Days Like This

by Laurie Breton

  “He’s a good man,” she said, sounding defensive to her own hyper-critical ears. “What I have with him—it’s nothing like what you and I had. There’s no comparison. It’s apples and oranges. He’s the best thing that ever happened to me. The most amazing man I’ve ever known.”

  Her chest tightened, making it hard to breathe. She should stop coming here. It was bad for her mental health. Every time she left here, she felt so disoriented, her loyalties so divided, it always took her a while to regain her equilibrium. To get past the guilt she experienced on so many levels. Not only because she felt some measure of illogical responsibility for his death. Not only because she’d fallen in love with Rob while she was still married to Danny. But also because she’d survived and he hadn’t.

  She’d walked away from the crash. Bloodied, bruised, and in shock, but alive. He’d left in a body bag. And no matter how many times her rational side reminded her of how ridiculous she was being, her irrational side continued to feel survivor guilt. Why had she survived, when he hadn’t? Had it truly been an accident, or was it all preordained? Did she have some reason for being on this planet that she hadn’t yet discovered? Had he already done whatever he’d been sent here to accomplish? Or was it decided not by Fate-with-a-capital-F but by something as random and meaningless as where they’d each been sitting when the car went off the road?

  It was a question she’d never be able to answer, and suddenly the unanswered questions, the memories, the guilt, were too much for her.

  “I can’t be here anymore,” she said, possibly to Danny, more likely to herself. “I have to leave now. I’ll come back another time.”

  And she fled, rushing down the hillside to the car she’d left parked on the grassy shoulder of the road. She climbed in and slammed the door, inserted the key and cranked the Mitsubishi’s starter. The engine roared to life. For an instant, she lay her forehead against the steering wheel and closed her eyes as her stomach roiled with nausea.

  “Get a grip,” she muttered. She raised her head, put the car into gear, and pointed it in the direction of home.

  Rob

  She’d been to the goddamn cemetery again.

  That grave site, high on a hill, was her own personal Mecca, and his wife went there with pious regularity to pray to her fallen god of rock & roll. Even when she didn’t tell him where she’d been, he always knew. She came home reeking of it. For hours afterward, the weirdness vibes would emanate from her like strong perfume on a hot summer day, while his stomach felt like he’d swallowed razor blades. Before they got married, she’d sworn to him that she had let go of Danny, that she’d put him behind her. But it simply wasn’t true. She might have made a valiant effort to exorcise her first husband, but it hadn’t worked. Danny Fiore still lived inside the heart, inside the head, of the woman he loved. And Rob MacKenzie didn’t know what to do with that knowledge.

  For more than a dozen years, he and Casey had been something more than friends, something less than lovers. Danny had always stood there between them, larger than life. The interrelationships between the three of them, both personal and professional, had been so complex. Then Danny was gone, ripped away from them suddenly, senselessly, and without warning.

  He’d had this crazy notion when they wed that because they were so solid, because of all those years of being Casey-and-Rob, the adjustments that plagued other newly-married couples wouldn’t touch them. But he’d been wrong. There were times—infrequent times, fleeting times, but still very real times—when he actually wondered if they’d done the right thing. Maybe, he thought, they should have waited a little longer, dated for a while before taking the matrimonial plunge.

  Then he’d look back over the years of their relationship and realize how crazy that sounded. How long was a man supposed to wait? Sixteen years should be long enough. And what would have been the point of dating? After all those years of living inside each other’s pockets, inside each other’s heads, they already knew everything they needed to know about each other.

  No, getting married hadn’t been a mistake. The mistake would have been to wait any longer. This was the woman he was meant to grow old with, to make babies with, to rock on the porch with in their doddering old age. There was respect between them, and tenderness, and a connection he’d never experienced with any other human being. The attraction between them was explosive, the sex spectacular. None of those things was the problem. The problem was Danny Fiore, the elephant in the living room, the invisible landmine they both tiptoed around for fear of stepping on it and blowing the whole thing sky-high.

