“Did you put those in there to see what he would do?” Zac’s eyebrows draw together, torn between laughter and judgment. “Did you? God, you’re terrible. How can I love you so much when you’re so terrible? He ate that whole bowl to make you happy, you know. You didn’t do that, did you?”
Like she’s going to admit to that right now—what is she, stupid? “And he doesn’t like anything good, and he called me Mrs. Trevor again last week—”
“He’s like that with you because he’s too polite to acknowledge that you’re monster spawn who doesn’t appreciate manners. He calls you Mrs. Trevor because he assumed you changed your name and I never corrected him because I’m a fucking caveman and I like hearing it, all right? And he has opinions. He just doesn’t say them in front of you because he knows you’ll tell him all the ways he’s wrong, and he doesn’t like to argue the way we do. He’s not boring. He’s nice.”
“Same difference.”
“I don’t know how you can think that the man who wrote ‘Bedrock’ is boring.” Zac starts mopping up the high chair mess.
“He didn’t write that,” she says, startled.
“He did so. Do you think I don’t know my own music, woman? I’m not making shit up.” He throws a balled-up napkin of baby drool in her direction. It glances off her foot and rolls under the fridge.
She stares at him for a moment. “I thought you wrote it together.”
“Nope,” Zac says. “I barely touched that one. Hell, even on the songs he does let me contribute to, he does 95% of the work.” He pauses. “Like 90%. 85, tops.”
She can’t stop staring. Why can’t she stop staring? “Nuh-uh. You write your songs together. You both won that Grammy for writing ‘Livid.’ I remember you complaining all the time about how you couldn’t get that riff right—you were humming it so much I was ready to kill you. Don’t tell me you didn’t write that song.”
“I help him write the harder guitar stuff,” Zac says, shrugging. “He doesn’t know the instrument as well as I do, and he can’t always judge what I’m capable of playing. I wrote most of the solo on ‘Livid,’ so I got a writing credit. But the words are always his. The melodies are his. ‘Bedrock’ is entirely his.”
“You go to the studio every day when you’re working on an album.”
“Yeah, because he gets wired and insecure when he’s working and he needs someone to tell him if something actually sucks or if he’s being neurotic. Look, half the time he gives me a melody and a time and a key and sticks me in the corner out of the way and comes back a couple of weeks later to see what I have. Sometimes he likes what I’ve done. Sometimes he scraps it.” He fiddles with the safety strap on the high chair, pressing his thumb against the buckle. “I was more involved when we first started out, but these days he doesn’t need me as much. Half the time I don’t even know what he’s working on until it’s done. Like with ‘Bedrock.’ Because he wrote it.”
“But—” Her brain is whirling. Absently, she kneels to pick up the stray spinach leaf and fish the napkin out from under the fridge. She can’t imagine Cal wired and insecure, let alone capable of writing something like ‘Bedrock.’ “But that song is so fucked up.”
He starts laughing at her again. “Yes, it is.”
“Cal couldn’t write that. I always thought the fucked-up shit came from you.”
“You’re so sweet to me, baby. He still wrote it.”
“But I like that song.”
“Stranger things have happened, I guess, than Anya Alexander liking something that Cal Keller did.”
“It’s so dark, though,” she protests, throwing the napkin and spinach in the trash. “How did he write that?”
“Everybody has a dark side,” he says, laughter subsiding. “And don’t go thinking that just because he’s not boring that you should ask him to crawl into bed with us. He’d still say no, and it would be awkward.”
“Would he?” she says again, thoughtfully, and Zac’s gaze moves away. Tellingly, she thinks. “Zac—”
“Don’t. Not like this.”
“So you’re not averse to playing again. It’s that you think Cal is too polite to fuck his best friend’s wife as a birthday present to him.”
“Don’t,” Zac says again, frowning at her.
“I’m not doing anything. It’s only talking.”
“Just don’t.” He turns back to the baby, whispering to him lowly enough that all she