Days Like This (17 page)

In spite of his fashion sense, or
lack thereof, he’d been smart.  Scary smart.  When they first started working
together, she hadn’t even known how to read music.  She’d been pulling the
notes out of her head with the help of a pitch-perfect ear, her mother’s
antique concert Steinway, and a portable cassette recorder.  He’d been the one
to teach her.  Pretty much everything she knew about music, Rob MacKenzie had
taught her, so long ago that the two of them had been little more than the
amorphous, embryonic beginnings of the people they would eventually become. 

He’d been a scrawny
twenty-year-old guitar wizard, still living at home in Southie with his
parents, and fresh from a two-year stint at Boston’s Berklee College of Music. 
She’d been an eighteen-year-old bride, radiant after her elopement with a
sinfully handsome blue-eyed singer with huge ambitions and a powerful, soaring
tenor that sent chills racing up and down her spine.  She and Rob had been
drawn to each other, two creative souls who somehow instinctively understood
that whatever they created as partners would be exponentially greater than the
sum total of its individual parts.

Seventeen years later, he was still
teaching her.  Except that the things he taught her now were more likely to be
X-rated.

She knew women were supposed to
reach their sexual peak in their mid-thirties.  But she’d never expected this
kind of raging inferno.  Was it her age, or was it the man himself?  Generic,
thirty-something female hormones, or Casey-and-Rob-specific pheromones?  There
was no way to determine, with any degree of certainty, the answer to that
question.  All she knew for sure was that sometimes she wanted to inhale him. 
Wanted to swallow him alive.  Wanted to meld with him in a frantic, violent
coupling, wanted to wrap herself around him and rock him hard and fast until
they both forgot their own names. 

She’d always liked sex.  What was
there not to like?  But in spite of the thirteen years she’d spent as Danny’s
wife, she’d been woefully naïve about a lot of things.  Rob MacKenzie had taken
her to places she’d never even imagined.  Despite the fact that her first
husband had been an international sex symbol, Danny had been surprisingly
Puritanical and vanilla in his approach to sex, and she’d been too innocent to
know the difference.

There was nothing vanilla about
Rob MacKenzie, in or out of bed.  There wasn’t a shy bone in his body, and he
possessed a “damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!” attitude towards life that
sometimes left her breathless and scrambling to keep up.  An inventive lover,
he enjoyed experimenting, and was willing to try anything at least once.  For
her part, she was an enthusiastic participant in his experiments, even the ones
that left them rolling in hysterical laughter.  He liked to talk during sex.  Sometimes,
he whispered sweet nothings so touching she melted.  Other times, his language was
crude enough to be shocking.  Embarrassing.

And extremely titillating, a heated
turn-on for a woman who’d been raised to wear her skirts at a respectable
length and her shirts buttoned all the way to the collar, a woman who’d barely
uttered any word stronger than “hell” or “damn” until she was past thirty. 

Sometimes, even after a year of
marriage, the transition from friends to lovers still felt awkward.  Sometimes,
she was overwhelmed by the complexity of her emotions.  Her feelings for him had
seemed clear-cut before, but now those clear waters were muddied.  Who was this
gorgeous, sexually-charged man who could turn her limp and pliable and ready to
rumble with nothing more than a heated glance across a crowded room?  What had
he done with the sweet, funny, kindhearted guy she’d married, the man who was
her best friend, her mentor, her keeper of secrets?  What had happened to the
demure and idealistic young woman she’d once been?  Surely, she could find that
woman again, if only she could figure out how to meld, in her own mind, the
best friend and the steamy lover into the same man.

“You okay?”

She raised her head to look at
him.  Swept her damp hair back from her face and said, “I’m fine.”

“Then why am I suddenly getting all
these weird vibes?”

“They’re all in your head.  There
are no weird vibes.”

“You can’t say that.  They’re my
vibes.  You can’t take ‘em away from me.  What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong.  I’m just
thinking, that’s all.”

“About?”

She closed her eyes, burrowed
back against his shoulder, and ran a finger down the center of his chest.  Smiled
when she felt goose bumps rise on his skin.  “If you must know, I was thinking
about evolution.”

