Between Never and Forever by Brit Benson
26
“This house is fucking insane,”I say to Red as I step into my trailer for lunch.
“The kitchen looks exactly like the one at the studio, first of all, and the view from the deck is just yard, then beach, then water. I guess it’s not technically the ocean. It’s the mouth of the river before it connects with the Atlantic, but the guy who owns it must be some sort of millionaire.”
I throw myself down on the barstool and pull one of the lunch containers toward me, flipping it open to find some sort of green salad that smells of pepper and vinegar. I grab a fork, spear a piece of lettuce for a test bite, and shove it in my mouth. It tastes good, so I eat as I chat.
“I wanted to snoop around but we’ve been busy as hell, and then I didn’t want to miss the kid, so I hustled back here when they called break.”
I shove another forkful of salad into my mouth as Red steps up next to my stool and sets a white box in front of me. It’s got Ziggy’s name on it.
“This was at craft services,” he says. “Dakota told me to bring it back here.”
I set my fork down, then pop open the box to find six of the most delicious-looking blueberry muffins with streusel topping. They smell divine, and immediately my interest in the leafy green salad disappears.
“Oh my god,” I say, pulling out a muffin and taking a bite.
I hum and tilt my head back while I chew. It’s so damn good. Ziggy whines, so I reluctantly break a piece off for her. The box did say her name, after all.
“Did I ever tell you about the blueberry streusel cake?” I ask Red as I take another bite.
He shakes his head no, so I plow forward.
“The town where I grew up—well, the town that I lived in until I was fifteen and ran away, I mean—there was this horrible old lady, right? Just awful. She hated me with a passion, but most people in that town hated me, so whatever. But anyway, she made this amazing blueberry streusel cake. She’d bring it to all the town functions. Bake sales and fish fries and town hall meetings. Anytime there was some sort of event, I’d sneak in just to get some of her blueberry streusel cake.”
I pop another piece in my mouth, then take a sip of water before continuing.
“She tried to get me arrested once for stealing an entire one of her cakes from the mayor’s daughter’s baby shower, but they couldn’t prove it was me.”
“Was it you?” he asks, and I smirk.
“Yep.”
He shakes his head like he’s surprised, but he shouldn’t be, and I frown into the box where five more perfect muffins sit.
“She used to go to Levi’s church,” I say into the box. “She’d bring the cake once a month when they had this weird Sunday potluck, and Levi would always smuggle some out for me. He’d wrap it in a paper towel and stick that in a plastic cup, then bring it to me at school on Monday.”
I close the white box and slide it away from me, but I don’t take my eyes off it. I tilt my head to the side and consider it. I can’t shake the feeling...the hope...
“Was there a note or anything? With these muffins, I mean. Did anyone say why these were set aside for me?”
I glance at Red, and he shakes his head, so I look back at the box. I stare at it, narrowing my eyes as if I can glean the answer from the cardboard.
“What happened to the lady?” Red asks, breaking me from my stare off with the muffin box, and I shrug.
I start to tell him that she’s probably dead and that I don’t really care either way because she was an evil bitch when there’s a knock on the trailer door. I’m up out of my seat and turning the knob before Red can even move, and when I swing the door open, Brynn is grinning up at me.
“Hey Boss,” I say with a smile.
I flick my eyes behind her, but there’s no sign of Levi, so I step out of the way and gesture for her to come in.
“Thank you so, so much for teaching me to—”
Brynn cuts off mid-sentence with a grunt when my menace of a dog bulldozes right into her, and they both tumble to the ground. Brynn is a mess of giggles as Ziggs does another lick attack, so I just lean on the counter and watch with an amused smile until it’s over.
“Sorry,” I tell her once Ziggy has calmed down, but Brynn doesn’t seem to mind.
“It’s okay, I love dogs.” She moves to the couch and sits down. “We had to get rid of ours when my mom got sick the second time. Oh wow, you have two guitars? Did you bring one for me?”
