The Tour

by Shelby Rebecca

  “Yeah. I found a tree lot about an hour away.”

  “Already?”

  “Yeah, Riley was asking about it yesterday. What do you say, Riley? Want to get hot chocolate on the way?” he asks, rubbing his hands together in anticipation. Riley squeals.

  “I think that means ‘yes,’” Deloris says, chuckling.

  * * *

  All of us pile into the car and drink hot chocolates from a drive through we passed on the way there. It’s snowing a little—not enough to stay solid once it reaches the ground, but it’s real snow while it makes its way down.

  I wonder, if I were snow, would I be the kind that’s only good on the way there, or the kind that stays for the winter. Maybe my career will only last as long as the show did and I’m already on the ground because it’s over. I could end up one of those one-hit-wonders. Or, even worse, a person who’s known for their scandals instead of their voice. I want to be taken seriously. I have to think of the long term, not just the short way down to my destination.

  We each take different color flags and place them by our favorite trees so we can vote. But, in the end, we choose Riley’s tree. Deloris goes on and on about the symmetry of Riley’s choice, about how the ornaments will look perfect on it. Manny is the one who actually saws through the base of the tree.

  The scent of the pine and the cold air reminds me of a story my dad told me one Christmas when he was putting our Home Depot tree in the stand in front of the big picture window in our house. It was another growing-up-in-Alaska story, so I tell Riley as we’re pulling the tree toward the car.

  “You know, Riles, Dad used to cut down his own tree when he was a kid.”

  “He did?”

  “Yep, he told me that he and his dad used to pull a sled out into the snow and walk past the road to a forest area where there were a whole bunch of pine trees. He said they’d pick up sticks along the path and put them in an X pattern when they saw a tree they liked. After they found a few good ones, they’d choose one.”

  “Like we did!” she exclaims.

  “Exactly and then he got to saw the tree down himself. They’d pile the little skimpy tree onto the sled and pull it home.”

  “What’s skimpy?” she asks.

  “Like, skinny.”

  “Have you ever seen that cartoon, A Charlie Brown Christmas?” Kolton asks her.

  “Yeah! I love it! We used to watch it every year,” she says in answer and I feel shitty for not making sure she watched it this year. Or last year. Did we watch it last year?

  “In that cartoon he has a wimpy little tree and all the needles fall off. It looks like a twig with a couple tiny branches attached to it. Was it like that, Mia?” she asks.

  “That’s what he said—that the trees in Alaska are short and don’t have a lot of branches. Not enough sun up there to help ’em grow really big like trees here.”

  “Have you ever been there?” he asks me. “To Alaska?”

  “No. My dad moved to the Central Valley in Cali when he was a kid. They didn’t have family in Alaska or anything.” All three guys put the tree on top of the car and start strapping it down with rope.

  “Do you want to go?”

  “I haven’t thought about it,” I say. “Do you?”

  “I was thinking—it’s probably really private there, you know. We could maybe get a cabin up there for the summers.”

  “They have biter flies there,” Riley protests.

  “What?” he laughs.

  “My dad told me there are flies that bite you. And you won’t know ’til your head feels wet and when you touch it your hand’s all bloody.”

  “Eww,” I say. “We could wear hats. How ’bout that?”

  “I guess.” She doesn’t look convinced. She’s touching the top of her head like it could be attacked at any moment.

  “After the tour. We could go there after we record your album.”

  “Uh, what?” I ask. “The tour, then we record my album, and then we go to Alaska?”

  “Just to get away. Or we can go wherever you want. I don’t care.” He’s looking at me with soft, gentle eyes. A gaze that makes a warm ache bloom inside the recesses of my heart.

  “But,” I protest, as we get in the car, “I haven’t decided what record company I’m signing with.”

  “No business talk during the holidays,” Deloris scolds as she slams her door shut.

  “Why would you need to think about it? Didn’t you see the deal Bad Heart’s giving you? No comparison.”

