Chapter 17

Liz was sitting on the couch, ear buds engaged, with her papers spread out over the coffee table again. She was hunched up and scribbling with her head bobbing in time to the music. She looked up when the light in the room changed and she hurriedly shuffled the papers until a blank piece rested on the top.

She shut off her phone and pulled the buds out of her ears when I walked in.

“No need to stop on my account,” I told her. “I know you have to work.”

“Just jotting some notes for myself,” Liz said. I suspected that she was lying but I didn’t press the point. “I called my lawyer. He emailed me a copy of our standard contract. I would have had him send it straight to you but ... I don’t have an email address for you.”

She lifted her eyes in mock disapproval.

“And you have yet to offer me your phone number,” she added.

“Oh, yeah,” I said, laughing. I read off the digits since Liz still had her phone in her hand. She typed them in and saved them. My phone buzzed in my pocket so I pulled it out.

“Just checking to make sure you weren’t trying to ditch me,” Liz replied with a laugh.

I glanced down at the display again.

“I noticed that you didn’t offer to return the exchange,” I said as I held it out to her. Liz’s number was blocked.

“Damn right,” she said, still smiling. “I don’t want you bothering me when I’m doing ‘big star’ stuff. You, however, are supposed to be at my beck and call 24 hours a day.”

“Got it,” I said, sticking the phone back in my pocket. I headed to the kitchen to get a bottle of water. “Want one?”

“I can’t believe you aren’t going to beg for my number,” Liz said. She had stood and walked into the kitchen with me.

I offered my best arrogant smile ... the one I saved for hospital administrators.

“You know I don’t beg, Girl,” I rejoined with a wink.

Liz did the thing where she dipped her chin to her chest and batted her eyelashes. This time, she trapped her bottom lip between her teeth, too.

She reached up to run her finger down my nose but I slid forward and wrapped my arms around her. It almost cost me an eye but the look of surprise might have been worth it.

She came into the hug willingly and I felt her relax slightly.

“I guess you talked Sarah out of kicking my ass,” she said.

“We had a discussion about boundaries ... and the difference between perception and reality,” I said.

“I knew the conversation would come but I didn’t really think she’d start while you were in the room,” she told me from where her head rested on my shoulder. “I figured she would pull me aside and talk to me privately.”

“That’s not really how we operate,” I said. “Grievances are aired loudly as soon as they crop up.”

“The sad thing is that a lot of what most consider speculation is true,” Liz told me. “That’s something else we’ll need to talk about.”

“No, we won’t,” I said. “My past is just that. I don’t want you judging me for some of the decisions I made when I was 22 or 23. Hell, I don’t want you judging me for some of the decisions I made last week. We both know there are going to be pitfalls. If we go forward it will be with our eyes open to potential problems. There are going to be problems, Liz. It doesn’t make a difference who you are or who I am. Rick and Eric have problems; Sarah and Matt have problems; Ryan has problems with his wife from time to time.”

“I know,” she said. “Her name is Sondra and she’s really great. I love spending time with her when I can. But I know that she would prefer he wasn’t out with me 30 weeks a year. Stephanie is the same way with her husband. He is a banker in Nashville so he’s home all the time. She’s home for a week or two and then gone for a month. That’s one of the reasons that I pushed to change my tour schedule. Ryan and Stephanie will both be home this weekend. Yeah, they’ll be back in L.A. on Monday but at least they have the weekend with their wives or husbands.”

“That’s one problem we probably won’t face,” I said as I softly massaged the muscles in her lower back.

“We’ll face the opposite problem,” Liz replied. “I’m ... I’m not always easy to be around. I get a little manic from time to time.”

“I’ll just put you over my knee and give you a good spanking,” I replied with a laugh. Liz pulled back and gave me a look of disbelief. I had on sneakers and she was barefoot so she was about three inches shorter than me.

I slid my hand down to pinch her on the butt and she laughed. Then she dipped forward and kissed me softly.

We stood in the kitchen (which I had seen more in the past two days than I had in the previous two months) with our arms around each other just looking at each other.

Liz gave a contented sigh and put her head back on my shoulder.

“I know you were working,” I said softly. “I don’t expect you to drop everything you’re doing as soon as I come in the room.”

