Hi everyone, I just wanted to say thank you for the wonderful response this story has garnered. I welcome your compliments and critique and hope that you all continue reading. Just so you all know, there should be at least two or three more chapters after this one. Thanks!

3. The Starbucks and the Song

Jude woke up slowly, cracking her eyes open to adjust to the light coming in through the large windows of her penthouse apartment. She loved those windows, but not this morning, when she had forgotten to close the blinds so she could sleep once the sun was up.

She noticed a weight to the right of her in bed and realized, all of a sudden, that it was the weight of Tommy Quincy. She knew they had done nothing but kiss and lie in her bed, his arms wrapped around her like nothing had changed, but she still felt the pounding in her head—and not just from the wine she'd consumed the previous night—that she had done something egregiously wrong.

They had not slept together. Well, slept slept together. Jude was glad that as much as she might have wanted to, they did not let things get that far. It would have been simply a release of frustration and pent-up anger, and though Jude loved her adventures and exploits, she was still of the belief that going that far should mean something more than I'm still really attracted to you but I'm also really pissed off. So at least that hadn't happened.

But there was still an intimacy in waking up at 7:06 on a weekday morning and seeing Tommy sleeping, his lips curled into a smile, on the other side of her bed. He was in her room, the room she'd decorated when she'd arrived in L.A., the light-blue-painted room that no one from Toronto had ever even seen. Los Angeles had become her sanctuary, her anonymity, and her sacred place—a place where no one from her old life could find her. And now, suddenly, she had been found. Found by Tommy, who was now in her bed.

She got up, took her usual long, hot shower, and peeked to see if he had woken up. He hadn't. She got dressed for work, put on a little mascara to mask her tired eyes, and threw a banana in her purse for later. And then she slipped out her door, closing it quietly so as not to disturb him. She couldn't deal with his peering gaze this morning, his insistent words (Didn't this feel right, Jude? You wanted this, Jude. I know you did. Let me in, Jude. Let me see the real you—) and his adorable boyish requests to see her again.

She drove to work too quickly, the freeway her in-between, a place void of Tommy and the monotony of her job, void of human contact and all those things she just couldn't deal with at the moment. She was driving so quickly in such a state of mental paralysis that she even forgot to stop at the Starbucks half a mile away from her office building. She veered into the parking lot beneath her building, rushing into the elevator, not sure why she was moving so fast other than a strong feeling of wanting, somehow, to escape the narrow, claustrophobic confines of her life.

"Morning, Jude," her overly friendly coworker, Andy, said too loudly over the barrier that separated their cubicles.

"Morning, Andy," she said, looking down, not in the mood to be polite.

"You look tired," Andy commented. "Rough night?"

You have no fucking idea, Jude thought to herself. "Just tired, Andy."

"You working on the Monroe book right now? Because I just heard that…"

She only heard his words as noise as she looked at her desk. Same as always—her messy stacks of paper to deal with at some point, various post-it notes littering the surface, pens and paper clips and trusty highlighter, dizzying screen saver bouncing across her monitor. Her eyes widened. There was a ring that had formed where a million cups had stained the desk's gray surface, the heat and dampness seeping through. She saw the ring, but not the cup. Where was her coffee? Where the fuck was her coffee? Had she forgotten to get coffee? Today, of all days, when her head was pounding and she felt like she was in a permanent cold sweat, today, she needed it the most. There was no way she was going to get through this morning without her Starbucks. She sighed heavily.

"Hey Andy? Can you just tell Jonas that I forgot my notes at home and I'll be back in fifteen minutes, tops?"

"Don't want to look bad to the boss, Jude," Andy said with a snarky, knowing grin like a Cheshire Cat. Jude didn't even want to look at him.

"Thanks, Andy," Jude said airily, nearly flying to the elevator. Goddamn it. She needed that coffee right now. She felt like she was going to scream. It was all closing in way too fast. A million memories, a million individual moments, felt like they were shooting painfully through her mind. The chords to a song that had always played in her head were playing still, too loud, way too loud, interrupting her thoughts, throwing her into a daze—

"Jesus Christ." Her mouth fell into an O with her words as she stepped out of the elevator, her feet stopping short on the marble floors of the lobby of the enormous office building where her publishing company had office space. Around her were the typical drones in ties and starched shirts and shoulder-padded pantsuits, sensible shoes and briefcases, loud talking on Bluetooth devices. And in the midst it all, there he was—Tommy, oh Tommy—holding her venti cup.

