Hitting the Right Note

by Rhonda Bowen

  “Simon.”

  He stopped and turned to look at her, and an unexpected wave of affection hit her.

  “Will you be here when I wake up?” she asked.

  He smiled. “As long as you wake up before my ten o’clock flight.”

  “Okay,” JJ said, sliding down into a sleeping position.

  She closed her eyes with an image of Simon standing by the door, his beautiful, intense eyes watching her as she drifted off to sleep. Not a bad image to make dreams about.

  Chapter 19

  By the evening, JJ felt significantly better than she had at the start of the day when Simon first showed up. Half of it had to do with sleep. It had been months since she had slept as much as she had in the past twenty-four hours, and her body was grateful. But she was convinced that the other half of it had everything to do with Simon. She had asked him if he would be there when she woke up. But he had done her one better and woke her up every few hours with a glass of some awful concoction that she was surprised her stomach was able to hold down. He refused to tell her what was in it, but whatever it was, it managed to eliminate her dizziness by midday and provide her with enough energy for a game of Scrabble by midafternoon. Maybe it had nothing to do with the medicine at all. Maybe it was just the house call. Something about being with Simon made her feel better, feel calmer, more relaxed. Life with Simon felt different—in a good way.

  By the time evening rolled around, she was itching to be outdoors. Simon didn’t need much convincing. A leisurely walk a couple blocks away from the hotel found them at a restaurant with a patio and several vegetarian options.

  After dinner she had insisted on going to the airport with him despite his protests. He eventually caved, and so here they were, riding a cab to JFK International Airport together. She was sitting next to him in the backseat, her right arm touching his left, his left knee brushing against her right. She had gotten used to those small contacts during the day. His firm grip on her arm as he helped her out of bed earlier that day. His hand on the small of her back as he opened doors for her that evening. His fingers grasping hers now, as he helped her out of the cab at JFK. She held on to his hand a little longer than she needed to, and he let her. She didn’t want him to go, because when he left, it would mean that her twenty-four-hour vacation would be over and she would have to go back to life as it had become.

  They walked inside in silence, his single bag slung over his shoulder. The drop-off area was busy, as it always was at JFK. Travelers and airport security moved around them at a brisk pace. He had to go. His flight would leave in a little over an hour. It was time to say good-bye.

  “Well, this is it,” he said, turning to look at her.

  She nodded. “Thank you, again. I still can’t believe you came all the way here for me.”

  She reached up and wrapped her arms around him tightly. He seemed surprised, as it took a couple moments before he returned her emotional embrace.

  “You’ll be fine,” he said, patting her back awkwardly. “Just keep yourself hydrated, get some rest, and keep your promise.”

  He held her back from him so he could look at her. “If you start throwing up again though, straight to a doctor. Okay?”

  She smiled. “Okay.”

  He looked at her a long moment before dropping his arms from her shoulders and stepping back. She hoped he didn’t say good-bye. She couldn’t bear to say good-bye to him.

  “I’ll see you, Judith.”

  She watched him step back, then turn and walk toward the check-in point. She suddenly remembered the moment she had watched him walk away from her outside the hotel in Paris. They had been separated by EMS workers and she had lost sight of him. The next time she caught a glimpse of him, he was walking toward a car and she was being pulled down into another. It would be four-and-a-half years before she would see him again. How long would it be this time?

  He glanced back at her and seemed to freeze when he caught the look on her face. In a single movement, he turned and was walking back to her.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, his brows drawn together in a way that had become familiar to JJ over the past twelve hours. Too familiar, in a way that nothing in her life had been familiar in the past few months. She should have been happy about that. This was what she had wanted, right? The dream of celebrity, the chance to sing onstage in front of millions of people, the chance to have a career that was real, the chance to matter. So what was this niggling feeling of restlessness she couldn’t escape?

  Grabbing her hand, he pulled her over to a cluster of attached chairs. He eased her down into one before taking another beside her.

  “Judith, what’s going on?”

  JJ waved her hand lightly. “You have to go, Simon. You’re gonna miss your flight.”

  “I’ve got an hour,” he said. “Talk to me. Are you feeling sick again?”

  JJ shook her head. “No. I’m fine.”

  “If you were fine you would look me in the eye and say that.” She turned to look at him, and the neutral expression she had tried to frame her face with crumpled at the sight of the concern on his. She sighed and sank back into the chair. She stared out at the swarm of people around her. Everyone moving with purpose. Everyone going somewhere. She wished she felt as sure as they looked.

  “Have you ever felt. . . like something was missing?” she asked finally, her eyes still taking in the scene around her. “Like there should be . . . more?”

  Simon was silent for a long moment. Then he gently squeezed her hand, which he was still holding.

  “Is that how you feel?” he asked.

  JJ rubbed her hands across her face as she tried to understand how she was feeling.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I finally have what I want. This dream that for a long time I wouldn’t even dare to dream, singing onstage, traveling the country doing what I love, it’s finally happening. I’m in front of thousands of people almost every night. I sing with Deacon Hill—the Deacon Hill, top ten R & B recording artist in North America. People recognize me on the street. Some girl even asked me for my autograph once. I stay in five-star hotels, wear designer clothes, get paid a ridiculous amount of money, which I barely have to use because so much is already paid for. I never thought this could happen to me. But it did.”

