to Keep (Soul 1)*
Down to My Soul (Soul 2)*
Refrain (Soul 3)
All: A Grip Short
Dear Reader:
If you have not read the GRIP Series—Flow, Grip & Still—this story contains spoilers. It originally appeared in the Cocktales charity anthology, which is now out of print. This is the only place you can find this short story now. A box set EXCLUSIVE! Enjoy and thank you for your support!
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GRIP - Chapter One
I hate waking up to an empty bed.
Scratch that.
I hate waking up without my wife. I draw that distinction because there was a time when I loved stretching from one corner of a California king to the other. After growing up in tiny, cramped spaces—which were sometimes shared with various family members, depending on their “situation” at the time—when I had my own space, my own bed, I luxuriated in it. But it only took sleeping with Bristol once to make any bed she’s not in feel just . . . empty.
It isn’t even light outside yet. Shadows cloak our bedroom. I press the little light on the cheap ass watch Bristol won for me so many years ago. This thing has been to the shop a lot, but it’s still ticking enough to show me it’s four in the morning. I’ve only been asleep two hours after a long night at the studio.
With the drapes drawn, barely a sliver of moonlight penetrates the darkness. I caress the rumpled, still-warm spot where Bristol should be and stare up at the ceiling. What my eyes can’t see, my memory paints on the dark canvas overhead. A Ferris wheel with us at the top sharing our first kiss, Bristol’s short, sweet breaths and urgent hands intoxicating me. I see Bristol, gorgeous against a backdrop of scarlet sand in the Dubai desert. Bristol under a night sky spilling snowflakes like secrets, and me on my knees, asking her—shit, begging her—to marry me. I see her standing in a mountaintop chapel with majestic, white-capped peaks outdone by the devotion shining from her eyes as I lay my heart at her feet, verse by verse in the vows I wrote for her. I see her weeping, broken, devastated on the hardest day of our lives. And I see her joy-lit face when she gave birth to our children
Our life together is panoramic, stretched wide in ugliness and pain, vast in love and passion. I wouldn’t trade one minute of it and I savor every day we have together. Not everyone gets to spend this life with their soul mate. Some walk all their days with half a heart, with the ache of something missing. I know how that feels, and I hope to never feel it again.
Despite the exhaustion weighing me down, I swing my legs over the side of the bed, scrubbing a weary hand over my face. Not bothering to grab sweatpants, I walk from our bedroom and down the hall in my briefs. First stop is Nina’s room. Our little girl sleeps like a log. She zips all over this house with boundless energy, a two-year-old tornado, leaving a trail of toys, soiled clothes, and hair bows in her wake. Every night it’s a fight to get her to bed. Once she’s asleep, though, not a peep.
Her nightlight illuminates the plump curve of her cheeks and the soft cloud of dark, curly hair fanned out on her pillow. I draw a sharp breath through the emotion tightening my chest. What I had with Bristol was all-encompassing before, but having Nina added another dimension to our love, to our lives, that I couldn’t have conceived before my daughter. Words are my creative currency, but this feeling defies words, goes beyond the scope of what I can articulate. It didn’t exist until this little girl did. It was born with her. Family has always been important to me, but this is another level. The people under this roof are my whole world. Not the Grammys or the fame or the money—none of it counts for shit without them.
I’m still smiling about my daughter’s out-like-a-light state when I pad down the hall to find Bristol. She’s in the nursery feeding our five-month-old son Martin. I hope I never get used to this, to the way my heart contracts when I see her breastfeeding. Or cooking dinner. Doing Nina’s hair. Brushing her teeth. Putting on makeup. Practicing yoga poses. Bristol doesn’t have to be doing anything monumental to make my heart stop. Just the fact that she’s