Love on the Edge of Time Read online

  Elation flooded Kylie and she internally smacked herself to stop that, but she couldn’t stop herself and immediately went to the possibility that if he were home, maybe this would not be the only time they’d ever meet. Maybe they would meet again someday.

  “I had made a promise to Dr. S that when I got back from this tour that I would commit myself to getting healthy. Body, mind, and spirit.” He played with his coffee cup, lips moving slightly, but no sound emerged as he formulated his thought, “And between you and me, if I’m still going to have a band, I really need to get my shit together.” Looking down, he shook his head, “I can’t believe I just told you that.”

  “It’s okay.” Not seeing herself as particularly nurturing, Kylie was surprised to find she was reassuring him. Wanting to reach out and touch him, she didn’t, fearing he’d see her like every other fan tugging at pieces of him until he was fragmented.

  “Anyway, now that I’m back, I want to make a commitment to get serious and…” he paused.

  “Begin regression analysis via hypnosis,” Kylie finished his sentence.

  Jesse looked up from his feet. Stunned. Then slowly nodded his head. “Are you doing it?”

  With an almost imperceptible nod, she confirmed.

  Kylie could feel pulses of tension radiating off Jesse as his right leg bounced to a beat only he could hear. “Are you concerned about doing it?” she probed his anxiety.

  “I am. Lord knows what demons I’ll unleash. Aren’t you afraid of that?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “I keep searching for my demons, hoping that maybe they have the answers.”

  “Are you finding them?” With his elbows on the wooden bar, he leaned close. “There’s so much I want to know.” He paused. “Are you okay with talking to me about this?”

  Clicking the straw between her front teeth, “Yeah, I guess so. I dunno. I’m not really good at sharing stuff with people, sharing feelings. So, I don’t know how helpful I’ll be.” Absentmindedly gnawing at the straw as she thought through it, “I have no one to talk to about this, so that would be good.” And you’re Jesse Fucking Winslow and you want to have deep conversations with me regarding stuff that if I talked to most people about, they would think I’m bat shit crazy.

  “Did it happen right away?”

  “No. Not really.” Kylie slurped at the bottom of her drink. “I mean initially there was nothing. Then it was like a still picture or a word or a pervasive thought that would just permeate my brain.”

  “Let me get you another one of those.” He pointed to her now-empty drink.

  “No, I think you should stay right here. I’ll get it. Miraculously, people have not figured out you’re in here. If you get up, someone is bound to notice.”

  Jesse nodded. “Well, at least let me pay for you.”

  Kylie waved him off, but he insisted until she finally took the twenty dollars he offered. “What can I get you?”

  “Venti drip, black, with three sugars.”

  Laughing, “That should keep you revved up,” she called over her shoulder, smiling broadly at his lopsided grin. Oh, God, I should have let you get the coffee. Now you’re seeing my ass as I walk away. Kylie went into pageant girl mode, it was as easy as flipping a switch as she tossed her hair and gracefully maneuvered through tables that didn’t seem to be placed so close together when she was thinner.

  Pretending she looked like she did the day he saw her on the catwalk–wanting to look like that for the first time in forever–Kylie shook her head. Fool, he lives with one of the most beautiful women on the planet. Do you really think he’s going to give a flying fuck if your ass looks like it’s in a relationship with Colonel Sanders or is starved to near perfection? Umm, no. Just get the coffees. One of the hottest musicians of our time is just here to pick your brain, not pluck your body like a six-string.

  “Thanks.” He took the coffee from her and brought it to his lips.

  Kylie watched him sip it, his full, sensual mouth on the lid. It was impossible not to imagine what the bow of his beautiful top lip would feel like pressed just under her jawline.

  “What?” he asked, smiling.

  “This is just really bizarre. Who you are and what we are talking about. It’s totally surreal and,” lowering her voice, “oddly intimate.” As the tail end of the sentence filled the space between them, she could feel the heat emanating from her face.

  “I really had no right asking you.” The apology tumbled from his lips.

