Chapter Twenty

 

When we got to the arena, Eric said to Oliver, “Should we go in? Knock about and get a feel for the place?” I wasn’t sure if Eric was trying to give Jimmy and me space to talk or if he intended to give Oliver space from me.

I chanced a peek at him and immediately wished I hadn’t. Before I’d left, Oliver always had an adorable almost smile for me, like it made him happy to put his eyes on me. Now whenever I accidentally caught his eye, he grimaced a bit, like I was something distasteful but not quite gross enough to get really riled up about. It was a specific, unpleasant expression to be on the receiving end of.

“Yeah, I got it,” I said to him under my breath. He made a “pshh” sound like I was speaking gibberish he couldn’t be bothered to decipher.

One thing at a time. First, the easiest one. I put a hand on Eric’s arm before he left. “Hey, are we cool?”

His green eyes met mine, and he gave me a reassuring smile. “Oh yeah. I missed you. I’m glad you’re back.” He leaned closer and whispered, “Good luck with the other two.”

It was going to take longer to fix things with Jimmy, but he was sorry and adorable, and I was pretty sure we’d get there. When the door closed behind Eric and Oliver, I poured two mugs of coffee and set them on the table. “Let’s talk, Jimmy.”

His shoulders slumped, then he squared them. “All right. Time for the bollocking. I will face it, Willa! Bravely, like I do everything, and also because I owe you this.” We sat facing each other.

“We need to have a conversation about what happened so we can make sure it doesn’t ever happen again.”

“Can I go first?” When I nodded, he said, “I’m sorry I acted like I did. I didn’t realize how terrible it was until you left, and it’s inexcusable. It would have been wrong if I was only your employer. I owed you time off, and I’d promised to fix your contract and never did. But I’m not just your employer. I’m your friend. As a friend, what I did was even worse. I made it impossible for you to stay with us and pursue your own goals at the same time after you’d been patient with me. I wanted you at Red Rocks, so I tried to bully you into it and keep you from something important to you, and that was some spoiled-toddler-level shit. There’s no excuse for it. I owed you better.”

He paused to drink his coffee. He scooted my mug toward me.

I was speechless, so he continued, his voice uneven. “I will fuck up again, Willa. I’m not good at relationships. Eric and Oliver are the only two healthy friendships I’ve ever had, and my track record with them is not flawless, but I can do better. I thought I’d ruined this relationship forever. I’m well-aware of lucky I am to have you back here to give me another chance.”

He stopped again and peered at me over his mug. “Are you going to participate in this at all, darling?”

“Um, you’re doing quite a good job on your own, truth be told.”

“That’s all I have for now. I love you. I’m sorry. I’ve only ever been close to one other woman, Willa, besides my mum, and things did not end well with her. I want to do better with you.”

I took a moment to gather my thoughts. I presumed I was going to have to steer this conversation, and now I was off track. I should have known Jimmy wouldn’t be predictable.

Finally, I said, “I took this job with you because I needed the money, I needed a change, and I wanted to work on my portfolio.” I smiled at him. “And I really liked you, right away. The more time we spent together, the more I realized… I love taking care of you. I want to be an artist, and I have things to say and things I want to do that have nothing to do with you. That’s true, but I missed this job, and I missed you guys.”

I studied my hands and considered how to proceed. “You let me down, Jimmy. You blocked me intentionally from a great opportunity. That’s not just a shitty thing to do as my ‘boss.’ It hurt so much because, like you said, we’re friends.”

He covered my hands with his and, surprisingly, didn’t interrupt. “It’s a difficult dynamic,” I said. “But it’s worth it. How about if we put our cards on the table, establish some boundaries, and give it another shot?”

His smile was radiant. “Yes, cards on the table. Go.” He set his mug to the side and gave me his full attention.

“I want to work with you for now.”

“Back home, too? After the States, we have a few more shows in England. Even after the tour, I’ll still need an assistant, won’t I?”

“I could finish this tour like we initially said. But I won’t do this forever,” I said. “This isn’t my long-term goal.”

