[Kristopher Ryans]

 Monday Morning
8:45 am
Sundance Records

Heather arrives early, she dressed nicely, did her makeup a little heavier to hide the blue-black bags she’s sporting from crying, not sleeping and eating very little. Her stomach growls as if on key and she bites her bottom lip. She was nervous.

She walks to the reception. The blonde sitting there reminds her of Jules.

Receptionist: “Can I help you?”

Heather nods.

Heather: “I’m here to see Jonathan Spicer.”

The blonde narrows her eyes on her,

Receptionist: “And you are?”

She was probably just doing her job, but the way she looks Heather over seems judgemental to say the least. She clearly did not know who she was, and was probably hoping for Heather’s response to give her a reason for tossing her out.

Heather: “Heather Halich... err... Cooper. I have a 9am appointment.”

She holds it together by plastering a smile on her face. The large cup of black coffee she had on the way was making her hands shake. She looks down from Heather’s eyes, and to the phone sitting on her desk. She tapped a button, and then brought her hand up to the headset hanging from her ear, tapping it. Apparently whoever was on the other end had picked up.

Receptionist: “There is a Heather Halich, or Cooper, here to see you.”

She pauses, leaving Heather in suspense while she listens to whatever answer she is given. When the person is finished talking she nods, gesturing towards the door just over her left shoulder.

Receptionist: “You can go in.”

Heather thanks her before moving to the door. She takes a deep breath before opening it and walking in. Jonathan Spicer is sitting at his desk, a pair of beats connected to an ipod. He’s moving his head with the beat and gives a smile. He looks up as Heather enters and points to the chair in front of him. As she sits, he pulls the beats off of his head, resting them on the desk. She hears the cover she did with Griff playing before he taps the iPod screen and stops it from playing.

Spicer: “So, first things first, is it Cooper or Halich?”

Heather: “Cooper.”

She doesn’t hesitate with the name. He smiles, taking one of the two folders off of his desk and dropping it through the shredder. For a second she doubts that it is going to be able to handle it, but, sure enough, the whole thing disappears. He flips open the one remaining on his desk, sitting up. He reads through some of the things on the front page, and then looks up at her.

Spicer: “I have to tell you, we heard you sing for Honor. We heard how the fans connected to you. You got them to stand up and cheer for five minutes based on the national anthem. Rumor was it took them forever to get people to stop.”

Heather blushes a little, but nods her head. He looks back down at the paperwork in the folder, but only for a second.

Spicer: “You’ve had a record deal before, yes?”

She clears her throat.

Heather: “Yes. I had a band with my cousins but that fell through when the youngest took off for Paris. They wouldn't accept a substitute bass player so they pulled back the deal.”

Her hands shake in her lap. He sits back, closing the file. She expects the worst when he takes a deep breath and runs a band through his hair.

Spicer: “I could give you the hard sell, or try to beat around it, but you're smart enough to know that if you're here we have to be interested. We might be better suited to just cut through all of the bullshit. It's been a couple years. You haven't signed anywhere else. Was this appearance for Honor just a one-off, or are you considering coming back to the industry?”

Heather: “Before I got pregnant I was working on producing an album myself but I had a difficult time with her. But I have been in an out of a studio lately. But to be honest, being my own producer has been stressful. I want this Mr. Spicer, even if it was my husband's name that got me in the door.”

He looks confused, sitting up in his chair and opening the folder again. He runs down all the information that he had been given about her. He does not find any reference to anyone else on the page. He laughs a little nervously, raising his eyes back to her.

Spicer: “...and your husband is?”

Heather: “Kris Halich.”

She leans forward to try and glance at the paperwork. He shakes his head, not finding anything,

Spicer: “...and he is a musician or something?”

She smirks in spite of herself.

Heather: “No. Just me thinking something that wasn't true. Keep going Mr. Spicer.”

He sits back again, offering an understanding smile.

Spicer: “Now you can tell me what you had in mind for coming back, or I can make you an offer that we think works. Plainly speaking though, you wouldn’t be sitting in that chair if we didn’t expect to be able to come to some kind of deal while you were here. We want to make this work.”

Heather: “I’m not the type to make demands. I will hear out your offer and maybe go from there?”

There is something in the pit of her stomach. It was that feeling she got whenever something happened that felt right. The last time was finding out she was pregnant and before that was when she married Kris.




=============
Monday Evening
=============

The problem was not that he did not want to go to the studio. It was not even that he did not want to talk. She was right about one thing though, he was afraid. The whole walk from his car to the front door was miserable. He thought his plan was going to work from the moment he came up with it. She should not have thought to look inside the container. It messed up everything. He pulls open the door, walking through the hallways, and then down the stairs into the mixing room. He knew she was already there from the car sitting outside, but her back was to him when he walked in the door. He places a bag down on the couch, knowing she heard him come in. Kris tries to find words that are just not there, instead standing silently.

He immediately notices the half full bottle of water without a label on the table next to her. His stomach drops. She turns, a paper bag in her hands. She walks toward him and hands it to him without saying a word. He looks down into it, seeing an identical drug test to the one that Kali had bought earlier in the day. The only response he can manage is a sigh, shaking his head and tossing the bag onto the couch.

