“You’re a good man, Liam Westbury.”
“Don’t tell anyone.”
She fists my shirt and pulls me down, and I go. I kiss her in the middle of the kitchen, the counters still stacked with everyone’s plates. She tastes of the wine from dinner. Her free hand slides into my hair, and she takes her time about it.
When she pulls back, her eyes are dark and her mouth is soft.
“Come to bed, Liam.”
I follow her. She knows I’ll follow her anywhere.
EIGHT
The headphones don’t shake my hands anymore.
Two weeks in, and the chair’s starting to fit. I drop into it a few minutes before air, pull the cans on, and the foam sits cool against my ears. The board in front of me glows with a row of empty call slots waiting to fill. They always fill.
The room still smells of fresh paint and new foam. It was a spare room at FMG Records until I handed it to Bex, and she turned it into this before we ever went on air. Sound panels floor to ceiling. A booth built out behind a wall of glass. A board that cost more than my first car. She runs the place tighter than any tour I ever played.
She’s behind the glass now with her headset on and her screener software up, mouthing something at a caller I can’t hear and don’t need to. We’ve built a language in two weeks. Two fingers up, I’ve got two minutes. A tap on the glass, I wrap it. A nod, I keep going. She hasn’t had to tap the glass in three nights.
She told me on day one she’d give it six weeks before we knew anything. We’re two in, and she’s already fielding calls from a pair of stations down the coast that want to carry us. She mentioned it once, then went back to her board. With Bex, that’s a parade.
Paige is folded into her corner with the laptop on her knees and her phone propped against the wall, already deep in a clip from earlier in the week. She doesn’t look up when I come in anymore. She lifts a hand instead, two fingers, telling me what Bex is about to.
“That clip from the other night cleared a hundred thousand,” Paige says, still not looking up. “You’re trending in three cities you’ve never set foot in.”
“Is that good?”
“It’s very good. Don’t let it go to your head.”
The light goes red.
“Evening. This is The Love Line with Liam, and tonight I’m all yours.”
Bex points to the first slot on the board and holds up one finger. I press the button.
“You’re on. What’s going on?”
“Hi, Liam.” A woman, warm, a little wound up. “It’s my mother-in-law. I cannot cook one thing in my own kitchen without her telling me what I did wrong. The salt, the oven, how I hold a knife. Thirty years married to her son, and she still stands behind me at the stove like an inspector.”
“Does she cook well?”
“That’s the worst part. She’s wonderful.”
I laugh into the mic. “Let me tell you about my wife and a turkey. One Thanksgiving, early on, she wanted to do the whole thing herself. Wouldn’t let me near it. She put the bird in, forgot the bird, and by the time we remembered, smoke was coming under the kitchen door. Fire department came. Three trucks. The whole street out on the lawn in their slippers.”
“What did you do?”
“We ordered pizza. Best Thanksgiving we ever had.” I let my words hang there for a second while I smile at the memory. “Here’s the thing. You’re never going to out-cook this woman,and you don’t have to. Some battles aren’t worth winning. Let her make the stuffing. Save your fight for something that matters.”
She’s quiet a second. “The stuffingisreally good.”
“Let the woman make her stuffing. Then ask her to teach you. Nothing disarms a critic like handing her the apron.”
The line clicks off. Bex slides me the next one.
“Yeah, hey.” A young guy, dorm sounds behind him, a hallway, a far-off door, somebody laughing two rooms over. “So I went out with this girl. Three dates. Good dates, I thought. Then nothing. She just stopped answering. I keep going back through everything I said, trying to find the thing that did it.”