  He tried not to let it bother him, but sometimes the resentment bubbled up inside him until he wanted to scream. Because sometimes, he felt invisible. Sometimes, he felt as though he’d simply stepped into Danny’s shoes, Danny’s life, and nobody had even noticed that he wasn’t Danny. After all, he was living in Danny’s house. Sitting on Danny’s couch, watching movies on Danny’s VCR. Lathering himself in Danny’s shower, and sleeping with Danny’s wife.

  Even though, technically, she was his wife now, how much had really changed? Aside from the sex, their relationship was pretty much what it had always been: They were, first and foremost, friends. They took care of each other, nurtured each other, kissed each other’s boo-boos when the world hurled painful slings and arrows, and complemented each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Nothing had really changed. Except that they’d stopped working together.

  And it was all his fault.

  The two of them had started writing songs together pretty much by accident. One afternoon, he brought Danny’s wife a half-finished song he’d been writing, thinking that maybe she could add some lyrics to it. They sat down at Danny’s old upright piano to work on it. Hours later, when Fiore came home from work, they were still there, sitting in the dark because neither of them had even noticed the sun had gone down and the sunny day had turned to twilight.

  Casey was fond of telling anybody who would hold still long enough to listen that everything she knew about music, he had taught her. And it was partly true, except that she was deliberately forgetting the road ran both ways, that she’d taught him as much as he’d taught her. True, he’d spent months tutoring her, passing on to her every bit of music theory he’d picked up in two years sitting in a classroom at Berklee. The rest of what he’d taught her came straight from inside him, more a matter of instinct than of factual information.

  They were coming at this songwriting gig from different places. Her major influences were folk/rock artists like Carole King and Carly Simon and Jackson Browne. His tastes were more eclectic: anything blues-based, anything Motown, anything written by Becker and Fagen. Her favorite album was Carole King’s Tapestry; his was Steely Dan’s Can’t Buy a Thrill. Pretty much the only thing they agreed on was that Stairway to Heaven was the greatest rock song ever written. It was a little unconventional, the way they connected, but Rob MacKenzie had never been one to concern himself with rules. He just made up his own rules as he went along.

  Because they were coming from such different places, they butted heads on a regular basis. Sometimes he won; sometimes she did. They might not agree on much, but they both knew instinctively that the marriage of these two vastly different sensibilities created something that was absolute dynamite. He taught her how to write a song with multiple layers of meaning; she taught him how to write one with commercial appeal. They both understood that the primary currency any song possessed was its emotional impact. Although they both wrote music, both wrote lyrics, he was better at expressing emotion through musical notation, while she was a vastly superior lyricist.

  When they hit a wall, when the music or the lyrics wouldn’t come, or they couldn’t settle a disagreement, they would set the work aside, and they’d play the piano and sing together. Just fooling around, being silly, having fun. It was never their own music they sang—because that was work, and this was play—but other people’s. Sixties pop, early Beatles, fifties doo-wop. Anything that would
give them the opportunity to harmonize. They’d take turns, one singing lead while the other sang harmony. Then they’d swap parts. Neither of them had the kind of vocal talent Danny possessed, but they could both hold their own, and their voices blended into the sweetest of harmonies. Most of the time, they sounded amazing together. Once in a while, one of them would drop the ball and trip up the other one, and they’d collapse over the keyboard in fits of uncontrollable laughter.

  Other times, when they needed a break from work, they’d go out and walk around the city, and they’d just talk. About the music, about the writing, about life and love and family. About hopes and dreams and disappointments. About her marriage, and about his lackluster love life. She was wise and warm and nurturing, and no matter what problem he might be experiencing, she always seemed to have the right answer.

