my ex to give him a piece of my mind.

“Where’s Tom?” I asked, after he buzzed me in.

“He’s working. We don’t live together though,” Aidan said calmly. “Where’s Ethan?”

I smacked my forehead. “I am so stupid! I left him at home all alone. Do you think he can handle that?”

Aidan didn’t take the bait. He simply said, “What can I do for you?”

“What can you do for me?” I repeated as I began strolling around his apartment. “What can you do for me? You could roll your eyes. You could say something nasty when I make a sarcastic remark. You could raise your voice. How about that?”

Aidan leaned against the counter in his kitchen. “What would be the point of all that?”

“The point? Oh, I don’t know. Maybe to demonstrate you have an emotion. But that’s the problem, isn’t it? You don’t have any emotions for me. Nope, not a single one. So you can just stand there all cool and casual and unbothered. But what about me?”

“What about you?”

“You led me on for years! You made me a fool. You made me feel so
stupid
.” I pushed my hands through my hair, anger like I had never felt before rising through me.

“I’m so sorry, Jane. I never wanted to hurt you. You have to know that.”

“You’re sorry? Who cares that you’re sorry? Couldn’t you have figured out, oh, say, maybe when you were twenty that you preferred men? Would that have been so much to ask?”

“I didn’t marry you thinking this would happen. I swear.”

“You kissed a guy in college, Aidan,” I said more quietly this time. “Didn’t it occur to you that you might be gay?”

Aidan turned away then, reaching for two tumblers and filling them with water from his Brita filter in the fridge. “Have some water.”

“I don’t want any water! I want to know why you led me on. I want to know why you slept with me. I want to know why you didn’t come out before you married me.”

He took a drink from his glass. “I didn’t know then. I wasn’t sure. This hasn’t been easy for me, either.”

“Fuck you, it hasn’t been easy for you! You’re a coward, Aidan Stoker. A coward. You couldn’t even dump me without help. You had to have a friend come over. Do you have any idea how humiliating that was?”

He just shook his head.

“Well, I hope you never have to know.”

Then I spotted his cordless phone on the kitchen counter. I reached for it, raised my arm over my head, and threw it as hard as I could at the faraway living-room wall. It smacked the wall and landed on the hardwood floor with a satisfying
clunk
, spitting up its battery case and battery. Aidan walked across the room, picked up the phone, and put its parts back in. Then he returned to the kitchen and placed it safely back in its cradle.

He reached for my arm. The feel of his hand wrapping around me hurt too much, searing me with all that I’d once thought it meant—and all that it never was.

“I’m sorry, Jane. I never meant to use you. I never meant to lead you on. I loved you. I still love you. I just don’t…” He let his voice trail off. “I wish I could say something to make you feel better.”

I shook my head and placed my hand on the doorknob. “You can’t.”

Now, here in the hall, the pain slices through me again. I’m reminded once more of Kelly’s advice—maybe I can help someone else. Maybe this pain will be useful to some other woman experiencing the same awful kind of self-doubt.

“Fine. E-mail me the details,” I tell him, then say good-bye, and the pain is instantly chased by anger.

I stare daggers at my phone and fight very hard the urge to throw it at the wall. Instead, I march right back into the studio, past Owen, sitting at the soundboard with Ethan in his lap. I push hard on the door to the live room and grab the nearest guitar. I strap it over my shoulder and push my hands through my hair, pulling it away from my face, reaching for a ponytail holder in my back pocket to get it out of the way.

Without even looking through the window into the control room, I can feel two sets of eyes on me. I can tell my brother and my son are both watching me, quizzical, wondering what is going on as I begin playing.

But I don’t care who is watching. I just focus on the walls, the floors, the microphone so close to my face, and listen to the beats already forming, the chords coming together, the melody of my anger—anger at myself—falling into place, as I play the guitar.

Ten minutes later, I layer the words on top, raw like the notes, raw like my emotions.

Don’t ask me

To be your friend

Don’t ask me to be your figurehead

I don’t want to be your spokesman

So don’t, just don’t, please don’t ask me

I’ll be shaking my head, turning you down

But the words don’t come out that way

So please don’t ask me, oh don’t ask, oh don’t ask, oh don’t ask

…

Later that night, I’m sitting on my deck—my
lucky
deck—listening to my second album on my iPod. Back when I thought I was happy with my husband. Back when I thought I knew what love was. But I was a fool, and these stupid songs sound so foolish now.