by Ward, Susan
I click down the phone before she can answer. I take in a deep steadying breath, trying to decide if I call Doris next or Jack. I feel too panicky to call Jack first and I’m not exactly sure why I feel that way. Secretive. Like I’ve lied to him. But I haven’t. Not really. I just didn’t tell him everything because I didn’t want to add any more emotional stress to this incredibly stressful separation from him.
I didn’t tell him about me staying at Alan’s because I didn’t want him to have thoughts about it. Not that he would. He’s neither jealous nor a run-away-with-assumptions kind of man. He’s calm, patient, loving Jack.
Why the fuck am I lying to him?
I hold up my hands, shaking them, trying to fling away my chaotic feelings. I want to talk to Jack first. It’s been three days and I miss him terribly. But I shouldn’t call him now. Better to talk to Doris and calm a bit.
I dial her number and inhale and exhale as I wait for her to answer. Answering machine. Damn. Then I look at the clock. Duh, Linda, it’s afternoon in LA. She’s at work.
I dial the number for the label.
“Sunrise West Records,” a voice announces.
“Doris Miller, please.”
“One moment.”
I hear click, click, a ring and then, “Hello, this is Doris.”
“Mom…”
“Linda!” The way she says my name makes me cringe. “I called you two days ago. Why didn’t you call me back? Are you OK?”
Jeez, she sounds distraught and that’s not like Doris. Aggravated. Annoyed with me. Those are common reactions. But worried, no never.
“I’m fine, Mom. I’ve just been working. This is the first chance I’ve gotten to call you. What’s going on?”
“Jack Parker is what’s been going on,” she whispers fiercely into the phone. “He called me to ask about you. What’s going on that I don’t know about?”
My entire face grows hot and tightens. “We’re sort of friends.”
Shit, that sounds lame. My face tightens even more.
“Friends, dear. Or do you mean friends?”
Now my cheeks are burning. “We’ve been seeing each other for nearly a year, Mom,” I blurt out and add in a rush, “A serious relationship. Not the kind you’re thinking I’m having. We’re involved. We’re in love, and hopefully someday we’re getting married, and I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you blabbing it to the world—”
“I don’t blab—”
“You’re the worst gossip in LA, Mom.”
She sighs loudly. “What do you mean in love? Married, really? Listen, sweetheart, men like Jack are fun, and he’s one of the good ones, but don’t buy his pillow chatter as something real. He’s like all the other musicians you’ve chased after. A few laughs, some nights, but he’s going to walk away.”
Anger surges through my veins. “See, this is why I don’t tell you things. You say the wrong things, and you blab.”
“I just don’t want to see you hurt, dear.”
“The only one hurting me is you!”
Damn, I’m crying and I don’t want to.
“He did seem concerned about you,” Doris mutters. “And was more than a little bit anxious when I told him I didn’t know where you were. What’s going on, Linda?”
I growl in my head. “Nothing, Mom. I’ve just been working and I didn’t have a chance to call until now. I’m fine. The tour is done in two weeks. I’ll be home every day after that.”
“Well, I’m glad things are going well for you.”
I didn’t say they were going well. I shake my head to chase away my thoughts.
“So this thing with Jack is serious?” Doris asks, more curious.
I roll my eyes. “I just said it was. And I’d appreciate you staying out of it.”
“I’m hardly in it,” she counters, indignant and reprimanding simultaneously. “You seem to keep a lot of things from your mother these days.”
Fuck, I’m feeling like I’m ten years old. First Mrs. Grayson, then Jeanette, and now Doris. Does the entire world think I’m a screwup and is unhappy with me?
“You doing well, Mom?”
“I’m fine, dear.” A long pause. “I miss you, Linda.”
“I miss you too, Mom.”
“Maybe you can come home for a visit soon. I don’t think I can wait an entire year to see my girl again.”
Emotion clogs my throat. That was a really sweet thing to say, so unlike Doris.
“It’s very expensive to fly internationally, Mom.”
