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It was very late by the time Ally finally walked through the door, bone-weary and starving. The house was dark and silent, not her favorite thing to come home to, but after a minute Charlie appeared with enthusiastic kisses, at least.
“Hi silly boy,” she whispered, scratching his ears as they made their way towards the kitchen.
She stood over the sink eating handfuls of dry cheerios, breathing in the quiet. Her meeting had run long and her flight had been delayed and she felt like shit, but now she was home. She’d only been out of town for two nights, but these days even that felt like too much.
She looked around, suddenly emotional. Over the last few months she and Jack had been talking seriously about moving, finding someplace a little bigger. Mostly she was excited about it, but on nights like tonight, when she took such comfort just standing in her kitchen, it made Ally sad to imagine coming home to anywhere else.
Behind her she heard the floor creak, and she smiled. “Why are you awake?” she asked, mock-stern, not needing to look to know he was there.
Jack laughed, caught out, and wrapped his arms around her. “I wasn’t waitin’ up for you, if that’s what you were thinkin’.”
She turned and drank in the sight of him, shirtless, hair mussed. “Hi.”
“Hi beautiful,” he said lazily, leaning down to kiss her. “How’re ya feeling, you alright?” He studied her face. “You look tired.”
“Gee, thanks,” she replied, raising an eyebrow, but she shifted to lean heavily against him. “I’m okay. Nothing that sleeping til noon won’t fix.”
“Well good luck to ya,” he laughed, rubbing her back. “I think somebody we know will have something to say about that.”
Everything in Ally softened. “Did she go down okay tonight?”
“Oh, not a chance,” he said cheerfully. “Put up a real good fuss.”
Ally hummed in displeasure. She still felt guilty and awful every time she had to leave their daughter, even though she knew Jack was perfectly capable. Amelia was nearly two now and being away from her never got any easier. “I’m gonna go peek at her.”
“Okay,” Jack said, kissing her forehead. “Where’s your bag, by the door?”
Off her nod he went to collect her suitcase, and Ally crept down the hallway to stare at her baby, just for a minute.
***
She dithered a little longer in the bathroom getting ready for bed than was strictly necessary, trying to decide what to do. She almost never had the impulse to shield Jack from negative emotions anymore, or try to put off difficult conversations. They’d worked hard to be in a very honest place in their marriage; Jack had worked hard to be in a place where those kinds of considerations from others weren’t necessary.
But what she had to tell him tonight was… complicated, to say the least, and she hated to see him upset. She could let herself come up with a million excuses if she wanted to -- it was late, she was exhausted -- but waiting until morning just didn't feel right, either.
She sighed, made a face at herself in the mirror. No time like the present.
The moment she climbed into bed Jack switched off the movie he (hadn’t really) been watching and settled so Ally could lie against him, but she sat back against the headboard instead. “Did Bobby call you tonight by chance?” she asked, just as a way to begin. She knew if that were the case he’d have said something by now.
“No,” he confirmed, brow creasing. “Should he ‘ave?”
“Well Clayton called me just as I was just about to board my flight. He had some...news, so I wondered.”
“News?”
She took a deep breath. “We’ve been invited to perform, next month.” She hesitated a beat, biting her lip. “At the Grammys.”
Jack just stared at her, silent, for a long minute. “We ?”
She nodded slowly. “Yeah.”
“They want me to sing,” he said, voice flat and disbelieving.
“They want us to do a song off the album, yeah.”
He didn't seem to know how to respond to that, and the blank look in his eyes made Ally’s heart race.
She reached out and took his hand. “Listen, Clayton said the producer he spoke to was very nice and understanding. Totally willing to work with us. And they’d probably take me on my own, if it came to it, or if I wanted to do something with another artist. But Clay said they wanted to be clear that you and I together is their first choice.”
Jack shook his head, still looking haunted. “I dunno know why they’d ever want that.”
“Well, it was always a possibility when we were nominated,” she said softly. She bumped his arm. “People love a redemption arc.”
His lips curled derisively. “People love ratings for their shows. People love to watch someone fuck up so they can laugh.”
“Well you’re not going to fuck up,” she said, matter-of-fact. “And you know, some people do just like to hear us sing.”
He ran his hand through his hair and sighed. “Ally, I’m sorry, but I think...no. No.”
“Okay,” she said, hitching one shoulder, knowing full well that wasn’t the end of it.
He sighed again. “Being nominated is enough of a mind-fuck for me, you know that.”
“I do know.” She’d never seen someone look so conflicted as he had the morning the nominations were announced. And though he hadn’t come right out and said so, she honestly believed he would rather they lose Album of the Year than have to get on that stage and give a speech, or even stand beside her while she spoke. Which she did understand, obviously.
She slid closer and wrapped her arms around him, and he dropped his head to the crook of her neck. “But you still think I should do it,” he mumbled against her skin. It wasn’t a question.