Kris: “I’m not taking another one.”

She sighs. She pulls off her rings and hands them to him.

Heather: “You had to fake a drug test to get rid of me. Here. Go. Run away.”

Her bottom lip quivers and she turns going toward the door into the booth. He stands there for a second, wanting to just leave. He knew that he should. She was letting him go. It meant that maybe she would have a chance. Kris closes his fist around the rings, and slides them into the front pocket of his jeans, turning to the bag on the couch. He flips it open, reaching in and grabbing a few pages of sheet music. Once he pulls it free, he moves to a different pocket, finding the page of lyrics he was looking for. Once he has them he turns crosses to the control panel, flipping switches so that the sound was being recorded, and follows her in. She is sitting in the corner, not behind a microphone.

Kris: “Come sit down.”

His voice is flat. There is no malice in it, but it is definitely not friendly. He places the lyrics on a stand in front of one of the two microphones, and then puts the music on another positioned across from the first. Instead of sitting, he moves to the wall. Several acoustic guitars hang, each tuned a little differently, but all ready to be used for recording. He strums across the strings of each, finally finding what he is looking for in the third and taking it off of the rack. When he turns she still has not moved from her spot.

Kris: “Heather…”

She takes a deep breath and slowly walks over.

Heather: “Let’s break up oh and record a song... Kris I need to be alone right now to contemplate how badly I fucked up my life. Okay?”

She looks at the lyrics.

Heather: “What song is this anyway?”

Kris: “Just sit down.”

His voice does not raise, but his tone is different. Almost like he is pleading with her to just listen to him. He pulls out his chair from the microphone, and sits down, raising guitar into his lap. He looks down at it.

Kris: “Of course it is…”

She did not even have to look up, hearing the same disappointment in his voice hundreds of times before. He had the same problem every time they went to a music store and he tried to play. The guitar is strung right handed, meaning he was going to have to play it upside down. He turns some of the pages on the music, absent-mindedly finding the chords with his fingers without looking down and making sure he was going to be able to get through it inverted.

Kris: “I can make this work.”

He looks back up to her, nodding towards the empty chair.

Heather: “I can find you a left handed one...”

She moves onto the stool, reading the lyrics.

Heather: “This is that song you have had stuck in your head... isn’t it?”

He does not meet her eyes at all, staying focused on the music in front of him. It is awkward at first, but after a couple of tries, he is able to accurately finger pick each note of the opening. She does not take her cue to start though, waiting on a response from him. He sighs again, his foot anxiously tapping the floor.

Kris: “You can use it, or not use it. But just us, a guitar, and nobody else touching it seems like the right way for us to move on. Can we just try?”

She sighs but it isn't an impatient one. This time she listens for the que and it begins beautifully. Even upside down, he manages to work his way through the song, trying not to let his playing dwarf her voice. He does not just stop at playing though, having written all of the cues for the backup vocals onto the sheet music, and adding his voice to hers at places where he could fit in without taking away from how sweet she sounded. She looks over at him as she sings and the smile she gives him is not one he has seen in a long time. Its genuine, relaxed. Music was as good as any drink was for her. By the time they reach the closing of the song, he is able to take his eyes off of the music, looking over the stand at her, returning her smile with his own. His eyes are glassy though as each word of the closing phrase comes out of her mouth pained, an indication of how hard the last week has been on the two of them. She looks away from him once she is finished, and he plays the last few notes. For a few seconds they both just sit there, silently, too afraid to look at one another. It was undeniable that the feelings that they had for one another were still there. Even with everything going wrong around them, they were there, buried under all of it. He nods a few times, pushing himself out of his seat and going to hang the guitar back on the wall without a word.

Heather: “Kris...”

He stops, as if listening for the rest of her words but her own silent tears stop her from saying any thought that was about to be vocalized. Instead she covers her face with her hands. Sobbing quietly. He leans forward, placing his forehead against the wall. It was why he did not want to meet to talk about things. Hearing her sob was only second to seeing it. For as long as he was away, he could pretend that she was happy. He had himself convinced that she was happy to have someone other than him, even if her choice of the individual ripped him apart. He forced himself to believe that she did not care. Hearing her sing, and now break down, he could not keep lying to himself. The sound itself breaks him, tears rolling on his face. He wants to run. She probably expected him to as well. Running was not the reason for leaving though Instead of turning for the door, he slowly backs away from the wall, before turning and crossing to her. He squats down in front of where she sits, reaching out with both of his shaking hands to lightly touch her forearms, and pull her hands from her face. She is resistant at first but allows him to. Her blue eyes are bloodshot. Her face has a gaunt look about it. The stress of the week showing. And just like Kali had said, he knew she wasn't eating well or sleeping.

Kris: “I love you. That has not, will not, cannot change.”

He had said it all throughout the week, but just like he had convinced himself that she was happier with Kurtis than she was him, she had convinced herself that he was just lying to save her feelings. He had to have just been telling her what she wanted to hear to keep her from drinking, or keep her alive. Looking into his eyes, seeing how hard it was for him, she could not hold onto her lie either.