Brynn made the comment about her mom so casually before switching topics and asking about the guitars, but I find myself stuck. Her mom got sick? I look at Red to find him watching Brynn closely. I want to ask about it, have her elaborate so I can learn more, but she’s already moved on.
“Yeah, I had my friend Mabel send me another one so I could teach you on it.”
Brynn’s head whips to mine and her eyes are just as big as they were the day she spotted me in the café.
“Mabel? Mabel Rossi? Your drummer Mabel Rossi?”
“The one and only,” I say and her jaw drops.
“You think I can meet her too?”
She’s so fucking excited that I don’t know what to say for a minute. I just flick my eyes to Red, who is pretending not to listen, then back to Brynn.
“I dunno,” I say slowly, then shrug. “Maybe.”
Before she can say anything else, I change the subject back to guitar lessons.
“Alright, just have a seat on the couch and we’ll start with your first lesson.”
Brynn darts to the couch so fast. It’s adorable. But what’s even more adorable is that Zigaroo jumps on the couch next to her and crawls onto her lap. My sixty-pound mutt thinks she’s a lap dog. I don’t even bother trying to tell her to get down because Brynn looks like she’s in heaven, and Ziggs wouldn’t listen to me anyway. Jerk.
I grab my Yamaha from the stand in the corner and then sit down on the little table in front of Brynn and Ziggy. I already switched out the strings to a light gauge for beginners.
“First lesson, Boss, is that I’m the boss during class,” I say firmly and ignore the light chuckle that comes from Red. “Dig it?”
Brynn nods seriously.
“Dig it.”
“Good. Now we’re going to start with the basics.”
I lay the guitar across my lap and point out the parts. I do it the same way Oscar did when he taught me how to play. I hate that sleazeball, but I will always be grateful that he put a guitar in my hand. Headstock, tuning keys, nut (Brynn doesn’t giggle like an immature idiot like me and Mabes did when Oscar said it), neck, strings, frets, body, pick guard, bridge, and saddle.
“There might be a test,” I tell her, and she giggles.
“I’m really good at tests.”
“I bet you are.” I smirk. This kid is too damn smart. Poor Levi. I look at my dog. “Okay, Ziggs, you have to get down.”
She doesn’t budge.
“C’mon, you mutt.” I give her butt a shove. “Boss can’t learn to play if you don’t let her hold the guitar.”
I shove Ziggy again, and she grunts. Brynn giggles, and I sigh, glancing at Red.
“Can you take her out?” I ask him, and he nods and moves to grab her leash, but Brynn pipes up.
“Or you can just come to my house. We can use the music room. We never use it, and it’s not by the kitchen so it won’t be in the way.”
I freeze. I glance at Red, and he jerks his head in the tiniest no. His eyes say this isn’t a good idea, so naturally I glance away from him. Levi has a music room? I get a chance to be in Levi’s house? Um, why would I turn that down?
“How far is your house?”
“Just across the street.”
Across the street isn’t far. Levi said to stay within the set barricade, but just across the street might as well still be in the barricade. And besides, I’ve only seen like three paps since we got here, and they’ve all been on the beach since that’s the side of the house we’re filming on. I make up my mind and plow forward.
“Yep, let’s do it.” I pop up and gesture to the door. “Lead the way, Boss.”
I snag the Yamaha and slip the strap over my head, so the body of the guitar is resting on my back, then I grab my beat-up acoustic from the corner. Brynn shimmies out from under my dog, and Ziggy just rolls on her back like a giant dead bug.
“I think she’s pouting,” Brynn says with a laugh. I nod. She definitely is.
Brynn walks to the trailer door and says goodbye to Red, so I do the same, mimicking her wave and everything. Red stares at me.
“I know what you’re doing,” he says on a low voice. “Troublemaker.”
I smirk.
“Fun sucker.”
I follow Brynn as she walks down the street, then look both ways with her before we cross, which just makes me giggle because all these streets have been barricaded off to traffic. I suppose it’s smart to watch out for rogue golf carts or frenzied PAs though.
When Brynn starts walking toward the house where we’ve been filming, my feet start to drag. It’s almost comical how long it takes me to connect the dots.
