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Her cousin arched an eyebrow. “Seriously, Lauren? Those clothes are nasty and you’re pretty rank—have you showered since last week?”
“Excuse me?”
As he opened the patio slider, DJ said, “He’s saying you smell.”
“I do not!”
“Trust me—you do,” Augie told her. “And if you don’t smell like soap and shampoo when you come out, I’ll drag you back in there and scrub you myself.”
“The hell you will.” For a split second, Lauren protested but then relented and let Augie steer her towards the bathroom. At the doorway, Lauren planted her feet again and started to argue, her innate dislike of being told what to do bursting out. But Augie just pointed at the bathroom. She relented, too tired to quarrel.
Shutting the door behind her, she pulled her hair out of the messy knot at the back of her head. It hung down, lank, tangled, and dull. She peeled off the yoga pants and kicked them away. Yanking the tank top over her head, she held it for a moment and inspected it. It really was disgusting, discolored with sweat stains and some other blemishes she couldn’t identify. She gave it a sniff and recoiled. The shirt found a new home in the waste basket.
Lauren cranked up the hot water and climbed into the shower, and stood—rigid—under the spray, trying to keep everything inside. Then all at once, her shoulders dropped, and more tears came. She didn’t try to stop it this time or control it. She nearly fell to her knees as she cried. She wept for her own broken heart. And for Danny’s broken heart. For what they’d had in the past, and for what could never be. As she cried, the tears dulled the razor-edged, shattered pieces inside her and washed away the debris she’d been drowning in.
When the worst of the tears abated, Lauren washed and rinsed her hair twice before working a dab of conditioner through it. She thought about the four men out in her apartment… Her four brothers-in-arms—her second family. They’d come looking for her because they were worried. Because they cared.
They didn’t give up, even when I almost gave up on myself, she thought.They’ve been there for me no matter what, for twenty years now. How could I ever think I have nothing when I have the four of them?
ChapterForty-Four
The band spent the next two days camped out at Lauren’s. They organized her notes and sifted through the ideas, prioritizing the ones they all liked best, and toyed with arrangements. Standing in the kitchen, a warm cup of tea in her hands, Lauren watched them work. Ox and Augie were tinkering on the percussion for one idea while DJ listened with his eyes closed. Stevie waited, keeping time with his foot, and then started picking out a few chords on the guitar.
She smiled. The past few days had been brighter. Getting out of bed was easier. She was still mourning her break-up with Danny, but the despair that had clung so tightly was now gray, not an inky abyss. She’d spent a week scraping along rock bottom, and she was so grateful that the words had finally rushed out—and the band hadn’t abandoned her. She was bruised. Battered. But she’d survive.
Lady Gaga’s “meat dress” graced the front of the newspaper that half-covered Augie’s vibrating cell. He pushed the paper aside and tapped the green answer button. “Hey, Fitz. No, I wasn’t kidding. Ditch all the other stuff. Yes,allof it. We get serious when we come in tomorrow.” He put a finger in his ear to block out the background noise. “No, I’m not fucking around with you.”
He looked up with his big, dimpled smile. “According to Fitz, we’re ‘going to give him a bloody fekking heart attack’ and ‘if we don’t bloody buckle down tomorrow’ he’s going to ‘feed us to the fekking crows.’” Augie’s imitation was dead on, and they all laughed.
They didn’t let him down. Lauren got to the studio before anyone and was working on a song when Fitz arrived. She acknowledged him with a nod, and he sat down in the control room and listened. The longer he listened, the bigger his smile got. Lauren’s voice was soft and the notes were a little hurried, but there was heart in her song. And that was how the great ones started.
For the next two weeks straight, The Kingmakers put in a series of eighteen-hour days. By the end, they were exhausted, but they’d brought four of the ideas from scribbles on paper to nearly finished tracks, and another ten were well on their way. The excitement and enthusiasm the band felt was contagious. They started talking about tour ideas and concepts for some of the videos that would be produced with the singles. And the idea of turning the project into a double-CD was floated more than once. They still had disagreements, and there were a few temperamental moments, but they were easily resolved.
“Easily resolved” wasn’t a term that applied to Danny and Heather’s counseling. While they’d made progress, they were still running into surprises and roadblocks that made Danny feel like he didn’t know what the rules were. The therapist assured him that the pendulum between progress and setbacks wasn’t uncommon.
Their most recent session was unequivocally a setback. On the drive to the doctor’s office, a Kingmakers song came on the radio. When Danny didn’t instantly change the station, Heather unloaded on him. They continued the fight from the car, through the parking lot, into the doctor’s waiting room, and into the office itself.
“Why did the song make you so angry?” the doctor asked. The doctor’s voice was devoid of emotion, and it pissed Danny off.
“I don’t want to hear her music. He shouldn’t want to hear her music.” Heather’s shoulders were rigid, her arms strapped across her chest. “How can she be out of our lives when she’severywhere?”
“What do you think of this, Danny?” The doctor’s bland monotone was a pebble in Danny’s shoe.
“I don’t think you get to dictate what I want.” Danny didn’t look at Heather even though his answer was directed at her. “It’s a song. Maybe it has something to do with me, maybe it doesn’t. I’m not going to go around blasting The Kingmakers’ music at the house. But you can’t blame me every time a radio station plays one of their songs. It isn’t like I asked them to.”
He worked his jaw. There was something he wanted to tell Heather. He wasn’t sure if it was a good idea now, based on this whole discussion. But avoiding it wasn’t going to make it easier or better.
“There is something I wanted to mention to you, Heather. May as well do it now.”
“What?”
Danny watched the color drain from his wife’s face. She set her jaw, undoubtedly expecting a devastating revelation.
“Idothink about Lauren and her music,” he said. “After we broke up in high school, I didn’t know how to deal with it. I’d never had a broken heart before. I buried everything as deep as I could and ignored it. Hoped it would go away. And I tried to ignore her music, thinking all I was going to hear was how much she hated me.”
He sighed and looked at his wife, who was at the far opposite side of the sofa. The chasm between them looked infinite.
“Clearly she got over it.” Heather’s voice was sour.
