Chapter 20
20
Days Later in LA
Wyatt
“ N o.”
“Wyatt,” Syd said gently. “We talked about this. You need to be open.”
“No.”
Francine, the stylist, was not a fan of me. She was not a fan of my thighs. Or the size of my neck. She didn’t like that I hated stripes. Or that I insisted on wearing a shirt under my jacket.
She wore dreadlocks in her hair and some type of asymmetrical dress with combat boots. She had silver hardware in several different facial features, and, quite frankly, she scared the hell out of me.
“This isn’t like the Oscars, honey,” Francine explained. I stood in her West Hollywood studio, being dressed and undressed and draped in fabrics. As bad as I expected it to be, it was somehow worse.
Syd, however, looked like she was in her natural element. She wore baggy torn jeans I’d never seen and a belly shirt that made her look like a teenager. Made me feel like a teenager. Her dark hair was styled so all the flyaway curls were gone and she wore dark mascara and bright red lipstick.
She looked like someone famous.
Since getting back to her place in Malibu, I’d been staying in her guest room. Alone.
It went unsaid, but being back in reality, away from the cabin, sleeping together didn’t feel right anymore. It wouldn’t help with us getting to the end, and we both knew it was coming.
Still, every night I almost wished for the return of her stalker just so I could see her in her sleep shorts and baggy shirt again.
“You can’t just put on a designer tux and call it a day,” Francine said. “This is a music award show. These people are artists.”
“Yeah, well, I’m a hockey player.”
“Sydney, please talk to your man.”
The studio we were in looked like converted industrial space. One big open room with tons of tables covered in silks, taffetas, ruffles and any number of sparkling things. There was a legit sewing machine set up in one corner and two mannequin shapes. One for a man, the other for a woman.
“I would,” Sydney said, glued to her phone. Another thing that was so different from cabin Sydney. I wondered if she was really busy or if she was using her phone to hide from me. “But he’s pretty intractable.”
Francine watched me with narrowed eyes and tapped her chin. I was suddenly terrified.
“You know, I’ve seen some of your brother’s fits online,” she said, throwing out all the stops to try and get me to agree to her clothes. “Liam straight up slays.”
“I only need a minute slay,” I told her. “Syd’s the star here. I’m just background dressing.”
“Hmm. Minute slay, like you even know what that means.” She threw her hands up in the air. “Then there’s nothing to be done. We’ll forget custom, dress him in Armani and call it a day.”
“That’s fine,” Syd agreed.
“Let me just confirm your ridiculous measurements again, hockey player.”
Francine ran a tape measure across my wing span, my waist length, then my inseam.
I tensed up when her knuckles grazed my ball sack through my jeans.
“Don’t be shy now,” she said, “If you want the suit to fit you properly, you need accurate measurements.” I stared at the ceiling while getting woman-handled. Francine was all business until she turned to Sydney and let out a low appreciative whistle.
Syd giggled. “I know, right?”
“Hey,” I barked. “I’m standing right here.”
“In all your glory,” Francine mused. Then she wrapped up the tape. “We’re done.”
“You think they’ll have a suit ready by Sunday night?” Sydney asked.
“They’ll just modify something they have. No one ever wants the boring suits, so they’ll have plenty in stock. I assume you’d prefer black.”
“I can do a blue suit on special occasions,” I pointed out. I wasn’t completely without fashion.
“Bold,” Francine snorted. “Now, Sydney, you want to try on the magic I made for you?”
“You made it?” I asked.
“I do custom work when the spirit moves me. Mostly I curate other designers. But I had a vision for Sydney here and I went with it. Behind that partition.” Francine pointed to an old school dressing screen set up in the corner of the room.
Syd clapped her hands excitedly and ran behind the screen. I imagined her taking her clothes off, wondered what she would leave on or off. Wondered what would happen if I went back there with her and got down on my knees to remind her of what we’d had.
Did she miss sleeping with me like I missed her?
Because it seemed like she’d turned it all off. Not just the sex. That I understood. She needed to protect herself. But it was everything else. The affection, the silliness, the sweetness. All of it was somehow muted. There were times I wanted to grab her and force her to act normal. The way she had before.
Before she heard me say she would be the last woman on the planet I would marry.
Fuck.
“Exactly as I imagined it,” Francine announced.
I turned to see Sydney walking out from behind the screen.
I couldn’t call it a dress. It was too magical for that. It floated around her body like a white cobweb that gave hints and peeks of skin. The fabric glittered around her waist and the hem grazed the top of her perfect thighs. She turned and I saw the way the back was shaped, above her shoulders, into points.
It looked like wings.
“You’re a fairy,” I said.
“Fairy Bride,” Francine corrected me. “It came to me in a vision and I knew only Sydney Malloy could wear it.”
Syd examined herself in one of the tall mirrors propped up against the brick wall. “It’s perfect. Absolutely, perfect. Thank you, Francine. You’ll bring it to the house and dress me on the day of the awards?”
“Of course. I can’t have you messing up my creation with red lipstick or some shit like that. You’ll listen to me in all things,” she said, pointing a finger at Syd. Then she turned on me. “And you better make Armani look good.”
“I think I can do that.”
When we got back to the house there was a car in the driveway.
“It’s Tyler,” Syd said. “I kind of thought after that last failed interview he was done with me. He hasn’t called or texted at all.”