He nodded. “You have your own dreams, and they’re more than working with us.”

“This is what I want for right now, if we can do it in a healthier way.”

“We can,” he said confidently. “I’ll be good at boundaries once I set my mind to it. I’ve just never tried. Name your terms.”

“Okay. I’ve thought about it a lot, and this is what I need. I get time off for myself, every single day. At least four hours, and it belongs to me.”

He slapped a hand on the table. “Done. What else?”

I sat straighter. “I don’t owe you this. If you treat me like that again, I will leave. As much as I care about you, I’m not obligated to give you anything other than the work you’re paying me for.”

“Right.”

“If there comes another time when I need time off for something, I’m going to need you to be a whole lot more open to it than you were this time.”

“Got it,” he said. “What else?”

This was a lot easier than I’d expected. I was running out of demands. “Now you. Tell me something you need.”

“I want you to be honest with me,” he said.

“I am honest with you!”

He raised his eyebrows. “Oh, good. Let’s go. Are you in love with Oliver?”

“I—”

“Are you going to be honest with me now? I’m asking you as your friend, not the person you work for.”

I was asking a lot of Jimmy. He was only asking me to be honest with him.

To do that, I was going to have to be honest with myself.

I let out a breath. “Yes. Maybe. Probably. Or maybe not. It’s more than a strong like, at least. I didn’t mean for it to happen, but it did.”

“I know that how you feel about someone else isn’t my business, on the one hand. I get it. But he’s my best friend, and you’re my Willa. You guys both shut me out.”

I hadn’t considered it from that angle. “I can understand why it would hurt you to have one or both of us keep something from you. I was focused on convincing myself I wasn’t falling for him, though. So I didn’t want to talk about it.”

He started to speak a few times, then cut himself off, searching for the right words. It made sense—this was new to us. We were discussing things I’d hardly been able to acknowledge in the privacy of my own mind.

He got up to make us both more coffee. When he sat again, he said, “I know it’s hard. We were careful to not talk about this, and it’s partly how we got here. We have to push past it. Whatever you guys are, it happened right under my nose. You both kept secrets from me.”

I squirmed. He was partly right—but only partly. “My love life and my theoretical sex life are none of your business. That’s a boundary. We’re going to put some in place. Unless you’re the one I’m having sex with, the whole topic is off-limits.”

He wrinkled his nose. “Ew, Willa. Now you’ve crossed my boundaries. I don’t want to have sex with you, but I don’t want you to have sex with Oliver because then you’ll both love each other more than you love me.”

“Jimmy, I’m eventually, hopefully, going to have sex with someone. It isn’t going to make me care any less about you. Those two things are totally separate from each other.”

He glanced out the window. “I understand I have to accept it, but also I hate it.”

“No, look at me,” I insisted. “Listen, because this matters. You and I aren’t ever going to be that for each other, right?”

He rolled his eyes, like yeah, I know.

“So you can’t begrudge me having a romantic relationship with someone else. It’s the same theme. You don’t want me to do photography because you want all my attention and time. You don’t want me to fall in love with someone else because of what it would mean to you. This can’t work that way.”

He slumped back in his seat, defeated but frustrated. “You’re right. I want you to be happy, and it’s not up to me to draw lines around it.”

I smiled at him. “Good job, Jimmy. Now another thing. Sometimes I’m going to wear colors. I love colors.”

He gasped and put a hand on his heart. “Willa! You are killing me, but fine. Colors, if you must. Unless we’re on band business, then you have to be in aesthetic. Okay?”

“Deal!” I said.

“Ugh. What’s next?”

“Less touching.”

“What? No! I’m a physical person, Willa! With everyone. I don’t do it to impose myself on you. I had no idea you minded.”

“No, I don’t! It doesn’t bother me, Jimmy. You’re a nice snuggler. Nevertheless, now that there’s a man in the vicinity with whom I might eventually—”

He held up his hands to stop me. “All right! Don’t keep saying it. Duly noted. Not quite as much touching. I guess I can occasionally shake your hand. Or perhaps a high-five on Tuesdays and Thursdays?”

