Smooth: A New Love Romance Novel (Bad Boy Musicians)

by Hazel Redgate

  Oh, Jesus Christ…

  ‘What?’ he says. ‘Why’s no one toasting, guys?’

  My neck snaps back instinctively. ‘Drew,’ I say.

  ‘What?’ His tone is clipped, his face stony; he’s always hated to be interrupted, let alone corrected. Let alone in public.

  ‘Lauren’s husband’s name is Drew, Carter. Not David. Drew.’

  As suddenly as it started, the cloud breaks; he laughs and waves his hand like it’s no big thing. ‘Yeah, babe,’ he says. ‘That’s what I said, wasn’t it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Sure it was. Drew.’ He looks around the crowd. ‘Come on, guys… back me up on this one, right?’

  There’s a neutral mumble from around the table: everyone knows it, but no one wants to get involved. Everyone’s treating Carter like a bruise on an apple, convincing themselves that they can just work around him, that he’s not so bad, that he’s not ruining anything, that it’s all part of his charm. After all, he’s here with me.

  How bad can he be, really?

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  ‘Jesus, can you believe the food in this place?’ Carter asks as we head back up to my – our – hotel room.

  ‘I know, right? It’s good, isn’t it?’

  His eyebrows crease up in surprise. ‘Good?’ he says. ‘That slop? Honestly, babe… have you been eating this shit all week? Have you gone native?’

  He’s talking about the jambalaya the hotel had served us during the second course of brunch: a real example of New Orleans home cooking, served up in giant, seemingly infinite ladles into bowls that were soon practically licked clean. It wasn’t the first time it had been on the hotel’s menu, and even though I had been a little sceptical at first – ‘spicy crayfish stew’ didn’t sound like a good time to my unadventurous ears – Lauren had persuaded me to give it a try, and I had been hooked.

  I shrug. ‘I liked it.’

  ‘What I wouldn’t have given for a decent slice of pizza.’

  ‘You barely even tried it,’ I say quietly, figuring that if he hears me being quiet he might find some way to moderate his own volume. No such luck.

  ‘I didn’t need to. I saw how it looked. Gross.’ He pulls a face, and all of a sudden he’s not the Carter I knew: he looks for all the world like a sulky, petulant teen. Or maybe he is the Carter I’ve always known, and I just never saw it before now. I mean, it wouldn’t be the first time he’s grumbled about not getting his own way; I was just always so good at giving in, so good at letting him have what he wanted. Whenever he complained about what restaurant we’d chosen for dinner, whenever he wanted to pick the movie or what to watch on TV… for God’s sake, I’d seen the most recent Expendables sequel three times, twice on the big screen because it was so good he just had to see it again, but when was the last time Carter and I had checked out a movie I wanted to see? When was the last time you managed to get him to see anything that doesn’t have an explosion in it?

  I close my eyes for a second, trying to shake the thought away. It doesn’t matter, I tell myself. It’s just jambalaya. He’s just a picky eater, that’s all. You knew that. You always knew that. Nothing’s changed.

  Well… something’s changed. But he’s gone now, and so he doesn’t matter. He’s out there in the world somewhere, no doubt thinking what a grade-A bitch I am for cheating on my fiancé with him. How any times must he have seen that before? A lonely woman on a bachelorette party, surrounded by her friends, looking to cut loose and make some mistakes? How many times has he been that mistake?

  No, I think. Not Jack. Someone like Jack would never be a mistake.

  Carter sweeps the keycard down the panel by the door and throws it open. ‘There,’ he says. ‘Just the two of us. Finally. I’ve been waiting all week for us to have some alone time.’

  You seemed pretty intent on getting all the alone time you could ever want, I think, but somehow I manage to bite my tongue before I say it out loud. There wouldn’t be any point; even if I thought it would help the situation (which it certainly wouldn’t), even if I thought it would make feel better to get that quick, vicious little jab in (which it might), Carter isn’t paying any attention. He’s too busy looking around the room, taking in all the delights that the Hotel Belle View has to offer. ‘What is all this shit?’ he says as he looks at the walls – the swans, the view of Paris. ‘Can you believe Drew and Lauren actually picked this place? I mean, for real. Just look at it.’

