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“And I want things to work between us,” Danny said. “When are you and the boys coming home?” He fought to keep all his tangled emotions from coming out in his voice.
“Saturday. The boys have made friends here, and there’s a big neighborhood beach party on Friday.”
“I understand. I don’t want to disappoint them.”
“I’ll have them call you tonight after supper,” Heather said. “Maybe we can talk a little more then.”
They said their goodbyes, and the line went silent. Danny put the phone down. He wondered why he didn’t feel happier.
The days dragged for the next week. Danny was little more than a robot at work, and when he wasn’t there, he was holed up at his house nursing his broken heart over Lauren and agonizing over how to fix things with Heather. He did his best to scrub the house so that it wasn’t a complete disaster, and when he was done, he assessed his work and deemed it passable. But it certainly wasn’t the way Heather would have done it.
The headache he’d been enduring felt like someone was beating the inside of his skull with a hammer. He cupped some water in his hand and used it to wash down a couple of ibuprofen tablets. He’d slept poorly all week, his restless mind racing as he thought about how he’d left things with Lauren the week before. Remembering the look on her face when he left. He wondered if she hated him. He hated himself, that was for sure.
On Saturday, Heather and the boys arrived around noon. Danny helped get the bags out of the car, and they all shared lunch. The boys filled the house with happy, almost ceaseless chatter, which brought Danny an inordinate amount of joy. And, for a time, it kept the awkwardness at bay. In the afternoon, they went outside to see their friends from down the street, excited to tell them about their summer at the beach.
Heather glanced at him as she closed the laundry room door. Danny had caught her surreptitiously watching him a few times. He knew he looked like crap—his warring emotions were taking their toll.
When she came into the kitchen, Danny said, “Heather. This whole summer… I just… we just…” He ran a hand through his hair, frustrated by his inability to articulate what he was thinking.
“We stopped trying,” she said. “We both did, long before this summer. When there was too much going on, it was too easy to sacrifice each other. I’m glad you want to try, Danny.” Shaking, she put her arms around him.
He realized she was trying not to cry, and he felt his own emotions well up in his throat. After a deep breath, he collected himself and they stepped back, both retreating to a safe distance from each other.
“What do we do now?” he asked.
“I want us to see a marriage counselor,” she said. “And I want us to talk with Father Rob.”
Inside, Danny recoiled. He wasn’t crazy about the idea of talking to Father Rob about all of this; he’d gone to confession at St. Sylvester’s expressly because he didn’t want to do it with Father Rob. And he especially didn’t want to be confessing his mistakes to some shrink. But he’d told himself that he would do whatever Heather wanted to try repairing their marriage.
She was watching him. Waiting for his answer. And she knew how he felt about therapists.
“Okay,” he said, trying to keep the reluctance out of his voice. “We’ll try it.”
“Thank you, Danny.” Heather smiled, and it was the first genuine smile she’d offered him in a long time.
ChapterForty
The “Chopsticks” moment with DJ was the last happy thing that happened to Lauren—or The Kingmakers—for the next three weeks. As August drifted into September, and September’s days began to slip away, Lauren continued her slow spiral downward, dragging the band in her wake. Work on the new album had been difficult before her affair with Danny crashed and burned. Now it was close to disastrous.
Lauren’s frustration and anxiety grew, as did her depression. The band was churning over songs for the album, and she blamed herself. They disagreed about the musicality, the tempo, and the thousand other details that went into a song. And Lauren knew her inability to string together a set of lyrics worth a damn was just gas on the fire. She’d brought several half-finished songs to the studio and didn’t like any of them, but with her inability to break free of the darkness consuming her, she just kept trying to fix the unfixable.
Feedback from the band wasn’t helping. They couldn’t seem to reconcile her lyrics with music and vice versa. Fitz was doing his best to coach her and steer the band through this conflagration. Lauren could tell he was growing more frustrated by the day—and they were all keenly aware of looming production deadlines. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to scream or cry… or just stop caring.
“That’s not the right tempo for this,” DJ said to no one in particular.
Stevie shot him a look. “It’s what’s working for me. Don’t like it, come over here and bloody well play it yourself.”
“Dude!” Even Augie’s tone was terse. “Not helpful.”
“Neither is the drumbeat. We’re all over the place; this is noise not music,” DJ said.
“Asshole,” Augie shot back.
“Are you hearing anything,chica? Might be nice to at least know what kind of song you’re tinkering with.” Ox made no effort to hide his frustration. Then, under his breath, he said, “Prince writes a song a day.”
“Back the fuck off.” Lauren threw her pen across the room. Where were her lyrics? She was utterly dry, out of ideas. The pain of her breakup and fear of a failed album consumed her. That awful voice in her mind that fed her despair and self-loathing was cranking up the volume.I can help you,it whispered. And every time it did, Lauren disintegrated a little more, like bits of sand disappearing in an hourglass.
“We’ve been backing off.” Ox thumped down in a chair. “That’s our whole problem. Our production schedule’s spinning outta control. We’re getting nothing done. Anyone remember what changed about a month ago?”
