“I’ve always made you wait,” I say with a smile, because I am punctually challenged. “I had to volunteer at Ethan’s school. Read to the class, library duty, you know.”
Kelly shoos away my apology for being ten minutes late. “No rest for the famous.”
We’re at our regular sushi haunt, Harajuku Sushi, a five-table restaurant wedged into a space about ten feet wide on Second Avenue. It’s a short walk from Ethan’s school and my apartment, and it’s just three blocks away from Kelly’s nearby offices where she runs her fitness empire. She’s an exercise physiologist with a master’s degree in sports medicine. But more important, she possesses the agility of a snow leopard, the stamina of a Clydesdale, and the winning personality of a peppy beagle.
She parlayed all that into Kelly’s Kickin’ Workouts, a series of ten-minute quick-fix workouts that have sold millions of copies on DVD and digital download. She’s the reason my sister’s arms are so spectacular. Natalie is a Kickin’ Kelly devotee. I like to say I am one in spirit. Mostly because Kelly uses one of my early songs as an intro into her Kickin’ Buns series.
That’s how we met—when her company called for copyright permission for one of my dancy-poppy songs. Naturally I said “yes” and have collected a nice royalty check and also a wonderful friendship.
I sit down and unbutton my gray coat and unwind my scarf. “You’re a rock star!” Kelly boasts, smiling ear to ear, her bright blond hair falling neatly in a page boy cut that somehow looks modern on her. “I have always wanted to say that and mean it, you know? Do you ever get those atta-boy e-mails when you’ve done a good job and your boss is like, ‘You’re a rock star!’ Double exclamation points and smiley faces, too. And you just want to gag. But you really are a rock star!”
“Kelly, when did you ever get an atta-boy e-mail from a boss? You run your own business.”
She holds up a chopstick in the air for emphasis. “Exactly, my friend. Exactly why I run my own business, so I never have to get one of those e-mails.”
She positions herself closer to the table and leans in. “Tell me everything. Every single detail. Don’t leave anything out. I want to know if Christina Aguilera is your new best friend, if P!nk is as cool as we suspect, and if Adam Levine is smoking hot in person.”
We order the lunch special, brown rice, hamachi sashimi and miso soup for her, with the hamachi traded out for an avocado roll for me, since I’m a vegetarian. I give Kelly all the details and after my report, Kelly methodically tucks her blond hair behind her right ear, then shifts to the other side to be symmetrical. She takes a sip of miso soup and says, dragging it out, “But…”
She knows we’ve arrived at the time to discuss the reason this lunch meeting was called in the first place. And it wasn’t to discuss my win.
I take a long breath. “Aidan wants me to go to a meeting. His support group thing.”
Her jaw drops. “Seriously? As if you’re a figurehead?”
Sighing, I say, “I know. It sucks, because I’m obviously completely supportive of g*y rights, g*y marriages, and people should be free to love who they want. So there’s a part of me that feels as if I’m supposed to go. But then there’s this other side that wishes he’d be angry or bitter or catty. That he’d try to take advantage of me, and wheedle money out of me or something. Or try to claim a portion of my Crushed royalties. But nope, he has to be polite Aidan, gracious Aidan. And now he’s asking so nicely about this group and helping other women. Like telling me he was g*y before he started dating Tom. Just a little courtesy heads-up. Hi, honey. We’ve been married for five years and have a kid. But I prefer dick. Wanted to let you know before I date Tom. Or Tooooom, I should say.”
But the truth is, Aidan was sensitive. He was thoughtful when he broke my heart, as weird as that may sound. He didn’t come home drunk and smelling of another guy. I didn’t stumble across g*y p**n on his iPad. And I didn’t catch him having an affair with a man at the gym. But the night he came out was the worst night of my life. I was dumbstruck and broken at the same time. I can still recall that sense of shock that my Aidan, my love, was no longer mine. It’s been a year now and the good thing is I don’t hurt like I did then. The glaring, gaping wound has closed.
And it’s about to be reopened, in a new, fresh way.
“He says there are other women there going through the same thing. And that makes me wonder if I should go. To try to help or something,” I say with a help-me shrug, the words coming out all choppy, because I’m honestly not sure what to do. I’m a bleeding heart indie musician; I’m all about supporting causes.
But still…
Kelly sighs sympathetically. “That’s a tough one. On the one hand, you have no obligation whatsoever to go to a support group. You know that, right?”
I nod, and she continues. “But on the other hand, you have such a good heart, and you’re always trying to help people. So maybe you go and you wind up helping some other women who are going through the pain you went through.”
I shake my head, wishing I knew what to do. So much of my life is lived on stage that I want to find moments where I can just breathe and live quietly. But I also know that the way our marriage ended can cause a particular kind of doubt for a woman, can feed all sorts of insecurities. And I want to tell all the other women going through this—It’s Not Your Fault.