Heaven Beside You

by Christa Maurice

  “Cool. What’s it called?”

  “In the Pines.”

  “Hey, wasn’t that—” Bear’s question cut off when Brian shot him a look dark enough to have its own gravity. Bear coughed.

  All of them went silent again. They stared at the floor, the walls, the ceiling, anything but him. They were all grouped on the other side of the room. Once upon a time these four guys had been his best friends in the world. They’d done all kinds of crazy stuff and talked about everything.

  “Come on, guys, it’s not like you have to walk on eggshells around me,” Jason said.

  “Yes, it is,” Bear said. He caught dirty looks from Marc and Brian. Tyler had his hand over his face as if he didn’t want to see a fight erupt. “Well, we do. Say the wrong thing to him lately and you might—”

  “Have to punch him?” Tyler asked.

  “You dumped a pop over his head,” Bear said in a snarling tone.

  Jason stood up. “Look, I’m the problem here. Maybe I should go so you guys can get some work done.”

  “You don’t have to go.” Brian stepped into the middle of the room. “Why don’t we all go get something to eat and start fresh after lunch. If we don’t get something down pretty soon, Sandy’s gonna skewer us. Besides, you can’t go. You’re my ride.”

  Brian would have made an excellent sheepdog. He herded them to a restaurant they all liked and tried to maintain some kind of social conversation without touching on any of Jason’s hot points. That pretty much left politics, the weather, and TV. They were halfway through their lunches, and embroiled in a spirited conversation about The X-Files, which they had been watching together last tour, when Brian looked up and groaned. Tyler cursed and Bear stood up and stomped away from the table, leaving the seat beside Jason open. There were only six people in the entire world Bear couldn’t stand to be around, but Jason couldn’t imagine which one of them might risk approaching the table. He looked around, bewildered, until he met the brilliant blue eyes of his ex-girlfriend.

  “Hi, Jason,” Stella said sweetly. “How have you been?”

  “Good,” he lied.

  She slid into the seat Bear had vacated. “I’ve been thinking about you.” Her seductive purr had all the sincerity of a bad porn actress. What kind of ‘work’ had she been doing?

  “Really?” Jason asked. “The new guy dump you?”

  Brian made a choking sound. Jason picked up his water glass and took a sip.

  “I thought we had something,” Stella said.

  Sweat filmed her upper lip. She needed something pretty bad. Probably publicity. That was her drug of choice. “I’m taking my mom to the Grammys, if that’s what you want.”

  “What makes you think I need to go to the Grammys with you?”

  “Need? Isn’t that more of a want situation?” Marc asked. Jason wanted to laugh. Warmed up, Marc could be brutal, and he’d been warming up for two years. Even when they hated him, they were still his friends.

  Stella shot Marc a sour look then tried to marshal her charms on Jason again. “I only want to know how you were doing. Are you seeing anyone?”

  Jason smiled. She had to know he wasn’t, she followed gossip columns like religion. “Is there something you wanted, Stella? My lunch is getting cold.”

  She glanced at his salad. Crystal tears formed on her perfect lashes. “How can you be so cruel? We were lovers.”

  “You dumped me in People.”

  “In a sidebar, no less,” Marc added.

  “I thought you knew it was over. I didn’t realize it would hurt you so much.” She reached out and rested her manicured hand on his cheek.

  Nothing. No flicker of desire or flush of heat. No urge to touch her back. How had he let this plastic doll mess him up so thoroughly for so long? He’d sooner find himself a mannequin and take that to the Grammys. His trip to West Virginia had served its original purpose. He was over Stella.

  She realized he wasn’t responding, and sat back. “Well, it was good seeing you again.” She sobbed. Then she jumped up and ran away from the table.

  “Oh, look. There’s a photographer. Maybe you’ll make Us,” Tyler said, pointing through the restaurant window.

  “Just Like Us.” Marc framed a shot of Jason and the chair Stella had vacated with his fingers. “They fight in restaurants.”

  “I missed something good, didn’t I?” Bear demanded, standing behind his chair.