A sigh. “I know. I just miss you.”
I brush at my tears. “I’ve got to run, Mom. It’s late here.”
Doris laughs. “I forgot we’re not on the same time zone.”
“Nope, it’s night.”
“Call me again. Soon, Linda.”
“I will, Mom.”
I click off the phone and brush at my tears. That call didn’t do a darn thing to settle my nerves. Crap, but it seems Jack has been doing a lot of worrying and stirring people up needlessly.
I frown, wondering what’s up with that. Jack is the most level-headed man I know. He never overreacts. Dread nips at my digestive lining. Is it just the separation making us both a tad nutty when neither of us normally is? Or is he reacting to something he’s feeling from me? Something I’ve let slip and show that I don’t want to?
Oh God, please let it not be that, since I’m not exactly sure about some of the things I’m feeling, but definitely sure I don’t want to share them.
I take a few minutes to compose myself, and then I dial Jack’s number. Saving the best and hardest call for last.
I lie back on my pillow, curling the cord around my arm as I wait for the phone to be answered.
“Hello?”
Crap. Jack answered the phone himself. I shut my eyes tightly.
“Hi, sweetheart. How are you?” I say quickly.
“Better now.”
My limbs tense. He sounds relieved and a hint angry.
“Where are you, Linda?”
“I’m not in London.”
“I know that. Why do you think I’ve been so—” He breaks off, sounding impatient with himself. “No one seemed to know where you were.”
“I was working, Jack,” I say contritely.
“That’s not what you told me, Linda.” He exhales heavily. “Talk to me, baby. I’ve been out of my mind wondering—”
I sit up. “Wondering what?”
“If you’ve decided not to try to stick this out and if you’d found someone else. The disappearing. The not telling me what you’re doing. The not calling back. It made me wonder.”
Tears burn my eyes. “Well, don’t wonder. It’s not that. I love you. There isn’t anyone else.”
“I can feel it, you know?”
“Feel what?”
“When you’re not being honest with me,” he murmurs.
I cringe. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I don’t always tell you everything. This is just so hard. I’m not always sure how much is the right amount to tell you.”
“Everything,” he says firmly. “Everything in every detail is the right amount, Linda. You are the most important person in my life.”
I nod even though he can’t see it. “I’ll do better. Things are just different, odd and stressful here. There’s a lot going on, and I don’t want to dump my shit on you. You have enough being dumped on you because of Chrissie.”
“It’s not dumping, Linda. It’s called spending your life with someone. There’s nothing you could tell me that would ever be you dumping on me.”
“OK. I’ll remember that.” The wisecrack bubbles up before I can stop it. “And you have to remember to tell me that if it starts feeling like I’m dumping on you.”
He laughs. “I’ll remember. If I don’t you remind me.”
A smile consumes me, taking the edge from my jitters over calling him, and teases the corners of my lip
s.
“So why don’t you tell me everything?” he says, and the subtle change in his voice is the one he has when he relaxes back and wants only to focus on me.
I tell him everything, in minute detail, like I should have since day one. How much I loathe living with the Graysons. How hard it is to fit in here. That I don’t like my job, not really. And in carefully crafted words, my suspicions and difficulties with the mercurial Alan Manzone.
When I’m finished I can almost hear him shaking his head through the phone, and my mind forms the image of the expression he gets, the Linda Linda Linda expression, as I’ve labeled it in my head.
“I want you to come home.” He says it quietly and firmly, but something in that stirs up my nerves again.
“Why?”
“You’re unhappy. I’m unhappy. I don’t want you staying there.”
It sounds a simple statement, but it’s not. I hear something in his voice.
“Why?”
He lets out a long, ragged breath. “Shit happens, Linda, when people are separated for long periods of time and are unhappy. We do things we wouldn’t normally do. Things that we don’t really want, but we do them because we’re lonely and it’s hard not to be with who you love.”
Every muscle in my body grows taut. Oh no, oh no, oh no. Oh God, is he tired of this and looking elsewhere?