Instead of heading around all the filming equipment to enter through the sliding doors from the deck, Brynn takes me through the front yard. Past the giant tree with a rope swing hanging from its branches, up the front steps, onto the front porch, then through the front door. Her movements are familiar and practiced, and I’m glad she’s not talking to me because I don’t know that I could form words.
I recall something Brynn said the other day. His guys built all the sets for your movie. One of ‘em even looks just like our kitchen.
Ourkitchen.
Because this house is her fucking house. It’s Levi’s house. Suddenly, I’m even more in awe than I was this morning; only now, I’m also excited and nervous. The cast and crew are only allowed in part of the house. Everything else is blocked off with green screens and portable wall partitions. To be honest, I couldn’t stop myself from snooping now if I wanted to.
And I don’t want to.
I marvel at every detail of architecture. The crown molding. The open layout. The high ceilings and large windows. It’s absolutely gorgeous, and I know in my bones Levi designed and built this house.
I’ll design every inch of it just for you, he’d said once. Only for you.
I stop in front of a framed picture hanging on the wall. It’s Brynn and Julianna. Levi’s once who became his one. Brynn is tiny in the picture, maybe four or five years old, and they’re sitting on the rope swing hanging from the large tree in the front yard. Julianna looks thinner than I remember, but she’s smiling brightly with Brynnlee on her lap.
I’ll design every inch of it just for you.
I guess he took that promise and gave it to someone else.
I feel jealous, even though I know I have no right to be. This is his family. His daughter. The mother of his child. He made the right decision by choosing them. By making them his priority. I don’t yet know what happened to Julianna but judging from this picture—a picture I’m sure Levi took—she was happy and loved.
I tear my eyes away and trail after Brynn as she starts to give me a mini tour.
“You’ve already seen the kitchen and the deck. This is the foyer. This is a dining room that we literally never use. This is a sitting room that we also literally never use. This is the living room, we use this all the time, and it’s usually open to the kitchen, but they put all these walls up for your movie.”
I nod and pretend to listen, trying like hell to reset my mood as Brynn blazes through the house. She stops at the foot of a large staircase, so I stop with her.
“The music room is down that hall, but do you want to see my room first?”
She gestures up the stairs, and I follow the movement. There’s a cut-out banister that gives me a view of another wall full of pictures, and while I want to go inspect it, I don’t think I can handle it just yet. I’ve known this is Levi’s house for all of two minutes, and I’m already shook to the core.
“What all is up there?”
Brynn ticks things off on her fingers as she answers.
“My room, the guest room, the guest bathroom, my bathroom, the laundry room, the office, and Dad’s room.”
It’s the last one that makes my mind up for me. I definitely am not ready to be that close to Levi’s bedroom. The bedroom he shared with Julianna.
“Maybe later. Let’s head to the music room and get to work.”
Brynn nods and turns around, then skips down a hallway. I follow, keeping my eyes on my feet this time. She turns a corner and opens a door, and then we’re stepping inside what appears to be a sound-proofed room. It’s empty but for a glass-partitioned area that is the perfect size to hold recording and mixing equipment. I blink as I take it in.
“What did you say this is?”
Brynn plops down on the floor and crosses her legs at the ankles.
“Dad calls it the music room.” I stare at her silently, and she bounces her eyebrows at me. “Okay, um, are we going to get started?”
I shake my head to loosen the sand that’s taken over my brain. A music room. Why would Levi put a music room—that looks very much like it’s meant to be a sound studio—in this house he built for his wife and child?
I sit down next to Brynn in a fog, then pull my phone out of my pocket to check how much time we have left on the lunch break. Instead, though, I get distracted by two missed calls and a text. One missed call and a voicemail from Hammond (barf), a missed call from Mabel, and a text from Mabel. I open Mabel’s text first.
Mabes
Hey call me back before you talk to Ham. Talk to me before you even listen to his voicemail. Labels on a rampage. I’ll give you the deets so you don’t pop off on his ass and get yourself in hot water.
