Every Little Piece of Me

by Amy Jones

  “Ava,” Antonio said.

  “Don’t you dare say my name like that. Who the hell do you think you are?”

  She felt her cheeks flush as Antonio stared at her from across the balcony. “Guys, can we have a minute, please?” he asked.

  Javier wordlessly switched the camera off and went inside. Val stayed put, turning to Ava with a raised eyebrow. It was impossible to tell how much Val knew, but she suspected it was more than he let on. She gave an almost imperceptible nod, and he got up. “I guess I’ll go get more coffee and muffins for the stupid pigeons,” he said.

  “I thought we had a deal,” Antonio said, once Val had disappeared back inside. “We could do the scene about your dads if we didn’t bring up Eden anymore.”

  “Well, the deal’s off then, because you just did.”

  “Actually, you did. It’s always you.”

  “So what?” she snapped. Antonio didn’t say anything. She turned and leaned against the parapet, gazing out at the Manhattan skyline. Ever since she’d returned, she had been trying to remember what it was she’d missed so much about this city. Nothing seemed to move her anymore. “Why are we even here?” she asked.

  “Don’t get like that.” Finally, Antonio crossed the balcony and stood beside her, putting his arm around her. “This is a really great opportunity for you. You just have to let people in a little more.”

  “A really great opportunity,” Ava repeated, her words getting lost in the soft flannel of Antonio’s shirt. There was only one reason she had signed that contract for the spinoff, and it had nothing to do with opportunity. It had nothing to do with her anger, either, although it was easy for her to pretend it did. It had only been about Antonio. She tipped her head back, studying his face, as she had so many times in the past five months, trying to figure out what he was thinking. But she never could.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, stroking her chin with his index finger. “We can pick this all up tomorrow. I’m sorry I pushed you, okay?”

  Panic spread through Ava’s chest, the way it always did when Antonio was about to leave. Because leaving only ever meant one thing. “Val’s going out tonight,” she said. “You should stay, we could get some dinner.”

  “I wish I could.” Antonio kissed the top of her head and let her go. Then he walked back across the balcony and started packing up his gear.

  “But we’ll have the place to ourselves.”

  “Come on. You know I have to go home.”

  Home. Ava hated hearing that word come from his mouth, because the words to Molly always hung in the air after them, unsaid. Ava pulled her phone out of her pocket and instinctively opened the front-facing camera. She saw her own face, puffy and pale, and frowned. She flipped it around, and when she did, she saw Antonio put down his gear and stare at her. She gave it another try. “I was thinking we could order in from that new Thai place down the street, maybe watch some Netflix?”

  “A second ago you were ready to pull down the sun to burn me with it. Now you want to watch movies?”

  “Well, yeah,” said Ava. “I mean, I thought maybe we should have a talk about our future.”

  “Our future?” Antonio slung his bag over his shoulder. “Ava, what are you talking about?”

  Once, back at the B&B, Ava had walked into the kitchen while Antonio was on the phone with Molly, talking about Micah. They weren’t arguing, exactly, but Antonio’s tone wasn’t warm, either. “Tell him not to worry about it,” he said, sounding annoyed, as if the last thing he wanted was to be having this conversation. As if he was realizing right then that he had made a huge mistake in marrying her, in tying himself to this ordinary woman who only wanted to talk to him about ordinary things. That his life could have been so much more. His life could be so much more.

  At least, that’s what Ava had thought at the time. Now, she knew otherwise.

  “Never mind, just leave,” she said, storming into the apartment, where she went straight to her room and slammed her door, half hoping he would follow her, but knowing that he never would.

  Later, after she heard him leave, she sat on the edge of her bathtub, waiting for it to fill, and ran her fingers over the twenty-three tiny notches carved into the top of her feet, one for each time Ava and Antonio had slept together over the course of five months. She didn’t know why she did it. Looking at them most days made her feel sick.

