The Girl in the Comfortable Quiet

by Susan Ward

  “That fucking worthless cunt of a friend,” Alan exclaims harshly and I can’t figure out who he is talking about. The head of his security team floats in front of my blurry vision. “Find those assholes from the BBC. Get the tapes. Send for the car. And clear the fucking hallway. No press. No cameras. Take the cameras. Break them. I don’t give a fuck. I’ll pay for it later. But not one picture, not one frame of film of her tonight leaves here.”

  Everything inside me starts to shake in alarm. Alan is panicked and afraid. He’s trying to stop something. What is it that Alan is trying to prevent?

  I’m spinning out of control and I can’t seem to stop it. Overly alert, overly numb, in focus and blurry all at once. Shifting frames in my vision. Limbs that will not work. Shallow, panting breaths that can’t push air into my lungs.

  I see Alan reaching out for me, scooping my body from Len’s arms and chest. My mind can’t keep pace with the movement, shouting voices, and flashing cameras pushing in on me from everywhere.

  I’m falling and floating, moving and frozen simultaneously. All I see is black. I don’t fight it. I let it take me.

  ~~~

  I pull out of the darkness into that place between conscious and asleep. Voices move in and out all around me. Shit, where am I? What happened? My eyes won’t obey my command. I’m too tired to open them. I float in and out. I hear them talking, but nothing makes sense. Nothing feels real. Not even myself.

  “Is she all right?” Alan. Frantic. “Or should we take her to the hospital?”

  Fingers on my body. Something cold against my chest. A squeaky sound, like a ball being inflated. Pressure on my arm. A shot of light.

  “She’ll be fine.” A male voice. Older. Unfamiliar. But confident and reassuring. “A combination of exhaustion, stress, alcohol and tranquilizers. Let me see those.” The sound of something shaking. Maracas? Why are there maracas? We don’t use maracas on stage. “She took only one of these? I’ve given her fluids. We’ve gotten her hydrated again. Her vitals are good. Make sure someone stays with her tonight.”

  “I told you.” Rene. Combative. Defensive. “You didn’t have to fly off the handle like I killed her or something. I would never do anything to harm her. We drank a lot today. More than Chrissie is used to. She’s hasn’t been sleeping. And she’s exhausted.”

  “You are a fucking poor excuse for a friend,” Alan grinds out on a voice of pure acid.

  “She’s had a fucked week,” Rene counters. Intense. “If you want to blame someone, blame Neil. It’s not every day a woman catches her husband in her bed with his best friend.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” Alan. Impatient, and something else.

  “She didn’t tell you?” Rene sounds surprised. “She’s divorcing Neil. Neil is having an affair in Chrissie’s house with Andy Despensa. The whole thing has her half out of her mind. She’s been just this side of coming unglued since she caught them in bed together. You don’t know how it’s been. Not that I blame her. That’s one you don’t expect and prepare yourself for. After talking to you, she was melting down backstage. I gave her something to take the edge off. I thought I was helping.”

  Alan does a raspy, enraged exhale of breath that sounds like a growl.

  “The only thing you are more inept at than being a human being is practicing medicine,” Alan hisses, and then there’s the sensation of floating again.

  More angry voices. Loud. Overlapping. Popping sounds. Shots of too bright light.

  I feel weightless as though I’m floating. Something slams. A car door? I don’t know how I know this. I feel warmth and movement against my limp flesh. Alan. I don’t know how I know that either.

  Quiet.

  Something is lightly moving in my hair. Alan’s fingers? I begin to feel queasy, less foggy, and the churning of my stomach makes whatever this lethargy is change. I’m starting to hurt and my head is pounding.

  I open my eyes. I see Alan’s face above me, head leaning back—we’re in a car?—eyes closed, features in an intense arrangement—angry or is he something else? My body makes jerks from my center and I know I’m going to throw up.

  I try to turn my head. Alan straightens and stares down at me.

  “Oh fuck, Chrissie. Are you getting sick?”

  He turns me onto my side and something is pressed against my mouth and the spasms get more intense, over and over again, but nothing comes out. I feel a desperate need to throw up and it won’t happen.