  “No, it’s okay.” Kylie felt the supple smoothness of the leather under her fingers as she reached out and laid a hand on his arm, this time being the trespasser. Looking down, she was appalled that she had entered his space, like a groupie making her play for the night, her soft caress suggesting an intimacy far outside the boundaries of her comfort zone, boundaries she had established when he ran his fingers through her hair. With a jerking motion that made both of them jump, Kylie pulled her hand back, viewing her renegade fingertips with disdain. She felt like she’d cheapened the moment and didn’t know how to get back what she felt was a special and unique connection.

  Jesse changed that for her. “I’m really glad I found you,” he started. Then stopped. A scowl forming a twin set of parallel lines between his eyes. “I mean,” he stumbled, “I mean, maybe I won’t have to go through this alone. And you won’t either, if you don’t want to.”

  Kylie couldn’t look at him. For some reason she didn’t want him to look at her as a groupie. But, what was shocking was that she wanted him to view her as a partner in this process.

  Jesse Winslow’s partner. How could that even be?

  “I saw something today,” she confessed. “It was a really long time ago. Like 1870. I don’t know.” She shook her head. “And I can’t shake it. I can’t shake the feeling. I was a nurse and it was during a war and I was in love with one of the patients. He was a wounded enemy soldier and everyone told me I couldn’t love him. But I did. He was my sunshine in a dark and rotting world. And I cared for him for months and we dreamed of our future.”

  “Do you know if you ever had that future?” The intensity of needing to know was evident in the way he leaned in when he spoke.

  Kylie reached under her sunglasses, not removing them, to swipe away sudden tears. “No. I wasn’t able to save him in the end. He was executed trying to escape. It was so emotional. My pain at losing him. Having to live on without him. The love. How much I loved him. It was overwhelming.” Thoughts shot out in staccato bursts, ripping through her heart.

  Jesse raised a hand, covering his own heart, as if trying to quell his own pain. “Wow. That’s intense. And you knew he was an enemy soldier?”

  “Yes. I just knew so much. It was like it all downloaded in a nanosecond. His name was Gunther. And, Jesse, I’d give anything to see him for one more second. To feel that overwhelming love. It was intense.” Kylie lifted her frozen drink, pacifying herself with the straw. “Claire said it would get more intense the more we did it and this was how it started.”

  Leaning in, his tone low, “How many times have you done it before?”

  “Today was the thirteenth. I mean it didn’t last long or anything, but this was the first time I didn’t walk out wondering did something really happen or not? Was I just making it all up?”

  His lopsided grin almost made her gasp. “Okay, I’m going to do this.” He nodded. “I’m so fucked up and out of control.” And then, “I guess I’m not so out of control or I wouldn’t know how fucked up I was or give a shit about losing it all. And I do. I give a shit. I just can’t stop myself from fucking up.”

  With a smile that she had no inkling was causing emotions he couldn’t grasp and forming stanzas he would one day write, she said, “I hear ya.”

  “I’m going to do this,” he muttered again.

  “Well, good luck with it. And don’t beat yourself up if nothing comes to you for a while. Like I said, today was my first big breakthrough and it was my thirteenth regression.�
� Kylie zipped up her faux fur.

  “Did it give you any answers to your problems?”

  Shrugging, “I don’t know. None of it makes sense yet.”

  Taking in her words, he observed, “You don’t seem to be in a bad place.”

  Kylie laughed as she turned to walk away. “My name is Kylie Martin. Google me.”

  And with that, the former Miss New Jersey left rock ’n’ roll bad boy, Jesse Winslow, seated on a high stool in a Starbucks wondering what overwhelming issues could be so prevalent in her life that she was resorting to regression therapy with a very pricey uptown psychiatrist.

  Chapter 3

  “I didn’t know you smoked,” Kylie’s nose scrunched up and he thought how cute she was, in a kid sister kind of way.

  “Only when I’m stressed.”

  “What are you stressed out about?”

  “Everything. I haven’t written a single song since I’ve been back, the guys in my band aren’t talking to me, my girlfriend puts a load of pressure on me, I’m detoxing myself from alcohol and all the other shit I put into my system.”

