Chapter 25
ELI
TRACK: Janis Joplin, “Me and Bobby McGee”
I was absolutely convinced that getting drunk on Reese’s body was the best moment of my life. Hands down.
Then I heard her sing.
I may be head over heels for this woman, but I swear to Christ she’s made of stardust, and it’s that showering over people when I hear her open her mouth that day in the studio.
I try describing it to Cassandra, but she looks at me like I’ve lost my marbles. “Eli, maybe you should leave the poetry to Reese?”
But as I stroll out of her office, barely remembering what I came in there for, I know I see the corner of her mouth turn up in a smile.
She may act like the straight and narrow one, but my twin can tell when I’m genuinely happy.
I can tell when she is too, and I know she never secretly smiled at me when I talked about Kelly.
I may be shit at describing how amazing she is when she sings, but that doesn’t stop me from gently trying to prod Reese into singing in public.
“I saw a sign up at Bean There when I was having coffee with Sam yesterday,” I tell her on Friday night after work. We’re at her place in the bathtub together, her beautiful sleek form emerging from the bubbles.
Reese slides a soapy washcloth over her shoulder, not turning around. “Oh?”
“There’s an open mic there tomorrow night.” I try to keep my tone casual, but Reese stiffens, stopping her hand.
“Eli—”
“It’s small.” I take the washcloth from her, tucking her hair over her shoulder and rubbing circles onto her back.
I press hard, knowing she loves it when I do this with her back tight from being on her feet all day in the restaurant.
Maybe I can massage her into agreement. “You remember the crowd for that cream cheese band—it wasn’t big, and that was a planned show. ”
Reese dips her head down, and I can tell by the way her shoulders shake she’s laughing but trying not to. “Queen Cheese,” she corrects, a little breathily.
I grin. “That’s what I said. Anyway, how about we just go, and you can decide then if you want to get up on stage. No pressure.”
Reese seems like she’s going to argue, but I dip the washcloth under the water and apply pressure to her lower back, and she moans instead. “Not fair, Eli.”
“Not fair would be me stopping.” I release the pressure.
“I’ll show you not fair,” Reese says, arching her back. She stretches her arms over her head and around my neck behind her, and we both know I’ll do whatever the fuck she says now that her soapy tits are displayed before me.
“Goddammit,” I say, dropping the cloth and grasping her gorgeous breasts in my hands. “You’re always right, you know that?”
She laughs, then twists around in the water, pulling her knees up under her.
Water sloshes around in the tub, threatening to splatter on the floor, but I barely notice.
All I see is Reese’s face before me, her eyes narrowed, but her lips turned up.
“Fine, I’ll go to the open mic,” she says. “But I’m inviting Nora.”
I groan, not because I don’t like Nora—because I really do. It’s because that means Jude will be there too.
“Why don’t you like your brother?” Reese asks, surprising me. Her hands are on my chest, her arms blocking her breasts from view, so I’m not so distracted I can’t think about the question.
“It’s not that I don’t like him…”
She raises a brow.
“Okay, it’s not that I don’t love him. I do—he’s my brother. But Jude and I have always had a…complicated relationship. We’ve just always been competitive. He has to beat me at every goddamned thing.”
“And you don’t?”
I tip my head back, wishing very much that our conversation didn’t turn this way. But she has a point. Jude doesn’t always start every competition—I do too.
“You ever think he just looks up to you? That he’s seeking your approval?”
“By kicking my ass at sprints?”
Reese sighs. “I don’t know, Eli. I just see the way he looks at you. Like he wants you to see him.”
I clench my jaw. “Jude doesn’t need any help being seen.”
“You’d be surprised,” she says softly.
Something prickly goes over me as I take her in, the way she looks down a moment before meeting my eye again.
Reese needed help being seen. She still does.
It’s why she wants to bring Nora to the show.
Reese confessed to me Nora and Michelle are the only other people besides me who ever mention her singing.
Everyone else either doesn’t know or is afraid to ask.
“You’re right,” I say, running my thumb along her chin. “Okay. I’ll ask Nora and Jude.”
Reese grins, then rises up and kisses me.
And I forget all about singing for the time being.
I release a breath when we walk into Bean There that night—just as I hoped, the crowd is small.
Though there aren’t more than twenty tables in the whole place, at the concert we went to here, almost every table was full.
Tonight, it’s only about half. But Jude and Nora are already seated at the table in the dead center of the room.
