Playing for Love at Deep Haven (13 page)

“Want to skip
dinner?”

“Oh, Violet,” he
deadpanned. “I’m not that easy.”

“Yeah, you are,”
she said, winking at him.

“Okay, I am. But
you compromise my virtue because I can’t help myself around you. You’re hot.
You were
always
hot.”

She looked away
as his words hit a specific mark in her heart, a tender, vulnerable mark that
had always wondered if Zach had rejected her because she’d been overweight in
college. She swallowed the sudden lump in her throat, talking herself out of
tears, but they filled her eyes anyway as the smooth guitar riff over the
speakers signaled the
Lumineers
’ song “Stubborn Love”:
“
When we were young, oh, oh, we did
enough.”

He thought she
was hot. He thought overweight, wacky-haired, bohemian-dressed College Violet
was hot. And apparently he also thought uptight, preppy, every-hair-in-place Greenwich
Violet was hot, too. Her heart beat a strange rhythm in her chest as words
bubbled into her consciousness:
No matter
what. No matter what. Then. Now. Still.

“I never trusted my own eyes
,” sang the
Lumineers
.

The sad thing is, I could have trusted his
, she mused.

She pressed on
her burning eyelids with her thumb and forefinger, propping her elbow on the
windowsill. She felt his fingers slip gently around her hand, then lace back
through her fingers as they drove the rest of the way in overwhelmed, yet perfect,
silence.

***

Zach had looked
up restaurants in the phone book he found on the kitchen counter and chose the
Town Hill Bistro for its working fireplace. He hoped they’d have a long, warm,
leisurely dinner, leading to a long, warm, leisurely night in his bed. After
she’d touched him in the car, it had taken a few minutes for him to calm down,
but it had put an edge on his hunger for her. Being patient throughout dinner
was going to be challenging, but he was determined for them to get to know each
other again, for her to see that they were possible.

He told the hostess
they’d wait at the bar and have a drink until a fireside table was available.
Violet sat on a barstool, and he stood beside her, leaning his back against the
bar. She ordered a glass of merlot, and he asked for a Sam Adams, no glass.

He clinked his
bottle against her glass, and she asked what they were toasting to.

“To Vile and Z,”
he said, remembering her protest when he’d made the same toast on Friday night.

She smiled and
took a sip of her wine as he drank from his bottle, holding her eyes, wondering
about her. She was so fucking beautiful. He had promised to blow her mind this
afternoon, but honest to God, she had blown
his
.
The way she offered herself to him, the way she still welcomed him into her
body when she knew what a dog he’d been. His heart pounded mercilessly, and he
took another swig of his beer, willing himself to calm down.

“What?” she
asked, cocking her head to the side.

“Do you love
novel writing?” he blurted out. “You seem pretty stressed-out about it. What
would you really do? If you could do anything?”

“Write poetry,”
she answered, “of course. All day. Every day. Get a contract offer to write
more. Make a living at it.” She took a small sip of wine. “If I was good
enough.”

His eyes
narrowed at her. “That’s the second or third time you’ve said something like
that and it’s starting to make me angry.”

“If it was good
enough, Zach, someone at Masterson’s would have followed up with me.”

“They couldn’t
read your stuff and pass up the chance to publish it. It got lost. It’s in a
deep pile and they just haven’t found it yet.”

She leaned
forward unexpectedly and pressed her lips to his. It was only the slightest touch,
but he felt it in his toes, which curled in his steel-toed boots.

“Thanks, Z.”

He cleared his
throat, moving closer to her until the straining zipper on the front of his
jeans grazed her thigh. “You don’t know what you do to me.”

“You do the same
thing to me,” she murmured.

He took a deep,
ragged breath, wondering if he should throw twenty bucks on the bar, grab her
wrist and pull her back to the car. Find a secluded street somewhere and—

“Zach.” She
barely breathed his name, her eyes wide and intensely focused on him. He
clenched his jaw, so turned on by her it was fucking
painful
not to give into his yearning, but a resounding voice in
his head stopped him.