  “Shouldn’t you be doing that with a doctor or a sponsor?”

  “I’ve done it so many times with doctors, I could open my own clinic.”

  “Why do you want to die?”

  “I dunno. Sometimes the pain is overwhelming.”

  “What pain is that, Jesse?”

  “I dunno. I just know it’s there. Don’t you feel it, too?”

  “Yes. I do. I can’t find what I’m looking for.”

  “Yes. Yes. That is exactly it.” He was astounded that she understood.

  “You smell like a goat.”

  “I smell like a goat?”

  “Yeah, those cigarettes smell like goat shit and you smell like a goat.” Kylie smiled at him.

  “A goat,” he mused, laughing. “You just told me I smell like a goat.”

  The hand on his shoulder was rocking him hard. “I have to go. C’mon, Jesse, wake up, I have to go.”

  Rolling over, his hand raised to shield his half-stuck lids, “You’re a goat?” he asked, quickly trying to bridge the gap from his dream to the screwed-up face of Claudine’s early morning wrath.

  “I’m not a goat. I said I have to go.” She was annoyed. “You knew I was leaving for Paris this morning. It’s 7:15 and I have to go.”

  “You’re taking a day flight?”

  “Ugh, Jesse.” She tossed her long blonde hair over her shoulder with the mere flick of her head. “You are still planning on meeting me there in two weeks, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah, sure.” He sat up in bed and ruffled his hair. “Martin,” he said aloud, not meaning to.

  “Martin?” she repeated, regarding him suspiciously.

  “Yeah, it was just a name I couldn’t remember.” She had told him to Google her. It seemed like a lifetime ago, on the other side of his detox. The initial physical trauma was already behind him when they had met, and that day had been a good day, a rare early good day, that was finally becoming more the norm.

  Three weeks had passed. Each Tuesday he had planned on going to Starbucks and wait there, hoping to catch her as she passed by after her appointment with Dr. S. But he couldn’t do it. The anxiety, nervousness, and mood swings during that phase of his detox were not pretty. Getting his ass to Dr. S’s and to the holistic center that was guiding him was work enough. Calcium, magnesium, and herbs were helping him sleep a lot, easing the conscious hours, and he knew that was what would get him through.

  His mind had felt dulled, and for the life of him, he could not remember her last name. As hard as he tried, it was out there but he couldn’t quite grasp it. He thought about calling her in a few weak moments when things got overwhelming, but what would he say? When she had gotten up to get them coffee, he had programmed his number into her phone, taking a selfie of himself in camouflage. He could see her face so clearly these last few weeks, but his mind felt too vacuous, incapable of making the necessary connections to remember her name.

  Kylie Martin.

  Later in the day, he dragged his laptop onto the bed and Googled the name.

  Miss New Jersey Tossed Out of the Miss America Pageant. There was the headline, almost two years old, and the image was of a beautiful redheaded girl with green eyes and an enticing, full, pouty mouth.

  The mocking wit in her eyes and lustrous wave of her dark titian hair were the giveaway. Wow. What made you do this to yourself? And Jesse instantly knew she was hiding. He could almost feel her trauma. The Kylie Martin pageant queen he was stalking on Google images, had to have been at least sixty to seventy pounds, or more, lighter than Dr. S’s patient, the girl he’d met up with at Starbucks.

  Examining screen after screen of the poised beauty in pageants and fashion shows, he kept expecting to find a light in the girl, something to show him that she was happier when she was thin and successfully building a modeling career. But there was no such light. Her eyes flashed vacancy, her vacuous, camera-perfect smile confirmed the void.

  What are you hiding from, Kylie? Women would give their left arm to look like you. Rare beauty, were the two words resounding in his brain.

  Setting the laptop on the bed, he reached over and plucked his old Gibson acoustic from its home, leaning against his nightstand.

  Em, G, Gm

  Jesse closed his eyes as his fingers took flight over the strings, a warm bass tone emanating from deep in the body of the forty-year-old six-string.

