Chapter Twenty-One
Shelby stood on the sidewalk outside Le Maison Grog for a long time, holding an umbrella and trying to make a decision.
She was supposed to be touring Versailles with Corinne and Vanessa today, but she’d insisted that they go on without her. Brandon was going to be here in a few hours, and she needed to end whatever this was with Russ before then, or she wouldn’t be able to live with herself.
But as she stood there in the rain, looking through the fogged-up windows into the bar, she found she had lost both her courage and her conviction.
Was she making a mistake? But no, she could hear her mother’s voice in her head, reminding her that her wedding vows were promises she’d made for life.
What was she going to do, throw away a chance at reconciling with her husband because of one night of amazing sex with a bartender?
That was ridiculous. And Russ would get over it; it was hard to imagine that a hot, Aussie bartender in the middle of tourist Paris wasn’t getting hit on every night. He would be fine.
Right. Shelby took a deep breath and before she could stop herself, she opened the door to Le Maison Grog and went in.
Nineties pop music was playing over the sound system, and the bar was even more sparsely populated than it had been when she and the girls had arrived on their first day. In fact, except for a middle-aged couple at the far end of the bar, the place was entirely deserted.
She approached the bar slowly, scanning the room for Russ as she dragged her feet. She was doing the right thing, but a big part of her wanted to delay the inevitable.
The other bartender, the one Russ co-owned the bar with, emerged from the back, and spotting her, broke into a smile. “G’day,” he said cheerfully as she approached. Then his forehead creased, and she could tell he was trying to place her.
“Hi,” she said. “Benji, is it? I’m looking for Russ. Is he here?”
Recognition flickered across his features. “Ah. You’re the girl.” It wasn’t said warmly.
“Um…”
“Russ isn’t here.” He began to wash glasses, which made eye contact impossible. “I thought he was with you, actually.”
“He was. But I had to go meet my friends, and now, well, I need to talk with him. I’m Shelby, by the way.” She extended her hand for a handshake, but Benji pursed his lips, raised his right arm up to show her that it was covered in soapy water, and then returned to his washing.
“Do you, um, know where I might be able to find him?” she asked after another minute had ticked by and Benji still hadn’t said a word.
“I’m not his keeper.”
“I know, of course.” She had seen the two men argue last night, but Russ had told her Benji would forget all about it by the next day. “It’s just that I really need to talk to him, and I’m not sure where—”
“Look, I don’t know where he is, all right?
” Benji finally turned off the water and slammed the glass in his hand down so hard that it chipped on the bottom.
He cursed and threw the glass out, then grabbed a towel and dried his hands.
When he looked up at Shelby again, he was glaring at her.
“And I’ve got to say, you’ve got some nerve coming in here. ”
“What?” Shelby asked, completely thrown. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that everything was aces between me and Russ. Then he meets you and in two days flat, he’s telling me he thinks he deserves a better life than this.”
“He… what?”
“Besides, it’s not like you’ll stick around, Yoko.” Benji sounded like a petulant teenager, but his words still cut her to the core. “You’re a tourist.” He said it like a bad word. “You’ll have your fun and then you’ll head home to wherever it is you came from.”
“I—” She wanted to protest—after all, just a few hours earlier, he would have been wrong—but she had come here today to tell Russ she couldn’t see him again, hadn’t she? “That’s not who I am.”
“Honestly, I don’t care.”
As Benji glared at her, she felt even worse. “If you see Russ, would you tell him I came by, please?”
Benji snorted. “Now I look like his secretary?”
“Actually,” she said, “you look a lot like someone Russ is better off without.” She left before she could dig her hole any deeper—and before she had to admit to herself that the same words might apply to her, too.
Jackson hurried through sound check at La Défense, his mind still spinning with lyrics.
It was good to hang with the musicians he’d spent four weeks rehearsing with back in Los Angeles, and he made plans to join them for dinner later in the evening after he’d seen Julia, but for now, he just wanted to get back to the Latin Quarter so that he could meet with Henry and commit his song to paper before he lost the thread of it.
Henry’s granddaughter lived on a side street not far from where Jackson had stayed in his twenties, and she buzzed him in immediately when he rang.
