Page 7 of Falls From Grace
“Oh.” Brynn stalled for time, feeling mildly panicked. Being the lone unemployed weirdo surrounded by famous musicians felt unpleasantly reminiscent of how she felt in a room full of her family, especially when they all talked shop. “I’m really very boring,” she hedged.
“Somehow I doubt that.” Savannah looked at her steadily. “You seem very…” her words petered out. “I’d like to know your story,” she said again, with determination. She really was standing very close. Brynn could almost count her eyelashes. She breathed in.
“Okay, well… I guess I-”
Savannah’s attention suddenly shifted. She pulled her mobile phone from her back pocket, and Brynn caught a few notes of the famous lullaby again.
“Yeah, okay,” Savannah said to the caller briskly without even waiting to hear them speak, then hung up abruptly. She looked at Brynn. “I’m-”
“You’re sorry, you have to go,” Brynn supplied for her. Savannah looked back at her inscrutably for a beat and then nodded. “No problem.” Brynn blinked and backed away as Savannah turned and slipped out of the room. “Jesus,” she breathed to herself, as she headed over to join Noah.
For a second, the singer had sucked her in. She’d made Brynn feel utterly like the only person in the room, which was the actual definition of professionally charming, she cursed herself. Now she just felt stupid. Thank god she hadn’t gotten the chance to babble on about her life, as though Savannah had actually given one single fuck about hearing it.
“You good?” Noah asked as she slouched over to sit next to him. She nodded, flopping down beside him.
“Oh hey, you’re the wife, right?” Travis drawled, leaning around Noah to shake her hand. “Nice to meet you. So great you could get to come up and spend this time together.” His words acted like a prompt and Noah quickly wrapped his arm around her shoulders, supportive husband style. It was actually pretty nice, feeling like she belonged for a moment, even just as a spouse. “How’d you two meet?”
Brynn and Noah looked at each other. She smiled, as if reminiscing about a romantic moment.
“I saved his stupid life,” she said fondly, squeezing his knee.
“Brynn’s a lifeguard,” Noah explained.
“Woah,” Travis looked actually impressed, but Brynn could tell he was imagining her in a swimsuit. Men always did when they heard what she did for a living. Right this minute there was the theme to Baywatch playing behind his eyes while she bounced in slow motion down a beach. “You were drowning?”
“I mean… I did swallow a ton of water. Got caught in a rip in Malibu. One minute I was going under, the next she was hauling me out. As soon as I could breathe again, I asked her out.”
They’d agreed to stick to the truth wherever possible during this fake relationship adventure and, so far, so easy. They patched over the next part of the story - Brynn saying he wasn’t her type, what with how she was super gay - by smiling at each other sweetly.
In real life, Noah had recovered quickly - both from his near drowning and his rejection - and they’d still had a drink after her shift had ended. A drink had led to tacos and tacos had led to true love. Just not the kind they were trying to project now.
“Ugh, that’s so romantic.” Travis shook his head. “I always wish I had a story like that to tell, but I met my boyfriend on Grindr.” Okay, maybe he didn’t particularly care about her in a swimsuit. “Of course, I told my mom we met at the library.”
“No, man, it’s romantic wherever you find love.” Noah was such a soft touch. “Particularly when you’re on the road all the time, right?”
“Yeah. I mean, we were. We’ve been in limbo, really, since the whole thing with Cole. And Tucker too, I guess. We haven’t been on the road together in almost three years and I miss it. Hoping you’ll be what turns that around for us.”
Brynn did her best to look interested, but they were drifting back into shop talk. She sipped her soda water, letting their words fade into the background, and watched the room. Coral and Jed were in some kind of intense conversation, maybe even verging on an argument. She wondered if they were a couple. Chester called out to them and they both burst into laughter, whatever it was, forgotten. No one commented on Savannah’s absence.
They all wound up sitting around a huge cedar table, eating an incredible spread of what Luis - the full-time chef - assured them was all local, farm-to-table and organic. Savannah slipped back into the room and took a seat without any fanfare, not long after the food arrived. The conversation was already loud and it didn’t falter with her re-emergence. Only Coral pulled away from where she’d been talking to Noah and checked in with her, their voices low and intimate.
It was weird…Savannah wasn’t like the other celebrities Brynn had encountered during her time in LA. She didn’t take charge of the room, didn’t act like she was the boss, and there was no deference shown to her at all by the others. It was more like hanging out with a group of friendly workmates or even siblings. If your siblings generally liked each other, that was.
Savannah caught her eye from her position near the other end of the table and raised her drink at Brynn slightly, her expression seeming apologetic, even verging on regretful. Brynn smiled back politely. She would normally tell herself to be on her guard around a woman that beautiful, but after this welcome dinner was over and Savannah and Noah got to writing, she was pretty sure they’d have nothing at all to do with each other, and that was just fine by her.
Chapter Four
By 5 a.m., Savannah had given up on sleeping. Her nights were usually disturbed, and this one was no different. By now she’d been lying awake, staring up at the darkness for what felt like hours. Her brain whirred like a non-stop machine, producing worry after worry until her stomach churned. She slipped out of bed, into her running clothes, and quietly closed the back door behind her.
Outside, it was still night, but the promise of sunrise gave her just enough light to make out the path. She began to jog, her body feeling tight with cold and tension, slowly loosening as she made her way through the trees. It didn’t occur to her to feel afraid of the forest in the dark. She’d grown up in the Tennessee woods and the whispering of the trees and the occasional snap of a twig felt like home. Humans were much scarier than anything in nature, but since these woods were both private and protected, she felt even safer out here than if she were tucked up in her bed indoors.
Slowly, the anxieties that had left her wrung out and sleepless began to lose their sharpness as she started to expend the energy inside her body. The low light slowly filtering through the trees felt like a relief, like the darkness had been mental as well as literal. She looped back around the path and down the big hunks of solid granite that acted as steps to the lake, just in time to see the first sliver of blazing rose-gold as the sun slipped up over the mountains. For a few dazzling minutes, the lake was awash with color.
Savannah perched on a boulder at the edge of the small beach and caught her breath. She let herself finally feel present, concentrating on the sound of the water gently lapping at the lake shore, the bird chorus awakening, the soft cool breeze against her heated face as the world slowly lit up around her. She wondered what it would be like to never have to go indoors again, to shed her life like a skin and disappear into the woods forever. She imagined sleeping in a tree hollow like a wild animal, finally at peace.
But that was not her life. She breathed in the cold air and tried to take advantage of these few stolen minutes to herself. They were so few and far between these days she wanted to cry. She didn’t want to waste the small time she had by fussing, so instead she began to focus on the day ahead, trying to break things into bite-size chunks she could manage.
Today the band were departing, all three flying back to Nashville to get on with their lives and their other projects. Savannah had nothing for them, not yet, and their return to Vermont depended on what, if anything, she could produce for them to work with. She wasn’t used to having sole creative control and she was both extremely thrilled and daunted by the idea. Which was where Noah came in.
