Lead Me Back

by Reiss, CD

  I swung my legs over the side of the bed. The cuffs of my father’s pajamas hung past my feet.

  “I’m going to a ball here. A costume dance. The same one he took Alicia to, and he’s going to be there. I shouldn’t go.”

  “Will seeing him make you feel unsafe?”

  He was never going to touch me again, but I couldn’t guarantee I’d return the favor.

  “I’m going to want to punch him if I see him. But . . .” I thought for a moment and decided this could be my chance to unload guilt. I didn’t even have to do anything but be visible as a reminder that I knew who he was and what he did.

  “Kayla?”

  “I want him to be uncomfortable.”

  “I understand.”

  I cradled the phone against my cheek as I looked out the window. It was a beautiful day.

  “I want him to feel unsafe.”

  “I wish I could see you. I’d know if you had that look on your face.”

  “What look?”

  “Like your brain’s on fire.”

  “I’m not sure what I’m cooking, but yeah. Something.” My white van was parked in the driveway of my father’s house. I was safe here. I was valued.

  “Did I tell you I missed you?” I said.

  “You don’t have to anymore.”

  “We can be friends again? Do you think?”

  “Girl. Yes.”

  Relief practically knocked my legs from under me. The loss of my friend had been like a picture I’d placed over a window. Until it was removed, it was easy to forget how much light wasn’t coming in.

  “Thank God,” I said. “And thank you for letting me come home.”

  Dad had gone to work, and I puttered around his kitchen. He’d left me a note with his work number and the location of the eggs and bread.

  I couldn’t get the idea out of my head. If I was safe and supported, I could make sure Signorile didn’t feel the same.

  All I had to do was tell the story. The truth could clear the path for me to be with Justin. I could rewrite my story. It played itself out like background music as I made breakfast.

  Butter was sizzling in the pan and I was scrambling the eggs when a call came in. Florida. It was either a garbage spam call or—

  “Hello?” a kid who sounded about five said. “Is Uncle Justin home?”

  “You’re calling to RSVP.”

  Breathing.

  “Hello?” I could barely hear him. I turned the gas off.

  “I want to go to the party,” he said.

  “Okay. What’s your name?”

  “Teddy.”

  “Hi, Teddy.”

  “Will there be karaoke?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I can bring my karaoke machine. It has all his songs on it.”

  “That sounds like fun.”

  “Uncle Justin likes to sing with me.”

  A man’s voice came from the other side. “Give me the phone, kiddo.”

  Rustling as the transfer was completed.

  “Hello?” He sounded almost exactly like Justin. “This is Justice Beckett.”

  “Oh, hi. I’m Kayla, and this is Justin’s old number.” I turned the stove back on.

  “Ah,” he said as if he’d put together a string of clues to solve a puzzle. “Louise is being Louise.”

  “It’s fine. I’m used to it.”

  “Teddy was all set to tell a heartwarming story.”

  “I can give her the message.”

  “Can you confirm the time and place? Roof of the Line Hotel? Saturday at eight?”

  “I can’t. And I’m not sure about the karaoke machine either.”

  “I’m sorry to bother you. I’ll call Louise.”

  “Not a problem.”

  We hung up, and I stirred my eggs. When the phone buzzed again, the call was coming from Beverly Hills. Assuming it was another RSVP to a party I wasn’t invited to, I picked it up.

  “Kayla Montgomery?” Male. Older.

  “Who is this?”

  “This is Ken Braque. I manage Justin Beckett’s public relations. Do you have a moment?”

  CHAPTER 20

  JUSTIN

  Kayla was mad at me, and she was right to be. I could live with her being mad, but I couldn’t stand not knowing what to do about it. I felt the world looking over my shoulder, judging my every move, waiting to cancel me. That was my reality. It nailed my feet to the ground in a way that had been helpful. Not anymore. Now I wanted to fly and couldn’t.

  Kayla took up space in my head, which should have been uncomfortable. It wasn’t. I wanted more—and had no idea how to get it without ruining everything. Even though I knew the way to the studio, I used her voice to guide every turn.

  In four hundred feet, turn left.

  “Kayla,” I said as I turned. “Where are you?”

  Coldwater Canyon Avenue and Moorpark Street.

  The GPS told me where the car was. What else had I expected?

  “Where am I going?”

  Ten thirty recording session at Slashdot Studios.

  “I miss you.”

  I miss you too.

  The voice was so real my entire brain lit up like a Christmas tree. I slammed on the brakes, nearly getting an ass full of honking Range Rover. I pulled over.

  Of course the software had been pumped full of Easter eggs. If I asked it how many roads a man had to walk down before he became a man, Kayla’s voice would reply that the answer was blowing in the wind. If I asked why the chicken crossed the road, Kayla would make any one of seventeen preprogrammed jokes.

  What would it say if I told it what I was really feeling? Would it make another stupid crack? Did it matter? Wasn’t the point that I was just spitting out what needed to be said? Did I just need to say it to an AI version of her so it was out of my mouth and into the world?

  “Kayla?”

  I am here.

  That was almost comforting, even if it was a provable lie.

  “I love you.”

  I love you too.

