Leaving to Stay Read online

  She was impressed with the jambalaya and I tried to remember the last time I’d eaten at the little shack off route 165, just outside Glenmora.

  Once upon a time, I had stopped there every week on my way to the bar to perform on Thursday nights but it had been a long time since I’d had the motivation to go.

  Life had been sucking the will to live out of me and maybe I’d given up on the music more than I’d realized.

  I hadn’t gone to the open mic in at least a year and I wasn’t even sure it was still being hosted at JoJo’s anymore. Fuck. I really should have researched it online before making such a grand gesture toward Geneva. I really hoped it did because I’d been working on a song for Geneva for the last three days and I wanted to play it for her.

  “I should warn you,” I told her. “There will be very little talent in that room, myself included.”

  She cast me a sidelong look as we drove, steering onto I-49 into the heart of Alexandria.

  “Are you fishing for compliments before I’ve even heard you play?” she asked bluntly and I was taken aback by the question.

  She really is not like the other women I know, I thought and for a second, I wondered if that was a good or bad thing. I didn’t really know how to cope with someone not out to impress me. I figured I better learn quickly.

  “I’m just warning you,” I replied, shrugging. “You’re a professional. You are used to hearing the real thing, not a bunch of drunken yokels.”

  “You’d be surprised what passes for talent these days,” she commented. “Anyway, I’m not a professional. Not anymore.”

  I swallowed my reluctance to push her and blurted out the question which had been weighing on me since I’d first learned about her.

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why aren’t you a professional anymore? You are so gifted, Geneva. You had a record deal – ”

  “You know, for someone who doesn’t have my phone number, you ask a lot of questions,” she interjected and I could see her shutting down in front of me. “If I wanted you to know, I am quite capable of telling you without prompts.”

  “You’re right,” I agreed quickly, not wanting to instigate a fight. The shoe really was on the other foot and it was damned uncomfortable.

  “I know.”

  A long silence ensued and Geneva turned to look out the window into the fading evening light.

  I could see she was regretting her decision to come but I felt like anything I’d say to her would only alienate her more so I opted to keep my mouth shut.

  I pulled up into the parking lot and exhaled as I recognized some of the vehicles beneath the neon sign of the bar. Something was still happening on Thursday nights, even if it wasn’t open mic.

  “Hey,” I said before she could open the door and she glanced at me, her mouth drooped into an unhappy frown. I didn’t want the night to be a bust before it had even gotten going. I needed to say something to her before we got inside.

  “What?”

  “I brought you here because I thought it was something we both had in common, Gen. I didn’t bring you here to upset you. If this is going to cause tension between us, I’d rather do something else.”

  She seemed surprised and she blinked quickly, studying my face. A sheepish expression crossed over her and she shook her head.

  “No,” she sighed. “I’m being a brat. I’m overly sensitive about my adventures in Nashville.”

  She inhaled sharply and sat back in her seat, releasing her hand from the door handle.

  “The truth is, I just got burnt out. I worked so hard to get that record deal, jumping through hoops, acting like a trained poodle. I gave up who I was to appease the agents and the publicists, showing them a ‘marketable’ side of me when all I wanted to do was make music. I just couldn’t take it anymore and I snapped.”

  “What did you do?” I asked, half-shocked by her stupidity, half-awed by her bravery.

  “I told them to take the record deal and shove it. I told my agent that I was nobody’s monkey and she could go to hell if she wanted to dye my hair blonde and call me ‘Juniper Jane.’ I’m not a goddamn Marvel superhero. I’m a musician.”

  I snorted, trying to envision a bleached blonde version of Geneva, cracking gum and sporting glitter eyeshadow. It didn’t jive in my head.

  “Anyway, making music isn’t about record deals and fame,” she continued but I would have had to be deaf not to hear the naked wistfulness in her voice. “It’s about art and soul and speaking to people so they hear you. Really hear you.”

  “You shouldn’t have to sell out to make music,” I agreed. “I don’t blame you.”

  She offered me a wary smile.

  “Thanks for saying that. Everyone else thinks I had some sort of nervous breakdown but that wasn’t it at all. I just needed to get out of there before I did. Does that make sense?”

  “Yeah,” I conceded. “It makes a lot of sense. I think you’re really courageous for doing that. I think most people just grin and bear it.”

  “I’m not most people,” Geneva sighed.

  “I can see that.”

  “I have no idea why I just burdened you with my crazy.”

  “Maybe because you can see that I’m your friend,” I suggested. “Or maybe you just needed to get it out your system.”

  Her eyes were glittering in the dark but my eyes were focused on her mouth.

  “You’re more than a friend, aren’t you?”

  If anyone else had asked me that on a first date, I probably would have “developed a massive headache” and cut the night short but there was no hesitation when I answered her.

  “I think I am.”

  “Come on. It’s getting too heavy in here,” Geneva said, turning to let herself out of the car. The emotion in the cab was making her uncomfortable. As she slipped out, I remained sitting in the driver’s seat, watching her for a long moment.

  I wondered why I wasn’t the least bit put off by what was happening between us.

  It should have unnerved me but it didn’t as if I had somehow found a kindred spirit for the first time in my life.

