Beaches conjured to mind the image of Miami or Hawaii, The Golden Coast or the French Riviera. Not Great Britain. I wrapped my arms around Georgia’s waist. “Well, England just has everything, doesn’t it? Beaches and old rocks and you.” I kissed her throat.
Her fingers crept over the back of my neck and threaded through my hair. That simple touch was enough to make me hard.
“Lottie’s in her room?” I snaked a hand to the waist of her jeans.
She swatted my touch away. “What is it with you and kitchens?”
“I don’t discriminate against rooms. It just happens that, for whatever reason, you spend a lot of time in kitchens.” My lips made a path to her shoulder, my fingers fiddled with the button of her fly.
Just when my fingers dipped beneath the hem of her panties, “Fuck You” by Ceelo Green blared from my pocket.
Georgia broke away from my hold, grabbing a dishtowel and popping me with it. “I’m going upstairs to go change.” She made her way out of the kitchen, and my gaze followed her ass.
I bit at my lip, debating on sending Ricky’s call to voicemail and following her upstairs. Ricky was one of the last people I wanted to talk to, but I couldn’t keep avoiding his horrible ass. Groaning, I pressed my phone to my ear. “Yeah?”
“I got you out of that stupid court date for your Free Willy moment on Rodeo Drive.”
“Thanks. You’re a winner.” I hoped he caught the sarcasm in that.
“And I’m gonna need you guys in the studio by the end of the summer.”
“For what?” I snagged the lone piece of sausage from the skillet and crammed it in my mouth. “I told you, I’m not singing pop.”
“Stop being a diva. I’m not making you sing pop. It’s updating your music.”
I didn’t feel like arguing with him. “When’s the album supposed to drop?”
“After the first of the year.”
I dreaded going back to the bullshit littered streets of LA, but it could be temporary. Just long enough to get the album done, then Georgia and I could come back here— There I was making plans like we were together indefinitely. “My contract’s up in November. I’m not recording anything for you.” Silence. I wiped grease from my hands. “Did you hear me?”
“I don’t know what’s crawled up your ass and died, but it smells. You’re recording the album. Leo and Nash already confirmed.” And then the call disconnected.
I stood in the kitchen in a daze. It felt like fame had forgotten me over the past few days, and I’d almost forgotten it. I could leave that entire industry showboat behind and never look back, but like I’d told myself a few days ago, the guys depended on me.
And as much as I bitched about fame, I lived for my music.
When I was fourteen, I found a janky Fender sticking out of a garbage can. I glued the neck back together, bought some strings, and I taught myself to play by watching YouTube videos. It was the first thing I ever felt good at. The first thing I felt was mine. Music was the first thing that didn’t reject me. It saved my sanity; it validated me. I found more of myself in music than I had anywhere else, and even at times when I couldn’t believe in myself, I believed in the music.
And that was my fatal mistake.
I took something that I was passionate about and made a career out of it. Sure, I was grateful. I understood I was a statistical improbability, but I also understood that all those kids playing fifty-dollar gigs at some rundown bar did it for no other reason than dreams and love. They sang what they wanted to. They wrote what they wanted to. And, at one time, I used to be able to do those things too. But when people and labels and fans started dictating my art, it lost its value—at least to me it did. It became a chore. Something I wasn’t sure I was so great at anymore.
Singing songs that I didn’t feel soul deep—that killed a little part of me. The industry had taken both things I was passionate about—Georgia and music—and shit all over them.
I could leave the music industry, minimalize and probably have enough money to carry Georgia and me through the rest of our lives. . .probably. But where was the security with that? Most bands lasted a few years. A decade if they were lucky. I could just suck it up and ride this magic carpet for everything it was worth.
Tours. And parties. A backstage full of drugs. Or maybe I shouldn’t. . .
20
Georgia Anne
Traveling the world, I had grown to realize that it wasn’t Santa Monica Beach that brought me peace. It was the lull of the crashing waves and the tantric dance the sunlight performed over the bobbing surface.
“You always liked the beach.” Spencer pulled my back against his chest, and I dug my toes into the gritty sand while seafoam lapped at our feet.
“A lot of cultures think water’s holy.”
“Is that so?”
I traced over the tattoos on his forearm. “Yeah. The Ganges in India—they say that’s the crossing point between heaven and hell.”
“It’s hot when you talk nerdy to me.” He nipped at my neck. “We should buy a house here. That way you can have the ocean in your front yard. We’ll have to make sure there’s a little alcove on the roof that faces the water, though.” His lips continued down to my shoulder. “I’m sick of LA, babe.”
My stomach kinked. LA. I’d almost forgotten who he was. What his job was. I stared at the white caps in the distance.
“You went tense.” He leaned into my line of vision.
“You’re going to leave California?”
“You’re here, aren’t you? You’ve got school.” His lips pressed below my ear. “And I’m thinking of leaving the band.”
As much as it terrified me, as much as I hated the fame, music had been Spencer’s dream long before I had. And while he may think it’s what I wanted, the last thing I needed was for him to resent me for making him walk away from something so few people ever achieved. “Don’t do that for me.”
“I’d do it for us.”