  “Everything is going to be okay,” he’d said after that first time, and she’d wanted to believe him. She’d imagined the two of them back in Manhattan together after he left Molly, a cute little loft apartment, strolls in Central Park, coffee and croissants in quiet cafés, pizza on the floor in the light of a raucously pink sunset. Maybe Micah would visit on weekends, and they would take him ice skating, or to the zoo. She had her whole life scripted into a Nora Ephron movie when she’d put her pen to paper and signed herself up for another round of the circus of humiliation that was reality television.

  But Antonio’s version of “okay” had been something altogether different. And even though Val had slipped back into city life as if he had never left—establishing his position as the New York music scene’s number-one fanboy and the guy at the show who always had weed—since they’d been back, Ava didn’t know what to do with herself or how to keep from spiralling out of control. She didn’t have any interesting obsessions, any idiosyncratic hobbies, any adorable neuroses. Alone in the loft after the camera crew went home, she would wander aimlessly from room to room, pick things up and put them down again, sit on the balcony and stare out at the sky. She hadn’t even really been out of the apartment except to pose for her weekly publicity shot at whatever place was hot that week, walking in, doing a single circuit of the club, and then leaving without even getting a drink. After years of dreaming about coming back to New York so her life could begin again, now she just sat at home and waited for something to happen.

  And it was in those moments that she wondered: Was Antonio the real reason she had come back to New York? Or was it because of those cameras lined up against the wall? Was she afraid that without script editing and colour correcting, without the gleam of the key light softening her features and the boom mic capturing the slightest nuance of her voice, she would discover she didn’t really exist at all?

  Well, screw it, she thought, letting her foot fall into the scalding-hot water. She wasn’t going to stick herself up on a shelf for the night like a prop. She was done with sitting around and waiting. She switched off the taps and pulled out her phone, texting Val.

  Where are you going tonight?

  Show at Davenport. Y?

  I’m coming with you.

  She slid into the water, letting her phone fall to the floor.

  * * *

  When the pack of wild girls had all left, she found Val again, near the front of the stage. “That was gross,” she said. “I’m so sick of being surrounded by a thousand me’s.”

  “Sometimes I’m sick of being surrounded by one you,” Val said, but his heart wasn’t in it. His face was shining in the purple and blue stage lights, making him seem like a rapt disciple waiting to be blessed. Val was an aspiring musician, because of course he was—his secret no longer such a secret, sheet music and records littering the floor of their apartment, lyrics tacked to walls. He had a guitar strapped to his body as he made toast or brushed his teeth, his fingers diving down to the strings at every free moment, tripping over some exorbitantly irritating riff that he would play and replay, over and over until, Ava assumed, either he got it right or she went crazy and killed herself. He also knew all the latest New York bands, following them around from gig to gig, fixated as a groupie. She had to remind herself that Val was only seventeen, just a kid. For all his posturing, for him the world was still a place where beautiful things were made by passionate, dedicated people, a place where anyone could be anything and art was all that mattered. Somehow, amidst all the cameras and celebrity, Val had managed to keep this essential part of himself protected. Ava did
n’t know how. Her own shell had cracked long, long ago.

  This band, Align Above—for Val, they were the pinnacle of all the beautiful things, mostly because he had seen them play once in Halifax, hitchhiking into the city from Gin Harbour and sneaking into the bar even though he was only fifteen. And even though back then he’d never told her about anything he did, that night he had come home buzzing with an excitement that was so tender it was painful to watch, full of bold proclamations about them becoming the Next Big Thing. And then, they did. And, Ava knew, some tiny part of Val wanted to take ownership of that, like a sports fan wearing their hat at just the right angle takes ownership of their team winning—that somehow his belief directly contributed to their success. In some corner of his brain, he belonged to the band now. Or they belonged to him.

  From the tension in the room as the band warmed up, Ava knew that he wasn’t the only one. The crowd seemed to hum with a low buzz of energy that was slowly but steadily beginning to build. Ava wondered if the band did it on purpose, standing there and teasing the crowd with their instruments, stroking them just enough to get them fired up, and then pulling back, making their heads spin with craziness as they waited, waited.

