33. ELLY
33
ELLY
I ’m ecstatic. Floating. Buckled into an orange car.
I watch Jack drive for a few moments, relishing the concentration that washes over his handsome features as he focuses on the road. He looks huge in this car, and we’re so low to the ground.
He loves me.
I want to say it back. Want to scream it. I love you . I love you. I love you . Instead, I say, “You’re crazy.”
He smiles, keeping his eyes on the road. “Nothing says I’m sorry like a Lamborghini, right?”
“I thought it said I love you.”
He chuckles. “Yeah, that too.” He reaches one hand towards me and I thread my fingers through his large, warm ones. He squeezes my hand. “Are we okay?”
I make him wait for it, just a little while. “Yeah. Your mum is a bitch, though.”
He glances at me. “You know I’m not her, right?”
A strange darkness settles in me. “I do, but a mother’s influence is like a virus. It can linger, dormant, for a really long time until something triggers it. We think we’re all free and independent, but we’re not.”
Jack shudders. “Sounds horrific.” He’s quiet for a moment. “What did your mother say, then? What did she infect you with? What’s gonna spring out at me when I’m not expecting it?”
I snort. “You don’t want to know.”
“I do, actually. I want to know everything about you.”
I roll my bottom lip through my teeth, pinching it until it hurts. “It’s more what she didn’t say. She’s not vocal like your mum. She’s quietly disapproving. Both my parents are. The silent treatment was a big punishment at home.” I let out a sigh. “They’re both straight-laced corporate lawyers.”
Jack scratches his forehead. “Oh, yeah. There was that big case last year—”
“There’s always a case. It’s their whole life. When I refused to go to law school, they stopped my allowance. Said if I wanted to pursue music that much, then the music should be able to pay my way. And if it couldn’t, then…”
“Then what?”
“Then I’ll be exactly what they think I am. An embarrassment. A failure.”
“They said that?”
“No. But I know they think it, and it’s really hard not to believe it’s true when it’s what your parents think about you.” I sigh, and Jack’s worried gaze darts from the windscreen to me, and he gives me a small smile as if to say, ‘ it’s okay. I’m here for you now ’. “We don’t really talk much anymore. Mum always wanted me to be more like Kate.”
“Kate, my sister?”
“Yeah. She’s Mum’s ideal daughter. Ambitious, hard-working, corporate. Earns a fortune. Gorgeous. Wears respectable clothes. Kate wouldn’t be seen dead in cowboy boots, unless it was fancy dress, maybe. And she has straight hair and no facial piercings.”
Jack huffs as though this is ridiculous. “Well, I’m glad you’re nothing like Kate, because this situation”—he waves a hand between us—“would be a fucked-up Freudian shitfest.” I laugh. “You’re perfect, just as you are. Uniquely you. Unbelievably talented, and if your parents can’t see that, then that’s on them.”
Warmth spreads through my upper body, burning fiercely around my heart. I think I love him . No one has ever supported my career the way Jack has. But there’s still something I need to know before I can completely relax with him again. “Did you hook up with me because I was the ‘nearest and easiest’ woman?”
He grunts dismissively. “No. I hooked up with you because I wanted to. A lot. A hell of a lot, actually.” He pauses, and I wait, barely breathing. “You weren’t the easiest, anyway. Lydia was right there offering herself to me in underwear and a trench coat.”
True .
He sighs and taps the steering wheel with his index finger. “Look, El. I’ve been with a lot of women. That’s no secret, but you… you’re something else.” The awe in his voice has butterflies springing to life in my stomach. “Watching you wander about my house, playing all our games, seeing you dress up and strut about… and getting to know you… all of it . I love it. I love you . I love how funny you are, and how you make me laugh. I haven’t laughed so much with anyone else, ever. I love being around you, and even if you didn’t want me, I’d still be here, waiting for you to notice me.” He glances over at me. “The sex, too. Can’t forget that. The feel of your skin”—he reaches over and strokes my thigh briefly—“the taste of your mouth. The taste of you .” He bites his bottom lip, his gaze dipping downwards, making heat flare between my legs. “All of it has been wonderful, and I love you so much…" A little line appears between his brows, and when he speaks again, there is the slightest tremor in his voice. “If this doesn't work out between us, it’s gonna really fucking hurt, so can we try not to let that happen?”
No one has ever said anything like this to me. My body aches from how much I want to tell him I feel exactly the same, but I can't. Not yet. It takes all my concentration to say, “We can definitely try.”
“Good. Because I’m not buying another one of these ridiculous cars, unless it’s one I can race on the track.” He winks. “And I’m not keen on this either.” He thumps his fist to his chest, almost the way a smoker might shift phlegm from their lungs. “It’s deeply uncomfortable, this love bollocks.”
A series of gasps pop off my tongue. “Love bollocks ? You are so romantic,” I say, sounding as sarcastic as I can manage.
He chuckles. “Hey. This is new for me. The worst I’ve had to endure in the past is heartburn.”
