No Strings Attached

"Smart ass," I muttered.

She grin and crouched down near Leia. "Did you say thank you?"

Leia gave me a hug again, mumbled a "thanks" and started towards their car. Em stood up and her shirt rose a little revealing a belly chain.

A fucking belly chain. The hottest piece of jewelry a woman could wear. That just wasn't fair.

"See ya Tuesday, Alex. Thanks.'

"Yeah. Not a problem."

A fucking belly chain.

Big Mike stopped me as I walked back through reception. "Hey, you put any thought into playing with that father-daughter band?"

"What the hell, Mike. I said no. I'll write them a check."

"Coward."

"Yeah? Go fuck yourself, you Polynesian wannabe!"

I stormed off to my office. A few minutes later the phone rang.

"Yeah?"

"Italian good for lunch?"

"Sure. Get me some sort of pasta with chicken."

"You got it. You're still a coward, but you're my coward. Make it a big check."

I laughed.

**

Em

"...hey soul sis... soul sister..."

A sharp twang.

"Ain't that Mr. Mister on the... radio, stereo..."

Another twanging sound, followed by a whimper from Pepper, who was their literal captive audience.

"You're not very good at that yet."

"I still have to practice, Baylee! I'm learning!"

"Let me try!"

"No, it's my guitar!"

"Girls," Kelsie called from the kitchen. She made no move to stand up. "No fighting."

"But Mom..."

"Maybe I need to come over there and take the guitar away, Leia." I also didn't make a move to stand up.

It wasn't needed. The voices hushed and Leia started strumming the guitar again.

"I'll play, you sing, just not so fast, okay?"

"I was kind of hoping I had to take the guitar away for five minutes," I whispered. "Just five minutes."

Kelsie snorted and ate a handful of popcorn.

"The lessons aren't going well?"

"They're going great. Alex says she's learning really fast." I rubbed my eyes. "I guess I should just be grateful she's graduated from 'Happy Birthday'."

"You okay? You seem..."

"Just tired. I've booked a couple extra clients to offset the costs. He's giving me a deal on the lessons but she's still going to need strings and shit."

"The fun kind of clients or...?"

I snorted. "No. Although I almost outed Patricia's husband to her during their session."

"Patricia, like Hayden's mom? From the girls' class?"

"Yep."

"Oh my God, you didn't."

"What else was I supposed to do? I'm trying to set up the perfect family photo and he keeps going 'are you sure I don't know you from somewhere? You just look so familiar, you know?'"

"And you said...?"

"Well, I was nice enough to him the first couple times. Polite laugh, just have one of those faces, you know. And of course he goes, 'I feel like I'd remember your face though. I mean you have all those tattoos.' And that's usually when people figure out... you know."

Kelsie laughed, though not unkindly.

"You could just say you used to model, you know."

"The last time I tried that, the guy's wife figured out real quick what kind of 'modeling' I did."

She made a soft noise of concession and I sighed.

"It's not that I'm embarrassed, I just—"

"I get it, don't worry."

"I mean I am a little embarrassed."

"It's literally no different than the boudoir photos you do. You're just on the other side of the camera now."

"I'd say there's a pretty big difference between boudoir photos and dudes jacking off to alt-girls online."

Kelsie snorted again and threw a piece of popcorn at me.

"What?" I laughed, catching the popcorn before it hit the ground. "They're not just jacking off to photos, they're jacking off to old photos. Leia wasn't even six months when I did the last shoot."

"Okay, but you could have—wait." Kelsie frowned, staring at me. "You were still doing the photos after you had Leia?"

I could feel heat creeping up my neck. Kelsie knew pretty much everything about me, but apparently that was a surprise.

"I mean... yeah, a few. Before Jones took me on as his assistant, I was still, you know. Modeling."

She gaped. "You were doing nude photos less than six months after having a baby?"

I laughed, relieved that it wasn't judgment in her eyes but astonishment. "Yeah. My tits looked great while I was breastfeeding."

"Lucky bitch." She threw another piece of popcorn at me.

"Anyway, Patricia's husband just wouldn't let it go. So finally I was like, 'let's do some mother and son shots' and got him to come over to the camera to 'look' at one."

"I see where this is going."

"All I asked was if he really wanted his wife to know where he knew me from."

"And he said..."

"Nothing, and gave me an extra fifty as a tip."

Kelsie burst out laughing, as did I.