“Evolution,” he said.  “Of
course.  That’s what I always think about after sex.”

“Oh, stop.  Not that kind of
evolution.”

“No slimy amphibious creatures
climbing up out of the primordial goop and exchanging gills and fins for lungs
and legs?  Good to know.”

“Our evolution.  Yours and mine. 
The evolution of our relationship.”

“So why the weird vibes?”

“It’s just—”  She rolled onto her
stomach and rested her chin on her folded arms.  “Sometimes, I still have
trouble with the transition.  Sometimes, I’m not sure who I am any longer.  Or
who you are.  There’s this one guy I’ve loved since the beginning of time, and
he’s my sweet and wonderful best friend.  And then there’s this hot, sexy guy who
turns me inside out every time he touches me.  It’s all so complicated, and
tangled, and the threads run every which way, and I’m having trouble seeing the
two of you as the same guy.  Sometimes it feels as though I’ve traded in my
best friend for that hot, sexy guy, and I’m struggling because I’m not quite
sure how to deal with it.”

Those green eyes softened, and he
slid down in the bed until they were nose to nose. “I haven’t gone anywhere,”
he said.  “I’m still here.”

“Yes, but now you’re naked.”

He flashed her one of those
grins, the kind that always melted her, clear to the marrow.  “You say that
like it’s a bad thing.”

“Trust me.  You, naked, is a
spectacularly good thing.”

“So this whole lust scenario isn’t
one-sided?”

She raised an eyebrow.  “You
actually have to ask that question?”

“I was just testing you.”  He circled
a hand around her ankle and pressed a soft kiss to the calf of her leg.  “Do
you ever stop to think about it?  What you and I accomplished?  All those years
of working together.  All those songs we wrote.  Pieces of you, pieces of me.
When we put those pieces together, like a jigsaw puzzle, magic happened.”

“I think about it a lot.  When I
held that first 45 record in my hands, everything changed for me.  It all
became real.  It was a killer song, and we only got better as the years went
on.”

“
Heart of Darkness
.  That
little gem made us big fish in a small pond.”

“It did.  Sometimes I still think
about the two of us, going out to hawk that record to the local radio
stations.  Me in my mother’s pearls, a thrift shop business suit, and your
sister’s shoes.  You came to my door looking like a rag picker, in a decrepit
old Army jacket and the most hideous paisley print shirt I’d ever seen.  I had
to raid Danny’s closet to make you semi-presentable.”

“And then you turned around and
covered your eyes while I changed into your husband’s clothes.”

“It wouldn’t have been appropriate
for me to watch.”

“And you tied Danny’s necktie for
me, and you told me I should wear green more often, because—”

“—it brought out the color in
those nice green eyes of yours.  I meant every word of it.  You were so damn
cute.”

“Me?” he said, taken aback.  “Cute?”

“Absolutely adorable, with those gorgeous
green eyes and that killer smile.  Not to mention that sweet little ass.”

He raised both eyebrows.  “You
were checking out my ass?”

“Certainly not.  I was a happily married
lady.  I simply noticed it, in a strictly non-sexual, extremely scientific
way.  You wore your pants very tight back in the day.  It was impossible not
to…appreciate…what they were displaying.”

“Hot damn, Fiore.”  He grinned
from ear to ear.  “You were totally checking out my ass.”

She rolled her eyes.  “Sometimes,
MacKenzie, you’re such a guy.”

“My poor, battered ego thanks
you.”

“You can cut the blarney.  There’s
not a thing wrong with your ego.”  She softened.  “I just loved you to pieces
back then, you know.”

“Did you?”

“Part of it, I think, is that I
was so in awe of your talent.  I still am.  You have whole symphonies living
inside your head, and you pull them out so effortlessly to share with the world. 
And part of it is that you always took care of me.  You kept us from starving to
death when Danny was too wrapped up in his music to even notice the
refrigerator was empty.”

“I couldn’t let you starve.”

“No.  You being you, that’s not
something you could ever do.  And I have so much respect for the person you
are.  But that’s still not all of it.  I think the biggest reason I was so
crazy about you was because you
got
me.  You really, truly got me, in a
way nobody else on this planet has ever done before or since.  You got me, and
you accepted me for who I was.  And that, my friend, is a priceless commodity.”

