The Girl in the Comfortable Quiet Read online

  “Neil is not cheating on me,” I counter heatedly. “It’s not that. And if it was I wouldn’t get over it as you advise. I’d be gone. The day he cheats on me is the day I divorce him.”

  She rolls her eyes and turns to dump her ash in the tray on the coffee table. “Then there’s nothing wrong with your marriage,” she snaps without looking at me. “You’ve got it all worked out, now haven’t you?”

  I glare at the back of her head. “Fine. Have it your way, Linda. Everything is perfect here. I didn’t want to talk about it in the first place.”

  She turns to stare at me. “Then why did you bring it up?”

  “I didn’t.” Crap, that sounded defensive, and worse, stupid because I did bring it up.

  Her gaze locks on me in that unnerving way I’ve never understood—part all-knowing superior woman and part mother—and then she pats the sofa beside her.

  “Sit down, Chrissie.”

  Imperative. Firm. When Linda talks this way there isn’t a chance in hell I would argue with her.

  Completely emotionally undone now, I obey and return to my seat beside her. She sits there smoking and studying me. She doesn’t say anything and my nerves grow tauter.

  She starts waving a finger in my face. “So let me see if I understand. He’s not cheating on you. But you are unhappy about something.”

  That makes me sound ridiculous. This just keeps getting more awful. I should just tell her the truth. I’m making myself sound pathetic and difficult. And your worries become less intense once you share them. I should just tell her every fucked-up worry in my head.

  I lower my gaze to my clasped hands resting in my lap. “I don’t think Neil is attracted to me anymore. I don’t think he loves me,” I blurt out quickly.

  There, I’ve said it. I wait anxiously for some reaction, anger at Neil or denial or sympathy for me—fuck, even a hug—but nothing comes.

  Finally, she speaks. “That’s crazy, Chrissie. Why would you think that?”

  I swallow down the lump in my throat. “When he’s home, he’s not really interested in me sexually. And when we do have sex—crap, I can’t explain it—it just feels really perfunctory. Like he’s doing it because I expect him to. Not because he wants to. It’s awful, Linda. Just awful.”

  Tears try to surface and I battle them back.

  Linda gives me a gentle squeeze with her arm. “Things get all out of whack, Chrissie. It doesn’t mean anything. Neil has been on the road nonstop since you got married. Then you had Kaley. That can put a mood kill on the romance department. But, Chrissie—” She takes my chin and turns my face so I have no choice but to look at her. “—none of that means he doesn’t love you. It just means you guys are going through a phase.”

  I take my lower lip between my teeth, trying not to voice my greatest fear, but the words bubble upward anyway.

  “He doesn’t want to be alone with me,” I whisper. “Not ever. When he’s here, he always brings people home with him. The guys. Roadies. Old friends. It’s like he surrounds himself with an entourage to make sure he doesn’t have to be alone with me. He makes me feel like an unwanted outsider in my own home.”

  “Aha.” Linda’s expression changes in a flash, sympathetic and amused. “Oh, Chrissie, now I know it’s definitely a phase. Things have happened really quickly for Neil, and the fucking man is reading his own press and starting to believe it. It happens. The bring the road home with him syndrome. It doesn’t last. It goes away. Just ignore it.”

  “Ignore it? How the hell do you ignore a half dozen people in your house, randomly showing up with your husband, staying up all hours of the night when you’ve got a child trying to sleep, or a man in bed beside you who doesn’t want to fuck you?”

  Linda struggles against it, but laughs anyway. A harsh, amused, choked back chuckle. “I don’t know. That one is new to me.”

  I shake my head, looking away. “Thanks a lot for the advice and the support, Linda.”

  She smiles. “Your problems aren’t problems, Chrissie. And I’m not going to act like they are and feed into whatever it is you’re feeling. If you don’t like the mob in the house, tell Neil he can’t bring them anymore. When you want to get laid, you make the first move. If you are not happy, talk to Neil instead of me. The answers are always simple if you let them be and not stir things up in your head and obsess over problems that aren’t there.”

  I give her a pointed stare. “They are there for me.”