  “I haven’t seen any of them, but. Well,” I start to twist my fingers in knots. “I don’t think you should be my boss,” I admit, in a childlike voice, as if I’m admitting to cutting my own bangs with my mom’s scissors.

  “We can work together and be together,” he says, disappointment written in his eyes and the creases of his forehead.

  “I’m sure some people can…”

  “They’re going to own your name. If it doesn’t work out, and you want out of the contract, they own you, your image, everything. That’s called an option in the business, and they’d have years of options on your image, Mia. Don’t you remember when Twice Shy changed their name to that symbol with the horns?”

  “Yeah… so?”

  “Let’s put on some Christmas music,” Deloris tries, and Devon plugs his phone into the stereo system and Colbie Caillat sings about “Christmas in the Sand”.

  “That’s ’cause the record company owned their name. They wanted to put out another album, but made them use songs they’d picked. You don’t have artistic control. So, their third album didn’t have the numbers the other two did ’cause it was crap.”

  “Kolton, I—”

  “They didn’t have a choice. It got shelved and stations quit playing them. They had ideas, good ones, but no choices about their own music. They had to change their name to do the next album, but because of the non-compete clause they couldn’t use a new name. That’s why they used the symbol.” He looks so frantic, so unlike himself. It seems like everything to do with me is like this. He doesn’t have control, and it’s killing him.

  I reach out and take his hand. “We can talk about it later. After the holidays, ’kay?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he says. “But my deal is the one, Mia. Just look at it.” The tone of his voice, like he’s begging, makes my chest feel tight, and my heart beats too fast.

  “I will. I promise.” But don’t I need some freedom? Couldn’t working together keep me below him when what I need is to be in charge of my own career? If we’re going to be a couple, I need to be an equal in his life. An equal, not an employee.

  I think my mind’s made up. After the holidays.

  I’ll tell him, for sure.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Stringing the Past

  We wrap lights around the tree and Deloris plugs the final string into the outlet. They blink on, red, green, and white and we’re all awestruck.

  “Beautiful,” Deloris says.

  “I found this box in the attic,” Devon mentions, picking it up from the floor and setting it down onto the table. “It says ‘Christmas’.”

  Kolton, who has been sitting on the couch drinking a beer and eating peanuts, perks up a little as Devon opens the box and brings out a little nest of tissues.

  “Let me see that,” he says, standing up and Devon hands it to him.

  I watch him measure the heaviness of the small package before he pulls on the frayed ends of tissue, revealing a flat clay emblem with a ribbon attached, and he takes a deep breath.

  “What is it?” I ask, walking toward him.

  He closes his eyes, holding the ornament in his hands like a relic. “I—I think it’s my hand print,” he whispers, bringing it up closer for inspection, “when I was a baby.” His breaths shiver a little near my ear as I take a closer look. On the back, I see two indents with an ‘M’ and a ‘D’ carved under them.

  “I think your parents put their fingers on this side, too.” He turns it
around in his shaky fingers ever so carefully. Then he nods his head and puts his thumb into the larger divot.

  “It’s the same size as mine, so it’s my dad’s.” He bites his lip and a huge grin swipes across his face. “You try. On my mom’s print,” he says, taking my thumb and pressing it into place. “See,” he says, letting go of my hand so he can place the ornament on the tree. Then he stands back a little to look at it.

  “It’s perfect,” I tell him, sitting on the couch to admire it.

  “I kind of feel like they’re here, you know?” he admits, sitting next to me and putting his arm over the back of the couch behind my head.

  I nestle into his side. “I feel it, too. Their stuff is everywhere. It’s like a shrine.”

  “Yeah, I couldn’t come here for a long time. It was—”

  “Too difficult,” I finish for him, remembering going back to my old house, too.

  “But you changed everything.”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah, I had to stay here to give you space while you were on the show. But then I started to like it here,” he says, his eyes soft, but deep and needy, stare into mine. “I’ve started to feel closer to them being here, touching the items they chose themselves—used themselves, made themselves,” he motions toward the clay ornament. “It’s ironic that the fire—this horrible thing—leads to us celebrating Christmas right where my parents did over twenty years ago.”

