Page 94 of If Not for My Baby
After a moment I say, quieter, “You wouldn’t have.”
“Nah, but I wanted to.” He tips his head back, his deep voice muffled under the cotton of his hoodie. “He fuckin’ deserved it.”
“Tom…” I don’t even know what to say. It’s like a nightmare my own pessimistic brain couldn’t even dream up.
“Why’s he out there anyway, talkin’ to you? He follow you? Fuckin’ gobshite.”
“He was wasted.” I wonder if he was on something—his eyes were nearly black and glazed over. “He might’ve been buying drugs out there.” I know I sound like someone’s apron-wearing mother, but it’s the best guess I’ve got. Why else was Grayson trolling around the parking lot instead of inside with everyone? I try to recall the moment he approached me. “He was on a phone call, I think.”
Tom sits up, some light bulb clicking on. “The paps.”
“No way.”
He shakes his head in sick awe. “He called ’em. He was allhyped up about the article…How else would they’ve known I was there?”
“I take everything back,” I say through clenched teeth. Everly’s poor steering wheel is taking the brunt of my anger. “Let’s tell Jen about all his ickiness and get him fired.”
Tom finally removes the hoodie, testing his swollen nose with his fingers. Plum purple and skinned-knee pink, and his knuckles, too, already blooming with bruises. He must have landed more than one punch on Grayson. The thought of him pummeling the creep is like soda through my bloodstream.
“Jen’s going to be livid, havin’ to kick him off the tour and find a new keyboardist this close to the end.”
The headlights illuminate a particularly dark patch of freeway and I squint to follow the road hurtling before us.
“It’s over so soon,” I say quietly.
“Is that why you weren’t in the ladies’ room?”
Better to admit to that, I tell myself, than to having a nervous breakdown about the ex who broke his heart so thoroughly he teared up on our second date. But I only say, “I just needed some air.”
“Clem.”
I inhale like a kid getting their first shot. I can do this. “I’m sad it’s ending.”
Tom’s palm massages my thigh and tension loosens across my body. “Me, too.”
“You hadn’t said anything, though.”
“Didn’t you know? My girl’s a bit flighty.”
My girl.My anxious heart thumps desperately at the words. “Fair enough.”
“It doesn’t have to be the end, though. For us, I mean.”
But I don’t have the stomach for that conversation tonight. To tell him how wrong he is. “Think you’ll ever do another tour?”
I see the Cherry Grove sign and click on my blinker. A few miles back, when Tom fervently rejected my hospital suggestion, I decided on this plan, and I’m not going to wimp out now. Fence jumping to homecomings—I’m all about the bravery tonight.
Tom rubs at his jaw. “I told Brad I wasn’t ready to commit to another album right now. That I just needed time. He was decent about it. Told me to call him when I had my next steps figured out. So, maybe. I’m feelin’ more optimistic about it than I had been before.”
I scope the street signs and wager I’ve got time for one last question before I spring my plan on him. “And the drinking…”
Tom’s teeth are white in the passing lamplight. “What about it?”
“Jen’s always so worried about you. But you had a beer tonight.”
It’s not much of a question, but he answers me anyway. “When my friend died, the one I told you about…” Tom presses one hand into the other as he fishes for the right words. But then he seems to change course. “The success of my first album came pretty shortly after that. I had a lot of guilt—I made some mistakes on that first tour before I stopped drinkin’. Jen worries about me going off the rails again because of the image she’s hopin’ I’ll maintain. But I’ve been doin’ well for a while now. It was nice to share a pint with you and the lads.”
“You let her think you’d slipped up, though. With what happened in Philly.”
