Oreos For Breakfast: Chapter 35
By the Paperbag Princess and Pumpkin Coach

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"Come to the studio now ," Jeremy said, and I looked at the cell phone in my hand. I didn't even remember answering it. The last thing I remembered was…

Justin. Yeah.

The last couple of days had been really weird. I blamed the damn industry party the other night with too many people from my old life. I liked my new life- working on the album, being in New York in my new apartment, Ben. Those were all good things.

But then there was Justin and Nsync and that made me think of the tour where all Nick and I did was fight. And there was my little fling with Justin that he wanted to be more. And Jeremy and Lola?

Really?

"Rache?" Jeremy asked again, and I sighed.

"You woke me up, J."

"Some of us haven't slept. I've got a song. Meet me at the studio."

"Did you call the others?"

He hesitated for a second. "Not yet."

That pause was weird. "Do you really have a song?"

"I don't lie about songs, Rache. Yes. I have a song. You'll… You need to hear it first."

"Is this some 'Rachel, take me back song'? Because I am really not in the mood."

"Get over yourself. Lola is way cooler than you ever were."

"Yeah, I'm not in the mood for comparisons, either. Is this a 'my new girlfriend is so much cooler than you' song?"

"Turnabout would be fair play, but no. Just meet me at the studio. Or I'll come over there."

"I'll be there in half an hour."

"Good, because we're recording the first take. I still think we missed something on 'Stigmatized' by getting James' second take."

"You're a freak, J. You'd better get me a bagel for getting out of bed before ten after the night I had."

"Onion, right?"

"You've got to be kidding me."

He laughed. "I know. Sesame. And a hazelnut latte. It'll be there."

He had my coffee, and my bagel with veggie cream cheese. He even got the cream cheese right. I took a sip of my coffee and sat at the chair at the mixing board. "Is this set up?"

He just looked at me. "It's me, Rache."

"Have you been here all night?"

"No, just about fifteen minutes. It's set up for me and a guitar."

"Cool. Go ahead, then."

He picked up a guitar and I looked at it. "Where did that come from?"

"Early Christmas present to myself. I think I'm entering a blues phase."

"Thank god the album is done."

"It will be after we record this one."

He took his guitar and a piece of paper into the booth, settling in as I took a bite of my bagel. One of the levels was off, and I adjusted it, glancing at him to make sure he didn't notice. Jeremy had very specific ideas about the control board. Some of them were wrong, but they were his ideas.

"Recording?" he asked, and I pushed the button.

"Wow me, baby."

Holy shit. This was so the Jeremy I'd fallen in love with, all those years ago, even if he was singing about how screwed up we were. I loved him like this, immersed in the song, his hair in his eyes. He wasn't looking at me, glancing at the words in front of him every once in a while, but I couldn't take my eyes off of him.

He was. He was the boy I'd dreamed about for years, in my bedroom on Long Island, when all I wanted was this life I had now. It hadn't turned out quite the way I'd planned, but for a little while, I'd had the moody, sensitive musician boyfriend that I thought I wanted.

Art was not Jeremy's forte. But he had sketches of me. He liked to try to draw me while I was performing. We both loved the musician in each other more than anything else. And he had some sketches of me naked. Music and sex. You couldn't build forever on that, but we sure did try.

I had to blink back tears at that one. It took a song, but that was one of the sweetest things he'd ever said to me.

Hey! Okay, he was right, but still. I had made the most of a lot of sadness, too. He wasn't the only one who could write heartfelt breakup songs.

I kept staring at him as he sang the chorus again, and he met my eyes on the final line.

Finally, it was silent, and we just looked at one another, separated by the glass of the recording booth. "And that's the last song I'm ever writing for you."

I laughed, turning off the recording equipment. "Bullshit. I'm your muse, baby."

"Am I still yours?"

He wasn't kidding, so I gave him the answer he deserved. "Always, Jeremy. Forever. No matter what happens, we will always have this." I motioned to the studio, but he knew I meant more than that. I meant the music we made together, the words and melodies that we conjured out of everything else in our lives. We could write songs without each other, but they were never complete until the other one passed approval.

He put down his guitar and was next to me in an instant, pulling me out of my chair and into his arms. "I love you, Rachel," he whispered.

"I know," I answered.

"But I'm falling in love with Lola."

"Good," I responded, smiling against his shoulder. "You can do both."

He let me go, sitting on the couch. "It was easier for you. When you fell in love with Nick, you still hated me."

"I did not!" I protested, taking my chair at the console again.

He just arched an eyebrow at me. "Yes, you did. And sometimes I was crazy jealous of him, and you loved that."

"You were jealous of Nick?" He gave me a look, and I shrugged. "Okay, you were. Sorry."

"I know he was jealous of me."

I nodded. Jeremy used to drive Nick insane. "Is Lola jealous of me?" I asked.

"A little, I think," he said. "You know her. She likes to be cool, so she'd never say she was, but… she is." He looked up at me. "What about Ben?"

"He's fine." He was. Then again, I never talked about Jeremy with him. "But… I'm not sure that he… gets us, really. I don't talk about work much with him."

"Work? We don't work, Rache. We make music and for some bizarre reason, people give us money for it. It's not work."

I spun back and forth in my chair, considering that. "True. But Ben doesn't get that. He's not like us, Jeremy. He's a normal guy."

"Why are you dating him again?"

I scowled at him. "Because he's a nice, normal guy."

Jeremy shrugged. "Whatever. My New Year's resolution is to stay out of your love life."

"Thank god," I said, and he smiled.

