Trust

It wasn’t my hometown, but I’d spent so many nights schmoozing with promising artists in the Boston music scene that every barkeep from Everett to JP knew my name. Kiia and I took the short walk to a high end Italian restaurant down the street from the theatre, where we were escorted to their private lounge away from the regular late night crowd who always recognized me.

“I didn’t realize that you were still this famous,” she remarked as we were seated with our own personal bartender.

“Good evening, Antonio,” I said before returning my attention to Kiia. “Yeah, I haven’t been onstage in three years; haven’t dropped a new release in two, but people are always waiting for the comeback.”

“Will it be the same as usual tonight, Cy?” Antonio asked.

“Yes,” I answered.

“And what can I get for you Miss?” Antonio asked, not hinting at any relationship between us.

“Can I get an aged Whiskey on ice?” She answered. “Or whatever he’s having, whichever is stronger.”

She turned her attention back to me with a snarky look.

“Well, Miss, then it will be the Whiskey,” Antonio said without a hint of emotion.

“If that’s the case, what does the great Cy Rondeau take at the bar?”

Antonio placed a bar glass filled with a brown liquid with light ice in front of me.

“I can either tell you, or you can take a drink. Entirely up to you.” I said nonchalantly.

Before I could process it, she entered my personal space, taking the first sip through the bendy straw. Her face strained at first, processing the sweetness of it, which was followed by confusion as she tasted for alcohol before swallowing.

“Is that…just raspberry iced tea?” She said, deeply concerned and confused.

“Yes,” I answered, laughing at her existential crisis.

“Drank too much back in the day that you switched to tea?” She asked, taking a drink of her whiskey.

“No, actually. I’ve never been one to drink alcohol. I made enough bad decisions without it.”

As soon as I finished my sentence, she was coughing on her drink.

“I wasn’t expecting honesty,” she said, pounding her chest to let her lungs unclog.

“Well, I did invite you here under the pretense of you trusting me.”

“Yeah,” she said quietly, signaling to Antonio for another whiskey.

“Since I’ve spent over eleven years building my bad reputation, I don’t really know where to start, so I’m going to need you to start asking questions to close the gap,” I said, openly avoiding bringing up Tara.

“Tara,” she said, staring into her drink. “That whole thing never sat right with me, so I need to know the truth.”

“Will you believe my side if I tell you the whole truth?”

“I never really believed her side all the way through,” she said, finishing her second glass and ordering a third. “So, there’s that.”

“Well, the honest truth is that once we started dating I was faithful for a while; for about six months in 2015. I felt like we had a special connection,” I smiled, starting a second iced tea, reflecting on the fleeting romance of youth.

“I had talked to the higher ups at Twilight Reverie about signing her to a major deal and touring with Beyond the Realms in 2016 to set her up for her major breakthrough debut, but they couldn’t come to a contract they could agree on. While I was on tour that summer, I was spending some time with a girl in an opening act while we were in Europe; nothing serious or anything romantic.”

I took a deep breath.

“I didn’t know one of our roadies was friends with Tara’s older sister, Ava, and he started sending pictures of us to Ava…when I went home to visit Tara and the family in Detroit, Ava took me aside and showed me the photographic evidence that I was cheating on her sister.”

“If I were older and wiser, I would have just let it happen, but I decided to play ball with her blackmail; only to find out that she wanted to sleep with me–that she deserved to be with me more than her sister. Being a stupid nineteen year old, I thought I could make the best of a bad situation.”

“Until Ava got bored and accidentally sent the pictures of us to her sister. I never understood how the whole situation brought them closer together…and then Tara took to social media about how I was scum for two-timing in the same family.”

I tilted my head back to look up at the ceiling as if it would have an answer.

I could have sworn I saw a tear on her face for a second. She knew how hard it was to deal with the court of public opinion.

“Thank you for telling me that. I wanted to be a little mean at first, but it’s obvious that you don’t like to talk about it from how unsteady you look right now,” she said, embarrassed, stirring her drink.

“Thanks for listening to my story…usually this is the worst part. Either people being mad on my behalf or the quiet judgement of my stupid, youthful indiscretion is exhausting.”

“Yeah…well, I’m meaner than most women, but I still have a heart. I wouldn’t be able to make the music I do without understanding others’ pain.”

The quiet was warm.

“Is there anything else you need to know to move this deal forward?” I asked.

“Maybe one more thing,” she said through a hiccup, four whiskeys in. “Why, after all of this time, did you decide to make this big swing with the label tonight?”

I inhaled softly.

“I’ve known how great your band is for years. I used to check you out at every festival we played together, but you were always so critical of me, and the way Beyond the Realms did things. I know that we did things the wrong way, that we were just a commercially engineered rock band, but I hated that the only band I respected that was our age hated us,” I paused, making steady eye contact with her. “I didn’t expect tonight to go like this. We’d never met, and despite my allegedly bulletproof heart, I was afraid of how much you hated me, and I was expecting you to be the same band. I was afraid you were stale like Beyond the Realms had become.”

“When I saw how much love and passion you had for this, and how much you’d elevated OH since I last saw you, I convinced myself it would be a waste if your vision for this project never found the biggest audience it could.”

This time her tears were real. I didn’t expect her to say anything right away. If someone had been there for me three years ago, maybe things would have gone differently. Maybe I’d still be touring. Maybe I’d still love music. I didn’t have anyone back then, not when it mattered.

“Thank you, Cy. I didn’t know what I was expecting when I agreed to come tonight, and it feels insane to trust everything you’ve said to me tonight, but I want this to be real more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life.”

Her voice trembled as her trust battled fear, the alcohol constantly changing sides.

I had this feeling for the first time when I was fourteen going on fifteen. If I learned anything from how my career panned out, I was going to make sure she didn’t have the same, lonely and catastrophic ending as I did.