Chapter 24. I Sang a Song Today.
Sitting on the comfy chair in front of the soundboard, Jude chewed on her fingernails. With both legs pulled up and tugged close to her, she watched the two men outside the studio chatting away as though she wasn't even here. Tommy was wearing a dark tailored suit, a navy blue tie and black shoes. He looked dashing, like he'd stepped right from some runway. Standing next to him was Rick, wearing Jeans and a grey shirt, looking much like Tommy would if he'd be recording with her today. But no. Tommy wasn't recording with her. He had some fancy business meeting to attend to. Darius had made him do that, as soon as he'd found out that Tommy was in New York. Interestingly, Chaz would attend the same meeting. She wondered what they would talk about. Just like she was wondering why Tommy and Rick were talking outside the studio, away from Jude, when she thought it obvious they were talking about her. What else had they in common, right?
"Damn it!" She flinched, having chewed off one bit too much of her nail. With a heavy sigh she leaned back and closed her eyes for a few seconds, trying to relax. It was useless. So she got up and walked out.
"…so I walked up to him and told him if wants me to record his shit, he better makes sure it's good shit!"
Rick laughed. "How did Shay take that?"
"What do you think?" Tommy asked sarcastically. "He went straight to Darius."
"Well that's Shay. But hey, at least your guy is singing!"
Tommy nodded slowly. "Jude will sing. She just needs—"
"I just need what?"
"Jude!" Tommy spun around, placed an arm around her and pulled her in for a quick, firm kiss. "Time," he finished his earlier statement. "With a little more time, you'll be rocking the house! You never told me Rick was your producer. He's a great guy. We worked together a couple of years ago."
"Before Tom went to produce in the Big Biz and I—"
"Became stuck with me. Just say it." Jude detangled from Tommy. "Aren't you supposed to at your fancy meeting with Chaz?"
"Chaz is running late. He's driving." Tommy tried to curl his arm around Jude's waist another time. This time she stepped away. Not just he noticed that something was wrong. Rick obviously did the same and politely walked away, leaving Jude alone with her boyfriend. "What's wrong, Babe?"
"You were talking about me. Out here. With me in another room, watching, but not listening."
"That's because you decided to sit in the studio." He gave a confused shrug. "This wasn't a private discussion. And we hardly talked about you at all. It was just the last part, which you overheard."
Jude wasn't convinced. "It doesn't matter anyway, 'cause there really isn't a lot Rick could say about me. It's not like I'm singing or something!"
"Are you mad at me or at yourself?"
Shooting him a glare, Jude declared, "I'm mad at no one!"
"Fine." He saw Chaz walking up and it was probably for the first time ever that he was grateful for that. "My ride is here. I have to go."
"Of course. Besides, it's not like there's any good reason for you to stay around, given that I won't be singing today. Just like I didn't sing yesterday, the day before or any other day since I got here." She picked a loose thread from her shirt and discarded it. "Will you come by after the meeting?"
Not when you're in this mood, he wanted to say but bit his tongue, smiled and nodded.
###
Five hours, no singing and two grumbling stomachs later, Jude found herself sitting in the studio with Rick, mutely eating french fries and hot-dogs. The experience of eating in silence wasn't new to her but being silent while being in the room with somebody else was irritating and so she glanced at Rick every now and then, only to immediately look away when he met her eyes.
When it happened again, he had enough, placed away the food and sat up. "This is getting ridiculous." Tugging away Jude's plate he made her acknowledge him. "Seriously, I get that you can't sing for some reason, but no talking? From what SME told me there are times hardly anyone can make you shut up. So why do I get the silent-treatment?"
"I'm not doing it on purpose," she assured him. "Seriously, it's nothing personal. I guess…I just don't know what to say to you."
"What did you talk with Tom about when you just met?"
"Music," she said, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world.
Rick smiled. "Well, I'm a producer too. You can talk music with me."
She shrugged. "It wouldn't be the same." Pulling back her plate, she resumed eating.
"Why are you in New York?"
"Because of the record deal."
"And?" He pressed on. "I mean, you could have gotten a deal in Toronto, or not?"
She barely replied. "It's complicated."
"The press and all."
"Yep."
With an eye-roll he took away Jude's plate once again. "One of these days, people will stop addressing you altogether. You're the most socially inept person I've ever met!"
"I'm not socially inept," Jude snapped, taking her plate and placing it out of his reach. "I'm just not in a good mood today!"
"You haven't been for weeks. You've been pissed off since the moment you stepped into this building. Either someone else is at fault or you're bitching at yourself. Even your boyfriend, who hasn't seen you for weeks, has fled. That should tell you something!"
"Tommy and Chaz are at some business meeting that's taking longer than expected."