  “Did you ever. It was awesome,” Marc raved.

  Jason studied his plate. Stella touching his face only reminded him how it felt to be touched by Cassie’s loving hands. The way she’d wrapped him in a warmed blanket when he came in from building his ziggurat, and rubbed a towel though his hair. She’d ordered him out of his clothes and then informed him she didn’t want any of his ‘cold parts’ touching her. Around him, his friends were telling Bear what he’d missed. Bear lamented that nobody had taped it. “What do you think about Crocodile Tears for a song title?” he offered.

  “Oh yeah,” Brian shouted. “That would be perfect.”

  “Damn, I gotta call Maur and tell her. She’s going to love this.” Bear pulled out his phone.

  Marc batted his eyelashes at them. “What makes you think I need to go to the Grammys with you?” he asked in a falsetto.

  Jason laughed, and it didn’t hurt as much as he thought it would. What hurt was knowing he couldn’t tell Cassie about it.

  * * * *

  Cass put the final strokes on the canvas. Since her mother’s lecture, she’d made an effort to pull herself together. She’d been showering and eating more or less regularly, and not all peanut butter straight from the jar. Although, what sleeping got done was on the couch. She was still watching her entire movie collection alphabetically, but she put them back on the shelf instead of leaving them all over the floor. She’d even managed to paint—she just hadn’t meant to paint this.

  She turned away from the canvas. Her whole body ached with an exhaustion almost indistinguishable from her gnawing loneliness. Paul had come by with a casserole three days ago and the next morning, a box of chocolate muffins sat frozen on her doorstep. She suspected the muffins came from Angela, based on the fact that they came in an old tax form box and Finn couldn’t bake. When Donny plowed the road yesterday, he’d dropped off her mail, a basket from the Baptist church ladies containing a meatloaf dinner complete with mashed potatoes and green beans, a hand crocheted blanket and a DVD of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. He’d also said he was sorry she was under the weather.

  Probably her mother had told the town she was sick.

  And she was. All the food in her refrigerator made her queasy just looking at it. Hopefully, the series of storms the news predicted arrived soon, because then everyone would stay away for a while. She picked up the phone and dialed Gretta. All those people so worried about her, and she couldn’t talk to any of them.

  “Hi.”

  “Oh, honey, he left didn’t he?” Gretta said.

  “Shouting and stomping in the middle of the night almost three weeks ago.” Two weeks, three days and sixteen hours ago. Cass checked the clock on the DVD player. Two weeks, three days, sixteen hours and thirty-seven minutes ago. Every minute felt like Chinese water torture. The digital display added another minute to the growing pool.

  “Shouting and stomping?”

  Cass rubbed the bridge of her nose. She seemed to have an ever-present headache. “He found my magazine collection and decided I was trying to manipulate him into getting married or something. He just went nuts. It was the middle of the night, and he packed up his stuff and stormed out.”

  “Oh God, how awful. What did you do?”

  “For the first two weeks, not much. I sat and watched movies.”

  “You could have called.”

  Cass sighed. “Gretta, I could barely get off the couch. Answering the phone was hard enough. Dialing would have been impossible.”

  “I understan
d. So what got you off the couch?”

  “My mother yelled at me. It got me moving, anyway. The whole town thinks I’m sick.” Her stomach responded to the word, roiling ominously. It had to be the stress. Having someone slam out in the middle of the night, shouting wild accusations could make a person sick, couldn’t it?

  “Are you?”

  Cass hesitated. If she heard it out loud and it wasn’t true, she’d be crushed. She didn’t think she could stand another blow this year. “Some.”

  “Sick how?”

  “Headache, tired, upset stomach. I think it’s just depression.”

  Gretta breathed for a long time on the other end of the line. “Could you be pregnant?”

  Now she’d heard it, and her heart grabbed the idea and ran. Pregnant with Jason’s dark-eyed, dark-haired baby. A little piece of him, hers forever. “Maybe,” she admitted. “We were careful, but we slipped once.” And she doubted condoms were sturdy enough for multiple uses, which had happened more than once.

  “Once is all it takes.”

