Chapter 14
14
Sydney
T he melody was almost perfect. The chord progression… A minor, D minor, G7…
“I like that one,” Wyatt said from the porch where he was measuring planks to finish the far side of the porch. “Not that I know anything, but that was good.”
I made a note of the chord change in my notebook and played it from the beginning.
“Yeah, I like that too,” I said.
“You know what it reminds me of?” Wyatt asked. He ran the saw for a second, sending sawdust up into the air and it fell down on his shoulders and in his beard. Lumberjack Wyatt. “The last summer nights before school starts. When you’re excited for school to start but you also don’t want summer to end.”
The word he was looking for was bittersweet, and that was exactly what I was going for. The minor chords were magic that way. I smiled and ran it through again, adding some of the lyrics I’d been playing with.
I’m just a paper doll. Fold me up and put me away.
Where you left me I could not stay.
I could feel Wyatt listening and it reminded me of those early days when performing was a drug I could not get enough of. It was me and the fans and nothing else mattered. Here in this clearing, it was that times a thousand. So sweet and pure.
The last chord echoed around the porch and Wyatt clapped. “God, Syd. That’s a great fucking song.”
“Well, it’s half a song. But thank you.”
“You’re right about it being different from your other stuff.”
I rested my cheek on the curve of my guitar and watched him as he measured and cut, measured and cut. So steady and methodical.
It was making me horny. Everything about him was making me horny. The muscles under that shirt he wore. The way he’d stand up and pull up his shorts. His hands on his hips like he meant business. The bead of sweat heading down his neck.
Horny. Horny. Horny.
The guy was a thirst trap.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Like it’s a little country, sure, but it’s…deeper, you know? The lyrics sound like you, like you’re singing from your life.”
I hummed, not quite able to take the compliment yet.
Last night, for some reason I did not understand, he insisted on sleeping on the couch again. After everything we’d done it seemed a little old fashioned to me, but when Wyatt decides something it’s decided.
“You’re sore,” is what he told me. “You don’t need me pawing at you in the night.”
What I didn’t say was that I wanted him to paw at me. After yesterday, I wanted more of him. In every way I could get it.
I took all those feelings and poured it into the new song. I was calling it Paper Doll and it was everything I’d been feeling the last few years. It was sad, sure, but mostly it was angry. I really loved it.
An hour passed like that. Me working. Him working. The birds landing in the trees nearby and taking off again. At one point, Wyatt pointed out a deer walking through the edge of the clearing.
I didn’t need golf tournaments or celebrity interviews to get myself back on track.
I needed this place. This silence.
This man.
He held a hand to his back and winced as he straightened from the crouch he’d been bent into.
“We should go couch shopping,” I said.
“Couch shopping?” he asked, rubbing the sawdust out of his hair. It flew up into the air and got caught in the sunlight like he was sending out sparks.
“That couch is the worst.”
“How the fuck are we going to get a couch up this mountain today?”
I smiled and set aside my guitar. “This is the fun part about having money. You can make all the problems go away.”
Wyatt
“I can’t believe we pulled that off,” I said.
“You don’t shop much, do you?” Syd asked. She was wearing that Peaks ball cap and a pair of big sunglasses. If she thought she was in disguise, she wasn’t. She sparkled through downtown Telluride. Tinker Bell on a shopping trip. “Because that’s basically how it works. You go in, you pay a bunch of money for something that the shop provides.”
“The delivery, is what I’m talking about.”
“Well, that’s because you’re with me,” she said with a sassy little walk.
We were walking out of one of the few furniture stores in Telluride. A place that specialized in rustic cabin decor. The leather couch that Syd picked out with those awesome copper rivets was both a couch and pullout bed with a really comfortable mattress.
Liam and Dad would be thrilled the next time they visited.
Plus, the shop was going to deliver it in the next couple of hours. No extra charge because the owner of the store was apparently Sydney Malloy’s biggest fan.
A fully grown woman with silver hair and a thriving successful business went fully fan girl, complete with squealing and tears. “That first album of yours,” she’d said, hugging Syd like she was a long-lost daughter, “got me through my divorce. I just had it on repeat in my car all the time.”
Syd laughed and cried with her and I stood back and just marveled. She’d been seventeen when that album came out and her songs had provided comfort to a woman in her forties going through something awful.
How incredible was that?
I had fans, sure. But I didn’t make people cry. The closest I got was drunk Peak’s fans coming up and telling me how, when we won the Stanley Cup four years ago, their father had cried real tears. Mostly people wanted to tell me I was playing for shit. Or they wanted to talk about Liam.
Sydney was something special. The effect she had on people was special. All that garbage with the media and asshole fake boyfriends was just that. Garbage.
If she could push all of that aside and record an album full of songs like the one she was writing on my porch – she’d be unstoppable. On her own terms. For the right reasons.
“It’s perfect for the cabin,” Syd said as we walked down the sidewalk, peering into other shops as we went. “I knew it the second I saw it. But, you know, you could use some blankets and pillows. Maybe some art on the walls. Something to make it a little cozier.”
