Chasing Kane (18 page)

Brian stood at the counter of Sweet Forty-Two with his weekly dessert order for Live in hand.

“Are we still friends?” he asked, biting his lip and grinning at the same time he handed me a mile-long list.

“Depends.” I arched an eyebrow, snatching the order sheet from him and giving it the once over. “I guess,” I said in a sigh. “You’re lucky Regan’s not around or this shit would be hard to fill. I’m ovulating and he’s in fucking Minneapolis.”

It had been over a month since Regan last held me, and the warmth of his arms and the scent that always sat in the nook of his neck and shoulder was only just starting to fade. Still, staring at the ovulation calendar taped to my bathroom mirror drove me nearly mad. It was like a visual biological clock. A loud one, at that.

Brian’s eyes creased at the sides as he winced. “Seattle wasn’t a winner, huh?”

I shook my head. “No, and thank
God
you’re gay. I can barely talk about ovulation with Regan, let alone any other straight male in my life.”

He held out his arms. “We all have a cross to bear. Your cycle is mine.”

I threw a rag at him, which he caught and threw back, smacking me in the face with a cloud of powdered sugar.

“Anyway, I know we only had two days last month, but I was hoping my body would be as efficient as it is in the kitchen. You know … all the analogies of buns in the oven …”

Brian laughed, walking around the counter to join me and put his arm around my shoulder. “If nothing else, your sarcasm will save us all.”

I rolled my eyes. “Or be the death of me when spewed at the wrong time.”

“How’s the tour going, by the way?”

“Good, I guess. They’re getting great crowds. I think the diversity of the acts helps. And summer is always prime demand for those kinds of shows. Oh, and they’re going to do some clinics for kids, and stuff. Workshop sort of things, like the ones Regan remembers from when he was little.”

There was a nagging piece of a recent call with Regan that was tugging at the back of my brain, but I was letting it go for now.

It was nothing.

Brian jumped up, sitting on the pay counter. “Is Celtic Summer going to record more together? I mean, they had a few albums that were massive hits … even the Grammy nom.”

Ah, yes. The Grammy’s. Regan
never
talked about it, but Celtic Summer
did
get a nomination after the release of their first album for Best New Artist. It had been a while since a group had won in that category, and that year a solo artist won again, but the nomination was a huge leap for Regan, the members of Celtic Summer, and their genre as a whole. Well, their
non-
genre as Regan liked to call it. He confided shortly before the awards that he never wanted to win a Grammy because he was afraid of what it would do to his head.

“The humility in that man …” I said out loud.

“What?” Brian asked, alerting me to my slip.

I sighed. “He told me he hopes he never wins a Grammy because he’s afraid he’ll become an egomaniac. Isn’t that insane? I’d gun for a Nobel Peace Prize if bakeries could enter.”

“They should,” Brian encouraged, lifting up a cupcake from my discard pile before shoving it in his mouth. “Who’s not peaceful with a brain full of sugar?”

“This is what I’m saying. Don’t eat all of those, I crumble them up to make cake pops.”

“In all honesty, though?” Brian continued. “It doesn’t surprise me. He’s more an under-the-radar kind of guy. Odd for someone who spends half the year on a stage, but I get it.”

I cocked my head to the side. “How? How is he so
good
at that?”

“The stage is a boundary, you know? He’s on it, then he’s off it. Doing music twenty-four-seven, yeah, but he’s available to the fans through albums and on stage. Period. A Grammy would tear those walls down in a heartbeat. It’s good he knows himself as well as he does. He is who he is.”

“Yeah …” I trailed off.

It was nothing.

“What’s that look?”

“It’s nothing,” I said out loud, shaking my head at myself and checking on the dough, rising in four different steel bowls across one of my prep surfaces.

“Clearly.” Brian didn’t buy it, crossing his arms in front of him, still sitting on the counter.

I put my hands on my hips, huffing petulantly. “It’s just … there’s this member of another band he told me about. One on tour with them. I mean, I know them, but … he found out a few weeks ago that they also play the violin, though not on this tour, I guess. But they might, or something, I don’t know—it was hard for me to pay attention.”

“Is that because the
they
you’re so eloquently referring to is a
she
, perhaps?”