  Chapter 6

  Geneva

  It happened gradually but with a force that smacked me in the face when I bothered to give it any real thought.

  The night we went to JoJo’s had changed everything between us and not just because we’d come back to my trailer and made love until five a.m., with the memory of the night fueling our passion toward one another.

  Despite what he’d said about his lack of talent, Jude’s voice had an effect on me that I rarely felt. I should have known it would when his regular speaking tones already caused my body to erupt into a million shivers.

  His music was harder than what I sang, his songs filled with anger and desperation where my country tunes were laced with melancholy and nostalgia.

  I listened to him pour his heart into the audience through painful lyrics and I wondered where all his angst stemmed from. There had to be a hurt child inside that cocky exterior but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to pry it open. I had so much lost girl inside myself. Did I really need someone else’s anguish on top of my own?

  But it soon became obvious that we didn’t have a say in the matter, that we had been brought together by some unseen hand, guided into one another’s lives despite the warnings of my new circle.

  “I could kill Jake for letting him stay that day,” Elsa fumed one day as we walked through Oakdale, pushing Catharine in her stroller. The toddler cooed and pointed out the few items she could identify as we walked and I pretended to be enthralled with her to avoid Elsa’s anger.

  “Tree!” Cath announced.

  “Very good,” I encouraged. “Tree!”

  “Stop pretending my daughter is the second coming,” Elsa snapped at me.

  “He’s really not that bad,” I insisted, wishing she would leave it alone. It had been two weeks since Jude and I hooked up and my best friend showed no signs of lett
ing go of her anger toward him.

  “What is the deal between the two of you anyway? He seems to think you’re Cruella Deville although I keep telling him you hate dalmatians and you look terrible in polka dots.”

  It was meant to be a joke but it only seemed to incense her more.

  “Isn’t that just like Jude? Turning everything around to make someone else look like the bad guy. It’s always someone else’s fault with that one. He’s never to blame for anything.”

  I sighed, realizing that our argument was going nowhere.

  “Elsa, I love you like a sister,” I told her sincerely. “But you’re acting like my mother. Jude has not shown me anything to give me concern.”

  “He will, baby,” she assured me, her jaw twitching. “Mark my words.”

  I saw Marybeth and Carrie waving at us from the patio of the café and ground my teeth together.

  “You were wrong about him having a girlfriend,” I reminded her. “Maybe you’re wrong about more than that.”

  “He’s been leading Kristy McClellan by the nose since they were children. I guarantee you if you ask her, she’ll tell you a very different story than whatever crap he’s been filling your head with.”

  “Elsa…”

  “What? You don’t want to hear it, I know. But Geneva, this wouldn’t be the first time I’d warned you and you dismissed me so easily.”

  I tensed at the reminder but I was permitted a chance to respond as we neared our other friends.

  It was strange that I had fallen into the mommy circle but of course, that had been Elsa’s doing. After all, she was a mom now and all her friends were too.

  If I’d stuck around, I might be one too, I thought but the idea of settling down and raising a gaggle of children was as laughable to me as rebranding myself “Juniper Jane” of country music fame.

  “There she is!” Marybeth cooed, swooping in to collect Cath into her arms. “How are ya, my little petunia?”

  Cath laughed, reaching up to pinch Marybeth’s chubby face and I sullenly sat in a chair, wishing I’d opted out of lunch.

  Jude was working and I didn’t want to pace around the trailer without him, not when we had started songs together.

  The RV had become a mess of sheet music and scrap paper as we tried to create something beautiful. More often than not, our nights were interrupted as we got distracted in each other’s embraces, laughing and talking until the wee hours where we would fall into a peaceful sleep in one another’s arms.

  The music was serving as an aphrodisiac but it was also a muse and after we were spent, more idea flowed onto the pages.

  Our styles were so different; melding them together was proving to be a challenge but it was one we were both up for.

  I felt inspired for the first time in ages and I could tell that Jude was in the same place. It wasn’t difficult to see when a fellow artist was consumed by their passion.

  “What are you smirking at?” Carrie demanded, snapping me out of my reverie. “Thinking about banging that heathen you hooked up with?”

  “LANGUAGE!” Marybeth and Elsa hissed in unison, glancing at Cath who was, of course, oblivious to the adult conversation around them.

  I liked Carrie’s no-nonsense approach to life. Of all Elsa’s friends, she was probably most like me but I also resented her for thinking she had any say in my life.

  I didn’t know her and she certainly didn’t know me. Whatever their opinion about Jude, she had no right to offer her two cents to me after two weeks of lunches.

  “Yep,” I replied. “I was thinking about how he bent me over the – ”

  “GENEVA!” Elsa roared, her face staining crimson and I shrugged.

  “You’re the ones who are so interested in what’s happening between Jude and me. I don’t want to spare you any of the details.”

  “Oh honey,” Marybeth chuckled. “Y’all think you’re the first to give us these details on Jude LaCroix? There ain’t many in this town who ain’t been taken every which way by him.”

  She was saying it for shock value but it didn’t stop me from reacting.

  I stood.