Rick reached behind him for his phone, switched it on and held it up for her. It showed a text message from Chaz.
"Meeting is over. T and I are heading for beers. Join?"
"The message came four hours ago," Rick informed her.
Jude read the text again. Tommy hadn't written her. He hadn't invited her to join. Maybe she had been a little mean earlier, but was that all it took to make him abandon her for the whole day? That thought was deeply unsettling and brought forth a lot of memories from Toronto. When it had become complicated with Laura, he'd found solace with Jude. And now it got complicated with her. Did that mean he was with someone else? Or that he was looking for someone else? What if he was? What if he wasn't? What reason did he have to make her think he was still busy in some meeting?
Rick put his phone away. "New York isn't a punishment, you know?"
Jude blinked. "Sorry, what?"
"A punishment. It's not. It's how you've been treating this city ever since you got here. I don't know why you're here but I know that a million people would kill to trade places with you right now and you don't even care. We spend the last five hours awkwardly sitting in this paid-for studio, with empty hard-drives ready to be filled with music yet all you did was scribble in your journal another song that nobody will ever get to hear. At some point a decision has to be made. Right now you can make it yourself. But in a week from now, things could be different. Chaz might be your friend, but even he has bills to pay."
She thought about his words, but one question kept popping up in her head. "Why haven't you gone?"
"Where to?"
"Beers with Tommy and Chaz. You're hardly surprised I didn't sing. Instead of waiting for something we both know won't happen anytime soon, you could have had fun with them."
"I wasn't in the mood for beer. Besides, I hoped that Tom's visit might have motivated you to try. You can sing, by the way. And I don't mean your capability of hitting the right notes. I mean you're deliberately not singing. Why?"
Surprised by that statement, Jude stared at him. "I can't sing, Rick. I want to, but I can't."
"No, Jude. You're standing in front of the mic and you don't sing. There's a difference. You're staring at the mic, at this studio, at the whole city of New York as some sort of punishment. If you couldn't sing, you wouldn't be writing songs. You'd give up. I've seen it happen before with other artists. But not you. You simply don't want to sing, but you're hiding behind crappy excuses."
"That's a lie!"
But Rick kept pushing. "No Jude, it's the truth!" He held up her journal. "You refuse to sing. Hundreds of songs written over years but instead of singing them, you're writing them down and locking them away into a book that nobody but you ever gets to read!"
She shook her head, over and over. "You don't know me. Stop pretending you do!"
"There's no pretending, Jude! It's a fact. When you walk up to the mic, you look at it and then you seal your lips with a vengeance." He gathered his stuff and got up. "This is useless. Tomorrow morning, I'll be looking for a new singer. Nice knowing you!"
When he was halfway out the door, she called after him. "She called me a whore." Her eyes were teary and her voice hoarse. "And if I sing, she'll be forever right."
###
Half an hour later, in the booth, Jude sat on the floor, strumming her guitar idly. Rick sat next to her, for the first time since knowing her flipping through the pages of her journal. More than often he'd comment, saying things like "awesome" or "fantastic". She hardly cared. Tommy had said all that and more before.
"So this Portia," Rick asked carefully, "isn't by any chance the same Portia Tom was married to, is she?"
Jude had told him a very vague description of what had happened years ago, in the VIP area of the club. "The very same," she informed him. "Back then somebody interrupted…it…from happening. She said I'd give it all for a record deal. Just like a whore would for money. I slept with a married man, I destroyed a marriage, and here I am, granted the deal of a lifetime because of it. As long as I don't sing…"
"As long as you don't sing," Rick finished, finally understanding, "you haven't completed the deal. And here I thought you were scared of failure."
"I don't fear that anymore."
"Chaz said you are scared that people will never see you as anyone other than the other woman and that they won't buy your song because of it."
She shook her head. "I'm not scared that they won't buy my record. I'm afraid they will all agree with Portia that I'm a whore who sold herself for a record deal. And I don't doubt for a second she'll be the first to tell that to the press."
After a while of more strumming and more flipping through pages, Rick put the journal down in front of her. "She's winning."
Jude stopped playing.
"Every day that you're not singing, she's winning. Every day that you're scared, she's winning. This, right now, your fear of what others will say, is her victory." He got up and stretched. "It's half past six. Lets meet again tomorrow. We'll try again then."
"I'm not fired?"
"You get one more day."
As she heard the door falling shut behind him, she looked at the page he'd read last. And she started strumming.
[Sara Barreiles, Brave: /watch?v=CGmixpdf7Kw]
"You can be amazing you can turn a phrase into a weapon or a drug
You can be the outcast, or be the backlash
Of somebody's lack of love
Or you can start speaking up…"
###
"I sang a song today. But you weren't there."