She pulled back to meet his eye. “I think you can do it.”
“Ally…”
“You came with me last year, that took a lot of guts.” Ally had presented an award at the most recent ceremony, and Jack had attended for the first time since… everything, a nerve-racking experience for them both.
He waved dismissively. “I didn't walk the carpet and I stayed in my seat the whole night. This'd be a little different.”
“It was a big thing, Jack,” she insisted. “But listen, I’m not here to convince you of anything, alright?” She waited until he met her eye, making sure he was really hearing her. “If you truly don’t think this will be good for you, then we won’t do. That’s it, done.”
Jack nodded, looking pained.
“I do think you should at least think about it some more, though,” she added, cocking her head. “It’s the middle of the night, we don’t have to decide anything right now.”
“Yeah, alright,” he said eventually, still sounding reluctant. “I promise I’ll think on it.” But then some of the tension left his face and he chuckled ruefully. “Not sure I’ll be able to keep from thinking about, even if I wanted to.”
“Okay.” She released a long breath and felt the knot in her stomach unwind a bit.
Jack took her face in his hands and kissed her, tender and sweet. “Don’t stress, it’s not good for you.”
She had to laugh at that, don’t stress, of course, but she fluffed her pillows and slid down under the covers, so very ready to be done with this day.
Jack switched off the lamp and curled up behind her, pulling her close. His hand snaked under her shirt and came to rest over her belly where a gentle swell was just starting to make itself known, still their secret for a least a little while longer.
“Sweet dreams, darlin’,” he breathed against her ear, and his calloused fingers moved in soothing little circles, and Ally was asleep before she could reply.
***
Bobby called the next morning just as they were finishing breakfast. “Well, well,” Ally smirked when Jack showed her his phone with a roll of his eyes. Bobby and Clayton -- her own manager -- had basically been working as a team the last year, and there was no way Bobby hadn’t found out about the Grammy invite last night. He’d certainly known before Ally had.
But now that it was done, she was glad she had been the one to tell Jack. The relationship between the brothers was better now than it had ever been, to be sure, but they still weren’t very good at talking about anything remotely emotional.
Jack stepped away to take Bobby’s call, and he didn’t say much of anything after he hung up, disappearing into the den. Ally could hear him messing around on his guitar and she left him to it, not knowing if that meant he was thinking or trying not to think, but stopping herself from trying to analyze him.
In the afternoon he re-emerged out into the yard where she was trying -- unsuccessfully -- to relax with Amelia and Charlie. He scooped the baby up, making her squeal, and then said to Ally, “I’m gonna run down and talk to Mark for a while, okay?”
Mark -- Dr. Whitman -- was the therapist Jack had been seeing for years, since he’d first been released from inpatient care following his attempt. “Okay,” she nodded, pleased. Mark had been instrumental in Jack’s progress over the years, and if he was going in for a session today that meant he must really be giving performing serious consideration.
He squinted at her, obviously sensing her thoughts. “Don’t read into it,” he grumbled, kissing them all goodbye. “I’ll grab dinner on my way home, wha’d ya feel like?”
Here at the end of her first trimester Ally’s appetite still changed hour by hour, and she pulled a face with a shrug.
“I’ll call you later then,” he chuckled. “Be good to mama,” he said to Amelia, swinging her back to the ground, and a few minutes later Ally heard his motorcycle roar to life.
“Naptime?” she chirped hopefully to the little face looking up at her.
***
Jack didn’t say anything about the Grammys when he got back, or after the baby went down for the night, or as they got into bed, and Ally didn’t push it, even as she found herself growing more and more anxious. Long after he’d fallen asleep she was wide awake, her mind whirring.
From the minute Clayton had told her about the invite to perform all she’d thought about was how Jack would take it. What it would mean for him to be back on that stage, how she could support him.
She felt slightly ridiculous, realizing she hadn’t once thought about whether she actually wanted to do it herself.
The truth of it was, Ally had never attended a Grammy ceremony without at least some measure if dread hanging over her. Even that first time she hadn’t really enjoyed the experience. She’d been worried about Jack before they’d even left the house, and the night had gone quite sharply to hell from there.
But she still went, every year, and every year she felt a little more comfortable. The secret, she had found, was staying meticulously in the present. Never, never, allowing herself to look back.
She was worried that wasn’t going to cut it this time, if they really did get up on that stage together, in front of everyone.
She blew out a breath and rolled closer to Jack, burying her face against him.
The problem was, she found it virtually impossible to disentangle that night at the Grammys from everything that had come after.
The months that Jack had spent in rehab where she was alone, feeling pulled apart by her love for her husband and her dreams for her career, everyone around her with a fucking opinion.