  She clutches my chin in a harsh way and plants a fast, smacking kiss on my lips. “I love you, Chrissie. But grow up. You’re not a little girl anymore. If you don’t like the way things are going for you then learn to deal and fix it. That’s what women do.”

  There’s a sharpness in her voice I’ve never heard before, an undercurrent of criticism, and something else. Resentment? Odd, but that’s what it sounds like and I haven’t a clue why Linda should resent me.

  I search her face and her expression has the power to make me cry, even though I don’t want to and I don’t really know why she’s affecting me so strangely.

  Before I know it, she has me in her arms, clutched against her breasts, gently rocking me. “It’s going to be OK, baby girl,” she says in a soothing way, making our bodies move in time. “I’m never wrong about these things. Neil loves you. Whatever is going on, it will pass. Everything is going to be OK.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  August 1997

  Silence. I pull the cans from my head and stare through the glass. Into the intercom, I say, “Are we good?”

  No answer. Alan is already deep in conversation at the soundboard with Ian and Ryan Norris. They’re smiling and laughing in the irritating, guy-mode way. I hope Alan looking like he’s in a good mood means we’re done. I’m exhausted.

  I sink down on the couch against the far wall of the studio to wait for someone to tell me I can cut out for the night. I yawn and my eyes drift closed. My leg starts to jiggle. I can’t fall asleep. I’ve got a long drive back to Santa Barbara I still have to do. Staying the night in LA would definitely not be a good thing these days. Neil’s been off the road three weeks and somehow, though it hardly seems possible, it’s even less good between us than it was before he left for this last tour.

  The studio door opens.

  I look up. “We good? Can I leave for the night?”

  Alan settles on the couch beside me. He drapes an arm across the back of the sofa behind me. He smiles. “We were good the first time we rolled tape. I just had you keep doing it because I enjoy listening to you sing.”

  He starts laughing and I shove him away in a playfully aggravated way. “God, you are such an asshole sometimes.”

  His black eyes shimmer. “You are perfect first roll of tape every time. Don’t you know that yet?”

  I roll my eyes. “I need to cut out. You have a good rest of the night since you’ve pretty much fucked up mine, Alan.”

  Before I realize what Alan is doing, he’s sprawled on his back with his head in my lap. Every part of my body snaps into full wakefulness.

  Shit, why did he have to touch me today when I’m feeling needy and unloved and too aware of him? Just being near him is like an aphrodisiac, but being touched by him—there are no words to describe that and there never will be.

  I feel his body move with his shallow breath and my blood turns to fire. My pulse is wild in me, a delicious heat moving across my flesh. The agitation in my body, the pulsing, the want and the need. And all Alan had to do to get arousal from zero to sixty in record time was to casually touch me.

  I sink my teeth hard into my lower lip, staring off into the room as I battle the fierce urge inside me to touch him, reminding myself that Alan’s current too-close proximity means nothing. It is just an escapable random occurrence of being near Alan. The smiles, the fleeting drive-by caresses, the little kisses, and that too familiar body contact are just the outward expression of his affection and caring for me. Alan’s weird, overly confusing acts of friend
ship.

  It means nothing. He’s this way with all women, whether he’s sleeping with them or not. His manner is exactly this way with Linda. It means nothing.

  “Are you doing all right, love?” he murmurs.

  I stare down at him. His eyes are still closed. I’m not sure what he wants to know. “Sure. I’m great. Why do you ask?”

  A smile softens his lips. “I have a bit of a problem. And I didn’t want to ask for your help if things weren’t going well for you, Chrissie.”

  Problem? I study his face and then frown. I suddenly know his closeness is deliberate. He wants something from me.

  I kill the impulse to shove him away and flash my temper. “What do you need?” I ask, pleased that my voice sounds calm and in control.

  His eyes open. “Ten weeks on the road.”

  I give him the stare. “You’ve got to be joking. What’s wrong with Kathy?”

  “She’s in the hospital. She broke her leg. She won’t be able to tour for at least five months.”

  “Broke her leg, huh? I bet that puts a crimp in things for you.”