Tommy looked up, blinked, and adjusted his eyes to the darkness. He'd stepped inside Jude's room from the illuminated hallway. But she had no lamps on. "Where are you?" He stumbled across a shoe on his way inside, searching for the light switch.
"Bed."
He found the light switch. "Are you okay? You sound strange."
"It's because I've been singing for hours and my voice isn't used to that anymore. I sang, Tommy. Where were you?"
"Getting drunk." If he wouldn't be drunk, he also wouldn't have said that. Somewhere in the back of his mind he realized that. But now the words were out and Jude, understandably, wasn't happy.
"Getting drunk without me while on your visit here to see me."
He sat down and reached for her hand, but she pulled away from him. "Girl, I was out for one afternoon with my friend Chaz. You were in the studio, singing. I don't know what happened, but maybe it was a good thing I wasn't there. Maybe you wouldn't have sung if I had been there."
"How convenient."
"Hey!" He faced her, albeit a building headache and the wish for some rest. "I have been here for you whenever you needed me. Don't make it sound as though I'm never there for you."
"I wasn't trying to do that, Tommy. But you didn't even ask me if I wanted to come as well. Chaz asked Rick, that's how I found out. You let me believe you were still at your meeting."
"No, I wasn't. You were meant to record today. Rick told me how important it is that you record something! I thought you would be busy anyway, so I didn't interrupt you. This wasn't a big conspiracy to keep you busy so I could have beers with Chaz. You were meant to record. You've seen me recording with artists, Jude. You know I hate interruptions. And you want to know what I hate even more? Other producers mingling with my work. So I won't sit in during your recordings. It's a professional thing and nothing personal. If you need help writing a song, I'm all yours. But from my understanding, writing is the last of your problems."
It all sounded logic. Maybe she was overreacting, Jude thought. But there was this tiny, annoying voice in her head that kept doubting him. "Is that really all there was to it?"
He responded firmly. "Yes! I don't know what you think happened."
"Where there women?"
A heavy pause. Tommy stood up, grabbed a pillow. "I'll be sleeping on the couch tonight." Before he was out the door, he stopped. "You know, you spent the entire afternoon — the entire last weeks in the company of men and men only. SME, Chaz and Rick. None of whom is in a relationship. It didn't occur to me once to even think something more than friendship might have happened. Goodnight, Jude."
"That's because I'm not a professional cheater!" She called after him, angrily. But she regretted the words before they were even out. It was the worst, most unfair thing she could have said and she had done it out of spite. He spun around briskly and she could tell he was seething. She felt horrible. "I'm sor—"
"Don't! Right now I really don't care for your apology. I'm this close to saying something that I will regret later." He made a gesture with his hand to highlight just how close to that he was. "So please just let me leave."
Without a further word he closed the door behind him.
###
Two hours later she crept out into the living room, finding him tossing and turning on the uncomfortable couch that was two feet to short for him. Glancing over her shoulder, making sure Wally's, Kyle's and Spied's doors were closed, she turned back, stripped the shirt she was wearing, along with her slip and crawled on top of him. "I'm sorry," she whispered, kissing along his jawline. "So very sorry."
Without a word he sat up, grabbed her legs and pulled them around his waist, bringing her that much closer. Her hands made quick work of his shirt. The wiggling of her body, the way she pressed her naked body against his, aroused him quickly. Catching her lips in a searing kiss, holding her face in place with one hand, he pushed down his boxers with the other one, before entering her swiftly. "I need you," he admitted, shifting, trying to find a rhythm. Lips traveled from her mouth to her neck before finding the desired destination of her chest. First his tongue darted out to wet her right nipple, then he suckled, making Jude gasp for air.
Her hands tangled in his messy hair. He had told her once she was the one person in the whole world allowed to ruin his styled coiffure. She had found it a grand compliment coming from someone who spend more on hair products than on car insurance. And he had many cars! When his teeth gently grazed her nipple she shivered, desperately clinging to him as he kept drilling into her. Faster and faster, as he knew she liked it. As they both liked it. "Almost…almost…" she breathed heavily, "oh yes…"
Then he came, taking her with him.
He collapsed backwards, and she dropped forward, snuggling into his arms. "I love you," Jude hushed, anew kissing his jawline. The skin wasn't quite so soft anymore. The slightest stubble had come forth. It offered an erotic friction, especially in combination with him, still being inside her. "Forgive me. Please. I really am sorry for that silly thing earlier."
He barely nodded.
Jude lifted her head, trying to read his expression. "I am sorry. Please, Tommy." She could tell that he hadn't yet forgiven her.
He rolled her to his side, slipping out of her. "You went there for a cheap shot. And some sex doesn't fix that." Getting up and putting his boxers back on, he took a seat on the love seat across her.
