by LJ Evans
“Some things are better than breakfast,” I told him.
♫ ♫ ♫
Later, we found cold coffee and cold pancakes in the kitchen. I sat on the counter while he heated things back up in the microwave, grumbling about it all being ruined now.
I wasn’t the kind of girl who usually sat on counters, but it seemed… decadent. Like I was going to be tossed out at any minute. Good Girl Mia hated it, but she was losing out more and more to this Other Mia who tried new things… like adventures with sexy musicians.
Derek placed my plate next to me, and I caught his hand. I kissed the palm. “Thank you for making me breakfast,” I said.
He looked down at his hand where I’d kissed it, then he looked up at me. His gray eyes turned to thunderclouds again. He pushed his body in between my legs, and I wrapped my legs around him, pulling him close, and laying my head on his shoulder. I smiled against his chest. Happy. That happy feeling continued to shock me to the core whenever I felt it with him and not the guilt that usually came with it. As if I’d discovered the last unknown frontier.
“Are you smiling?” he asked with a smile in his own voice.
I just nodded.
“God.” He hugged me tight to him, and I think we would have found our way into each other’s skin again if a knock on the door hadn’t been followed by a little four-year-old’s voice demanding entry.
We pulled apart just as Maggie and a woman who reminded me of a young Carol Burnett rounded the corner. I slid down from the counter, tugging at the hem of my t-shirt while Derek adjusted his jeans. The Carol doppelgänger’s eyes widened, and she quickly averted them.
Maggie, however, came right up to Derek and hugged his leg. “Uncle Derek, where is your kitty?”
“Last we saw, she was cuddled on her blanket in the bedroom,” he said, ruffling her hair in a way that made me think of Jake ruffling mine.
Maggie took off toward the bedroom, and I hoped nothing in there would give us away. “Hi, Betty,” Derek said to the woman who was awkwardly moving toward the living space.
She just waved.
“Do you want some coffee?” he asked with a smile and a wink at me that Betty couldn’t see.
“No, thank you. Do you want us to come back later?”
“Nah, we were just having breakfast,” he said, and he tugged at my hair, wrapping it around his finger till the finger met my lip in that way that made me feel safe, and claimed, and so many other different and complicated emotions.
“I’m going to go take a shower,” I said, grabbing a plain pancake off the plate and making to leave, but he hadn’t let go of my hair yet.
“What happened to staying in bed on our day off?” he whispered quietly, all smiling BB.
“Seems like you have company.”
He kissed me and let me go, and we both made our way to the bedroom, but I left him and Maggie to play with Jane the Kitten while I found myself in the luxury of his bathroom. It was five-star hotel type luxury with scents, and shampoos, and soaps that my mama would never in a million years have spent money on.
Which reminded me, with a wave of guilt, that I hadn’t texted Mama in almost a day. I sent her a quick good morning and then texted Cam to ask about her and the baby before losing myself in the scents and heat of the scalding shower.
When I came out, Betty and Maggie were gone, and Derek was nowhere to be found. I texted him. No response. Then, I heard laughter and splashing coming from outside.
I found him in the pool. Maggie was riding a huge swan monstrosity while he pulled her through the water. She was definitely in charge, telling him exactly where to go, and he laughingly obeyed, serf to her medieval princess. I sat in my summer dress on a chaise lounge, watching them. Betty joined me.
“Hi, I’m Mia,” I said with a smile.
“Betty. Sorry about earlier.” She flushed and looked away.
I matched her flush with one of my own and waved her off.
“It’s just…well…Derek’s never had someone here before. I didn’t know,” she said as she watched Derek. If she wasn’t at least twenty years older than him, I might have been suspicious that she had a crush on him. But I think it was just Derek’s way of charming everyone, old and young alike. You wanted to like him as soon as you met him.
What caught me in her response, though, was that she said he’d never had anyone at the guesthouse. That seemed almost impossible. “Never?” I questioned.
She just shook her head.
