13. A Very Bad Day

The remainder of Cassidy’s drive was blessedly uneventful and devoid of law enforcement presence or any other random cause for heart palpitations.  Even if she had seen a police officer, they would’ve had no reason to take notice of her because she was the model driver.  She kept a close eye on her rear view mirror and was irrationally overcautious, coming to a full stop at every stop sign and keeping her speed two-miles-an-hour under the posted speed limit. 

In spite of her motorist paranoia, she enjoyed the remainder of the commute.  What wasn’t to enjoy when you were producing encore-worthy performances with the star-studded cast of Lightning 100 FM?  Alicia Keys, Lady Gaga, Train, American Authors and Adele were all privileged enough to receive Cassidy’s exemplary vocal accompaniment and, if they were aware of it, she was sure they would all be vastly appreciative. 

The guy in the car next to her at that last traffic signal certainly liked her voice well enough.  He hooted and offered a shrill whistle through his fingers as she pulled out from the light.

Jon was the only one in recent history who hadn’t seemed to be particularly impressed with her voice.  To be fair, she couldn’t recall that he’d ever said anything positive or negative, so maybe he simply found her mediocre.  It didn’t really make a hill of beans in the long run, but she was still a bit puzzled as to why he blew off the gratitude she’d expressed at the chance to sing with him. 

Then again, he’d also very nearly demanded that she join him again tonight, and she couldn’t figure that out either.  The man clearly had a complex mind, which he didn’t like sharing, so she may never know.

Unless you come up with a way to “persuade" him.

That was a challenge that had been lingering in the back of her mind all day.  It had provided interesting fodder for thought as she performed menial tasks at work, and she’d been grateful for the distraction while cleaning out the vat of oil that reeked of chicken and pickles.   She’d had a far better time unleashing her creativity on persuasion-worthy tactics than she would have pondering the gunk in the bottom of the deep fryer. 

It wouldn’t be long before she found out whether or not that creativity was going to pay off.

Unbelievably enough, Cassidy was only running about five minutes late when her black stiletto Mary Janes came to a standstill in front of the same Omni suite that she’d visited the night before.  Hiking the overnight bag higher onto her shoulder, Cassidy lifted her fist to knock on the nondescript door that gave no indication of who its famous occupant was. 

She waited for him to answer with the realization that the anticipation fluttering in her stomach was an entirely different variety than that of last night’s anticipation.  The uncertainty had been removed and she knew – more or less – what would happen on the other side of this door tonight.  This anticipation was pleasurable instead of nerve-wracking. 

The door swung inward, and her stomach leapt with a burst of excitement. 

Jon stood partially shielded by the heavy door, but he remained visible enough for her to see that today’s t-shirt was a dark blue only a few shades lighter than that of the dark-wash denim jeans.  She also immediately recognized that this wasn’t the man she’d left behind this morning. 

Brooding Jon had returned and his smile lines dug deep to emphasize tightly compressed lips that were far from smiling.  They strongly mirrored the grooves that dug into his forehead and between the eyebrows that were drawn low.  Dull denim eyes had come to replace the ones that were sparkling the last time she’d seen him, and barely suppressed dissatisfaction swam in their murky depths.   

While she’d rather see him happy, Cassidy wasn’t daunted by the man who beckoned her inside with a silent jerk of his head.  She knew that she could improve his mood, so she simply summoned her usual cheery smile and stepped through the door with a bubbly, “Hi, handsome.”

The door clicked shut behind her, and Cassidy glided over to deposit her bags in the same armchair nearest the door, finding it odd that he still hadn’t spoken.  She was just turning to ask him why when savage fingers clutched her bicep and swung her around to fully face him. 

Jon’s eyes were no longer dull.  They were backlit with a fire that had nothing to do with passion, and he locked her other arm in a matching grip.  That dual grasp propelled her into a forceful backward march that ended only when her head and heels hit the wall with a muted thump. 

Her gasp was swallowed whole when angry lips crashed down with a demanding greed that had the edges of her teeth cutting into the sensitive flesh lining her mouth.  Unaware, or uncaring, he drove harder. His tongue boorishly plundered battered lips, hell-bent on its mission to brutishly devour her and, when he sought a more satisfying angle, their teeth clacked together with jarring force.  

Jon thrust his body against hers so that invasive hands could grope beneath her shirt and fumble into the waistband of her pants. 

Cassidy was stunned.  In their previous encounters, he had never even hinted at this kind of aggression.  If he had, she would have set immediate boundaries or, better yet, never come here in the first place. 

She didn’t know who the hell this guy was, but it surely wasn’t who she’d come here to see. 

Straining against his grip, she bent her arms to wedge her forearms between their torsos.  The heels of her hands were forcefully jammed into his sternum and she did her best to make it hurt when shoving with all her might.

