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story
alone.”
    “Tempestuous? Is that what you’re calling
it? Here you called it a ‘delicious catastrophe’,” he said
gesturing toward the songbook.
    “Yeah, it was that too.”
    “The two of you made some great songs
together, though,” Thad said. Sioux was surprised by the ruefulness
of his tone, as though he didn’t want to acknowledge the fact. She
and Trig were good together. They had the Grammys and the
record sales to show for it. Too bad the aftermath of their
relationship had left both of them covered in huge gaping
wounds.
    “Yeah. Trig is a very talented man,” she
said, unable to keep the sadness out of her voice.
    He must have picked up on it because he
didn’t drop the subject. “Anyway, that’s not the story most people
know.”
    She exhaled heavily. She’d known this was
coming sooner or later. Might as well get it out of the way now.
She and Trig had been front-page news for years. Thad would be less
than human if he wasn’t curious about it. Their relationship had
been loud, vivid and worst of all, public. Oh so very public.
Amazing how they'd both reveled in that aspect of the affair.
Deliberately doing outrageous things to draw attention to
themselves, even to the point of using the media to incite jealousy
and convey messages to one another. They had brawled and loved in a
fashion that had kept more than one tabloid in business.
    “I know. According to the media he was the
bad boy rapper who led the pop princess into drugs, destruction and
more than one near-death experience," she said with a wry twist of
her lips. “Reality was almost the exact opposite of that. Daddy’s a
helluva P.R. man. You know how it goes with relationships: Two
sides and then the truth,” she said with a heavy sigh. “Most of the
time I felt like I was taking crazy pills, which, ironically
enough, are probably the only pills I didn't take!” It was a pretty
lame joke, but he joined her in the brief spate of laughter that
followed. Afterwards she stared into space as she struggled to put
her feelings into words. Funny how much harder it was to do when
she wasn’t focusing on writing in rhyming pentameters. Too much
opportunity to feel what she was saying. “Trig was my first love.
My only love really. I destroyed that with the drugs and assorted
craziness. I was hell-bent on wrecking myself and did a damned good
job of taking him down with me.”
    “Can’t you get back together? You’re clean
now and so is he, or so the gossip blogs say,” he asked, his gaze
fixed on her face with an intensity that made her shift
uncomfortably under his scrutiny and lower her own eyes. Despite
his focused stare, she got the impression that this wasn’t the
question he really wanted to ask.
    “Shame on you for reading gossip blogs, but
yeah, I’m really proud of him. But no. No. We can’t get back
together. I’m toxic for him. I ruined his life.”
    “Bullshit. You can’t ruin anyone’s life,” he
said.
    “Really? When I met Trig he rarely drank
more than a beer or two. Would occasionally smoke some weed if it
was passed to him, but that was it. By the time I was done, he was
a raging crackhead who would sell his soul for a rock. I introduced
him to drugs. He did them trying to hang with me.”
    “Yeah, but he made that choice. Did you put
the pipe in his hand?”
    “You weren’t there. You don’t know. You’ve
never had a relationship like that.”
    He paused and she watched as a vivid flush
rose high on his sharp cheekbones.
    Suddenly his amazing hazel eyes shuttered,
as though he’d totally shut down. “Yeah, you’re right. I have no
right to try to tell you anything about your love life. So are you
going to sing it?”
    “What?” Sioux asked, still distracted by the
sudden change in his expressive eyes. Clearly there was more to
that story, but due to her big mouth she doubted she'd ever hear
it.
    “The song. Are you going to sing it?”
    “Which one?”
    ““A Girl Named Sioux.” I think