Gabe stared at the text for so long his stillness drew the attention of all his friends.
I apologize profusely, Gabe, but I can’t make it to Firelight Falls today. Something has suddenly come up.
He now held in his hand what felt like a grenade, but which could be a perfectly innocuous text.
What did it actually mean?
And to think, just an hour before he’d been standing in the shower singing an homage to one of Eden’s guilty pleasure songs: “The first time . . . ever at Firelight Falls . . . ba da da daaa . . . dum de da da da da daaaaaa . . .”
Eat your heart out Roberta Flack, he’d thought.
That mood suddenly seemed eons ago.
Did she need help? Did she have cold feet? Had she changed her mind about the two of them? Did he have the right to press the issue? Should he press for answers?
Some premonition slowly iced his stomach. But surely it was just another blip in their schedule challenges, not a definitive blow off?
Finally, he texted back:
If I can help with anything let me know. I’ll be there in a flash.
He meant it when he’d said he hated games.
But he’d also just put the burden of asking for help on her. Which he also hated.
Suddenly he realized what was really bothering him about that text she’d sent: the two of them established a sort of radical, good-humored directness. And that text was oblique as hell. All apology, no humor, no real . . . intimacy.
Another text dinged in.
Thanks for understanding, Gabe.
And that was all.
Not even an emoji, for crying out loud. Not a heart or a smile or a cat.
He would have loved an emoji from her. And emojis got on his nerves.
He looked up when he realized it had gone silent. All of his friends were staring at him.
He cleared his throat. “Hey, looks like I can make the game after all.”
There was a long silence.
“Yaaay,” Louis said weakly. Finally.
“Nice, um, restaurant.”
Jasper seemed uncertain as to whether this was the appropriate word to use. A little wonderingly, a little amused.
She’d chosen Pasquale’s Pizza specifically for its unique qualities: it was way, way off the beaten path of downtown Hellcat Canyon, at the south end of town two streets behind the high school, where the buildings grew gradually more and more faded, drab and disreputable, as if the town was running out of toner by the time it got to them. And she was very unlikely to see anyone she knew there.
Its other unique qualities included a facade of dirty, chipping beige stucco; a no-frills rectangular marquee announcing PAS UALE’S PIZZER A; grubby, fissured beige linoleum that curled at its outer edges like potato chips; and battered and wobbly Formica tables crowned with glass shaker jars of cheese that had probably been powdered around 1977.
The pizza wasn’t horrible, which was perhaps the kindest thing that could be said about it.
“We’re not liable to run into anyone we know here, is the main thing. The pitchers are cheap. Free refills on iced tea, too.” She rattled her glass. Someone, somewhere, a few decades ago, might have passed a tea bag over the water, enough to give it its color. If she really gave her imagination a workout, she could almost taste tea.
One ordered at a glassed-in counter, behind which were the pizza oven and a trio of surly employees. They stared at Eden when she strolled in with Jasper, not so much in recognition of either of them but with vague hostility, as if customers were merely an inconvenient byproduct of running a business.
She’d taken a table way, way against the back wall, near a silent jukebox. She’d tied three knots in her straw wrapper so far. Three little knots to represent the great big knot in her gut.
Jasper had ordered a bottle of Michelob and wasn’t drinking it. He was percussing it with his fingers. Annelise did that, too: jauntily tapped things.
Eden inhaled. “Soooo . . .” she said on the exhale. “What did you want to talk about?”
“Soooo . . . well, I guess it’s that I’d like to get to know, um, our daughter.”
“The word our implies a we, and as I established, there is definitely no we,” she said instantly and reflexively.
This was not off to a great start.
“Okay,” he said carefully. “I’d like to get to know the fruit of my loins?”
She closed her eyes. “So. Much. Worse.”
“‘Fruit of My Loins’ is the name of my next record, as it so happens.”
Incredulity made her eyes snap open again.
“Kidding,” he said shortly, probably lest she actually fire the blue daggers she could feel glinting in her eyes into his heart. “Funny, I remember you had a pretty good sense of humor. Which was part of what made you so hot.”
“I would have laughed, except, you know, my daughter’s life is no laughing matter to me.” She landed just a little harder on “my” in that sentence than necessary. Given that she’d already made her point. “Why don’t you just call her Annelise.”
Another little silence.
“Okay. Sorry. It’s just I don’t know how to talk to you about this. But I want to. What do you need to hear from me so that you’re convinced I’m sincere?”
He sounded quite reasonable. Not angry, not defensive.
He sounded perfectly normal, in fact. Although she knew this could not ever be entirely true.
“I don’t know. I’m having a hard time with this. It’s just . . . I mean, Jasper . . . you have a pet jaguar.”
“But Annelise likes cats. She told me.”
“And don’t you have a python?”
“Used to.” But he sounded somewhat wistful. Which made her wonder whether the python had made a break for it, and whether one of his neighbors was destined to find it emerging from their plumbing or cuddling them in their bed in the dead of night.
“I could get a koala, instead, if she likes animals. It’s safer.” He paused and tipped his head back as if remembering something. “Well, marginally.”
