Far Too Tempting Read online

  “Believe it, Owen Stanchcomb, believe it,” I say then turn to him and hold up my empty hands. “I’m scared. I don’t know what to do,” I whisper, and tears sting the backs of my eyes. “I’ve never had this kind of trouble writing.”

  He doesn’t let my worry faze him. “It’s okay, champ. We’re in this together.” He mimics a boxing trainer and throws a few pretend punches, then rubs my arms as if he’s prepping me for the fight. “C’mon. First words that come to mind.”

  I peer through the glass at the class. “How about something about movement,” I say, improvising.

  “Movement.” Owen nods as if what I just said is pure genius.

  “Or action.”

  “Action. That’s good.”

  “Maybe stretching.”

  He glances at the glass. “Or kicking,” he offers, picking up the baton easily.

  “Kicking and screaming?”

  He nods and claps. “This is it. It’s coming together.”

  I tap my head with the pen. “It’s in there, percolating, marinating.”

  “Maybe that could be a song,” Owen begins, singing in a low voice. “I want to percolate, marinate, ruminate, remediate.”

  “That does sound like a song. Like an INXS song!”

  Owen laughs. “You got me there.” He stares up at the ceiling as if in deep thought. Then he snaps his fingers. “I know what we need to do. Get a quick lunch and go the studio. You need to be around microphones and soundboards. You need to get those headphones on and be in the heartbeat of making music. I have the keys for the studio, it’s a Saturday and no one is using it, so let’s do it.” He holds up his hand to high-five.

  I slap his palm back. “You are the most awesome producer I have ever had. And you’re not too shabby as a brother either.”

  Ethan runs out of the karate class. He rushes to Owen first. “Uncle Owen!”

  Owen picks him up and ruffles his hair. “Dude, what’s up?”

  “Did you see my front kick?”

  “It was fu—I mean, freaking awesome,” Owen says admiringly.

  “Hi, Mom. I need some water,” Ethan says and walks off to the water fountain while Owen and I gather our hats, coats, scarves, and other supplies to brave the tundra for a quick lunch at Wendy’s Diner, then over to the studio.

  My brother may have had the right idea. Because the first day back in the recording studio is like the start of spring training. When I flip the light switch just beside the door of Gnarled Sunrise Studios, I feel that same sense of starting anew, as I walk into the live room, touching the microphone, look through the familiar window into the control room.

  This must be what baseball players feel when they walk into the locker room for spring training in Florida after a winter away from the game. It’s the feeling of dusting off, stretching your muscles, getting back into the swing of it. Maybe here, in my element, I will find inspiration. If the best music comes from the heart, then maybe this is where I should be searching.

  “This is so cool!” Ethan does laps around the room and banging the walls with his palms. He runs to the middle of the room and grabs the microphone. “Be careful,” I say, but still click it on for him.

  “Uncle Owen! Can you hear this?”

  Owen nods his head vigorously from the other side of the glass. He’s sitting in the control room, the equipment spread out before him.

  “But I thought it was supposed to be soundproof?” Ethan asks.

  Owen’s voice pipes into the room. “It is soundproof. But it’s so people outside the studio can’t hear, like someone walking down the hall.”

  Ethan smacks his forehead. “Duh! I thought no one could hear.” He then walks around the studio, his squeaky sneakers rendered practically soundless on the hardwood floors. Not only do the hardwoods Jeremy installed add to the ambiance—I love the warm, homey, intimate feel of the blond wood—they also do an astonishing job absorbing sound. I’ve worn my loudest boots in the studio, the kind with wickedly high heels, and it’s like someone turned the volume all the way down on the soles.

  “All right, Ethan. I’m going to sing. Want to play air guitar?” I ask.

  “Yeah!” He breaks out his imaginary pick, poised to strum.

  We run through “Mixed Messages,” then “Physical.” Owen gives me a thumbs-up from his perch inside the control room. “Now, we just need, oh, say, at least six more songs.”

  “But no pressure, really.”

  “None at all.”

