“I’ve learned that little kids and rock tours don’t mix, no matter how much you want them to. And some people would say, ‘You’re crazy to have even tried,’ but what did I know? I’d never traveled out of the States before.”
He put down his untouched beer. “You left out that you’ve learned not to count on your husband.”
“He was there to be a rock star, not a family man.” She reached for her non-existent ring again. “In retrospect, I feel like all I did was complain. Neither of us knew how crazy the demands on his time would be.”
“Maybe he did,” he said. “Maybe he wanted his family with him so badly, that he figured ten minutes here, thirty minutes there, a coffee or meal snatched together with the kids, was better than nothing—for him.”
He’d wanted to wallow in glory and adulation, not return to his hotel room to see Kayla barely coping. After concerts, he’d wanted her waiting up for him, all starry-eyed at his awesomeness, not asleep and mumbling, “Okay but it’s a quickie. Our kids will be up in a few hours.”
And when he did spend time with them? Damn, but they’d better be cheery and smiling and as delighted to see him as everyone else. “C’mon family, I’ve got five minutes, make it good.”
He’d been a prick.
“Even if he couldn’t give you any more time, he should have given you a lot more understanding.” He waited until she looked at him. “Maybe he’s desperately sorry for being such a selfish ass.”
“And maybe she knows that. Anyway, enough about me.” She steered the conversation into safer waters. “What’s your story, Bob?”
“I grew up in a small town, a nerd in an athletic family. Three sisters, all older. As a kid I spent most weekends at their sports meets, sitting in my parents’ car listening to music. One of our neighbors was a bass guitarist and something about the sound…dispossessed and dark…called to me. Bass has got shivers, layers, sediment. I have two passions in my life, and music is one of them.”
She didn’t ask, “What’s the other?” Perhaps because she no longer believed his answer.
“I wasn’t a loner at high school—with three sisters I couldn’t be—but I did live in my own world with music, and didn’t notice other people much. But I noticed her.”
He leaned forward to pick up an olive, conscious of Kayla’s sharpened focus.
“This girl was a dynamo, always cheerful and friendly. She must have been involved in half the clubs in high school.” The olive was salty and tart with a shot of sweetness from the pimento in its center. “She tried out for the school band but even playing the triangle, someone had to nod a cue or she’d miss the beat. She just laughed it off and moved on to something else.”
He chewed thoughtfully. “She didn’t care about her image the way the other pretty girls did. What mattered to her was giving everything a try and encouraging other people to have a go.”
Swallowing the olive, he washed it down with warm beer. “I don’t know why she decided to make me one of her pet projects, or even how she found out I wanted to become a professional musician.”
He paused, waiting. He’d never thought to ask her that before.
“Perhaps she didn’t, at first,” Kayla offered. “When you played she might have been blown away by how freaking good you were—despite her own lack of talent on the triangle—and figured it was your lane.”
“She started dropping career pamphlets in my locker on how to develop a music career and pestered me into playing in the orchestra for our high school production. I messed with her a lot because I was cool and full of self-doubt. And one day she called me on my bullshit.”
Absently, he looked at his hands, with light calluses on the left fingertips from the frets.
“She said, ‘You have to believe to succeed’, which was the lamest cliché I ever heard, except that I did stop pretending and I believed. And when that belief wavered, when people told me how hard it was to break through, or suggested I give up and get a proper job, this girl believed for me.”
He stopped, emotion thick in his throat. Took another sip of beer. “I lived with a houseful of women, I wasn’t going to tie myself down young, but she was irresistible, like trying to stay out of the sun.”
He wanted that sun’s warmth again, wanted to bask in her love so badly.
Chapter Three
Kayla swallowed, unable to look away from those dark, liquid eyes. “Sounds like a fairytale.”
“It is. I married her.”
She finished her mulled wine. The dregs were bitter and gritty. “And yet here you are, Bob, on a secret assignation with another woman.”
She was proud of how light and playful she kept her tone.
“Kayla—”
“Betty.”
“Kayla,” he repeated. “I—”
Laughing shrieks distracted him. Kayla looked up. Had one of the exotics gotten loose from their bamboo cage?