  The relationship that developed between Rob MacKenzie and his best friend’s wife was impossible to classify, and after a while, he stopped trying and just accepted it for what it was. There was nothing sexual about it, nothing romantic. He’d long since gotten over his initial reaction to her, and as far as she was concerned, there was only one man on the planet, and that man’s name was Danny Fiore. What they felt for each other was strictly platonic. They were simply two people with an extraordinary friendship who just happened to be male and female.

  Except that there was something else, something he couldn’t put his finger on, some inexplicable connection that went beyond simple friendship. Sometimes it almost felt like a marriage, only without all that messy sex stuff. Whatever this thing was between them, it was genuine, it was intense, it went gut-deep, and it wasn’t going away any time soon.

  In spite of the fact that she was one of the strongest women he’d ever met, he had this big-brother protective vibe going on. Sometimes Danny did stupid-ass stuff, and somebody had to make sure she was covered. Travis still hadn’t fully forgiven Danny for seducing his kid sister, and Trav’s idea of protection was so far over the top it was laughable. So it was up to Rob to be the one who always had her back.

  He never questioned whether Danny loved her; once that gold ring went on his finger, Fiore was a changed man. But sometimes he seemed like an emotional cripple, and for whatever reason, Casey seemed to believe he needed coddling. So while she took care of Danny, Rob took care of her. It was an odd little three-way thing they had going, but for some crazy reason, it worked. For years and years.

  Until one night, on a moonlit beach in the Bahamas, he screwed it all up.

  For the past four years, he’d wandered alone through an arid musical desert. After four years, he should have adjusted. After four years, it shouldn’t still feel as though his right arm had been amputated. But it did, and he hadn’t yet figured out how to deal with it. For a dozen years they’d worked as a team. A dozen years of making beautiful music together, of living inside each other’s heads. Through the lean years, when they struggled and starved. Through the fat years, when they wrote and produced hit after hit for Danny Fiore, when they won Grammy after Grammy for the magic they created. For a dozen years, they’d meshed like cogs in a wheel.

  Then Katie died, and Casey’s marriage to Danny went south. She hadn’t spoken to her estranged husband in ten months on the night when Rob MacKenzie, mildly sloshed and without conscious intent, had kissed her on that damned beach and started something they couldn’t possibly finish. The next day, he’d given her an ultimatum: fish or cut bait.

  She’d chosen to fish. She’d picked Danny.

  And their twelve-year musical partnership had completely unraveled.

  ***

  She came in through the shed and saw him standing at the kitchen sink, and the look on her face said it all. While razor blades danced in his stomach, she crossed the room to him and he closed his arms around her and they clung to each other. After a time, he said bitterly, “Why do you keep doing this to yourself?” And to me, he thought, but didn’t say it.

  “Don’t,” she said. “Please don’t. Just hold me, and don’t say anything.”

  He opened his mouth to speak. But the words wouldn’t come out. All the garbage rolling around inside him had rendered him utterly incapable of expressing what he wanted, what he needed, to say.

  So he did what he always did. He shut up and just held her.

  Paige

  The start of the school year was always the same. The crisp September weather, the guys with their shiny new sneakers that would be scuffed and dirty by next week; the girls with their MTV-inspired definitions of cutting-edge fashion. Textbooks that needed to be covered by week’s end and a locker that was located several city blocks away from any of your classes. The Breakfast Club, her all-time favorite movie, pretty much had high school nailed: you had your jocks and your nerds, your popular kids and your burnouts and your untouchables. You had yearbook club and glee club and French club. Lousy cafeteria food, stunning boredom, and a major jonesing for the lazy days and sandy beaches of summer.

  And algebra. God, how she hated algebra! While Mrs. Silverburg wrote equations on the board in her spidery handwriting, Paige doodled in her notebook. When the bell rang, she was the first one out of her seat, snatching up her backpack and heading for the cafeteria. The food might be lousy, but it was sustenance. Juggling her backpack and her food tray, she stood lost in the bustling crowd, searching for an empty table. When she found one in a far corner, she squeezed between packed tables, past snotty girls and obnoxious guys, finally dropping the backpack and the tray on the table.