“What the hell is your problem?” she demanded through the tender lips that had been torn free when he took a staggering step backward.  The torment that flooded his eyes was painfully visible, but she wasn’t interested his torment.  All Cassidy cared about in this moment was the reason for his insulting behavior.

Jon regarded Cassidy in silence as he rubbed the tender spot her escape had left in the center of his heaving chest.  He couldn’t decide if the pain was from the blunt contact or the intensity in which oxygen was moving in and out of his lungs – or from sheer mortification at his actions.   

There were no words to bring acceptability to what he’d just done, and his conscience felt nearly as bruised as her lips appeared to be.  Her bruised and unsmiling lips.

You are a fucking moron.

Every memory he had from their short acquaintance featured her smile.  She was smiling in every single mental picture he had of her, but she wasn’t smiling now.  The angry confusion that marred her pretty features didn’t belong on a woman who exuded perpetual happiness, yet he had put it there. 

Because he’d had a shitty, shitty day.

It had started off beautifully because of her.  She had given him a renewed glimpse at the former nirvana of his life.  She’d provided an inner peace and clarity which allowed him to write – really write something of substance – for the first time since…

Since Richie left.

After Obie’s visit, things had steadily gone downhill and, with each lousy step that took him further and further down into the abyss of his fucking life, the chasm between him and that nirvana had grown.  As it steadily progressed toward insurmountable, his mood had begun to sour, and all he could do was obsess over it and the woman who could obliterate it.

Like a drug addict, he had craved what she could give with a desperation that couldn’t be comprehended by someone who hadn’t experienced the high.  The later the hour had become, the more his anxiety had built. 

He’d opened a bottle of wine and drunk most of it in an effort to get a grip on himself, but wine didn’t offer its usual calming effect tonight.  It had done the exact opposite and made him so jittery that, when she’d been late in arriving, he found himself on the verge of some kind of psychotic panic, thinking that his supplier wasn’t coming and that he wouldn’t get his “fix”. 

By the time she’d finally gotten here, he’d slipped off the deep end with relief and become some Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde nutcase.

You’ll be lucky if she doesn’t walk out of here and send the cops back in her place.

“I am a kind woman.”  Her gentle Southern lilt eradicated the silence. “So I will choose to believe you weren’t trying to be a self-entitled son of a bitch just now.  Instead, I’ll very graciously assume you were venting your frustration over a very, very bad day.”

One would think her forgiveness would ease his conscience, but that wasn’t how his psyche chose to play the hand it was dealt.  Rather than accepting the absolution, his bruised conscience hemorrhaged and labeled him as the self-entitled son of a bitch she’d named him.  Whether she chose to believe it was irrelevant.  The label stuck. 

Frustrated and incapable of forming coherent sentences, Jon growled in vexation and spun on his heel to stride toward the window.  When he reached the point where his options were to stop in front of open curtains or continue through the nineteenth floor plate glass, he planted his bare feet just short of the wall.  Both hands were crammed harshly into his pockets in lieu of punching a hole through the window – or breaking his hand without benefit of a hole – and he scowled at the inappropriately beautiful Nashville sunset.

He cursed himself.  He cursed Richie.  He cursed Obie.  He cursed Clay Adams.  He cursed the fucking antidepressants. 

He cursed everyone but the woman who noiselessly joined him.  Jon hadn’t heard Cassidy move, and her presence at his side wasn’t something he saw with his eyes, since he refused to look.  He could simply feel her manifestation like some kind of ghost of the Confederacy. 

Tension coiled all of his muscles as he waited for her to lay into him – to curse him the way he cursed himself.  Cassidy, however, did no such thing.  She shared his view of the city skyline for an infinite amount of time without saying anything, until the silence was no longer acceptable.   

“You’re gonna need to say somethin’.”  Her quiet mandate bounced from the glass in front of her.

He was very well of that, and would be happy to do so if having some fucking command of the English language wasn’t required to make it happen.  He had a pretty strong feeling that “see Spot run” wasn’t going to be of any use here.

“You were right,” he churlishly offered after too long, hating the attitude that coated his earnest surrender.  “I had a very bad day.”

“I see.”  A single beat passed after her soft acknowledgement.  “Did a loved one pass?”

Exploratory eyes slid toward the petite woman whom he currently hated for giving him what he’d been missing, since he couldn’t seem to hold onto it with both fists.  She was right there at his side, interchangeably conjoined with the woman he’d spent most of the day yearning for, and they both perused the twilight sky. 

“No.”

“You were diagnosed with a terminal illness, then?”

“No.”

“Did you get pulled over by the police?”

“No.”

“Did you work eight hours for minimum wage, just so you could put gas in your car?”

Jon’s eyes fell shut on a sigh, and he turned back to the skyline.  “No.”

