by J. R. Rogue
This Romeo Ain’t Got Julie Yet
Hunter
I’ve been split in two for years.
Georgia gave birth to me. My mom and dad are there. My girls have always been there. But now my oldest is gone. And my youngest will be gone soon, too.
Nashville had my heart, but I’m not sure it does anymore, not the way it did before. It’s different. I can play music anywhere. I still do, and when people say I’ve given up on music, I just shrug my shoulders and don’t correct them. They’re wrong, but you can’t often change a set mind. People like to place you in neat boxes in this life. If it makes things easier for a person, I reckon I’ll just let them.
I have no interest in my ex-wife. I divorced her for a reason, but sometimes loneliness and familiarity and a shit ton of shots will cause you to make some shit decisions. Yes, I slept with my ex-wife. We were drunk and laughing and remembering why we fell for each other in the beginning.
The next morning, we both decided it should never happen again. For the sake of our girls. Because one thing we agreed on was that they were our top priority. And two parents who go back and forth on whether or not they should be together isn’t healthy. The ink was long dry on the divorce papers, and sticking to that decision was the best one we could’ve made.
I wasn’t in love with her when I made that mistake, and I’m not now. I respect her. I back her up with the girls when she needs it. We’re a team. Parents should be a team. But she isn’t who I want.
I want Sonnet. And all my rules need to be thrown out.
It’s a Tuesday night just before the New Year, in my kitchen, when worlds collide.
“Did you and that Sonnet girl at the Holloways’ house have a thing?”
A swig of beer is going down my throat when my youngest daughter asks me this question.
I wipe my face, then set the beer down. “What?” What a dumb answer. I’m not good at redirection with the people I love. Sonnet was right to call me out last week.
“Sonnet. Did you guys date?”
“No.” The truth sucks. I hate our reality.
“Looks like you dated. She pulled you out of the room after you sang the song you changed.”
“She had to tell me a…secret.” I talked a big game to Sonnet in the grocery store, assuring her I wouldn’t act differently around her with my daughter there. But Sonnet’s hesitation made me leave my jokes and flirtations in the driveway.
“I’m not five, Dad.”
“I know, Harper.”
“You and Mom are so weird about dating. I don’t know why you act like Savannah and I are still babies.”
“Where is this coming from?” I down the rest of my beer, walking into the living room.
“I followed her on Instagram.” Harper waves her phone at me, and I cringe.
“You know I hate you being on social media.” I groan. “See anything interesting on there?” I stalk Sonnet’s social media every day. She’s reserved these days, ever since she and her ex-husband split, to be honest. I noticed the change back then. Although life sure as shit isn’t lived online, I would like to see the old her back. The one who shared her thoughts and shit that made her laugh because she was happy. I think she’s on her way there, and in good hands in Nashville with Sera and Kat.
“She likes Christmas a lot.” Harper laughs.
I look around the living room. I have a small tree in the corner. It’s real, not the artificial kind that Sonnet likes. But the colors remind me of her and the way she looked jumping on that bed in the mountains, belting Mariah, off-key and tipsy. “Yes, she does.”
“Do you like her a lot?”
“Do you like that phone a lot? Keep it up and I’ll take it away.” I make a swipe for it, and she pulls away, laughing.
“What’re you gonna do when I’m gone?” she asks. “Seriously, Dad. I’ll be gone soon. I had the same talk with Mom last week.”
“I don’t think you need to worry about us. We’re grownups, we can take care of ourselves when you’re gone.”
“I worry about Mom more than you, but I still worry about you.”
“Oh, you worry about me?” I raise an eyebrow. “Is that why your sister’s home and she’s with your mom right now and you’re not?”
My youngest hops off the loveseat she’s made herself comfortable in and then heads back to the kitchen. “I’m here because Grammy said she would be making chocolate chip pancakes tomorrow morning, and I’m not missing those.”
My parents live down the road, and both of my daughters are close to them. It’s why I’m here. Family units are important for children. But my girls won’t be children for much longer.
Harper returns to the living room, a plate full of dinner in her hands. Her next words are spoken over a mouthful of food. Plus, Mom’s ribs aren’t as good as yours.”
I laugh, reaching for the remote. “You gonna invite any of your friends over for New Years?”
My youngest rolls her eyes. I don’t even have to see it, I can sense it. The girls have spent every New Year’s Eve with one of us. They have the rest of their lives to get wild and go to parties. I’m surprised Savannah came home to spend part of her break with me and her mother. So far, her college experience has been everything she hoped it would be.
“I invited Bethany,” Harper says. “She’s always up for a Netflix binge night. Did you invite anyone?” She thinks she has me caught, because I never invite anyone else over to bring in the New Year. It’s always been about the girls when they spend it with me. I only go out with the guys when they choose to spend the holiday with their mother.
“Okay, you girls can have the living room. We’ll have the office.”
“We who?” She perks up, swallows the bite of coleslaw she just shoveled into her mouth.
“The person I invited.” I pop the tab on another beer and start flipping through channels.
“Who did you invite?” Harper sets her plate down, crosses her arms, and raises an eyebrow. She looks more like her mother than ever right now.
