Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
ISAIAH
I tried to keep it light at the winery store, but the sense of foreboding waltzing into the Sanchez’s Victorian set in before we even got here. It wasn’t only about me having to say goodbye to her either. Cassidy’s been aloof since we left the comfort of the inn.
I have to admit, I’ve mulled over Cassidy losing her position at the banquet hall and have tried to make sense of the situation. Something about Cris taking away a job his niece loved doesn’t jibe with the man I met yesterday. Although, logically, I’m aware he wasn’t the sole decision maker and that makes me wonder about her entire family.
The banana muffin and the tasty sautéed vegetables she showed me how pan-warm and whip into an omelette with the reheated filet mignon leftovers from the steakhouse are the only cooking of Cassidy’s I’ve eaten. But everything tasted fantastic.
I don’t expect her to stick around during this morning’s session. Except, something about Daveigh Sanchez’s conviviality reminds me of Cass. So, I hope she does. And perhaps Cris’s wife’s warm welcomes are another reason I don’t thumb my nose at him. If someone that sweet loves him, how bad can the guy be?
I pause in the hall to see if I can find Cassidy in more of the pictures.
Photos on the wall are something that’s missing in my house. I had the requisite wedding photo on a hutch in the formal living room. I took it down because I couldn’t bear to look at it and remember the girl I grew up with, who had so much potential—so much to live for.
I tuck my sadness about getting on the plane and my concerns over Cassidy’s career away, and I put on my stage face and enter Cris’s studio.
At the end of this session, the scent of fried chicken gently tickles our nostrils as we wait to be called for a late lunch. All three of our stomachs’ growl, and we get off track, discussing some of the better songs about not falling in love while we wait for Daveigh to call us for lunch.
I produced my songbook for Jake to look at. The melody he’s humming to the lines of one particular song I wrote are spot on. But Jake, a former drummer, taps his foot, adding an extra beat to the tempo I hadn’t considered until I heard it.
“Man, this has a vibe to it. I like how you’ve tinkered with wanting someone to have love, but the well is empty and you don’t have it to give to them. The whole while you’ve got everyone thinking it’s an unrequited love song. You’ve got an emotional high going and then, bam!” Jake smacks his thigh. “It crashes down and the listener is just devastated when they understand it’s not a conventional love song. We need to get Cris in on the harmony and make a move to finish this one.”
The truth is, the song Jake’s excited about isn’t as much about someone not falling in love with you as it is about not being loved at all. It came out of a place of sympathy for someone else, whose affections I can’t return because their mere existence is overwhelming and left me hollow.
The poetry is some of my best, but a lot of what I wrote immediately after Kylie passed away is despondent bullshit. Me being down in the dumps is a far cry from the energy working with Cris and Jake, and even the way I’ve felt in Cassidy’s company over the past twenty-four hours.
“Thanks for the compliment,” I say. “Though I don’t think this song fits with what we’ve come up with so far.” Or if I ever want it to see the light of day.
“If you change your mind, I want in on it.” Jake shrugs and continues flipping through my notebook.
I’m uncertain if Jake not pushing me to finish the song he’s interested in is part of his normal demeanor or if he and Cris have been handling me with kid gloves throughout our meetings.
Until they started talking about it today, I hadn’t known Cris was a widower, or that Jake knew Cris’s first wife. I guess having experienced a significant loss explains their willingness to work with me when my request was impromptu and not at all convenient given the holiday season.
I want the feather in my cap of a number one credited to Roomer, Ballantine, and Sanchez. Except, accepting Jake’s help to turn the song he’s got such faith in makes me feel like a heel for using someone else’s misfortune to my benefit. It’s no different from what the media did to me when reports of the accident came out. It also flies in the face of me insisting I’m not okay with the video director using images of my wife or from our marriage for the ballad currently on the airwaves.
But this song’s lyrics are also real, deep emotion and that bam Jake spoke of is a legitimate feeling I still have whenever I read the lines.
