56 - The Ostrich Clause

I'm out of town and totally got my days screwed up.  I apologize for the late Tuesday post.  I'll post again on Friday and then back to regular schedule.  Sorry!!  :(

What began as a lousy day ended up being one of the nicest Jon could recall.  There was a bunch of mundane bullshit to wade through with regard to the potential Titans purchase, but even combing through player rosters, financial sheets and potential return on investment scenarios was oddly soothing to his obsessive nature. 

Of course, Cassidy’s presence might have had something to do with that.

Not overly talkative, she was content to sit with her legs tucked under her on the couch and let him do his thing while she scratched on blank pages borrowed from his songwriting notebook.  Yet, whenever he talked out loud to himself or took a break, she was amiably willing to chat about whatever was on his mind.   

Now that it was late afternoon, he was tired of researching.  He put the lid down on his Mac and leaned forward to deposit it on the coffee table.

“What have you been doing over there all afternoon?”  From his seat in the chair furthest from her, Jon jutted his chin toward the pages that were no longer blank.  “You an artist, too?”

“Me?”  Her eyes went wide with surprise before she laughed with derision.  “Hardly.  I’ve doodled a fork in the road – basically the letter ‘Y’ – and a coupla flowers.”

Jon held out a hand and waggled his fingers demandingly.  There was no way a single letter and two flowers had filled up three out of four pages.  “Gimme.”

It was with a soft laugh that she stretched toward him, putting the papers within his reach. 

“I’m tellin’ ya, it’s nothin’ but scribblin’s of me talkin’ to myself.”

A quick perusal and he found that the ‘Y’ she spoke of took up much of one page, but it wasn’t what filled the page.  There was a title of ‘A Fork in the Road’ and subtitle of ‘(story doesn’t end here)’.   At the juncture where the 3 lines of the ‘Y’ met, there was a star labeled ‘You Are Here’ and accompanied by something that resembled the Titans logo while, at the base of the ‘Y’, was a small rendering of a house labeled ‘Home’.  

The right fork in the road had a smattering of musical notes and the aforementioned flowers inscribed on its path, along with motivational suggestions advising ‘Dare to Dream’, ‘Touch the Sky’, ‘Make Memories’.  It was a clear representation of hopes and desires that were beyond the scope of mundane life. 

The left wasn’t quite so motivating – in Jon’s opinion.

There, she had sketched a little box with a mound of circles on top of it, which Jon presumed was the gold.  They were scattered along that path, interspersed with captions such as ‘Legacy’, ‘Hold Head High’, ‘Love Your Life’ and, again, ‘Make Memories’.

He flipped the page over to discover she’d used the top half to jot down a short list of careers:  bookkeeper, hairdresser, RN, vocalist, musician, bartender, and historian.

“Historian?” he asked with a curiously uplifted eyebrow. 

The smile she gave him was partly sheepish and partly mischievous.  “I have a minor in Civil War history.”

“Of course you do,” Jon murmured with a lopsided grin.  More and more he was discovering that Cassidy was an eclectic jack-of-all-trades, and each new revelation was less surprising than the last.  She had a diverse skillset that he was starting to accept as fact instead of being shocked by it.

The second sheet of paper, which only had writing on one side, further proved that.  It was obviously a result of their conversations today as it was all about football. 

There was a list of questions regarding the game itself and held terms such as ‘quarterback sneak’ and ‘hurry’, but there was another section that had to do with the financial side of things.  That piece looked very much like the return on investment scenarios that he’d been working on himself, and it proved that Cassidy hadn’t been idly humoring his earlier deliberation of profitability and weak links in the current roster.  She was paying much closer attention than Jon had realized and was smart enough to piece it together in a slightly different way – a way that prompted him to rethink his current evaluation of the Titans.

I’m going to have to update my notes and factor this in.

