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One
There’s a full-colormural of Mick Lange on a building in downtown Jersey City. Stretching a couple of stories high. Him and his red and white Stratocaster in front of a splotchy microphone that needs repainting. Lily’s passed it enough times on the way to the PATH train that she’s memorized every brushstroke. The reality of him is somehow even bigger, taller, though her first view of the man himself is strangely bleached of color. He leans in the doorway of the rental cabin, half in shadow. Dark hair all tousled like he’s been running his fingers through it. Ripped jeans riding low. Faded gray work shirt pulled on quick and still unbuttoned.
“Yeah?” His gaze flickers from the top of her head to her feet, not unfriendly but not welcoming either. Assessing. Like being scanned at the airport, except by a pair of flinty blue eyes.
She’s used to that look, from all kinds of people. The suspicion in it. The caution. The automatic appraisal of how hot she might be. But it’s never really turned her on before. Not until now. As this man just stands there watching her. The longer he stares, the more the back of her neck prickles. The more wet she gets between the legs. What an inconvenient time to be horny. Or possibly the best time. She’ll probably—hopefully—find out soon enough.
“I’m Sheila Mistry’s daughter,” she says, holding her backpack in front of her knees so he can’t see them suddenly shaking.I’m Sheila’s daughter. Love me like you loved her. Love me so hard I’ll never forget you and compare everything else in my life to what we had.“Lily DeSilva.”
He doesn’t react to her name. Playing his cards close to his half-bared chest. And when he replies, it’s a miracle it’s more than one syllable. “You look just like her,” he says in that gravelly voice she’s never heard live until now.
She can’t tell if it’s a good thing or a condemnation—her looking like Sheila. Her mother has always inspired strong emotions in people—mostly negative—but Mick gives nothing away. Maybe he thinks she’s beautiful. Maybe he’s not moved by the resemblance at all. Or he barely remembers Sheila Mistry and is bullshitting her.
It’s a little infuriating, honestly. After everything she’s heard over the past twenty-eight years. After the boxes full of CDs and backstage passes and ticket stubs in the back of Sheila’s walk-in closet. The poison in the back of Sheila’s mind and heavy on her tongue. The canonization of this man above all else. The caustic sniping of “I wish you were his.”
Is that what Lily’s here for? To finally be his? She’s asked herself that ever since she hopped a short flight into the regional airport. And in the rideshare all the way here. Maybe she shouldn’t’ve let it drive away before she even made it up to the house. But the time for “maybe” is long gone. So she sets her jaw and stares right back at Mick Lange, complete with pervy once-over. “You look older than your press pictures,” she lies blatantly, because he looks like sex on a stick. “But I can see the appeal.”
A smile or something like it tugs at the corner of his mouth. He’s shifted enough that he’s standing wholly in the fading daylight.Great. Now he’s sex on a stick with a halo. Like a gorgeous archangel on a teen supernatural show. “Remind me to give my publicist a raise,” he says dryly.
“Your security, on the other hand...” She makes a show of looking around the carefully kept front lawn and the expansive porch lined with rocking chairs and a swing on shining chains. There’s not another soul in sight. They’re the only ones out here. That should be an alarm bell. And it does send a warning shiver up her spine. But another, stronger, shiver follows it. It’s finally happening. The thing she’s been imagining for years. Like pulling back the curtain and meeting the Wizard of Oz.I’m alone with him. Alone with Mick Lange.He has three platinum albums, four Grammys, and a spot in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And a permanent room in her mother’s head. She can’t forget that. She’s never allowed to.
“I’ll be sure to send them to bed without supper,” Mick quips. “It’s so hard to find good help these days.”
He’s funny. She didn’t expect that. Mostly because Sheila doesn’t have a sense of humor and can’t stand it when she sends memes and GIFs to the group chat with Dad. What could Sheila and Mick possibly have had in common all those years ago besides sex? Which Lily already knows entirely too much about. Apparently, the man in front of her pioneered the female orgasm. The fact that she knows this fromher mothershould be the grossest thing since Lifetime made all thoseFlowers in the Atticmovies. But when you’re raised in dysfunction, the bar for “icky” is really low. So, she’s still turned on. Still intrigued. She started this journey. She has to see it through.
If she sees him naked in the process, so be it. All the better, in fact.
###
He’s been out nearLake Placid for two months with no visitors except the housekeeper who comes in twice a week to clean and drop off supplies. Cases of Red Bull and Boost and fresh produce. It suits him just fine. Solitude. Silence. Songwriting. Portrait of a Dedicated Musician at Work. But then the doorbell rings late one afternoon, out of the blue and unexpected. And he answers it to find his past’s come knocking. Five-foot-five and furious.
Sheila Mistry’s little girl wants to fuck him. Probably she wants to ruin him. Take her pound of flesh however which way she can. Punish him for something he doesn’t even know he did. Or just for existing. He’s used to this. Husbands, brothers, sisters, mothers, tracking him down for a reckoning. But it hasn’t really happened since he stopped touring regularly. Since he’s stopped drinking and snorting coke and sticking his dick in anyone who asked for it. But they still find him every once and again. Like Mick Lange’s the horned and hooved leader of all their demons. This girl, with her big green eyes and her cut-off shorts and a chip on her shoulder, wants to exorcise him the only way she knows how. It’s there in the stubborn set of her jaw, in how she’s glaring and eating him up at the same time.
She really does look like Sheila. It’s been almost three decades, but Michael can see the resemblance. Wavy dark hair spilling to her waist. Long sun-kissed legs that her bulky bag can’t quite hide. Same lush mouth, same sharp nose. But even with just a few words spoken, he knows his ex and her daughter don’t sound alike. This pretty young woman in her college logo t-shirt has a voice like whiskey and smoke. Like a twenty-year bad habit. She’s no teenager, but she still sounds way older than she should.
“You wanna come in?” He steps back from the door he should’ve shut in her face five minutes ago and gestures her forward.
“Yes,” she says firmly, though her hesitation on the threshold speaks to the exact opposite. “Yes, I do.”
Again with the voice. She’s too young to hold that much cynicism and heartbreak. She needs to pour it into a mic, soak guitar strings. She should drown him in it. She probablywilldrown him in it. Lucky for her, it’s been a long time since he’s participated in his own ruination, and he’s about due for a fall.