Prior to having Leia, I'd been the definition of a hot mess. Young, dumb, on my own for the first time... one thing had led to another and I'd ended up—for lack of a better term—modeling. In the two short, yet very long, years I'd done so, I'd developed a bit of a cult following. I'm not sure that there's any other kind of following when it comes to what was politely referred to as "alternative pin-up girls," not that it mattered. The point was that even years later, I was still being recognized as a "model."

Then Leia came along. Well, more accurately, one of Leia's potential fathers came, and it was a long time before I realized my body wasn't just filling out, I was pregnant. By the time I figured it out, there were a handful of different guys it could have been, and I only knew how to find a couple of them.

When she came out looking just like me, it was very clearly neither of the two men I'd tracked down. They were kind enough to take paternity tests anyway, but she was as white as snow and they were both African-American. No one was surprised when neither of them shared even a questionable amount of DNA with her.

So, Leia didn't have a father.

Jones was a photographer I worked with before getting knocked up. We worked together on a number of shoots and made a great team. He took me in after I had Leia and started training me to work as his assistant, rather than in front of the camera. It was from him that I discovered how much I truly loved photography. He taught me everything I knew, gave me a set of his old equipment, and told me to get my own business started before I got sucked back into a life he knew I didn't want.

I owed Jones everything. I would have married him, but his husband would have probably had a problem with that.

I was no longer in front of the camera; I was behind it. Graduation photos, family portraits, maternity shoots, and newborn pictures kept me steady, but my favorites were the boudoir shoots. I'd made quite a name for myself when it came to taking sensual, dramatically lit photos that reeked of sexuality and empowerment.

Well, my alternate ego had made a name for herself. "Passion by Fire" and "Portraits by Em" were two different companies, for all intents and purposes, though I had a few clients who knew me under both names. It was more to keep Leia in the dark, just for a few more years. I couldn't bring myself to explain Mommy's past just yet.

Kelsie and I had polished off the bowl of popcorn and Leia and Baylee had just about nailed "Hey Soul Sister" when someone knocked on the front door.

"Who's that?" Kelsie asked, as if I'd know.

"Well, if it's not you, then I have no idea."

I was halfway to the door when the knocking became a pounding.

"Please open up, Em."

Jimmy's voice was desperate in a way I hadn't heard before. The first thought that crossed my mind was that he'd gotten someone pregnant. The second was that he'd pissed off the wrong person and someone was after him. The third was that if he had dragged his drama to my front door and put my daughter in harm's way, I'd kill him myself.

When I flung the door open, I was ready to lose my mind at him yet again. When I saw his face, I was speechless.

Jimmy had been crying.

"I need to talk to you."

"Hey girls!" Kelsie shouted from the hallway. "We're gonna go play outside for a bit."

"That's perfect!" squealed Leia. "We can give you a concert in the backyard."

"I cannot think of a single reason for you to not do that," Kelsie said unenthusiastically.

She managed to usher Leia, Baylee, and Pepper outside without them seeing Jimmy, who had collapsed on the couch in my living room after I quietly shut the door.

"Do you want a beer?" I asked uncertainly.

Jimmy shook his head.

That was a surprise, too.

"What, uh, do you want to talk about?"

"I'm fucked."

"Generally or for a specific reason?"

"Both." He pulled his phone from his pocket and chucked it onto the coffee table. "Read that."

The screen was on an article posted in Guitar Player, which I inferred was some kind of music magazine. The title big, bold, and shady as all fuck.

Wasting Away Again in Margaritaville

Jimmy was being an asshole. Jimmy was drinking too much, partying too much, and being downright insufferable. He was egotistical, overwhelmingly cocky, and unbearably rude. He was on a fast path to self-destruction. He was a danger to himself, a bad influence on my daughter, and a completely unbearable excuse for a human being.

He was also my brother, and as I continued reading, I felt my face growing red with rage at whoever had written this about him.

Sadly, Buffet couldn't shoulder the load alone, so we have another Jimmy wasting away in Margaritaville. This one is squandering his overhyped talents on trying to be a cliche and live a sybaritic lifestyle that went out of fashion decades ago.

As our friends in country music might say, he's all hat and no cowboy.

"I'm fucked," he said as I looked up from the phone. "This is it. It's over."

"None of this is exactly a lie," I said.

Jimmy's forehead wrinkled. He stared down, shoulders hunched, suddenly not the man of twenty sitting on my couch but the boy of ten who'd cried as I kissed him goodbye and ran away from home.