My eyes narrow at the screen and my lips purse. I don’t even know what I did, this time. I’ve been on my best behavior. What the hell is Hammond up to now?
How much trouble am I in?
Not much. Just call me before you talk to Ham. I’ll explain.
The fact that Mabel is running interference for me warms my heart more than the idea of Hammond playing games cools my blood. She’s looking out for the band, but it also feels like it’s for me. I still feel like I am the band, and I file that feeling away for later. Despite the irritation, I smile as I type out the thank you text and let her know I’m shooting until late, but I’ll call her as soon as I get a free minute, then I stick my phone back in my pocket.
“Alright, Boss, we’ve got about forty-five minutes before I have to report back. First lesson starts now.”
I set Brynn up with the guitar on her lap and show her how to hold it properly, then I sit across from her and mirror her position. I walk her through how to count the strings and frets and show her proper finger placement for a few chords. She’s the perfect student and every bit Levi’s daughter in how attentively she listens, and how perfectly she carries out each instruction I give. The grin that stretches wide across her face every time her strum sounds exactly like mine is so full of joy, and I feel like I’m reliving a crucial part of my life I’d forgotten.
Learning to play the guitar was thrilling. It was my first taste of freedom. Of control. It was my first healthy outlet, and it was like discovering the sun after a childhood locked in darkness. You’ll hear musicians say it all the time, and it may sound cliché, but it’s one of the truest statements that has ever passed my lips—music saved my life. It gave me a purpose and a direction. It was everything else that came with it that led to my destruction.
If I could take the music and leave behind everything else, I’d be set for life. I just can’t figure out how to do that.
“How’d I do?” Brynn asks as we finish up.
“You did great. I think you’re going to be a natural.”
“Really?” Her eyes widen and she bounces slightly on her toes. “You think I could be good like you?”
I smile and answer honestly.
“Boss, I think you could be better.”
I trail Brynn out of the music room and down the hallway, my mood brightened by the music lessons. My step is light despite the awkward weight of carrying my two acoustics, and my attention is no longer stuck to the floor for fear of seeing something I shouldn’t.
And then I regret it.
Brynn weaves through the formal dining room and I halt in my tracks when I see a large canvas portrait on the wall. My mouth drops, my heart stops, and my eyes sting. I stare at the canvas without blinking.
“Oh, that’s my mom and dad and me.”
Brynn’s voice comes from somewhere off to the side, and I see movement in my periphery as she comes back to stand next to me. I don’t take my eyes off the canvas portrait, though. I can’t. They’re stuck. I might die here staring at this picture, and it’s the closest I’ve ever come to worrying about going to hell.
My eyes scan, and though it hurts, I don’t look away. Morbid fascination and my self-sabotaging tendencies partner up, and I’m nearly knocked over from the force of the shock.
“Is this...” I work to clear my now dry throat and form words with my now numb tongue. I swallow and lick my lips before trying again. “Is this their wedding?”
I know the answer. It’s obvious. Levi’s in a tux and Julianna is in an expensive looking white wedding gown. She’s holding a bouquet of gorgeous flowers. His boutonnière matches. I knew they were married. Levi still wears the ring. That’s not what has my brain addled and my nerves racing.
What throws me off is Brynn.
She’s a toddler in this picture, not an infant.
It’s not uncommon for couples to wait years after the baby is born to get married—there are a multitude of reasons why this happens all the time—but something about this seems significant in a different way. Knowing what I know about Levi’s parents, and what I remember about Julianna’s, something feels off.
“They’re going to make you marry her.”
“No way, they wouldn’t.”
“They will.”
“It doesn’t matter what they want. I won’t do it.”
Had he held out? Had he really told them no, but they wore him down? Maybe the delay had to do with college? Maybe it was venue-related or had something to do with aesthetics?
Maybe Jules wanted to lose the baby weight?
I study her. She looks beautiful. An absolute angel in that wedding dress. Maybe Levi said no at first, but he grew to really love her. Maybe he was excited to get married. Maybe—
“Yeah, that’s from our wedding. From the first time Mom got sick.”
