Page 2 of From the Embers
Above and beyond that, I wasn’t leaning on Bree for shit.
Luckily—or unluckily depending on how you looked at it—Jessica’s best friend, Bree, was married to my best friend, Rob. This meant I’d phoned the closest thing I had to a brother and asked my best friend if I could drop our daughter off to stay with his sitter.
He’d of course said yes. Then, after hearing the shame and frustration in my voice, he’d spent the next fifteen minutes on a pep talk, reminding me he and Bree had also struggled after their oldest had been born. To hear him tell it, everything we were experiencing was perfectly normal. I had a feeling that his wife wasn’t giving Jessica the same encouragement.
It could be said that Bree wasn’t my biggest fan. It could also be said that I’d puked on her shoes the night we’d met. But hey, stomach acid under the bridge, right?
We weren’t mortal enemies or anything. Bree and I got along just fine—on the surface. Deep down, she was a touch…uh, difficult.
And judgmental.
And snobby.
And…well, high maintenance.
I was learning some of that applied to my own wife too.
I’d been moving heaven and earth to work my way back into Jessica’s good graces. My hopes were high that a double-date night would at least bring her smile back. There was no way I could afford dinner and drinks at whatever five-star restaurant Bree would deem worthy of her presence, so Rob had suggested we make it a game night. With the kids at their place, the four of us could hang out at our house, free from little ears and responsibility. Everyone would BYOB. I’d drink the remnants of the Scotch Rob had given me when Luna was born, and I’d buy Jessica whatever giant bottle of wine I could find on sale. The good news for me was she wasn’t picky when it came to drinking away her troubles.
Gripping the back of my neck, I held her icy stare. “Can we just not do this tonight? Please. I’m so sick and fucking tired of fighting all the time. You’re pissed. I get it, okay? We’ll figure it out.” Reaching out, I hooked my pinky with hers and gave it a gentle tug.
She inched closer, stopping before her chest touched mine. “You’ve been trying to figure it out for months now, and nothing has changed. The mortgage company is blowing up my phone like I can magically produce four months of payments if they just keep calling. Every morning, I wake up terrified that it’s going to be the day they finally turn off the water or the power or—” Her voice cracked. “Or…I don’t know. Something.”
My stomach wrenched. Shit was bad, but arguing about it all the time wasn’t doing anything productive other than driving a wedge between us.
I moved into her, wrapping her in a hug, and kissed the top of her head. I didn’t let her stiffness faze me. “I’m not going to let them turn the water off. Or the power. Or anything else you can think of.”
“How?” she croaked, her lack of faith as insulting as it was justified.
I sucked in a deep breath, my chest filling painfully. Dammit. It was time. I couldn’t put it off any longer. Not for pride. Not for what-ifs. Not for all the “maybe one days” in the world. It was our only way out. I was a father and a husband who had responsibilities that didn’t involve chasing a dream.
“I’m gonna pull apart the album,” I whispered.
“Eason,” she gasped, tipping her head back and resting her chin on my pec. So much fucking happiness danced in her eyes that it felt like a knife to the gut.
The spotlight was out of my reach, but I knew how to sell music. Songwriting was where I’d gotten my start. It had paid for our first date, Jessica’s engagement ring, and the down payment on our house. Currently, my dwindling royalties were paying our bills—when we paid them. The first time I’d heard one of my songs on the radio, I’d called everyone I knew, simultaneously laughing and fighting back emotion. I was proud of my accomplishments, but the ultimate goal had always been for me to not only write incredible music, but also be the voice on the radio performing it.
With my signature mix of laid-back pop and soul, Solstice in the ’92 was supposed to be my ticket to the top of the charts. Thirteen songs I’d poured my heart and soul into, each one representing a different stage in my life from growing up without a dad to my party days as a bachelor, all the way to the birth of my daughter. They were bold. They were raw. They were Eason Maxwell. Selling them off was going to feel like being ripped limb from limb.
