Behind the Strings (14 page)

3
5

I woke up the next morning with only pieces of my costume strewn on the floor alongside my bed. I could feel Jesse’s chest pressed firmly against me and his arms held tightly around my bare chest. This time we hadn’t even made it to the bedroom before I had tugged at his belt and my jeans were on the floor. We started on the island in my kitchen before moving over to the arm of the couch. We finished in the bedroom before we both fell blissfully asleep, stuck to each other like glue.

Thankfully I wasn’t a late sleeper, because I woke up just in time for Jesse to remember he had a gig later that afternoon. He rolled me over to face him and kissed every other part of me before he came to my lips. He lingered there, savoring the moment before slowly pulling away.

“You’re a bad influence, you know that?” he said as he threw the covers off of him and swung his feet to the floor.

“Me?” I said with a laugh. “Why?”

“Because you make me want to forget all of my adult responsibilities every time I’m with you.”

I watched him as he left and then returned to the bedroom with his shirt in hand. I watched him pull it down over his head, sliding it past every ripple of his abs. I reached out my hands to him once his pants were fully zipped and he laid himself on top of me.

After another minute, or two, or maybe three of my lips playing with his, he had to go. He wouldn’t let me walk him out. He said I was too cute lying there naked for him to disturb me. Instead, I watched the curly black flyways on the back of his head disappear through the doorway. When I heard the front door click, I pulled the covers back over my head and closed my eyes.

It couldn’t have even been five minutes later when a knock at the door forced them back open again. I hopped out of bed excitedly and covered myself in a black silk robe before prancing down the hallway. I wasn’t sure what he forgot, but I would use whatever it was as an excuse to kiss him one more time. I swung the door open and felt the smile on my face fade quickly when I realized it wasn’t Jesse in front of me.

“Logan.” I jumped back in surprise, pulling closed the top of the robe.

“Expecting someone else?” he asked curiously.

“Oh no, I’m just surprised that you’re up and functioning, that’s all.”

“Ha, me too, actually, but my manager called bright and early so I didn’t really have a choice. I wanted to stop by and say hi before I headed out. We’re leaving earlier than planned.”

“Like, today?” I asked.

“Like, in an hour.”

“Story of your life, huh? In one day, out the next.”

We both stood on opposite sides on the door for a little more conversation before Logan finally asked if he could come in. I was so caught off-guard by his presence that I hadn’t even bothered to offer.

“Yes, of course,” I said, moving aside. “Are you hungry?”

“Starving, actually, but I’m kind of in the mood for something that doesn’t take 30 seconds in the toaster to be ready.”

“You definitely came to the wrong place, then,” I laughed.

“Ha! That is true. How fast can you get ready?”

I turned to look at my reflection. My hair was all sorts of crazy and I could see yesterday’s eyeliner underneath my eyes.

“I guess that depends on how embarrassed you are to be seen with me like this,” I laughed.

“I will never be embarrassed to be seen with you.”

“Okay then, give me five minutes.”

I darted off to the bedroom, pulled a comb through my hair and threw it up in a ponytail. I replaced last night’s eyeliner with a fresh coat and daubed a bit of mascara on my lashes before I pulled on a floral print jumper and slid into some sandals.

“Okay,” I said, returning to Logan. “Now if I could just remember where I put my purse.”

I followed Logan’s finger as he pointed by the front door. There it was, on the floor by my shoes. My lipstick had rolled out of it along with my keys and a few other things.

“In a hurry to get to bed last night?”

I let out a nervous laugh as I bent down and tossed everything inside the purse. Vaguely I remembered coming into the house last night and tumbling as I tried to slip off my shoes with occupied hands. My purse had slipped off my shoulder as I caught my balance with the wall. Yup, I was in a hurry last night, but bed was the last thing on my mind.

