This Story Might Save Your Life(47)

I was still riding my postshow high when Xander and I returned to our hotel room.

“I saw you,” he said, shutting and bolting the door.

I blinked. Benny and I had just been treated like megastars by 5,174 people. He may as well have been speaking another language. “Saw me what?”

“I saw you backstage.”

Disappointment rose like bile. “I—I don’t know what you mean.” My act was laughable even to my ears. The memory of the stairwell swept through me like a hot flash and I felt my face going red again. “There was nothing to see.”

“Did you kiss him?”

“What? No. God, no.” It was clear he didn’t believe me so I doubled down. “We were…” I searched for the word. “Huddling.”

“You were huddling.” He breathed out heavily through his nose. With a growing sense of alarm, I watched him pace back and forth in front of the tightly made bed.

“Xander, I know what you’re thinking, but it’s not … we’re not…” Try as I might I couldn’t finish the sentence.

He sank down onto the bed and put his head in his hands. “I do everything for you.”

“I know. I do. And I love you for that.”

“Just for that?”

He sounded so hopelessly sad. I pressed my hands to his shoulders and nudged his legs apart. He wrapped his arms around me, and I rested my cheek on his head. “I love you. Period. You’re my husband. There’s never been anyone else.”

He may not have believed me, but he let it go.



* * *



I’D BE LYING if I said we were fine, though. We at TSMSYL gifted ourselves a six-week hiatus to recover from the tour, and instead of relaxing in the town house as I’d intended, Xander whisked us away to Big Bear Lake. He insisted it was exactly what the doctor ordered. A second honeymoon. A chance to reconnect without all the triggers of real life.

I needed to talk to Benny. He had to assume something was going on when Xander changed our flights, sending us home a full twelve hours apart, but there was more than could be explained in a text, so we arranged a place and time to catch up in LA. When Xander sprang Big Bear on me, I pushed Benny back a week, only to learn, as we rounded the final bends into the cozy mountain town, that my husband had booked not one, or two, but three weeks of vacation. I balked, but Xander was positively giddy. What did I mean, I didn’t want to stay three weeks? Why hurry back to smoggy LA when we could cozy up in a lakeside cabin at seven thousand feet? Why, indeed. And so we hiked, and slept, and lunched in the village. Rode pontoon boats around the lake. I didn’t bring it up again because I didn’t know how. He’d cleared my schedule. On paper, I had no reason to go back.

When we returned to Los Angeles in late June, the need to clear things up with Benny had fizzled. We never did address the weirdness, and I convinced myself it was because Benny wanted to forget it ever happened. Luna was no longer talking about starting a firm up north, and while I had no idea what her earlier vacillation meant for the future of their marriage, I assumed they were working on things. Why confuse the matter by bringing up the Fox Theatre stairwell?

And so we went back to the way things were before the tour. With one major difference: we were now flush with cash. While I knew this would be the biggest perk of enduring thirty-eight live shows in nineteen cities across the United States, the final total floored me nonetheless. Xander and I were ready to upgrade from our budget town house to a proper single-family home.

I won’t bore you with details, but suffice it to say Xander was particular. His list of must-haves was lengthy, and LA’s market was tight. I didn’t expect a perfect match. I only hoped we could find a place near Benny and Luna in the Hollywood Hills.

But Xander wasn’t interested in the Hollywood Hills. The property he set his heart on was a 1931 Spanish revival in Mount Washington. I won’t pretend I hated the house, but this was farther out than I’d hoped to live. Without traffic it was a twenty-five-minute drive to Benny’s house. With traffic, who knew? Not to mention, there was nothing within easy walking distance of the hill. No restaurants, no theaters, no big-box stores, no pharmacies. I would need a chauffeur to go anywhere. Xander knew this.

“But we weren’t talking about Mount Washington,” I said.

I fought him on it. For the next several days I showed him listing after listing in Hollywood, Thai Town, Los Feliz, Franklin Hills.

“Stop,” he said, pushing my phone away. “There’s no point.”

He admitted then that he’d already put in an offer. Already signed the electronic forms in my name. We were in escrow. He had his reasons for doing this, of course. Xander always had his reasons. He knew I wouldn’t come around in time and didn’t want to lose the house. It was too special, what with its arched windows and doors, its painted tiles and exposed beams. Though what set it apart, in his eye, was its privacy. A metal fence encircled the entire property, with trees and bougainvillea shielding the view to the 3,100-square-foot home. The only visible neighbors were those directly to our east, a former judge and her partner.



* * *



IT WAS AROUND this time, just after our move in late July of last year, that we became aware of our superfan. He called himself TSMSYL_Number_One_Fan, and I only say “he” because he listed pronouns in his bio. We had no idea who he was, and at first, we didn’t care. “Joy Moore in the wild,” he posted, along with a photo of me walking hand in hand with Xander near our new home.