He finishes feeding PJ, and she gets up to wipe her son down, kissing his forehead, adoring the way he sighs a tiny baby sigh of happiness to be with her. “I love you too,” she whispers. When she returns to her seat with him squirming in her arms, she turns to Cal. “You know, Zac tells me that you wrote ‘Bedrock.’”
Cal pauses with his fork halfway to his mouth, his shoulders hunching. “Well, I don’t—”
She ignores his attempt to deflect. “It’s good. I know ‘Livid’ broke all those records and won all those awards, but I like ‘Bedrock’ better.”
He blinks, turning his head to study her. “Most people say the opposite.”
“‘Livid’ is an earworm,” she admits. “It’s catchy as hell. But ‘Bedrock’ is...haunting.”
He puts his fork down, his expression unreadable. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. It’s probably for the best that you didn’t let Zac help.”
Cal ducks his head, but she can see his amusement.
“Assholes,” Zac pronounces them. “Both of you.” Then he tips his narrowed eyes at Anya. “I know what you’re doing. You’re not nearly as clever as you think you are. Also, I’m way more important to the band than him. I’m the front man. I stand in front.”
You’d think she was trying to murder kittens instead of making a more concerted effort to help Cal feel like he can open up a little. Honestly, Zac should be thanking her, and instead she gets this. “You strut around on the stage gyrating like you’re fucking ghosts against an imaginary wall in front of everyone. That’s not important.”
Zac’s eyes go wide in offense, but Cal bursts into laughter and Zac clearly doesn’t know how to feel about that. Cal’s not a man who laughs easily. Even Anya knows that. She’s sort of proud of herself for managing it, and she loves that she’s going to get away with teasing her husband because he can’t help being impressed with her too.
“You do look like you’re trying to fuck a ghost,” Cal gasps. He’s laughing so hard that his hands are shaking. He’s getting beef bourguignon splatters all over the table, and Anya doesn’t care. Her stomach has gone weirdly tight, and she can’t help but notice that while Cal is a good-looking man when wearing his usual serious expression, he’s beautiful when he laughs.
“That ghost-fucking has made you millions, so yeah, keep laughing at it,” Zac grumbles, but he can’t hide the slight pull of his smile. “We should watch a movie. I’m tired of being made fun of.”
“Pick something good,” Anya suggests. “Or we’ll make fun of you more.”
“Cal should pick, then,” Zac says.
“Oh, no, I’m fine with anything,” Cal says, and Anya would roll her eyes, except that she’s expecting it. He looks longingly at PJ, not even subtle about it, and Anya kisses her son once more on his chubby cheek and passes him back into Cal’s arms.
She sits on the sofa and Zac sprawls across both her and the couch, one leg propped up on the back, one arm dangling into space. He puts his head in Anya’s lap and pinches her side and thigh until she curses and consents to rub her fingers through his thick hair. “You’ll probably go bald soon,” she tells him meanly and he turns on his side to bite her knee, making her yelp.
Cal’s in the armchair, watching them and smiling.
“What?” Zac demands.
“You’re both eight,” Cal says, his smile growing. PJ’s making fussy noises, but when Cal murmurs to him, he tucks his face into Cal’s throat, settling down. Anya’s heart swells at the sight.
“You’re eight,” Zac tosses back. “Pick a movie, you bastard.”
Cal smiles and politely pretends he’s never seen a movie in his life and therefore can’t possibly be expected to know how to choose one. Anya ends up scrolling through Netflix until Zac hollers his interest at something he sees. It’s some action flick that can’t fully wrest anyone’s attention, and she strokes her husband’s head, smiling at his contented noises, and watches Cal cuddle her son, enjoying the way they all talk through the movie about nothing important.
* * *
In bed that night, she nudges Zac with her toes. She likes conversations at night, once they’ve turned the light off and they’re snuggled in close. They’ve never had a problem being honest with each other, but there’s an added tone of intimacy to talks that happen in a dark bedroom, one that she finds satisfying.
“So tell me more about Cal,” she says.
“Anya,” he says warningly, as if that’s ever worked on her.
“I don’t mean so we can fuck him.” She makes a face even though he can’t see it. “I mean that he’s a part of your life. He’s your bandmate and your friend and maybe I could learn to like him better if I knew more about him.” She found him surprisingly tolerable tonight anyway.
The sheets rustle as he rolls toward her. “Really? You’d—you’d want to? Try to be friends?”
Oh, God, he’s wanted this. Perhaps for quite some time. She must’ve missed something crucial in the beginning, back before she knew his tells, evidence that it bothered him that his best friend and his wife didn’t hit it off. She certainly hasn’t seen signs of it since she’s gotten to know him well. He might’ve given up on the idea of it ever happening. It makes her sad to think of it.
She doesn’t really care much about Cal, but for Zac, she’d hang the moon. “I’ll try. No promises. But if you tell me things, I’ll try to like them.”
“It’s all right if you don’t like him. You don’t have to care about him just because I do. It doesn’t mean you’re being a bad wife.”
“What do I care about being a bad wife? I don’t even like you.”
He laughs and puts a hand on her hip, thumb trailing affectionately over the curve. “So you say.”
“I do say.” She wrinkles her nose. “Now, tell me about your supposedly not-boring friend.”
“I’m not sure where to begin. Growing up, he was really close to his family.”
“That’s boring.”
“How do you figure?” he asks, tone full of laughing outrage.
“Happy families are always boring! It’s the unhappy families that are interesting. Tolstoy said so, even. Don’t you read?” She puts as much scorn into her voice on that last sentence as possible, as if she’s read more than a dozen books since she dropped out of high school at fifteen to go make a fortune as a model. The fortune and modeling thing worked out; the poor reading skills bit her on the ass once she changed professions and needed to learn as much about photography as she could to be successful. It still takes her half an hour to read a page. It’s pathetic. But if she’s read ten books in the last decade, Zac’s read two, and that makes her better than him.