Chapter 3 Miles
MILES
It took me months to get used to waking up alone in bed after I moved out of what I had considered my home.
The novelty and joy of being able to jerk off whenever I felt like it—as long as Macy wasn’t staying with me—wore off pretty fast. That was replaced by the subtle ache of knowing that the woman I’d planned on spending the rest of my life loving was no longer mine to love.
Mornings haven’t been fun for a long time.
A few years ago, something changed. A few years ago, I started waking up to a slightly different kind of ache—the ache of knowing that a woman I could possibly have loved, even if only for an hour or so over breakfast, can’t ever be mine.
Even though Tyler lives in New York and he’s dating someone I just happened to set him up with—he still has feelings for Aria. I can tell.
He’s an important client who gets more and more important each year. Martin Hancock is his manager now. Martin is practically family, now that his niece is engaged to Owen. Both of my brothers would give their left nuts to be in one of Tyler’s movies.
Yeah, they would all tell me I’m just making up reasons not to date her because they think I’m afraid of falling in love again.
But they’d be wrong. All three of those guys are madly in love right now, so they have no recollection of what it’s like to be a sane and rational man who makes sane, rational decisions about this kind of thing.
I mean, what do they want me to do? Ask out a pleasant, beautiful young woman who hates everything that I represent as a human being? A woman who used to live with one of my clients? A woman who cockblocks my only child’s dreams of being the star of a musical?
I’m not afraid of anything.
I just know better than to create unnecessary complications.
I don’t have time for complications.
I barely even have time for uncomplicated situations.
It’s just a coincidence that I realized Zuma Beach is a great place to run at the same time that I met Aria.
The fact that I suddenly overcame my aversion to sand and marine aromas has nothing to do with her either.
It is also a coincidence that I discovered how good the coffee and breakfast burritos are at Carmela’s Café the same morning that Aria mentioned she always goes there.
If I ever have to explain that to Tyler, it wouldn’t be a lie.
But for those first agonizing moments after I wake up alone every morning now, I find some sort of consistent thrill, if not comfort, in jacking it to that asshole client’s ex.
I close my eyes and picture myself tugging on a fistful of her long, wavy hair, twisting it around my hand.
She gasps as I kiss all the way up the length of her slender neck.
I think about those tiny gold earrings and that sexy fucking toe ring and that ass that points to the heavens while she rides the waves like a tiny dancer.
I have so many questions. Why hasn’t she gotten that bumper fixed?
Isn’t she worried that someone will steal her surfboard from her convertible?
Doesn’t she have someone managing her money for her?
Is she as uninhibited in bed as she is on the beach?
Is she as flexible as I think she is? Does she look happy or sad when she comes?
Does her pussy taste like salt water or salt water taffy or a fucking Starburst Summer Splash?
I need to taste that unexplainably juicy rainbow.
I need to know if her nipples were hard beneath that T-shirt because of me or the air conditioning.
I want to make her hit those high notes like she did in that theme song for her show.
I want her to ride my longboard all night until she—
“Daddyyyyy!”
“No!”
Fuck.
Macy bangs the palm of her hand on my bedroom door five times after yelling from the hallway. “But Daddy!”
“Don’t come in! Hang on.”
Fucking shit fucker shit fucking cock fuck…
“I need to talk to yoooouuuuu!!!”
I drag myself out of bed and try to pace around. “Are you hurt?”
“No! Are you?! You sound funny.”
“Just hang on, honey. Wait out there!”
“But it’s Gramma Brodie’s birthday today, remember?!”
And suddenly, Elvis has left the building.
All of the blood has abandoned my pelvic region.
The only females who exist in the world now are my daughter and my mother.
I grab a pair of sweats and open the door.
It’s just after eight on a Saturday morning, and Macy is already dressed, her hair is brushed, and she looks about as upbeat as a news anchor reporting on a war.
That’s what her life has become, I think.
A war between herself and everyone who doesn’t think she deserves to be the star of a musical. “What’s up, hon?”
She sighs, pushes past me into my room, and takes a seat at the edge of the bed.
“When are we going to Facetime Gramma? Because I have to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to her, but I have my audition at two o’clock.
So I don’t want to wear out my voice before that, but I also don’t want to sound bad if I sing to Gramma after my audition. ”
“Your audition is today?”