36

I was not at all prepared for why Logan had brought me out to breakfast that morning. He barely looked at me once we sat down and spent most of the meal with his mouth full. I was so uncomfortable with the whole thing that I barely took two bites of my own. I knew he was in a hurry, but something told me that’s not what all of this was about. It wasn’t until we were back outside of the restaurant that we exchanged our first set of real words since my house.

“Logan, are you alright?” I asked.

He said nothing. I could tell he hadn’t heard me so I called out his name again, a little louder. This time he snapped out of the trance he was in and stopped walking towards the car. He took both of my hands in his and actually looked up at me, but still said nothing.

“You’re scaring me,” I said.

“Can we sit down for a minute?” he asked.

With my hands still in his he took me over to sit on a stone wall. Bits of water splashed us from the fountain we sat beside as I waited for him to say something. Anything at this point would have been fine. At least, that’s what I thought before he actually did.

“Celia, about last night,” he paused, “that whole marriage talk…”

“Oh please, you don’t need to apologize. You were drunk.”

“No, see, that’s the thing. I know I was drunk, but…”
Stop. Please stop. Don’t say it
. Any of those would’ve been the vocabulary I wanted to use right then, but they wouldn’t come out. “These past few months, all those feelings I had that night I left Hamden, they all came flooding back. Or maybe it’s that they never left. I look at you and I see my everything. I see the girl I want to wake up next to every morning, the girl I want to hold in my arms as she falls asleep at night. You’ve always been my safe place, my escape when life gets crazy. You’re my calm through every storm. You are the love of my life. And I know you’re scared, but you don’t have to be, not with me. When you’re lonely and when you’re sad and when you’re afraid because you don’t know what comes next, I will be there to love you through it. So, I guess today, I’m asking you to let me.”

I think my heart stopped beating for a split second after he was done. I sat there, as still as I could, gasping for air with long and slow breaths. I looked up at his hopeful eyes, full of real, true, genuine love and I wanted to die. I stared hard into them, wanting so badly in that moment for a part of me to feel the same. I thought maybe if I sat there long enough it would come to me, a sensation of everything he was feeling would flow through me and I too could tell him that he was the love of my life, but that feeling never came. As much as I loved Logan…I was not
in love
with him.

“Logan, I…”

“I know, it’s a lot to take in,” he interrupted.

“Logan, I need to tell you something.”

I had every intention right then to tell him about Jesse, but I couldn’t go through with it and snapped my mouth shut dumbly. I couldn’t do it. Not just for me, but for Logan and Jesse, too. Neither of them were ready for that. And at the moment Logan was most vulnerable? It wouldn’t be fair.

“I need some time.” I said cowardly. “I have a lot going on right now and I need time to think about a lot of things.”

“I understand,” he said, “take all the time you need.”

He leaned in and kissed my forehead. Then we stood and hugged before we went our separate ways. Logan off to the first stretch of a long couple of weeks, and me to the only person I knew could help me through this tangled web I had gotten myself stuck in.

37

“He said
what
?!” Jaycie said.

She must’ve jumped at least a foot when I told her about Logan’s confession. Even though I knew I didn’t need to repeat it, I did. The more I talked about it, the more it sunk in how utterly screwed up this whole situation was.

“So let’s put aside the fact that I was right,” Jaycie said.

“Oh shut up! This is not the time to gloat.”

“I know. Let’s put that aside, I said, and put this all into perspective.”

“Into perspective” basically meant three different scenarios that we could work out:

Scenario #1:
I tell Jesse that Logan is in love with me and he breaks things off because he doesn’t want to hurt one of his closest friends.

Scenario #2:
I keep Logan’s feelings from Jesse and if he finds out I knew, he’ll probably break things off because I lied.

Scenario: #3:
I wait for Logan to return and tell him about Jesse and me; if we still exist, he gets pissed and Jesse again breaks things off because he doesn’t want to hurt one of his closest friends.

