Page 22 of Making the Save
“And no pets?”
He shook his head. “Travel too much. You?”
“Same. I really want them though. All of it. Dogs, cats, maybe even a parrot. I keep thinking when all of this is over, when I can finally settle down into real life, then I’ll have all the animals I want. I’ll love them so much, you know?”
He blinked. “This isn’t real life?”
I looked back out at the ocean. “No,” I said. “This is…a dream. A fantasy. That one day I’m going to wake up from. I just want to do my best to honor it while I’m here.” After the way my last record flopped and the way the press were talking about me, that day might be coming sooner rather than later.
“You said you were contracted to your label for one more album, right?”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “I am. You remember a lot from last night.”
He grinned and rubbed a hand behind his neck. “I can hold my liquor a little better than you.”
“Well, you’re like four hundred times my size.”
He stepped up to me as if to prove it, and my head came to about the middle of his chest. He lifted my hand and pressed our palms together. His fingers were at least two inches bigger than mine. He was watching me so carefully, his eyes missing nothing.
What does he see, I wondered.
“Are you writing songs now?” he asked.
I stepped back and shook my head. “I’m…blocked.”
“Like constipated?”
“Like writer’s block!” I laughed.
“That’s like brain constipation, isn’t it?”
“I guess?”
“So? How do you get unblocked?”
“I wish I knew.”
I quickly retreated to my kitchen. Why did I bring this up? I hated talking about myself. I always said too much and then ran it over in my head for days feeling like a fool. “You hungry? Thirsty? I can make some coffee or tea?”
“I’m good, Syd. What’s got you blocked?”
“I don’t know. The scrutiny? Total failure? The world?” See. I said too much. “Whatever, you’re a professional athlete. You know better than anyone else that there is an end date to our careers.”
“That’s different. At some point, I won’t physically be able to keep up the demands of the game. When that day comes, it will be my choice. Not people’s opinion of my play. But you, you’ll always be able to sing and write songs.”
“Hmm,” I said, not agreeing or disagreeing.
I was a pop star. Pop stars were a commodity with a shelf life.
The air at the top was thin for a reason. No one got to live there forever.
I walked over to my L shaped couch and sank into its faded blue material. It had been a bright vibrant blue when I bought it, but the sunshine from the western facing window had faded it. I loved that about it.
“So Beatrice is going to pick up Tyler in LA and then she’ll bring him here to the house. We’ll lay out a blow by blow of how we met, when we started dating, all of it. Then we’ll come up with a reasonable timeline on how to end things so it doesn’t sound like a lapse in judgement. Instead, just a love affair gone tragically wrong because of timing and the demands of our professional lives.”
“Why do I feel like this is normal for you?” he asked, walking back to the window. Watching people throw a ball to a dog out on the beach.
I shrugged. “Because it is. I’ve spent eight years in the tabloids, Wyatt. Everything is a show.”