Ex-Daredevil by Zoe Lee
Chapter 22
Gavin
About once a month, Barley had me over for dinner and we decompressed. It was seventy percent venting about the business aspects of Barley’s life, twenty percent throwing around ideas about whatever he was mulling over, and ten percent like any conversation between two friends. Most personal assistants, like any other employee, didn’t have a personal relationship with their boss, but he wasn’t great with boundaries and loved pretty much everyone. And I didn’t want to spend my time with someone who didn’t see me or know me, or who I couldn’t laugh with, no matter how much I got paid.
Tonight he was making chicken salad with pomegranate seeds to go on rolls that were crunchy on the outside and fluffy on the inside. I watched him work, moving around his large kitchen with the same command and good spirits as he worked a stage, humming.
We’d already gotten through the ninety percent work-related or work-adjacent things and now I was quiet, my mind drifting away from the moment and over to Eliott. It was happening so often that it should’ve unnerved me, but the bubbles of excitement that burst in me when it did made it impossible for me to try very hard to check the train of thought.
“So,” Barley said, “what’s going on with you lately?”
I didn’t try to deny it; it was much easier to be open with him than with my family.
“I’m officially dating Eliott Navarre,” I told him.
I could hear how bemused I sounded, but I wasn’t embarrassed, still just nervous.
“Tell me about him.” He looked over at me and smiled, then went back to putting together all the components of the chicken salad, giving me the space to answer.
“It started out as a one-time spontaneous hookup,” I started.
But he interrupted me, “Gav, I didn’t ask for the story. Tell me about him.”
That made me pause to really consider how to explain who Eliott was—or, to get to the root of his request, how to explain how I felt about Eliott and who he was.
“If I’m sassy and sarcastic, then he’s pissy and vaguely judgmental. If I’m goading him, then he one ups me. If I’m flirting, then he’s downright dirty. But not in, like, a competitive way where it’s just about winning. And not like he’s doing it to be a people pleaser, adjusting his moods to match mine, either. He doesn’t seem like he’d have as many facets as he does, and he surprises me a lot. He took me to the ballet last weekend. It… I learned something about myself. I feel like that doesn’t happen much past your early twenties.”
“I’m learning new things about myself all the time,” Barley commented.
“That’s because you’re changing all the time,” I countered dryly, making him laugh.
The big, bad rock star shrugged, scooping up the chicken salad and piling it on the waiting rolls. “Come on, let’s go eat,” he suggested, picking up the plates while I picked up our drinks and meandered along behind him, smiling when he started humming again.
We settled in and he leaned his forearms against the edge of the table, leveling me with a serious, penetrating look. “You know, when I first met Astrid, everything about us was this wonderful symbiotic creature. We were together a long time and our lives changed so drastically. I thought that we had to change exactly the same as each other. I refused to see that isn’t possible, or ideal really, once you’re not a kid anymore. I fucked it up, trying to force who we were into the same shape we had been at the beginning. I broke us.”
“Barley…” I began, not knowing how to finish. He’d never opened up to me before about his famous relationship with his first wife, who was still a really good friend of his.
“Hush,” he said, Texas popping up proudly in the word the way it did when he was feeling extra feisty. “So when I fell for Carina and it was that heart-stopping euphoria again, I thought I’d be smarter. I would let us be two beautiful individuals who loved each other. I wouldn’t pressure her to go everywhere I went or go together to every function we each had to attend. I wouldn’t try to bend to her will, or make her bend to mine.”
Wide-eyed, I just nodded. By the time I’d started working for him, Barley had just gotten done with a long, grueling tour, and he and Carina were already drifting apart. I had never seen them at their best, or seen first-hand whatever it had been like between them in the first place. Within six months, they’d split and Carina went to New York to do a play on Broadway while she was off-season from shooting her television show. By the time that was done, she’d gone straight to Vancouver to film the next season of her show, and that was it.
He made a what-can-you-do gesture with his big hands and then shook his head. “But, son, let me tell you, that que sera, sera attitude was just as shitty. Here I am, thinking I’m a modern feminist man, and there she was, thinking I didn’t give a shit. Now these days, I’m thinking it’s better if you cherish the things you share, and respect the things that make you individuals. But most importantly, you have to know each other, all the way down, and you just have to love all those layers and the things they don’t like about themselves.”
I didn’t want to tell him that that seemed like pretty standard advice, to me.
But he surprised me when he went on, “The worst thing I learned about myself during this second divorce is that I have so many boobytraps, I fuck myself up.”
That made me snort, nearly choking on the juice I was drinking. “Boobytraps?”
“Yeah. They’re in my own mind, and they trick me into thinking I’m being open and honest,” he admitted. “That I’m always right. That I’m so patient and exciting. That it isn’t supposed to be work to let someone in, which you don’t do once, you do all the time.”
His last words hit me hard and I slumped a little.
“First you need to figure out how much you show people is the real you, and how much is just defensive bullshit left over from old battle scars, you get what I mean?”
“Yeah,” I mumbled. “Most of the time I know who I am and I’m proud of it, I’m a happy person, you know? When I learn something new or try something new, I’m always all-in, really dedicated and focused. But that’s not the same as… as dating, and every once in a while something that hurt me forever ago pops into my head and makes me second-guess myself. I’ve never doubted myself like this before, ever, and I don’t know how to get over it.”
“Yeah.” He took a huge bite, groaned with satisfaction at his own creation, and crunched on it like a horse eating hay, his words garbled as he replied, “Well, I don’t fucking know either, do I? Otherwise I’d be sitting here naked eating sushi with Carina, wouldn’t I?”
I rolled my eyes and told him, “You’re not in the worst place, Barley. You’ve been humming nonstop all week, which means you’re writing again, so don’t pretend.”
“Ideas are rolling around, kiddo,” he said happily, his huge echoing off the high ceilings of his living room. “I know people think I must be writing some epic breakup album or something, but that’s not what’s coming to me. It’s last-minute and it’s bad timing since we’re already in the studio and have enough tracks, but we’re going to figure it out.”
Grinning, I replied, “Good. Unexepected is much more fun. Can’t wait to hear it.”
“So how’s the sex with Mr. All-Business Lawyer Man?” he asked unapologetically.
“Fabulous,” I replied gleefully. “We’re still figuring out the dates part because neither of us want to just go out to eat. Him because he’s done it a lot and it never felt natural, and me because there’s no space for spontaneity. But also have this bet going about me getting him to do adventurous things and him getting me to do boring things.”
Barley’s world-famous, eardrum-shattering laugh boomed out.
“He’s going to turn you into an actual adult,” he gauged.
“Maybe he will,” I murmured, not as terrified by the idea as I should have been. “But I still have to come up with something daring to do for our next date. I took him on a motorcycle ride for the first one. If I win, then he has to go skydiving with me.”
Grinning, he rubbed his hands together and we started to brainstorm what things an overly cautious person would categorize as daring and then debated their merits.
Beyond the big windows, the sun set and the crescent moon’s glow brightened, and the birds took off and resettled every time Barley’s laughter boomed out and surprised them. I relaxed in my seat, slouching down and crossing my ankles once I was done eating, and soaked up the peaceful moment. I considered my cousins my best friends, but that was about giving each other shit, white water rafting and going to see MMA fights, and scuba diving. But with Barley, I got to talk about any and everything, always feeling supported.