“Stop. I’m just saying, like, less kissing, and let’s not sleep together anymore.”

“I like sleeping with you,” he said mournfully. “You’re so soft and warm.”

“I love to sleep with you, but it’s probably weird. I don’t have any other friends I sleep with.”

“You don’t have any other friends like me, so that’s a useless point. But listen.” He gave me a conspiratorial grin. “I’m going to tell you something that’s not my business or yours. Oliver hates it when I sleep with you,” he said, somewhat giddily.

“He doesn’t mind,” I disagreed.

“Oh yes, he certainly does!” Jimmy said. “He haaaaaaaaaates it. He hides it from you, but he has this expression like, ‘Get off my girl, mate,’ which is funny since you’re not his girl. Except in his mind, you are. Or you were. Maybe not now.”

“Is he mad?”

“Certainly not. He’s not that far gone. He’s entirely sane.”

“I mean pissed.”

Jimmy shook his head. “It’s morning. He hasn’t had a drop to drink.”

“I mean angry!”

“I’m only kidding, Willa. I’ve gotten good at interpreting your Americanisms. Yeah, he’s angry. Good luck bringing him around. If you even want to! It’s none of my business. Let’s change the subject.”

“Gladly.” I took our mugs to the sink.

He sat on the counter next to me and kept me company as I washed our mugs and tackled the backlog of dishes. Jimmy brought me up to speed on the Red Rocks debacle. He hadn’t lost his voice and hadn’t slept with the keyboard player or the vocalist, but it was “a very close call,” whatever that meant.

“After we go shopping, I’ll do bills.” I put the last of the dishes on the strainer and dried my hands. “I assume you haven’t—oh! One more thing! I logged in to my bank account, and—”

“Oh, wow.” He hopped off the counter and pointed out the window. “The sun is coming out.”

I tugged on his arm until he returned his attention to me. “Jimmy. Did you pay off my… everything?”

“Do we have to discuss this?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t want to, darling. Let’s not. What should I wear when we go shopping?” He rifled through the clothes piled at the foot of his bunk. “Should I wear these jeans?”

“They’re identical to your other black jeans, and they’re fine. Talk to me.” I sat on his bed.

“Are you going to be weird? Don’t waste your time. I did it, and it’s done.”

“We have to talk about this. Sit down.”

He sat on Oliver’s bunk, facing me. “I’ll sit, but there’s not much to say. I wanted to, so I did. The end.”

“Not the end,” I insisted. “It was a lot of money, and it’s going to take me a long time to pay you back, but I will.”

“You most definitely will not!”

“Jimmy—”

“No, Willa. Stop it. I have compromised a lot this morning.”

“Yeah, but I can’t allow you to—”

“I can’t allow you to not allow me to. I can afford it. It’s done.”

“But I—”

He leaned forward and put a hand on my knee. “Do you like not being in debt?”

“Uh, yeah. But—”

“Good. Can you please drop it?”

I could not drop it. I needed to know the answer. “Did you think you needed to buy me?.”

He captured my hands and held them. “I bought myself the peace of mind of knowing if you’re with me, it’s because you want to be, not because you can’t afford not to be. If we have another fight, not that we’ll have another big one because I’m sure we won’t, but if we did and you left, at least I wouldn’t have to imagine you and Toby losing your house or declaring bankruptcy or something. I did it purely to soothe my own conscience and to make it easier for me not to worry. Completely selfish like everything else I do. Don’t make more of it than it is.”

I swallowed past the lump in my throat and squeezed his hands. “You paid off every red cent of my debt because you’re selfish.”

“That’s it exactly!” he said cheerfully. “It’s about me.”

My eyes filled with tears. “I think you did it because you love me, and you wanted to help me even when you couldn’t find me.”