“That day we went out hawking
Heart
of Darkness
, I thought you were so ballsy.  Quiet, demure little you, bluffing
your way in to see all those deejays, just so you could get them to listen to
our record.  Gave me a whole new perspective of who you were.”  He ran the tip
of his finger along the inside of her thigh.  “Gutsy broad.”

“You were right there with me,
hotshot, brilliantly playing off whatever outrageous thing I said.  We had a
regular good cop/bad cop routine going.  And it worked, didn’t it?”

“For the most part.  We only got
tossed out on our asses a couple of times.”

“It got us the airplay we
needed.  That was all that mattered.”

“You impressed the crap out of
me.  You were scared shitless that day, but you forged ahead anyway.”

“I was terrified.  But how did
you know?”

“Geez, Fiore, I don’t know.  Maybe
the fact that you spent half the day in various bathrooms, tossing your cookies? 
It was either a really bad case of the flu, or abject terror, brought on by
your own audacity.”

“You don’t miss much, do you?”

“I’m a wizard.  We know all and
see all.”  He pressed a kiss to the crook of her elbow.  “You do realize I had
a wicked crush on you back then?”

She raised an eyebrow.  “This I
did not know.  Maybe because you never told me.”

“I couldn’t very well tell you. 
You were Danny’s wife, and totally off-limits.  I had to settle for what I
could get.” He rested his head against her knee, his cheek warm against her skin. 
“When he wasn’t around, you were mine.  In a strictly non-sexual, extremely
scientific way.  The minute he walked into the room, you forgot I was there.” 
He shrugged.  “
C’est la vie
.”

Regret clutched at her heart.  She
brushed her knuckles across his cheek.  “Oh, Flash,” she said.

He kissed her hand.  “That was a
long time ago.  I got over it.”  He drew her back into his arms.  “On the other
hand, you might say that early passion was rekindled a while back.”

She circled her arms around his
neck.  “Sounds intriguing.  Maybe you could tell me more about it.”

“I can do better than that.  I
can show you.  The kid isn’t due home for a couple more hours.”

“But aren’t you hungry?  What
about the pizza?”

“Hey, it’s not often these days
that I get a whole naked afternoon with my girl.  The pizza will just have to
wait.”

“I feel flattered.  You actually
chose me over food.”

He rolled her onto her back.  “There
will never come a time,” he said, “when I won’t choose you over food.”

***

The next morning, while Rob was
puttering in the studio and Paige was still asleep, Casey cut a few of the
blood-red roses from the garden outside her back door, put them in a bottle of
water, and drove to the cemetery.

His grave sat high on a hill,
beneath a towering elm, where wildflowers bloomed in abundance between the
gravestones and a breeze continually rustled the tall wild grasses that grew
nearby.  She knelt before a simple granite headstone that read
Daniel Fiore
1951-1987
and with her bare hands, dug into the moist soil, fashioning a
trench just deep enough to hold the makeshift vase and prevent it from
toppling.  “I brought you roses,
caro mio
,” she said.  “A rich and
beautiful red.  You’d love them.” 

She rocked back on her heels and
contemplated this peaceful place where he rested.  “I’ve been thinking about
you a lot lately.”  He didn’t answer, but it didn’t matter.  Death had turned
Danny Fiore into a good listener.  She tugged at a tuft of grass.  “The other
day, I was out in the garden, and a couple of those big Huey choppers flew over
the house.  I don’t know where they came from, or what they were doing way out
here in the middle of nowhere.  But those old protective instincts never die,
do they?  For an instant, my heart stopped, and I automatically looked around
to see where you were.”

Sixteen years ago, she’d watched
him—six feet four inches and a hundred and ninety pounds of edgy, cynical
man—drop to the kitchen floor of their Boston apartment and curl into a
shuddering ball with his arms wrapped around his head at the sound of those
whirring blades passing overhead.  By the time she’d figured out what was
happening and rushed to slam the window shut, it was too late; the damage was
already done.  There was nothing left to do but kneel beside him on the floor,
wrap her arms around him, and hold him until the shuddering ended and his
galloping heart slowed and his breathing stopped hitching.