  A computer loved me, but her voice sounded so real I got this warm tingle all over me.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Love means never having to say you’re sorry.

  Cups up to Elon Musk for stringing together two answers, but no. That wasn’t true. Love meant saying you were sorry all the time. Being sorry meant you were learning how to not be careless. Love meant you weren’t afraid of being wrong, because the person you loved made you a better person. And in that circle of logic, right in the center, was Kayla.

  What if it was too late?

  What if I lost her?

  What if Kayla made me a better person for the benefit of some other girl?

  No. There was no one else. I was talking crazy to myself. I could have just about any girl I wanted on four continents, but I wanted only her. Not like a car or a house. Not like my publishing rights or creative control. I wanted all that, sure. Some of it I’d demand.

  But I wasn’t terrified of losing things I wanted. The thought of not getting that stuff didn’t make my blood run cold in the front seat of my car or turn my future a dull gray, like a morning fog that was so dense you couldn’t see five feet in front of you.

  I knew I was being weird. I knew this wasn’t normal. I was overreacting. I was putting my entire future on a woman who had her own life to think about. It wasn’t fair, but I didn’t feel like a fair, rational person. Everyone thought I was an impulsive, immature, entitled prick, and now I knew exactly what that meant.

  It meant this feeling. Right here. Right now. Like I’d stop existing if I didn’t take care of this immediately.

  “Call Kayla Montgomery.”

  Calling Kayla.

  The screen flipped to her name and number. It rang once, then again. By the third ring my palms were sweating like I was in grade school, trying to act cool enough to sit next to Harmony Davis at recess.

  “Just pick up, all right?”

  As if she heard me, sh
e picked up.

  “Justin,” she said flatly.

  “Hey. I just wanted to make sure you got home all right.”

  “You’re not in the alley, are you?”

  “No. I’m on the way to the studio. I want to . . . I want to see you. We should talk.”

  She sighed as if she was resigned to something. Whatever it was, it wasn’t a good sign.

  “I don’t think it’s going to change anything,” she said.

  “Ten minutes.”

  Stupid. As if promising less would make her mine again.

  “Don’t you have to go to the studio?” she asked.

  “I’m Justin Beckett. They’ll wait.”

  “Fame has its privileges.”

  “Yeah, it also has limits.”

  It can’t make you forgive me.

  Nothing would, but I wasn’t even close to giving up. My next tactic was flat-out begging, but she saved my knees from the scabs.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’m at my father’s house.”

  “Cool, text me.”

  “Ten minutes, Justin. I have things to do.”

  “Sure, sure.”

  She texted me the address, and her voice guided me there.

  The house wasn’t far into the Hills. A couple of turns off the 101 onto a curved street with intermittent sidewalks. Her van was in the driveway. I parked behind it, letting the ass of the Tesla stick into the street.

  She was sitting on the front steps of a sharp, modern house in the same clothes she’d worn the night before. Her hair was pulled back, and the waves flattened against her scalp looked like the wet sand after a swell retreated back to the sea.

  “Hey,” I said, sitting next to her. She shifted to give me room. “This is your dad’s place, huh? Pretty nice.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So you came here?” I asked. “After you left the studio?”

  She shrugged. “I needed to be around people.”

  “Yeah. I left the session early. Needed to be alone.”

  She smiled so briefly I would have missed it if I could have taken my eyes off her, which I couldn’t. Not for a moment. She seemed so permanent in my life right there, with the morning sun coming through the trees, that I had to remind myself that she might not see herself that way.

  “I’m sorry I flipped out on you.” She drew her knees up and wrapped her arms around her legs.

  “Nah. It’s cool. I was kind of a dick.”

  She shrugged again. “I should have told you.”

  “I understand why you didn’t.”

  “I wanted to just be me. Without all that stuff. I thought coming all the way here . . . to LA . . . would wash it all off me. It doesn’t work like that.”

  “It’s no big for me.”

  “It should be. I put you in danger. Your career. You worked hard, and I just came along thinking my past didn’t matter. But it does. I’m poison for you, and it’s not fair.”

  Poison?

  Was that what she thought? Had I said anything like that? Implied it? Or was that what she’d gotten from the situation?

  “Them’s strong words, lady,” I said.

  “I’m trying to not dance around the facts.”

  “They’re not the only facts.”

  “They’re the ones that matter. I’m not going to sabotage you because I . . .” She faced me. “It doesn’t matter how I feel. I’m not even a blip for you. I’ll never own you. You don’t even own you. Justin Beckett belongs to a big chunk of the world.”

  “Fuck the chunk.”

  “No. Your fans pay your bills. They’re a part of you. It’s just how it is, and neither of us can change it. You need someone who belongs to the world as much as you do or someone so anonymous she’s a vacation from it. I’m just this in-between person who can drag you down. Even if we wait until Ken gives us the go-ahead, it’s going to be the same. I’ll never be able to pull you up.”

  Something was off with what she’d just said, and I was so lost in her meaning and her brown eyes it took me a second to pinpoint it.

  “Ken?” I said.

  “Your PR guy.”

  “Did I tell you his name? Ever?”

  “He called me.”