He gave me his fake-amazed expression. “Then wouldn’t you be an ungrateful cow to suggest you’re going to pay me back? Appalling. The only proper thing to do would be to say thank you and drop it forever.” He shook his head. “Now stop it. No crying. You’re going to make me cry, and my eyes will get puffy.”

I released his hands and wiped my face. “I won’t cry, but listen.”

“I’m listening, but you are crying.”

“You can’t imagine what it means to have the weight of it gone. Thank you.”

“Well, don’t get too carefree. I’m bringing you back to a challenging job with a trio of men who need a lot of attention. One of us is a diva, I won’t say who, and one of us is going to make life difficult for you, at least for a bit—that one is Oliver. And seriously, this bus is disgusting. You’re going to be busy, Willa. Those other two live like pigs when they don’t have any supervision. Oh! The pictures!”

“The pictures!” I said. “Was that your idea?”

“It was Eric’s. Did you sell them?”

“My uncle bought them, and they’re doing a special insert. It’s going to be amazing. I’m so excited!”

“What did you do with the money?”

“I opened a savings account!”

He slumped in disappointment. “A savings account isn’t very glamorous.”

“You don’t understand, Jimmy. I’m in the black. That has never been the case in my entire life.”

He brightened and smiled at me. “How’s it feel?”

“Good!” I said. “So, so good.”

~ * ~

Jimmy was a new man.

Sort of. A lot of the time.

He tried.

I needed to remind him sometimes. Like the time I met with Hope for drinks in Boston, and he followed me “in disguise.” I reminded him I was on my four-hour break and sent him back to the bus.

When we were in Florida, I did a photo shoot with a folky, acoustic band called County Fair. They were playing in a brewery with an event barn. It was Uncle Ken’s idea. At best, it’d be a small review article. Still, it wasn’t nothing, and I needed these opportunities to keep my foot in the door.

Jimmy attempted to stop me. “Willa, I know we agreed you could work on other things sometimes, but we couldn’t have foreseen you’d get a gig… on a night I… on a night I had a migraine coming on.”

“You’re not getting a migraine,” I said.

“He could be,” Eric said. “He’s quite accomplished at getting inconvenient disorders.”

“Giving them, too. I say that as someone he’s assigned dysentery to.”

From the back of the bus, Oliver made a sound that sounded suspiciously like a laugh.

We were frozen with surprise for a moment. When I came back to myself, I said to Jimmy, “Remember we agreed? Sometimes you’re going to need to let me do things even when you don’t want to.”

“I’ll take some ibuprofen,” he said glumly. “Have a good time.”

“Drink some water, and call me if it gets worse.”

It wasn’t perfect, but he was doing his best. Like any other relationship worth having, we had to work at it.

The Oliver situation, on the other hand, wasn’t getting better. He completely shut me out. He didn’t even talk to me when I did his hair and makeup. He sat there like a big, pretty, angry statue. A warm, fragrant, super-hot, angry statue.

“Willa, I love Oliver,” Eric said, dropping on the couch next to me. “I do.”

We were in the green room, and I’d just gotten Oliver ready. He’d stalked out the second I was finished, and I sank into the couch, dejected.

I sighed. “Everybody does. Because he’s the most lovable of anyone.”

“I hate that he’s struggling,” Eric continued.

“So do I! I want to apologize, but he won’t even let me get started. I’m at a complete loss.”

“Jimmy, c’mere, help me out,” Eric said.

Jimmy stopped admiring himself in the mirror and sat at my other side. “Willa needs to force Oliver’s hand,” Eric said to him, talking over my head. “This is getting ridiculous. He’s being stubborn, and now he’s hurting both of them with it.”

Jimmy shrugged. “It is none of my business at all, Eric. I don’t even have an opinion on it. Boundaries. Right, Willa?”

“Yes!” I said. “Nicely done, Jimmy.”

He pointed at me and winked. “See? I’m learning.”