“Yes! You have to take me because Mommy’s out of town, remember?! And today’s Nanny Cho’s day off! You didn’t forget, did you?!”
“Yeah, no, I’ll take you. I can take you. Two o’clock?”
“Yes. But we have to sign in before that, so we need to be there by one forty-five.”
“Okay. Yeah, okay. Why don’t we call her right after breakfast?”
“I’m too nervous to eat breakfast.”
“Well, you have to eat, honey.”
“Can I sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to her first? And then I’ll have a small, warm meal and warm water with honey, and then I have to steam my nasal passages and my throat.”
“Okay. How do you do that?”
“I brought my facial steamer in my bag. You just plug it in and add purified water and turn it on. It relaxes my throat muscles. Mommy read that Idina Menzel takes steam showers to do that before she performs.”
Clara usually takes Macy to her auditions when I’m at work, but I do know that my daughter likes to plan out every tiny detail when she’s anxious about something.
“Okay. So we’ll Facetime Gramma, which can be like a vocal warm-up for you, right? Light, warm breakfast, steam your vocal cords, get dressed so you look pretty, get to the audition early with plenty of time to sign up.”
“Sign in!”
“Sign in! What about lunch?”
“I can’t have any dairy before I sing, so no cheese!”
“Okay, okay. No cheese for lunch. No milkshakes for lunch. We’ll celebrate with fondue afterward. How about vegetables and hummus for lunch?”
Macy scrunches up her face and then collapses back onto the bed. “I don’t know! I don’t think I can eat lunch.”
“Okay. Well, as long as you eat breakfast, then…” I look down at her.
Her face is still all scrunched up, like she’s constipated or trying to hold in a fart.
If she were a boy I could tell her that and make her laugh.
But Macy doesn’t like to talk about bodily functions.
She doesn’t want anyone to know that anything other than a voice comes out of her, but she doesn’t seem to realize that her singing voice is…
not good. She’s probably tone deaf. Or just in denial.
Or she might not care that she sings off-key, if you can even call what she does singing.
But I’m not going to be the one to tell her any of that.
If I told her that, neither she nor her mother would ever forgive me.
So I will leave that up to my ex-wife. Or her second husband.
Although pretty much everyone who isn’t related to her seems to have tried to convey all of that to her, in one way or another.
And I would punch every single one of them in the face if I could.
They’re right.
But I’d still punch them.
“You okay, honey?”
“No.”
“You nervous about the audition?”
“Yes.”
“It’s okay to be nervous, you know?”
“I know.”
“What’s this one for again?”
“Alice! Alice in Wonderland!”
“Right. And you’re auditioning for…”
“Alice!”
Shit. “Right. Good. Do you want me to help you run lines or anything?”
“Later.”
“Okay. What song are you going to sing for the audition?”
“Mommy chose it for me. It’s called Yes! We Have No Bananas.”
She’s so serious when she says it, I have to laugh. “Really? That’s a fun song.”
“It’s weird. But Mommy says that’s good for this audition because Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass are weird stories.”
“It is, but that’s what’s fun about it. I used to read those books to you, remember?”
“Yes. I just… I want to be Alice so bad.”
She also wanted to be Little Orphan Annie so bad.
She wanted to be Dorothy so, so bad. She wanted to be Anne of Green Gables and Lucy in that Charlie Brown musical.
If a children’s production of Frozen ever happens around here and she doesn’t get cast as either Elsa or Anna, I honestly think she would set fire to the theatre.
“Yeah. Well, honey, just go to the audition and do your best.”
“I always do. Always! But I never get it.”
“But you have fun practicing and auditioning, right?”
“No,” she answers, like she can’t believe I’d ask such a ridiculous question.
“I thought you did.”
She squeezes her eyes shut. “I don’t understand. I want to be the star so bad, Daddy. I try so hard. Why can’t I ever have it?”
“Aw, honey…” The fuck am I supposed to say to that?
I operate from my brain all day for work, but every single thing about my daughter breaks my heart.
I lie back beside her and stare up at the ceiling.
“It’s good to want things. Y’know? At least you try to get what you want. Some people don’t even do that.”
“It hurts not getting it,” she whispers.
“I know. It hurts more if you don’t even go for it, though. You’re so brave. I’m really, really proud of you. You know that, right?”
She sighs dramatically. It’s the only way she knows how to do things—dramatically. And somehow slightly off-key. “Yes. But I want to be the star.”