“You can’t just go to the store and buy a freaking koala!”
He looked at her with something like tender pity for the Muggle she was. He could probably get his hands on anything—and anyone—he wanted.
“Listen to me, Jasper. Annelise is not something new to add to your menagerie, or some item your PR people can use to keep your name in the news, or something that you try on like . . . like . . . Kabbalah, to see if it fixes your life. No.”
“I was never into Kabbalah. You’re thinking of Madonna. I did have a guru living with me for a while. Maybe that’s what you’re thinking of.”
“Oh. Right. Silly mistake.”
“He slept with my girlfriend. Had to kick him out.”
She closed her eyes again. “Jesus, Jasper.”
“Jesus Jasper is the name of my next next record.”
That almost made her laugh.
Although the hysteria might be doing that, too.
His life was both kind of magnificent and sad. He was the Parthenon, a glorious wreck.
“I’m not a bad person. Sometimes I’m even boring.”
“Do you mean boring, or bored?” she said tersely.
He went silent.
“You’re not boring,” he concluded finally. He didn’t sound altogether pleased about this.
“True,” she agreed tautly. “When it comes to my daughter, I’m not boring the way a Tasmanian devil isn’t boring.”
“You really are beautiful, though.”
The “though” was almost funny. As if one could be “not boring” or beautiful, but not both.
She supposed this was his go-to compliment when it came to disarming women.
“Well, I must be, right? I’m sure you never boink ugly women.”
He smiled. “None that I recall, anyway. They all seem beautiful at the time.”
Dear God.
“Jasper, that’s . . . that’s not how you . . . look, maybe this is a mistake. Maybe I should get going.”
“Eden,” he said firmly and evenly, “I just want her to like me. And I wouldn’t hate it if you liked me. Believe it or not, I’m nervous about this.”
She eyed him suspiciously.
“I like kids, I really do—I’m the godfather to John’s kid. Travels with us. He’s still little. His name is Milo. Want to see pics?”
He whipped out his phone and showed her his screen saver: a photo of him crouching next to a diminutive plump toddler with big dark eyes. It was pretty stinking cute. They were both making peace signs.
“John is . . . ?” Eden said absently. Studying that picture. Adorable as that kid was, she was really glad Annelise wasn’t the kind of kid subject to the vicissitudes of life on the road with a band.
“John’s my drummer. And if I’m partly responsible for Annelise being in the world, I want to be part of her life. At least a little part of her life. It literally kept me awake last night thinking a kid of mine is growing up not knowing who her dad is. I mean that. I mean, I know your dad. Cool guy. You had that growing up.”
She was going to have to tell her parents about Jasper, and she had a hunch Glenn would not be a cool guy when he heard the news.
“Yeah. I have a great dad. Annelise has plenty of positive male influences in her life.”
She landed on “positive” a little too hard.
She forgave herself.
She was all for making Jasper work for this.
“You know, speaking for myself, when you don’t know your dad, there’s this . . . you’re always just kind of aware that something’s missing. No matter what. Even if you don’t really lack anything. For me, it added this level of restlessness, I think . . . maybe that’s why I have a jaguar.”
She smiled a little at that. But he was serious.
“And yeah, I’ve tried a few ways of, um, thinking and being. Who doesn’t do that? It’s just that the things I’ve tried are on a slightly, um, epic scale, and make it into the news.”
This did sound like a reasonable explanation.
“She’s a little girl. Not a supermodel. You’re a rock star who possesses a certain amount of charm—”
“As much as that, huh?”
“—and you’re intelligent, and odds are good you’re not a sociopath.”
“Now you’re just trying to turn me on.”
“She’s a delightful, funny, blazingly smart, sunny-natured easy child, and I lucked out with that, I really did. I’m totally aware that it could be so different. So it’s not that hard for anyone to make her like them, Jasper. She’s trusting and openhearted and . . .” She stopped, freshly breathless with trepidation, suddenly, at the idea of exposing Annelise’s tender, trusting, open heart to the relative wild card that was Jasper Townes.
But she was the one who’d slept with this man and created Annelise, the heretofore fatherless child. The onus was on her to manage this and make it right for Annelise. Because like it or not, this guy was her father. And it was either now, or maybe never. This moment, this opportunity, might not ever come again.
“. . . and . . .” he pressed.
“I meant to say, the idea of you being her father? She’s been wondering more about who her dad is lately. And you may not be what she has in mind. And she does have a mind of her own.”
“That’s odd, considering her mother is so easygoing and mild-mannered.”
“Ha ha. Anyway . . . you’re going to just have to be yourself and let the chips fall where they may.”
“Okay.”
A little silence.
“I think I’d like another beer,” he said suddenly.
“Didn’t you go to rehab? I mean, if you have any dependencies, congenital diseases, it’d be good to know.”
“I didn’t go to rehab. I went to Cozumel.”
She stared at him. “Come again?”