  ‘I like it,’ I say. I’m not sure why. The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them, but I make no move to take them back. I don’t want to agree with Carter right now – not about this, not about anything. I want to tell him he’s wrong. I want to list off every mistake he’s made in the past week – Christ, every mistake he’s made in the last hour would be enough – but I’m scared that if I start then I may never stop.

  He’s the future, I think. He’s your plan. Nothing’s changed. Nothing’s changed.

  ‘Whatever,’ he says, and I feel like I could scream. I take a moment to close my eyes; by the time I open them again he’s flopped down on the bed and opened the box of complementary chocolates in their heart-shaped box. I watch as he pops three into his mouth, one by one.

  ‘So,’ he says. ‘We gonna make the most of this bedroom or what?’

  Jesus Christ. My mind flashes back to Jack the night before. I try to stop the image, but it’s everywhere in front of me: every touch, every sensation, playing out over and over and over again. The softness of his fingers on my skin, the subtle cadence of his voice in my ear. The give, the take. The quiet longing, the tease, and the release.

  With Jack, it was a dance. With Carter, seduction is a brick to the temple.

  I shake my head, hoping that some excuse will form in the meantime, but none does. Nothing sounds quite right.

  ‘No?’ he asks. He looks annoyed; his brow furrowed, his jaw clenched tight. ‘Why not, babe? You’re not still mad at me, are you?’

  ‘I…’

  ‘Because I think that’s really shitty of you if you are. I mean, I apologised, didn’t I? I got on the plane and flew my ass right to you. I didn’t even change my clothes, for God’s sake. Come on, be reasonable.’

  ‘I am being reasonable.’

  ‘By not having sex with me? After I flew all this way? After I proposed?’

  The implication is clear: you owe me. Haven’t I been good to you? Don’t I deserve it?

  Somewhere along the line, the script has been flipped. Suddenly Carter is the victim, and I’m the one spurning him. If things don’t work now, it’s because of me, not because of him. He did his part. He flew all this way. He proposed.

  At least, that’s the story he’ll tell people. How ungrateful I am. How I didn’t even fuck him after he made the big romantic gesture – never mind that it was his fault a big, romantic gesture was needed.

  You’d fuck someone else, though, wouldn’t you? You’d fuck Jack, right here in this bed. Right where your fiancé is lying. Oh, you’d do that sure enough.

  A lump forms in my throat. ‘I… I think I need to get some air,’ I say.

  ‘Oh, what? Really?’ He lets out an exasperated sigh. ‘We just got back from eating. I don’t want to go out for a walk again.’

  ‘I meant by myself. Just for a little while. I won’t be long.’ He doesn’t look convinced. ‘Must have been something I ate. I guess you were right about that jambalaya.’

  ‘Told you,’ he says, unable to keep the smug I told you so tone out of his voice. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll get you back to Chicago tonight. Get you some real food.’

  ‘Sure. Sounds great.’ If you say so.

  ‘Why don’t you have a shower while I’m gone? You must be wiped out from your flight. It might help to freshen you up a bit.’

  Carter nods dumbly and kisses my cheek. ‘Sure, babe,’ he says. ‘Whatever you need. Just be back soon, OK?’ He gestures to the bed where Jack and I were wrapped up in each other’s arms just hou
rs before; if I squint, I swear I can still see the shape of our bodies there in the sheets. ‘We should probably break that thing in if we’re paying for it, right?’

  I don’t answer. There’s nothing I can say.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  I’m astonished by just how much of the city I haven’t seen. Sure, we had our little jaunts in the days before the wedding, but they were mostly from bar to bar, and mostly conducted in the dark. The city was a completely different place in daylight – weirdly alien, bustling with tourists but still feeling like it was on the verge of the next big party.

  If I were back in Chicago, it would be better. I’d know where to go to think, then. I’d go and grab a coffee at Mason’s, then take a stroll through Lincoln Park until my head was a little clearer. Maybe go and sit by Buckingham Fountain and watch the tourists milling about, trying to get a good photo for their Instagram. How many times had I done that since I moved up there? Too many to count. There was something so satisfying about watching all those people in my territory, knowing that I was the one who belonged and that they were the ones who were out of their comfort zone – but in New Orleans, alone, it’s all reversed. The one place that I did feel like I might have some connection to – the Coeur de Vie – was definitely out of bounds now. Even if I could be sure Jack wouldn’t be there, I could only imagine the welcome I’d get from Eddie and Charisse. Persona non grata all the way.