  The second the words slip from my mouth, I cringe inwardly. Shit, why did I say that? It’s one thing to know that Kathy is Alan’s current bed partner, it’s another to invite the topic into open discussion between us.

  “No crimp. Expedited the end. We’ve been over for months. But it is inconvenient on other fronts.” He closes his eyes and relaxes back into my lap. “I’m only asking for you to fill in for her on the road for ten weeks. Leave September, be back in California before December. You’d be doing me an enormous favor, not making me have the hassle of finding a suitable replacement.”

  “I’m surprised you don’t have a book full of numbers to call.”

  Those black eyes shoot open again, sparkling and amused. “I do. Just not for singers. And especially not with a singer with your range. Do this for me, Chrissie.”

  Do this for me, Chrissie. The way Alan asks for things should piss me off; its effect is always the opposite.

  “I can’t go on the road with you, Alan.”

  “Why not?”

  “Neil is off the road for six months, taking some family time and working on new material. I can’t just leave. Besides, what would I do with Kaley?”

  “Bring Kaley with you on tour. Linda brings Bobby. It’s not like it’s something artists don’t do. Just bring Kaley and her nanny on the road with you.”

  “Kaley doesn’t have a nanny. I have a housekeeper, that’s all, and I can’t do it. I’m sorry.”

  “I thought you said everything with Neil was good.”

  Alarm flashes inside me. What did I say to get Alan wondering about the status of my marriage?

  “It is good,” I counter, irrationally defensive. “Very good.”

  Alan smiles. “Then there shouldn’t be a problem with you helping me by doing this. Talk to Neil. Let me know.”

  “I don’t need to talk to Neil. And I don’t need Neil’s permission to do this. That is if I were going to do this, which I’m not.”

  Those black eyes fix on me. He lifts up a hand, touching my cheek with his thumb. The gesture takes me by surprise. It is soft and gentle and alluringly him out of nowhere. It turns my insides into rapidly heating liquid.

  “You’ll do this, Chrissie. We both know it. So stop being a pain in the ass and go home and discuss it with your husband.”

