Page 89 of Making the Save

“It’s my label,” she said, and looked up at me like it was the boogeyman. “Patricia.”

“The big boss,” I noted.

Syd had given me a rundown of the players at her label. The people who would be making the decisions about her upcoming album.

“Marc must have shared the song with her.” She caught her bottom lip in her teeth, her signal that she was anxious.

“Don’t answer it if you don’t want to,” I said, part of me wishing that she wouldn’t, and then feeling like shit for even thinking that.

“I don’t really have a choice,” she said, and tapped the screen with her finger. “Hi Patricia,” she said as she headed for the front door and the hill where the reception was the best.

I shoved the pullout bed back into place and folded it up. Put the pillows back the way Syd liked them and hung the blankets over the back of the couch. My blanket was blue and hers was kelly green. Like her eyes.

I was an idiot to let this go so far.

Blankets and pillows and sex andourbed. Wedding nights and sex songs and inside jokes. Those were things for real couples, with a future. We were fake and all we had ahead of us was a joint statement announcing our split.

Syd came back in the room, that bottom lip still between her teeth. That stress line between her eyes, the one I had effectively fucked out of existence, was back.

“Everything okay?” I asked, trying to be nonchalant. I walked over to the kitchen and started pulling food out of the cupboards. “You hungry?”

“I could eat,” she said, and sat down on the couch. Her body all curled up again.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Patricia wanted to remind me of the America’s Choice Awards. But really, I think she was digging about songs for the next album. Marc had to have played her the one I sent.”

“You have a bunch.”

“Ha! I have one good one, three great hooks. A bridge maybe? And a dozen ideas.” She rubbed her forehead. “I probably need to get back in the studio.”

This was it. The moment I’d been pretending wasn’t going to happen. The beginning of the end.

“Okay,” I said, putting crackers on a plate next to the last of the cheese and grapes. Girl dinner, she called it. I called it a snack, but whatever. “We can leave today.”

“We don’t have to go just yet,” she said, like leaving today was a terrible idea. That gave me some relief. “The awards are in a week and I can send Marc some more of the recordings of what I have so far. Make an appointment with him when we’re back in the city.”

She was supposed to get her period next week. So…this could be it.

The last week of us.

“What about you?” she asked.

“What about me?”

“Don’t you have to be at training camp or anything?”

“Not until the end of August.”

“Are you getting excited?”

“About two-a-day practices and getting back in the weight room?” I asked. “Not really.” Not at all.

“It must be hard,” she said, “gearing yourself up for that every year.”

“It used to be easy,” I said, and lifted my foot so I could roll my ankle. Fucker was sore. “It used to be the off season that was hard.”

“Are you really thinking about retirement?” she asked.