Chapter 13
THIRTEEN
Ihaven’t planned a date in so long I fumble the reservation on my own phone, three tries before it takes, and then I refuse to tell Josie where we’re going just to watch her work me for it all afternoon.
She tries everything. Sweet, sly, bribery, a threat involving the good knives.
I hold the line. It’s the most fun I’ve had keeping a secret in years.
She comes down the stairs in a dress I’ve never seen, deep, dark purple, her hair up off her neck, and I forget what I was about to say. All these years and she can leave me speechless.
“Well,” she says, turning once at the bottom of the stairs. “Worth the wait?”
“Get in the truck before I change the plan to staying home.”
She laughs and grabs her coat, and Paige hollers from the couch that we look like we’re going to prom and to have her home by eleven.
I take her to a place a few towns over, on purpose.
Not the flashy spot downtown where everyone knows us and will want to talk about town politics, the show, or the new menu items introduced at the café this week.
I take her to a quieter place, with velvet cushioning in the booths, where the only light comes from the dim lamp on our table, and where there’s a guy on an upright, playing the strings like, he’s making love to them.
This is the type of place where no one will ask for a selfie, or post online that Liam Page is out on the town.
Mira, my longtime manager, told me about this place, and spoke very highly about their no cell phone policy in the restaurant.
That was most of the reason I picked it.
I wanted to be able to take my wife on a date and not have it broadcasted to a million people.
Especially JD because he’d hit up my phone about wearing a condom and reminding me to treat my “date” to a nice dinner before I bang the fuck out of her.
The other reason is the look on Josie’s face when she walks in and sees it for what it is, a place nobody’s going to bug us. She squeezes my arm and doesn’t say anything.
We order too much. We always do. She steals off my plate even though hers isn’t empty. She’s done this as far back to when we were teens. What she doesn’t know is I’d starve before I told her no. Josie’s the only one though. No one else can touch my food.
We talk about nothing, which is the whole point.
Not the kids. Not the babies, not the shop, not the show.
Her. Me. The trip to the coast we keep saying we need to take since Harrison and Katelyn haven’t been out in a while.
I know it’s killing them, not being with Peyton and the babies, even though Elle and Ben travel between here and California.
They also love the beach, and I know it’s hard to give up.
Harrison surfs every morning and has been teaching Oliver.
I imagine he has Jett and Sonny in the water already.
The only water Beaumont has to offer is a lake.
It’s a nice lake. It’s just not the same.
“We should do this more,” she says, around a bite of my steak.
I know this isn’t a jab at me not being home.
Even when I’m on tour, and she’s with me, our nights are on a tour bus, in cramped quarters.
We’re with our friends though, making memories and those have been just as important in our lives.
Now that I’m home, there’s no reason we aren’t doing this.
“That’s the idea. I’m told it’s a ritual now.”
“Says who.”
“Says me. I’m establishing it. Tonight. Us, a table, no one allowed to bother us on date night. I really like this place, no phones. Paige and Noah know where we are in case of emergency, that’s enough.” I top off her wine. “I’ll make a standing reservation.”
“And if they’re booked?”
Why is she always testing me?
“I’ll have to make friends with the owner.” I shrug and top off my glass.
“Or buy the restaurant.” Her eyebrow rises, another test.
“Don’t tempt me.” I set the bottle down. “I think we have enough projects going on right now.”
She nods and takes a sip of her wine. “Thankfully, we have a good project manager to oversee everything. You just write the check.”
“Easy peasy.” I hold my glass up and wait for her to do the same. “To us and a new routine that benefits us.” The glasses clink and we drink.
“Are you trying to get me drunk?”
“Why would I need to do that?”
Josie lifts one shoulder. “To take advantage of me in your truck.”
The way she says it goes right to my dick. I adjust as discreetly as possible and clear my throat. I’m visibly uncomfortable. That gets me her real smile.
Josie’s hand moves slowly across the table until her fingers are playing with mine. “We own the land the water tower is on.”
“This is true.”
“And it’s been a really long time since I rode you in your truck.”
Heat spreads everywhere. With my free hand, I tug at my collar and adjust the top button. “Jojo.” My voice carries a hint of warning.
“Rockstar.”
I chuckle and lean forward, hiding the bulge in my trousers. “You know, all you have to do is ask. I’ll give you whatever you want.”
Josie leans forward and keeps her voice low. “I want to go to the water tower, make out like teenagers and bounce—”
“Is there anything else I can get you?” the waiter has impeccable timing. Josie’s smile is wicked and gleaming, and she leaves me to answer.
“We’re—” I have to clear the lump away. “All good for right now.”
He smiles and tells us he’ll back.
I run my hand over my face. “I need to use the restroom.”
“Don’t you dare rub it out.”
My eyes widen at her words. “Josephine Westbury!”
“Don’t call me Josephine and I know you, Liam.” She stares me down and I swear I can feel the daggers stabbing me.