"You forgot to stop for it," Tommy said, simply.

"I never told you I stop at Starbucks in the morning."

"Jude, you've always stopped at Starbucks in the morning."

She drew in a sharp breath. He was right, of course. She had had her cup before every studio rehearsal and recording session in Toronto, just like she always had her cup sitting over the ring-shaped desk stain now, a thousand lifetimes away, at her book company in Los Angeles.

"What is it?" She breathed, nodding her head towards the cup.

"Venti soy latte, extra foam," he said without thinking. She knew that he knew that Starbucks order like clockwork, but to hear him say it was like music to her ears.

He passed the cup to her, and she took it, appreciating the warm cardboard against her hand. She took her first sip.

"Orgasmic," she declared softly, choosing her word deliberately, smiling at him. He braced his jaw firm, swallowing thickly, as he watched her pink tongue sweep up to lick the foam from her tempting upper lip.

She felt an inner calm, standing there silently with him. It was the comfort of having him right there, having him know her so deeply, know her coffee preference—for god's sake, that meant everything. The buzz that ran inside her head was stilled, quieted, by the peace she felt, even in the lobby at her office.

"Dinner? Tonight?" She asked quietly, not wanting to seem too forward. He smiled broadly, genuinely, letting it reach his eyes. She was so happy to see him so happy.

"That sounds perfect, girl," he said, and she closed her eyes slightly to savor it—girl—they had come a far way from it and yet it felt, somehow, like they hadn't been away at all.

"I have to, um, go back up there," she said, nodding her head towards the elevator. "Thanks for the coffee."

"Enjoy it," he said, turning to leave and walking away. She smiled as she watched him go—she would enjoy it.

…..

"I'm running late," Tommy said apologetically when she called around seven from her apartment. "I'm so sorry."

"It's okay," she said, sensing his sincerity. "Really, Tommy, it's okay. How about I pick you up from work?"

"You'd do that?"

"Sure. Text me the address," she declared. She knew her intentions were a double-edged sword: she was certainly happy to pick him up, but more than that, she wanted desperately to see the studio, a GMajor corollary, where he was working. She wasn't sure how much time in L.A. he had left—she knew his work was mostly in Toronto and he only came stateside for more mainstream acts that wouldn't travel to Canada for his widely renowned skills as a producer. So she wanted to make sure she saw the studio while she had the chance. It was the peephole into a world she had abandoned long ago, and she was curious to see how that world had changed since she'd seen it last.

The L.A. traffic was lost on Jude as she drove absentmindedly to the address Tommy had sent. It wasn't far from her office building, actually, right in the heart of downtown. L.A. was a funny, sprawling city with a million personalities all wrapped into one. It was nice, sometimes, knowing that so many types of people could all exist within a handful of zip codes, but it made her miss her own zip code in Toronto, where one could find her favorite record store and her favorite vintage clothing shop and her friends and her family. She was tired of the smog, of annoying Andy in the next cubicle over at work, and of this goddamn traffic.

The girl at the desk had sharp, razor-cut bangs that were purposefully raggedy. Heavy black eyeliner ringed her squinted eyes. She stared at Jude through her bangs, glaring at her before she had said a word.

"I'm here for Tom Quincy?" Jude said. "He's a producer here…"

"Yeah, yeah," the girl smirked. Jude realized that obviously he was a producer, he was Tom Quincy, everyone knew who he was. But the girl, bored expression sitting on her face, pointed Jude in the direction of Tommy's studio anyway.

She knocked on the tinted-glass door, unable to see in. His name was printed on a card taped to the door, so she knew she was in the right place. She cracked the door open, hoping she wasn't interrupting anything, and realized the studio was empty.

She looked gleefully around the workspace, a producing heaven—the sound board, with all those glorious buttons, a mike, mixing equipment—and then glanced at the most beautiful guitar she thought she'd ever seen. She drew in a gasp, unable to control herself, to prevent that inner musician from sneaking out of the cage she kept it in, deep inside herself. She reached out to touch the strings, letting her index finger brush them gently, tempting her with their subtle sounds.

When Tommy entered the room, he was surprised to find Jude sitting cross-legged on the leather couch in his studio, playing a series of basic chords over and over like she had never played a guitar before. He stood in the entryway where she couldn't see him, and he simply watched as she got more and more involved, her fingers dancing faster and faster, playing more complicated combinations. Her eyes were alight like they had been when she was a teenager, when she had just won Instant Star. He had been dazzled, then, by the life and energy she pumped into the instrument, and he still was. She was a force to be reckoned with, musically and personally, he knew that well. But watching her—well, watching her was a whole other story.

