Merry Ever After

He was angry now. His hand dropped from my neck and landed on the counter next to my hip. “Because it’s never fucking enough. It’s not enough that I write and play music people like. That I get up on stage and perform for them. They still want more. They want pieces of you. Pieces they can hold up under a magnifying glass to judge their worth. Be raw. Be real. Be fuckin’ vulnerable. Let me judge you, dissect you, digest you to decide if you’re good enough.”

It was more words than I’d heard him say in an entire day. And I wished I’d had my voice recorder on.

“Wow,” I breathed.

“You want this story? This job?”

I nodded.

“Then you gotta earn every answer.”

I wet my lips and wondered if it was wrong to hope that he wanted me to earn answers with really awesome punk-rock sex.

“H-how?”

“Quid pro quo, sweetheart. You get an answer; I get an answer.”

I accepted the plate Vonn handed me. I was trying to figure out his angle. I was a divorced mother of two adult children. I lived in a small town in Pennsylvania. I didn’t have secrets like a man who had been on a dozen world tours did.

“Do you want some wine?” I offered.

He shook his head. “No thanks.”

I remembered then that he didn’t drink. An interesting quirk in his line of work.

“We got a deal?” Vonn asked, strolling into the living room.

Betty barked, and I looked down to see her sitting in front of me, tail swishing across the kitchen floor.

“Dinner. Right,” I said. I put her

kibble dinner in the bowl before following Vonn.

He was sprawled on the couch. Feet propped up on the coffee table.

Gray sweatpants had been invented for Vonn Barlowe.

Not only did they put the perfect globes of his butt on display, they also paid quite the flattering homage to his crotchal region.

I snapped out of it and took the opposite end of the couch, pulling my feet up and resting my plate on a throw pillow. It was roasted chicken legs with sprigs of rosemary, fat wedges of red onion, and… “Are these grapes?” I asked, poking one of the purple globes. It smelled divine.

“They are.”

I took a bite of grape and onion and chicken. My eyes rolled back in my head. “Yum. This is really, really good.”

“I’m a man of many talents.”

It was safer not to respond to that.

My phone rang on the coffee table, and I realized he’d brought it into the living room for me.

Addison.

“It’s my daughter,” I said, putting my plate down and swiping to accept the call.

Shane and Addy’s faces popped up on my screen. “Merry Christmas Eve, Mom,” they sang.

I grinned. Once again surprised and delighted by the combination of traits both kids got from me and their dad. Hair. Eyes. Jaw. Nose. Yet all four of us were completely different people. Addy was a bubbly perfectionist hell-bent on growing up as fast as possible. Shane was a laid-back athlete who didn’t waste time on things like planning for the future.