“Miss Mia, come join us!” Derek yelled from the pool.
I shook my head with a smile and waved my Kindle at him. I’d sit and read to give him time with his niece. His beautiful niece who certainly didn’t need to be told that she was beautiful. She already knew it. How are some people born with that knowledge?
They swam for an hour or more, and then we all made our way into the big house into a kitchen the size of my family’s entire house in Tennessee, where a chef had lunch ready on a buffet table. I was floored again. Derek didn’t even blink an eye. This was his normal life.
It made me feel far away from him again. Our realities spiraling one more twirl out from the core that was us. Soon, the gap would be impossible to cross. As if he sensed my thoughts, he grabbed my hand at the table and leaned over to kiss my cheek. “Breathe, Miss Mia, it’s just lunch.”
It wasn’t, though. It was a whole lifestyle that I didn’t know how to live in. I would never have expected this from Derek. He was so casual and down-to-earth. He was at home making grilled cheese in a motor home and eating fried chicken in a karaoke dive bar. Even though I hadn’t expected this, this life also seemed to fit him. The rich kid in a world of money and power. It was only surprising that he didn’t seem the least bit entitled because of it all.
After lunch, Betty bundled Maggie off to a nap that I seriously doubted would really happen, but it allowed Derek and I to make our way back to the guesthouse that he called home, but didn’t really seem like a home. Instead, it felt like a resort you would visit for a few days before you returned to reality. I guess that was it. This was my resort. My three week vacation. But my reality waited for me at the end of this journey.
I knew that Derek hadn’t realized that yet. He’d called me his girlfriend after all. That wasn’t something you usually did if it was all going to be over in a handful of days.
I wandered the room. There were a few pictures scattered around the side tables, beautifully manicured pictures of Maggie, Dylan, Derek, and a blonde that screamed Hollywood, and who I assumed must be Bianca. There were no pictures of Derek as a little boy or his parents. Those were the kinds of pictures that were plastered around our house in Tennessee like sprinkles on cupcakes. Our pictures were full of life. Prom pictures and graduation pictures. Plenty of football and dive pictures. Pictures of all of us on vacation at the beach or picnicking at the lake.
Here, there were only these posed pictures. An image of the family that had been manufactured for the world to see.
As I roamed the room, I picked up random instruments that were also scattered about. The instruments were the only thing in the guesthouse that did seem to fit Derek, especially after all the ones I’d seen him play on the road.
While I rambled about, Derek lounged on the couch, his guitar in his lap, plucking strings.
“Question twenty, Little Bird?” he asked.
“How am I at twenty?” I turned and crossed my arms over my chest, taking in his glorious lankiness.
“We lost count, I know, but I’m sure you’re at least at twenty. Maybe more.”
I paused. I really wanted to ask about the pictures and his childhood, but instead I went for something safer.
“You have a lot of instruments.”
He shrugged. “I majored in compositional music at UCLA.”
My mouth dropped. This was a perfect example of how a three week journey didn’t make us boyfriend and girlfriend. A real girlfriend would have
known this.
“You went to college?” I breathed out.
“Wounding me, Miss Mia, wounding me,” he chuckled with his lips twitching in a way that said he was enjoying shocking me. “I just finished my master’s program in May.”
He still had his gaze fixed on me as he hit notes on his guitar. I couldn’t take the heat of his stare. It was like he absorbed some piece of me every time he concentrated on me that long. I turned, frazzled, because his confession about college had made me realize that there was still so much more about him that I wanted to know, but I wasn’t sure if the remaining time together would be enough to find it all out.
I set down the strange pipelike instrument I’d held onto, placing it next to one of the fake pictures that could have come pre-purchased in the frame.
“That wasn’t the question you really wanted to ask,” Derek prompted me.
I debated whether to ask the questions whirling in my brain, because saying, “Hey, these pictures look pretty fake,” wasn’t exactly something Old Mia would ever say. So I settled for something close.