“I had a song pop into my head,” Liz admitted. “I was getting it onto paper before it got away.”

“Then get back to it,” I said. My back was to the counter so I couldn’t pull away. I also didn’t want to but that’s another story.

“I am,” she said. But she didn’t move either.

“You’ve had a computer inserted into your brain,” I said laughing again. “That’s one rumor that hasn’t leaked.”

Liz chuckled along with my lame attempt at humor.

“I was sitting here after you left,” she said softly. “I started looking around, you know, just really seeing my surroundings. I put on a cap and went outside to look at the view from the back deck. It’s a great view.”

“Particularly when the neighbors are sunbathing,” I added.

“Uh-huh,” Liz said as she dug her fingers into my ribs. I squirmed but I was trapped against the counter. She relented after only a moment. “I started to think about how ... peaceful ... it is here. I have solitude at my house or my apartment. I mean, I can be alone. Here, I was by myself but I wasn’t alone. I can be lonely when I have a thousand people near me.”

She moved her head away again to look at me.

“That’s one of the lyrics,” she said. “‘I’ve felt alone on a crowded street; now when you’re near me, I feel complete.’ That’s how I feel. It’s ... a little scary. It’s hard to trust.”

“That’s not exclusive to you or your line of work,” I countered. “Trust is hard for everyone. There are just as many selfish people outside of the celebrity world as there are inside of it.”

“Yeah,” Liz agreed. “I’ve ... I’ve thought about this the last day or so. Stephanie is sort of like Sarah. She asked me why I was sure you wouldn’t try to exploit me or something. I had nothing concrete to use as an example. I just ... knew. I guess it comes back to when we were kids. You could have had anything you wanted from me. I, literally, would have done anything you asked me to do. No, that’s not even right. You could have told me to do anything and I think I would have ... walk your dog, clean your car, polish your shoes, blow you in the janitor’s closet between classes. I would have said yes to any of those things. And you knew it! But you never once took advantage of my ... puppy love. You never once had me do something degrading just to show your friends I would.”

“I would never do anything like that,” I said.

“Nope,” Liz said. “You wouldn’t. Do you know the biggest highlight of my high school life?”

“The talent show,” I said.

“No,” Liz answered immediately. “It was ... a week or two before the talent show. I was sitting in the library and you were with your friends. You saw me and just left them standing there. You told me that you didn’t understand one of the formulas in Algebra and asked me if I had time to help you. I could have been performing open-heart surgery and I would have told you I had time. But you were so cool! You told me that you knew I had better things to do than to teach Algebra but if I found a minute or two and you were around that you would like my help. I felt like I was 10-feet tall when you walked away. At least until I realized that I hadn’t spoken a word. I think I had managed to nod or something but no words had come out.”

“You were just about the smartest person I knew,” I admitted. “I knew you understood the class and, uh, I knew you’d help.”

“Not because it was me,” I added hastily. “But because you were also the sweetest person I knew. Even when people were horrible to you, you were never mean to them. Honestly, a lot of people in that township are lucky I’m not you. I would have crushed every person that screwed with me.”

“Oh, it crossed my mind a few times,” Liz admitted. “My second favorite memory of high school also involves you. Do you remember when they tried to vote me to the spring dance court just before I moved?”

“Yes,” I said. I knew my voice got tight because the thought pissed me off almost 20 years after it had happened. I wasn’t aware that Liz had ever found out about it.

“I almost wished it had worked,” Liz said, smiling. “I ... I found out that you told the assholes that were trying to do it that you would ask me to go – and make sure they went to the dance with black eyes. It’s sort of a shame. You would have gotten so lucky that night! I had ... I had already had a few contacts from Nashville by then. I knew that my life was going to change. I was going to leave my glasses at home and use my own money to buy a kick-ass gown. I decided that the joke could be on them.”

“You should have told me,” I said. “I would have played along.”

“Oh, I had plenty of ideas to convince you,” Liz said. “I might have even shaved my armpits for that one.”

I chuckled lightly.

“I was going to rock your world,” Liz said pulling back and smiling with me. “Even then I was a bit ... uninhibited in that area. I lived mostly in a fantasy world back then and I had no real concept of what sex was actually about. I had this idea that sex was ... primal. It was about acrobatic positions and ass slapping. My entire knowledge base came from the Internet.”