Heather: “Then why?”

She shakes her head, standing to try and move away from him. He stands up with her, still in front of her. He wraps one arm around the small of her back and one to her cheek. He pulls her in close to him, brushing his lips gently against hers at first, but unable to hold it back to just some innocent peck. She seems to melt into him, a passionate kiss that they hadn't had in months. She moves her hands up to his face, seemingly clinging to him. Not letting him pull away. She hoped he felt everything in that kiss. How sorry she was. How much she needed him, not as her way to stay sober but as the man she had chosen to love forever. No one could ever fill that void. Neither of them want to pull away, fighting to keep one another close until they are forced to break apart or suffocate. She tries to recapture his lips, but he rests his forehead against hers, pulling his chin back so that he is just out of range. He runs the backs of his fingers down her cheek.

Kris: “That’s why…. I can’t lose that. I can’t lose you. If we keep making all of these mistakes, and hurting each other, that’s going to be gone. We need to unfuck ourselves. You can’t do that with me here. I can’t do that if I stay…”

Heather: “I don't know how to do this by myself Kris.”

She shakes her head.

Heather: “I got myself into this situation by myself. Bad things happen by myself.”

She looks out the glass to the bottle sitting on the table still.  She licks her lips. He follows her eyeline to the bottle, and then looks back at her. He does not give her the answer that she is looking for though.

Kris: “I can’t make the decision for you to be sober anymore. Just like you can’t be made to carry that decision for me. Instead of dealing with our shit, we both have a drug of choice to numb it. Instead of making the choice to stay away from it for ourselves, we blackmail each other to stay in line. That’s not how a real relationship works. It’s not how a real marriage works. We can’t keep doing this to each other or we might hang on for another year or two, but when one of us finally walks away they’re never going to come back.”

Heather: “I don’t know how to stop wanting it.”

She sighs. She is about to continue but he cuts her off in a way she never expected to hear come out of his mouth.

Kris: “You know how I figured out I would never actually touch heroin again? You know what made it so easy to take it all out of that box and dump it?”

She shakes her head.

Kris: “Friday morning. I couldn’t sleep. I was up all night, just laying in the dark. Everything ran through my head dozens of times. KJ. Lindsay. You. Kurtis. Jason. Jet City. My not-dad. SCW. Everything. Every day on that cruise got worse than the one before it. At the end, looking back, I could see how if I would have shot up, it only would have gotten so much worse. As bad as things are, the thing that would have made me feel better in that moment would have made everything so much more difficult today. If that test was real it would have broken your heart because you would have known that all of you were easy to let go of forever, and we wouldn’t be having this conversation. This has been the worst week of my life. I could have made it so much worse though.”

He says it all in one breath. Once he got rolling, it simply poured out of him until he could not force out another word before taking a breath. The tears filling his eyes started to fall again as he finished.

Kris: “I need you to find that reason for yourself, and understand that you’re worth something. Understand that people don’t love you because I am around. People love you for the same reason I do. They see the person buried in there. I want you to be happy with yourself, and you can’t do that while you’re stuck living for me… so you have to let me go.”

He had done so well not getting choked up. He thought he could make it through, and almost did. The last of his words are barely understandable, the pain of them evident on his face. She breaks down completely now. She shakes her head.

Heather: “No!”

She looks up at him.

Heather: “I am not letting you go. I am not signing those papers unless you don't love me anymore. You want to separate I can do that. But getting divorced Isn’t the answer. So I will struggle with finding what you want but there is no one in this world that will ever convince me that letting you go is the right answer.”

There it was. Everything that he wanted to hear. Everything that he knew she was going to say. He had to look away from her, and find any excuse to get out of the situation before he caved. Every atom in his body wanted to be with her. He could not keep himself from staying, and damning them both at this rate. His eyes wander around the room, until they land on the control panel recording every sound in the room. He shakes his head, changing the subject.

Kris: “I should turn that off…”

She is quicker than he is, slipping through the door before him and then jacking a chair under the handle.

Heather: “You aren't doing this.”

She mouths it since he can’t hear her through the glass. She goes to her purse and pulls out a familiar looking folder and a lighter. He steps close to the glass, shaking his head and telling her not to do it while she grabs the trash can from the floor and puts it up on the desk. She lights the corner of the folder with the lighter and holds it out so he can watch each document burn. As soon as the flames reach halfway across the paper, she dumps it into the trashcan, the burnt end down so that when the flames rise, they torch the rest of the folder.

Kris: “Let me out.”

His voice cannot travel through the glass, but since the studio was still recording, she could hear him through the PA system. She walks over to the board and presses the speaker button.

Heather: “Sorry Baby. I got some things I need to do so you gotta stay right here.”

She smiles, and picks up the water bottle and leaves. He punches the glass, but it is double paned and his hand is absolutely no match for it at all. It does nothing but hurt him, and send him into an irritated fit. He turns around, pushing over both music stands before screaming out at the top of his lungs. He stands in the middle of the room, breathing heavily, and trying to calm down. He tries the door a second time before giving up on it, pulling his phone out of his pocket and calling the only person that he could count on to come get him.