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Again, he went quiet. As that silence stretched out, Marcella began to understand the problem. Propping herself on an elbow so she could really look at him, she said, “It’s not that you don’t know how to tell the story. You don’t know how to open up.”
He didn’t look away. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
All that bluster, the nasty comments, the don’t-give-a-shit attitude, hell, even the massive muscles—it wasn’t merely a decent man buried under a metric ton of asshole. It was a frightened, lonely little boy trying to stay safe. He’d built such a thick wall around himself that he’d never learned how to behuman.
Marcella kept that insight to herself. It broke her heart a little, and warmed it quite a bit, but she knew him well enough to be sure he’d take it badly to be compared to a frightened child. She didn’t want to fight with him now; instead, she wanted to let this burgeoning feeling, this new affection for him, sink its roots deep.
She leaned down and kissed him. Opening up could happen by degrees.Slowwas the way to move into and through this new thing they were trying. There was no great rush—after all, it had been eleven years since they’d made a baby together, and they were only now getting around to considering whether they might also make a family.
Right at this particular moment, she still had an hour or so before she had to get to Dash’s for a video production meeting, and she wanted to wrap herself around this man for a while longer.
He was on the same page at once, hooking a hand around the back of her head, sucking her tongue into his mouth, rolling over to lie on her.
They could do a lot in an hour. Maybe this was a way to get to know each other, too.
~oOo~
“Fuck, you guys,” Dash snapped, throwing his arms up, “Can we please stop fucking bickering and make a damn decision?”
Kenny shrugged. “Far as I’m concerned, the decision’s made. This script sucks. All the shit we agreed on is gone. I told y’all I wasn’t down with the video focusing on you and Marcella, and that’s what that bullshit is. This band has six fucking members. Be nice if you’d remember that.”
Dash rubbed his hands over his face. “The man who’s paying for the video wants it. Like I said, this revision based on Cyrus’s notes. He speaks for Wes in this.”
“Then tell Wes Brown to take his money and shove it up somebody else’s ass. Let’s just do a video like we always do, with us playing the song.”
Kenny had dug his heels in, which meant they’d get nowhere. Except they had to—they had studio space booked, and a camera crew, and all the rest of it.
Marcella tried to think of something to say that would smooth the waters, but in this disagreement, she knew Kenny wouldn’t hear her. If she said anything that wasn’t exactly in lock-step with him, he’d say she just wanted to be the star.
And truthfully, yeah. She liked being out front. There was enough of her childhood fancies left that the idea of hitting it big and becoming famous still held some appeal—though more in the abstract than the concrete. She had no intention of leaving Tulsa, her home—and, more importantly, her son’s home.
However, she didn’t like this script, either. Whether you read it as bleak or hopeful, ‘One Last Lonely Night,’ was a song about two people whohadn’tyet gotten together, and the script, and its accompanying storyboard, focused heavily on romance. Dash and Marcella would be half-dressed and making out like high school crushes if they went with this script.
She’d have been uncomfortable with that in any event, the lines between her and Dash were blurry enough, but now there was Eight to consider. It wouldn’t surprise her at all if he turned out to be jealous as hell, considering that this was his first attempt at a relationship in his whole life, and he was … fifty-something.
She should probably know exactly how old he was. And his birthday, and shit like that. Back in the day, when she’d checked his driver’s license to find out his real name, she’d looked at the birthdate, too, but that bit of information had faded out over the years.
This thing with Eight was so damn weird.
“It’d be better if we had actors playing the lovers,” Dawn said, and Marcella honed her attention on the issue at hand. “That’d be okay.”
Dash sighed. “Look, I agree. That’s what we wanted. But Wes wants Marcella and me. He says it’ll have a bigger impact if there’s a personal connection. He won’t cover the cost unless we do it his way.”
“So fuck him,” Kenny said. “Again I say, tell him to shove his money.”
“We can’t, Ken,” Joe replied. “We’re already in deeper than we can cover. Just paying for the script and storyboard would beyond tap us out, and we’ve got deposits down for the studio, and the equipment, all of it. We’re in over our heads already.”
“Well fuck,” was Wade’s most significant contribution to the conversation so far.
“Marcella?” Dash said, eyeing her sidelong. “You’ve been uncharacteristically quiet.”
That was true. Normally she had a lot to say, but today she felt awkward and unfocused. More than once during this conversation, she’d thought of that sack of money, which would easily fund the video they wanted to make. They could cut Wes Brown out of the equation entirely.
But that money was for Ajax’s schooling.
Then again, if Eight was so loaded he could drop that kind of cash in her lap unexpectedly, he could probably also afford to pay for their son’s educationin additionto back child support.
But what if they didn’t work out as a couple? What if Eight bailed again on Ajax?