  “That son of a—” My hands were balled into fists, and if I opened them, a hundred profanities were going to fly out. “What did he say?”

  “That you have a habit of getting in your own way, and that I’m just the latest iteration of that.”

  “No. That is fucked up and a lie.”

  “He didn’t say exactly that. I inferred it. But . . .” She looked away again. “He’s right in a way. It’s just the way it is. Look what happened to Gordon and Heidi. If you just scrape away the particulars, the problem was that she’s a regular person who wasn’t regular enough. She isn’t owned by the world. She’s halfway in and halfway out, and she got dragged into a situation she didn’t have the resources to manage. Look what happened. Not just to her but to Gordon. To their marriage.”

  Through her whole speech, I was jumping out of my skin to contradict. I scoffed. I ran my fingers through my hair. I shrugged as if the clouds had me on puppet strings.

  “Are you done?” I asked.

  “I’m done.”

  “Heidi’s problem wasn’t her job with famous people’s kids. Her problem was that she came into my room to give me shit for talking to Chad’s dealer, when she shoulda stayed by the damn pool minding her own business.”

  “Still.”

  “Still, nothing. I already have a nice house, paid in cash. If I can’t finish the new one, so what? What am I going to do with a house like that if I can’t put who I want in it? I am sick of this. So sick of it. I want to do what I want. I know half the world owns me. I feel that on me every day from the minute I wake up. But there’s a piece of me I don’t show them. It’s the piece with all the stuff I can’t say out loud. It’s where the songs come from. I didn’t know what I was saving it for until now, but it was for you. I want you to own that part of me.”

  “Justin—”

  “Nope.” I cut her off, because the look on her face wasn’t all happy and grateful. It was full of apologies, and I didn’t want them. Love meant never having to say you’re sorry.

  “You already own me,” I said. “So you might as well just take me.”

  “This is so confusing.”

  “What’s confusing? The movie’s shot, and either I sucked or I was good. I can fire Ken right now. I can tell Slashdot to suck it and finance my own album. Or not. I don’t care. I don’t need permission to make music, and I don’t need permission to love you.”

  Ah shit.

  That was what I meant, but it wasn’t meant to be said out loud before I replaced “love” with something less heavy.

  “All I’m saying,” I added as a distraction. “Ken shouldn’t have called you. My life isn’t up to him. He’s had a bug up his ass to get me solo ever since . . .”

  Ever since Gene brought me the Slashdot deal.

  “You’re not going to drag me down,” I said. “If that’s your real reason.”

  “It is.”

  “Okay, good. It’s settled then.”

  “And it’s still a good reason. For now.” She stretched her legs down to the next step. Two straightened knees closer to walking away. “I didn’t think I’d respect you the way I do. I want to be something good in your life.”

  “You are.”

  I heard those words as if I were a different person watching them on a screen. I sounded like a whiny bitch, and once I realized that, a wall went up. I’d told her I loved her when I shouldn’t have, and she’d thrown the word respect back at me. I’d handed her my heart on a platter, and she was gearing up to tell me thanks but no. That wall was my ego, and it was there to protect me.

  So, cool. Fine. Cool.

  No problem.

  I couldn’t push myself on her. Signorile had done that, and I didn’t want to be that guy. And yeah, I was as human as the next man. I
felt like staying there and taking up her time until she understood. Yelling my needs in definite terms. Forcing facts into her brain. I could make an argument that if I didn’t touch her, I was better than Signorile, but nah. Forcing myself on her wasn’t a sin of degree or proportion. You were either doing it or you weren’t. And yeah, I wanted her, but not enough to hurt her.

  “You know what?” I said. “Fine. You’re right.”

  “If we wait a little while . . . I need to unload some stuff. And if it all goes well, then Ken’s going to love me.”

  “This vague shit’s not giving me a good feeling.”

  “Trust me.”

  “Yeah,” I said, standing up. “Sure. Whatever.”

  She stood too. A step above me, she was closer to eye level. I looked away.

  “Can I call you?” she asked.

  “You have my number.”

  I waved and went to the car, tapping the remote to open the door. I got under its wing and closed it, pulling out into the narrow street without looking back at her.

  When I turned onto Gower, I switched the GPS voice to a generic female that Tesla had named Tammy and shut it off. Tammy couldn’t guide me where I wanted to go.

  CHAPTER 21

  KAYLA

  I could call Justin. I would call him.

  When I did, I’d feel better. Lighter. Exonerated. Unencumbered by other people’s lies and my own silence. I’d be a strong person who acted from conviction, not fear.

  Six days before, on my dad’s front steps, he didn’t seem to get it, but he would. Tomorrow, after his surprise party, I’d call him and explain it fully, with details. We’d laugh about the dozens of RSVP phone calls I’d gotten that week, some with stories about the favors and good deeds he’d done. I’d tell him how every story proved he was worth loving a little more. We’d belabor the fact that the Regency ball where I threw off my chains was his birthday.

  “So, you’re doing it?” Brenda asked over the Bluetooth speakers.

  “My dad got me a shark of a lawyer. She talked to Alicia and Winnie. She’s ready to rip off a limb and I love her for it.”