Rifts and Refrains

by Devney Perry

  “How so?”

  “The lights. The crowds. The intensity.” Her free hand floated into the air, dancing above us as she spoke. “It’s a rush. It’s a high. You go up there, and no matter how tired you are from taking a red-eye across the country or not sleeping because you’re stuck on a tour bus, you get this energy. It feeds you and makes you forget about everything else. For one magical hour, it all makes sense again. So you put up with the in-between.”

  “And you live hour to hour.”

  “Exactly.”

  In my own way, I could relate. Playing at the bar was a blast. Amp that up to a larger scale, I could totally see how it would become a drug of its own.

  And she’d leave here to keep living those hours.

  “Fifty-seven,” I said.

  “Fifty-eight.”

  We reached one hundred eleven before she stopped counting again. “You asked me last week if we were real. As kids.”

  “Yeah,” I drawled, having no clue where she was going with this.

  “We were real, Graham. We are real.”

  I shifted, rolling up on my side to look down at her face. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that I never stopped loving you. I doubt I ever will.”

  The sadness in her eyes broke my heart as I spoke her next word. “But . . .”

  “But it’s not you,” she said. “You said it yourself that night after the Eagles. My lifestyle would make you crazy. The schedule is grueling and there’s no such thing as routine. If we tried to make it work, you’d end up resenting me. I’d end up hating the music. And Colin would suffer the most.”

  I loved her for considering my son in the equation.

  “I don’t want to give it up,” she whispered. “The magic hours. I don’t want to quit.”

  “And I wouldn’t ask you to.” I closed my eyes, taking a moment for the pain to fade.

  Colin and I couldn’t follow her around the world. We couldn’t hop on and off buses and airplanes for months in the year. I wouldn’t subject myself to that kind of chaos, let alone my son. He needed to be here, in Bozeman with our family. In school. In our home.

  There was no practical way to merge our lives together. The give and take, the sacrifices, would end up destroying us both.

  “Where does that leave us?” I asked. “Do we end this now? Tonight?”

  Her chin quivered as she nodded. “If I wake up in your bed one more time, I won’t want to leave.”

  And I wouldn’t let her go.

  “I loved you too. It’s taken me this week to see it, but you were right. It was real. Every minute.”

  “Maybe it was destiny. We were always meant to walk different paths. Before, we were too young to understand it. But now . . .”

  Now we could walk away without anger or frustration or words left unsaid.

  Her hand came to my cheek. “Graham, I wish—”

  I cut her off with a kiss, stealing whatever words she was about to say that would only make it harder for me to let her go.

  And I would.

  I’d let her go.

  She belonged on that stage. She’d earned those magic hours.

  Quinn hadn’t said she wouldn’t give it up. She’d said she didn’t want to quit. There’d been a hesitancy in her voice, in her words, like if I’d asked, she’d cave.

  So I kissed her before my resolve weakened. Before I broke my promise and begged.

  My tongue darted into her mouth, my hands roamed her gentle curves. And when she came apart in my arms later, both of us panting and sweaty, I memorized the warmth from her lips in the cool night air and the way the moonlight turned her hair silver.

  The drive home was silent, every mile toward her house agonizing.

  When I pulled onto the block, I noticed that most of the firework debris had been cleaned away. The Franklins had already pulled their trash can to the curb for tomorrow’s pickup.

  I parked in front of her house and moved to shut off the truck, but her hand shot out, stopping me before I could shift into park.

  “No, don’t,” she pleaded. “Don’t get out.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I can’t do it.” A tear dripped down her cheek. “I can’t say goodbye. So just let me walk away.”

  Like she’d done at the airport nine years ago.

  That was why she’d walked away.

  “Will you tell Colin goodbye for me?”

  I nodded, unable to speak.

  Then she leaned across the console and pressed her lips to mine, the taste of her salty tears falling onto my lips.

  I held her to me, savoring one last kiss before she ripped herself away and yanked at the door handle.