His peripheral vision told him when Cassidy finally pulled her own focus away from Nashville.  He could feel the air shift as she pivoted on sky-high black heels to scrutinize him with an intensity reserved for sideshow freaks.

”If nobody’s dead and you’re not dyin’ or in jail, there oughtn't be anything else worth gettin’ your shorts in a wad over.”

Obie and his unspoken prophecy of doom for Bon Jovi, the damnable fickle nature of happiness, his fucking piss-poor mood in general and anything associated with football.  And let’s not forget the self-loathing that had reared its head since she arrived. 

All of that was definitely wad-worthy.

“Don’t presume to tell me what’s important in my life,” he foully threw back her assessment.

“Then don’t presume to use me as your whippin’ boy.”

Her words weren’t angry, as they should have been – as his would’ve been in her place.  That wouldn’t be natural for her.  Cassidy’s voice carried nothing more than a maddening tranquility, and she pivoted ninety degrees further to move in the direction of her belongings.

“Whipping boy”.  The one person that has offered me the tiniest bit of solace, and I’ve used her as a “whipping boy”. 

Jon pinched the bridge of his nose, effectively letting the excess hot air out of his big head so that remorse could take up residence.  She hadn’t done anything besides try and put things in perspective, and there was no reason to compound his abysmal behavior by being a dick.

He turned to find that she was across the room, where she hefted both of her bags to one shoulder and regarded him disinterestedly.

“One of two things is going to happen right now.  I’ll either be takin’ my leave or takin’ a shower.  If you have an opinion on the matter, now’s a good time to give it.” 

His opinion was that he needed her more than the antidepressants.  If she left now, he was afraid he would never get back to where he’d been this morning.  That he would end up being a depressed and unemployed fuck for the rest of his life.

“Stay.”

Cassidy’s ponytail tipped to one side in accordance with the tilt of her head.  “That whole brevity of words thing you’ve got goin’ on is somethin’ I’ve appreciated until now.”

There was no way in hell he was telling her the thought process that had just taken place.  Talking about his thoughts and feelings wasn’t something Jon did.   Sensitivity and openness wasn’t part of the Jersey culture, and he’d just met her for chrissake. 

Thoughts and feelings were reserved for songwriting.  Cassidy was due an apology, but it didn’t require spilling his guts.

One hand was pulled out of his pocket, and he pushed it into his hair to scrub back and forth over his scalp.  “I’m sorry.  Sorry I had a shitty day, sorry for… using you as a whipping boy.  Sorry I’m not a particularly nice person.”

“I’m sorry you had a shitty day, too.” 

There was no pity in the sentiment, nor acceptance of the way he handled it.  There was only a simple authenticity to her words that he found a little endearing. 

“Look,” he sighed.  “I was an inexcusable dick, so I understand if you don’t want to spend the night, but stay and have dinner with me.  It’s the least I can do.”

She studied him, probably gauging him for a bullshit factor.  His sincerity must have come through, because her chin dipped in a quick nod. 

“Okay.  But, for the record, you weren’t completely inexcusable.”  The bags were hiked up a little higher, and she stepped close to buss his cheek with a kiss.  “I’m a better listener than I am a whippin’ boy.  After my shower, we can talk about your day.  If you want.”

With nothing more, she slipped away to round the corner into the bedroom.

“Hey, Dixie?” he called after taking a couple of steps in her wake.

Her coppery ponytail made a reappearance around the same corner.  “Yeah?”

“Did you get pulled over tonight?  Is that why you were late?”

The ponytail – and she – disappeared back into the bedroom.  “Yeah.”

She obviously didn’t want to talk about it, and that was fine.  He figured it couldn’t have been too serious since she was only ten minutes late, but Jon had wanted to clarify why that scenario had come into the conversation in the first place.   

That minimum wage thing for gas in the car really happened, too.  Wanna clarify that? 

Jon scoured both hands over his face, fingers digging into his eyes.  He had enough problems of his own.  Willingly taking on someone else’s was beyond him right now, and there was nothing sad or pitiable about working hard for what you wanted.  His entire career had been built on that very premise and around that theme. 

Taking a step toward the coffee table, he hooked the remaining half bottle of wine in the fingers of one hand while the wineglass was scooped up with the other hand.  When said glass was overfilled with his favorite poison, he plopped down on the chair with a weary sigh as his eyes caught on the flash drive that he’d dropped to the table earlier today.

Exchanging the wineglass for his Mac, which was also on the table, he flipped it open just as the melodic lyrics of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” came drifting in from the bathroom.  The flash drive went into the USB port, and he recalled that she’d expressed an interest in doing that song yesterday at the studio.  Time and her stamina hadn’t allowed for it, so he took a moment to appreciate the impromptu performance while he reviewed the track list. 

I’m gonna have to ask what the deal is with her and that song.