Or the last night of her tour, when she had come off stage looking for Jack and somehow ended up in a hospital room wearing her costume, throwing up into a garbage can and screaming at Rez and thanking god that her husband had overdosed before he had a chance to hang himself.
That had been rock bottom, mercifully. But there had still been a lot of bad days after that, for both her and Jack. It had taken them a long time to pull themselves back up into the sunlight.
And she did have her own therapist, did believe that there was potential for valuable lessons in even the worst experiences, but still. That didn't mean she enjoyed dwelling on any of it.
In some ways the passage of time made looking back more difficult, not less. Thinking about her life now it was unbearable to imagine everything she would have lost, everything she would be without, if things had gone another way.
She flopped over in bed again, feeling a twinge of guilt when Jack mumbled and shifted in response beside her.
She knew she needed to find a path through it. To figure her shit out, to find a way to reckon with the past. Because she was so tired of agonizing over the goddamn Grammy Awards.
***
When Ally woke the next morning the sky had barely begun to lighten, and she was surprised to realize Jack wasn’t in bed beside her. She glanced at the monitor but the baby was still in her crib, still quiet. It was a rare thing for Amelia be the last awake, and it seemed a shame to waste, but Ally got up anyway, shrugging into her robe and wandering from the room.
She found Jack sitting on the patio outside the kitchen door. He looked up a little sheepishly as she joined him, stubbing out a cigarette that was only half finished. He’d been “cutting back” for quite some time now, though all that really meant was that he smoked just as much as ever but didn't do it around Ally or the baby. Since she’d gotten pregnant again he’d been even more stealthy, though she wasn’t actually fooled.
This morning she just laughed and rolled her eyes good-naturedly. “Honestly I’m a little jealous,” she said, settling onto the bench beside him and putting her feet into his lap. “I think I could really go for one right now.” She snagged his coffee instead and took a long swallow.
“Didn’t sleep so good?” he asked, gazing at her fondly.
She shook her head and he responded with a grim nod, his smile slipping.
He looked away, staring out at the trees. She watched him, followed the rise and fall of his shoulders, his fingers drumming against each other.
“Why’re we doing this?” he said abruptly, turning back.
“Are we?” she asked lightly. “Doing it?”
He slumped forward to rest his elbows on his knees, let his head hang. Ally pulled her feet back and shifted beside him, slipping her arm around his waist.
“Mark said the same as you,” Jack said after a long minute. “That he thinks I can do it, if I wanted. That it might be a good thing.”
She hummed an acknowledgement, waiting.
He let out a long breath and looked up at her, hair in his eyes. She reached out to smooth it away.
“I guess I just don’t…” He shrugged. “I guess I just don’t feel like I have anything to prove, you know?” She nodded, and he went on. “And even if I did, I think we’ve already proved it. We put out the exact record we wanted to put out, said exactly what we wanted to say. And people listened.” He smiled, eyes shining. “What else is there?”
Ally felt herself returning his grin and she leaned down to kiss him, her sweet talking man.
“You’re right,” she said, pulling back. “You don’t owe anybody anything.”
He sighed, looking at her carefully. “But you wanna do it.”
“Yeah,” she admitted, biting her lip. “I do.” She’s been up half the night thinking about it. “Look, I don’t give a shit about what any music industry assholes think about me, or you. But it’s obvious this show still holds power over us -- the last few days have proven that.”
“Fair enough,” Jack said, with a jerk of his chin.
“After five years I just want to take it back, you know? Own that stage, instead of it owning us. Put it behind us for good.”
Jack screwed his eyes shut and shook his head slowly, running a hand over his beard.
“I’m not trying to guilt you,” she insisted, worried she’d pushed too hard. But he huffed out a laugh, surprising her.
“Fuuuuck, woman.” He squinted at her sideways.
“Jack…”
He reached up to cup her chin, suddenly looking very solemn. “You’re right. Let’s do it.”
She blinked, emotion flooding her. “Are you serious? Just like that?”
“Yeah,” he said, stroking her cheek gently. “I’d mostly made up my mind already anyway. I’ve been out here a while.” He grinned. “And ownin’ that stage does sound pretty fuckin’ great.”
“Okay,” she said slowly, strangely feeling like she’d been talked into something, though she was fairly certain the opposite was true.
“Just promise me somethin’.”
“Anything,” she said, ready to offer the world.
“Next year,” he drawled, reaching up to trace the plunging neckline of her robe, “we skip the whole fuckin’ thing and you let me take you to Bali or Fiji or somewhere they’ve never even heard of the fuckin’ Grammys.”
She laughed, already feeling lighter. “I’m prepared to agree to watch from the couch,” she said, shivering slightly as the robe slipped off her shoulder. “But given a whole year who knows what you’ll be able to convince me of, if you try hard enough.”
_____________________________________
It was surprisingly quiet in their dressing room, considering the scale of the production taking place just outside. Jack sat watching Ally steal a nap, fiddling with his hat and trying his best to think of tonight as just another show.