I gape at him. “Wait, no one broke your heart? All those women and you never cried?”
He snorts, as though this suggestion is completely ludicrous. “No.”
This feels surprising and yet not surprising all at once. “You didn’t love a single one of them?”
He pauses, his cheek distorting like he’s rubbing his tongue on his molars as he thinks. “No. It was all good fun, but no.”
“So you never lost someone you loved?”
His reaction is subtle but intense; eyes flickering, fingers squeezing the wheel. “Yeah, I did. My dad.”
Guilt sears me. Of course, he knows what loss feels like. Perhaps not in a romantic way, but his father died suddenly of a heart attack less than a decade ago. Jack watches my reaction in glances he steals from the road.
He flicks the indicator and turns into our street. He parks the car outside the house, switches off the engine, and turns towards me. In the silence that follows, the air turns heavy. “If anyone’s going to break my heart, it’ll be you.”
The anticipation of pain in his voice shoots across the space between us, embedding itself into my heart like a bullet. “I won’t, if you won’t,” I say quietly.
“Deal.” He leans across the car and kisses me, and his tongue is soft and warm and the scruff on his jaw scrapes my face.
Sitting in the passenger seat of this ridiculous car, Jack’s tongue in my mouth, it occurs to me that life is perfect.
This, right here, is perfection.
The days following Jack’s confession pass in a blur of sex and kisses. I’ve never felt so loved. So completely safe. Long may it continue.
I love you, I love you, I love you. He’s said it so many times that I find myself wondering if I’m dreaming. It feels too soon, too fast, and yet not at all. It’s as if this state of affairs was always there, like a pool of water I could have dived into at any time, but I chose to stand at the edge instead, convinced it was too dangerous to take a swim.
I’m fully submerged now, and the water is blissful.
This morning, Jack is wandering about the kitchen in just his boxers. I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to seeing him bare-chested and up close this way. He’s jaw-droppingly ripped, and I can’t believe it’s me who gets to be here when he takes his suit off.
“Hey,” he says to grab my attention. As if he doesn’t already have it. “Your album came back from the studio. Listen to this.”
He holds his phone to his mouth and instructs, “Play Elly’s Album.”
He smiles and tips his head at the speakers in the ceiling, wordlessly instructing me to listen as the chords of my first song ring out.
“Elly’s Album?” I ask.
“I didn’t know what you wanted to call it, so for now, it’s just Elly’s Album. Do you have a title in mind?”
“Nope.” I hadn’t let my imagination go to the place where I had a full album, let alone a name for it. I was accumulating songs without a fixed goal, as if they might magically coalesce into something worthy.
Yet again, Jack has pushed me where I couldn’t go alone.
He stands still and we listen for a few seconds until my voice trails over a high note at the emotional climax of the song. I’ve sung it a million times, but it still gives me shivers to hear it. “That, right there. That is fucking genius,” Jack says, pointing upwards, as if my song is a visible item in the air around us.
He sways to the melody. “You have a gift. Not many people can take feelings out of the ether and turn them into something other people can understand. You’re translating a language that has no words, but that everyone recognises. It’s like magic.”
My heart soars, but Jack instantly goes back to the phone, completely unaware that he’s just doused me with the best compliment ever. He swipes his phone screen, and the music reverts to the first track on my album. He points both index fingers at the speakers in the ceiling. “You’re gonna be big. You have to start believing it.”
He’s always saying these things to me. Little sound bites, telling me how good I am. How talented. How beautiful. He’s re-writing my script, day by day, and I love him for it.
“You haven’t posted anything on social media for three days,” he says, still scrolling through his phone. “Why not?”
Jack set up my social media channels a few weeks ago, while I sat by his side, and although it made it easier to face the writhing fear in my gut when he was there, as soon as he wasn’t, I ran away from it again. If I put myself out there, people can laugh. People can say I’m crap. I can fail.
“It’s embarrassing.”
“You believe this is good?” He gestures once more to the speakers.
“Sure.” I can hear the hesitation in my tone, so I’ve no doubt Jack can too.
He comes towards me, right up close until he puts his palm right between my breasts and my breathing shallows. “In here. Do you believe it in here?”
I look deliberately at his fingers. “It’s hard to think with your hand on my tits.” Looking chastened, he removes his hand, but he cups my cheek with it instead and I rest my face there for a moment.
“You’ve got to start believing, because that impacts every single action you take.” His words are a tender whisper that nestles in my heart. “If you believe, you’ll go the extra mile. You’ll make that extra post, write another song, make the last song even better. If you don’t believe, you won’t bother. All those choices are cumulative, and they have ripple effects you can’t anticipate. And I’m telling you, it’s good.”
He strokes my cheek with his thumb, and I hope he can’t read the doubtful thoughts running through my mind, not only about me and my ability, but about him. Jack Lansen isn’t exactly the arbiter of taste when it comes to music. “Thank you,” I say.