No. Talk to her. You need to connect with her so she
gives you a real chance, so she gives us a real chance, so she doesn’t just
chalk us up to a fucking fling.
He brought the beer bottle to his lips
and took a long sip, forcing himself to calm down.
Poetry. Poetry, poetry, poetry
. . .

“So, poetry.
Yours. Let’s just assume it’s good enough. Could you live like that? Writing
poetry full-time? I’ve read your stuff, Vile. It’s intense. Wouldn’t that be a
highly emotional state to maintain?”

She raised her
eyebrows like he’d surprised her. “I don’t
always
write pain and suffering.”

“No?”

“No! I write
silly, like Ogden Nash. I write satirical, like Dorothy Parker. I love
simplicity, like E. E. Cummings. Haiku. Rhyme. The way
you
talk, I’m the next Sylvia Plath.”

“Okay. Fair
enough. Tell me a sunny poem. Something cheerful.”

“On demand? Like,
make one up?”

He picked up his
beer and gestured with it. “Go for it, show off.”

“Okay. I’ll do
it. And you will stand in awe of my skill.” She looked at his beer, brown eyes
twinkling. “A beer down the gullet goes well with a mullet . . .”

She glanced at
her glass of red wine. “A merlot that you sip looks fine with a flip.”

He toasted her, amused,
but she held up a finger to indicate she wasn’t done.

“A kosher martini
still honors a beanie.”

“I think it’s
called a yarmulke.”

She rolled her
eyes. “And a spiked lemonade’s just right with a . . . a
braid.
”

“Pulled that one
out of your ass,” he said, laughing.

“O ye of little
faith,” she said, then took up her poetess voice once again. “A tea brewed in
Ceylon works well with a chignon, while a nice, chilled
Peroni
is great for a pony.”

“Do ponies
drink
Italian beer?”

She laughed,
biting her lower lip in thought until she exclaimed, “Ha!” and finished with a
flair: “Drink whatever you like, drink whatever you dare. Just be sure it’s the
drink that goes well with your—”

“
Hair!
” he shouted, and she burst into
giggles as he put his empty bottle on the bar, clapping. “That was amazing.
Amazingly bad poetry.”

“Aw, come on!
It’s not like you put me on the spot or anything. Write a song. Do it.”

“Right here?”

“I did it. You
do it. Your turn.”

“I have a better
idea.”

She raised her
eyebrows, sipping her wine, waiting.

“Write one with
me.”

“With you?”

“Like we used to
do. At Yale.”

“That was just
playing around.”

“No, Vile. They
were good. I swear it. You write the words. I’ll put them to music. If you help
me write four, I’ll share the forty with you. Right down the middle. You can
return the advance you spent. You can tell your publisher to fuck off.”

“Zach, I’m not
good
enou
—”

He pressed his
lips to hers, hard, fast and punishing before she could finish the sentence.
When he drew back her eyes were startled. He shook his head at her. “No more of
that. I fucking mean it.”

“Okay,” she
sighed. “Write a song?”

“Four. It’ll be
all or nothing. Royalties later, too.”

She looked like
she was seriously considering it, but then she shook her head. “Heavy metal,
Zach? That’s not me. No offense, but it doesn’t sound like music to me.”

“We’ll do it our
way. And if they don’t like it? We’ll sell it somewhere else.” The idea was taking
off in his head, starting to feel exciting, possible. “But they
will
like it. Because your words are
beautiful, and every rocker band needs a ballad or two. A crossover for the
mainstream that shoots up the charts. ‘Patience’ by Guns N’ Roses. ‘Beth’ by
Kiss. We can do this, Violet.”

“Does . . . what
are they called?”

“Savage Sons.”

“Do the Savage
Sons
want
a ballad?”

“They need a
couple. John said so. Anyway, you heard Malcolm. He’ll take what I give him.
And what my partner gives
me
will
determine what that is.”

“Your partner?”

He shrugged. “If
you’ll have me.”

“You’re doing
this for me,” she murmured, reaching up to press her palm to his cheek. “You
said you didn’t want to write for them anymore. You said you needed to get off
the hamster wheel.”