Then she closed her eyes, frowned, and began to play a Jude Harrison classic, "White Lines." God, Tommy loved that song. She played it perfectly, still, not a strum out of place. He watched her delicate fingers move across the strings with an innate understanding of the guitar. She had said it had been years since she'd played, but you wouldn't have known it. Mechanically it was flawless, and emotionally it was as raw and real as it was when she'd first written the music, a million moons or so ago. She would never stop astounding him, Tommy thought to himself.

Then he heard her voice—Jesus, he thought, that perfect voice—layered over the guitar. He was immediately thrown into a hazy recollection of the day they'd recorded that song.

White lines, and headlights in my eyes. She had sung it in the bus, with twinkling lights around her as she gave it her all. He knew how personal that song was. She could hardly look at him when they'd tried to give it a go in the studio. She couldn't let him in that deep, because she knew how badly it would hurt. In the bus, though, she could look down at him with his gear outside, near and yet far, and sing her heart out.

White lines, I'm ready to drive all night; white lines, how many till I'm in your arms? As he watched her now, in an entirely foreign studio in L.A., Tommy wondered exactly that. How long would it take? Her hair was still short and blond, cropped around her chin, and it danced as she bobbed her head in time with the music. Her voice was perfect, clear, and a little husky like it used to be. There was only the faintest hint of the time that had passed since she'd sung like this before.

White lines, will bring me home…home…home…Toronto, always Toronto, and lazy days in the studio, work turning into play and play into work, the Chrome Cat with its bad lighting and that crappy couch, cold Sunday afternoons on Jude's front porch, laughing in the Viper with its roof down in the late spring, him driving with her in the passenger seat…home…Toronto…he missed it dearly. Not just the city, of course, but the city how it used to feel, with Jude by his side. White lines, will bring me home…but he knew it was different now, that home wouldn't feel the same way. He could go back to Toronto next week but it wouldn't feel like it had when he'd left just a few days earlier. This onslaught of memories would stay with him, more permanently than before, reminding him of a home that was far better, a home from a few years earlier, when she had been home for him. She had been home for him, he thought to himself as she sang. He was never going to find real peace in Toronto, or in Los Angeles, or anywhere else, for that matter, without her. It was her that was home, not a city or a house or an apartment anywhere, not GMajor or his drinking buddies or even Stella, the only legitimate family member he had left. It was Jude. It had always been Jude.

"Tommy?"

"You sang," he said, breathlessly, shocked out of his mind's rambling path when she spoke.

"Sorry," she said sheepishly. "The guitar was there and I couldn't help myself."

"Don't apologize," he said, firmly. "Jude, it was—it was—"

"It was rusty," she laughed, with a warm, nostalgic smile, her eyes brighter than he'd seen them in the past few days. "We can go, or—"

"Jude, you have to go back to it," Tommy said, eyes wide, insistent. "To the music."

"What are you talking about?" She smirked, resting the guitar ever so gently against the wall again, looking down at it. Then she looked at him again, looked at how badly he wanted her to say, 'Yes, Tommy, and will you be my producer?' But his face, full of earnest desperation, was not going to change her mind. She smiled kindly at him. "I don't want to get into this again, Tommy, really I don't. I'm sorry."

"That's okay," he sighed. "I understand."

She turned to face him, looking at him briefly, amazed at how some things could change so little and some things so much. It had been six years since she left Toronto for London and two since she left London for L.A. She hadn't spent this much time with Tommy since Toronto, right before she'd decided to leave for the sake of her music. Ironically, it hadn't taken long for her to give it up entirely. It was funny how all the parts of her life were so intertwined. It was like her connection to Tommy and her musical career and ambitions had hit a high together before dropping to zero. Only last week, both music and Tommy had been so far away from her current life. And then, like a whirlwind, both were back. They were crucially tied to one another, Tommy and her music, Jude knew that, she had always known that. London had been a test, a test of whether her music could survive without him beside her. She needed to know, needed that affirmation.

But as soon as she was gone, Tommy had ended all contact. He didn't return her calls or emails, simply blocked her out of his life. And as soon as he was gone from her life, so was her music.

And now it appeared that they were both back.

"Dinner?" He asked, and she nodded, silently, blinking back the onset of tears.