Chapter 3

Fox

Days after the disastrous lesson with Lily-Rose, Talia dropped me a single-line text message.

I just don’t think it’s good for her to continue lessons. I’m sorry. I muttered it out loud, feeling anger and confusion ripple through me. My biceps bulged as I thrust my fist against the couch cushion at my downtown apartment.

Staring out the window, I drew a line toward where I’d learned Talia and Lily-Rose lived. I could just make out the tip-top of the baby blue house, a house Talia and I had walked past endless times as teenagers, muttering sweet nothings to one another about how we would one day own a house of our own.

God, the way her eyes had lit up after each one of those conversations. She’d almost always let me fuck her after those talks, opening up her legs and closing her eyes, whispering to me to hold her tighter.

Ha. The musings of an idiot teenager. That had been before I’d taken charge of my own destiny. Before I’d made something of myself.

Blinking around at the apartment – the sterling silver appliances, the humming refrigerator, the $4,000 painting hanging over the dining room table, the baby grand piano, and the three different electric guitars in the corner – I tried to tell myself not giving Lily-Rose lessons was probably for the best. I hadn’t come back to Bilkington to charge up past lust. I’d come to regroup, to figure out the “why” of my fucking life.

Like, why the fuck had Marissa died, when all I’d wanted to do was love her?

Outside, a gaggle of what appeared to be eight- or nine-year-old kids in baseball uniforms walked past, bouncing on the pavement, their hats falling to the ground. I spotted Lily-Rose among them, her hands at her sides and her chin toward her chest. Her blonde hair curled down her back beneath the hat, and she wore a demure expression.

Damn. With a lurch, I swept forward, cranking the curtains over the window. Just a single glance at her face had brought back wave after wave of memories. At the age of six, my mother had gotten the diagnosis: cancer. I’d spent the better part of that year, and the next, slumped over in a plastic hospital chair playing with an old video game while my mother slowly died beside me. Even after a brief “remission” when I was eight, I still sensed the light in her eyes slowly waning. She died a few months after my twelfth birthday—a year before I kissed Talia for the first time. “You can talk to me about her, if you want to,” Talia had said frequently, her head on my chest. But I’d been locked, sealed to my innermost, darkest emotions.

And in some ways, that had led me to the anger, the terror, the volatility of joining the drug-filled, wild world of the Los Angeles rock scene. When I’d gotten my first tattoo at the age of sixteen, with each prick of pain, I hadn’t felt the dark, staggering pain in my heart, the result of my mother’s death. This had pushed me faster, with full-force, toward a life of drugs, of sex, of cranking the volume to the highest level and tearing my fingers across the strings of my guitar.

The local bartender, Marris, had filled me in on the details of what had happened with Talia’s sister, Billie, when I’d visited the bar the other night. “The car accident was really fucking bad,” Marris had said, as I’d sipped my third rum and coke the evening after Lily-Rose’s piano lesson. “She tore through a tree. I mean, I don’t know how anyone could have survived that. Just goes to show you, anything can happen to anyone at any time, you know? Better keep your loved ones close.”

I’d stewed from this comment, feeling the weight of my wife’s death. Sipping the last of my rum, I’d dropped Marris a fifty dollar bill – a good thirty dollar tip – for the kicks of talking to her, a forty-something woman who said she remembered my grunge band , but hadn’t followed up with my career after I’d left high school. I was grateful for that.

With quick, jerking motions, I reached for my phone and strutted toward the door, stomping down the steps and beginning the quick trek toward Talia’s blue house. As I approached, I watched as Lily-Rose scampered into the backyard through the fence, tossing her baseball hat to the ground and letting her hair fly free.

No. Just because Lily-Rose had lost her mother, like I had, didn’t mean she had to fall into the life I’d led. She was pure, a force for good in this ragged and wasted-out world. I’d contributed too much to the world’s darkness—leading Marissa into that club that night, and then witnessing her blood seeping out all over the floor.

I rapped my hand against the door, listening to Talia’s approaching steps. The moment she spotted me through the screen door, something flickered in her eyes. Was it rage? Resentment? Excitement? I couldn’t read her. As a twenty-nine-year-old woman – still gorgeous, yet more guarded than she’d been ten years ago – she was multi-faceted, someone I needed to study.

Not that I wanted anything but to fuck her brains out. Love wasn’t a part of any future equation for me, not after what had happened with Marissa.

The door creaked open, bringing Talia’s face into the summer air. She blinked twice at me, showing those dark, penetrating eyes, and then tilted her head.

“Fox, I told you. I don’t think we want any more lessons. But thank you,” she said, her voice professional and bright—like one of a telephone operator.

From within, the oven began beeping. The smell of baking cookies wafted through the screen, and my stomach spun with sudden hunger. Placing my hand on the doorway, I lifted a single eyebrow, sensing my dominance over Talia. She remained perched at the door, even as the oven continued to blare.

“Are you going to get that?” I asked her, feeling the sarcasm in my voice.

Talia pressed her lips together, turning swiftly toward the kitchen which was in the back of the house. I caught the screen door with my hand before it slammed and entered the front room; it was a living and television room, with an upright piano in the corner. I recognized the upright from Talia’s parents’ house. We’d rammed our fingers over it for hours at a time, before throwing ourselves in my car and whirling to the various parking lots and fields across Indiana. Where we could fuck, in peace.