“What are you trying tell me, Jack?”
“I’m trying to tell you to come home. I love you. I need you with me. I don’t want to lose you.”
Instead of calming me, his words intensify my distress. Everything inside me is churning, like it does right before something terrible is about to come my way. A sense of impending doom. The tension in my body is unbearable.
I say it before I can stop myself. “Don’t fuck with me, Jack. Are you seeing someone else?”
The silence through the phone hits me like a slap.
“Christ, Linda. There are times you don’t listen at all. And you still don’t really get me.”
And to my shock, in a very non-Jack way, he hangs up the phone.
Eight
Two weeks later
I’m lying in bed where I pretty much haven’t moved from all day. Tonight is the last gig of the Blackpoll UK Tour. There’s a shitload of stuff for me to take care of before tonight’s performance, but I haven’t got the will to get up and start any of it and I definitely don’t have the mental stamina for a dose of Alan Manzone.
I reach for the bottle on my nightstand, pour my fourth glass of wine, and then stare at the phone. Two weeks. I haven’t been able to reach Jack for two weeks, not since he hung up on me. That’s never happened before and each day I become more emotionally chaotic.
Worse, I don’t even get Maria answering the line in the Hope Ranch house. At least if I spoke to her, I would have an opportunity to pump her for information about what’s going on with Jack, get enough insight to know if he’s all right and what’s he’s doing. But no, I go straight to the answering service, so worry is now consuming me with the panic since Jack ended our last call.
Are we over? I don’t know. It feels like he’s ended us. The man hasn’t gone two weeks without talking to me since we first met, and a part of me is afraid to find out if I’ve ruined the best thing that has ever happen to me. I don’t know what will happen if it’s confirmed that I blew it with Jack and that we’re over. No, I’m far from prepared to hear that.
Stupid, Linda, stupid. Why do you always ruin everything good in your life?
Against my will, my mind rallies off all the mistakes I’ve made loving Jack, back to the first mistake, when we first met, of being dishonest with him. Then walking out in Santa Barbara when he asked me to stay. Definite mistake. Then immediately following that blunder by not realizing the depths of his feelings for me, that he was serious about us all those months we struggled to be together while he toured, before I left for the UK. What the fuck kind of woman doesn’t realize it when a man deeply and sincerely loves her? Then leaving him in West Hollywood after he asked me to marry him.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. What the hell is the matter with me?
A voice replaces my own in my head, the very worst possible intruder in my thoughts. Alan Manzone. Did Daddy not love you? Is that why you’re a bitch and a tease to men? Is that why you ran from a man you love? Daddy didn’t love you so no man can?
I hated Alan for saying that, but I hated more that it had the painful ring of truth. Is that why I keep screwing up with Jack? Why I do relationships so badly. Has my dad not wanting me left me believing no man can love me? I shake my head, chasing away Alan’s words. Alan is wrong. I believe Jack loves me. I just do it badly.
I take a sip of my wine, then curl on my side and stare at the phone. Should I call again? It’s probably pointless. Jack doesn’t want to talk to me. While I’m in new territory with him, something tells me to be patient and that he’ll call when he’s ready. He’s not an abrupt ending kind of guy, and I must have pissed him off, hurt him big time, for him to feel he needs to step back from us for a while.
My rational self understands him and what this is. Still, my heart needs to know where we stand and that he’s OK.
I reach for the phone, punch in his number, and anxiously chew on my thumbnail as I listen to the rings. Four rings. Then answered. Damn. It’s the service again. I hang up without leaving a message. What’s the point in leaving a message? If Jack wanted to be reached, I could reach him.
Face it, Linda. The guy doesn’t want to talk to you right now and I don’t blame him.
I brush at the light trickle of tears that fights through my steely resolve not to cry. I’ve cried more in the past two weeks than I have the first twenty-two years of my life. I never knew love could hurt this way, but then I didn’t know a lot of things before Jack.
The buzzer goes off on the clock again and I slam it back into snooze. I reluctantly take note of the time. Crap. 9 p.m. The guys will be going on stage soon. I should have been at the venue hours ago.