Maybe someday when I’m settled. I’ve eked out a place in their schedule for later this year —um, next year. It’s December, dummy . The advice they’ve given was money well spent. I’d spend it again a hundred times over.
The conversation trickles toward sampling tracks from old songs and remakes of classics.
“I knew… know because we’re still on good terms… a woman with fabulous taste in music. Every time I thought I had her genre pinned down, she’d switch it up.” Jake rubs his chin. “I mean, I was never sure whose version of Elvis’ Can’t Help Falling in Love was next on her playlists. And no matter what artist it was, that version was perfect for the moment,” he adds with a sentimental grin. “When we were both single, I could have married her in a heartbeat.”
“Why didn’t you?” I question.
“I had my head pretty far up my ass.”
Cris snickers in the background.
“Paisley must be the same way, about music?”
“Nope. She has her favorite songs. But music isn’t in her bones and most of her appreciation for it comes from me being in the business.”
“Daveigh is like that, too. It’s meaningful to her because it is to me, but it’s not innate.”
“What does she do then?” I’m curious.
Jake and Cris both got married after establishing their careers in the industry.
“Daveigh? She’s a veterinarian,” Cris says.
I rear back. “Well, that’s about as far from what we do as it gets.”
A knock at the door announces lunch. Cris tells whoever it is we’ll be out as soon as we set room to rights.
There’s a guitar beside me whose strings I’ve been picking. I place it back on the stand in the corner. Then I collect my notebooks and copies of the sheet music we’ve scribbled on.
As I clean up, it strikes me how easily I convinced myself that marrying my celebrity equal was the right thing to do. What my spouse does for a living shouldn’t matter one way or another. Until Jake brought up a seemingly perfect woman, who didn’t wind up becoming his wife, I’m not sure why I never considered that plenty of artists have spouses who aren’t singers. Most of the ones I’m familiar with met their husbands and wives long before they hit it big. In country music, a lot started out in the same church choirs.
For the last few months, I’ve explored a lot of feelings. It ties me in knots that I married a pop princess, thought the shine wouldn’t wear off, and that we’d make a real go of our golden life.
I walk behind Jake down the hall, toward where their wives have laid the food out. His tall, thin frame moves out of the way. The first person I see is Cassidy and my heart skips a beat. I hadn’t expected her to stick around and suddenly I understand why it matters that she stayed.
On the surface we have nothing in common, but I like her. A lot.
If Cris and Jake made a go of it with their wives, it means there’s hope for whatever is happening between Cassidy and me. It doesn’t need an expiration date. We can see where things take us. I’m not looking to get remarried. I just… Selfishly, I don’t really want to be without her. The hollow part of me—the part that’s desperate to take Monty’s advice—believes I have a right to put myself first.
Cassidy spoons coleslaw onto Cris and Jake’s plates. Her false smile doesn’t make her big brown eyes light up the way they do when we’re alone. I’m next in line. She pretends not to notice me.
“Thank you,” I say, moving along and putting a flaky biscuit next to my fried chicken.
Her polite “you’re welcome” is an almost inaudible squeak.
My ego belly flops from ten thousand feet. Didn’t we fuck this morning? And last night? I was certain we had a great date. Except, now I’m not so sure the evening meant to Cassidy what it had to me.
An older, taller version of Cassidy whispers something in Cassidy’s ear. Cassidy stiffens. The tension coming off her in waves has me turning my head toward the other blonde woman.
“Don’t mind me. I’m just her mom, Keely Cavanaugh.” Cassidy’s mother sends me a smile and extends her hand. “Her father, Colton, is over there, sitting on the couch next to Paisley and Jake.”
Cassidy rolls her eyes. “You know what? I, um, I need to go. I just remembered no one is at the mansion to accept Isaiah’s delivery.” Cassidy drops the serving spoon with a clatter, high-tailing it out of the kitchen. She dodges her father’s question about where she’s running off to so fast, the door practically slams behind her.
