“That’s what I said.” I shrugged. “It would be hard to just pick up and go. Then again, I miss him when he’s gone, so… I don’t know.”
“Well I’m sure he’s rolling in the dough by now.” Josh sounded bitter. “You probably won’t need this job for long anyway.”
“Oh he hasn’t seen any royalties yet. He won’t for quite a while.”
“They didn’t give him money up front?” Josh frowned. “What a rip-off.”
“Well he got an advance,” I explained. “But he has to pay for everything out of it. Making the album, promotion, marketing, the tour, making the music video. All of that comes out of his advance.”
“They should call it leftovers, not an advance.”
“That’s more accurate.” I laughed. “Plus he still has to pay his manager. He gets twenty percent. And there’s his publicist. I don’t know how much she gets. But when everyone else is paid, then Dale gets a quarter of what’s left.”
“A quarter?”
“There are three other band members in Black Diamond.”
“Oh right.” Josh sighed. “Man, I thought rock stars were millionaires!”
“I guess you have to be doing it longer—and sell more.”
“Number one is pretty good!”
“It’s awesome,” I agreed. “But the way the world works, somehow it’s always the artist who gets shafted. They’re the ones doing the work—authors write books, musicians write and sing songs, artists paint paintings—but everyone else gets the bulk of the money. It’s kind of backwards if you ask me. Because without Dale—there’s nothing for all these people to sell.”
“Yeah but what if he sucks? I mean, obviously he doesn’t. But what if the record company takes a chance and no one buys the album or goes to the concert?”
“Then no one makes any money. I think it’s kind of a balancing act,” I explained. “They’ll have some artists who take off like a rocket and sell millions and some that fall flat. The ones who sell millions make up for the ones who don’t.”
“So do you think you’ll go?”
“On tour?” I shrugged. “I really don’t know yet.”
“I guess having a rock star boyfriend is kind of like being a military wife. My uncle was in the military and he got deployed for months at a time. My aunt didn’t even know where he was.”
“Well I guess that’s something.,” I said. “At least I don’t have to worry about him getting shot at.”
“There’s looking at the bright side.” He grinned. “Hey, are you doing anything after work? I’m starving, I was going to head over to Connie’s Diner and get a bite. You want to come?”
“Sorry, I can’t.” I shook my head. “I have to get home.”
“Oh right, rock star waiting and all.”
“John will have dinner waiting.” I smiled. “Have a good night, Josh!”
* * * *
Pavlov would have been proud. My stomach growled the minute I pulled up to the townhouse and smelled John’s spaghetti cooking. I looked around furtively before getting out of the car but didn’t see anything unusual. There were no reporters with cameras surrounding the house. Maybe we would all be able to go on with our lives after all. People would forget about the pictures and the article, the one with the headline, “Diamond Rocker Back Together With Girlfriend?”
I had hoped they wouldn’t print my name but it was there, in black and white. Sara Wilson
“I’m home!” I announced, kicking off my shoes and dropping my purse near the door. The house was redolent with the smell of John’s spaghetti sauce. I glanced into the kitchen and saw garlic bread waiting to go into the oven. The table was set. Where was everybody?
“John?” I called, stopping near his bedroom door. It was closed.
“I’m on the phone!” His voice was muffled through the door. “Be out in a few! Would you stir the sauce for me?”
I did what he asked, taking a spoonful as payment of course—and rather than thanking me, my stomach growled in protest—more, more! Halfway up the stairs, I heard the sweet sound of Dale’s guitar. My heart lifted in my chest and I bounded up the other half, throwing our door open and leaping at him.
“Hey!” He barely had time to put his guitar aside before I tackled him, covering his face with kisses as we rolled on the bed. “Wow. I always wanted to get a dog so I could be greeted like that, but I think I like this much better.”
“Woof.” I panted like a dog and he laughed, sliding his hand behind my neck so he could pull me down for a real kiss. His mouth was soft and open and he tasted like honey. He had started sucking on Ricola cough drops to soothe his throat. Singers needed a lot of those, apparently. I just knew their Ricola commercial with the three Swiss leprechaun-looking fellows annoyed me to no end.
“You taste like dinner.” He smiled rolling so we could be side by side. “Is it ready?”
“I hope so. I’m starving.”
“How was work?”
“Same as always,” I said. “I’m glad Josh is back. I actually got to draw today.”
“I don’t like him.”
“Oh don’t start. Josh is harmless.”
“He flirts with you.”
“He flirts with every girl,” I said, exasperated. “So was it quiet here today?”
“Except for Dad complaining about grading first year essays. He’s pretty sure we’re all going to be illiterate by the next century.”