I pull myself up into a sitting position and then slowly climb from the bed. I’ve survived eight weeks with Alan Manzone and I’m not going to blow this now. One more night. One more performance. One more dose of Alan, and I’m back to London, hopefully with the job Sandy promised me and in a few more weeks, school. Now is not the time to self-destruct.
As I make my way to the bathroom, I note that I’m a little unsteady on my feet and that that last glass of wine probably wasn’t a good idea. Still, twenty minutes later, I leave the hotel room with full makeup and hair, stylishly dressed in a pair of black pinstriped tight pants, three-inch stilettos and a backless shimmering black halter top.
In front of the hotel, I’m surprised to find the car parked at the front curb and Phil leaning against the passenger door waiting for me. Shit, why is Phil here? Without me riding roughshod over them, did the peckerwoods go MIA and blow off the gig? Fuck, that’s all I need.
I hurry to the car. “What are you doing here? Why aren’t you at the arena?”
Phil straightens up and tosses his smoke into the road. “Manny sent me back to get you, but I decided not to barge in on you. I thought you might be busy or something.”
My cheeks flush both at the way he says busy and in how his gaze is roaming my provocative outfit.
“I wasn’t busy. I was sleeping, you imbecile.”
He gives me the I don’t buy that one look and opens the door. I ignore the insulting way he’s watching me and drop heavily down onto the seat.
In a few moments, the car lurches forward and we’re making our way across the city, and I feel even more tipsier than I did when I left the hotel. Crap, the alcohol is kicking in even more.
At the arena, I spring from the car without waiting for Phil to open the door. At the security entrance, I’m stopped. I rummage around in my leather satchel for the canvas strap with my backstage pass on it and realize I’ve forgotten it.
I stare up a
t Jenkins. “I forgot my identification.”
He stares at me and makes no move to open the door. “You know the rules, Linda. No pass, no backstage. The rules apply to everyone. Even you, love.”
“For Christ’s sake, don’t be an asshole. You know who I am. I just misplaced the fucking thing.”
Jenkins shrugs. “How do I know they didn’t fire you and that’s why you don’t have your identification? Everyone’s here for tonight’s show. Everyone early. Everyone here, but no Linda. What am I supposed to think of that?”
My eyes widen in confusion and alarm. “What do you mean everyone is here? Who the fuck is here?”
He leans into me and says in a near whisper, “The mighty Mr. Craig of Craig Management himself. Sandy Harris. The bigwigs from the label. Even that weasel Arnie Arnowitz.”
Crap. Great, Linda, you picked the perfect moment to fuck up.
I glare. “Let me in. Now. Or so help me—”
He steps out of my way and opens the door. “Shit, Linda. You used to be more fun. What’s eating you?”
I brush past him, ignoring the question. I hurry down the packed corridor, dodging my way through people amid the thundering sounds of Blackpoll on stage. The band is only on the second song of their set.
I bypass the green room, rush toward the stage entrance and hurry up the metal stairs to the stage.
I halt in a darkened area of the wing, in a tiny space cramped with equipment, and I lean against a Marshall amplifier for support. I breathe in and out, trying to calm myself. Everything is fine. The guys are on stage tearing it up. The house is packed and the crowd is going crazy. No disaster and hopefully nothing to fix.
I’m about to leave for the green room to see what’s up with all the bigshots being here, but in mid-verse Alan tilts his face in my direction and his eyes lock on me.
A jolt shoots through me and my nerves grow taut. Those black eyes are simmering in a way that tells me he’s pissed, though I don’t know why he should be angry with me any more than I know how he knew I was standing in this darkened recess in between the equipment.
But the second his eyes fix on me everything is suspended. Only it didn’t really suspend. He’s still singing. The guys are still cranking out earsplitting music. The crowd is on its feet, rowdy and supercharged, but somehow the lock of Alan’s eyes has made everything around me feel like it is moving in slow motion.