Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
ADDISON
“I can, um, go upstairs and get out of your way,” Riley says uncertainly after I finish loading the dishwasher. She’s been hanging around the kitchen with me while I got everything cleaned up.
Not that there was too much to clean. She’d obviously been careful to make as little mess as possible, and she already had most of the pots and pans she used soaking in the sink.
I wipe my hands on a dish towel and turn to face her. “Feel free to do whatever you want with your night. If you want some privacy, that’s cool. But you’re not in my way.”
She smiles. “What would you be doing with yourself if I weren’t here?”
It’s a perfectly normal question, but I don’t answer immediately because I’m trying to come up with something that doesn’t make me sound extremely boring. And in my moments of hesitation, her eyes suddenly go wide, her face turns red, and she quickly directs her gaze to the floor.
I have no idea why at first.
Then I flash back to a couple hours ago—to Riley’s expression of shocked horror when she pulled my vibrator out from the couch cushions.
Kill me now, please.
“If you weren’t here, I’d probably play music, maybe read,” I rush to say, desperate to steer her thoughts away from the same scene I just recreated in my head.
“Right. Yeah.” She still looks flustered, but after a few seconds, the red on her cheeks fades to the lightest pink. When she peers back up at me, there’s a small, shy smile on her face. “I like music,” she says.
I laugh in relief that she’s not going to let the awkwardness of that incident get in the way of the relationship we’ve been building.
Friendship.
The friendship we’ve been building.
Jutting my head in the direction of the living room, I tell her, “Come on, then.”
She follows me in there, and as I’m leaning over the back of the couch to draw the curtains closed, she says, “I really like those.”
It takes me a second to determine that she means my curtains, which are a sheer, dark blue covered in tiny silver stars. I really like them too, but now that she’s pointed them out, bad memories have me frowning.
I tip the corners of my lips back up in an imitation of a smile as I turn back to her. “They’re one of the only things I bothered to keep from my marriage. Sad, right?”
“Um.” She twists the bottom of her loose shirt into a ball around her fist. “I guess. I don’t know.”
“Christy didn’t like them. She argued with me when I bought them. And then, just to spite me, she argued with me years later as I yanked them off the curtain rods and packed them up with all the rest of my stuff when I was moving out.”
“She sounds kind of mean,” Riley says. And then she grimaces, like she’s afraid that saying that makes her mean.
If only she knew that I’ve called my ex-wife plenty of worse things since the divorce. But I’d rather her not find out how bitter that woman made me. It’s not a good look.
“She was a lot of things,” I settle on saying. “Not that it matters anymore. And I don’t want to bother you with my petty drama. I told you my life was boring. While you were out touring the world, I was stuck in an apartment in Chicago arguing over curtains.”
Taking a step closer, Riley’s gaze drifts over my shoulder toward the windows. When she looks at me again, she says, “I know you mean that as a bad thing, and I’m sorry that your ex didn’t treat you the way you deserve to be treated. But to me, that almost sounds nice.”
“How the heck does that sound nice?”
She glances down, toying with the bottom of her shirt again.
“Not the being treated badly, obviously. But yeah, I’ve spent half my life touring.
So what you’re talking about sounds like stability to me.
Like you had a relationship that was serious enough to involve decorating together.
I’ve had plenty of boyfriends, but I’ve never had that.
I think I’d love the chance to argue over curtains. ”
“Oh,” I say dumbly. Because she’s thrown me for a loop with this.
I suppose I understand what she means, though. And I guess it is kind of sad that she’s never had something like that.
“Well, you’re young,” I tell her. “You still have so much time to settle down and be boring like the rest of us.” But for her sake, I hope when she finds that relationship, the arguments stop at curtains, and they don’t escalate into arguing over who slept with whom behind the other person’s back.
She doesn’t say anything else, turning her gaze to my vinyl collection. Which reminds me what we’re doing in here, so I encourage her to have a look and pick out whatever she wants to hear.
When she crosses over to the shelves and starts scanning the album titles, I worry she won’t be able to find anything she likes.
Although my music taste is pretty diverse, she is younger than me, and a lot of my favorite artists were making music before even I was born.
There’s plenty of newer stuff too, but it’s more on the indie folk and alternative spectrum.