“My grandfather just called and is on his way back,” she said quickly when she answered the door, her cheeks flushed. She was about Jackson’s age, maybe a little younger, with shoulder-length brown hair and a kind smile. “Melanie.”
He shook her hand. “Jackson.”
She laughed. “Yes, I know. Anyhow, my grandfather wanted me to apologize for keeping you waiting.”
“Not at all,” Jackson said as she ushered him into an apartment that was warm and homey, the tables piled high with magazines and art books, and the walls lined with bookshelves and framed black-and-white photos of Paris. “I’m sorry to impose.”
“It’s not an imposition at all. Can I get you a drink? A coffee, maybe?”
“That would be wonderful.”
“Espresso? Americano? Latte?”
“Just a regular black coffee if you have it.” Jackson smiled.
“Just like my grandpa. Coming right up.”
He followed her into the kitchen and set his guitar at his feet. “So what brought you to France?” he asked as she scooped grinds into a French press and plugged in a kettle to boil water.
“I married a French man,” she said, and there was a tightness in her voice when she said it.
“That sounds very romantic.”
She looked away. “Yeah, well, I thought so, too. But now—” She stopped abruptly and busied herself with preparing the coffee before finally looking up at him. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Have you ever… cheated on anyone?”
He raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Wow, that’s a big question.”
She blushed. “I’m sorry. And you don’t have to answer. It’s just… my husband had an affair recently, and I think I’m just trying to wrap my head around it, you know? And I figure that since you’re a rock star…”
“That I must have cheated on someone?”
Her blush deepened. “No offense. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked that.”
“No, it’s fine,” Jackson said, feeling terrible for the poor woman, who looked completely flustered. “And no, I haven’t. But I also haven’t ever been that serious with anyone. So you and your husband—well, you’re already a step ahead of me in terms of commitment.”
“You’ve never been married?” She shook her head. “I mean, I should probably know that from your Wikipedia page or something.”
He laughed. “Believe me, I’m glad you don’t. No, I never married. But if I had, I’d like to think I wouldn’t have cheated.”
“The thing is, I’m not sure whether to forgive him,” she said in a small voice. “Do I owe it to him to keep trying until we find our way back? I don’t know what to do.”
“Look, no one in the world would mistake me for the guy to come to for relationship advice,” Jackson said.
“But if you want my opinion, I’d say it should be about what you want for your future—not what you owe him, you know?
When you have an affair, don’t you lose your say over what happens next? Just my two cents.”
She exhaled heavily. “You sound an awful lot like my grandfather.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Jackson said with a smile.
The front door opened then, and they were momentarily distracted as Henry bustled into the kitchen, propping his walking cane against the doorframe and apologizing for his late arrival.
Melanie busied herself with pouring them each a cup of coffee, and then she hurried out of the room, mumbling an excuse about having to check her email.
“She’s going through a bit of a rough time,” Henry said.
“She told me about her husband,” Jackson said, and Henry raised an eyebrow.
“Did she?” Henry sighed. “Melanie has the biggest heart of anyone I know, and sometimes that complicates things; she’s so busy trying to do the right thing that she forgets to ask herself what she wants. She’s invited him to your concert, you know.”
“Has she?” Jackson was surprised; he figured that with the way she’d spoken about her husband’s affair, she wouldn’t want him to be there. “Well, that’s fine, of course. I just—I hope she doesn’t get hurt.”
“I hope so, too,” Henry said. “But she’ll be okay. She’s stronger than she gives herself credit for. Now she just has to figure out how to move forward.”
“She’s lucky to have you, Henry.”
“Ah, I’m lucky to have her, too. Now, what was it you wanted to see me about?”
“It’s silly, really,” Jackson said, embarrassed. “It’s just… there’s a woman. And, well, I can’t seem to stop thinking in lyrics since I met her.”
Henry smiled. “Sounds like love to me.”
Jackson felt like an idiot. “I hardly know her.”
Henry didn’t reply for a moment. Instead, he beckoned for Jackson to follow him into a smaller room off the parlor, where Jackson was startled to see a full piano tucked against more bookcases.
“Is your granddaughter a musician, too?” Jackson asked.