She stopped suddenly, looking down the main street of Telluride, the view of snow covered mountains in the background.
“Wow,” she whispered.
“Yeah,” I said, looking up at the mountains beside her. “It’s how I felt the first time I stood here and saw that view.”
“It’s like when I saw the ocean for the first time. I didn’t think anything could be so grand. But this… this is grand .”
“Come on,” I took her hand. Only because she wasn’t going to watch where she was going now that she was focused on the mountains. “How about we get some lunch?”
“Oh,” she said, still looking at the mountains. “I could eat.”
We tucked inside one of my favorite spots when I was in town. An informal place full of hikers and locals. At the bar I ordered beers and some poutine, which the two Canadian dudes who owned the bar, rocked.
I found a table in the back and made Syd sit against the wall so I could shield her from anyone coming in the place with their camera out. Although, on a random Tuesday afternoon it was nearly empty.
I didn’t want to keep her from her fans, not after seeing her with the furniture store owner, but I wanted her to myself, too.
Was that wrong? I wondered. Selfish? As her fake husband, where did I belong in the equation?
Liam would know, I thought sourly. Liam did social shit a million times better than me.
I set one of the beers, a local IPA, down in front of her and stopped. “I don’t even know if you like beer.”
We were doing this all out of order. Married, but not really. Dating, but not really. Fucking, but not really. Knowing each other, but not really.
All we needed was a damn baby and we’d…
It hit me in the back of my head like a sledge-hammer.
“I like beer with salty food,” she was saying. “And on hot days it’s hard to beat, but-”
“I didn’t use a condom.”
She blinked at me. I stood there with my own beer in my hand and I could actually feel the blood draining from my head.
“You better give me the beer, you look like you’re going to faint.” Syd took it from my hand and set it on the table.
She wasn’t wrong. I collapsed into the chair across from her.
She took a sip of beer and made a considering face. “Not bad.”
“Syd, did you hear me?”
“I mean, it’s a little punch you in the face but not as bad as some IPA’s.”
“This is serious,” I barked.
“Why?” she whispered. “Do you have an STD I need to know about?”
“No,” I snapped. “I get tested once a year as part of the team physical and I always, always, wear a condom.”
“Well, not always , always.”
Was this her joking? “Again, Syd. Too. Soon.”
Our fries were delivered to our table and she dug in with a fork, getting lots of cheese and fries and gravy in one bite. She put it in her mouth and closed her eyes like someone was going down on her in the shower.
“Syd,” I hissed, keeping my voice low. “We didn’t use a condom. Please tell me, despite the fact that you haven’t been having sex, that you’re on some form of birth control.”
“Uh, no. I got one of those shots back when I was eighteen, but I had really bad side effects from it.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Okay, let’s not panic.”
“Wyatt, you didn’t… you know …in… you know .”
“Oh geezus,” I groaned. “First, you need to start using the words. You can’t have sex unless you can say sex words. No, I didn’t come in your vagina, but if you took biology in high school, then surely someone explained the dangers of precum.”
“You’re telling me your precum is dangerous?”
“Tink,” I growled with my best don’t fuck with me voice.
Her shoulders slumped. “Okay, I’ll admit I wasn’t thinking about birth control, that’s for sure.”
No, she was completely focused on losing her virginity and I was completely focused on her.
“Just so we’re clear, this is on me,” I said. “I’m the one who is responsible. There is no excuse for not grabbing a condom the second I stepped into the cabin.”
“Shouldn’t it be on both of us?”
“Let me take the blame,” I said.
“Okay. I’ll blame you, your dangerous precum and your way too big penis. How about that for sex words?” She winked at me before putting another bite of poutine in her mouth.
“It’s not too big,” I tried to explain. “You weren’t ready …doesn’t matter. The point is, now we have to wait and see if you’re pregnant. Before we even consider any kind of separation or divorce.”
God, the truth was, I hadn’t been thinking about separation or divorce.
“And if I’m pregnant?” she asked.
I gotta build the loft and we have to get those headphones for the baby when I take them to concerts. I’ll definitely have to retire…
Then I remembered those songs. The album she had to record and the way that woman in the store responded to her. She was young and a kid was probably not what she wanted right now.
“Let’s cross that bridge when we get to it,” I said and she nodded.
“Until then, you’re still my husband,” she said and took another bite of the poutine. I grabbed my fork and got in there before she ate it all.
“Yeah,” I said, sensing she was working on some angle.
“Then as your wife, before we go back to the cabin, can we hit up a Target and get some throw pillows and blankets for the new couch? Just a couple of accent items. It’s what a good husband would do.”
“A good husband, huh?”
She beamed. “Yeah, for his wife.”
I didn’t want to think about how much I liked that. How it made sense in my life. That vision of a baby. The R word didn’t even hurt anymore.
Retire. See. Not an ounce of pain. In fact, if I was being honest, the thought was almost…a relief.
“Sure,” I said.
“Target run,” she did that fist pump thing of hers, and I was wrecked all over again.