“Jesus,” I muttered.

“Yep, there would have been no vanilla missionary position that night,” Liz said, laughing. “Your loss. Instead, I lost my virginity to a guy that turned out to be gay.”

“What?” I asked.

“Yep,” Liz said with a nod. “Terry Meadows.”

“Did he go to our school?” I wondered as I searched my memory for the name.

“He’s a singer,” Liz said, rolling her eyes. “He was another one RFN plucked from obscurity to program into the perfect media sensation. He started on tour when he was 15. So they had me opening for him before my first disc dropped. I was 17 and he was 18. We ... fucked. That’s the only word I can use to describe it. It was ... a very terrible time for us both. He was hiding his sexuality; I was a complete idiot. We were ashamed to even look at each other for the next month. I mean, we had a song together. I didn’t have a band yet so I used a part of his. My last song led directly into his first. It was this duet and it was supposed to be all romantic and ... sexy. Instead it was awkward and embarrassing. We dropped it midway through the tour.

“He told me at the end of the tour that he was coming out to the label. I supported his decision but the label didn’t. They dropped him despite the fact he had two discs that sold really well. He never really got the chance to succeed. Another label gave him a shot but without the publicity machine behind him he couldn’t make it work.”

“Is he still touring?” I wondered.

“No,” Liz said, shaking her head. “I offered him a spot as one of my backup singers. He decided to just quit music altogether. He made some dough so he moved to New York and does some off-Broadway stuff.”

“That’s too bad,” I told her.

She shrugged.

“It wasn’t his sexuality that caused him to turn down a spot in my band,” she told me. “It was his ego. He ... he thinks he’s the one that got me my big break. He never understood that the only way to fail was to buck the label. If he had kept quiet for a couple of more releases, he could have told them to fuck off and he would have been too big for them to fight. Instead, he thought he was more than he was, and it bit him on the ass.”

“Do you want to go sit down?” I asked. We were having an in-depth conversation with our arms around the other in the kitchen.

“If there is a way I can stay like this while we’re sitting,” Liz told me with a wide smile. “How about if you sit on the couch and I sit on your lap?”

I laughed but shrugged. My shoulder made its presence known and that was all it took for Liz to back away.

“Did the way we were standing hurt?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “It does that all the time. It wasn’t a product of anything but a spill I took seven years ago.”

“Let’s sit down,” Liz told me. She took my hand and led to me to my couch. I sat and expected her to land on my lap. Instead she sat down beside me. I glanced back at the bottle of water I’d left on the counter. I started to rise but Liz popped back almost as quickly as her butt hit the cushions.

“I’ll get it,” she said. “Do you want some of the fruit we cut up? I saved half of it for you.”

“I was cutting it up for you,” I said. “I don’t eat lunch very often.”

I heard the refrigerator open and Liz returned with two bottles of water and the bowl of fruit salad that we’d fixed.

“You slept through breakfast, too,” she said, handing me the bowl and a fork. She blushed at the look I gave her. “I ... I want to take care of you.”

“Thanks,” I told her. I meant it. I didn’t want anyone to be my servant but it was nice to have someone around that was aware of my needs. I told myself that I needed to be just as solicitous to her. In that vein, I offered a piece of cantaloupe on the fork. She smiled as she took the bite.

“I can see us sharing a shrimp salad or feeding each other grapes,” she giggled.

“I am really sorry that I was so shallow when we were younger,” I admitted.

“It wasn’t that,” Liz said. “It was ... youth. You know, my body is exactly the same now as it was then. Yeah, I had LASIK surgery and got my braces off. Outside of that, what you see now is exactly how I was then. I might be five or 10 pounds heavier but that’s all. I could have saved my allowance and got nicer clothes. I probably could have asked Mom and Dad to get them for me and they would have. I could have cut my hair and gotten contacts. I could have taken dance classes and tried out for cheerleader or majorette. But I chose to revel in my backwardness. I don’t know if the decision was conscious or not but, looking back, I didn’t have to be the butt of everybody’s jokes.”

“I can still remember the day we found out you’d signed a recording deal,” I said. “The looks of people’s faces were just ... I loved it. I loved to see those arrogant pricks taken down. Your first song came out right before our senior prom.”