  “But I wouldn’t be sick already. It hasn’t even been a month.”

  “A girl in my office was sick practically the next day.”

  Cass struggled to keep hope from blooming out of control. It might be depression, or subsisting on peanut butter and no sleep for two weeks. Or shock. She might have caught a bug at the dance and hadn’t shaken it yet.

  But please let it be a baby. Please.

  “Listen, I know you can’t get sensitive stuff in the mail, but how about Fed Ex?”

  “The nearest hub is in Charleston. Nobody sees him even come over the mountain.”

  “I’m going to overnight you a pregnancy test. I want you to be thinking about whether you’re going to keep the baby and whether you’re going to tell him.”

  Chapter

  Jason heard Cass, but he couldn’t find her. By the time he crawled to the foot of his king sized bed, he’d hear her sweet laugh from the headboard and when he got there she was somewhere on the left side calling him with a seductive purr. It didn’t help that the bed had grown to the size of a football field and he couldn’t figure out how to get off his knees.

  Then he woke up tangled in the sheet in the middle of the bed with one limb stretched toward each of the sides, hard as iron. Pushing himself up, he shook his head to clear it. Why was he always so optimistic that would work? Shaking his head just aggravated his headache. He’d never wanted a king-size bed. You tended to lose the other person in it. The acre of mattress had been Stella’s idea, something about needing enough space to sleep. Cass had a queen-size mattress. Big enough to stretch out in, but small enough he could always reach her.

  He’d finished off the brandy last night. On the way home from his encounter with Stella a few days ago, he’d bought a bottle. That night he’d needed one glass to put him to sleep. The next night it had been two. Last night he’d needed the rest of the bottle before his eyes started to droop. As far as building a tolerance level went, this was insane. By the end of next week, he’d be buying brandy by the case and mainlining it. Maybe he should take Sandy up on that therapy option. Self-medicating wasn’t doing the trick.

  He rolled out of bed and slicked sweat off his face with his hand. Waking up sweaty, hard and frustrated every day wasn’t exactly a peak experience. The hangover never helped either. Stumbling to the bathroom, he drank two glasses of water then stepped into the shower.

  Grammy day. He had to pick up his mom for hair, makeup, and wardrobe at two, then some dinner with the guys and their dates so they could be in their seats by five and sit around until at least seven before they got to the good awards. Good thing they weren’t nominated for children’s recordings or Best Incidental Music in a Commercial. Those poor suckers were already there. He staggered out of the shower and drank another glass of water.

  Hopefully his mom had taken Connie with her when she’d picked out her dress. Designers could convince his mother of anything. Connie had an eye for style and wouldn’t let Mom look bad. Thinking of which, what was his sister dressing him in tonight? When she called last week he’d told her he didn’t care. She would make him look good, too.

  He yanked on a tattered Metallica T-shirt and black jeans worn to an uneven gray. It wouldn’t do to turn up looking decent. One had to torment one’s sisters, even into adulthood.

  He surveyed the look in the mirror. A couple of years ago, say, pre-Stella, he’d have been overjoyed by the thought of tormenting his sister with junky clothes. Today, it felt like an empty gesture in an empty house. This room, done in cool white with its king-size bed and gauzy white curtains, always made him feel like an unwelcome speck of dirt. He should have it redone. Connie might be up to the job, around her regular work doing wardrobe for television. Or Candy would know somebody.

  The writing sessions were going very well. The other guys had been working on stuff independently. Thanks to the hillbilly songs he’d remembered snatches of, he could fake some contribution. His main contribution had been the title Crocodile Tears that Marc had run with.

  Settled in the kitchen, eating a bowl of cereal, he decided he hated the color of the kitchen too. Claiming the color was good for appetite, Stella had picked out some screwed up shade of green that didn’t exist in nature and shouldn’t anyplace else. Though it was great for ruining appetite, he hadn’t bothered to argue with her. It needed redone as well. So did the living room. From his seat at the table he could see his black leather couch. He had some thoughts on what he wanted for the living room. Hardwood with light finish. Burgundy drapes and furniture. Maybe a fake fireplace.