She wrapped a blanket around herself. "Gee, Tommy! I said I'm sorry!"
"That doesn't make it go away, Jude. Do you really think I'd cheat on you?"
"No, of course not!"
"I'm not so sure about that. It's just that…"
His face saddened visibly.
"Earlier today, I had the feeling that…you weren't inviting me for beers because I had been snappish and maybe complicated and…then earlier, when I said what I said, you just walked out. It's why I was so angry. I don't want you to walk away from us because it gets complicated."
For long minutes he just sat there, thinking about her words. With each passing heartbeat Jude grew antsier. Had she said too much? Had she struck a cord?
"Of all the things to hold against me…this one actually hurts." He leaned back, closing his eyes to take a moment. "Funny thing is, I'm exactly where I was when it all began. I'm at G-Major, working with people I royally screwed over, being friends with people whose friendship I probably don't deserve. When you were hiding in my hotel bathroom, smoking and not eating a crumb, I was there. When we had sex while I was married, I didn't run. I came looking for you! I wanted to fix it. When you ran from your own voice, I found you and it was me that said you should speak up! All those weeks since you left I've been laying awake at night, thinking about what I did wrong for you to think that leaving the country was your only option. By God I swear I thought I wasn't a good enough boyfriend and that you deserved better. That I should have paid more attention. Done more. ANYTHING!" He got up. "But you're the one that ran. You're the one that hid in the bathroom, locking me out. YOU are the one that left ME behind. You accuse me of leaving when it gets complicated? " For a long moment he just stared at her. "Well, here's me, leaving. " With that he went into the bathroom, not coming out for a long, long while.
###
The next day, after not bringing Tommy to the airport but merely kissing him goodbye awkwardly, she sat in the booth when Rick arrived. Her journal was positioned in front of her, at the piano. When he entered, she offered the smallest change in her expression. A sign she acknowledged he'd arrived. But now she was finally ready to sing and had no time to say 'hello' first. He must have understood.
"On three," he said, not yet even out of his jacket. Then he pressed a button and gestured a 'three'. And Jude went.
Two months ago...
Jude was lying naked on the bed sheet, wondering how many times it had been used on other hotel guests before and how many of them had had sex on them. It was a disgusting thought, one that automatically came every time she got into Tommy's hotel bed. Next to her, where he usually slept, was a tabloid with a nasty headline about her that featured words like "Gold-Digger" and "Opportunist".
Tommy sat on the edge of the bed, scribbling something down.
"Grocery List?" Jude asked, reaching out with one hand. Her fingertip traced one of the many tattoos he had on his shoulders and upper back. The one that fascinated her the most was a Chinese symbol. "What does it mean?"
"Which one," he absentmindedly asked.
"The one that looks like a stick figure with boobs."
She heard him chuckling. "It means 'destiny'."
"Destiny," she repeated, letting the word roll from her lips. "Like…destined to make music?"
"Something like that." He turned around, handed her her journal, and leaned down to kiss her languidly. "Or meeting the right woman."
Jude smiled at that. Then she looked at her journal. "You were reading my songs?"
"No." Another kiss. "Writing one. For you." Before she had time to read it, he climbed on top of her, distracting her with wildly erotic kisses.
Now...
"You can be amazing you can turn a phrase into a weapon or a drug
You can be the outcast, or be the backlash
Of somebody's lack of love
Or you can start speaking up
Nothing's gonna hurt you the way that words do
When they settle 'neath your skin
Kept on the inside, no sunlight
Sometimes a shadow wins
But I wonder what would happen if you
Say what you want to say
And let the words fall out honestly
I want to see you be brave
With what you want to say
And let the words fall out honestly
I want to see you be brave
I just want to see you
I just want to see you
I just want to see you
I want to see you be brave
Everybody's been there, everybody's been stared down by the enemy
Fallen for the fear and done some disappearing
Bowed down to the mighty
But don't run and stop holding your tongue
Maybe there's a way out of the cage where you live
Maybe one of these days you can let the light in
And show me how big your brave is
Say what you want to say
And let the words fall out honestly
I want to see you be brave
With what you want to say
And let the words fall out honestly
I want to see you be brave
And since your history of silence
Won't do you any good. Did you think it would?
Let your words be anything but empty
Why don't you tell them the truth?
If you say what you want to say
And let the words fall out honestly
I want to see you be brave
With what you want to say
And let the words fall out honestly
I want to see you be brave
I just want to see you
I just want to see you
I just want to see you
I want to see you be brave"
When the last piano tunes faded out, she had tears in her eyes. Her fingertips traced the words of the song, written in Tommy's unique handwriting. Touching the words made her feel almost as if she were back in bed with him. "I think Tommy and I are done…"