  She turned to Simon. “So why do I feel like . . . like . . .”

  “Like what?” he asked gently.

  “Like there should be something else. Like there should be more?”

  A look of understanding flitted through Simon’s eyes. Then he sat back, quiet. JJ rested her head against the back of the chair and closed her eyes. She couldn’t pinpoint exactly why, but she knew that she was unsettled. She had gotten her dream, but it felt like it wasn’t enough.

  “That day in the elevator,” Simon said suddenly. “Do you remember where you were going before we got stuck?”

  JJ opened her eyes and glanced over at him. “I was on my way to the airport.”

  He smiled. “You wanted to go to the Rue de Rivoli because you heard that they had tons of little shops that sold inexpensive souvenirs.”

  “Oh yes! That’s right,” JJ said as the memory came back to her.

  He shook his head, the smile still on his lips. “You were stuck in an elevator, barely over a panic attack, and all you were worried about was that you wouldn’t have time to get something extra for each of your sisters and for the teenager you were teaching guitar. I think you said her name was . . . Tiffany?”

  “Stephanie,” JJ corrected. “Stephanie Corwack.”

  JJ hadn’t seen Stephanie since last Christmas. She had taught the young woman how to play guitar for several years, but their friendship had stretched beyond the music. Stephanie, who was the only child of a single father, had adopted JJ as her big sister in many different ways, and it had been an emotional parting when Stephanie had left for college two years earlier. Long phone calls and lengthy e-mails had become the basis of their friendship since then, bu
t over the past year JJ’s contact with Stephanie had dwindled significantly. In fact, Stephanie had sent JJ an e-mail several weeks ago that she had yet to look at, much less respond to.

  JJ closed her eyes again.

  “You know, a while ago you talked about a lot of things,” Simon began again, his voice taking on a gentle, lazy quality. “But I didn’t hear you mention your sisters, or your family, or your spirituality.”

  “I haven’t spoken to my sister Sydney in almost two weeks,” JJ said. She shook her head. “Usually, we can’t go a couple of days without talking to each other. But ever since we had that fight . . .”

  JJ let the rest of the sentence drift off. She still remembered the argument over Rayshawn more than a month ago. They had both offered some sort of semi-apology. But the air wasn’t anywhere near clear. Even though they had tried to connect since, their interactions had been strained at best.

  “You know, the girl in the elevator?” Simon mused. “Family was all she talked about. And faith. Those were the most important things in her life.”

  The very things that were in flux in her life now.

  “Maybe it’s that shift that has you feeling lost,” Simon said quietly. “Maybe you haven’t quite adjusted to that change in priorities yet.”

  He was right. In many ways she was still transitioning. And figuring out how to balance all those old priorities with her new life was proving to be a great challenge.

  But maybe it was all a phase—just an adjustment period. It was her first time on tour and maybe this was how people felt when everything was so new. After it was all over, she would be back in Toronto and there would be time to reconnect with her family. Then it would be easier to nurture her spiritual life the way she used to.

  “You know what? You’re right,” JJ said, sitting forward. “It’s just the adjustment, just the tour. It’s the first time I have been on something like this, something so intense. It’s taken a lot to get used to. Even my body is out of whack, which is probably why I got sick in the first place.” She took a deep breath. “I’ll be fine. I’ll get through the tour, and when I get back to Toronto, everything will be okay. My family is not used to this. But we just need time. We’ll adapt. We always do.”

  JJ kept nodding her head, as if by doing so she could convince herself that her words were true. Simon looked at her and she thought she saw something akin to sympathy in his eyes.

  The call for his flight came across the airport intercom and JJ stood up.

  “Even though I don’t want you to, you have to go,” she said with a sad smile.

  He stood, his eyes still searching her face. Then he shocked her by leaning down and pressing a kiss against her cheek.

  “I hope you find what you’re looking for,” he murmured close to her ear.

  She wanted to respond, but her brain was mush. All she could think about was the feel of his lips against her cheek, the warmth of his breath on her ear, the contrast of his coarse stubble against her soft skin.

  Then before she could recover, he was gone. Slicing through the crowd and disappearing, leaving his kiss on her cheek and his words in her brain.

  JJ sat down on the chair she had just vacated. If she hadn’t been confused before, she definitely was now.

  Chapter 20

  It was way too early in the morning.

  This is what JJ knew for sure as she took the stairs down to the lobby early the next Saturday morning. Everyone else was sleeping. The show they had played the night before at Philadelphia’s Mann Center had been completely sold-out. JJ had heard that people who had missed the New York show had driven in for this one. The rumor was that scalpers were selling last-minute tickets on the street for sometimes more than twice their value. Their second show later that night promised to be just as packed, and if JJ knew what was good for her, she would have stayed tucked into her sheets and not gotten up until an hour before their four p.m. sound check. But for some reason here she was, ten fifteen in the morning, stepping through the glass doors of her hotel, oversized sunglasses on, light jacket thrown over a simple blue summer dress, clutching a piece of paper with an address hastily scribbled on it.

