Money For Something

24 - Shake It Off

**Willow**

Something was up with Ace. We hadn't been together all that long, but I'd come to know him well enough to know that over the last week something had dimmed his usual sunny disposition. Oh, he was still his usual unfiltered, irreverent, affectionate self with me, but I couldn't help but notice the way he'd taken to avoiding his friends and band mates.

Quite an achievement when you consider that were all sharing a house. A large house, but still it was obvious that he was either entering or leaving a room when they were doing the opposite. Or he was just plain absent when they were around. It was more than just a case of ships passing in the night.

The thought had occurred to me that our conversation, on the night we decided to make our marriage real, might have stirred up some conflicted feelings in him. I wondered if he was feeling some resentment toward them for their lack of support with the whole Crazy Jodie thing.

I still hadn't worked out if I'd developed extraordinary powers of observation, or if Ace's friends were unusually oblivious to his off mood, when Lucy and Kim unceremoniously burst into our bedroom one afternoon as we lay on the couch in a tangle of limbs.

I was perusing my parents' latest Instagram post and Ace was flipping through a dog-eared copy of 'Magician' by Raymond E. Feist. It had been a pleasant surprise to find that Ace was a reader. A shelf in the corner of our room, no doubt intended for decorative objects, was piled high with his books, battered old favourites along with his ever increasing to-be-read hoard.

"What the hell? Have you two not heard of knocking?" Ace struggled to an upright position leaving me floundering among the pillows.

Lucy looked apologetic, Kim not so much. "Sorry Ace –" Lucy started before Kim interrupted, "Ace we need to talk."

Hmm, so not just me who'd noticed his weird mood.

Wrestling myself free of the suffocating embrace of the couch I stood up. I needed to give them privacy to talk, the girls weren't just his friends, they guided the career of his band. "Would you like me to give you some privacy?" I asked, fully expecting them to agree. I wasn't in the band; they had every right to keep band business confidential.

"No!' Ace grabbed at my wrist just as Lucy said, "You're welcome to stay." So maybe not so confidential? Settling back down beside Ace I gave a pointed look at the fingers wrapped around my wrist. He released them quickly with a smile that was more of a grimace.

Lucy and Kim sat down in the armchairs facing the couch. I sometimes still found it hard to believe that the bedroom Ace and I shared was probably bigger than the entire apartment that Jack and I had lived in. I had absolutely no doubt that it was bigger than the apartment my parents had lived in when I was a baby.

Ace may have released his tense grip on my wrist, but his hand was clenched tightly around the edge of the couch cushion. The hard line of his jaw barely softened when I lay my hand over his and laced our fingers together.

"Right then, I'll start. Do you think you could give Josh a black eye and get the fuck over this stupidity sooner rather than later?" Kim's words might be matter of fact, but it wasn't difficult to hear the concern running beneath them.

"No, he's a tosser who can fuck off," Ace gritted out, jaw ticking. It wasn't anger in his voice it was deep, sharp hurt.

"Do you need to take a swing at any of the rest of us?" Lucy asked gently.

"Maybe, if the rest of you have the same fucked up ideas that knobhead has," he growled through clenched teeth. Poor Ace didn't look happy. This disgruntled ball of misery was not the man I'd met in Vegas and married.