Jack tips his chin in acknowledgment of my thanks. “We can get Derek to step up the posts he’s doing for you, shunt more of the burden to him, if that would make it easier. He’s been doing a good job, right? He’s great at the marketing for creative types.”
“Creative types?”
He lifts his hand from my face and rubs at his jaw, his tongue swiping over his bottom lip as he assesses me. “That’s what you are, isn’t it? All the feelings and the lyrics and the music.”
“And what are you?”
“Not that.” He nods his head up at the speaker in the ceiling, changing the subject. “This song. Start with this one. Put it out there over and over again until it goes viral.”
Fear splices my insides. Viral ? Millions and millions of people hearing me? Seeing me? “I’m not ready.”
“You are.”
I fidget, shuffling in my seat, tearing the croissant in front of me into tiny pieces. “The idea of it is terrifying.”
He’s staring at me with such a serious expression that I almost cower before him. “What’s the fear? Because fear is bullshit. If you know what it is, you can disprove it and move on.”
That sounds ridiculously simple, and I can’t believe it would ever work. Could I have done that when I was sitting in that reception area, waiting for my interview with Robert Lloyd, panic rising through my veins like a tsunami?
Could I have rationalised away all my fear?
Under Jack’s watchful gaze, my thoughts begin to churn and anxiety claws at me, but I don’t want him to see how frightening this is for me. Everything comes so easily to him. He’s so competent, so capable, so confident in his own ability.
“You know what?” I say. “I know I’m good at what I do. The music, the song-writing. The singing. I do know that, but...” I fade off, struggling to complete the thought.
Jack eyes me, as though he’s weighing me in some way, then he blows out a breath in a gust. “Seriously, if I find the prick who made you this afraid of putting yourself out there, I’ll destroy him.” He pauses, his eyes widening into an expression of appalled revelation. “Oh, shit. Am I gonna have to kill your mum and dad?”
I let out the tiniest laugh in response. “No. Maybe. There is no one person. It’s the whole thing. Music is precious to me. It’s my creative outlet… it’s intimate. Private, almost. I gave up a lot to do this, and once things are out in the online world, they’re no longer mine. I can’t control what people think of me or my music. If it’s not perfect, everyone will tear me apart.” The fear grows as I put it into words, rising like a cobra up my throat, preparing to strike. “If I put myself out there... Shit happens. I let it in. I cause it. Like your mum turning up and screaming at me. Or the tomatoes at the Marchmont. And those are small scale. What happens when something goes viral? If I don’t—”
“If you don’t do anything, nothing can hurt you?”
His words burn right through me, exposing a truckload of excruciating pain behind them as though they’re dragging every bad memory through my torso. I’m trapped by my own fear. I can’t look at him. Tears are throbbing behind my eyeballs, waiting to spill.
“El,” he says, his voice soft. “No one is perfect. If that’s what you need to be to move forward, you’re going to be sitting in the Marchmont strumming that guitar for the rest of your life. There will always be people who don’t like you. There will be critics. There will be people who are rude and obnoxious and say fucking nasty shit. But if you don’t let the shit stick… if you don’t let it get inside your head… you win.”
“I get it. I can hear you, but…”
I can’t. I can't do it.
Jack's large, warm hands come to rest on my shoulders. “All you need to do—all you ever need to do—is get up and try again. You keep fucking trying until you get where you want to go, and you make sure you’re letting the shit slide off on the way there. You have to be bigger than what people throw at you, or it will crush you. And I really don’t want that to happen because I like having you around.” My insides begin to fizz, releasing tension I wasn't even aware of. How is it possible for a few kind words to dispel pain I’ve endured for years?
But it’s not just the words. It’s him . Knowing I have Jack Lansen’s support means more than I could ever have guessed it would. It’s a balm that soothes all my wounds.
His piercing blue eyes fix on me. “I love you. And you’re brilliant. Get out there and shine.”
“Okay.”
He kisses me gently, but when he pulls back he’s still frowning as though he’s not convinced I’ve taken the advice on board. He dips his head to make sure he has my full attention. “I’ve got a meeting at nine, so I have to go get dressed. I’ll get Derek to call you. You’re wonderful. Don’t forget it.” He releases me and turns away.
“Do you have five minutes?”
He stops, glancing back over his shoulder, a dark eyebrow rising. “What do you want to do in five minutes?”
“Fuck me before you go.”
He sighs like I’m asking for the world, pretending it’s such a hardship when we both know it isn’t, and says, “Only because I love you.” The words make me swoon, and when he lifts a bunch of bananas from the fruit bowl and reveals a pile of condoms beneath, I’m too turned on to even laugh.
He rips one open and sheaths himself, taking me there on the counter. Quick and hot and sweaty, and we come together, groaning, screaming and gasping as though there isn’t enough oxygen in the room.
Afterwards, Jack rests his head on my shoulder, and I whisper into his ear. “I love you too.”
He chuckles. “It was the condoms in the fruit bowl that finally did it, wasn’t it?”
I’ve never felt this happy . “Yes. Absolutely. That’s what it was.”