  She flew up the sidewalk and vanished behind the door.

  My throat burned as I stared up at her bedroom window, waiting to see if she’d appear in the glass and wave. The room stayed dark. So I pulled my foot off the brake and drove home. When I walked inside my dark house, the sense of loneliness nearly brought me to my knees.

  Was this how it would be? Was this my life? Living for my son. Using his activities to keep me busy. Using work to distract me from the fact that there was a hole in my chest.

  I’d been doing it for years, so why not a few decades more.

  My body flew into action and I began ripping open the kitchen cabinet doors. I emptied the upper cupboards first, hauling plates and bowls and glasses to the dining room table. Then I cleared out the lower. Things I used regularly were stacked beside my dishes. The other items that my mother had given me over the years—two slow cookers and a bread machine—went downstairs for storage.

  The first swing of my sledgehammer was around two in the morning. By four, I’d filled the bed of my truck with cabinets to donate to Habitat for Humanity. By five, I’d made an impressive pile of junk in my driveway.

  As dawn approached, I stood in the kitchen, staring at the demolition.

  Fuck.

  Why hadn’t I begged Quinn to stay?

  Chapter Twenty

  Quinn

  “Ha! Look at that.” Dad shifted a box aside and peeled away a tarp to wheel out a tricycle that was buried in the disaster that was Nan’s garage.

  Mom had called it. The house had been Nan’s domain, organized and easy to sort through, but this garage might take months.

  “Was that yours?” I asked Dad, abandoning a box I’d just opened.

  “Can you believe they saved this?” He crouched to run his hand over the handlebars. It was dirty, but the red trike was free of rust and nearly unscratched. “I remember pedaling this around the driveway. I used to have a wagon too, but—” Dad pulled at the tarp, feeling through the cluttered mess.

  Brown boxes coated with a layer of dust were stacked to the ceiling. Tarps covered some items while others were left clustered together. There was a clear aisle that circled Nan’s Subaru Outback like a walking trail through a dense forest. But otherwise, the space was packed.

  Nan had told me all about the car, the first she’d ever bought brand-new. She’d only driven it for two months before deciding, even with shiny new wheels, driving wasn’t for her anymore. Traffic was horrendous, she’d explained on a Monday call.

  So the Subaru had been safely parked away a few years ago, and any free storage space she’d since filled up with forgotten keepsakes. They were probably items from the house she hadn’t wanted to organize.

  Or maybe she’d known that this would be like a treasure hunt for Dad.

  “Found it.” He grinned as he unearthed a wagon, steering it into the aisle beside the trike.

  “Keep pile?” I asked.

  “Definitely.” He carried the wagon as I steered the tricycle through the maze to the yard where we’d been making piles. Or should have been making piles. So far, everything we’d come across was a keeper.

  “Is that all for donation?” Mom asked as she came through the front door, a garbage bag in hand.

  Dad and I shared a look. “Uh . . .
”

  “Oh, no.” Mom wagged a finger. “I know that look, Bradley.”

  “What?” He feigned innocence. “These are great finds.”

  Her mouth pursed in a thin line and I fought a smile. Mom would huff about this, but she’d let him take all of this home and turn their own garage into a slightly more organized version of Nan’s.

  “Here.” Mom walked up to me and took a spare garbage bag that she’d stuffed in her jeans pocket. “Sneak some stuff into the donation pile when he’s not looking.”

  “Okay, Mom.” I giggled. When she turned away, I caught Dad’s eyes and mouthed, “Never.”

  He beamed.

  It had been nine years coming, but the rift between me and my father was beginning to heal.

  Dad and I returned to the garage, working in separate corners. I did my best to take away the obvious trash. Dad had no interest in keeping yard rakes and shovels and Nan’s gardening tools so those went into the charity pile. The photos and scrapbooks she’d put in clear tubs were immediately loaded in his truck to take home. The crates of bottles she’d kept Dad wanted to try to sell online.