“Give it back.”  Her hand extended much the way his hand when initially requesting the sheets of paper.  “You’re givin’ me a twitch with the way you’re starin’ at ‘em while the wheels in your mind are turnin’.  There ain’t nothin’ there to be spinnin’ your wheels over.”

He gave her afternoon’s work another visual pass, finding it very telling.  The woman sitting across from him was clearly trying to decipher what to do with her life and, if he were a psychologist, he might be inclined to think those football notes looped him into her decision making process. 

He wasn’t a psychologist, though.  He was a musician.   That meant his spin on it wasn’t board certified, but he could see something that Freud himself might miss.

Ignoring the demandingly wiggling fingers, he inquired, “Ever consider trying your hand at songwriting?”

“What?”  Her nose crinkled with confusion.  “No.”

“Want to?”

Her little sketch held some pretty prolific thoughts and, if she was having trouble making a decision, it wouldn’t hurt to look at it from another angle – a musical one.

“Honey,” she drawled.  “I think you might wanna crawl between my legs, because you’ve surely lost your sanity.”

Jon flashed a fleeting smile, but it was long gone when he shook the papers in his hand.  “I think you’ve got some lyrics in here.  Let me give you a focused guitar lesson that will help you pick out some music to go with them.  Or I can see if Dave still has the keyboard in his room, if you prefer.” 

Shaking her head, she informed him, “I can’t write a song.”

“I don’t see why not.  You’ve done every-damn-thing else.”

Rising from the couch, she gently but firmly extracted her doodles from his hand.  “No, thank you.”

Stubborn woman.

There was more than one way around her willfulness, as he’d already proven once today.  Unfortunately, he wasn’t feeling up to another round of bondage, so a more political approach would be required this time.

“Okay.”  Jon agreeably leaned back in his chair.  “Then let’s talk about how to best deal with your inheritance and uncle.”

Pretty features contorted with distaste, which was about what he expected.  He’d tried to gently steer in this direction a couple of times after David left this morning and during their room service lunch, but she redirected him back toward football or music both times.  An educated guess told him she would choose playing around with her own music over family drama. 

“I agreed to be an ostrich with my head in the sand for one day and I’m invokin’ the ostrich clause.  That means pretendin’ the damn gold doesn’t exist and bein’ in denial about my world goin’ to shit.  Next topic, please.”

“Your world will never be shit as long as I have something to say about it.”

“Ostrich clause.”

If he had considered his words maybe he wouldn’t have blurted them out – at least he would have used a little more finesse in saying it – but he didn’t think.  Jon just felt it and said it.  In his defense, there were a good number of friends he could say the same about, so she didn’t have to appear so damn outraged.

“Fuck that,” he countered firmly.  “I’m not letting you pretend I don’t exist.”

“That’s the furthest thing from my mind,” Cassidy sighed, setting the papers aside to rise and move toward the bedroom. “All I wanna do is live today like tomorrow ain’t comin’.  To make some memories that aren’t tainted by the consequences waitin’ outside our hotel cocoon.  Is that too much to ask for just one day?”

“Cassidy.”  The sharp edge to his voice wasn’t intentional, but he did intend to halt her disappearance from the living room – and it worked.

When she stopped and turned her head, the first thing he saw was that her eyes bled frustration and pain, which immediately provoked his gut-wrenching anger.  He fucking despised everything that smothered her natural happiness, including him. 

“Let’s make a memory, Dix,” he coaxed her inner sunshine to breathe free.  “Write a song with me.”

###

With the exception of that one tense moment between them, Cassidy thought the day couldn’t have been any better unless Beauregard Beasley himself had knocked on the door.  Well, and considering that she was still a fugitive and not a darn thing had been resolved. 

Other than that, it was a simply splendid day. 

Being with Jon was easy.  Sometimes he talked, other times he didn’t and either suited her just fine, because the silence wasn’t awkward.  Since they’d admitted having vague, unlabeled feelings for one another, there hadn’t been any unspoken subtext lingering in the air and everything was comfortable between them. 

