Side Trip(60)

Joy shakes her head.

“Any of these guys?” He reads the small print in the CD booklet.

She doesn’t answer him.

“Some days I feel really close to you. I don’t know where you begin, and I end. I love that about us. But other days? I watch you stare out the window for hours and you’re far away. You come back and you’re like a stranger living in our house. You’re distant. I’ve always wanted to ask where you go when you do that. Zone out.” He slides the CD booklet back into the case. “Maybe I should have downloaded the album for you. You don’t even listen to CDs.” He sets aside the disc and stands.

Joy reaches for his hand. “I’m sorry.”

“I wish I believed you.” He looks at their hands and waits. She reluctantly lets go. He fists the Knob Creek bottle and leaves the room.

Dejected, she goes to their bedroom. She falls into a fitful sleep but wakes after midnight. Mark snores beside her on the far side of their king bed.

She slips from their bed and pushes her arms into her ratty robe. Barefoot, she softly treads to the front parlor and turns on the floor lamp. Warm, buttery light bathes the room. It stings her eyes, raw from crying, as they adjust. She rubs them and goes to the couch. Trace the Outlines’ CD cover is where Mark had left it.

She opens the case and slides out the booklet. Flipping to the last page, she reads the album’s details and her stomach sours. Every song is written by Dylan Westfield. There are eleven of them. The album is mixed by a Rhea McPherson and mastered by Fred “Grips” Merrick, but Dylan produced it. And the copyright? It’s under exclusive license to Westfield Recording Studio for the United States. A Westfield Records Company.

At least he didn’t sell the songs. He still owns the rights. But still . . .

Joy flips the pages and skims the lyrics. She’s never read them and hasn’t heard the words either. But she knows the story behind them.

Because the song is about her.

Sixty-six is where you’ll find, the girl with her hand wrapped in mine.

Joy sinks onto the couch. She knows she has no right to be, but she feels betrayed. He said he wasn’t going to produce the song. He promised to keep what happened on the road, on the road. Granted, she hasn’t told a soul she met him, and her name isn’t mentioned once in any track. Only she knows, and Dylan; and he’d know that she knows. Yet he hadn’t reached out to forewarn her, which meant he didn’t care, about their trip, her, or what happened between them, and could still happen.

Joy shouldn’t care either. But she does.

She crosses the room to the player and ejects the CD. She inserts the disc in the case, slides the booklet into its slot, and claps the plastic closed. She should throw the disc away, but she can’t bring herself to do it. Too many memories she can’t make herself let go of. Instead, she hides it in Judy’s hatbox, then stores the box in the back of the closet behind her handbags and overnight cases. Hidden from view. She won’t be tempted to listen to it.

First thing tomorrow, she’s canceling her Rolling Stone subscription and tossing her back issues. She’s done with Dylan Westfield, his record label, and anything else with the music industry.

In the back of her mind, she knows she’s being melodramatic. Her reaction has more to do with how unhappy she has been than with Dylan sharing everything he felt for her with everyone but her.

Still, it hurts. It hurts deep in the hole their separation had carved out in her chest.

If she’d known how difficult it would be to not think about him, and how unhappy she’d be with the life she’d chosen, Joy would have done many things differently.

Ironic. She feels the exact same way about the night Judy died. If only she’d done things differently.





CHAPTER 21





AFTER


Dylan

Dylan didn’t sing the lyrics, and he didn’t play the guitar. His face and name aren’t on the album’s cover. But Joyride’s title track earned him his first two Grammys: Record of the Year for his production work and Song of the Year because he wrote the lyrics and composed the music.

Standing in his Soho loft kitchen in New York, he weighs one of the two six-pound statues that were just delivered. Jack had nine of them and he displayed them proudly in his home recording studio in Malibu. But this one’s different. It’s his name etched on the handmade trophy. Dylan Westfield.

He strokes a thumb over the gilded gramophone made from Grammium, a custom zinc alloy invented solely for the award. Behind him, Chase whistles.

“That’s a thing of beauty,” his cousin says, shouldering his navy Tom Ford jacket over an Ascot Chang shirt. The music label has done well and the man loves his threads. Dylan would rather rock his jeans and graphic tees for the rest of his days, if it’s all the same to him.

“Told you that notebook had Grammy-winning material,” Chase says for the millionth time.

“That you did.” He settles the trophy back into the shipping box.

“Where are you going to put them? Here or your office at the studio?”

“No idea.” He hasn’t given it any thought. Just like he hadn’t given thought to producing Joyride’s tracks until Chase shoved the blue sticker-adorned notebook in his face. The guy wouldn’t relent either. “At the very least, finish the songs. Then decide what you want to do with them.”