  “Actually, I was planning on doing a two-song album. Oh, wait, that would be a single with a B-side, wouldn’t it? And some would say that’s the future of the business,” I add, teasing him, teasing myself. And though I’m not suddenly belting out a new tune, I do feel better being here.

  My cell phone rings then. It’s Aidan. “Hello?”

  “Hi, Jane. How are you?”

  “Fine. What can I do for you?”

  It’s not as if he’s calling to chitchat. We don’t do that anymore. I no longer call him to share cute Ethan stories, like I did when we were together. Back then, I would leave messages during the day when he was teaching. I’d say, “Did you know his preschool teachers call him the Mayor of Manhattan Day because he knows all the kids and all their parents and says hi to everyone?” Or “Ethan insisted on making me breakfast today, so I had raisin bread stir fried in milk and brown sugar. Yum.”

  It’s not that Ethan stopped being adorable. It’s that you cease sharing the cute little stories when you’re divorcing.

  “I wanted to check in again about the meeting. The one I asked you to attend. You said you’d consider it,” he says.

  I step into the hall. I’d nearly forgotten his request. “I’m going to be honest here, Aidan. I have a lot on my plate. My record label needs an album I’ve barely written, I have a few gigs coming up, and then there’s that little matter of raising our son half the time.”

  “I know,” he says sympathetically. “And if you want to say no, I completely understand and respect that. I simply wanted to ask.”

  “Ugh,” I moan, and his routine reminds me of how our marriage was. “Why do you have to be so fucking nice and considerate all the time?”

  “Because I care about you, Jane. You’re the mom of my kid. And you’re kind of a cool person too,” he says, as if the answer is obvious. “I’ve always cared about you. I always will.”

  I feel a hitch in my throat, and the tears that pricked my eyes back at the karate studio well up again. I hate that I still feel this way. I wish for just a moment that he could make it easier for me to hate him. Couldn’t he at least have had the balls to cheat on me? Couldn’t he at least have given me the satisfaction of having had a quick screw in a bathhouse? A long and sordid affair with Tom?

  But he’s not that person. He’s a good guy. He’s a kind man. He’s a great dad, and yet sometimes all I want is to go Alanis Morissette on him.

  Like the night I showed up at his new place a month after he left me. The early shock had worn off and anger had set in. Natalie had come over for Chinese takeout, and after I ranted—and moaned and cried—I asked her to stay and watch a sleeping Ethan because I needed to visit my ex to give him a piece of my mind.

  “Where’s Tom?” I asked, after he buzzed me in.

  “He’s working. We don’t live together though,” Aidan said calmly. “Where’s Ethan?”

  I smacked my forehead. “I am so stupid! I left him at home all alone. Do you think he can handle that?”

  Aidan didn’t take the bait. He simply said, “What can I do for you?”

  “What can you do for me?” I repeated as I began strolling around his apartment. “What can you do for me? You could roll your eyes. You could say something nasty when I make a sarcastic remark. You could raise your voice. How about that?”

  Aidan leaned against the counter in his kitchen. “What would be the point of all that?”

  “The point? Oh, I don’t know. Maybe to demonstrate you have an emotion.
But that’s the problem, isn’t it? You don’t have any emotions for me. Nope, not a single one. So you can just stand there all cool and casual and unbothered. But what about me?”

  “What about you?”

  “You led me on for years! You made me a fool. You made me feel so stupid.” I pushed my hands through my hair, anger like I had never felt before rising through me.

  “I’m so sorry, Jane. I never wanted to hurt you. You have to know that.”

  “You’re sorry? Who cares that you’re sorry? Couldn’t you have figured out, oh, say, maybe when you were twenty that you preferred men? Would that have been so much to ask?”

  “I didn’t marry you thinking this would happen. I swear.”

  “You kissed a guy in college, Aidan,” I said more quietly this time. “Didn’t it occur to you that you might be gay?”

  Aidan turned away then, reaching for two tumblers and filling them with water from his Brita filter in the fridge. “Have some water.”

  “I don’t want any water! I want to know why you led me on. I want to know why you slept with me. I want to know why you didn’t come out before you married me.”

