Rock Radio (25 page)

“Fine,” she answered flipping on the television and lying down on the couch.  Within minutes he saw she was engrossed in some reality program.

As soon as Jonny left the room, Jill leapt up. She only had a limited amount of time.  She quickly ran to his cell phone and began scrolling through the calls.  The radio station popped up a lot, but so did the name Heather Dupree.  She was sure she was the one who was having an affair with her husband.  Jill flashed quickly to the night of the station kick-off party.  She remembered how the slight redhead sashayed by them, flirting shamelessly with her husband, acting as if Jill wouldn’t notice.  Acting as if Jill didn’t exist.

So young, so foolish,
she thought,
like I’d just stand by and watch another woman steal my husband from me.

Jill gave up her career to follow Jonny to small town markets so he could follow his dream to rock deejay stardom.  She survived with Jonny on his barely minimum wage salary, sacrificing buying new clothes, going out to dinner and taking much needed vacations so they could pay the rent.

Now Jonny had made it.  A great salary and all the prestige he had dreamed of.

They got to this point together.

She’d be damned if some skinny little college whore would take her life away.

Jill wouldn’t let that happen.

Ever.

The next day Dana stormed into the studio while Jonny was on the air.  She slammed the door.

Jonny rose from his chair.  “Whatever it is, take a deep breath and calm down.”

“That’s easy for you to say.”

Jonny didn’t dare tell her that his life was falling apart, too.  Instead he sat back down and motioned Dana to do the same.  “Tell me what’s wrong.”

“Sam is getting married.”

This
was
shocking.  “What?  I thought you guys just broke up a couple months ago.  I mean re-broke up.”

“He left me a fucking message on my answering machine!”
  Dana jumped up from the chair and began pacing, unable to sit still.

“What…” Jonny said incredulously, “why would he do that?”

“Why?  Because he’s an asshole?  Because he’s a prick?”  Dana’s words dripped with anger.

“I don’t even know what to say.
”

“
I called one of the receptionists at his firm.”

“She talked to you?”

“Jonny, she was so excited to talk to Dana Drew, she answered anything I asked.”  Her hands began to shake.  “She told me Sam liked to brag he was with the rock deejay.  I guess he took some flack when we broke up, so he got back with me to salvage his ego.”  Dana started crying.  “Big joke on me.”

“Wow.  That’s fucking low.”

“That’s not the worst of it.”

“There’s worse...?”

“He just met this chick.  She’s some new clerk at the firm.  The receptionist said this girl’s been helping him with a case.  I asked, but she insisted he wasn’t cheating.  Supposedly it was all platonic up until just recently.”

“Very recently.”

“Exactly!  It makes no sense!”

“He wasn’t threatened by her,” he
muttered under his breath.

“Come again?”

“Dana, I’m gonna be straight with you...I think you intimidated him.  Some guys need to feel like the most important one in the relationship. You said he kept bringing up your career...”

“Right, so?”

“And now he’s with this law clerk.  She probably looks up to him.  He needs the adoration.  He needs to be the one on top.”

“Oh stop being such an idiot guy for once in your life and look at the facts.  We broke up...then he moved back in...then I threw him out.  How could he have found ‘the one’ in that amount of time?  It’s not possible!”

“Look how you feel about Cody...and that was just one weekend.”

“But I’m not marrying the guy!”

“Well, who knows what happened to Sam.”

             
Dana took several deep breaths.  She was starting to hyperventilate.  “He told me he loved me, but he said he wasn’t ready to commit.  He said he didn’t want marriage yet, but what he really didn’t want was me.”  Tears fell rapidly down Dana’s face in rhythm with her hiccupy cry.

             
“Dana.”

             
“He didn’t want me.  He didn’t want
me
.”  She was sobbing heavily.

             
Jonny walked around the console and put his hands on Dana’s shoulders.  He really felt her pain.  “I’m so sorry.”

             
“You have no idea what it’s like to be alone and then meet someone and devote yourself to them.”  She tasted salty tears as she spoke.  “I was so into him...we were living together...I never lived with anyone before him.  I really thought we’d end up getting married.  He was one of the only people who knew me for who I was and not for the image.  Why didn’t he want me?  Why didn’t he want the real me?”

             
“Oh, Dana.”

             
“I mean, you can’t really understand.  You have this great wife who followed you around with your crazy career...I mean obviously this is not something most people are willing to do, and she did it for you.  She knew you before you were famous, she loves you for you.”  Dana enviously eyed Jonny.  “You are so lucky.”

             
Jonny guiltily avoided her gaze.

             
“I hope you’re not screwing around on her Jonny because you are so fortunate to have her.  You can’t find that kind of love so easily.  Look at me.  I can’t even sustain a relationship.”  She buried her head in her hands and kept crying.

             
“Dana...I don’t know what to say.  What about Cody?”

             
“What about Cody?”

             
“He seems like a great guy.”  Jonny was trying to find something positive.

             
“Who the hell knows what’s going to happen with that.  I know deep down you think it’s ludicrous for me to pursue...I even think so sometimes.  I mean what kind of relationship could we really have?  Say it works out...he’s on the road and I’m always working...we’ll never see each other.  It’s doomed to fail.”