  Eurgh. This would all be so much easier if Lauren were here.

  What are you talking about? I tell myself as I walk. Lauren is here. She’s right back at the hotel. You know for a fact that if you knocked on her door right this second she’d drop everything to help you out. She’s like a sister to you, for God’s sake.

  Except…

  Except it doesn’t feel like that now. Perhaps with some other problem, she’d be able to help me out. Perhaps in some other scenario – job stress or family bereavement or even just a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day – she might throw everything to one side to assist me, but now? The day she’s supposed to leave before her honeymoon? It would be a dick move even to ask.

  Except that’s not what you’re afraid of, is it? That’s not what you’re afraid of at all.

  No, it’s not. I could understand her if she was too busy to help out. What I’m really afraid of is seeing the look in her eye, the look I’ve never seen before and have absolutely no desire to see: an ‘I Told You So’ that was less playful and more gloating. Oh, we tease each other about things like that – what friends don’t? – but if I came to her feeling like this, how do I know she wouldn’t just turn me away?

  You made your bed, Ella. Now you’ve got to lie in it.

  Yeah, well… the problem isn’t so much the bed, or the lying, but who I’m supposed to be lying with – and why he feels so much like the wrong decision.

  He never used to. That’s what’s killing me. Before this weekend, Carter never felt like the wrong decision at all. Being with him made perfect sense. I’d never questioned the plan, not from the minute I’d met him.

  Well, maybe you should have. Maybe you should have looked at things a little bit closer, because that man up there in the hotel room is the next fifty-something years of your life. ‘It’s all part of the plan’ isn’t good enough. Maybe the plan is wrong.

  Maybe it is. But what the hell am I supposed to do about it?

  I turn a corner, and suddenly I’m struck by a flash of remembrance. I know this place. It’s practically impossible, but I do: the curve of the road, the familiar arch of the trees on the boulevard. I recognise it, that’s for sure… I’m just not sure how.

  And then I see it. I know exactly where I am. The painted black-and-red sign calls out to me from across the street, and everything clicks into place.

  CHARLES LEVEAU HOUSE OF VOODOO, EST. 1997.

  Underneath it, there’s a chubby little man in a faded black t-shirt, just watching the world go by – sitting on a rickety looking wooden chair, eating a late lunch, picking out the next rube who’ll make his way into his little house of lies.

  That son of a bitch.

  That was when it started. It had nothing to do with Jack, or the Coeur de Vie. I wasn’t the kind of girl who’d be swayed by some handsome jazzman. I wasn’t the kind of person who could so easily be lured away by a flashy smile and a few nice gestures – and I’d shown that, hadn’t I? The first night I saw him play? I’d been focused on Carter, focused on my phone. Then we’d gone to see Mr. Charles LeVeau, and we’d all paid to have our glimpse into The Other Side, and that first little worm had made its way into my brain.

  Oh yes… it was his fault. It was all his fault. I always said that a little hope was a dangerous thing – but what about a little doubt? Surely that was even worse?

  Before I know it, I’ve marched across the road; I can see myself sticking a finger into Chuck LeVeau’s pudgy chest, like it’s playing out on a movie screen just for me. Obviously it’s not real – I’m not the kind of person who’d ever make a scene like that; it’s just not me – but then I see the bulbous red of his nose and smell the egg salad of his sandwich, heavy on the mayonnaise, and I realise Oh no… this is apparently exactly the kind of person I am now. Whoops.

  ‘I hope you’re happy with yourself,’ I say.

  He chews his sandwich placidly, barely reacting; this is apparently not a strange occurrence for him. Then again, when you spend your life pretending to contact the spirits, what would be a strange occurrence? What would it take for your workday to be something out of the ordinary?

  ‘Well?’ I ask.