  “How did this get here?” Dad took the lid off a gray plastic tote.

  “What is it?”

  He waved me over. “See for yourself.”

  My mouth dropped when I looked into the tub. It was my stuff. The decor I’d had in my room as a teenager. The books and CDs I’d left behind.

  “This must have gotten mixed up with some of Nan’s other things because I thought this was at home in the crawl space.”

  At least they hadn’t thrown it away.

  I lifted out a poster, rolled into a tube, and slipped off the rubber band and unrolled the paper. “Aww. My Neil Peart poster.”

  The famous drummer from Rush had died recently. I’d been lucky enough to meet him once and as I’d shaken his hand, I’d remembered this poster, wishing I’d had it along for him to sign.

  “Here.” Dad handed me the tote.

  “Thanks.” I set it on the concrete floor and kneeled down, taking a few moments to pick through it all. Another poster was rolled up inside and as I opened it, I cringed. This band had been my favorite and the poster had been tacked to my ceiling.

  Then I’d met them about five years ago. Hush Note was growing, but we weren’t at the level where we were now. We’d been newcomers, opening acts with a few hits. Every member of that band had made me feel like a pretender. A leech.

  Assholes. “I can’t believe I liked you.”

  Rip. I smiled as the paper tore easily. I crunched it up in a tight ball, both halves destined for Mom’s trash bag. Then I replaced the lid to the tub and hefted it from the floor, planning on taking it home to dig through later.

  “Your mom wants to take Graham his chair today,” Dad said as I walked past.

  “Oh.” I stumbled but regained my footing. “Okay.”

  “Would you like to come along?”

  I didn’t answer as I walked outside, squinting in the bright sunlight.

  Since Graham had dropped me off last night, he’d constantly been on my mind. Sleeping alone in my bed had been miserable and lonely. But ending it had been the right decision.

  He didn’t want my lifestyle and I couldn’t blame him. What would my fame do to Colin? Neither of them needed that kind of attention. They didn’t need to worry about the creeps on social media sending them inappropriate messages or the tabloids publishing a picture with a misleading caption.

  And my focus needed to be on the band and this next album. Harvey didn’t want us to lose any momentum and he was right. If we lost our focus, we’d never make it to the next level.

  I was finally, finally writing music again. The letters Nan had given me were the inspiration I’d been missing. My grandfather’s song was finished and I was in the middle of three others.

  They were good. They were fresh, different from the music on our last album. One of them had a bite, a darker edge we hadn’t done before. My grandfather’s song was sweet and soulful. The other two were classic Hush Note and I had no doubts that Jonas’s lyrics would fit in seamlessly.

  Those songs would appease our die-hard fans and the label, because they were what people had come to love about our music. But the others were a stretch and would show the world our versatility.

  They’d ink us on the map. Permanently.

  I had an obligation to Jonas and Nixon. I had an obligation to Hush Note, and that meant staying in Montana was impossible. It was time to return to work.

  And this was my dream, right? This life was what I’d been chasing. Just because Graham and I had found each other again didn’t mean I could just give it up.

  No matter how badly I wanted Graham.

  The idea of leaving tomorrow was excruciating. Spending one night away from him had been terrible. I’d cried for an hour, then tossed and turned through the night. It felt like I was eighteen and losing him all over again.

  Maybe after a few months apart, it wouldn’t hurt as badly. Maybe when I came home for Christmas, we could navigate to something like friendship.

  But not today. Today it hurt. So today, Dad would have to deliver the chair alone.

  “I think it would be better if you took the chair to Graham’s later,” I told him as I returned to the garage. “Without me.”

  “Okay.” He was gracious enough not to ask why.

  We worked for hours, organizing and sorting, until the piles on the lawn were more equally divided. Dad and I loaded up the items to donate and made our first trip to Goodwill. The manager came out personally to give his thanks before we waved goodbye with the promise to return with more.

  “It’s hard to let go, isn’t it?” Dad asked, glancing in the rearview mirror.