  It wasn’t hard to find a cab. The second driver she asked actually knew the address, and so JJ sat back for the ride. In twenty minutes she was in Chestnut Hill, a neighborhood in the northwestern part of the city that didn’t seem like it belonged in fast-paced Philadelphia at all. Furthermore, the beautiful European-style stone structure that the driver stopped in front of looked from the outside to be more like a cathedral than the kind of church she was used to. Nonetheless, the gathering of people just outside the front steps told her it was exactly what she was looking for.

  JJ paid the driver and murmured her thank-you before stepping out of the vehicle onto the sidewalk. Usually she didn’t much enjoy being in churches where she knew no one. She enjoyed the fellowship of her spiritual family and craved the freedom that came from being with people who shared her beliefs. But today she was just content to be somewhere where God might be also.

  The restlessness hadn’t gone away. She wasn’t adjusting like she thought she would. Instead, she was feeling more and more unsettled as the days went by. She had needed to escape, and in the past the quiet inside a church building had served as her haven. Maybe here, today, she could find that tranquility again.

  “Welcome to Chestnut Hill Community Church!”

  JJ smiled, but not nearly as brightly as the greeter, a large woman old enough to be her mother. She took the offered hand and was shocked when the woman pulled her into a gentle hug that was, surprisingly, not as intrusive as she thought it might be.

  “Glad you could make it,” the woman said when she let go.

  There is was. That serene atmosphere. “Thank you,” JJ murmured.

  The woman nodded, then turned to the person behind JJ and offered a similarly genuine greeting. JJ chuckled to herself and slipped inside the sanctuary.

  The church was narrow and welcoming with its two aisles of padded pews and well-worn carpeted floors. She sighed and felt her muscles relax as she sank into the deep cushions of her seat. Light piano trickled through the sanctuary, bringing the buzz of voices and movement down to a hum. JJ closed her eyes and let the music flow over her, let the chords imprint on her heart, let them stir up further the feeling of longing and nostalgia that was gently swirling inside her.

  JJ missed this. The opportunity to sing without rules or expectations. The freedom and the openness to be who she was in a place where she would not be judged. The serenity she experienced when she was able to leave the world behind. She used to be able to experience that on her own, in her own time with God. But that had seemed so difficult of late.

  JJ didn’t want it to be over, but when the minister finished the message, she knew it was time to go. Slipping out of her pew, she made her way down a side aisle, hoping to beat the crowd out the door and avoid any awkward visitor moments. But the voice with the microphone stopped her.

  JJ turned around slowly from the back of the church and stared. She watched as the woman’s honey-colored fingers moved skillfully over the acoustic guitar as she sang the song, “Open My Eyes,” a song JJ had loved to play when she first learned guitar. When Christ’s love had first become real in her heart. It seemed like such a long time ago, but that song brought back the memories. The feeling of nostalgia was almost overwhelming, like a throbbing ache without the pain. And now, she couldn’t just walk away without knowing if it was the singer or just the song.

  She waited in the back row until the crowd had mostly dispersed, then she walked through the remaining stragglers to the front. The woman’s blond-streaked auburn hair hung in straight long layers over her slim shoulders as she secured her guitar in the case. When she finally stood, she came face-to-face with JJ.

  “Hi!” she said, offering a bright smile. “Are you a visitor?”

  JJ nodded. “I am.”

  “I thought I saw you somewhere near th
e middle,” the woman continued, offering a hand to go with her smile. “I’m—”

  “Cymmone Slater,” JJ finished. “I know who you are.”

  “And you’re part of Deacon Hill’s new female band,” Cymmone said with a knowing smile. “I knew there was something familiar about you when I saw you in the congregation.”

  JJ’s eyebrows shot up. “How did you . . .”

  “The posters,” Cymmone said. “They’re everywhere. Plus you guys were on the front page of a tabloid in the supermarket, and the line at the cashier was kind of long, so . . .”

  JJ laughed. “Wow, this is new for me. But I bet you must be used to it by now.”

  The woman gave a little laugh. “Not so much. I still get surprised when people recognize me. Especially after so long.”

  “Three years is not that long,” JJ said. “Especially when you’re an American Icon winner.”

  Cymmone shrugged. “I guess.”

  JJ noticed a faraway look in the woman’s eyes, followed by a grimace that she quickly shook off.

  “Anyway, that was a long time ago,” Cymmone said, her smile returning quickly.

  It was also clearly a time she wasn’t eager to talk about. JJ could only imagine why.

  “I just came up here to see if it was really you,” JJ said before the awkward moment could get any more awkward. “And to say I really enjoyed your song. I didn’t even know you were a Christian.”

  “A lot of people don’t,” Cymmone said. “For awhile, I forgot myself.”

  Second awkward moment. JJ wasn’t sure what to say to that, and so she said good-bye instead and headed back toward the exit.

  “Hey, wait!”

  She turned around to find Cymmone walking toward her.

  “Would you like to stay for lunch? We have lots of food and everyone here is friendly. I promise not to bring up your singing if you promise not to bring up mine.”

  JJ smiled in spite of herself. No matter where she went, there were some things about church life that never changed.