A few waves rolled in. It had only been six days, and we were already acting like it had been forever. I knew there was every possibility that Spencer would relapse. From what I’d read, chances were high.
“Our contract with Devil’s Side is up at the end of November. I don’t want to screw Nash and Leo over, but I just. . . I want to go back to making music for the art.”
“If you want out, they’ll have to understand.” I exhaled. “Talk to them.”
“We don’t even need a label. . .”
Silence stretched between us, and I knew Spencer well enough to know he was going down a rabbit hole of what ifs. “They can’t get mad at you for wanting out, Spence. They, of all people, must know that lifestyle’s not what people think it is.”
And it wasn’t. It was like a swirling, churning vortex of drugs and death and arrogance fueled by insecurities. The one thing I’d come to realize, most of those guys—most of those girls—they feigned confidence. They craved validation for the weaknesses they’d been led to believe they possessed.
“Bands split up all the time, and everyone’s fine.” I needed to lighten the mood. “Look at One Direction.”
“You did not just compare Midnite Kills to a boy band.”
“I did.”
“Tell me you don’t listen to them?”
“Sometimes.”
He shook his head. “The tabloids would have a field day with that.”
I went back to tracing the pattern of tattoos on his arm, and he tightened his hold. “Speaking of tabloids. . . wanna hear some shit?” He swept hair from my face. “My mom called me a few weeks ago.”
“What?” I pulled out of his arms and faced him.
“Some lady named Vicki Dunn.” He snorted. “Dunn. How would you like to be Georgia Dunn?”
“It’s a little lackluster.” I laughed while my mind went ninety to nothing. “How did she get your number, though?”
“Ricky gave her my cell—thought it would make great headlines.”
“What a
n asshole.”
“Right?” He scooped sand into his hand and let it run between his fingers.
Spencer had grown up with a sense of abandonment most people never felt. One I somewhat understood. While my mother may not have left me at a truck stop, I often wished she had. Then I could have made her up to be whoever I wanted her to be instead of the monster she really was.
Spencer’s mother left him. Mine beat me.
He never knew his mother’s name. I cursed mine.
“I mean, did you talk to her or. . .” Knowing Spencer, he had hung up.
“I listened for a second. She said she was only fourteen when she had me.” He grabbed another handful of sand. Tiny particles caught on the breeze when he tossed it to the side. “She was just a kid. I can’t blame her, but I still hung up on her.”
“Of course you would.”
“She probably just wanted money.”
“You don’t know that.”
“It doesn’t matter, though. She gave birth to me, doesn’t make her my mother.”
It seemed harsh. But some things in life are harsh. “What if she wasn’t calling for money?”
“What am I supposed to do?” he asked. “Try to have some relationship with a woman just because she birthed me and then left me at a truck stop? I could have died had that prostitute not found me and turned me over.” He exhaled. “Maybe that makes me an asshole, but that’s just the way I see it.”
“It doesn’t make you an asshole.”
“You wouldn’t tell me even if it did.” He wrapped his arms around me again. “Which Tom Petty song was I singing the first time you saw me in my backyard?”
The fact that he changed topics so fast meant it bothered him, but I wasn’t going to force the issue. While I knew Spencer had not forgotten what song it was, I pretended he had. “You forgot?”
“I forget a lot of things, Georgia Anne.”
“‘Free Fallin’.’”
He snapped his fingers. “Ah, that’s right.” He hummed the opening notes before the lyrics rustled past my ear, and I closed my eyes.
From the time I was a kid until I was seventeen, I would climb onto the rotting roof to escape my mother rip-roaring through the house. One night, when I had ducked onto the eave, the abandoned house behind ours was no longer abandoned. Spencer sat with a cigarette pinched between his lips and a guitar in his lap. He took a drag, then swiped a hand over the strings. A few chords in, the lull of his voice joined the somber notes, and I found the same peace I thought I could only find watching the waves at Santa Monica Beach.
From that night on, I had snuck out to watch him play. Three weeks in, I felt some part of me knew some part of him, which made it worth the guilt that I was a thief stealing moments that should have only belonged to him. But, at the time, his voice was my only saving grace.
Spencer’s song fell silent. “Ricky wants us to start on a new album by August.” There was a pause. A few waves rolled onto the shore. “You’ll go with me, right?”
“If you want me to.”
“I figured we could just keep the house in Beverly Hills to use whenever we had to go out to LA.” Then he picked up where he left off in the song, his finger sweeping along my arm.
The reds and oranges bled over the tides as the sun slowly sank behind the horizon. We were talking about houses. Planning months and years from now. And I wondered how long he would stay sober. Most importantly, I wondered about what I would do if he faltered. I left because he wouldn’t try. This was Spencer trying—so what happened if he had a misstep? We did, after all, have the rest of our lives to go. The song eventually ended, and we sat in silence, watching the sun set.
“What are you thinking about?” I asked.
“How old would he be now, two?”
I held my breath. Please don’t make me talk about this. It’s too hard. I tried to keep those memories shoved as far down as possible because they hurt. I busied myself with everything I possibly could, but at night, when the world grew quiet and I laid down to sleep, every time I undressed and looked at the silvery-white marks on my stomach, I thought about Bennington.