“Sonnet.” I flip through more channels.
“You invited Sonnet?”
“Yes.”
“Dad,” she smirks, “that’s kind of exciting.”
“Only if she shows up.”
Georgie Off My Mind
Sonnet
“I’m not following him to Georgia. I made a home here, and I’m not packing up my life for him.” The plane ticket is hefty in my hands. I hold it tightly, hoping the breeze blowing through downtown Nashville won’t blow it away.
The ticket is for tomorrow—New Year’s Eve.
Sera and Kat walk in front of me; one has a box of donuts, the other has coffee. I just hold my fear and cowardice in mine. And a sinking feeling about this home I’ve made here.
“Do you love him?” Sera asks, echoing the question my mother asked me on the phone last night. I didn’t answer her, because telling my mother I love a man seems like a waste of time. She loves love. She loves romance. But how long until her love for her new husband dwindles? Sometimes I wonder if my father was the love of her life and if she will never get over the hurt he caused. Same as me.
“Yes. I love myself, though. That’s the thing. I can hear his melody, blind. But what if I wake up one day, ten years later, and realize I packed up everything for a guy who couldn’t compromise for me?” The why of my reasoning for settling in Nashville sits in my belly like a grenade.
“I understand. And selfishly, I want you here too. I’d hate to lose you to him. I think he’s worried you’re gonna go downtown and replace him.”
“With some other singer?” I laugh, but I know a thing or two about insecurities. The old Sonnet, the version of me who numbed herself with alcohol and used men to ease the sting of rejection from the one man who was supposed to love me, is still being buried.
“Yeah. Some other singer. Some younger singer.” Sera winks at me, and I blush. She’s been working her way through my past novels, and I try to pretend
she isn’t.
“Then he’s an idiot. Because it’s never mattered that he’s a singer. It was just him. Something about him. I’ve heard dozens of guys sing downtown, and they aren’t Hunter. I knew I wanted to know him that first time I heard him sing.” We walk down the hall of Sera and Chace’s writing school, toward her office, in silence.
I want to tell Sera everything about my father. About the trips I made to this city, and why I convinced myself I loved it. Why I convinced myself I would live here one day.
I take a seat in front of Sera’s desk, in an oversized chair, and Kat takes a seat next to me. I’ve spent the last two days with these women, getting to know them. Writing with Sera and finding my place on the outskirts of their close friendship.
I grab a donut from the box as soon as the lid is open, then sit back.
Sera sips her coffee. “He told me he was always shy, growing up. Which doesn’t seem like it could be true. He said the only way he could talk to girls was after he started playing the guitar. Because it was an icebreaker, and the guitar was a shield. It’s the same with his humor. He’s not as confident as he appears to be. I read him the first time I met him. He didn’t have to tell me, but I smiled when he got drunk and told me and Chace that.”
“When was that?” I ask, swallowing a bit of bread.
Sera clears her throat. “After he and Kenzie split up.”
I never knew the name of the girl he dated after he and I met, and I married Preston. “What was she like?”
“Nice.” Kat shrugs.
“Younger than him,” Sera offers. “Wanted kids. It was doomed from the start. We told him that, but he never listens.”
“Yeah. He doesn’t.” Some people want kids of their own, that they never have to share. Some people can’t share their own kids, so they give up altogether.
“He told us about you too, you know. Not your name, but about the one-night stand. So I knew about you before we ever met. Before you told me how you met, I knew.”
I glare at Sera, but it doesn’t last. She smiles behind her coffee. “What did he say about it?”
“That you had a great night together. And he thought he might see you again, and then boom, you were married.”
“Yep. That’s about the gist of it.” What chance was that? Our second?
“Did it mean anything to you?” Kat asks, her hand running down her pregnant belly.
“We met at the wrong time. I had a broken heart.”
“Your ex-husband?”
“No,” I reply, offering Sera a halfhearted shrug. “My father.”
Kat shifts toward me in her seat. “What’s up with your dad?”
I shove the rest of my donut in my mouth, giving me a moment to think about my words. When I swallow, I pull my feet up into the chair. “He sucks. There’s no other way to put it.” I look at Sera. “You know how I said I came to Nashville to meet him, and it went to hell?”
She nods, and I say, “Well, that night, my former best friend Joanne and I went downtown. We got shit-faced drunk—well, I did anyway—and I cried sitting outside of Rosewood Bar. You know who owns Rosewood Bar?”
“No,” Sera says, slowly, like she doesn’t want to know the answer.
“My aunt does. An aunt I don’t know. I have a whole family here who doesn’t know me. Because my father just…couldn’t be a father to me.”
“Why did you decide to publish under that name?” Kat asks.
I clear my throat, but the lump there is stubborn. “I was married by the time I published, and I wanted to take my maiden name—my father’s name—and make something good of it. It’s my name. It was my mother’s name for a time. I didn’t want the way he hurt me to make me ashamed of that name. And when I came here to Nashville and had my heart broken by him, I ended up at Rosewood Bar—my family’s bar—and I saw Hunter. It was the second time I’d seen him, and I’d been following him on social media. I had a crush on him, and I was single, and I just wanted to stop hurting for a while.”