  Where ya gonna run when there’s no place left to go

  Where ya gonna run when there’s no place left to hide

  Those are skyscrapers I can’t scale

  Chasms I can’t cross

  Shells that can’t be broken

  Oh, baby, I’m at a loss

  I want to tell you all my secrets

  I want to bare to you the depths of my soul

  I want to take you on a journey

  If only you would go

  Who would have ever thought that the former Miss New Jersey would be his muse? With his favorite acoustic spooned under his arm, paper, journal, pen, pencil, and laptop strewn about around him, Jesse Winslow sat in the middle of his bed, in an empty apartment, and wrote the first four songs for his next album.

  In interviews, he would later describe the experience as if he were being guided and comment that this newfound sobriety was the greatest and most creative high he’d ever experienced.

  Filling the apartment with soaring guitar riffs, haunting piano solos, honest words from deep, dark places and empty take-out food containers, the bones of Jesse Winslow’s next album, Fade to White, were born of a wanting, a need to know, and a deep-stirring gnawing at his soul begging to be recognized, as the lead singer reveled in two weeks of solitude.

  ••••••

  I felt something today. He texted after a session with Dr. S.

  Jesse?

  Yes. I put my number in your phone when you went to get us coffee.

  You sneak! ☺

  I’m hoping by that smile it means you’re not mad at me.

  Not mad. What did you feel?

  It was only a passing glimpse. The buildings were old and stone. Maybe Ireland.

  So, you saw something?

  Yes, but it was really fleeting and the feeling was stronger than the visual. You know how when you think of a certain time in your life, there’s a whole “feeling” that goes with it. It’s like multiple senses all come together to form that imprint that will always signify that time.

  Yes, I think I know what you are talking about. Sometimes a smell can bring it back for me. She wrote back to him.

  Well, that is what it was. For a split second, it all came together. And then it was gone. And I wracked my brain, was it something I know? And it’s not anything I know. But it was real and it was part of my memories. Does that make sense?

  Totally. I totally get it. I’m so excited for you. You’re chipping through.

  LOL. Break on th
rough to the other side. He couldn’t help himself and wondered if she’d get the reference.

  Now you’re stealing the other guy’s material.

  Jesse smiled at her response. Miss New Jersey knew the classics. Impressive, indeed.

  LOL…he’s dead, he won’t know. Or maybe he will. It is real, isn’t it?

  I think so.

  I think you might be right. He found himself nodding as he typed the words. Have you seen more?

  Yes. But nothing major.

  Gunther?

  You remember ☺. No, not Gunther. A different time. In France.

  Really? I’m headed to Paris for a few days. Need me to check out anything, Miss New Jersey?

  Ah, so you stalked me?

  Yeah, it was weird. I’m usually the stalked, not the stalker.

  I’ll bet you’ve had your share of stalkers.

  The stories I could tell you!

  When there was no response, he pinged her again. Want to meet at Starbucks after your next session with Dr. S. I’ll be back from Paris by then.

  Okay. Hey, go have an éclair for me at Patisserie Stohrer when you’re in Paris. I love that place.

  I’m more of a Napoleon kind of guy.

  LOL. Nah, you’re way too tall.

  LOL. That’s true. You are funny. Okay, I’ll see you next Tuesday.

  Jesse was smiling as he tossed his phone onto the bed and grabbed his laptop.

  Patisserie Stohrer. There it was. He clicked on the link. Perusing the pastries, Jesse’s mouth watered. A gorgeously photographed fruit tart nearly jumped off his screen. He could taste the fresh raspberries, both tart and sweet on his tongue, feel the little seeds crunch between his teeth.

  Putting the address into his phone. 51 Rue Montorgueil. Second Arrondissement. He’d have plenty of free time while Claudine was working. Back on his laptop, he clicked on Google Maps and dragged the little person icon to street level.

  As he navigated through the cobblestone streets, past alleyways and sidewalk cafés, attempting not to slam into buildings, while trying hard to negotiate Google Earth on the laptop’s touchpad, there was one prevalent thought ricocheting through his brain, loud and clear, so clear that it felt as if it were on a frequency that was being broadcast from deep within his temporal lobe. The message kept repeating as if it were on a loop.