Whereas, from what I know of Riley’s music, she sings the newer style of country that borders on pop, and those are probably two of the least represented genres on my shelves.
By now, though, I should have learned not to make assumptions about this woman. Because she clearly listens to a variety of music outside of her own genre. Within two minutes, she’s gotten excited over at least five different albums.
Then she says, “Ooh, Fleetwood Mac, definitely!”
I go over to her as she carefully pulls her selection off the shelf, and I take it from her hands, seeing that she picked Rumors instead of the band’s earlier self-titled album. I unintentionally catch a whiff of her sweet strawberry scent and hastily step back before I do anything stupid.
“This is an excellent choice,” I tell her.
“I wish you had the remastered one with ‘Silver Springs’ on it.”
“Sorry my collection’s not large enough to satisfy you,” I quip as I get the vinyl set up on the record player.
“Oh no, it’s amazing,” she says earnestly. “I’m definitely satisfied.”
Those three words certainly shouldn’t sound dirty. Yet hearing them come out of her mouth messes up my brain for a moment.
While the music begins playing, we sit down on opposite ends of the couch.
She looks uncomfortable, sitting up straight, and I hope it’s not because of what she found here earlier.
But when I pull my feet up onto the couch, leaning my legs against the arm of it, her posture relaxes too.
She pulls her legs up sideways, tucking her feet underneath herself.
“You’re right, though,” I say, smiling at her. “‘Silver Springs’ is a great song.”
“It’s my favorite song,” she replies. “I’m sure I say that about a lot of songs, but truly, if you forced me to pick only one, that’s what I’d pick.
I’ll never get over the lore of it. Stevie Nicks writing it about Lindsey Buckingham after they broke up, and then they still had to be in the band together.
The live performance where they sing it to each other with that intense eye contact that made everybody feel how heartbroken they both were. ”
She frowns, like maybe she thinks she’s talking too much. Then, toying with the hem of her shorts, she adds, “I’d give anything to write a song with that kind of power.”
“I’d say your songs are pretty powerful if millions of people are listening to you.”
She shrugs this off. “Yeah. I’m proud of what I’ve done with my music. But I doubt anyone will remember my songs fifty years from now. I don’t know if I’ll ever leave that same kind of legacy.”
“You never know.” I adjust my position so I can face her easier, propping my back against the arm of the couch with my feet on the middle cushion. “You’ve got time. You’ve still got a long career ahead of you.”
“If I’m lucky,” she says, one corner of her mouth dipping down into a half-frown, as if maybe she’s doubting her longevity in the music industry.
I hope she is that lucky, but I don’t say anything more as she closes her eyes and starts humming along to the second song. I take the opportunity to simply watch her, to fully take her in without worrying she’ll see my attraction to her painted across my face.
Her lashes are long, and I suspect she’s wearing mascara, but it seems like that’s the only makeup she’s used. And her natural beauty is enough to draw me in.
I have to fight the pull I feel toward her. The desire to touch and caress, to kiss her pink lips that are now silently forming the words to the song. I want to kiss the lyrics right from her mouth.
I also want to run my hand over her leg, trace my thumb below the hem of her shorts until I’ve reached her inner thigh. I want to sneak my fingers under her shirt and skim them up her sides. I want to feel all her curves that she’s been showing off for weeks with all those sundresses.
But I won’t. I can’t.
So it’s almost a relief when she opens her eyes again, forcing me to dart my gaze away from her before I get caught. Before I become too tempted.
Focusing my attention on Freddie, I watch as he climbs up to the top of his cat tree, and I do my best to pretend that this woman’s presence doesn’t affect me.
Soon, she starts singing out loud, her volume very low at first and then gradually growing a bit louder, almost like she can’t help herself. When I glance over at her, she stops, giving me a shy smile. “Sorry.”
“Why in the world are you apologizing?” I ask. “I’m honored to be getting a free concert.”
She laughs that off, but I mean it. I wasn’t a fan of Riley’s music when she showed up here, but I’m quickly becoming a fan of Riley.
Her voice is achingly sweet. It sounds different now than it does in her songs I’ve heard on the radio.
The way she’s singing along with Stevie Nicks feels raw and honest and real.
“This is hardly a concert,” she says.
“You could play for me. You brought your guitar.”