  I breathe in. I breathe out. I run my clumsy hand across my mouth and then roll back until my head is again on the pillow that is Alan’s body.

  Those black eyes fill the world above me. Oh God, I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but instinct warns this is another Chrissie low moment.

  How did I get into a car alone with Alan? Where is he taking me?

  I moan, wishing I could disappear beneath his overly alert gaze.

  “Are you OK, baby?” Alan’s voice is ragged and unsteady.

  “I feel sick,” I whisper. My tongue is thick in my mouth, making my words slur. “And my head hurts. What’s wrong with me?”

  He starts brushing back the wayward hairs from my face. “Nothing. You’ll be fine in the morning. You need rest. You need to eat. And you need to never listen to that miserable friend of yours again.”

  Rene? If I had the strength I would laugh at the way Alan says that. Only I feel so weak. And none of this is funny.

  “What happened?”

  He gives me a don’t worry about it, tender kind of smile. “Nothing that hasn’t happened to me before. A dinner six parts scotch and one part tranquilizer. You feel wretched now. You’ll be fine by morning.”

  “Oh God,” I groan. Is that why I feel so awful?

  There are bits and pieces of the night in my head, but they are foggy. I went on stage, I know that. But after that, blank. Nothing. There is nothing in between me running on stage and waking up in the car with Alan. A total blank. Why nothing?

  Before I can question Alan, the car rolls to a stop and he’s carrying me into the beach house. I struggle in his arms, wanting to be put down, wanting to figure out what happened and why Alan has taken me home with him, but the world turns back into shifting frames, and my mouth, legs and arms are useless.

  “Why—”

  “Stop it,” he orders harshly. “I promised the doctor someone would stay with you tonight.”

  Doctor? Oh no, oh no, oh no. I don’t remember. And why am I with Alan instead of Rene?

  “Where’s Rene?” I stare up at him, wide-eyed, alarmed. “What happened tonight, Alan? Why a doctor?”

  He ignores my questions, holding me against his chest with one arm, and opens the front door.

  “Goddamn it, what is she doing here?” I hear a voice screech.

  Oh fuck. Elaina. Standing in the foyer, hands on hips, stunning face contorted with rage.

  Alan brushes past her toward the hall. “I thought you’d left.”

  “And I thought you said that you weren’t fucking around with her?” she screams in a voice of pure venom and accusation. “That the stories in the press were untrue. I stayed because I believed you, you bastard. But I’m sick of your shit. I’m leaving and I’m not coming back.”

  “Then get the fuck out,” Alan growls without looking at her. “I was expecting you to be already gone.”

  He goes into the bedroom.

  I stare up at him, humiliation and so much more turning in me. I don’t know where to start. What to say.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper weakly.

  Alan exhales slowly, harshly. “Don’t be. It’s been over for months. You just expedited the ending.”

  His voice is clipped, angry, and I’m not sure which one of us, me or Elaina, he’s angry with. The front door slams. He lays me on the bed and sits down on the edge beside me. He is silent, taking in measured breaths as if trying to calm himself.

  I remember the question in my head before the unpleasant appearance of Elaina
. “Why did I need a doctor?”

  He runs a hand through his hair several times. He looks angry. Annoyed. Reluctant. Those black eyes lock on me. “You were pretty fucked up by the time you went on stage thanks to Rene. You passed out at the end of your set. As a precaution, I thought it best to have you checked by a doctor. He gave you some fluids to hydrate you or you’d be still sleeping and feeling a hell of a lot worse than you do. He sent you home and not to a hospital, which I think we can both agree was a better outcome for you and should tell you you’re fine and stop that panic I see in your eyes. You’re staying the night here, Chrissie. That’s the end of it.”

  The end of it? I search his face. Oh no, there’s more. I can see it in his eyes. Something happened in that chunk of time I can’t remember. And I’m not sure I want to know what. It has to be dreadful if Alan won’t tell me. Alan says every thought in his head, untempered.

  I feel frazzled and disoriented and sick again.

