Free Playing for Love at Deep Haven by Katy Regnery Page A

Smalley’s death. Oh, there
were many times during his sophomore year at Yale that he’d seen Violet with Shep and wished Shepherd Fucking Smalley was dead. But as
the weeks turned into a month and whatever window he’d had to win her back
decisively closed, he’d seen how good Shep was for
her. He was that easygoing, confident, mannerly sort of American blue blood who
was fifth-generation Yale and umpteenth-generation gentleman. By the time he
realized what he’d lost, Zach knew he couldn’t compete with Shep Smalley.
    Zach had gotten
his first tattoo, in fact, after the first time he saw them kissing. He’d been
walking from class back to his dorm when he passed them under the bridge that
connected the east and west sides of the dorm. His heart clutched, seeing her
held by the handsome blond frat boy, her head tilted back as another man kissed
her lips. Zach got drunk on cheap bourbon that night and woke up with a tiny
violet on the inside of his wrist, over his pulse. It was the only tattoo that really
meant anything important to him. The others meant things, but that was the only
one that truly mattered.
    “He was a good
man,” Violet said. She wiped her eyes, then turned to him with a weak smile.
“Please talk about something else.”
    “Yeah! Of
course. Um, so, I write music . . .”
    “You were always
really talented, Zach.” Her smile grew stronger, and she sniffled once, taking
another sip of Scotch. “That’s so great. What have you written? Anything I
know?”
    “Yeah, um, I’m
sure.” Which sellout rocker anthem was he least ashamed of? Hmm. Remarkably
difficult choice since they were pretty much all crap. “Have you heard of ‘Driving
Rain’? By the Mechanics?”
    “The Mechanics?
They’re, like, heavy heavy metal, right?”
    He nodded.
“Yeah. How about ‘ Slammin ’ in the Sun’? By Savage
Sons?”
    She shook her
head, looking uncomfortable.
    “Doesn’t matter.
It’s all shit anyway,” he said. “I haven’t written anything good in a long time.
But that’s about to change.”
    “The stuff you
wrote in college was great,” she said, smiling encouragingly.
    “The stuff you wrote in college was great.”
    “The poetry? It
was okay.”
    Okay? Is she crazy? Her poetry was epic. He looked at
her downcast eyes. “I expect you’ve written a dozen books of poetry by now?”
    “No. I wrote one
novel.” She averted her eyes and her cheeks flushed salmon.
    He knew about
her book, but he wasn’t ready to open that can of worms quite yet. “Why no more
poetry?” he asked instead.
    “It doesn’t
sell,” she said sheepishly. “I never told this to anyone, but I sent a
collection to an editor at Masterson. The publishing company. I never heard
anything back from them. It wasn’t good enough.”
    “I doubt that,”
he said, his voice rough and angry.
    Zach knew of Masterson
House Publishing. They were owned by the same media conglomerate that owned
Cornerstone Records. He passed their floors in the elevators whenever he was at
the in-house studio cutting a record or using one of the writing rooms. The
editors, getting on and off the elevators, all looked like stuffy, frustrated,
old-school suits. He suddenly hated them all for not giving Violet’s work a
chance.
    “But that didn’t
discourage you,” he said. “You still write it, don’t you?”
    “Not very often
anymore. And if I do, I don’t show it to anyone. It’s just for me. I can’t help
it, I guess.”
    “It would be a
huge fucking loss to the world for you to stop, Vile. I mean it. Your stuff was
the best—”
    “Zach—” she
started to protest, but the phone rang somewhere in the house, and she jumped a
foot. “Wow, that’s loud! Should we answer it?”
    “Nah. The
machine will get it.”
    They paused,
listening to the machine beep.
    “ Yo , Zachariah, you shithead! I called you a thousand times.
I just bitched out Johnny John and he finally gave me your number. I don’t. Want.
Ace. I want you . Think