"Okay, so it took me getting a love life to get out of yours. I know."

"As long as you realize that."

"Shut up. But… Nick got okay about us eventually, didn't he?"

"Sorta. We had a lot of other problems there at the end. You were like… the boring old problem that he brought up just because it always worked. If he was mad at me for no good reason, he'd bring you up."

"I'm a boring old problem? I'm supposed to be the love that you could never get over. We're the star crossed lovers that can never be together!"

I laughed. "You're a freak. It was a boring old problem by then. Lola will be fine. She knows us. She's seen us fight about a zillion times. She knows we drive each other insane."

"It's a thin line between love and hate."

"Yeah, but… you wrote her that great song yesterday!"

He smiled. "I'm giving her that for Christmas."

"You better be getting her something else, too. It was nice getting songs when we were broke, but you have money now."

"I got her stuff," he said scowling at me. "I just thought it was a good present."

"It is a good present," I agreed, smiling at him.

"I'm going to her family's on Christmas Eve."

"Wow," I said. "That's big."

"They're big," he said, looking a little nervous. "It's her mom's family, who is one of seven kids."

"And they're Italian. How many grandkids?"

"Like a million. I think she told me there will be forty people at her grandmother's, eating twenty kinds of fish."

"Isn't it supposed to be seven fishes on Christmas Eve for good luck or something? Lots of Italians at my high school."

"Lola tells me it has to be at least seven. If you go over seven, it's fine. She's making lobster ravioli."

"Really?" Lola cooked?

"Lola cooks. Who knew? She's really good at it, actually, but she says her grandmother's stuffed squid is amazing."

"You hate squid."

He nodded. "And you're not Jewish."

I threw my empty coffee cup at him and he laughed, ducking. "I don't pretend to be. So what if I ate some latkes at the Hanukah party? I'm not converting."

"Because I know you wouldn't give up the Christmas eve party for anyone. Is Ben coming?"

"No. He goes on a skiing trip with friends every Christmas. I'm joining him there on the twenty-sixth."

"You hate skiing."

Damn. Caught. "Maybe I've never really tried."

"You'll ski, I'll eat some squid. The things we do for the people we love. He couldn't miss a day on the slopes for your party?"

"I didn't ask him to."

I glanced away from Jeremy, but I knew he was considering me. It was weird, talking about my love life with him. He knew me better than anyone in the world. Well, except James.

"Huh," he finally said. "He's just the rebound guy, isn't he?"

"No!" I protested. "He's more than that."

"But you're not in love with him."

"We haven't even been together for a month!"

"I think it was about two weeks with Nick. And you started the whole thing at your place, didn't you?"

"And look how that worked out. No, Ben and I are just taking it slow. He'll ski and I'll have family Christmas, then we'll be together on New Year's. That's something, right? Spending that holiday together?"

"I bet he'd come to your family Christmas. If you wanted him there."

I glared at him. Damn Jeremy. I didn't want Ben there. We weren't at that point yet. Jeremy and Nick were the only guys who had ever spent Christmas with me.

"Aren't you supposed to stay out of my love life?"

"New Year's resolution. It's only December twenty-second."

My phone rang, and I grabbed it out of my bag. It was Ben. "Hey, sweetie," I said, turning away from Jeremy. "Are you back in town?"

"Yeah," he answered. "Where are you?"

"The studio."

"Can you have lunch? We need to talk."

He sounded weird. Distant. Shit.

"What is it?"

"We'll talk at lunch. Meet me at Nobu."

Well, if he was going to break up with me, at least I'd get lunch at Nobu.

He was late. Ben was often late, because work held him up, but that just gave me another ten minutes to worry. We'd talked last night and he was fine. I'd told him I was going out with Nsync and he laughed and told me to get their autographs for Jessa.

Autographs for Jessa. Shit. I'd forgotten about that.

Chris' clothes might still be in my dryer. Maybe she'd like his socks or something.

"Hey, work held me up. I got Connie to call and hold our table, though." His kiss was quick, not like he missed me at all.

Fine, he'd only been gone for like thirty-six hours, but still. We followed the waitress to our table and I shut my menu without looking at it. "What do we need to talk about, Ben?"

He glanced over his menu at me. "You mean you don't know?"

"No." I really didn't.

"You didn't see the Post today?"

"No."

Shit. Shit, shit, shit. There were pictures of me and Justin dancing, weren't there? I thought all of the photographers were outside, but evidently not.

Shit.

Reaching into his briefcase, Ben pulled out a copy of the Post, already opened to Page Six. "It says, and I quote: "Rachel Connor seems to have dropped her lawyer boyfriend in favor of ex-boybander Justin Timberlake. The two were seen gyrating together at Club Luxe last night. "They were all over each other," says a mutual friend of the couple. "They're perfect together. Justin needs someone with Rachel's maturity." Page Six isn't sure if canoodling in corners is mature behavior or not." And there's a really nice picture of you."

He held it out to me, but I didn't look at it. "Ben, really, we-"

He laughed. "Sorry. I just couldn't keep it up any longer."

Why was he laughing? "Keep what up?"

"Rachel, did you honestly think I was jealous or something? I met the guy. I know you're not interested in that cocky little bastard. He was arrogant and obnoxious and I know you have better taste than that. After all, you're dating me."

"Now who's cocky?" I asked him, and he got up from his chair, coming around the table to kiss me.

"I'm cocky," he said, smiling at me. "Because you're here at lunch with me now."

"Only because I know you're buying. This place is expensive."

He wasn't jealous? Not even a little?

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