“I know you don’t like to talk about it, Georgia. I’m sorry I wasn’t there when . . .” He swallowed Bennington’s name. That’s what we do with pain, swallow it down like a bitter pill, hoping the hurt will eventually pass.
“You were halfway around the world,” I whispered, staring at the darkening sea.
Spencer plucked a broken seashell from the sand and chucked it into a cresting wave. When we lost him, that was when everything had fallen apart. I shut down, and brick by brick, I built a wall. I knew that now, but it took me well over a year to see it. Spencer didn’t know how to handle me. I had stayed in bed. I wouldn’t eat. The world had cheated me, and God, I was angry.
A few months after we had lost him, I walked out of the bedroom and found Spencer and Nash carting the crib away from the nursery. That had made it too real. I fought with them to put it back, and when Spencer told me we had to move on, I slapped him, and he took it.
Our marriage, it seemed, had accumulated a lifetime of strain in the matter of a few years. And yet, we were still here. That’s what true love was meant to do—withstand breaks. At the core, our love was a fire that refused to be extinguished. And while I hated we had missed the past year of our lives together, I took comfort knowing that diamonds are made under pressure.
“You being there wouldn’t have changed anything,” I said.
“No. But I should have been there for you.” He tossed another shell into the water. “Fuck knows I wasn’t afterward.”
And for the first time, I was honest about the after: “Neither of us were, Spence. Neither of us were.”
It was dark by the time we got back to the house. Reruns of Absolutely Fabulous flashed over the TV screen. Lottie was sprawled out on the couch and snoring, so Spencer and I snuck up the stairs to my room.
“I’m going to grab a shower.” He gripped the doorframe and tapped his ring on the wood. “Wanna join?”
“Make it a bath and I will.”
His teeth raked his bottom lip.
Water knocked through the old pipes by the time I reached my room. I pulled my hair loose from its ponytail and ran my hands through it, checking my reflection. My gaze landed on the wooden trinket box to the side of my dresser, and my heart stalled. I dug through handfuls of costume jewelry until I found the two rings that had settled at the bottom.
The Cartier, I had left behind, but I took my real rings with me. Clutching them in my fist, I moved to my nightstand and sifted through the gum wrappers tucked safely away until I found one that read: Marriage is forever.
The silver foil folded into a perfect square around both rings.
On my way down the hall, my heart beat to the same nervous rhythm it did the night I had followed Spencer into his house. Stopping outside the door, I took a breath. Even though the man on the other side was my husband, I still got this nervous energy in my stomach around him. Not butterflies—that description was too simple, too cliché. What I felt inside my stomach was akin to a million shooting stars trapped in the orbit of a lonely moon.
The hinges to the door groaned when I stepped inside, clicking the lock behind me.
Spencer’s tattooed arms were draped over the edges of the claw foot tub. His head rested against the sloping porcelain. “What’s the shit-eating grin for?” His lips kicked up on one side.
I loved that man with every bit of my soul, and I would do anything to be with him. Some may say that made me a complete fool, but I’d rather be a fool who took a risk than one who let her life pass her by. I stepped beside the tub and held out an open palm with the foil square in the middle.
His brows pinched together.
“Take it.”
Warm droplets of water sprinkled my hand when he grabbed it. And as he unfolded the wrapper, the rings dropped to the water with a plunk. The crease in Spencer’s brow deepened when he fished them
out.
“You were right. It is forever.” I held out my left hand for him to put them back on.
When he hesitated, my vision blurred behind tears. Our gazes remained locked while he slid both rings on my finger.
“We are forever,” I whispered.
“Fuck yes, we are.”
He grabbed me by the waist and hauled me into the tub, sending water sloshing to the floor. “I know I have my faults.” He kissed the edge of my mouth. “But I love you in a way that’s desperate.” He fought to pull my damp shirt over my head. “In a way that’s hopeless.” Another breath-stealing kiss. “In a way that would make the universe seem like it had an end.”
Tears stung my eyes. The salty taste met our mouths, and Spencer pulled away, cupping my face.
“Why are you crying?”
“Because I can’t find the words to tell you how much I love you.”
“But, babe. You already did.
21
Spencer
August
Three months clean.
Three months with Georgia.
Three months to realize this LA shit was not for me.
The window behind Ricky’s desk showcased the hazy LA landscape, and I found myself missing the green fields of Salisbury. Ricky’s stubby fingers drummed on the wood. His lips tightened into a disapproving line. “You look like you belong in a boy band.”
“What can I say, dickhead? You wanted me to go more pop.” I swiped a hand over my spikey hair. “This is all the pop you’re getting.”
Nash chuckled beside me. “You could give him extensions like Beyoncé.”
“She doesn’t have extensions,” Leo argued to my right.
“Are you kidding me, dude.” Nash leaned across from me and pointed at Leo. “She does.”
Ricky rested his head against his palm. “I don’t get paid enough for this.”
“It’s not that big of a deal, man.” Leo slouched in the chair to my right. “Extensions aside, what do you think of the album names?”
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