I twisted my lips. “He told you?”

He pulled his head back. “Fuck no. Regan and I don’t talk about girls.”

My mouth dropped open, but he cut me off.

“Not because of
you
, weirdo. Not like that, anyway. Because he’s married and I’m gay. What’s there to talk about? And, we don’t communicate a ton while he’s on the road, anyway. You know how he is. Brood City. “

I grinned. Regan’s hermit-like nature was often mislabeled as broodiness, but he didn’t mind and neither did I. There was a fine line between the two, anyway, and he was just as likely to fall on one side as the other. He was quiet, but fierce and passionate. Sure of himself in a way I admired and aspired to.

“Anyway, yes. It’s a girl. The lead singer of The Brewers.”

“Nessa Crowley?” he asked, sliding off the counter to pour himself some coffee.

“Ah, it has a last name.”

Brian’s eyes were wide as he turned, but he relaxed his face when he saw I was smiling.

“Yes,” I continued. “Nessa. I know her last name. She’s lovely. Quiet, but lovely.”

“So … what’s the problem?”

I fumbled for an answer because, really, there wasn’t one. Not one I could put my finger on, anyway. I trusted what I knew of her. And that didn’t even matter. I trusted my husband above all else. There was something else, though.

“Is it because she plays the same instrument Regan does?”

I shook my head. “That can’t be it. He spent years with Shaughn and that didn’t bother me.”

“True. So … What is it, then? What has you all tongue-tied and paranoid—shit … sorry.” Brian winced.

I sighed, waving my hand dismissively.

It’s common American vernacular to tell people to calm down and not be
paranoid
when things were bugging them. When anxieties surfaced. But for me, the word
paranoid
was always attached to my mother’s diagnosis of
paranoid schizophrenia,
which caused storms far greater than any sized panic attack ever could.

“Don’t worry about it.” I threw him a wink, but he still looked reserved.

“Anyway,” I continued through the awkwardness, “I don’t know what it is. I just miss him, I think. It’s been a month since we’ve seen each other, for fuck’s sake. And, while sexting is all fine and dandy, it doesn’t give mind-blowing orgasms.”

“And it won’t get you knocked up, either,” he added with a laugh.

I twisted my lips. “True. Then Regan would have no mini-him musical protégé to usher through the world.”

I hadn’t thought much about having kids while I was growing up, but hearing Regan tell stories of his time teaching impoverished children warmed my heart, and showed me without him having to tell me how great a dad he hoped to be someday.

“Go to Minneapolis,” Brian said out of nowhere.

My eyes bugged nearly all the way out of my head. “
Excuse me?
”

He rolled his yes, waving his arms around dramatically. “What
ever
will San Diego do without you for
one night?
Look,” he pointed to my calendar. “You’ve got the next two days free. Get on a flight
today
, shag his rocker brains out, and you can be back the morning before I need my cannoli’s.”

“He’s planning to come out here between Ohio and New York for a couple days, and then he’s got a few weeks in Massachusetts, and I was going to go out there—“

“Blah, blah, blah,” Brian cut me off, handing me my cell from the basket by the bakery’s phone. “Call the airline. Get you some.”

My pulse pounded in my neck and my throat ran dry. “I can’t … I’ve never left the shop on such short notice.”

“Can’t or won’t?” Brian lifted his eyebrows, then his look shifted. Slightly pleading.

“Neither,” I said before I had time to think about it. “I’ll go. Can you—”

He held up his hands. “Yes. I’m a chef, and I know your OCD ways with this kitchen.”

An energy I’d never felt before swirled through me. “Am I crazy for doing this?”

Brian smiled, all the way to his eyes. “Not at all. This is your husband. And you miss him. And have you ever surprised him like this?”

I thought for a second. “No. I mean, once or twice very early on.” My face fell. “While his band was on tour, we were taking off business-wise here. So all my trips were well calculated and planned.

He reached for my shoulders, his warm hands giving me a playful squeeze. “Then this will do both of you some good, don’t you think?”

“Spontaneity is really Regan’s department. Relationally, I mean. Like, I have all these tattoos, and he has … none. But he swoops in and does the flowers and brings me lunch even though I work in a kitchen and am twenty feet from my home kitchen …” I trailed off, untying my apron, grabbing my phone, and moving toward the door. “Holy shit, am I doing this?”