  He flipped open the half-memorized dossier on Cass that Tessa dropped off the morning after he got home. She’d rattled him out of bed at ten thirty and handed it over amid disparaging comments about his appearance and work ethic punctuated by some Spanish she’d learned to make it look like she had street cred, but which impressed him not at all. The dossier didn’t tell him anything he didn’t know, but added some color and it was all he had. There was a picture from her driver’s license and a summary of her old tax returns. Tessa had included the paperwork from her divorce and a copy of Michael’s acting portfolio. Jason didn’t ask how she’d gotten the portfolio. Tessa had probably called his agent for it and now the little creep thought someone in Hollywood wanted him.

  Jason hoped so. He wanted to think the bastard was twisting in the wind, especially after the summary of Michael’s attempt to steal part of Cass’s campground in the divorce proceedings. That had made him want to attend Michael’s latest performance so he could throw rotten vegetables at him. He also had a yen to buy Cass’s old comic book publisher just to fire a couple of people. To pull that off though, he’d have to convince everyone he knew to invest with him, and make Tessa understand why it was a good idea. So far it seemed too daunting. Maybe next week.

  For a guy who wanted to get as far away from Cassandra Geoffrey as he could, he certainly had a lot of plans to be her knight in shining armor. He missed Cass’s kitchen, all finished wood and good smells. Maybe he should sell this ugly house and start over.

  The only comfortable room was his music room in the back. Stella never laid a hand there. In fact, she’d never stepped in it. If she wanted to talk to him, she would stand in the doorway as if afraid the cables snaking across the floor would attack her.

  Jason settled in the big comfortable chair in the corner and picked up his oldest guitar. It was the first one he’d ever owned, given to him by his mother and sisters for his thirteenth birthday. At the time, he’d been guilty about the cost even though it was the cheapest guitar available and never stayed in tune, but he’d paid them all back. Comforted by the feel of the strings and the slightly out of tune sound, he started to pick out notes.

  The phone ringing almost startled him out of the chair. He ran to the kitchen and grabbed it, absurdly hoping Cassie would be on the other end. “Yeah?”

  “Jason, where the h
ell are you?” Connie shouted. “It’s two thirty. You were supposed up pick up Mom an hour ago. Everybody else is already here.”

  By the time on the wall clock, which took a second to figure out because it was some kind of nonfunctional artistic thing, he’d sat down to play over three hours ago. That didn’t make sense. He wasn’t drunk. People blacked out when they were drunk, not when they were stone cold sober and playing guitar. The tips of his fingers ached. “I lost track of time.”

  “Damn right you did.”

  “Look, I’m sorry.” Jason set aside the guitar.

  “Have you been drinking again?”

  “No. Call Mom and tell her I’m on my way.”

  “Eleanor is bringing Mom. Just get over here. And you better not be wearing anything stupid.” Connie slammed the phone down.

  Jason hung up the phone and dashed for his car. Right after he’d gotten the guitar, there had been times when he’d gotten lost in it. He’d learned to play on Brian’s, and when he got his own he could play Stairway to Heaven for hours. When Tessa threatened to beat him to death with his guitar if he played that song one more time, he’d embarked on learning every one of George Harrison’s songs, including his Beatles and his Wilbury stuff. Consoling himself for three years with a guitar and a monumental goal made him one of the most proficient guitar players in rock. It also meant he lost track of hours.

  As he swung into Connie’s driveway, her little boy came racing out of the house. “Mom says you’re late and you’ve got to get into a chair immediately.” Colton seized his hand and dragged him to the house.

  Connie took in his outfit and glared at him. “You never get tired of this, do you? Get that off. Put this on.” She shoved a clutch of hangers into his hand and gave him a push in the direction of the bedrooms, which had been turned over to dressing rooms for the day. His mother sat in the makeup chair watching him. Burgundy trimmed in gold, the dress his sister had chosen for her made her look like an attractive older woman without making her look like a fossil. Connie had given him a burgundy shirt, black pants and a black jacket that was a little too short in the sleeves.