“I also said I
wanted a second chance to prove what you meant to me, and you said you’d give
me two weeks. So this is me proving it in the little time I have with you.” He
turned his face and pressed his lips to her palm. “It’s just four songs. Then
I’ll move on and write something big and beautiful. The thing is, Vile?
Whatever we write together will already be better than any of the shit I’ve
written in the past few years. It’ll already be a step in the right direction.”

“You’re sure, Zach?
You sure you want to do this? Spend your whole two weeks up here writing songs
with me?”

He smiled and
hoped it was convincing because as much as writing songs with Violet sounded like
heaven, the idea of selling them to that asshole Malcolm Singer sat cold and
hard in his belly. Maybe he could figure out a way around that without losing
the money. Maybe John would buy them if they were really good.

“I’m sure,” he
said softly, leaning down to brush her lips with his. “I’m sure.”

“Violet? Violet
Smith?”

Violet eyes flew
open in recognition and she dropped her hand from Zach’s face like it was on
fire. She stood up abruptly, putting her back to him, stepping away from him.

“Mrs. Smalley,”
she murmured, her voice breaking a little. “W-What are you doing here?”

Chapter
10

Violet’s hand
trembled as she extended it to the elegant older woman standing in front of
her. Without the weight of
Shep’s
comforting arm
around her shoulder, she felt small and intimidated facing his mother, not to
mention incredibly embarrassed to be caught kissing Zach.

“Why, Violet,
dear, we’ve come for some leaf peeping this year. We never open the house in
the fall, but
Shep
Senior said we should, so there it
is.”

Violet smiled
politely. Mrs. Smalley’s eyes were the same clear blue as
Shep’s
,
and it made Violet’s chest constrict with genuine grief and regret. If Mariah
Smalley noticed the hitch in Violet’s breathing, she didn’t let on. She flicked
her eyes to Zach, arching her eyebrows.

“I couldn’t be
more surprised to see you here.” She gave Zach a full once-over, then looked
back to Violet.

“Oh, um, yes,
this is an old, I mean—”

“Zachariah
Aubrey. Violet and I went to Yale together.” He put out his hand, and Violet’s
stomach flipped over when she noticed his rings, one with a large skull that
had ruby eyes, and another that looked like a black metal serpent. As he
extended his arm, his sleeve shifted up a little too, showing a good portion of
his tattooed arm under his seen-better-days Iron Maiden T-shirt.

“Mariah
Smalley,” said
Shep’s
mother, her nose pinched in
distaste as she looked at Zach’s arm then back to his face. She took his hand
and shook it quickly before pulling away and taking a step back from him. “You
say you went to Yale?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“So did my son,”
she said, offering an approximation of a smile that made Violet cringe. She
knew the one—it had been offered to her often enough. “You’re very . . . colorful.
I guess you must be talented? At something or other.”

He laughed lightly
(or was it a snort?) through his nose. “I guess I must be. I’m a songwriter.”

“Oh! A musician!”
She smiled benevolently now, as she would at an infant or an idiot. “Well,
that
explains it.”

She turned back
to Violet. “Are you and Mr. —” Her eyes darted to Zach.

“Aubrey,” he
supplied, terse.

“—Aubrey a pair,
Violet?”

“No,” said
Violet.

“Yes,” said
Zach.

At the same
time.

Violet gave Zach
a look and was startled to see his face flushed.
I’ve hurt him
. She almost reached out to him, but instead she
looked back at Mariah Smalley, who smiled thinly, looking amused.

“Still some
kinks in the works, I think.”

Violet swallowed
nervously, composing herself, taking two steps away from Zach, toward Mrs.
Smalley. “Mrs. Smalley, I think of
Shep
all the time.
I wish—”

“Yes, yes,” said
Mrs. Smalley, stepping back from Violet and smiling at the floor. “Does no good
to dwell, of course. What’s done is done.”

“I miss him.”

Mrs. Smalley’s
eyes narrowed briefly before she managed a tight smile. “Well, it seems you’ve found
someone infinitely more suited to you, dear. How clever of you, really, to find
another Yale man.” She glanced derisively at Zach again, indicating he was
anything but the sort of
man
of whom she approved. “Ah!
I see the Thompsons are here. You’ll excuse me, of course, dear. Mr. Aubrey,
nice to . . .”