“I won’t. I promise.” I stand, lean toward her, and pull her chin up with my finger so she’s looking into my eyes. “I would never deprive you.” I kiss the tip of her nose and stalk off.
The night is exactly what I wanted for us.
It happens on the way back from the restroom.
A woman stops me between the tables. Pleasant, well dressed, a little bright in the eyes.
She says she doesn’t want to bother me, and then she does.
She listens every night, she says. She tells me she was in a bad way and my voice got her through it, that some nights it felt like I was talking straight to her, like I knew.
She’s got my show times memorized and watches my social media for replays of the clips my team has put together.
She knows the song I closed with on Thursday and tells me I used it before and then asks why I didn’t choose something different.
“It’s how I felt in the moment,” I tell her. “I’m glad I was able to help. Thank you for listening.”
She sticks her hand out. We shake. I smile and start to let go. She doesn’t ease her grip until I tug my hand away. “Have a nice evening,” I tell her and walk back to my table.
None of this is a crime. Is it wrong to approach someone like this? Maybe. I can make an argument that I want my privacy but then people like her are the people who gave me the grace to be the persona I am.
Still, there are times, like now, when I want to be Liam Westbury. Where I want to have a nice night with my wife without having to be on.
I get back to the table and Josie’s watching the whole thing over the rim of her glass.
“Fan?”
“Listener.” I sit back down. “Says I helped her through a tough time.”
“That’s sweet.”
“It is,” I agree, and I let it go, because it is sweet, but it sits with me a little longer than it should.
The piano player starts something slow, and I do a thing I haven’t done in longer than I care to remember. I stand up, hold out my hand, and ask my wife to dance.
She looks at the other couples, none of them dancing, and then she looks at me, and she takes my hand anyway.
She learned a long time ago; we don’t want to waste time being shy.
If we can, we set an example for others to follow.
There’s no floor, really. Just the space between the tables.
We use it. She fits against me easy, my hand at the small of her back and hers up around my neck, and we turn slow to the song.
Part of me’s braced for the fan to join in with her date or ask to cut in.
I mentally prepare for what I’ll say or how I’ll react.
Thankfully, we aren’t interrupted and it’s just us and a piano man playing a song neither of us knows the words to, and all I can think is there nowhere I’d rather be.
After dinner, we decide to walk. Josie tucks her arm through mine and we walk the little main street with our shoulders together, no place to be, the shop windows dark.
“You going to tell me what you and your mother talked about the other morning,” she says. “Or are you going to make me guess. Because I’ll guess, and I’ll be right, and then you’ll be annoyed I didn’t let you say it first.”
“How’d you know we talked?”
“Because she stopped by the café and said I may need to be a sounding board.”
“And you’ve waited all week?”
She shrugs. “I figured if you needed to vent, you would. I’ve been patient, now I’m asking.”
I walk us another half a block before I answer.
“The man that called,” I say finally. “The one where you texted me to come home.”
“I remember.”
“My mother thinks it was my father.” The word comes out of me strange. I don’t use it much. I don’t have much use for it. “She’s sure, actually. The voice, the way he talked around the hard parts. She lived a lifetime with the man. She’d know.”
Josie stops walking.
I keep her arm in mine so she has to stop with me, face to face on the empty sidewalk under a streetlight buzzing overhead, and I make myself say the rest, because she’s the one person, I don’t get to give the short version to.
“If it is him, he called my show, Jojo. Sat somewhere and dialed a stranger because he couldn’t dial me and asked how a man comes back to a son he threw away.
And I didn’t know him. I gave him the kindest answer I had.
I told my own father how to find the door.
A door I don’t know if it’s open or not.
The shit he did . . .” I shake my head and look to the ground.
She doesn’t reach for my face or tell me how I feel. She just steps in and puts her forehead against my jaw and her hand flat over my heart and stands there with me in the cold on an empty sidewalk.
“Okay,” she says, finally, into my collar. “Okay. So now I know it too. Whatever it turns into, you’re not the only one carrying it anymore. That’s the deal. That’s always been the deal.”
“I know.”
“Do you, though?” She leans back to look at me. “Because you’ve had all week to tell me and you waited until I asked. If this is the result of one caller, your father or not, I don’t like it. Maybe this show isn’t for you.”
“I vowed a long time ago to never let that man ruin anything for us.”
“We’re too strong for him. He’s never known the kind of love we share, the kind we have for our children. He’s an afterthought and taking advantage of the vulnerability you’re putting out there for your fans. He’s not a fan.”
She takes my face in both hands. “You are so much more of a man than he could ever dream of being and you owe him nothing.”
“I hate not knowing if it was him.”
“Then we don’t know together and now you’re sharing the burden.” She tucks back into my side and turns us toward the truck. “Come on. Walk me to the truck, rock star. Take me to the water tower and you might get a second date out of this yet.”
“I don’t know,” I tell her as I help her into the truck. “If I remember correctly, you want to do some things that probably shouldn’t happen on the first date.”
“It’s a ritual now.” she winks as I close the door.