  “I’m sorry you lost her.”

  “Me too.” He reached across the cab and put his hand on my shoulder. “But it’s not forever. We’ll see her on the other side.”

  “It still hurts saying goodbye.”

  “Yes, it does. But I’ve always thought goodbyes were a part of the healing process. Until you acknowledge something is in the past, you can’t look to the future.”

  Was that why I couldn’t bring myself to say goodbye to Graham? Because I didn’t want to see a future without him?

  Graham was no longer the boy from my youth. He was a man—a good man. The man I’d always known he would become.

  He was responsible and an amazing father, which was insanely sexy. And he was down to earth, rooted and steady. He was the towering oak tree, planted firmly in the earth. I was the bird, flying in the sky above, and the wind had carried me too far to turn back now.

  Maybe I’d write a song about goodbyes since I couldn’t speak the words.

  The next morning, as promised, Nixon returned to Bozeman with my airplane. And for the second time in a decade, I left home.

  And though I’d told my family I’d return, maybe it would be easier for us all if I stayed away.

  “What?” I snapped as I flung open the door to my penthouse.

  “Ahh. There she is.” Nixon strolled past me wearing a pair of sunglasses, jeans and a rumpled shirt—last night’s clothes. The stench of booze and a sweaty club wafted in my face, making me gag. “You were so nice in Montana that I was worried your trip home had dulled that delightful, bitchy sass.”

  “It’s four o’clock in the morning.” I slammed the door. “Of course, I’m bitchy. And you stink.”

  He shrugged and pulled off his sunglasses. His eyes were bloodshot. His hands were shaky and his skin pale.

  My irritation subsided as worry took its place. Nix was coming down from a high.

  At least he’d come here to crash instead of another friend’s house who’d only get him high again as soon as he woke up.

  “Come in.” I walked past him, leading the way to the kitchen. “Are you hungry? I ordered Chinese last night and have some leftovers.” I’d been missing Graham and Colin so I’d gone for sweet and sour pork.

>   “Nah. Mind if I crash for a while?”

  “Shower first.”

  “Yes, dear.” He chuckled, tossing his sunglasses on the counter before striding away toward the guest bedroom suite.

  I sighed and trudged to the coffee maker, rubbing the sleep from my eyes as I made a cup.

  Nix might sleep all day, but now that I was up, I wouldn’t be able to go back to bed. I’d only toss and turn, like I had last night, wondering why that sense of home I had in my apartment was missing.

  The coffee dripped and I closed my eyes, searching for that sense of peace. Nothing. Just as it had been since I’d walked through the door.

  The penthouse was clean and smelled like roses. I’d come home to a bouquet in the dining room, another in the living room and another in my bedroom. Ethan’s touch, no doubt. He was clearly bored, not having us on tour to babysit.

  With my coffee in hand, I padded into the living room, sinking into my favorite charcoal leather chair.

  My interior decorator had gone for dark and cozy. The walls in the living room were painted a deep taupe. The black curtains made it so I could block out any light from outside. The floors were a chocolate wood with thick rugs placed strategically to break up the open concept and add warmth.

  It had always felt more bachelor than female. But then, she hadn’t asked me about my style. She’d decorated my place at the same time she’d done Nixon’s and must have assumed that as a drummer, I wanted the same vibe. It hadn’t been the first time I’d been lumped in with the guys and it wouldn’t be the last.

  The decor hadn’t bothered me much until yesterday. I’d sat in this same chair, staring at my dark furnishings and abundance of space and wished to be sitting in a charming home instead. One with an outdated kitchen, bright bedrooms and two guys who were stuck on my mind.

  Where had Graham put that plaid chair? By his fireplace in the living room? Or in the basement? That chair would probably become his football chair. I could picture him sitting there, grumbling about the lime green, drinking a beer watching the game on a Sunday evening. Colin would race around until he was older and got interested in football. Someday, there’d probably be a woman curled in Graham’s lap.