  “You should go to sleep,” Alan says quietly. “We’ll talk in the morning.”

  Alan removes my shoes then reaches for the clasp of my pants and I start to protest.

  His eyes begin to flash. “Fuck, Chrissie, will you stop being a pain in the ass? You scared the hell out of me tonight. I’m out of patience. Don’t make this more difficult than it has to be.”

  His voice brings me up sharply. He sounds emotionally ragged.

  “If you’re in trouble, you come to me first. Why won’t you let me be there for you?” he whispers.

  His smoldering gaze burns into mine. The inner tension that I didn’t even know I had slowly leaves my limbs and I release the air from my lungs. His hand cups my cheek, and his thumb lightly caresses me. I’d forgotten the care in which he touches my flesh, so gentle, and I quiet beneath his touch.

  After a few minutes, his hand falls away and he undresses me. He lifts me up and puts me beneath the blankets.

  “Do you feel all right?” he asks softly.

  I nod.

  “Do you need anything?”

  “No. Just sleep, I think.”

  Alan sighs. “Are you ready to tell me what’s going on with you, Chrissie?” When I don’t answer him, his jaw clenches. He stands. “I should let you sleep.”

  I stop him with my hand. “Can you do something for me, Alan?”

  He stares down at me.

  “Can you stay, hold me, not let go and let me sleep?”

  He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t move. It feels like an eternity with us doing nothing but staring at each other. And right when I feel like I can’t endure another second more of his silence or the look in his eyes, Alan settles beside me, takes me in his arms and holds me close against him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  My lids open wide and Alan’s face fills the world above me. I catch it—that look in his eyes he only has that first moment I wake when he’s watched me sleep—before he can reclaim it behind the shadowy darkness of his gaze.

  I take a moment to let that look calm my internally messy. Parts of last night are clearer. I am calmer, though I probably shouldn’t be because my public Chrissie low moment just propelled my problems with Neil into epic proportions and I don’t even know everything that I did last night. But that Alan stepped in to take charge tells me it was bad. And I should definitely not feel calm inside with him lying close to me, reclined on his side, cheek in hand, and unwaveringly staring at me.

  I try to gather something reasonable to say to him in this circumstance that won’t sound trite or lame, but the task is made impossible by having him close to me.

  I’d forgotten how beautiful Alan is in the morning, strongly carved features softened by sleep, dark black waves tousled, eyes more like melting chocolate instead of burning coal.

  He smiles, a gentle, sort of nothing kind of smile. “Good morning.”

  Normal conversation in not a normal context.

  I brush the hair from my face. “What time is it?”

  He checks the clock. “A little after two in the afternoon. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you sleep quite so soundly. No nightmares. No babbling.” He arches a brow, amused. “Completely uneventful and not interesting.”

  He says that with just the right amount of inanity, but my inner distress returns and I laugh to hide my sudden discomposure caused by the memories he brings flooding back without effort. Memories of him. Memories of us. Memories of other times I’ve woken in his bed.

  They are not all happy, and I shake my head to push them away. I pause to let my gaze move around the room, bright with afternoon light, as I try to orient myself to this day’s events.

  Waking up in Alan’s bed and having him in it. Jeez, how much of the time since I’ve been here has Alan done nothing but lie and watch me? Inside my head I roll my eyes at myself since that is a vain question, in the extreme, to think he’s done nothing but watch me sleep.

  I change course. “Are you going to tell me what happened last night? What I did on stage? What got everyone in a panic over me?”

  His gaze fixes on my face, stripped of expression, but it feels like he’s trying to decide which way to go with this. “Do you want the highlights or the lowlights?”

  He phrases it in a way that deliberately gives me an out. I tense. “Both.”

  He stares into me, hardly blinking, calm and gentle. “You performed remarkably well last night. One of your best, considering how fucked up you were.” His expression changes. Serious. He looks annoyed with himself. “And you were fucked up, Chrissie. Make no mistake, no one watching missed it. Not the audience. Not the press. It isn’t so much the performance that is the issue you might need to work through with Neil.”