  “Avalon,” she heard someone say behind her.

  “No,” she said, without turning around.

  “Avalon,” the voice said louder. Ava looked at Val, but his eyes were transfixed on the shadowy figures with their shadowy instruments. She took a sip from her martini and then slowly turned around to face Antonio.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “You know very well what I’m doing here. You go to a club, I have to follow you. It’s part of the contract.”

  “I won’t tell if you don’t.”

  “Val already told them. But I feel like you knew that already.” Antonio sighed the deep, heavy sigh of someone who sighed for a living, or someone who wanted you to know they sighed for a living. “What kind of game are you playing here?” he asked.

  “I’m not playing anything. I only wanted a night out with my brother.”

  “Right. You, who never goes out.” He ran his hands through his hair, exasperated. He glanced furtively around the club to see if anyone was watching, then leaned into her ear. “Is this because I wouldn’t stay with you tonight?” he whispered angrily. “You decided to go out and force me to stay with you?”

  “No one’s forcing you to do anything. Go home if you want.”

  “Some people have jobs, you know,” he said. “I need to do my job.”

  “Well then, maybe you need a vacation,” Ava said. “You know, a nice week on a beach somewhere with your beautiful wife.”

  “Ava…”

  “No, you’re right, that would be horrible. I think you probably need a night off. Here, let me get you a drink.” She waved at Justin Bieber’s backup dancer, blew him a little kiss. He smiled, made a drink motion with his hand. She nodded.

  “I don’t want a drink,” Antonio said, and Ava could see his jaw muscles working like rotors under his skin. “I want you to go to the bouncer and tell him to let Javi in with the camera so I can film your ridiculous shenanigans and then go home and get some sleep.” She couldn’t remember a time she had ever seen Antonio angry, even when she was at her worst-behaved. It thrilled her, in a way she couldn’t explain. It made her want more.

  “Fuck you, Antonio,” she said, downing the rest of her martini before letting her glass fall from her hand. It hit the ground with a smash, shards of glass flying everywhere.

  Antonio reached out and grabbed her arm, twisting it, hard. “No, fuck you, Avalon.”

  For a moment, Ava thought he was going to hit her. But instead, he switched his grip on her arm and dragged her across the dance floor to the back of the club, down a long hallway toward the bathrooms and out a back door into the alleyway. The door slammed behind him as he let go of her arm, swinging her toward a wall next to an overflowing dumpster.

  “Too bad Javi didn’t catch that on camera,” Ava said, rubbing her arm. “Did no one see that?” she yelled toward the door. “What is wrong with everyone?”

  “What is wrong with you?” Antonio said. “You’ve been acting crazy for weeks.”

  “You’re mad at me for being crazy?” Ava swung at him wildly with her fist but only managed to graze the sleeve of his jacket. She swung again, this time connecting with his upper arm. “You are the reason I’m crazy, Antonio. You. You are the reason.”

  Antonio drew back his shoulders, and Ava retreated against the wall, bracing herself for whatever came next. But all the anger had deflated out of him, and he dropped his head, sinking in on himself.

  “I know,” he said. “I know. I’m so sorry.”

  “Dammit,” Ava muttered. She pulled his head into her chest. “Stop it, okay?” She cupped her hand under his chin and lifted his head, kissing his mouth. “Just stop it.”

  Within seconds he had her skirt up and was pushing her against the wall. Ava wrapped her legs around him and pressed her forehead into his shoulder, letting her mind empty. For one glorious, shining moment she could feel it all drain away—all the stress and the pressure, the show and Val and Molly and everything—gone in a flash of heat and adrenaline. But just as quickly, it was over, and the world came roaring back in. She kept her legs locked around Antonio’s waist, feeling him still hard inside her, her breath coming in heaving gasps as she raised her head and rested her chin on his shoulder.