“You still pay him?”
“I do.”
“Good, then you go in there and fire him.”
“It’s not that simple,” she said, twisting her fingers together. Something I’d noticed she’d stopped doing up at the cabin.
This life of hers stressed her out. Or maybe it was just Mean Tyler.
“It is. You’re writing an amazing album that is going to light the world on fire. You don’t need this guy’s reputation bullshit. Your excellent music is your reputation. All the rest of it, who the fuck cares? Let your music do the talking. You’re Sydney Fucking Malloy and you have something to say and people want to hear you.”
She looked at me, her fingers untangling. Her eyes glowing.
There she was. My cabin girl. My tiny fairy.
“I think,” I swallowed. “I think you’re amazing.”
I watched my opinion give her strength. Straighten her spine. She believed me. She knew the version of her I saw was the person she really was. If nothing else, I’d given her that.
“Let’s see what Tyler’s upset about,” she said and got out of the Rover.
“Or let’s go fire Tyler,” I muttered as I got out after her.
Inside, Tyler was all smiles, unlike the last time when he’d been all four letter words. “Hello honeymooners!”
His teeth were blinding and his spray tan had veered into orange territory. Honestly, there was nothing likeable about this guy.
Tyler pulled Syd down on the couch next to him and even managed to have a fake smile for me too.
“Well done you two! Everybody’s just gagging about you both.”
“Who is everyone?” I asked. “And why are they gagging?”
Tyler rolled his eyes. “Oh please, don’t tell me you’re one of those I don’t look at my own social media people.”
“Okay. I won’t,” I looked at Syd. “What’s he talking about?”
“The pictures!” Tyler shouted. “They’re everywhere.”
He pulled out his phone and handed it to me. On it was a picture of me and Syd in that home goods store where we’d bought all the blankets and shit. I was looking down at her and laughing at something she said.
We looked…
“Just keep scrolling,” Tyler said and slid his thumb across the screen so another picture appeared. We were leaving a restaurant in Telluride. We’d gone for a late lunch and I had my arm draped over her shoulder, she was looking up at me like I’d hung the moon.
I remembered thinking how loose I’d felt. Like I’d won the Stanley Cup instead of losing it. Like my ankle didn’t ache every goddamn minute of every goddamn day. Like my shoulders were greased. Like I wasn’t worried about next year and if I could keep up with the young guns. If I could still perform like I used to.
There was no future but the woman under my arm.
“Oh my gosh, you two actually look like you’re in love,” Tyler said, pulling the phone away to look at the picture himself. “So astute to know cameras would show up a few days after someone spotted you in a furniture store, of all places! Brilliant. Why didn’t I think of that? It screams cozy domestic. Everyone’s calling you the new It Couple, as they should because you’re adorbs. Now that we’ve righted the public-image ship, let’s talk about where we go from here, because one Mr. Jonathon Bernard is doubling down on the whole victim game. You know he's dating Ellie Wheeler now.”
“Is he?” Syd asked with a shrug. “I guess that figures.”
Did Syd know about the cameras? I wondered. Had she been acting for them? It wasn’t possible she could have misled me like that. Was it?
As soon as I had the thought, I tossed it. It was never anything she turned on and off. Those cameras had been around one percent of the time we’d been together. And she looked at me like that a hundred percent of the time we were together.
She used to anyway.
Tyler turned to fill me in on the background. “Ellie’s an indie artist who routinely calls Syd’s songs cookie cutter. As if, am I right?”
“Let me get this straight, this guy, who you were in a fake relationship with, is talking trash about you while dating another singer, who also talks trash about you?” I asked. “Who the fuck are these people?”
“John is a very petty guy who blames me for a lot of stuff,” Syd explained. “He didn’t like how things ended, but if he didn’t want to be called out for cheating, he shouldn’t have agreed to our relationship in the first place. I didn’t ask him to do it.”
“Who did?”
“Uh, why does that matter?” Tyler asked.
“Because I want to know the asshole who kept setting Syd up with a bunch of assholes,” I snapped, turning to face Tyler.
Tyler raised his hand slowly and close to his body, as if trying to hide it. “Johnny was on the rise, while Syd failed to earn a Grammy nom with her last two albums. She needed exposure.”
“And what about that Sam asshole who let her get arrested in that club in Paris?”
“Not arrested!” Tyler and Syd both shouted. I growled at both of them.
What I wanted to say was that when I left, the next guy better not be some fake asshole. When I left, the next guy better not be…the fucking next guy.
My vision went red when I thought about the next fucking guy.
Syd walked over and patted me on the shoulder. “Stop being mad on my behalf. I can handle my own mad.”
“Please, we all know Sydney doesn’t get mad,” Tyler said. “So cool it, Mr. Hockey Player.”
“No, that’s not true,” Syd said. “I do get mad. I get mad all the time, I just think it’s really rude to take out all that anger on someone else. And I don’t think people’s feelings should be used as publicity stunts. And I don’t like constantly being told what to do!”
Tyler looked positively aghast that she was raising her voice at him. “What are you saying?”
“Tyler,” she said with a large swallow. “You are so fired.”
It was glorious. Amazing. It was like watching her grow wings. Real wings. It was like watching her grow twenty feet tall.
It was like falling in love.