  I shift my gaze away from his, feeling naked and vulnerable held in that Alan black stare. I’ve already told him no. Why is he so certain I will do this for him?

  ~~~

  I park my car in the garage and pull the key from the ignition. I check the dashboard clock. 1 a.m. I quietly slip from the driver’s seat.

  Fuck. I roll my eyes and slam the door. Music and laughter float from the widow’s walk. Why do I even bother trying to be quiet? It is always like Animal House here 24/7.

  I stare through the wall of glass out at the patio crowded with people. Nope, not doing it. Not even to let Neil know I’m back from LA.

  I go into the foyer and drop my keys and purse onto the console table. I go down the steps into the living room.

  “Hey, Chrissie,” Nate says.

  My eyes widen. Nate and Josh are sprawled on couches drinking beer. I do a fast inspection of my house. It doesn’t look or sound like there is anyone else on the main level. Everyone is out on the patio with Neil.

  I sit on the coffee table facing Nate. “What are you guys doing inside? It sounds like quite a party out there. By the way, when did Neil decide to throw a party? I thought you guys were going to be jamming in the studio all day.”

  Nate tosses his book down beside me. He turns, propping himself on an elbow, his fingers clutched in his hair.

  “That was the plan,” he says, annoyed. “Shit wasn’t happening. Tempers started to flare. My boy was on edge all day today. So we called it a day and decided we should just have some of the local mob up here, drink and chill.”

  I frown. “Why do I sense you’re pissed off about something, Nate? Fess up.”

  He stares at me and says nothing. I look at Josh. He shifts his gaze away, but he seems uncomfortable.

  My brows hitch up. “Are you going to tell me?”

  Nate gives me the fuck, Chrissie look, then swings his legs around and sits up.

  “Andy blew in around three this afternoon with some friends of ours from high school. Neither of us wants to be around that fucker. Not after all the shit he’s done to Neil. That’s why we’re in here.”

  I can’t believe what I’m hearing. “Andy? The Andy?”

  Nate runs his fingers through his hair again. “Yep. Andy.”

  “I don’t understand. Why would Neil even let him into the house?” I ask, my nerves prickling in alarm.

  Nate’s eyes widen. “You don’t know the full history, do you?”

  Full history? “I know about Neil beating him up and going to jail.”

  “No, the rest of it,” Josh says, surprising me since he hardly ever talks to me.

  My gaze shifts back and forth between them. “What rest of it?”

  I arch a brow. I wait. Nate sits there for a while, staring at me, searching my face, looking like he wants to drop through the floor.

  “We’ve all been friends since we started school, Chrissie,” he says in a reluctant voice. “Andy and Neil especially. Surfing buddies. Getting high buddies. Everything. Did you know when we started the band in high school Andy was a part of it?”

  My eyes widen. I didn’t know. Why didn’t Neil ever tell me this? “No, I didn’t know that.”

  “Fucker wasn’t any good,” Josh says scathingly. “We all wanted to boot him, but Neil wouldn’t. He was our friend.”

  “He was also our feel-good guy,” Nate adds. “We were all pretty fucked up, pretty deep into drugs back then. Coke. Weed. Pills. E. And Andy could get anything, anything we wanted, so Neil kept him around.”

  My features tighten in disbelief. “Neil? We’re talking about my Neil? He had a drug problem in high school? He hardly drinks. He doesn’t do anything but occasionally smoke weed. I can’t believe what I’m hearing.”

  Nate looks agitated. “It was a long time ago, Chrissie. Before you. He doesn’t fuck with that shit now. It’s all different since you and Kaley.”

  I frown. “So why did you bring it up?”

  “Because Andy is a fucking parasite we can’t shake off,” Josh exclaims on a ragged growl.

  Nate gives Josh a hard stare and his face contorts. “Will you fucking keeping it together, Josh?” His gaze shifts back to me. “The first time Neil got busted was because of Andy.”

  “First time?”

  “Shit. You didn’t know that either, did you?” Nate pauses. “We were in Bakersfield doing a gig the year after we graduated from high school. We got popped by a cop. Fucking van full of smoke and Andy with enough drugs in his bag to drop a possession charge on all of us.”

  “Neil took the fall,” Josh sa
ys. “It was his van. Cop said one of us had to claim it or we’d all go to jail. Neil was already pretty much off the shit by then. He figured his dad could help get him out of it. He took the fall for all of us.”

  “Fuck you,” Nate mutters. “He took the fall for Andy. That fucker knows how to work over everyone around him.”

  I’m stunned. “So what happened?”

  “Neil went to jail—”

  “—Thirty days in county, ninety day rehab,” Josh cuts in.

  “—and Andy disappears without even thanking Neil,” Nate finishes. “Stole half of our gear when he split.”

  “Asshole,” I whisper.

  “Best thing that ever happened to us, Chrissie,” Josh says empathetically, leaning forward in his chair. “We all cleaned up our shit after that, and Andy was out of the band. Best thing that ever happened.”

  “Except the part where Neil went to jail,” Nate reminds him.

  I sit frozen, unable to get my head around this. There are parts of Neil’s history he never talks about to me, but this is a pretty significant thing. Shouldn’t he have told me about this?

  “Anyway, now Andy just blows in randomly, fucks up things a little, and then blows away,” Nate says.

  “Like San Francisco,” Josh says, staring at the ground.

  “But why does Neil let him?” I ask.

  Nate slouches back against the cushions. “We all started together in the band. After the jail, ripping off our shit, and disappearing thing, Neil wouldn’t take the fucker back. We’ve made it big and Andy? He’s a lowlife hustler who travels the party circuit selling drugs and whatever else—”

  Nate catches his words, flushes and looks away.

  “He started showing up on the road a year ago,” Josh informs me grimly. “We’ll walk into a party and Andy will be there. Ready to waylay and bleed Neil.”

  “He shows up when he needs money,” Nate says pointedly. “Guilts Neil with that look at where you are and look at me shit. Soaks Neil for what he can get or until Neil gets fed up with him. Then Andy moves on.”

  “But he always fucks up something before he leaves,” Josh adds. “You want my advice, Chrissie? Get him out of your fucking house now.”