Secrets

Part Two: ATS -- Distracted

[December 20, 2009]

It was quiet in the car, and had been for miles. Anna glanced over at Mike, his right arm draped over the console and long fingers resting on the gear shift, his left hand on the leather wrapped wheel of her Mercedes SUV. Her eyes slid up his forearm, up his neck to his messy long hair, to the sunglasses covering his tired, sensitive eyes. It was impossible to determine his mood with his eyes covered. She wanted to know what he was thinking but didn't want to interrupt the silence.

With restraint, Anna suppressed a sigh and turned back to her right, looking out the window as nature passed them by at a perfectly consistent seventy miles per hour. Chester would know. The thought came suddenly and without thinking she reached for a lock of hair, twisting it between her fingers as she argued with herself silently. Surely she knew her own husband better than his best friend did.

But did you ever really know another person completely? What was to stop someone, anyone, from holding things back? There were plenty of moments, if Anna were to stop and think it through, where she felt that Mike was hiding something, and always, always, it revolved around Chester. The longer they had been friends, the more time they spent holed up together writing and singing, the closer they had become, and the tighter Mike had held information about Chester. It felt at times that Mike protected Chester's secrets more fiercely than he protected her own.

Secrets. There aren't supposed to be secrets between us. As she bit down on her lip and wondered how she'd ever broach the subject with Mike, he surprised her.

"What's on your mind, honey?"

Mike was glancing between her twisting fingers and the road, and Anna could see the small crease of concern between his eyes, not hidden behind the sunglasses. Immediately she dropped her hand into her lap and smiled, knowing the nervous habit had outed her. "Just ready to be there. Tired of being in the car." She smiled brightly in his direction, and didn't miss his lips pressing into a dissatisfied line.

"Ann..." he started, his eyes on the road. "You don't fidget with your hair unless you're worrying about something. What's on your mind?" he asked again. Sometimes Mike was too observant. Like Chester rubbing his thumb over the palm of his hand, Anna's hair twisting habit was an anxiety based reaction that Mike recognized immediately.

Without thinking, Anna blurted out the first thing that came to mind. "I am tired of being in the car. But I was also thinking that I hoped you could really put work away while we're here. Focus on us." It was a way of saying, 'leave Chester out of this' without coming out and saying it. Anna wasn't sure when it had happened, but it seemed like Chester was always there, in every moment of Mike's day, whether he was there or not. Having left Otis behind at her parent's for the week, Anna was keen on reconnecting with Mike, and it wasn't a complete lie to claim she was worrying about his ability to relax. But the unspoken words- her worry over whether he'd be able to go a week without talking to Chester- didn't seem to register as they normally might have, because Mike was distracted.

He shifted his right hand to the steering wheel as he lifted the left to run through his hair. I don't know what to say. I'm always thinking about work. I could be mixing right now. We got those group vocals done on Iridescent, but I haven't put it together yet... soon that will be ready. One more thing I can check off the list.

His mind went to the studio, to the afternoon they'd spent arguing over choruses and drum parts, electronica and guitars, everyone with their own ideas and nobody really on the same page. It had been Brad's vision to have everyone in on the Iridescent chorus the second time through, and even though their less experienced singers had been reluctant, Mike had managed to convince them all into giving it a try. That was, of course, after he came around to the idea himself.