Chapter 123

I spent my morning researching Liz Larimer Entertainment and its subsidiaries (while keeping Liz’s parents, my mother and Brea entertained with my sparkling wit and charm).

Yeah, the last part, not so much. I was worried and I was a huge pain in everybody’s ass. My mother was used to me being a pain in the ass, though, so she hung out with me while everybody else made themselves scarce.

She lasted until 10 o’clock. I still hadn’t heard from Liz but I didn’t mention my concerns to anybody else. I didn’t need her parents or my mother going crazy alongside me. Once Mom had given me up as a lost cause, I plugged in my earbuds and listened to some of Liz’s early songs while I went through stuff I should have studied at least four months earlier.

The information was dry – and I didn’t really understand all of it. I didn’t have anybody to consult since I’d sent Jill off to visit with Brian so I contented myself with just learning the rudiments of how things were structured.

The marketing stuff was the easiest for me to figure out. But it was also something that had already been transferred to San Diego. Any changes that I might have recommended had already been put in place by the competent people heading up that section of her business (namely Susan, Sarah and Rick).

A few minutes after Mom had wandered off, I came to the realization that reading the stuff in a vacuum was exactly worthless. I’d have to wait until Liz was back to ask her the hundreds of questions that had entered my brain.

But it had taken my mind off her health for almost a quarter of an hour. I skipped around to a few entertainment sites that featured Liz’s name in some fashion and that knocked another quarter hour off my morning. Again, there was a lot of information that was new to me but I had nobody to put it into context. So I left off that section and I pondered for a few moments as I considered what to do next.

I decided to explore some of the places that I usually kept off limits. I wasn’t going to go into her office. She had a lot of information in there that I didn’t need access to.

Instead, I headed into her recording studio. I had seen dozens of discs on a shelf on the wall. Liz told me they were things she’d recorded that didn’t come out how she’d hoped or that the label didn’t want to release.

She’d told me that I could listen to them if I wanted. She had even shown me how to listen to them in the studio. I thought that now would be a perfect time.

I pulled some of them out and looked at the dates on them. Some of them were almost 15 years old. I decided to start there. I sent my mom a text to let her know I hadn’t run off to join the circus and put one of the digital masters into the slot.

I hit the play button and put the headphones over my ears.

“Elizabeth Larimer, demo session one,” I heard a gruff male voice say.

The next thing I heard was a long guitar introduction. It was strictly acoustic and I had heard Liz play enough over the past few months to recognize her signature style at once. The notes were haunting.

“I’ve been a lot of lonely places,” Liz sang. “I’ve seen the scorn written in a lot of hateful faces.”

I sat and listened to the story of a lonely teenager – Liz’s story. She talked about how she wished somebody would give her a chance to prove her worth but she was always on the outside looking in.

The last verse was the best, in my humble opinion.

“You’ll look around one day, when I’m on top, when I’m Miss Thing; you’ll say I knew her when. But I’m not you, I won’t commit your sins. I’ll hold the door open for you to come in.”

“Fuck,” I said when the song ended.

The guitar came back on with a little faster tempo.

“Seems like the only one that doesn’t know is the guy you see first thing every day,” she said. “Everybody says that you’re the golden one; you just shake your head and walk away.

“It must be tough to have all the answers when you walk around with people what don’t know what to ask. Someday you’ll find your path and this place will just be part of your past. When you find your place in the sun, I hope you’ll take the time to understand that I’m the one.”

I found myself bobbing my head along with the beat as I listened to the words. I wondered if she had me in mind when she’d written the song.

I had my answer in the song’s last verse.

“We were just kids when I saw the signs; you gave me your lunch ‘cause I lost mine. Now the years have gone; you’re the man I thought you’d become...”

The song came to a stop and I listened to a few seconds of silence before Liz’s voice returned without the guitar.

“And I feel like a fool; I could never be the one for you.”

I rubbed my jaw and expelled air noisily. The next song kicked in before I could get the last few words out of my head.

“Let’s pack up our things and hit the road,” Liz sang. “Let’s find a place we’ll never be found. There’s nothing left for us to prove; let’s get out of this town.”

This song made me smile as she sang about all the reasons she wanted to be somewhere that nobody knew her. But she didn’t want to go alone.

The last song on the disc had a full accompaniment of musicians. It was faster paced and I listened to somebody playing an electric guitar to start the song. For some reason, I knew it wasn’t Liz. I wondered how I knew it.

The song was pretty cool. It was about a small-town kid taking a chance and hitting the big time. I wondered if Liz might be a psychic along with her other talents. I was putting the disc away when my phone buzzed with a text.

“On the way home; all OK,” Liz had typed. Or perhaps she’d had Skye do it depending on how cranky she was.

“Lunch and loving boyfriend waiting for you,” I typed back.

I got a winking emoji that I didn’t know how to return so I sent the only thing I could remember. It was a smiling face and I hoped it served its purpose.

I took a few minutes to clean up the studio before I went upstairs to run Liz a nice hot bath. I added some bubbles to the mixture and even found a scented candle.

Mom had fixed a fruit salad for our lunch so I scooped some into a bowl (without spilling much) and put the bowl beside the tub. I looked around and thought I’d set a pretty relaxing atmosphere.