"I know," he said.

He cried on my shoulder. I let him, my heart breaking and relieved at the same time. I didn't want Jimmy to lose his dream, but...

It wasn't the time for those thoughts. It was the time for support, to just be there for him as his world crashed down around him.

"Who is this guy?" I asked when he pulled away, roughly wiping his face.

"Dunno. Some writer."

"Who the fuck names their kid Curt Llama?"

A wet, sniveling laugh bubbled from Jimmy's throat.

"Uncle Jimmy?"

Leia was peering into the room from the kitchen. Jimmy tensed, his cheeks red with embarrassment.

"Hey, munchkin."

The only thing Leia could do was rush over and hug him. Luckily, it was probably the only thing in the world that would make Jimmy really feel just a little bit better.

**

Alex

I was more leaning on the stool than sitting on it as I noodled through some thoughts I had with the guitar. Bryn thought that we were pretty much done and just needed a hook for our latest song and I was letting my fingers and brain operate independently, hoping they'd meet somewhere in hooksville. Leaning over, I jotted down some stuff in my notepad and then got back to it.

There was a brief knock and then Lini opened the door for Leia. Her gap-toothed smile was wide and she was carrying the acoustic with pride. The video and audio allowed Em to watch and hear us while she waited in reception. It had been about six weeks and she'd finally started feeling comfortable sitting in reception and watching the monitor once in a while.

I pulled out my phone. We regularly had musicians in the studios at two and three in the morning doing who the hell knows what, so our security service had us hooked up with live feeds from almost every conceivable angle. I pulled up the reception area and saw Em sitting there, thumbing through a magazine. She was wearing jeans and a tight dark blue tee with a faded Betty Boop image.

She looked good. Real good.

"Mr. Alex?"

"Yeah, sorry honey. Let's get to it." I looked at the image again before putting the phone down.

Leia's feet dangled as she sat on a stool next to me and she began chattering, telling me about her practicing and how her dog would listen to her playing, which led to a discussion about her dog and how he wouldn't obey any commands. It was a problem, but insignificant in the grand scheme of things. I constantly had to reign her in and help her focus, but that was part of the job when teaching kids. The upside is that her brain was like a sponge, soaking up everything she was taught at a crazy rate.

She was going to have to grow into the instrument before she got any sort of mastery, but in spite of her tiny hands, she was making amazing progress. Yes, she was raw and new, but everyone was at some point in their playing. It was evident that she practiced frequently.

I waited for a pause before interrupting.

"Remember when you asked about the Oni?" I turned my arm over to show the tat. "You seemed disappointed that you wouldn't be able to get any tattoos until you were the ripe old age of eighteen, so I thought I'd help out."

Reaching past her, I grabbed the paper bag and handed it to her. Eyes wide, she paused and then opened it. To say she wasn't impressed would be an understatement. She looked like a kid that had grabbed the biggest present under the tree and ripped off the wrapping only to discover it was a dictionary.

I wasn't sure what to say. "Um, they're temporary tattoos. You can..."

"Thanks. That was really nice, but I'm almost eight. These are for kids."

"Yeah, sorry. I wasn't really thinking. I, uh, I knew a little boy once that really loved them, but yeah, he was younger than you. They had to be Star Wars. All those weird characters and... Well, you're not here for that. Let's get to it."

Twelve lessons in and she was, if anything, more enthusiastic than she was on the first day. I wasn't interested in pretending that she was anything other than what she was; a passionate, talented child with less than two months of guitar under her belt. That being said, she had what her uncle didn't, she played with heart.

Maybe he had at one time, but if so, it was long gone. I wrote another article about him and I heard that he hadn't shown up in LA for a meeting with his label. What's worse is that they hadn't pressed him.

If they don't give a fuck, that's a very, very bad sign.

As important as Guitar Player was in the industry and as solid as my writing could be, I didn't have that sort of sway. He must have been pissing some important people off for a while. Someone should have explained the rules. If you're going to be an asshole, you have to be a genius or so established that they can't ax you. He was neither. I'd gone out of my way to listen to some of his early work on YouTube of all places. He'd had promise. That promise was traded in for pablum.

Jimmy Reilly became style over substance with a heaping tablespoon of prima donna.

We'd been going for a while when Leia stopped playing.

"Do you know an old group named Mettic?" she asked.