  As he says that, I feel my throat tighten around a knot and my eyes start to pull with tears. I wish he could have mourned them when they died, but he was only three years old. Instead, he grew up without love—especially the kind a mother gives you. In a way, I can understand why he became so promiscuous. He was taught, because of his housekeeper, to experience love—physically. And that’s what he’d done for all of these years before me. But now, he’s trying to be different. He’s trying to be real.

  “I’m—” he says, putting his hand up to his chest, “I’m grateful for this. For you. For Riley and Deloris. Even for Devon and Manny,” he adds, laughing a little as he reaches for the tear falling down my cheek and absorbs it with his finger.

  “We’re a family,” I say. “That’s how it feels.”

  “Yes,” he agrees, nodding and moving his hand down to the back of my neck. “A family,” he says as he takes my hand and lowers his mouth to mine. He tastes like beer and peanut butter. My heart squeezes and my brain blanks. I forget where we are as his mouth teases mine. He nips my bottom lip, and Deloris clears her throat, bringing me back to real time. When I pull away from him, he looks serene. Bold. Perfect.

  I giggle and wrap my arm around his waist. “Speaking of family,” he says, and stiffens up a little in his chest, “We’ve been invited to my uncle Tedd’s for Christmas Eve.”

  It’s immediate, the reaction I have to the place where he was molested by his housekeeper. I start to shiver with apprehension. I feel my head shaking ‘no’. “Does he have the same housekeeper?” I ask, incredulously.

  His eyes go vacant for a moment, and his hips settle nervously into the couch. “No.”

  “But—” I try, because it feels as though his response was truthful, but incomplete.

  “It would be rude to ignore the invite, Mia,” he says, taking a sip of his beer as if the conversation is over. My eyes squint at him but he’s not looking at me. I don’t like being lied to, or ignored. He told me about what happened to him, but I’m not allowed to have a reaction to going back there with him?

  “I don’t have a say?” I ask. Without another word, he leans forward and changes the channel from a Clint Eastwood movie to sportscasters talking behind a desk. Their brash monotone voices bounce around my brain until I’m fully annoyed. I want to tell him to turn on the real news, just so he can disagree with me about watching our tragedy on the tiny screen. Instead, I reach across and take his beer out of his hand, press the dark stained glass to my lips, and take a defiant gulp.

  “What the—?” he blurts and swipes the bottle away from me. “You’re not twenty-one, Mia.”

  “So? I’ve drank before.”

  “Not around me, you haven’t.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “I said no,” he says. “And I mean it.” I feel like a child being scolded.

  “Like you know what’s good for me.” I cross my arms over my chest. He’s taking me to the place where he was abused and she’s probably still there. How can that be good for anyone?

  “We’ve already broken rules, and we’re not breaking any more—especially not a drinking-age law. And if you do it again, I’m gonna throw that bottle at the fucking wall!” His nostrils flair and his eyes widen with anger. Why is me drinking making him so mad?

  My internal red line for pure, unadulterated rage has reached the top. I turn my back to him, and realize everyone is staring uncomfortably at us. Riley is playing with her game, but I know she heard us. Deloris is white-faced and stiff while Manny and Devon are looking at each other stone faced.

  We’re cooped up in this tiny place and we’re going stir crazy. I want to leave, to be anywhere but here, but it’s not all about me. Riley deserves Christmas like all the other kids her age. At first I think about hiding in the master bedroom, but I decide to sit with Riley at the table instead.

  “You wanna play Candyland?” I ask, pulling the chair out. “I saw the game in the closet inside Kolton’s old room.”

  “After my battle,” she says, not looking up from her DS screen.

  “I’ll wait.” I try to ignore the tightening of my stomach around the ball of nerves taking up space in my body.

  I get the box and set it up. She finally puts down her DS and we play, just me and Riley, and then Deloris joins us. I feel it when Kolton walks out of the room and down the hallway, but I don’t acknowledge him.