My muscles tense. I have a keen awareness that my fixation on Cassidy during her hasty exit is abnormal, as is the ensuing silence in the Sanchez house. I put my plate down, begging the ladies to excuse my bad manners while avoiding the stares of some rather grumpy old men.
Outside, I duck and dart between tree limbs, trying to find Cassidy. Arms swinging, she’s already crossed the access road between the Victorian and the stable yard. I have to sprint to catch up with her.
“Where are you going?” I’m cautious not to yank Cassidy by the elbow.
“What?” she snaps as I fall in stride. “I said where I was going. Go eat your lunch.”
“So, we’re pretending you aren’t upset?”
Casey stops and crosses her arms. The action lifts her breasts in the most unfair way.
“What did I do wrong, Cass?”
“Nothing!” she exclaims, throwing up her hands and attempting again to storm away.
“Then can you at least tell me what happened? You booked it out of there like your pants were on fire.”
And not the good kind of on fire either. I figured out how Cassidy reacts to that last night.
She stops once more, keeping her back to me. “Listen, I understand your privacy is important to you or you wouldn’t have been reclusive since Kylie died. You don’t need anyone prying into your life or complicating things.”
“Why can’t I be the judge of that?” Cassidy wouldn’t believe the complexity of my life if it was staring her in the face. “What’s the big deal about your mom… or your dad? Did you not want me to meet them?”
Whoa. That’s a shock to my pride.
Cassidy turns. She blinks the same way any of my past girlfriends or my wife had, looking at me as if I’m dense.
While I have a general understanding when women are certain I’ve done something wrong, I don’t get what she thinks I’ve done.
“They’re all asking questions.” She gestures, flustered.
“What do they want to know?” I’m intrigued.
“About dinner and what you wore and what I wore and the food.” Her shoulders hit her ears.
“About our entire date,” I huff, my chest swelling. A broad grin bends my cheeks, remembering how gorgeous Cassidy was and how much fun I had with her. I’m at ease with this woman and my brain can’t wrap around the fact that I met her less than thirty-six hours ago. It feels longer. “Did you tell them?”
“No! I’m not divulging secrets about your se—love life.”
My chest rumbles. “Last I checked, it’s your sex life, too. Is that why you want to keep it quiet?”
Cassidy was hesitant in the gift shop as well because of the surveillance cameras.
“You were six paces behind me when we got to the steakhouse. I went to the ladies’ room so that you could walk out alone. As for my parents, why bother? Why get their hopes up? Why endure an afternoon of ridicule when you’re about to leave? Once you’re gone, it’ll be ‘poor Cassidy got dumped by Isaiah Roomer, country superstar.’ How am I supposed to live down accepting one date with you when it was never meant to lead anywhere between the two of us?”
Damn. She’s cutting her losses as I’m trying to reel her in.
“ Ah, that’s… Practical” Practical as shit, but I’d rather hold my tongue than cup my balls in case Cassidy junk punches me. “What if I stuck around?” I suggest.
“Until tomorrow?”
“Or next week.” I lean in, curling my fingers around the shell of her ear. “I don’t have a date for New Year’s. I heard Cris mention the country club y’all are members at holds a big soirée?”
“Are you crazy? It’ll be swarming with people.” Cassidy’s hopeful expression tells me she wants my request of a second date to be serious.
“Crazy as a bedbug,” I reply, wrapping my arms around her. I place my lips on her forehead, breathing in her sweet scent and December’s fresh, cool country air.
Cassidy sinks into me and we stay suspended in the moment. Holding onto her, I don’t want to leave at all. The ranch and vineyard are beautiful, serene. Cassidy is gorgeous. I’d be content staying at the B too chicken to go home and too cowardly to admit that the longer I stay, the less I want to leave.
“You can go back and eat at Cris and Daveigh’s,” she offers.
“ Nah, if you are making me a priority, then I can make you mine.”