Page 87 of Healing Hearts
“Thanks.” I crack the can and wander down the hallway to where the recording studio is located. There’s an apartment here for all the famous people who do fly-by-night visits to record something before going back to LA or NY or some other city. There always seems to be someone here.
Grady isn’t in the booth. Instead, he’s in the part where people normally record, his guitar resting on his knee, a pencil in hishand, and paper on the music stand, scribbling away as I pull open the door. He’s a producer, songwriter, and an occasional recording artist. His last album blew up, but he had no interest in going on tour.
“Emily come to see you?” Grady asks without looking up.
I freeze in the doorway. “What do you know?”
“Just come talk to me,” Grady says, setting the pen on the music stand and setting his guitar back on the stand.
“Who are you writing for?” I ask, avoiding the obvious topic of conversation.
“Sarah Telling,” he says. “That’s confidential, obviously. Not sure if what I’m writing will get used or not.”
I slide into one of the few comfortable chairs in the room and sip my drink. Grady doesn’t say anything, and I know he’s going to outwait me.
“Em’s pregnant,” I say.
“Congratulations,” Grady says. “Maggie’s pregnant too.”
“She is?”
“Yep. Castillo cousins growing up together.”
“Emily was supposed to be telling everyone she used a donor,” I say, somewhat resentful, even if it’s not justified. She was right in the shop today—it doesn’t take much to put two and two together. It’s just that I don’t know what to do with how Emily and I made four without fully realizing it.
“You were living with her, man. Did you really think when she announced she was pregnant thatno onewas going to raise their eyebrows?”
“I was renting a room.”
“Were you? What’d you pay her with? Dick?”
“Fuck off.”
“I’m going to guess that you’re not taking the news as well as both of you might have hoped.”
“Definitely not as well as she hoped,” I admit. “I’m not sure what I expected. It’s going to sound fucking ridiculous, but when I agreed to all this, all I knew was that I didn’t want anyone else to have her. Saying that out loud makes me sound like a dick.”
“Makes you sound like you’ve had some pretty significant feelings for her for a while.”
I absorb his comment, and when I let it settle, I think he’s probably right. Every time I went to pick Emily up from a date, I felt a little vindicated that she couldn’t find anyone she wanted to be around more than me. That at the end of those nights, she was with me. Back then, I had no desire or interest in analyzing that feeling, but I can see now that it was there.
“I know some part of you thought you could keep the paternity of Emily’s baby a secret, but all secrets come out in time. We both know that. Do you really want it to be a secret? You don’t want that life with her?”
Grady and I poke fun at each other all the time, and the sincerity in his voice makes me realize he understands that nothing about what’s happening is a joke. That it’s very real and very overwhelming.
“The way I feel about Maggie,” Grady continues, “I wouldn’t let anything or anyone come between us. And I sure as hell wouldn’t be okay with anyone else raising my kid.”
“Yeah, but you’re you.”
“What does that mean?”
“Come on, Grady. Rockstar. Celebrity songwriter. Friend to the stars. There’s nothing seedy or bad about being associated with you in this town, in the world. Even you fucking up your run for mayor didn’t tarnish your shine in this town.”
“Ah,” he says, as though it’s clicked for him. “This is about you going to jail.”
“Of course it is. And it’s about how my past just won’t fucking let me go.”
“It won’t letyougo, or you won’t letitgo.”