They had toured the album over the summer, and it had been the best experience of Jack’s career. His twenty-year-old self would probably find that hard to believe -- performing sober, sharing a hotel suite with his wife, their kid and her nanny -- but it was true. He’d never played better, felt more connected.
He was having a hard time finding that connection tonight.
Just being in this building, the energy of the place, was enough to throw him off. And Ally’s mood all day, amped and anxious and watchful, hadn’t helped. But she was resting now, and he was trying to be calm.
Probably his only actual memory of that night -- not something he’d been told, after the fact -- was an image of her face, makeup running, that orange hair dripping wet, eyes absolutely haunted.
He was also trying very hard not to think about that.
In rehab he had clung to it, that image of her, turned it over and over in his mind like a talisman, burned it into his heart. He had used it like fuel, like his salvation, his whole reason for getting sober -- that look in her eyes.
It hadn’t taken him very far in the end. But he knew better than that now; knew what it really took to stay clean. And beating yourself up over something you couldn’t change wasn’t it.
So he sat backstage at the Grammys and watched her face now , five years on, not haunted, not dripping or running, but relaxed in sleep.
She looked like an angel, sitting almost entirely upright in an armchair, enveloped in an enormous poofy dress specifically chosen to hide her belly, her hair all done up with some elaborate headband thing. His girl.
She was the greatest miracle of his life. The place from which all other miracles sprang.
She was the reason he was doing this. The reason he did anything, really -- her and Amelia. Ally didn’t like when he said things like that -- codependency isn’t healthy Jack, he could practically hear her -- but it was the truth. Without them what would he be?
So he worked hard, every single day, at being a husband and a father to be proud of, because there was no other option.
None of this was easy for Ally either, he knew that. She remembered everything he didn’t. But she had always said she wasn’t embarrassed of him or their struggles, and no one could say she didn't walk the walk in that regard.
She showed up to events like this with her head held high, gave candid and genuine interviews, supported an organization that assisted youth with mental health and addiction issues -- gave speeches, even.
He would never be as brave as she was, he knew that, but he could try.
A sharp knock at the door abruptly brought him back to reality, and a PA poked her head in. “Fifteen minutes,” she said briskly, and Jack nodded his thanks.
He heard Ally stir, and when he looked over she was blinking at him, looking flustered. “Was I asleep?”
Jack laughed, getting up out of his seat. “I think you were just restin’ your eyes.”
Before she could say anything else her hair and makeup team bustled in and started fussing, which Jack took as his cue. “I’ll be right outside,” he said, putting on his hat and making for the door, but Ally grabbed his hand and pulled him to a stop in front of her.
“Hey,” she said softly, eyes darting over his face, but whatever she saw there evidently passed her test because after a moment she gave him a brilliant smile. “I won’t be long,” she promised.
Sarah was already doing something to Ally’s lipstick so Jack kissed her fingers instead, trying to keep out of the way, and stepped into the hall.
Bobby and Clayton were there, and his band, people who had supported him the past five years on his slow climb back to himself, and for the first time Jack felt a kind of… if not excitement, then contentment, in the decision to do the performance. Whether their album won tonight or not, this, right here, was an achievement. This group of people getting to this place, together, healthy and whole, was something else.
“Okaa-aay,” Ally trilled from behind him, and Bobby clapped his shoulder with a nod, eyes warm, and then they were moving, led by their efficient PA just offstage to await the signal.
From this vantage he could hear the audience much more clearly. Their host, some late-night guy, told a joke and everyone laughed, and suddenly Jack felt adrenaline race through him, dread pooling in his gut. Their dress rehearsal that afternoon had gone fine and he’d been trying to remember that, but apparently having an audience made all the difference, and not in a good way.
He scrambled for his earpieces, thankful -- for the first time ever -- for the buffer they would provide.
Ally looked at him sharply, obviously reading his shift in mood. “Jack,” she said grabbing him by the elbow, “hey, look at me.” He met her eyes, wide and unblinking. “All you have to do is sing, alright? That’s it. Just sing for me.”
He nodded, feeling some of his panic drain away. Sing for her. If nothing else, he could do that. Sometimes he had a hard time remembering what he’d ever sung about, in the forty years he’d lived before he met her.
Ally smiled and leaned in, lips brushing his ear. “All ya gotta do is trust me,” she whispered, putting on her silly growly voice, her favorite joke. “That’s all ya gotta do.”
He smiled despite his nerves, holding her tight. “I love you.”
“I love you,” she said, pressing a swift kiss to his throat, right where his pulse was jumping, and then the show cut to commercial and they were being shuffled out onto the stage.
Ally grabbed his hand and tugged him along, shooting him a reassuring look over her shoulder, and he followed her, like he always would, out into the light.
-o-