“Fuck,” Sera mutters, setting down her coffee mug.
“Yeah,” I say, wiping a tear from the corner of my eye. I didn’t want any to fall, but one snuck out. “Who doesn’t have daddy issues these days?” I laugh, though it’s strange.
“I do,” Sera replies. “I never even knew my father. He left before I was born.”
“I’m sorry.” I shake my head, and Sera waves her hand like it’s no big deal, but I can see in her eyes it is.
“I don’t have daddy issues,” Kat says. “I have a great father. But I have mother issues. I think most of us have at least one parent who fucks us up a little. Or, most of the people I know do.”
“You know who I’d say won’t have daddy issues?” Sera’s voice cuts. Because I know the answer.
“Hunter’s daughters.” I smile, pulling the airline ticket out of my pocket. My fingers run over the paper again.
“You love him,” Sera says, knowing.
“Maybe more than Christmas.” I laugh. Because I really need to laugh.
“I think you should take him up on his offer,” Sera suggests. “I think you should go visit him in Georgia. And while you’re there, ask yourself why you picked Nashville to be your home, and what that word really means to you.”
Love Without End Amen
Sonnet
Don’t wait for someone who is saving you for later. Read that again.
I saw that shared on social media one day. I saved it. I shared it. It was vague and it made me hurt, deep down in the pit of me. Where all my pain is anchored.
I pull up to the house, my skin on fire and my eyes leaking a bit already.
This house is familiar. I know the slope of the driveway; I know the shape of the window to the right of the front door.
There are two cars in the driveway. I wonder if the garage is full of shit they don’t want, remnants of my father’s life without me. His life with his new family.
The last time I pulled up to this driveway I was met by brown eyes, a man with worn eyes, and a voice that sounded a little like my own.
I park in the street this time, and from my car I can see lights on in the house. The last time I was here, my father told me to come back at another time. That his new wife and daughter would be home soon, and they didn’t know about me.
He’s had ten years to tell them. Ten years to reach out to me. Ten years to fix things, or at least try.
I didn’t have a man walk me down the aisle. I didn’t have a man give me away.
As I expected, my mother is no longer married to the man she was married to when Preston and I exchanged vows. And having one of her husbands walk me down the aisle was never an option I would entertain.
I pull out my phone, searching for my father’s name. I’ve pulled it up so many times, just to check in. To see how he looks. To see what’s changed in his life. Most of his photos are private, but some albums aren’t.
I have a sister. A sister who’s around Hunter’s youngest daughter’s age. They’ve known their father their whole lives, just as my sister has known her father her whole life. They’re so lucky. So lucky to have a father who loves them.
I click on my father’s name. I click on the message button. It shows me that he’s online right now. I type out a message.
Me: I know it didn’t work out when I showed up ten years ago, but I’m hoping time has changed things. I want to know my sister. I want to know you. For the longest time, I didn’t believe in forgiveness. I didn’t believe I should give you another chance to hurt me, but silence hurts more than anything else. I’m parked by your mailbox. I won’t pull into the drive and I won’t knock on the door. But I’ll be out here for the next ten minutes. If you want to come out and meet me, and get to know your daughter, I’m here.
I send the message and instantly have to roll down my window. I feel like I might throw up. It’s stifling inside my car, and the late December air hits me like a slap in the face. I need it, because the feeling I have about m
y father’s response…isn’t a good one.
I can see in the messenger app that my father has seen my message. I glare up at the house as the curtain in the front window falls back into place. My heart thunders in my chest; my neck is on fire.
Two more minutes go by and all I can hear is the thudding of my heart and the sound of a firetruck a few blocks away. A red car pulls into the driveway as the sirens fade. It’s been seven minutes.
A teenager gets out of the car, her face in her phone as she walks toward my car. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Jesus Merry Christmas.
Just as she gets within five feet of the mailbox, she looks up, seeing my car. It halts her steps, and the front door of my father’s house flies open. He jogs down the lawn, beating her to the mailbox.
I hear their words though the cracked window.
“Who’s that?” my sister asks.
“I don’t know. I’ll get the mail, you go inside.”
My hands grip the wheel, white knuckles are all I focus on as she walks away, slowly, to the house.
My father turns to my car when the front door closes.
I roll down the window, allowing him the chance to speak.
“You weren’t going to come out, were you?” I hate the way I sound, sad and nothing like the red that’s burning inside me.
“Sonnet,” he starts, and I hate the way my name sounds coming from his mouth. He named me after a poem, but Hunter made me one. “Sonnet, now is not a good time. You can’t just show up whenever you want to, with no warning.”
I turn to him, and I know I’ll never see him again. “It’s never a good time to be my father, I get it. You’re saving me, and this conversation, for later. But later is never going to come. I moved here. Did you know that? Or do you not check up on me like I check up on you?”
He places his hands on the side of my car, peering in. He has dark hair, just like mine, and the darkest eyes. I have his teeth, his long fingers. “No, I didn’t know that. Why didn’t you get in touch when you moved here?”