  He pauses for a moment, and swallows hard. ‘I know you,’ he says, eying me up and down. ‘The other day, right? The bachelorette party. You were the girl with the boyfriend troubles and the pregnant friend. How did that work out for you?’

  It’s the smug look on his face that gets to me more than anything else – so ready, so willing to take the congratulations for… what, exactly? Lying to people? Pulling bullshit out of thin air and spinning it into the kind of story that gullible tourists want to hear? Putting that first seed of doubt into my mind about my relationship with Carter?

  Well, thanks a lot, asshole. Thanks a whole bunch.

  ‘My friend isn’t pregnant, you complete shit,’ I hiss at him. ‘She can’t have kids. She’s known that for months, and it crushed her. But you don’t care about any of that, do you? Oh, no. You’re happy to lie to anyone for a quick forty bucks – because hey, it doesn’t hurt anyone, right? What’s the harm? What does it matter if she winds up ignoring all the goddamn doctors and gets her hopes up? Who cares if she spends the next year crying herself to sleep every night because she wants a baby so goddamn badly, and some kook with a crystal ball told her it was only a matter of time? What then, eh? What then?’

  He takes another bite of his sandwich while he waits for me to burn out. That smug look on his face only serves to rile me up even more. I just want to shout and scream at him, to knock his lunch out from his hand, to pull that damned CHARLES LEVEAU HOUSE OF VOODOO sign down off the wall and karate-chop it into a million little pieces, like something in a Saturday morning cartoon serial.

  But I don’t. Of course I don’t.

  ‘You finished?’ he asks eventually.

  ‘Not even close.’

  Chuck the Psychic stands up tall; he’s bigger than I remember him being, but in that cramped back room it was hard to judge. His belly overhangs his pants, and the t-shirt he’s wearing – The Ramones, today – stretches almost to bursting. How could anyone ever have taken him seriously?

  I expect him to yell, to shout, to scream back at this crazy woman who’s accosting him in the street – Well, let him, I think; I’m not scared of some two-bit charlatan – but in the end he just stands and watches me for a second, reading my face. Another one of his party tricks, no doubt. Probably seeing if he can fleece me for another fifty or so.

  ‘This really about your friend?’ he says eventually. ‘Or i
s it about the things I told you?’ He looks down at my hand, at the ring that’s currently sitting pretty on my finger. ‘I didn’t expect to see that again, I won’t lie. Sounds to me like you didn’t either.’

  He reaches an arm up as if to comfort me, to calm me down, but then thinks better of it. Instead he turns on his heels and walks towards the entrance of his shop.

  ‘Why don’t you come inside?’ he asks.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  The back room of the Charles LeVeau House of Voodoo (Est. 1997) feels a lot less restrictive than it did the last time I was here. It doesn’t take me long to figure out why: all of the accoutrements of the psychic trade are no longer in place. The heavy burgundy drapes are still there, sure, but the low lamplight that made everything feel vague and ethereal is turned off. In its place is a harsh white bulb that makes the room look like nothing more or less than what it is: a closet, in the back room of a junk shop.

  Chuck takes a seat across from me.

  ‘Love what you’ve done with the place,’ I say.

  Chuck shrugs. ‘I try and keep the showmanship to a minimum when I’m not with a client. Keeps things simpler.’

  Makes it easier to pull the wool over their eyes if they can’t see you properly, you mean.

  ‘And where’s the crystal ball?’

  He smiles. ‘I sent it in for a tune up. I could only get the basic cable package on it. Total rip off.’ He pauses. ‘It’s under the table. I don’t just leave it out between sessions, you know. That thing cost a damn fortune.’

  ‘I hear The Other Side can be real con artists.’

  ‘Sure. I guess you could say they really saw me coming.’

  ‘You think this is funny, don’t you?’

  He shrugs. ‘A little.’

  I feel my cheeks grow hot. ‘Listen to me, you arrogant son of a–’

  ‘Look, honey… save it, OK? Everything you’re going to tell me, I’ve heard it a thousand times before. If you want your money back, no refunds. If you want to threaten to sue me, go ahead: you wouldn’t be the first, and I’ve got a lawyer on retainer. If you want to yell and scream, sure, go ahead and get it out of your system… just let me know when you’re done so I can show you to the door. Deal?’