“Where’s your childhood?” I waved my hand abstractly at all the pictures.
“Not here.” He smiled, but there was a shuttered look that came into his eyes, one that I was unaccustomed to seeing in a man who had always been an open book.
“Well, I know you didn’t grow up here, but don’t you have any pictures?”
“I’m sure Hugo does.”
I stared at him, speechless for the second time in almost as many minutes.
“Hugo? Hugo Brantly has your childhood pictures?”
He shrugged as if it was no big deal.
He started a new melody on the guitar, one I hadn’t heard before. It was aching and lovely. I realized that this was Derek’s way of changing the subject. He didn’t want to talk about Hugo and the PlayBabe Mansion. He was good at avoiding talking about himself and the things that haunted him, but I knew him well enough now to know that this was one of his ghosts, because he’d been serious and not smiling.
“That’s new,” I said as I sat down next to him, curling my feet up under me on the couch.
“It’s called the ‘Wooly Bison’.”
I slugged his shoulder. It did remind me of our time at the Wooly Bison, though. Of the first time we’d made love as the shimmery Oklahoma sunshine filtered into our hotel room. It was amazing how he could speak to me without words, whether that was through his music, or his fingers, or his eyes. He watched me as he played. No words, just chords.
“I like you like this,” he said huskily.
I looked down at myself, in my sundress with bare feet curled under me. “Like what?”
“Relaxed. Happy.”
I flushed. He put down the guitar and eased a finger over my flushed cheeks. “I like you here. As my girlfriend.”
I tried not to panic. I knew that this was the time to say something. To speak up about the label he’d given me and the few days we had left together. But just like he didn’t want to talk about his childhood, I didn’t want to talk about the future. For once, I just wanted to continue to live in the moment. It was why I’d come with him on this journey to begin with, to escape my reality.
It would come back to bite us. I knew it would, but as he continued to touch me, my brain shut off and my body took over. And then we were gone for a while again. Lost in each other, and our skin, in a way that I never knew I could be lost. Lost in a way that I couldn’t have imagined even two weeks ago when I thought I was missing Hayden and was full of guilt over my dead brother.
♫ ♫ ♫
Family dinner at the Waters household was nothing like my family dinners in Tennessee. First of all, it didn’t even start until nearly eight o’clock. In Tennessee, we ate with the senior citizens at five or, at the latest, six. Plus, this wasn’t really a family dinner to me at all because Maggie had dinner on her own and was in bed with the nanny watching over her. Our family dinners would never have happened without all the kids scattered around the table. To me, that’s what made it a family.
I was nervous as I met Bianca for the first time because I hadn’t changed out of my simple sundress while she looked like she’d just stepped out of a fashion magazine. She wasn’t nice and self-deprecating like Trista the Model had been. No, Bianca was a Hollywood wife. She was one hundred percent blonde, and perfect, and entitled.
As we gathered into one of the richly furnished rooms that she called a family room, she made a slight attempt to visit with me before realizing that we had nothing in common. I ran a car dealership in the backwoods. She kept her husband’s entire life running while he made A-list movies.
The doorbell rang, and we were soon joined by George and a man that looked like a run-down version of Dylan. He had gray hair that you could tell used to be blonde, and a cleft chin like the boys, so it was obvious this was their dad. That’s where the similarity to either of the brothers really ended though.
“Derek!” he boomed in a voice that was scratchy from too many years of smoking.
Derek didn’t hug him like he had Dylan. In fact, he barely acknowledged him from across the room. “Dad.”
Derek’s father made his way to us. “George here has been telling me how your songs are finally taking off. Took long enough,” he growled.
When he got close, I could smell the alcohol on him. It was so strong it was almost as if it had embedded itself into his skin permanently. A cologne that didn’t need to be reapplied.
I held a finger to my nose so I wouldn’t gag. Derek frowned at my movement while Derek’s dad eyed me. It was not unlike the way Dylan had eyed me, but you could tell that the older man came up with a different assessment. “Hey, honey, I’m Doug. Who might you be?”