  He took a drink from his glass. “I didn’t know then. I wasn’t sure. This hasn’t been easy for me, either.”

  “Fuck you, it hasn’t been easy for you! You’re a coward, Aidan Stoker. A coward. You couldn’t even dump me without help. You had to have a friend come over. Do you have any idea how humiliating that was?”

  He just shook his head.

  “Well, I hope you never have to know.”

  Then I spotted his cordless phone on the kitchen counter. I reached for it, raised my arm over my head, and threw it as hard as I could at the faraway living-room wall. It smacked the wall and landed on the hardwood floor with a satisfying clunk, spitting up its battery case and battery. Aidan walked across the room, picked up the phone, and put its parts back in. Then he returned to the kitchen and placed it safely back in its cradle.

  He reached for my arm. The feel of his hand wrapping around me hurt too much, searing me with all that I’d once thought it meant—and all that it never was.

  “I’m sorry, Jane. I never meant to use you. I never meant to lead you on. I loved you. I still love you. I just don’t…” He let his voice trail off. “I wish I could say something to make you feel better.”

  I shook my head and placed my hand on the doorknob. “You can’t.”

  Now, here in the hall, the pain slices through me again. I’m reminded once more of Kelly’s advice—maybe I can help someone else. Maybe this pain will be useful to some other woman experiencing the same awful kind of self-doubt.

  “Fine. E-mail me the details,” I tell him, then say good-bye, and the pain is instantly chased by anger.

  I stare daggers at my phone and fight very hard the urge to throw it at the wall. Instead, I march right back into the studio, past Owen, sitting at the soundboard with Ethan in his lap. I push hard on the door to the live room and grab the nearest guitar. I strap it over my shoulder and push my hands through my hair, pulling it away from my face, reaching for a ponytail holder in my back pocket to get it out of the way.

  Without even looking through the window into the control room, I can feel two sets of eyes on me. I can tell my brother and my son are both watching me, quizzical, wondering what is going on as I begin playing.

  But I don’t care who is watching. I just focus on the walls, the floors, the microphone so close to my face, and listen to the beats already forming, the chords coming together, the melody of my anger—anger at myself—falling into place, as I play the guitar.

  Ten minutes later, I layer the words on top, raw like the notes, raw like my emotions.

  Don’t ask me

  To be your friend

  Don’t ask me to be your figurehead

  I don’t want to be your spokesman

  So don’t, just don’t, please don’t ask me

  I’ll be shaking my head, turning you down

  But the words don’t come out that way

  So please don’t ask me, oh don’t ask, oh don’t ask, oh don’t ask

  …

  Later that night, I’m sitting on my deck—my lucky deck—listening to my second album on my iPod. Back when I thought I was happy with my husband. Back when I thought I knew what love was. But I was a fool, and these stupid songs sound so foolish now.

  I yank the earbuds from my ears, turn off the music, wishing I didn’t feel so many damn mixed emotions at once—the start of something with Matthew, and the aftereffects of the end of Aidan. The trouble is, only one of those feelings comes with music. I’ve finally managed a decent song, but it came from Aidan, from the scab of my marriage that I keep picking. Not a single, solitary note has come from pleasure. Even the one song I wrote about Matthew wasn’t about happiness—it stemmed from confusion.

  I want to move on musically, and I want to be happy personally. But those good, floaty, buzzy feelings for Matthew don’t come with any notes; they aren’t paired with music; they don’t elicit melodies. Maybe it’s only the broken part of my heart that can produce a song, not the part that might be finally healing.

  And if that’s true, I’m pretty much screwed.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I call Matthew in the morning when I wake up. I’m still in bed, my voice a little froggy from sleep.

  “Are you back in town?”

  “Indeed I am.”

  “I wrote a song this weekend,” I tell him.

  “Excellent. When do I get a sneak preview?”

  “You don’t really beat around the bush, do you?”

  “How about tomorrow morning in Central Park?”

  “What’s going on in Central Park tomorrow morning?”