  Oh no. I’m starting to remember. He pauses as if waiting for me to grow steady enough for him to continue.

  “Just tell me, Alan,” I whisper, almost unable to push the words out.

  “I’m not sure which will be the highlight or the lowlight for you, love. I definitely have a preference. When you finished singing you came to me on stage. Do you remember that?”

  My lids fly wide, partly because of how he says it and partly because I don’t. I remember Len Rowan, but not going to Alan.

  More heavy silence. The lump in my throat is strangling.

  His mouth sets in a grim, albeit slightly amused, line. “I would have stopped you, Chrissie, if I had a clue what was going on with you or what you were going to do. But to be honest, I enjoyed it.”

  Enjoyed it?

  “Full mouth, wide open kiss, lots of tongue and overtly sexual.” He pauses, his face changing into something deliberately humor-bent. “I admit, the kiss was among your best, perhaps because you were so fucked up. At any rate, Len pulled you off me and that’s when the lowlight happened. After kissing and rubbing yourself up against my cock for quite a while, love, you told Neil to fuck off and gave him the finger in front of a packed house filled with press and the BBC filming. And then you passed out before we could get you off stage.”

  I stare up at Alan. No. This can’t be. How could I forget that? And shit, if I forgot that, what else have I forgotten? Fear and dread turn my muscles to rock.

  “Is that all of it? I didn’t say anything else, did I?” I ask, anxious and afraid of the answer.

  Something flashes in his eyes quickly then is banked. He smiles. He laughs. “You think there is more? Isn’t that enough, Chrissie?”

  I search his face. He didn’t directly answer me and I can’t tell if he’s being honest. Oh shit.

  “Why did you kiss me last night on stage? Why do it then, that way, love?”

  His question startles me, and changes the direction of my careening thoughts. I did it because I love him. My body aches for him, and last night my brain couldn’t get in the way of my heart having what it wanted.

  “I don’t know. I was out of it.”

  He starts to climb from the bed. “I should fix you something to eat. Rene says you’ve not been eating.”

  “Alan—”


  He cuts me off. “Everything is going to be fine, Chrissie. These things have a way of blowing over all on their own. You don’t need to do or say anything. It’s probably best to leave it alone.”

  I have the strangest feeling that he’s not talking about the public spectacle I made of myself. That he’s talking about us. Him.

  Probably best to leave it alone?

  I’m suddenly aware of the feel of us in the room, the blending closeness that is us, that somehow last night we’ve been pulled back into that space, unintentionally and effortlessly. My emotions start to collapse when I realize Alan feels it, too, and dismally I wonder if he has just provided me an out if I want it. A way to turn back from whatever this is rebuilding between us.

  Why would he do that? I don’t want to turn back. Even as horrible as the past twenty-four hours have been, being here with Alan, this way, feels as if the disjointed pieces of me have joined comfortably inside me for the first time in a very long time.

  The room is suddenly overfilled with the feel of Alan. I ease up in the bed, slip my arms around his neck and pull him into my kiss. It’s what my heart wants and I’m not letting him or myself get in the way. Not now. Not anymore.

  I am met with tension and resistance in him, though I don’t know why he should be either, and I deepen my kiss. I curl my fingers in his hair, holding him to me. My heart accelerates. Then I am pinned against his body and he is kissing me passionately, in a heated assault, in an almost desperate, frenzied way.

  I am lowered beneath him and I lift up into him, giving him the feel of me there. His hands roam me, hungry, his limbs surrounding me as we devour each other. All I am feeling is him. My insides are anxious and demanding. I’m out of my mind with the urgency to have him buried inside me.

  I start to move more frantically against him.

  Then abruptly it stops and I am pinned beneath him in a not so gentle hold. My eyes fly open. A ragged shudder moves through his limbs and what’s revealed in his eyes blasts me with a chill.

  Those black eyes are burning into me. Angry. He pulls back from my body. “If this is about you adding to your week of colossal fuck-ups and public meltdowns with a few days of revenge fucking with me to get back at Neil, then I prefer to pass, Chrissie,” he growls, disgusted, and then releases me and moves away completely.