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He leaned forward and kissed her forehead. In return, she picked up a piece of pizza, turned it toward him, and let him take a bite.
“Fuck! Hot!” he cried, fanning his mouth, the roof of which would never be the same again. “Blow on that before you eat it.” Catching the time on the microwave, he said, “Well, if you don’t need me, I guess I’ll hit the road.”
“Tell everyone I said hi,” Becks said. Then she took a break from blowing on her pizza to add, somewhat grudgingly, “Even Mom.”
“You bet,” he told her, then, keeping his tone as breezy as a tumbleweed tumbling across the interstate, he swiped his keys off the counter, and added, “And send me Ashley’s pictures.”
“All of them?” Becks asked. “Or just the ones with your baker friend who’s a baker?”
“Any of the ones I’m in.” He winked at her. “I looked great in that suit.”
“You could at least tell me her name,” Becks called after him while he walked toward the door.
Turning back, thinking about his past and his future and wondering where he currently stood between them, he said, “Mira. Her name is Mira.”
CHAPTERSIXTEEN
COLE
Turninginto the Trax parking lot, he pulled up next to Nancy’s black Escalade, took in the fuzzy red dice hanging from her rearview, and blew out a breath. He loved this studio. That’s why he’d bought it over twenty years ago. Sure, there were nicer, newer, fancier studios in Seattle he could have invested in, but Trax belonged to them—the old guard, the eighties and nineties punk and rock bands. It was where all three Makers’ albums were recorded. It was where he and Madigan carved their names into the bathroom wall when they were nineteen. It was where Becks grew up, learning to walk by cruising around the same big table where she did her homework when she got older. It was home. But it was Nancy’s home too, and despite all they’d been through, he’d never been able to bring himself to ask her to go somewhere else.
While seeing her ridiculous hotel on wheels in the lot annoyed him, it also made him wish. He wished Nancy’s Escalade was Mira’s Element. He wished the danish he’d picked up on the way to the studio was one of Mira’s tarts. He wished the busy interstates he drove on were quiet streets with quaint little shops and only two stoplights.
And this behavior wasn’t new. Every night since he’d gotten home, he closed the door to his bedroom, flopped onto his bed, andwished. He wished he could text her. He wished he could follow her on Instagram. He wished he could have sent the “cute as hell” comment he’d drafted under her kitten cookies post this morning instead of deleting it. He wished he could talk to her, let her know he was thinking about her, hear her laugh, ask her more questions, be back in her world.
But he couldn’t.
She hadn’t reached out to him. She hadn’t texted or liked his posts or followed him. And for some reason, he was convinced he needed to let her make the first move in reconnecting. She was busy. He wasn’t. She had an entire bakery to run, a mom to look after, a son to raise. He had a temporary stint as a live-in grandpa, a studio that pretty much ran on its own at this point, and occasional drumming gigs. He also had a tendency to chase after things, after people, who only kept running. Even though he’d promised himself he’d stop, while he took the steps to the studio, he wished it was Mira’s door he was about to open, Mira’s face he’d see when he stepped inside.
“Did you bring one for me?” came the sultry, raspy voiceRolling Stonehad once called “A whisper wrapped in barbed wire.”
“Nancy,” Cole said by way of hello.
Rolling her coal-lined eyes, she said, “When you pretend to be grumpy, it just makes me more obnoxious. You should know that by now.” She wore tight black jeans, a sleeveless silver sequined top that glittered when she jumped down from the counter she’d been sitting on, and a cropped fur coat that hung off her shoulders. He thought it might be real. “What’s in the bag?”
Not hungry anymore, he gave her his danish. It wasn’t what he’d wanted anyway. What he’d wanted was buttery, flaky, and a day’s drive away.
“Thank fuck,” Nancy said, spinning away from him to knock on the window of the mixing booth where Benji—the lead singer of Stone’s Throw who’d fronted the Makers during their last tour, and the co-owner of Trax after he’d worn Cole down to sell him a percentage—sat, pretending not to notice her. “Because Benji,” she shouted through the glass, “that cheap-ass motherfucker, never gets the vending machines refilled!”
Glancing up from his board, Benji ducked his chin toward Cole, then raised a lazy middle finger at Nancy. Watching Benji chuckle behind the glass, listening to Nancy’s chainsaw-after-a-pack-of-Marlboro-Reds cackle, Cole tried to laugh too, only achieving a limp huff through his nose.
Nancy scowled at him, unimpressed. “Come on, Cole.” She fluffed out the shoulder-length hair she’d recently dyed from platinum blond to bright red. “We’re just having fun. Remember fun? It’s that thing when you don’t take everything so seriously all the time?”
It used to thrill him, how Nancy was always turned up to eleven, always explosively alive in a way most people never were, always moving, creating, chasing after the next song or album or tour, giving him no choice but to chase after her. Now it wore him out. He didn’t want explosions. He didn’t want the chase. All he wanted at this point in his life was some peace and quiet. All he wanted was to be somewhere else, to bedoingsomething else, only he had no idea what that something else was. Maybe it was to hop in his car and drive east, not stopping until he took the only exit into Red Falls.
Nancy’s scowl softened a fraction. “Jesus, you look like I just shot your puppy. I was only giving you shit, Cole.”
Signing deeply, he said, “I know, Nancy. I know.”
* * *
Pushingthrough the door after he’d spent the day booking recordings for next month, then cold-calling the lead singer of an up-and-coming punk band called the Sympathy Gags he was trying to convince to use Trax for their new album, Cole stood back as an enormous cloud of smoke rose into the sky.
Nancy sat sideways on the steps, taking up as much space as possible as she peered up at him through narrowed eyes. After taking another pull from her vape pen, she exhaled, scowling at the gray plastic device. “I fucking miss smoking. Know what I mean?”
“Yep.” He’d quit when he’d turned thirty-five, but if someone invented a healthy cigarette tomorrow, he’d start back up in a heartbeat. “You’re vaping now?”
“The guy I’m dating doesn’t like cigarettes. I’m trying to”—she made a face—“compromise.”