I was back downstairs by the time Liz returned with Skye, Bobbi and Dayton. She looked a little pale but she gave me a wink.

I put my arm around her and gave her a soft squeeze. I wanted to ask her what the doctor had said, how she was feeling and probably a thousand other things. But I didn’t think the entryway of her home was the appropriate venue, particularly when both of our mothers and Brea had come into the area.

The nurse seemed to believe differently.

“Is everything OK?” she asked.

“It’s fine,” Liz assured her.

The question caused the moms’ ears to perk up.

“Was something wrong?” Bev asked her daughter.

My mother was more intent upon looking at me for answers (answers that I had no intention of providing).

“It was nothing,” Liz said, smiling again. “Really.”

“They took blood,” Bev noted, gesturing to a bandage at Liz’s elbow.

“They took blood,” Liz agreed. “It was just ... a normal visit.”

“My ‘normal’ visit doesn’t include blood work,” Bev said.

Liz sighed.

“I drew milady a bath,” I said, hoping to end the inquisition.

“That’s why you were so obnoxious all morning,” Mom chimed in. “If it’s private, that’s fine. But we are your family, Liz. Or ... I will be your family soon, I suppose. We care about you.”

“I know you do,” Liz said, giving my mother the full-wattage smile. “I’m glad that you do. I care about you, too. It was ... my monthly times have been...”

“Missing,” I supplied.

The mothers exchanged knowing looks.

“It’s not that,” Liz said. “I thought it might be but it wasn’t.”

The looks on the faces changed to concern.

“Then what is it?” Bev inquired.

“A lot of things,” Liz said with a heavy sigh. “The doctor doesn’t think it’s medical. Everything ... is normal. She took some blood so she could do a full workup but she isn’t worried. It’s just to see where I am with my iron levels and that sort of stuff.”

I saw that my mother was about to intervene but I offered a shake of my head. Liz would tell us when she was ready.

She closed her mouth but the look of worry didn’t cease. That was enough for Liz, I guess.

“A lot of things happened all at once,” Liz said. “I went off birth control. It wasn’t planned but I got too busy to get back here to visit my doctor. Then my eating habits changed. I had been on the go for months before I ran into Travis again. I had been eating poorly. He...”

She glanced over at me and gave me a one-armed hug since her arm was around my back.

“He got me back to eating better,” she said. “I went from a lot of high-calorie, low-nutrition food to things that were better for me. I also started to exercise more. The month before Dallas was a lot of stress and a lot of exercise. Then ... last month was just pure stress. She’s pretty certain that is all there is to it. She said that the birth control shot helped to regulate things when my life was crazy before. But I’m not 22 years old. I’m 30 ... almost 31. Dropping the birth control screwed my system up. It caused some hormone surges, I guess. I just need to relax more, watch my diet and make my exercise routine more consistent.”

“And the relaxation starts immediately,” I said in a firm voice.

Liz gave a helpless shrug as I ushered her toward the stairs (but I’ll note that she didn’t protest at all).

I waited until we got upstairs before I started to quiz her.

“You’d tell me if there was something wrong?” I asked.

“Yes,” Liz replied.

I looked hard at her.

“Yes!” she said more forcefully. “What I told everybody is exactly what the doctor told me. She’ll have the results of my blood tests in a day or so. But she said that I just need to get my body back into a routine of sleeping normally, exercising normally and eating normally. She said that the hormones from the shot should be completely out of my system.”

I couldn’t stop myself from hugging her as tightly as I could.

“There’s nothing to worry about,” she told me.

I nodded and kissed her softly on the cheek. She smiled and ran her hand down the side of my face.

“You didn’t shave this morning,” she noted.

“I’m lazy,” I admitted.

“Did you get your research done?” Liz asked as she started undressing.

“What little I could,” I said. “I realized today that I’m pretty clueless about most of what you do.”

“That realization hit me a couple of months ago,” Liz said, laughing a little. “Where’s Jill?”

I cringed slightly.

“I sent her home so she could go to the doctor with Brian,” I confessed.

Liz smiled wider.

“I know,” she informed me. “She texted me to make sure it was OK with me if she left early. She was planning to take the afternoon off. She seemed to understand that you weren’t really her supervisor.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I thought his appointment was in the morning. I shouldn’t have overstepped.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Liz said.

She had slipped out of her skirt and lowered her panties. She inspected the crotch and tossed them into the laundry. My eyes followed them – not for a prurient reason but because Liz had looked at them. It was something I hadn’t seen her do before.

“So what did you do all day ... besides annoy your mom?” Liz asked. She saw that my eyes were still on the hamper, in spite of the fact that she was completely naked and only a few feet away from me. “I was just checking for spotting.”

I glanced back at her with confusion on my face.

“Today ... there is always a little blood after I go to the lady doctor,” Liz said. “They poke around and prod me in places that I’m not usually prodded. I’ll be a little sore and I’ll bleed a little down there for the rest of the day. I’m usually OK by the next day, though.”

“OK,” I said with a sigh. I took her by the hand and led her into the bathroom.

The bubbles had deflated a little bit (and I was certain the water temperature had cooled) because of the time spent downstairs.

Liz took in the scene and gave me one of her amazing smiles.