“No reporters?”
“Not a peep.” He shook his head.
“Maybe we got lucky.”
“Kids!” John called up the stairs. “Dinner!”
It was funny how he called us kids. I guessed maybe we would always be kids to him.
“I love Mondays.” I sighed happily, taking a seat at the table. Mondays was John’s day off from teaching—he had no classes on Monday, just office hours in the morning. He always cooked something delicious on Mondays. He had already put all the food on the table and poured me a glass of milk. Dale had a bottled water and John had a beer.
“Most people hate Mondays.” John smiled. “Back to work day.”
“Monday is spaghetti day.”
Dale looked at me. “I thought that was Wednesday?”
“That’s Prince spaghetti day,” John said. “For shame. I make my own pasta.”
I nudged Dale on the table, smiling at him. I felt his hand on my knee and smiled. He gave it a gentle squeeze and a look that said, “Later.” It made me shiver.
“So it was quiet here all day, Dale says.”
“Except for his incessant guitar playing,” John joked. “When are you gonna go out there and get a real job?” John’s eyes were twinkling but Dale didn’t take the bait.
“That’s funny, I thought it was quiet except for all your whining about students who didn’t know the difference between there, their and they’re.”
“All sound the same to me,” I said, grinning.
“Oh the humanity.” John groaned. “To answer your rather obtuse question with a direct answer—no reporters called today.”
“Well that’s a relief,” I replied.
“However, I did get an interesting phone call from your mother, Dale.”
“What did she want?” Dale’s hand gripped my knee.
“Your sister wants to come live with us.”
Dale dropped his fork, staring at his father. I knew that look. My stomach knotted up tight. I’d been hungry but now there was no room for food.
“Let me guess. She wants to go to Rutgers,” Dale snapped.
“She did just graduate,” John reminded him. “And it makes the most sense, given that tuition is free since I’m a professor there. You could have taken advantage of that fact too, you know.”
Dale ignored that last point. “I don’t want to have anything to do with her. When is she coming?”
“Mid-August.”
“Just before the tour,” I said.
“Good. We’ll be gone soon after she arrives.” Dale resumed twirling his spaghetti around a fork. “It’s good timing.”
“What if I don’t go… on tour, I mean.”
Dale didn’t answer that. I knew he didn’t want to consider that as an option.
“Are you giving her my room?” I asked.
“No of course not,” John replied. “ I’ll dismantle the office, put most of it in my room or in storage. She’ll have her own room.”
“Is she flying?” Dale asked.
“No, your mother’s driving her and bringing all her stuff.”
“Great.” Dale put his fork down, pushing aay from the table. “Just great.”
“Aren’t you going to finish?” John asked as Dale got up.
“I just lost my appetite.” Dale walked out of the kitchen and started upstairs.
John sighed. “I guess I should have waited to tell him until after dinner.”
“I’m going to go upstairs too.” I put my fork down. “I’m sorry, John.”
“Go on.I’ll clean up.” John waved me on. “He’ll raid the fridge at midnight.”
Of course he was right.
“Dale?” I called, slowly opening the door to our room.
He was face down on the bed, words muffled, but I understood them anyway.
“I can’t do it. I can’t be in the same room with them. They’re just going to pretend like nothing happened. And fucking Chrissy. She knows! She knows damned well and she’s going to take advantage of him anyway.”
“John thinks she’s his daughter,” I reminded him.
“Thinks is the optimum word there.”
“Okay fine. So she isn’t really his daughter.” I sat next to him on the bed. “What about me? He took me in and he loves me. He treats me like a daughter. Why would he treat Chrissy any differently—even if he did know?”
“Because you’re not the result of an affair with his best friend.”
He had a point. What would John do, if he knew?
I remembered the first time I’d found out Dale had a sister who lived in Maine with his estranged mother. It had been enough of a shock to discover that Tyler Vincent, the man I’d worshipped from afar, whose music I listened to constantly, whose videos I stayed up late and waited for on MTV, whose movies I attended religiously on opening day, just happened to be John’s best friend. They’d met before Tyler became a star, back when Tyler was teaching music at the University of Maine, the same place John had been teaching English.
Then Dale had told me an even deeper secret, one John didn’t know—Dale and his sister, Chrissy, weren’t John’s biological children. His mother had been involved with Tyler twenty years ago, a torrid affair—and she continued to have an affair with him, according to Dale, even though both she and Tyler remained married to other people. Dale’s mother had finally asked for a divorce—Dale said she was convinced Tyler was going to finally leave his wife for her, but he didn’t—and still, she never told John about the affair. Or the fact that his children weren’t, in fact, his.