Jude’s sprawled out in his chair while Nora’s sitting primly, tapping the video camera on the table. They haven’t seen us yet.
“Did Nora tell you she was going to be filming?” I ask, as much as I want to direct Reese’s attention away from the camera, lest it make her even more nervous. I take her guitar so she can take her coat off.
To my surprise Reese doesn’t seem to be rattled about that. Maybe that’s because she’s already nervous as hell. Her eyes are pinned to the stage, which is currently empty. “Nora films everything,” she says absently.
It’s true, Nora’s never without that camera.
“There she is, the star of the night!” Jude exclaims as we approach. He claps his hands overly loudly, and a few heads turn toward us.
I cringe. “Can’t take this guy anywhere,” I mutter under my breath.
Reese smiles tightly. “I’m going to get us some drinks,” she says, kissing my cheek.
“I’ll go with you,” Nora says quickly, before I can offer.
“Something I said?” my idiot brother asks as I settle in the seat across from him.
I hook the guitar strap over Reese’s chair. “Ya think?”
Jude looks genuinely confused.
I sigh, pinching the bridge of my nose. I told him on the phone that she didn’t want to make a big deal about being here. “Maybe just give her a moment to adjust to being here, or there’s no chance she’s going to get up on stage.”
Jude looks genuinely wounded, and I remember Reese’s words last night. That Jude just wants me to see him.
“I like the enthusiasm though…” I almost say buddy, like Jude’s a little kid again. Maybe that’s the thing. Jude’s a lot like Peter Pan or something—he seems like he never grew up, even though he’s the first of us siblings to have a kid. “Jude,” I finish lamely.
“I just think it’s cool,” Jude says, shrugging.
“It is cool.” I run a hand over my jaw. “I’m sorry, man. She’s just a little gun-shy about being in front of a crowd.”
I don’t want to tell Jude about Reese’s ex—it’s none of his business and her story to tell—but Jude doesn’t press.
He nods almost sagely, before taking a swig of his beer. “Some guys hated that part,” he says.
I know he’s talking about tennis, and I know he says that in a way that indicates he didn’t hate that part, but he gets it at least. For all his goofiness, the guy isn’t an idiot.
“Hey, how’s Jack?” I ask.
Jude grins, looking as glad as I am that I’ve changed the subject to my nephew.
“Cap,” he says.
“That’s still going on?” After watching Captain America, and all the Marvel movies in quick succession, Jack insisted on being called Cap. I’m surprised it’s stuck now that he’s moved on to other kid obsessions.
“I think it’s for good, honestly.”
I smile. “That’s cool.”
Jude grins, going off on Cap and what he’s been up to lately.
It’s Jude’s same lighthearted, never-take-anything-seriously quality I let get to me that makes him such a good dad.
He talks to Cap like he’s his buddy rather than his son, though he’s still good at setting boundaries and expectations.
Cap is a great kid, and all the credit should go to the special relationship he and his dad have.
It comes naturally to Jude, unlike me. While I always wanted kids, before I started the little league thing, I had no idea what to do with them, because I’d never spent time around them.
Kelly tended to have us drift away from our friends once they had kids—maybe because she preferred to do the kinds of things where they weren’t welcome.
I still saw them sometimes, but it was hard when she refused.
It was Reese, actually, who inspired me to do the little league thing, I remember now.
I sneak a glance at her while Jude makes some huge gesture with his arms about a skateboard jump Jack did.
She’s talking to the woman behind the bar, laughing and eyeing the stage. She looks gorgeous, as usual, but also relaxed. At home.
She looks like she did the first time I met her, at a park, years ago, when I’d been looking after Jack. I’d said I had no idea what to do with a toddler.
“You just need to spend a bit of regular time with kids,” Reese had reassured me. “Get to know them. Talk to them like little people, and best of all, have fun with them. It’ll come.” Reese had nieces, and was a natural around them like Jude. They adored her, like most people did.
I started making a point of hanging out with Cap at family gatherings. But it was only when I started coaching little league that I really came into my own. Now I don’t know how I was ever unsure of myself—kids are a blast.
As Reese comes back to the table, I can’t help the image that flashes through my mind of a mini-Reese clinging to her mom’s hand. A little me, sitting on my knee while we watch his mom sing.
Now I’m getting way the fuck ahead of myself.
“Everything okay?” Reese asks when she reaches us, sitting down beside me.
“Yup,” I say, hanging an arm around her shoulder.
“Where’s Nora?” Jude asks, craning his neck to the bar for his best friend.