“My manager at the time thought rehab sounded more glamorous than the fact that I’m afraid to fly so I get drunk first. I hardly ever drink because it makes me fat. I hate to fly, and I don’t like working out. So I watch my weight like an old fart, and I’m only thirty-five. I do get stage fright, believe it or not. I sometimes get a little drunk before I go onstage. I smoke a little weed.”
“And that’s all?”
“These days,” he said. After a moment of what appeared to be genuine brain-racking reflection.
She wasn’t certain she believed him. Rock stars usually only truly repented all their bad habits right about the time they got their second liver.
He stuck his tongue out, folded neatly in half. “And I can do that.”
She smiled at that, somewhat reluctantly. “Annelise can do that. I can’t.”
“Dominant and recessive traits. See, I’m no dummy.”
“Never thought you were, Jasper. Not now, not then.”
“I’m not a saint, either. If you have any cute friends, I’ll probably hit on them a little. It’s a reflex. In the spirit of full disclosure.”
She sighed. “If you could refrain from ever doing it in front of Annelise . . .”
He went still.
“Does that mean . . .”
She paused. “Let’s . . . let’s talk some more.”
Gabe had bashed the crap out of the ball every time it was pitched to him, sending the outfielders scrambling and alternately fuming or whimpering.
They won by three points.
It wasn’t a pretty win, but somehow that made it even more satisfying. He was in the mood to fight to win something. A win was a very decisive thing: You either won or you lost. No guessing, reading between the lines, no wondering or worrying or waiting.
Still, the restlessness set in once he wasn’t playing anymore.
As per usual, they all repaired to Pasquale’s for cheap pizza and pitchers, because it was nearest the high school field where they played, and because the hard-core no-frills atmosphere perversely appealed to all of them. That, and the cheap pizza and pitchers.
“Hey, Wade, where’s your ten bucks? Wade!” Gabe bellowed from the order window while the surly employees glared at him.
He glanced over his shoulder.
Wade was frozen and staring straight at the back of the restaurant, and muttering wonderingly to himself. “What the ever loving . . .”
“Wade, didn’t I tell you not to stare at women with your mouth open? It creeps them out.”
“Dude, it’s not a woman,” Mike said sotto voce. “I’m looking at Jasper Townes.” He held a ten-dollar bill out to Gabe without turning his head away.
“Didn’t you have him in your pervert pool, or whatever you want to call it?” Bud reminded him.
They all laughed. Gabe held up three fingers to the guy behind the counter for how many pitchers they wanted to get started with.
“Hey, Caldera, you spike the Gatorade? Wade’s hallucinating,” Louis chimed in.
“Nice try, trying to blame your inability to hit a damn thing on the Gatorade. Why would Townes be anywhere near here?” Gabe collected one of the pitchers.
And then suddenly Wade was half indignant, half vibrating with the thrill of certainty. “No, man, I swear, that really is Jasper Townes! And check it out! He’s with a wo—”
Suddenly Mike grabbed Gabe’s elbow and pivoted him up against the counter like a cop about to tell him to spread his legs.
“Hey, I think I might want something different this time. Or maybe we should get Chinese instead of pizza. And . . . and . . . German beer. Let’s just stand here and read the menu for a while. They might have added something new. We don’t do that often enough.”
“Get off me, man.” Gabe extricated himself. “What the hell are you doing? German beer? Did you get hit in the head? You don’t like change. Of any kind.”
“I’m just not in the mood, suddenly. And . . . oh wait . . . I think I left my wallet at the high school. We have to go back right now!”
Gabe frowned at him.
Suddenly all of the guys were still, forming a little phalanx between him and whoever was in the back of the restaurant.
Something was up.
He deliberately sidestepped Mike and stared toward the back of the restaurant.
He went motionless.
Mike saw this, closed his eyes, and swore softly.
The rest of the guys went still and stone silent.
The rest of his team hovered behind him, and three of them reflexively, absently, removed their hats and covered their hearts, as if they were at a funeral for Gabe’s love life.
Or perhaps saluting Jasper Townes, the way one stands for the national anthem.
No one said a damn thing. Nothing snarky, nothing profane.
Which made it even more horrible. Because that alone confirmed it was indeed as bad as it looked.
He felt himself moving before he was aware he’d given that command to his feet.
“Gabe. No, Gabe. Stay, buddy.”
Lloyd said this as if he was talking to his dog, Hamburger.
But Gabe didn’t hear him over the strange roaring sound in his ears, which he supposed was the beat of blood. He couldn’t stop moving if he tried, anyway. He moved as if he was mounted on a dolly, tugged forward by a hideous fascination, like peering over to get a close-up view of a cobra even if you knew it would bite you.
He had to see it up close because he was no fucking coward.
He had to see it with his own eyes.
He knew it was going to hurt; it already hurt.
His gut was wall-to-wall ice.
Eden was pale. She fidgeted with the wrapper of her straw. She’d already tied three knots into it.
Townes looked up. He didn’t even give a start.
“Oh, hey, dude. Sorry, man, I don’t have a pen on me. But I can sign with a french fry and ketchup if you have any.”
He cheerfully, resolutely wiped his hands on a paper napkin.