“Nice place,” I said to her, listening as she took a pan out of the oven.

Talia glanced out of the kitchen at me, looking stern. “Excuse me, I didn’t invite you in,” she said, her nostrils flared.

“What are you baking for?” I asked her, taking a step forward. From the center of the rug, I could see into the kitchen where she’d set out the baking tray filled with chocolate chip cookies. “Look at you. Playing house. Having a kid. It’s funny to see.”

Talia’s eyes glittered, yet her lips were downturned, angry. “If you must know, I’m baking for the local community center’s bake sale. It’s basically falling apart. They need the money.”

“What a good community member,” I said, still sounding sarcastic, yet feeling a jolt of actual admiration. What kind of person actually tried to uphold her community? What kind of person actually fucking cared?

“Don’t do that,” Talia said, swatting at my hand as I attempted to nab a cookie. “Really, Fox. I know you don’t give a shit about anyone except yourself, but at least leave the cookies for the community center.”

Leaning heavily against the counter, I crossed my arms over my chest, watching as Talia busied herself with scraping the cookies from the baking sheet. As she did, her breasts quaked back and forth in her white t-shirt, showing dots of brown nipples, perky against the fabric. I felt my cock stir in my pants, jolting up against my jeans.

“I want to talk to you about Lily-Rose,” I finally said, my voice firm. “I think it’s a mistake to take her out of lessons.”

“Oh, is that right?” Talia asked, refusing to look at me. “You think you know what’s best for Lily-Rose, after a single lesson? That’s super interesting. You should really look into child psychology, Fox. I think it could really be your next career move.”

“Come on, Talia. I know what it’s like to lose a mother when you’re too young. Not that there’s any right time,” I said, watching as Talia whirled toward the refrigerator, drawing out a large vat of cookie dough. She began to portion out the dough, ripping her fingers through it and then making balls.

“Sure. I know. And I don’t want Lily-Rose to end up anything like you,” Talia said. “Which is why I’m doing my fucking best with her. To be the kind of mother she deserves.”

I stepped toward her, closing the distance. I watched as her tongue flickered across her lower lip, showing her fear of me. I could smell a hint of her flowery perfume over the warmth of the cookies, and I yearned to glide my tongue along her neck—porcelain white, glowing in the sunlight streaming in from the yard. Outside, Lily-Rose swung on a rickety play set, her hair flowing out behind her.

“Well, I want to help you,” I said. “And I think Lily-Rose having one-on-one lessons with me – learning music theory, classical music, everything – I think that’ll give her a boost in the right direction. Maybe she won’t feel like she needs to… damn, I don’t know… join a grunge band or get a tattoo or…”

“You really think I would let it go that far?” Talia demanded, her eyes stony. “I think I have a bit more of a handle on it than you could ever know. I don’t need your help.”

I chuckled, remembering this headstrong Talia, the one who’d refused any help, no matter the situation. This stubbornness had clung to her, wrapped around her neck, and squeezed and become her as an adult, through and through.

“What? Don’t laugh at me,” Talia said, rolling a cookie ball with too much force and flattening it. I watched as dots of chocolate flickered across her tits, dribbling toward the bottom of her white t-shirt. I brought my own fingers forward, flickering them across the counter. I wanted to drag them through her hair. I wanted so badly to strip her bare, to lean her against the countertop and rail into her with sudden, unadulterated passion.

But even so, her stubbornness enraged me. “You don’t understand. I can offer her an entire world, Talia,” I told her. “You probably don’t remember what it’s like to perform music. But as recently as, hell, four months ago, I performed to a sold-out arena in Los Angeles. And I can still remember the energy of the crowd, the way the music gives you this kind of adrenaline.”

“Are you sure it was the music? Or was it the women waiting for you after, eager to do whatever you wanted them to do?” Talia demanded.

I pressed my lips together, feeling another wave of dislike, mixed with lust. My hands drew themselves into fists. I wondered, deep in the back corners of my mind, if Talia had ever learned what had happened to my wife. If she knew that I wasn’t in Bilkington to just “hang around,” get together with an old fling.

I was there to hide.

Suddenly, Lily-Rose burst in from the backyard, sweat dripping from her forehead. Reaching into the fridge, she gripped a juice box and popped the straw into the top, a practiced motion. She blinked between her aunt and me, curious.

“Will I have another lesson now, Aunt Talia?” she asked, revealing a bright red juice tongue.

Talia swept her hand over Lily-Rose’s shoulder, shaking her head. “I just don’t think we have time. Between your baseball team, and studying for next year in school.”

“But Aunt Talia, I hate baseball,” Lily-Rose said, her voice almost a whine. She gazed up at me, her eyes awash with light. “I want to play the piano.”

“Maybe we can find you another teacher,” Talia said, trying to brush it off. “I don’t think Fox has time for another student right now. Isn’t that right?” She looked at me, her eyes like daggers. I was meant to play along.

“Oh, but please,” Lily-Rose said, her bottom lip quivering. “I don’t want anyone else.” She tore toward me, gripping my hand and yanking it. “Fox, won’t you please teach me? Just one more time? I’ll be better.”

I gave Talia a half-hearted shrug, finding a smile flickering across my lips. “How can you refuse that face?” I asked her.