"Medic? No. Like a doctor?"

"Um, I don't know. They have a song about puppets. Uncle Jimmy likes them. They're his favorite."

"Do you maybe mean Metallica?"

"Yeah! That's them. Can you teach me the puppets song?"

"That's a... You mean 'Master of Puppets', right? Like this?" I played a bit of the song.

She nodded her head. "That's the song!"

"That's a bit advanced for you, Leia. Maybe in a while, we can work on part of the song."

"Can we do a little? Just a small part?"

"Uhm, let me see if I can figure something out for next time. Why?"

"Uncle Jimmy's sad all the time and I thought maybe if I can play his favorite song... I don't know, it was probably stupid."

"No, honey, it wasn't stupid. It was really nice. Let me think about it, okay?"

Leia and I worked for an hour and twenty before I looked up at the clock and realized we were over.

"Hey, look at that. Twenty minutes past an hour. You owe me, Leia. I'll take the extra pay in more cookies."

She looked concerned. "The cookies are done. They only have them for a while. I can maybe get some from the store."

"I was just kidding, kiddo. We're good. Let's get out there to your mom. She's probably wondering if you stole Mike's hula-girl and escaped out the back."

She laughed and we went out to meet up with Em.

"Mom, we need to get Mr. Alex some cookies 'cause we kept going after an hour."

I raised my hands. "I was just joking with her. I don't need any cookies."

Em smiled. "How about dinner? I sort of was hoping... Well, it can wait. Are you available this weekend at all?"

Her voice got that raspy, warm quality to it again. I had to stop myself from leaning towards her.

"Uhm, yeah. Saturday?"

"Saturday'll work. Five?"

"Sure. Can I bring anything?"

"No, we're set. I'll text you the address."

They left and I went back to my office, stunned. Was this a date? Did I just agree to a date with a woman who was at least twenty-five years younger than I was? I needed to talk to her about Leia playing in a recital anyway, so whatever this was I could at least get that done, but... yeah, I was lost.

On Saturday, I showed up at the address at ten to five. I checked my breath, ran my fingers through my hair, grabbed the bag and walked up to the door. Em answered, leaning down to prevent her dog from jumping on me, and stepped out of the way so I could enter.

"Leia's at her friend's. C'mon in."

"Thanks. I brought a cake. Didn't want to come empty-handed. I..."

Fuck.

Jimmy was sitting at her kitchen table. He'd shaved his head and was wearing a ripped "Farewell to Kings" tee and faded jeans. He looked like a thinner, taller Henry Rollins. It was completely unfair. He looked like a rock star with the long hair and looked like an edgier rock star with the shaved head thing. There was no way I could pull that off. The prick.

"Jimmy wanted to talk to you," Em said.

Great. Just fucking great.

**

Em

Alex looked at me like I'd laid a trail of candy for him to follow only to then shove him in a pit of snakes lined with speakers blasting Leia's rendition of "Hey Soul Sister" on repeat. Guilt tugged at my chest, worsening when I noted that Alex was dressed just a touch nicer than usual. He'd frozen just half a step away from me in the cramped front hall and I could smell the faint scent of a lightly spiced cologne.

Oh my God. He'd thought it was a date.

Even worse, I was more disappointed about it not being a date--even though I hadn't realized I'd asked him on one--than I was about the fact that he thought it was a date in the first place.

But that was a problem for another time. The immediate issue was the fact that Alex was staring at me like I'd kicked a puppy.

I cleared my throat. "So, uh, I mentioned to Jimmy you were stopping by for dinner and he asked if he could... um, talk to you."

"I would've called the studio but I'm still banned," Jimmy added unhelpfully.

"Wasn't my doing," Alex said. He seemed to resign himself to the situation and stepped in the house further. If I hadn't known better, I would have said he looked cautiously arrogant as he brought the cake to the kitchen, Jimmy watching warily while he sipped a can of Diet Coke.

I raised my eyebrows at Jimmy, trying to silently communicate with him.

You promised me this wouldn't be a pissing match.

He seemed to get the message and jerked his shoulders helplessly. Another pang of guilt and I sighed, trying not to clench my jaw.

"Can I get you something to drink, Alex? Dinner's just about ready."

"Uh, yeah. Please."

"We have Coke, Diet Coke, grape soda, orange soda, apple juice. Any of those things mixed with vodka. Or beer. Or, um, water, I guess."