She gestured
awkwardly with her perfectly manicured hands.

“Of course,”
whispered Violet, leaning forward to hug the older woman good-bye, only to be
smacked lightly in the face with the trail of her silk scarf as she pivoted, hurrying
away to greet her friends.

Violet stared
after Mrs. Smalley in stunned silence, her fingers cold and still, her palms suspended
facing up in front of her, waiting for a hug that was not forthcoming. She
finally lowered them to her sides.

The last time
she’d seen Mrs. Smalley was at
Shep’s
funeral fourteen
months ago. She hadn’t seen or heard from the
Smalleys
since, but she was suddenly flooded with memories of her years with
Shep
, attending various events with his family, vacationing
for a week every summer in Bar Harbor and staying in the small guest cottage
adjacent to the Smalley mansion. Mariah Smalley had never fully accepted Violet
into her inner circle, referring to her as “
Shep’s
friend” until the very end. She wondered if she’d still have been “
Shep’s
friend” if they’d actually gotten engaged.

She asked
Shep
once what it was about her that his mother objected to,
and he laughed and said, “Oh, the old girl’s just a big snob.” Violet had taken
this to mean that the daughter of a divorced nurse from Portland wasn’t good
enough for Mariah Smalley’s boy. Didn’t matter that she’d gotten into Yale.
Didn’t matter that she’d changed her clothes and hairstyle to better assimilate
into
Shep’s
world, in an effort to please him and his
mother. She’d overheard Mrs. Smalley once ask her husband, years into Violet’s
relationship with
Shep
, “Why in the world can’t
Shep
find someone appropriate? It’s not that I dislike her,
per se. But must he settle for some artsy little urchin from nowhere? Really,
now. We all know ‘writing her novel’ is code for living off
Shep’s
trust fund.” That had told Violet all she needed to know—she’d never be accepted
by the
Smalleys
. Not that it had kept her from trying
her best.

Zach’s narrowed eyes
followed Mariah Smalley to the front of the restaurant where she greeted her
friends.

“Wow,” he said. “That
was fucking unpleasant. Not every day someone calls me trash, in so many words.
Talented
trash, but . . .
Talented
, right? That’s the word she
used? Oh, and since I’m so
well suited
for you, apparently she thinks you’re trash, too. And you know my favorite
part? Your sweet little sellout. Apparently, we’re
not
together, according to you, which is weird because I’m pretty
sure that was you flat on your back in my bed this afternoon. Remember that,
baby
?”

The way he
called her baby felt dirty, and tears sprang into her eyes as he regarded her
with ice and fury. “Zach . . .”

He held up a
hand to stop her, exhaling from his nose, and it reminded her of a bull on a
wintery morning. She almost saw the steam.

“Is she the sort
of person you’ve been spending the last decade of your life with? Sincerely,
Violet? I don’t know who to be angrier with—her for saying those things or you
for taking it and just about asking for seconds.”

“You don’t
understand.”

“Actually, I was
standing here, and I
was
smart enough
to get into Yale, even though they let in all kinds of riffraff. I think I understand.”

“That’s just how
she is.”

“Obviously.”

“She was really
upset when
Shep
—”

“No. No, that’s
not
fair, and it’s
not
what I’m talking about. I’m not talking about her as a mother
who lost her son. That’s terrible, and she has my sympathy for that.” The
unflinching steel of anger in his eyes made his rocker persona even more
intimidating. “She just took you down, Violet. She leveled you. Just stood
there and disrespected you
and me
,
and you were totally fine with it. You were about to hug her good-bye, for
chrissake
! You going to tell me that she didn’t do that
when you and
Shep
were together? He let her treat you
like that, didn’t he?”

Violet thought
of
Shep’s
heavy, warm arm around her, the way he’d
squeeze her shoulder when his mother started up with her suggestions and criticisms.
It was true. Zach was right.
Shep
had rarely stepped
in to defend her, preferring to let his mother say whatever she wanted to, and comforting
Violet later instead. He had avoided conflict with his family, even when it was
at Violet’s expense. Violet tried to remember one instance when he told his
mother to back off or shut up, and she came up dry.