  For the first two days of the semester, she’d eaten lunch with Luke and a couple of his geeky friends. But after he dropped Physics and picked up Lab Bio, they no longer shared the same lunch period. Since hell would freeze rock solid before she’d sit with those geeks without Luke there as a buffer, she sat by herself, a lone island of solitude in the midst of chaos.

  At the next table, a trio of girls who looked like they spent too much time watching Beverly Hills, 90210 were whispering and giggling, undoubtedly over something trite and meaningless. Sometimes, she really hated chicks. They were so superficial. Guys were much more straightforward. Simpler. And their interests didn’t revolve around hair or makeup or the latest teen idol. Paige picked up her fork and poked at the UFO—unidentified food object—on her tray. The gray sludge may or may not have been shepherd’s pie. The jury was still out on that. She thought longingly of her stepmother’s cooking, which was the second-best thing about being dragged off to this alternate universe.

  She was halfway through the UFO when a red and gray L.L. Bean backpack dropped heavily to the table, and the first-best thing about being dragged off to this alternate universe sat down across from her. Those dark eyes studied her wordlessly, and a funny little flutter tickled her stomach. “Hey,” she said, surprised. This was her third day at Jackson High, and the first time she and Mikey Lindstrom had crossed paths.

  “Hi. How’s it going?”

  She set down her fork. “It’s high school,” she said. “How good could it be?”

  “That’s a valid point. You settling in okay?”

  “As okay as can be expected. How come you’re not eating lunch?”

  “Free period. I already ate.”

  “Oh.” She cast about for something else to say, but she’d never been good at small talk, and every time Mikey Lindstrom walked into the room, her palms began to sweat.

  In an unnerving and intimate gesture, he reached out and plucked the dinner roll from her tray and tore it into two pieces. “Dad says you’re in his sophomore English lit class.”

  “Lucky me.”

  “What else are you taking?” He popped a piece of bread into his mouth.

  “Spanish, Intro to Western Civ, U.S. Government—” She rolled her eyes. “And the icing on the cake, my old friend, Algebra.”

  “Not a math person?”

  “I shudder at the thought.”

  “If you need help, let me know. I’m a whiz at math.”

  “I
appreciate the offer, but I don’t think it would do much good. I’m a hopeless case.”

  “You severely underestimate my powers.” He glanced at the wall clock and finished off the dinner roll. “Better eat faster, the bell rings in two minutes.” He stood, picked up the backpack, and she tilted her head so she could see all six feet of him. “If I don’t run into you before then,” he said, “I’ll see you Saturday.”

  “Saturday?”

  “The weekly family get-together?”

  “Oh. That.”

  He almost smiled. The corner of his mouth twitched, and for a second, she thought he was going to lose the battle. But, to her disappointment, Mister Solemn won. Shouldering the heavy backpack, he gave her a final cursory glance, and he was gone. She watched him snake his way through the crowd, greeting and being greeted by a half-dozen people, clearly some kind of demigod in this twisted microcosm of life known as high school.

  The bell rang, and she gathered up her things, made her way through the crowd to deposit her tray, then shouldered her backpack and headed off in the direction of her Spanish class. A petite, dark-haired girl in jeans and a pink-and-white-striped knit shirt fell into step with her.

  “Hi,” the girl said. “You’re new here. We have Spanish together. I’m Lissa Norton.”

  “Paige,” she said. “Paige MacKenzie.”

  “So, what do you think of Señor Hooper?” Their Spanish teacher was a short, white-haired man who’d peppered his walls with travel posters, but Paige highly doubted he’d ever left the good old U. S. of A.

  “I think it’s really lame that he makes us call him Señor. This isn’t exactly Barcelona. Or even Guadalajara.”

  “I know. Stupid, isn’t it? So, I saw you talking to Mikey Lindstrom. How do you know him?”