             
“That’s not exactly the best attitude to go into this with.  Didn’t I see flowers yesterday?”

             
“Yeah.”

             
“And he calls you, right?”

             
“Right.”

             
“Even with his busy schedule.”  Jonny let his words sink in before continuing.  “Dana, guys don’t do this kind of stuff if they’re playing around.  They’re doing it because they like someone.  This guy really likes you, Dana Hill, you.”

             
“But he’ll leave me again, just like Sam.”

             
“Sam’s an idiot.  Cody isn’t Sam.”

             
“How do I know for sure?  I don’t want to waste another year of my life on some guy who’s not what he seems.”

             
“Dana, you don’t have a crystal ball, I don’t have a crystal ball, there’s no way to know what tomorrow holds for any of us, but if you don’t try, you’ll never find out.  If you don’t try you’ll definitely be alone.”

“Logically you make sense.  Reality is different.”

“Look, do you think this Cody is a good guy?”

             
“Yeah, but I thought the same thing about Sam.”

             
“What do you lose by giving it a shot?  It’s obvious he’s into you.”

             
“I guess.”

             
“You guess?  I don’t know what exactly happened in Tampa.  I don’t know if I want to know, but you came back from there a different person.  I’ve never seen you like that before and I’ve known you a long time.”

             
Dana subconsciously smiled.

             
“The lead singer of what soon will be the hottest band in America is pursuing you Dana.  It’s not a bad place to be in.”

             
Dana smiled through her tears.  “He is, isn’t he?”

             
“Yes, he is.”  He tousled her hair.  “Now go splash some cold water on your face and cheer up.  You’re on the air in thirty minutes.”

              Cody missed Laura.

             
Not the person, but the closeness of her.

             
Being on the road was lonely.  He missed having a close companion, someone to share his life with.  His youth was a den of instability.  There was no one to turn to for comfort or love, no one to confide his deepest hopes and dreams.

No one.

Now that the band had started to taste success, friends appeared from nowhere, people wanting to be close to the next best thing.  Cody saw through their shallowness.  Harper and Bobby didn’t.  They were loving every minute of the attention and adoration, staying out late, having a different girl/woman/cougar leave their bedroom every morning.  They were rock clichés falling into the trappings of success.

             
He couldn’t totally blame them.  The trappings were tempting.

             
Who wouldn’t love to be told how wonderful you are all the time?  Who wouldn’t love to have gorgeous women throw themselves at you every night?

             
Cody learned a hard fast lesson from his one night stand that permanently ended his relationship with Laura.  It didn’t make him feel good about himself.  He didn’t feel like a stud.  Instead he felt like every other prick who only cares about himself.

             
No different from his dad.

             
Cody was better than that.  The happiest he ever was, was with Laura.  They had gotten so close...but she didn’t want to live his dream with him.  There was too much for her to give up.  He didn’t blame her, and the fact that she saw problems with his lifestyle probably meant the relationship would have inevitably failed.  He just sped up the process by killing any hope for reconciliation with one wild night.

             
No, Laura probably wasn’t the one.  But she was close.  And that taste for closeness with someone was addictive.  Cody only wanted a real love.

             
His burgeoning rock star career gave him a feeling of success.  Standing on stage, having the crowd sing his lyrics back to him was electrifying.  No words could describe the sheer pleasure he felt seeing people respond to his songs.  At the mic, with the band behind him, Cody was in his element.  The loud rock, the screaming fans, the pulsing beat.  Noise, noise, noise.

             
Then he’d go back to his hotel room.  And there was nothing.  It was so unbelievably quiet, a one hundred and eighty degree difference in sound.  And in the silence, he was just Cody Blue Smith, from Pinetree, Florida with an abusive alcoholic dad and a mother who never protected him.  He was just a scared kid who wanted someone to put her arms around him and say that everything would be all right.

Success had changed his friends.  Bobby and Harper were living the rock star life and Alex was wallowing in his impending fatherhood and clingy girlfriend situation.  They weren’t ‘brothers’ anymore.  More like an odd group thrown together by circumstance.

Awash in self-pity, Cody called Dana.  He knew she was on the air.  She answered in her radio voice.

“Dana Drew.”

“Hey you.”

“Hey,” she said, truly happy to hear Cody’s voice on the line.

“I miss you.”

“I miss you, too.”

“Do you have a few minutes?  I know you’re working.”

“Yeah...it’s fine.”

“I thought we could have a phone date.”

She smiled.  “Okay.  I’m game as long as you can deal with an interruption at ten and forty past the hour.”

Cody rolled over on the bed to his stomach.  “I can deal with that.  We actually have a night off tonight, no show.”

“Shocking.”

“I know, so I have time to take you out, get to know you better.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Everything.”

“That’s a little broad.”

“But it’s the truth.”

“So where should I start...?”

They talked for hours, through Dana’s shift.  Dana sharing stories of childhood, Cody slowly revealing the dreams of his youth and tiny bits of his family life.

For Dana, Cody’s call was a safe warm blanket.  This day was difficult, Cody’s voice and descriptions of life on the road pulled her from her sadness and confusion, distracting her from the pain of Sam’s message – his betrayal and apparent empty love.

Cody, too, was helped by Dana.  He listened to her closely, sharing in the joy of her silly stories of her family life while growing up.