“She plays a bit of piano. I like to think it’s the one legacy I’ll leave behind.”
“All of those songs you’ve written are a pretty impressive legacy, too.”
Henry shrugged. “The older I’ve gotten, the more I’ve realized that it’s not the things you accomplish in life that matter, or even the art you create. It’s how you love the people you’re fortunate enough to share your time on earth with.”
The words hit home. “See, you even speak in lyrics.”
Henry smiled. “Well, what is a song but the truest expression of what lies in one’s heart? I simply do my best to say what I mean.”
“I’m not so good at that,” Jackson admitted. “For a long time, I think I went into every relationship on the defensive, with all my walls up, assuming that women were interested in me for the wrong reasons.”
“And you may not have been wrong,” Henry said.
“But I may not have been right, either.”
“I won’t pretend to know what it’s like to be a rock star, Jackson. But it seems to me that a certain amount of self-protection is not only wise but essential.”
“The problem is that once those walls are up, it’s hard to tear them down.”
Henry sat down at the piano and beckoned for Jackson to take the chair just to his left. “Go on, then. I’d love to hear what you’ve got.”
Jackson felt nervous as he pulled his guitar out of its case. “It’s not as good as what you write.”
Henry fixed him with a look. “It’s apples and oranges, son. You write with your life experiences, and I write with mine, and we both create art in our own way.”
“Did it ever bother you? Not to have the chance to sing your own songs?” Jackson asked.
Henry chuckled. “I’m a writer, not a performer. Never did have much of a singing voice, even before I lost it. No, I think I’m exactly where I’m meant to be, Jackson. And you? Did it bother you not to write your own songs?”
“I was never good enough.”
“I doubt very much that that was ever true,” Henry said, “and if you had people in your circle who made you feel that way, perhaps they didn’t have your best interests in mind.”
“Maybe not.” Feeling like he was about to leap without a safety net, Jackson began to strum his guitar and sing. “I wish I could tell you what I’m starting to feel. That the way you inspire me is so new and so real.”
For a moment, Henry just listened with his eyes closed, and Jackson was certain it was because the older man thought that his lyrics were terrible, that the melody was even worse.
He was just about to stop singing when Henry’s fingers began to move across the keys, softly at first and then with more conviction, accompanying Jackson flawlessly.
“I wish you knew how perfect you look in this light.” Jackson sang, with a bit more confidence. “That as long as I breathe, I won’t forget tonight.”
For the next three and a half minutes, he sang from his soul, and Henry played along, his eyes still closed, his forehead creased in concentration. When Jackson finished singing, Henry opened his eyes and smiled at him.
“Well?” Jackson asked hesitantly.
“I think you might have your next hit song on your hands, son. I mean it. It’s beautiful.”
“You’re not just saying that?”
“It’s beautiful because it’s real. When you let your heart bleed into the music, people can hear that.
Heck, they can feel it.” Henry paused and took his hands off the piano keys, turning to look Jackson right in the eye.
“You asked me a few minutes ago how it could be love with this woman of yours when you hardly know her yet.”
“Oh,” Jackson said, startled by the change in subject. “Yeah.”
“It might interest you to hear that I had only known Celeste—the love of my life—for two days when I began to write ‘City of Light.’ ”
“Two days?”
“Sometimes you just know, Jackson. It’s in our nature as human beings to search for logical explanations for everything, but sometimes, all we need to do is find space in the quiet to listen to what our hearts are telling us.
I listened when mine spoke to me about Celeste—and I love her still, eighty years later, even though we were separated for most of our lives.
I am hoping beyond hope, son, that when I bring her to your concert tomorrow, when she feels the rhythm of the song that I first sang to her all those years ago, that her heart will remember, too.
And whatever happens with this new lady friend of yours—whether you’re together many years from now or whether you have only a moment in time, as Celeste and I did—you can’t regret it.
You can only listen to your heart, for that is what makes you a better artist and, more importantly, a better man. ”
“Thank you, Henry,” Jackson said over the lump in his throat. “And for what it’s worth, I’ll be rooting with everything I have for your Celeste to remember.”
Henry smiled. “And I’ll be rooting for you, son, to know the kind of love that is possible only when we open our hearts without fear.”