She wiped away
the tears in her eyes. Once again, she was faced with revisionist history, and
she didn’t like it. She didn’t like what Zach was implying—that
Shep
, who’d been so bright and shiny, may not have loved
her as much as she wanted to believe. She didn’t want to change her memories of
him. She owed him more than that.

Zach’s knuckle
brushed the underside of her chin gently, tilting her face back up, and she was
surprised by the tenderness there after he’d been so angry a moment before.
“Hey.”

She swallowed,
trying to control the downward curve of her lips from dropping into a
full-blown,
trembly
frown.

“You
wanna
get out of here?”She nodded, looking away from him as
her eyes filled again. He took her hand and pulled her out a side door, into an
old-fashioned garden, likely left over from colonial times. There was a
white-pebbled path that led around the back of the old tavern, and Zach tugged
her hand gently, leading her down the dimly lit path until they found a
moss-covered bench looking out at a river. He sat down and pulled her onto his
lap, wrapping his strong, warm, muscular arms around her. And Violet, whose
carefully bland life was feeling more and more out of control, buried her face
in his neck and wept.

***

Zach knew he’d
been hard on her in the restaurant, but what the fuck? Seriously. What. The.
Fuck? These are the people with whom Violet had spent the last nine years of
her life? Had
Shep
ever stood up to his parents? Had
he ever defended her? Because that woman had afforded her no respect. Zero. And
it made Zach’s blood boil.

Violet didn’t
deserve to be treated like anyone’s whipping girl, and that rich old bitch had
made her cry. And not that he really gave two
shits
,
but he wasn’t crazy about the way she’d looked him up and down either, like he
wasn’t fit to touch the hem of her garment, let alone her hand in greeting.
Why? Because he wasn’t conservative enough for the high-and-mighty
Smalleys
?

Fuck them. They don’t matter.

Concentrate on
her
. Because she
does
matter.

Violet sniffled,
and he tightened his grip around her. He ran his hands up and down her back as
she cried. “It’s okay, Vile. It’s okay,” he whispered, losing any respect he’d
once had for
Shep
Smalley by the second. No wonder
she’d changed so much in her appearance, gotten so skinny and preppy and
conservative. She was probably trying to live up to some image of perfection
perpetuated by the
Smalleys
.

Zach had been
honest when he told her that
Me and Then
You
was a good book. It was. Good. But for anyone who had known that insane,
visceral Violet of nineteen? It was fluffy. Safe. Superficial. Entertaining and
good, but not
great.
It merely tapped
the surface of her potential without showing the rolling, undulating, fire
underneath that had, once upon a time, singed her words on his soul.

My spot. It belongs to me.

He sighed as her
sobs dwindled and her breathing returned to normal. She laid her cheek on his
shoulder. He slipped his hands under her blouse, resting them on the warm skin
of her lower back.

Had he been the
unintentional catalyst for Violet backing away from life? Had she taken a
chance on him only to be pushed away, only to be pushed into
Shep’s
milquetoast, unspectacular arms? It hurt his heart
to think that she’d stopped taking risks, buried her sharp, saturated vibrancy
away. It made him wonder if the person who’d made it run for cover could
possibly coax it out again.

“Violet,” he whispered
into her ear.

“
Mmm
?”

“You okay?”

“Mm-hm.”

“You want to
talk about it?”

He felt her
shake her head against his shoulder. “Nope.”

“You want to go
write a song about it?”

She leaned back,
and he looked at her face in the moonlight: red-rimmed eyes, flushed cheeks,
puffy lips. He bit back a groan as he remembered that he had no more condoms
and wondered how totally insensitive it would be to make a pit stop on the way
home. There was no fucking way he was making it until morning without having
her again.

She bit her top
lip and flattened her hands on his chest. “You were serious about that?”

“Oh, yeah,” he said.

“I haven’t
written poetry in a long time.”

“Really? I could
have sworn you wrote me a poem at the bar twenty minutes ago.”

Her smile
widened a little, and it made his heart happy.

“
Good
poetry,” she said.

“The one you
told me today, ‘My Spot.’ We could start with that.”