I drag my eyes off the portrait and pin them to the side of Brynn’s face. She’s studying the canvas with a small, sad smile. When she speaks again, her voice is wistful, and I’m reminded that she’s only seven. I keep forgetting that. She seems so much older, but she’s still just a child.
“Mommy got sick, and Daddy didn’t want us to be alone. He moved back here, and we got married, and then we became a family.”
I swallow hard and try to process what she’s said, but once again, my mind is moving in slow motion, and I can’t seem to make sense of any of it. Brynn said only a handful of words, but my body feels like it might collapse beneath the gravity of what she’s implied.
“What happened to your mom, Brynnlee?”
I ask the question, but I’m already certain I know the answer.
“She died.”
“When?”
“Two years, five months, two weeks and three days.”
She rattles it off, right down to the day, and everything in my chest hurts for her. For Levi. This poor girl lost her mother, and she was only, what, five?
The first time she got sick, she’d said. I glance back at the wedding portrait.
Brynn was five years old when her mother died of cancer, and she’d lived every year before that with the stress of the disease. I can’t even imagine how something like that would color a childhood. How it could affect development. The way Brynn carries herself, so grown-up and serious, no longer amuses me. It pains me. Even her spark of mischievous humor makes me feel like crying.
This girl had to grow up way too quickly.
Not for the first time, I feel a connection to Brynnlee so powerful that it makes me flinch. My hands clench to fight off the desire to reach for her and pull her in for a hug. To brush her hair back and look into her eyes—eyes just like her mother’s—and tell her, I get it. I understand.
I make up my mind to end the conversation here, to stop putting her through this, when she continues.
“Mom had osteosarcoma. That’s a type of bone cancer. It’s supposed to have a 74% survival rate, but when it came back, it was already everywhere. It was fast.”
I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry for your loss? That really sucks? Nothing feels like enough. I’m watching her, trying to pull something worth saying out of my head, when footsteps sound in the hall just outside the dining room, and I know who I will see even before his body graces the doorway.
“Brynnlee, you were told to stay out of the house during filming.”
Brynn and I turn to face him at the same time. He’s speaking to her, but his eyes are hard and set on me.
“Sorry, Daddy. Sav and I did guitar lessons in the music room.”
I watch Levi’s jaw tense and his eyes flare just slightly. To anyone else, he’d appear still as stone, but even after all these years, I can still read him.
He doesn’t want me in that room.
He doesn’t want me in this part of the house at all.
He probably doesn’t want me to even know it belonged to him, and he definitely doesn’t want me gawking awkwardly at his wedding portrait.
Any other day, in any other moment, I’d toe the line. Test the boundaries. I’d nudge and nudge just to see how far I could push him. But right now, with how off balance I feel, I just can’t do it. I still need to do a half day of filming, and right now, I feel like I might throw up.
I want answers. I will get them.
But right now, I need to leave it alone.
I tear my eyes off Levi and bring them back to Brynn with a smile.
“Thanks for showing me around, Boss. Don’t forget to practice, and I will see you tomorrow, okay?”
“Okay,” she says quietly, just a small hint of a secret smile. She’s definitely expecting to get in trouble when I leave, but she’s not worried. I turn to Levi.
“Let’s just plan on lunchtime lessons for the next week.”
He jerks a single nod, but says nothing, so I wave awkwardly with the hand not holding my Yamaha, then turn and see myself out the front door.
This time, when I step off the porch, I head straight for the large tree with the rope swing.I peer up into the canopy of leaves, noting the thick, sturdy branch where the rope is tied. I turn to study the seat of the swing. It’s just a plain, worn piece of wood. The ropes attached on either side have plastic guards the size of an adult hand right where you’d expect someone to grip when swinging. I reach out and run my fingers over one of them.
I imagine Brynn and Julianna on this swing together, like in the photo, but in action, like a home video. They’re laughing and smiling with Levi watching happily from the porch. I have the strangest urge to sit on the swing, but I resist.
Instead, I take a step backward. Then another. I take one last look up into the canopy, then I turn around and walk back to my trailer.