“Think of it this way,” Jaycie said, “if you wait for Logan to return, you at least get a little more time with Jesse. Then, if it doesn’t work out, you end things and no one gets hurt.”

“And if it does work out?”

“At least you get two extra weeks with him before all hell breaks loose?”

My face fell into my hands. I didn’t know what the right thing was, but I did know that I didn’t want anyone to get hurt. I loved Logan as much as you could love someone without being in love with them. I didn’t love him the way he loved me, and maybe that made me a terrible person. After all he was to me, all he had been, and I was keeping this huge secret from him. One that I knew would hurt him. I knew it was wrong. I knew what I was doing with Jesse was wrong, but the way I felt, the way we were together, I couldn’t help it.

“I’ll tell you what,” Jaycie said, “I have to go to the Opry tonight to write about a few up-and-comers making their debut. Come with me. We will make a day of it and forget about all of this and figure out how to deal with it tomorrow.”

I knew forgetting wasn’t going to happen, but I decided to oblige anyway. No one can object to full day of pampering or a night at the Opry. We started with manis and pedis before pretending to be Julia Roberts in “Pretty Woman” at a few lush boutiques. Ninety percent of what we tried on we would have needed Richard Gere to pay for, but since he was nowhere to be found, we settled for a little less upscale wardrobe that was still exquisite in our books.

Our hair and makeup appointments ended with just enough time to head back to Jaycie’s to slip into our dresses before our chauffeur pulled into the driveway. We rode in the back of a sedan driven by Jaycie’s driver, Victor. He was a gray-haired man who spent most of the time talking to us about his coin collection. Every now and then we’d tune him out in the politest way possible to engage in our own conversation.

“So how much did you pay for Victor?” I asked.

“Uh, I didn’t pay anything, Frankie did.”

“Wait, what? Frankie got you a driver?”

“Well she doesn’t know it yet, but yup, she did.”

“Oh lord, Jaycie.”

Not that I thought Frankie would have a conniption, but Jaycie was totally one of those people with the “it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission” mindset. She had gotten pretty good at it over the years. First class flights, rounds of cocktails for “clients,” and even the espresso machine in the break room. I was secretly jealous she was so bold, but on nights like tonight at least I got to reap the benefits.

All access passes awaited our entry and I followed Jaycie backstage to see her in action. To my surprise, once we pushed our way through the sea of staff, I found Jesse, dressed in a dark gray shirt with the top button undone, sitting on an amp, tuning a guitar. I watched him for a minute, maybe two. It was in that silence I realized the two very different parts Logan and Jesse played in my life. That sense of calmness in the middle of a storm, my anchor when the tide was rough…for the little girl whose father left her all alone, Logan was both of those things. But that little girl grew up, and for the woman I was right here, right now, I found a new calmness and a new anchor in Jesse. And more, something I’d never found in anyone before then. I waited until he set the guitar down before walking over.

“Hey, you,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

“My god.” He jumped up and I watched his eyes linger over me from head to toe. “You…you look stunning. Is it wrong that the only thing I want to do right now is take that dress off of you?”

“Jesse,” I whispered, blushing.

“I know, sorry.” He changed the subject back to my original question. “I’m playing back-up tonight. One of my friend’s guitar players got sick last-minute, so I’m filling in.”

“I see. I’m just someone’s plus one, not actually invited.”

“Plus one?”

I turned and pointed to Jaycie. His shoulders settled at the sight of her and he threw his guitar pick at me before standing up and quickly kissing the tip of my nose before he was called over to the stage entrance.

Jaycie and I found our seats before the show began and I spent the rest of the night doing exactly what Jaycie had set out for me to do in the first place. The worry of what would happen when Logan found out about Jesse and Jesse found out about Logan’s confession…none of it surfaced. All I did was stare at Jesse and think about how handsome he was up on that stage and how happy he made me. The last thing on my mind was the possibility that this feeling was only temporary. That there would be a day I would wake up and it would all be gone.