Page 41 of Wingwoman
“It probably doesn’t feel like it, but you’re lucky to have had that much time with her. My mom died when I was five. I don’t remember a lot about her. Except that her hands smelled like the neroli and rose oil she would use on her cuticles.”
I inhaled deeply. Neroli and rose oil.Thatwas the floral smell Hope had. I’d been trying to place what her scent was from the moment we first met. “Is that what you wear as well?”
She nodded and her gaze slipped far off somewhere over my shoulder to the window behind me. I knew from countless nights eating at this table alone that you couldn’t see a damn thing out that window once the sun set. It was pitch black out there, with the exception of the occasional glimpse of moonlight through the shadowed trees swaying in the breeze.
She looked sad. Not sad in the way someone who suffered a recent loss was sad. But I could see hints of her tragic past in the melancholy tilt of her eyes.
And I didn’t just mean the tragic loss of her mom. There was something more. Something deeper and darker that she didn’t talk about much.
Even when she smiled, it was never with her whole face. Her mouth still always managed to dip down at the corners, hinting at just the edge of a frown. No matter how wide her smile actually was, it never masked her pain and anger. At least not to me.
I sighed, hating myself a little more for what I was bound to do to her. That drive I had to ruin every good thing in my life was raw and I hated it in myself. Yet I couldn’t stop. I was my father’s son, after all.
Though when I was with Hope, it was different. It didn’t feel like it did when I first met Jenn. And it definitely didn’t feel like it did with the other women I’d dated and tossed aside like rotten fruit.
When I looked at her, I didn’t feel that aching pull to break her in order to watch the chaotic beauty of destruction.
Because she was already beautifully broken.
Broken enough to write about.
Broken enough to inspire me, even in the depths of my writer’s block.
Some things never change, Josh, I heard my dad’s voice ringing in my ears.
Once a cad, always a cad. He wasn’t wrong about himself… so why would I think he’d be wrong about me? And in the same way I could see Hope’s tragic story written on every line of her face, I knew my dad was right. I was powerless to stop myself.
Like a tornado, I destroyed everyone in my path. It was what I did. And exactly what my dad did too.
The only thing I knew for certain was Hope’s tragic past had already healed… and I was bound to shatter it—and her—once more.
“Why don’t you write a song about your mother?” she asked quietly.
Her suggestion completely caught me off guard. A breath staggered in my throat as I shook my head.
“I… I couldn’t. I could never. It’s too painful. Too personal.”
She nodded. “I understand,” she said. And I thought maybe for the first time… someone I was talking to trulydidunderstand what I meant.
“But,” she continued, “aren’t you trying to tap into pain for this album?”
I swallowed hard and pushed some chili around my bowl as she kept talking. “It sounds like your mom was more than any muse could ever be to you. It sounds like she was your hero.”
Emotion clogged my throat and I dropped my spoon into the chili, lifting my eyes to study Hope.
How could one woman be so astute? How could she see so clearly right through me in only two days together? Her gaze drifted up to me and she tilted her head. “What?”
I shook my head. “Nothing.”
But it wasn’t nothing. She was so tragically beautiful it made my open wound throb with fresh pain.
Like likes like.
My pain wanted her pain. I wanted to swallow it, absorb it, let it water the seeds of my despair so it could grow and take shape in the form of beautiful music.
“Maybe you’re right,” I said. “Maybe I should write a song for my mom. And maybe…maybefor the right woman… the right muse, unveiling her at the rodeo makes sense. Can we play it by ear?”
Hope smiled again. And once more, there it was. The smile that wasn’t really a smile. The smile that masked her pain. “Of course.”