He’d even taken the time to help create a soundtrack for her silly doodles, and she might be smitten with the idea of creating something of her own out of thin air.    A cheap guitar had definitely made it onto her wish list, at any rate. Plucking the strings of his infamous Takamine in search of ear-pleasing chords had been cathartic, as was piecing all those random words together in a single theme. 

It was a rough work in progress and, while she hadn’t told Jon, Cassidy had an idea of where it would end up.   The ultimate message of her song was about enjoying today and every step along the way until they met again. 

The ostrich clause mandated that it was ‘until’ they met again, not ‘if’.  She had discovered a deep and abiding love for ostriches today.

“What time are we leaving tomorrow?” asked David, who had joined them for dinner in the suite to recount his search efforts for the day, which hadn’t produced anything.  He was now lounging in a chair with a glass of dark red Cabernet while Jon was on one end of the sofa with his Pinot Grigio, and Cassidy had wisely chosen to sip her red from the chair opposite David. 

She would love nothing more than to stretch out on the couch and put her feet in Jon’s lap, but she kept her distance to avoid any further commentary from David.  What he offered this morning was enough to suit her for a very long time.

“We’ll head for the airport about four, I guess.”

Sipping deeply of her wine, Cassidy tried to drown the awful feeling that she was going to miss him. 

“Good.  That gives us almost the whole business day to hear back.”

“Hear back from who?” Cassidy inquired.

“What the fuck?”  David good-naturedly chided as he held an open hand out toward her with its palm up to convey disbelief.  “Weren’t you listening at dinner?  The Georgia State Bar.” 

She frowned and tried to recall Georgia being mentioned at all during the salads and pasta, but she couldn’t think of a single word that even came close. 

“You must’ve talked about it when I went to the ladies’ room, but why would you be contactin’ the Georgia Bar?”

“Because, if your boy Beau is a lawyer, he has to be registered with the state Bar Association and they’ll know how to find him.”  David’s grin was wide and smug.  “I’m a genius, right?  You can say it.”

“Honey, I really do regret that I can’t concur with this bout of genius, but it’s the Tennessee Bar you oughta be talkin’ to.”

Jon, who had been wandering the room with his eyes, turned to lock on Cassidy while David locked on him. 

“You said her grandmother lived in Georgia, dumbass,” David criticized his friend.  “I specifically asked you that.”

“Oh, she very surely lived in Georgia,” Cassidy interceded as the middle finger on Jon’s hand stood alone and pointed to the ceiling.  “But according to my cousin, Mr. Beasley is a Tennessee lawyer.”

It had seemed odd to her and she’d almost called the will a fraud based on that simple fact alone.  Lawyers had to pass a state bar exam to practice, so it was natural to assume a Georgia lawyer had to prepare a Georgia will.  Practicing law and drawing up a will weren’t quite so state-specific, it turned out, when a former client requested said services.  Her grandmother had never used the services of Mr. Beasley that Cassidy knew about, but that’s the card her uncle was playing.

“Well fuck me,” David sighed, his half-buttoned shirt gaping open to reveal a huge tattoo on his pectoral muscle as he reached for the bottle of Cabernet from the table.  “That would’ve been useful information to have about eight hours ago.”

Scrubbing at his face, Jon sighed.  “Yeah.  Is there some reason you didn’t mention that earlier?”

“I guess I just didn’t think.  It’s so embedded in my mind, I reckon I thought you knew.  I’m sorry.”

David’s well-filled glass separated from his lips to point in Jon’s general direction.  “Starting this all over again in Tennessee is going to be a minor pain in the ass, simply because tomorrow is Friday.  There’s no way in hell we’ll hear anything back before the weekend.”

By his light and cordial tone, David clearly didn’t grasp the true significance of his words, but Cassidy did.  So did the man whose crystal blue eyes were still locked on her.   

Her ostrich clause had just expired.