“Over there,” I say, spotting her scribbling something onto a clipboard and handing it to the guy at the sound booth.
“Oh God,” Reese says, squeezing my thigh so tight I wince. “This is really happening, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” I say, laughing. “Damn straight it is.”
It’s twenty minutes before the guy in the booth calls Reese’s name, and by then, the place has started filling up. Several people have guitars; one guy even has a tambourine.
“Reese Franco?” the guy repeats.
“Reese?” I say.
But Reese is frozen, save for her hand rubbing at her wrist. That fucking tattoo.
“I can’t,” she whispers.
“Reese,” I say. I’m about to tell her she doesn’t have to do this.
But I stop myself. Because that’s not true.
This night, no matter how small, is a moment of truth for her.
It’s the moment she’ll either break through the final layer of self-doubt that asshole caused her, or be kowtowed by it for life.
And I’m not going to let that happen.
“Go buy us a minute,” I tell Jude.
My brother, at least, knows how to use his gifts.
He nods, jumps up, and swaggers down to the booth, giving a few high fives and “how’s it goings” as he passes the other tables.
Then he leans in and lays the charm on the guy standing there, who blinks, his eyes going wide as he recognizes who’s standing in front of him.
The crowd murmurs.
“Reese, I know this feels hard,” I say, turning to her. I grasp her hand with mine, bringing her knuckles to my lips. “Remember what you said to me, about feeling? That’s all this is. You’re helping people feel what they’re dying to feel. That’s your gift, baby.”
Her eyes are still wide, but she blinks, nodding almost imperceptibly.
She looks back down at her wrist, then flips it over onto her knee. “I fucking hate him.”
“Right,” I say. I do too. “But if you can overcome this—what he did—you can handle anything, Reese. All those years of him needling into you—that’s harder than any amount of quiet from a crowd, and any amount of heckling.”
I’m struck with a sudden idea, and pat around my coat. When I don’t find what I’m looking for, I flag down a passing server. “Can I borrow that?” I ask, indicating her pen.
She hands it over and I take Reese’s hand, holding it up so her wrist is exposed, those letters sitting there like branding. “Do you trust me Reese?”
Reese’s eyes flutter up to mine. “Yes,” she whispers. “I do, Eli.”
I take the pen and write the rest of what it needs to say tonight.
Then I let go of her hand.
Reese pulls it toward herself and when she reads it, she sucks in a breath.
I can see the pulse throbbing at her throat.
“Okay, Eli.” She nods, kissing me hard, and I hand the pen back to the server. Then, Reese Franco gets up, picking up her guitar, and walks with her shoulders back toward the stage.
This time, when Jude starts whooping and clapping his hands, I join him. Even shy, quiet Nora does too, before picking up her camera again and training it toward the stage.
It takes Reese a minute to get settled, and when she looks up, she squints into the bright light shining on her. My chest tightens as she goes still, like she’s freezing up. But the moment passes, and she sets the guitar on her lap and leans into the mic.
“My name is Reese,” she says. “And I’m going to sing you a little song from a very special woman from Port Arthur, Texas.
She was voted ‘the ugliest man on campus’ by a fraternity at the University of Texas.
But she showed them. She was a queen. And her music makes me feel.
I hope it makes you feel too. This is ‘Me and Bobby McGee,’ by Ms. Janis Joplin. ”
The crowd cheers while Reese tunes her guitar.
Then she strums the opening notes, and we’re all lost, falling into the twang of her guitar and the notes of Reese’s voice, which seem to thrum right down to my bones.
Before I know what’s happening, I’m on my feet—we all are, as the woman I love takes down the room with the most heartfelt rendition of that song since Janis herself.
She kills that song—destroys it. With each crescendo her fingers fly more confidently over the strings of the guitar. With each high note, she soars.
And when she’s done, nobody sits. Not for a whole minute.
The crowd is ecstatic, and I’m moving before I can stop myself to the stage.
Reese is crying, I can see it, but the tears are happy, and when she sees me, I see the sob, though I can’t hear it.
She reaches down with her arms outstretched, and I see the words I wrote on her wrist.
SH-OW THEM EVERYTHING.
I take her hand and then Jude has her guitar and I have Reese in my arms, whispering in her ear that she did it. She showed them everything she had.
“I’m so fucking proud of you, baby.”
She looks at me with tears in her eyes, then I’m kissing her, lifting her up. I know, in my heart, that this girl is fucking stardust, and it’s my privilege to be the one holding her up.