  After Riley beats me for the fourth time and I tuck her in, I don’t even try to sleep on the couch. But I do go to bed angry. When he reaches for me in the dark, I push his hand away. He lies there stiff before turning his back on me. He’d said I can go to bed angry as long as I sleep in his bed.

  At least I can follow some of the rules.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Naked Chiffon

  “I don’t have anything to wear,” I protest as he puts his arm into a suit jacket I’d bought him when I was at the mall. It’s only two hours away from us needing to check in at his uncle Tedd Royce’s Christmas Eve dinner party. I’m not ready. Will I ever really be ready to face this with him?

  “You have all those clothes that got shipped here from your wonderful trip to the mall.”

  “Don’t start, Kolton,” I say pushing open the closet door and looking for the perfect little black dress I know I didn’t buy. “I push you away one time and now you’re bringing up the mall trip to put me in my place. That’s not fair.”

  Suddenly, he’s behind me as I stand in front of the open closet door. He moves in close, but doesn’t touch me. A tingle moves up my spine, and I have to take a quick breath. He puts his hand up against the wall next to the closet, pinning me in. I feel his warmth and his dizzying energy buzzing all around me.

  He reaches around with his other hand and tugs on the end of the tie keeping my short bathrobe closed. Cold air makes contact with my skin, still moist from the shower and I tighten my stomach, thinking he’s going to touch me. I close my eyes and wait.

  His hand comes up to the back of my neck, the little hairs there forming goose bumps begging to be soothed. Instead, without touching my skin, he pulls on the collar of my robe, sliding it off my arms and dropping to the floor. I start to turn around, but he grabs my hip firmly, and slides in closer so he’s barely touching my back with his chest. My heart is pounding and his breath is quick in my ear.

  “Put your hands on the wall. Now,” he demands in a rough whisper. As if hypnotized, my arms are pulled up, led by my hands, and I press them into the wall.

  “That’s right,” he whispers appreciatively, his l
ips against my ear. I feel the scruff of his new beard as it moves lightly across the curve of my neck. He pulls his hand away from the wall, takes my hip, and drags me backward until I’m bending over at a sharp angel. Then his foot slides mine across the carpet so my legs are far apart.

  I gasp slightly. I’m at his mercy. I have no defense for this—I crave him, I need him. But I’m scared. I start to pull my knee up and in, but he lightly kicks it back where he’d placed it, making an admonishing sound through his teeth. “How do you feel?” he asks. “Vulnerable? Uncomfortable? Excited?”

  “Yes,” I answer, arching forward, feeling my breasts heavy and free in the dim light, the stretch of my legs as the muscles pull and ache, the weight of me held by my hands and arms.

  “This is how I feel. How you make me feel. Always,” he says. I’m panting, shivering with need. I cry out a little when I feel him rub up against my leg. “Do you know your power over me? Do you?” he asks. “What about mine? Do you know my power?”

  “Kole, please.”

  “Please, what? Do you want me, Mia? You didn’t want me last night. Hmmm?” His hand moves around from my hip and down my stomach. He rests it there, so close, but not close enough. I wiggle, because I have to, I need to. I can’t stay still. “Don’t move,” he warns, as his other hand comes up and rests in between my aching breasts. But still, he doesn’t touch me or ease the want.

  I can feel my arms sagging into my shoulders. The bones and muscles in between my shoulder blades are stinging because I hold my tension there. It’s tight and pinches so much I groan in pain.

  “Would you stay like this? Just so I could touch you, hold you, fuck you up against the wall? Make love to you?” he asks.

  “Yes,” I breathe. “I’m doing this, aren’t I?”

  “It hurts, doesn’t it? And the need for me winds tightly around you, constricting you until it burns. That need to be touched, to have your aches softened, to have release and to be loved. It’s so confusing why the person you love would make you bend so far just to be with them, isn’t it?” He’s punishing me for pushing him away. He’s showing me physically how I make him feel emotionally. My head is spinning around that thought as he adds, “That’s how I feel, too. All the time.”