Brian nodded, grinning like a love-struck fool. I wondered how he and Randy were doing, but thought better of asking right at that moment. “You’re doing this, Kid. Go, now. Make it a first-class ticket if you can!”

“Let’s not get carried away,” I teased before bounding up the stairs.

Within a half hour I did my makeup, packed two carefully chosen outfits, and was out the door without looking back. My pulse raced and I was jittery like the one time I drank three-too-many espressos during a long wedding week two years ago. But this was better. This adrenaline rush wasn’t from work at all.

It was from my husband.

As the plane took off, miraculously on time
and
a direct flight to Minneapolis, I stared at the twinkling landscapes below me. I wondered, pressing my head against the window, if there were two people down there even a fraction as happy as Regan and I were. Settling back into my seat, I took some cleansing breaths. Yes, I was ovulating. But I was going to try to keep that way in the back of my mind as I seduced my husband. Normally our sex life is fantastic, but since this baby thing it’s all seemed a little forced and calculated.

I just wanted to show him a good time, and love on the man who has loved me when I couldn’t or wouldn’t love myself.

***

If my calculations were correct, I’d actually beat the tour buses to the hotel in Minneapolis. They had been lumbering their way from Billings to Minnesota, swinging through random towns here and there for R&R. A break from the tour grind.

Regan left me a detailed itinerary before he left on this tour, and any time it changed he would always call or text. My short-term memory was filled with brides and first birthday parties and gender reveal cakes—that’s a thing now. I couldn’t fill it with trying to remember where he was at any given minute.

I’ll never forget the first time he forgot what city he was in. It was hilarious. He was well into his first long tour with Celtic Summer, and he wandered on the streets for a minute until he figured it out because he didn’t want to ask anyone. Men. It was Richmond, VA, by the way. We joked we should name a child
Richmond
, though we couldn’t decide if it would be applied to a boy or girl.

Still energized despite the long, uneventful flight, and the fact I hadn’t slept since the night before, I took a cab to the hotel that was next on the travel docket. I decided not to rent a car, since once I arrived at the hotel I didn’t plan on going anywhere—or wearing clothes—until my return flight late tomorrow morning.

It was late. Ten o’clock, meaning I had less than an hour before Regan was scheduled to check in.

“Hi,” I greeted the bored-looking twenty-something, male receptionist at the check-in desk. “I’m Georgia Kane, checking in early to Regan Kane’s room. It might be under Grounded Sound Entertainment.”

He nodded once—not rude, but he could have certainly used a little coffee—and began clacking away on the keyboard in front of him.

“Hmm,” he said, squinting as if that would change the information before him. “I don’t have you—”

I put up my hand. “Let me stop you right there. I’m aware that my name isn’t on the reservation. Regan is my husband. He’s on tour. Kind of a big deal,” I started, checking the time on my phone. “So, I’ll show you my license, passport, almost whatever you need to prove to you he’s my husband so you can hand me a key to his room. Because, one way or another, I’ll get in that room.” I shot him a wink and a slightly flirtatious smile, keeping my voice light and airy throughout.

I’d been through this multiple times in the last few years. Then, it donned on me.

“Click on special requests.”

“Huh?” He looked at me like this was his first day on the job.

I sighed. “The
special requests
tab for Regan Kane. My name will likely be there.”

He arched an eyebrow, but did as I asked. A few seconds later, he eyed me. Georgia, you said?”

I nodded, smiling. “That’s me.”

“Says here to add you to the room.”

I nodded once, gesturing to the keyboard. “If you will …”

Yardley’s good. We started that system halfway through Regan’s first tour, when I encountered a difficult front desk manager—no doubt concerned with keeping their job, and the band’s safety a close second. The surprise was ruined when I called Regan, blubbering that they wouldn’t tell me where his room was. I hadn’t thought of calling Yardley then. Still, after that incident, she put my name on every room Regan stayed in. I hadn’t talked with her about it for this tour, but it seemed she really did take care of her label family.

“Here you are, Mrs. Kane. Sorry for the delay,” the young man said with renewed enthusiasm for his job. “Your husband’s amazing, by the way.”