“Yes,” I said, fidgeting with the hem of my shirt. “Yes, you are, and I appreciate it.” I paused. “It’s only that in this particular circumstance, I’m at a loss, and—”

He dropped his head back on his shoulders and blew out a gusty sigh. “Oh my God, I thought you were never going to ask me. Who knows Oliver better than Eric and me? Nobody. Literally. Not even his own mother. We are uniquely qualified to give you advice, and I have been absolutely dying for you to ask. You could have already bagged that if you’d only asked sooner. Right, Eric? Because Oliver is gagging for it. Gagging. For. It. He needs the right shove so you guys can get past this and be together, and you’ll both be happy. So will I, and I know that’s not the point, but this is much worse than when you were both dancing around it. I woke up this morning, sure I was suffocating, and then I realized, no, I’m only choking on sexual tension. You could fix this if you would focus, Willa!”

I blinked. “Wow. Okay, one, we’re not talking about anyone gagging or bagging. I just want him to talk to me. Two, you are vastly overestimating his opinion of me. Three, we agreed you had enough coffee for the day.”

“I just finished what was in the pot, and there was hardly any in there. Focus, darling.” He patted my knee. “You’ve come to Uncle Jimmy and Uncle Eric for advice, and now we’re going to give it to you.”

I shook my head. “Well, now I’m reconsider—”

Jimmy covered my mouth with his hand. “No take-backs. Quickly, Eric. Go.”

“More short skirts, Will. He definitely noticed your black skirt the other day. We need him to look at you in spite of how determined he is not to. You need to get under his skin.”

Jimmy was impressed. With himself. “All your talk about choosing your own clothes, but who was it who chose the skirt? Was it you? No. It was not. Let’s keep going. Wear your leather pants. Oliver loves leather pants.”

“They’re kind of uncomfortable—”

“Oh, sorry,” he interrupted. “I thought we were discussing how to help you help Oliver stop being miserable! Are we talking comfort? Get your granny nightgown back on then, darling. By all means. Wait. Only you can’t because I threw it away when you were gone! It was the first thing out the motherfucking window, Willa, and I regret nothing!” He paused. “All right. That was a bit much. Why didn’t you dump the rest of the coffee? I’m always going to drink it if you leave it there. This is on you.”

Eric said, “Maybe walk with a bit more wiggle. Or, like, flip your hair around? Drop something and spend a long time leaning over to pick it up? I don’t know what tricks girls—I mean women—get up to. Just do whatever you can do to catch his eye. He stares at you when you’re not paying attention. Maximize that.”

“Right! Channel your inner Marilyn, Willa.” Jimmy said. “He’s as good at being stubborn as he is at everything else. The only thing that can override him is himself. You need to rouse his animal nature. You know how to do it.”

I was struggling to keep up. “Yes? I do?”

“Why are you saying it like you’re asking?” Jimmy frowned at me. “It’s not a question. Yes, you do.”

“Okay?”

“Definitely!” he insisted.

I fiddled with my shirt some more. “All right.”

“Why are you acting like you have no idea what to do? Do what you did to Benny Walker.”

“I didn’t do anything! Benny wanted you. I was the equivalent of slop on the pool table.”

“Other way round, darling,” Jimmy said. “I was the slop. And believe me, it was a first.”

“False. You were the target.”

He smiled at me. “You’re adorable, because you’re clueless. It’s good you have Eric and me, yeah?”

“Is it? I’m not sure any of this is helpful, actually.”

He gave me a disapproving frown. “You need to loosen up. For a cowgirl, you’re incredibly uptight. That’s all I’m saying.”

“I doubt very much it’s all you’re saying,” I said. “It never, ever is.”

“How can you expect—”

“See?”

“—things to change if you’re not going to do anything differently? You must understand that.”

Oliver came in then, and when he noticed I was in the room, his face went blank. When he thought it was just the boys, his expression was neutral. When he saw me, he turned to stone.

Something snapped in me. It was the moment the guilt evaporated, and I decided to force his hand.

I didn’t need advice from those two well-meaning, misguided boys.

I knew what Oliver liked, and it wasn’t leather pants or wiggly walks.

It was Just Willa.