  “This was a mistake,” I snapped. “I’m getting really sick of you telling me about Jude. You don’t have to be happy about it but I would rather you keep your comments to yourselves.”

  “Sit down, Gen,” Elsa sighed. “You’re right and I’m sorry.”

  I blinked and stared at her, wondering if she was trying to trick me in some way.

  “Sit down. We have no right to comment on your love life and if Jude makes you happy, have at it.”

  “We’re tryin’ to be helpful, baby, not bitches,” Marybeth added. “We ain’t your enemy.”

  I was reluctant to believe them but I could read the grudging contrition on their faces and I lowered myself back into my seat.

  “Stop bringing up his past,” I insisted. “I don’t want to hear this every time we go out.”

  “We will,” they chorused and I exhaled slowly.

  I should have just yelled at them a week ago, I realized, settling back into the chair.

  “Thank you.”

  There was an uncomfortable silence as they all pretended to look over their menus and I felt like it was my responsibility to change the subject in light of this new truce.

  “We got a gig singing together,” I offered and all sets of eyes looked at me in shock.

  “What?” Elsa choked. “Singing where? I thought you were taking a break from all that, Gen.”

  How could I expect her to understand? Elsa’s idea of art was making a cornucopia on Thanksgiving or wreaths on Christmas. When passion struck, you needed to embrace it. There was no denying that Jude had awoken the sleeping beast within me.

  “We got a show on Friday night at JoJo’s in Alexandria. We’ve been going there for open mic nights and the owner really likes us.”

  “That’s great, baby!” Marybeth cooed, clapping her hands together. “We’ll get a group sitter and come, won’t we, ladies?”

  “Yeah, of course!” Carrie agreed quickly, shooting the others a nervous look but I didn’t care. The sooner they got used to the idea of Jude and I together, the better. Maybe after they saw the magic between us on stage, they’d be more forgiving.

  In any case, I wasn’t doing it so much for my benefit as I was Jude’s; his voice needed to be heard to an audience. Mine had already been heard – well, as much as I’d allowed it to be anyway.

  “Great!” I said, smiling at them. “I’m hoping that this is the first of a regular thing for us.”

  “You know, Charlie has a friend who owns a bar in Lafayette, I’ll call him and see if they’re lookin’ for talent out that way.”

  “Really?” I asked dubiously. “You’d do that, Mary?”

  The chubby woman shrugged and nodded.

  “Why not, baby? I just told ya – I ain’t your enemy. Anyway, I heard all your songs. You sing like an angel. You’d be doin’ him a favor.”

  I was touched by the niceness of her words. Frankly, with all the chaos that mine and Jude’s pairing seemed to bring, I hadn’t been sure that the girls liked me all that much.

  “Thank you, Marybeth! I – we would be honored if you could talk to your husband for us. We’re just talking about getting out there but I’ve found that jumping in with both feet is sometimes the best way.”

  “Don’t thank me yet, girl. I ain’t promisin’ anythin’. If Jude bombs on Friday…”

  There it was. At least I knew that they still loathed him but if she could get us booking gigs, why not?

  I knew that using my name would book us into shows without a problem. I may not have been famous but I had a YouTube channel and people had heard my name, particularly in country music scenes.

  But I didn’t want to overshadow Jude’s talent by cashing in on mine.

  No, I decided. He’ll get by on his own merit. I’m just helping him get there.

  It made me feel good to be working again, even if it wasn�
�t for me, not really. Jude wanted a taste of what it was to be on stage before people who adored him and I was granting him that opportunity.

  Who knew? If all went well, maybe we could showcase ourselves as a pair and I could give it another go in the big times?

  But I was getting ahead of myself. Way ahead.

  I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to step foot back into the business yet. I had to take baby steps and ensure I wasn’t selling myself out.

  No wonder I was always second-guessing myself. I’d been around people making every decision for me for five years.

  I had to sit back, take a deep breath and see what happened.

  Still, it was exciting to think about, no matter how fresh it all was. No one would try to change my image if my image was already tied into another. Jude and I fit perfectly together, after all. There was no changing that.

  “You’re grinning again,” Carrie commented and my smile widened.

  “I have a lot to smile about,” I replied, reaching forward to grasp her and Elsa’s hands in mine. “You guys, for one.”

  My gaze flittered around the table to meet their gazes and the warmth I felt reflecting back was almost palpable.

  I’d done the right thing coming home. I was sure of it.

  Chapter 7

  Jude

  “And I’m lost in you and I’m lost for you,” she sang, her dark eyes meeting mine as her manicured nails closed around the microphone. “And I’ll never be found without you.”

  “But I’m here with you just as I always was, but before it didn’t do,” I joined her, my hands strumming over my guitar. A gorgeous smile touched her mouth and I was temporarily dazzled by the light of the stage, touching her face. She was radiating, glowing as we picked up the tempo of the song, dipping into the chorus. Our tones matched perfectly and she hummed as I belted out the words we’d worked so hard on for weeks.

  “Never again,” I crooned. “Here forever n-ow, never again, I could never leave you, h-ow?”

  “Never again,” she added, our eyes still locked. “Here forever n-ow, never again, I could never leave you, h-ow?”