  “Goos Mom,” he declares, referring to the caretaker of the Central Park geese.

  “Is she back? I love Goos Mom! I haven’t seen her in years.”

  “Word is she was in California for a while, but she’s back and she’s has her wagon. Meet me on the corner of Seventy-Ninth and Central Park West at eight thirty. I’ll be there with my dog.”

  “I get to meet The Doctor. So exciting. I’ll be there.”

  “And Jane,” he says, and then pauses. “I can’t wait to see you.”

  “Same here,” I say, then fumble into the kitchen to make tea, wishing this wanting, this longing, would lead to a song.

  …

  I scan up and down Central Park West for Matthew. But he’s not here. I park my butt on the closest bench and listen to Arcade Fire on my iPod. I close my eyes during the slow part of one of the songs, then feel the unmistakable sensation of dog breath on my legs. I open my eyes and pull the earphones out of my ears.

  Matthew’s in front of me, and I grin instantly at the sight of him. It’s been a week since I’ve seen him, and he’s so damn handsome, those blue eyes drawing me back to him with the way they sparkle playfully. “Matthew Harrigan is late. Or so Jane Black thinks. But what she doesn’t know is the clever Mr. Harrigan told Jane to be here at eight thirty to ensure she’d be here at the proper time. Nine.”

  I can’t help but let a small smile form across my mouth. “You tricked me.”

  He reaches out a hand to me and I willingly accept, standing up from the bench. “I had no choice. Goos Mom excels in punctuality and I needed you here on time.”

  I gesture to the big blond dog. “I like your dog.”

  “I’ve told her all about you.”

  That makes me smile and want to smother him in kisses too. Instead, I bend down to pet his dog on the head. She’s a big dog, probably eighty pounds or so, and appears as if a little bit of hound, a little bit of husky, and a little bit of Labrador were dropped in the mixing bowl to make her. She has a thick husky coat, hound haunches, soft ears, and the proverbial big brown eyes. “She’s adorable,” I say.

  “Thank you. Shall we?” He gestures to the park. We walk across to Turtle Pond, tucked just north of Seventy-Ninth Street. He guides me
to a bench not too far from the pond.

  I’ve seen Goos Mom before. She’s a Central Park institution, but she went west for a spell, and now, evidently, she is back. At nine o’clock, she heads down the walking path, her short, gray hair peeking out from under her signature Yankees cap, her olive-green rain boots on. She pulls her fire-engine red Radio Flyer wagon with the New York State license plate with GOOSMOM on it. Her pet goose, with the black head and white stripe, sits inside the basket, guarding over the goose food next to him. When they reach the pond, the ritual unfolds. Geese fly in and wait patiently by the water as she retrieves bins from a shed. She fills each one with goose food, places them symmetrically around the pond, and then claps three times. Then the geese race over to the food and chow down.

  “I wish I knew who she was. Have you ever talked to her?”

  He shakes his head. “No, but sometimes I make up stories in my head about who she is and why she takes care of the Central Park geese.”

  “You do like stories, don’t you?”

  “Well, so do you. You tell stories in your music. I do it in my writing.”

  “Only yours are true,” I point out.

  “That might be the pot calling the kettle black.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your music, especially your last album, might just be true too. Like true to your feelings,” he says, petting his dog, who sits dutifully at his feet. “Your last album was straight from the heart. That’s why so many people connected with it.”

  Straight from the heart. That’s precisely how I wrote Crushed. But I can’t write from the heart now. I can only write when it’s aching. Not when it’s reaching for this man by my side.

  “You know that, right?” he continues. “Sometimes I think you don’t realize what your music has done for people.”

  I give him a sideways glance, like he’s crazy.

  “Do you have any idea how many people blasted your songs over and over?”

  “Yeah, when they were hurting,” I add in a withered voice.

  “So? What’s wrong with that? Music heals. You probably helped heal hearts.” He taps my hand again, and the slightest touch from him sends a spark through me. “Speaking of, how about that preview?” Matthew asks. He reaches into his backpack for the reporter’s notebook that’s become so familiar to me now.