The sordidness in his tone took me aback. I couldn’t believe that there was any way that this man could actually be Derek’s father, and I wasn’t sure how to respond to him. Derek tugged at my hand, interlacing our fingers, and when I looked up at him, I saw Derek in a way that I’d never seen him before. Barely veiled contempt and anger clouded his face that was normally so happy. Even the seriousness I’d seen had nothing on this look.
My heart broke in a whole new way because I could tell that the forgiveness Derek had had tattooed on his wrists was tied to this man and his childhood. The childhood without pictures. The childhood he didn’t want to talk about.
“Dad, this is my girlfriend, Mia.” His voice was cold as he said it, and I didn’t take it personally because his whole body was coiled tight as he addressed this man. I inwardly cringed at allowing him to continue to use the girlfriend term. But like before, now wasn’t the time to stop him.
“Mia, huh? That’s a good name.” Doug eyed me up and down again, taking in my size E’s in a way that no father should. Definitely not the way a father should look at his son’s proclaimed girlfriend. I stepped closer to Derek.
I felt Derek lean forward to say something that wouldn’t have been good at all, but we were interrupted by a southern accent attached to a dark-haired man. “Mia Phillips! As I live and breathe!”
Then, I was being enveloped in a hug from Keith. Long forgotten Keith that Cam had just mentioned seeing at this very mansion. He seemed tall and happy. Derek pulled at my hand again as Keith let me go.
“Keith!” I said with a smile.
“I swear I can’t leave you for two seconds without you running in to someone else you know,” a deep voice said next to him. The man who came up to Keith had graying hair that belied his age. He was handsome and self-assured with an expensive suit that clung to his body. A suit that was mirrored by the one that Keith had on, even though they were different shades. They both spoke of money and success in a way that only custom suits could. I knew that for a fact after having seen all of Hayden’s tailored suits in his closet.
“Mia, this is my boyfriend, Locke,” Keith said, his smile full of so much love that it made me forget all about Derek’s slimy d
ad.
“Nice to meet you,” I smiled. Derek seemed to relax just a touch, and my stomach couldn’t help but do a little flip of relief.
“How do you know Mia?” Derek asked.
“We grew up in the same town,” Keith responded with a smile.
“You grew up in Tennessee?” Derek was surprised.
“Yep! Sure did. I think I was the one that kept Mia here supplied in ice cream after she’d had her surgery,” Keith said before regretting it just like anyone from our town ever did when they talked about Jake and that time. It was like they couldn’t help themselves, because they forgot he was gone and then hated themselves when they remembered it all over again.
“Keith was really more of Cam’s friend than mine,” I told Derek with a smile.
“That hurts.” Keith pretended to pout.
I laughed. “It’s true, though. Who ordered you to bring me my ice cream?”
Keith smiled knowingly. “Well… that would be Cam. But who can ever say no to that woman? How is she? How’s the baby?”
“They put her on bedrest,” I said.
Keith chuckled. “Oh my God. I feel sorry for Blake and everyone else that comes into her eyesight.”
“I know, right? Blake’s grandma tried to get her to start cross-stitching.”
Keith laughed so hard that he had to lean into his boyfriend. It was good to see him so happy.
“So you work for Dylan?” I asked.
Keith nodded, leaned in and whispered, “I’m only here tonight because Bianca wanted someone to make sure Dad got here safely. Sometimes it feels like I work for Bianca more than Dylan.”
Derek overheard and laughed the first real laugh since his dad had walked in, and that made me like Keith more than I ever had.
Bianca announced that dinner was ready, and we made our way into a huge dining room that looked like it should be in Buckingham Palace instead of a Hollywood mansion. We were spread out around the long table like polka dots on a dress.
I was near Keith, his boyfriend Locke, and Derek’s dad. Derek was down with Bianca, George, and Dylan. It seemed like it was a statement that Bianca had made on purpose, separating real family from the “others.”