  “Are you going to leave Molly?” she whispered, her mouth inches from his ear.

  He pressed his forehead against the wall behind her. “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Right,” said Ava. She untangled herself from him and pulled her skirt back down, walking back into the club without turning around.

  “Wait,” said Antonio, grabbing her arm.

  As she opened the door, a wall of sound hit her. No, not a wall, a giant wave—a great breaker crashing down over her as she tried to swim out of the wake, limbs thrashing, lungs sputtering for air. Antonio still had a grip on her arm, but he was far away, drifting, suddenly irrelevant as Ava surfaced and moved through the crowd.

  There were four musicians on the stage: a guitarist, a drummer, a bassist, and, standing in the middle of them all, a woman with a red spotlight setting her hair on fire. The wave of sound built again, growing louder and more insistent. But this time as it reached its apex, instead of breaking, the singer stepped to the mic, wrapped her hands around the stand, and opened her mouth.

  For a moment, the sound of her voice hung in the room, suspended. Then Ava felt it rip through her, propelled by an engine of vodka and adrenaline, pulsing against her temples as if it were trying to push itself out through her skin. Any other time—sober, without the imprints of Antonio’s hands still on her back, without the screams of the wild girls still ringing in her ears—she might have stood outside of it, might have walked out of that bar as though nothing had ever happened. But now she found herself riveted in place as that voice split her open, exposing everything she had ever tried to hide, the darkest, most terrifying, desperate parts of herself spilling out as she stood there drowning in the sound, swaying almost imperceptibly to the beat of the drums like seaweed in a current.

  “Avalon,” Antonio said, but his voice was far away, and Ava knew that soon he would be too. He would give up and go outside to find Javier, and they would report everything back to Bob and Tess from LifeStyle, and maybe it would be the last time, maybe it would finally be the end of things for Ava and Val. Or maybe they would give them another chance, and Ava would fuck up again and that would be the last time. Either way, Ava could feel everything rushing away from her, as though she were standing on a beach, watching as her life drifted further and further out to sea, every moment thinking, I can still get it back, I can still save it, but still not moving, not doing anything, until finally it was too far gone.

  Instead, she let herself be pulled toward the front of the stage by the music, and watched the
band play through the rest of their set. When they finished, the singer turned abruptly and walked off the stage, and Ava felt herself plummet back to the earth.

  “I thought I’d lost you,” the backup dancer said behind her. “Are you okay?”

  But Ava kept staring at the spot on the stage where the singer had been. Her vision pulsating in and out, fading then clearing, riding the crest of her heartbeat.

  * * *

  Ava woke up the next morning in a haze of smoke and headache. The last thing she fully remembered was doing shots at the bar with a man who said he was a baseball player, although she couldn’t remember what he looked like or what team he played for. Everything else came in brief flashes—falling down in the bathroom, losing her earring, a cab ride. Snippets of a conversation with a woman on their balcony, could that be right? She grabbed her phone and checked her social media, but she hadn’t posted any photos, nothing to give her any ideas as to where the rest of the night had gone. She supposed it was probably for the best. LifeStyle hated it when she posted her own photos. Everything on her social media had to be carefully curated, planned, and styled, though posed to seem as natural as possible. A drunken selfie with a man who, let’s face it, was probably lying about being a baseball player didn’t exactly fit the bill.

  Ava tried to sit up on the couch and was instantly sent back down with a searing pain through her shoulder. It must have been the fall in the bathroom, she thought. She pushed herself up again, gingerly, and made her way to the kitchen. Maybe Val was up and could give her some insight on what happened last night. Even though she had no memory of him after the band stopped playing, that didn’t mean he wasn’t there. He always kept an eye on her. He was a good brother.

  When she got to the kitchen, she was surprised to find a redheaded woman, in a long, black T-shirt and bare feet, carefully and quietly rummaging through one of the drawers. “That drawer is mostly takeout chopsticks and packets of soy sauce,” Ava said.