Echoes of the Heart

by Casey, L. A.

  “You wanna talk about it?”

  Risk’s question lingered as I filled my kettle up with water, plugged it in and flipped it on.

  “It’s just weird,” I said as I prepared two cups with tea-bags. “I never knew something like that could be so scary. I felt stuck, trapped.”

  “It sucks. I know.”

  “I’m sorry you have to deal with that all of the time.”

  “I’m sorry you had to experience it tonight. I’ll be more careful with you out in public in the future . . . being home kind of makes me forget who we are, you know?”

  I nodded because I understood what he meant. Everyone in town loved the guys because we were all so proud of them, but Risk was just Risk to us and he’d let that familiarity catch him off guard.

  “Next time we’re back here, we’ll have security with us. Everything is a mite easier with our team.”

  I quickly understood the importance of having a security team. It would have made fending off the strangers with cameras a whole lot easier, that was for sure. I shook off the incident and put it behind me because dwelling did no one any good. I looked down and softly smiled. Oath was super cuddly, like he could sense I had had a bad night, so I snuggled him and kissed his head.

  “My best boy.” I nuzzled him. “Aren’t you my best boy?”

  When he meowed in response, Risk laughed.

  “Why am I jealous of a cat?”

  I put Oath down and he pattered over to where his food and water station was set up next to the doorway of the kitchen. He barely even glanced at Risk. Risk, on the other hand, was keeping an eye on him, which amused me.

  “I don’t know,” I turned and leaned against the counter-top. “Why were you jealous of a sixteen-year-old boy hugging me in the diner tonight?”

  I had wanted to ask him that question since I saw the way he looked at me after Sky gave me a hug. Risk’s smile vanished at the mention of it.

  “Let’s put it down to a bad case of ‘mine’.”

  That surprised me.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah,” he answered. “It pissed me off to see that kid hugging on you. Do I have any right to feel that way? Nope. Do I still feel pissed off? Yep.”

  I crossed the space between us.

  “Risk,” I placed my hands on his arms. “You hear how silly this sounds, right? He’s a child.”

  “I’m aware.” His eyes searched mine. “I just . . . I don’t like anyone touching you, Frankie.”

  Like he said, he had no right to feel that way, but it was crazy of me to like that he didn’t want anyone touching me, whether it was a kid or a grown man. At the same time, it just confused the hell out of me. I had no idea what we thought we were doing. We had kissed on the pier and now Risk was admitting he didn’t like a boy, or anyone, touching me. It was weird ground to walk on because we weren’t in any sort of relationship and I had to remind myself of that.

  I loved Risk but I had to remind myself that we had no future.

  “Let’s just forget about it, okay?” I smiled up at him. “You’re leaving soon for London, I just want us to have fun and spend time with each other while you’re here. No drama, no complications, just us being friends again. Okay?”

  Risk nodded. “Okay.”

  We were both in agreement, but a voice in the back of my head told me that both of us . . . we were lying.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  RISK

  It was Friday, two days before we had to leave Southwold and go to London.

  It was interesting to me that just days ago I was dreading coming home to Southwold because of Frankie, and now I was dreading leaving because of her too. A handful of days, that was all it took for her to mess my head up a million different ways. She said we were friends, but when I kissed her, she kissed me back somethin’ fierce. When I hugged her body to mine, she squeezed me to the point of pain. When she looked at me, I saw emotion for me in her eyes. Or at least I thought I did. I wasn’t sure if I was imagining her reactions to me because I wanted them to be real and not just some figment of my own imagination.

  It was fucked up, but that was just the way things were.

  “When we leave on Sunday,” May said, interrupting my thoughts. “Are you gonna come back?”

  “Come back after the gigs?”

  “No,” my friend replied. “Are you gonna ever come back?”

  I looked from the road, to May, and back again.

  “Of course,” I answered. “I’m not leaving Frankie again.”

  I realised that I had made that decision the second I saw her in the PE hall of Sir John Leman’s High School. Now that I had her back in my life, there was no way I could just carry on without her in it. I couldn’t do it; I didn’t want to either.

  “See, this is where I’m confused.” May sighed. “You don’t live in England, you stay in your house in London for maybe a total of six weeks throughout a year. You don’t live in Southwold at all . . . Frankie does.”

  My hands tightened around the steering wheel.

  “I’m fully aware of all of that, May.”

  “Are you really?” he pressed. “I don’t think you are, main man, because ever since she forgave you for being the world’s biggest dickhead in the diner a few days ago, you’ve wanted to spend every minute of the day with her. I don’t give a fuck what you say, you are not just friends. Even back when you were friends you were never really friends. You both have always just been . . . more.”

  He was right. Frankie and I had always been more, we could never be ‘just friends’ with one another. I knew that and deep down she knew that too.

  “I don’t know what to tell you, mate.” I sighed. “I thought seeing her again would go differently. I thought maybe I’d see her and feel nothing and that I’d be able to fully move on from her with a clear head but fuck, May. She’s all I can think about, I want her so badly I can’t think straight.”

  “Want her how? For sex? As your girl? What?”

  “All of the above.” I grunted. “I want her, but I can’t fucking have her. Nothing about our lives has changed. She couldn’t cope with the thought of long distance before we blew up and now with me being famous, and having no privacy, I think any chance of her wanting to have a relationship with me is out of the window.”

  “So what the hell are you both doing?” May demanded. “I’ve been watching the pair of you. You’re both gonna get in trouble, man. I can see it happening.”

  “Just leave it,” I quipped. “Please, May. We agreed to spend time together and just enjoy one another until we leave on Sunday. I don’t want to think beyond that, I just want to stay in the now with her. I just want this tiny bit of time with her. That’s all.”

  My friend sighed deeply.

  “This is gonna be bad, you know that . . . right?”

  “Probably,” I swallowed. “But I’ll deal with whatever comes my way once I can have these few days with her.”

  “But what about when things go back to normal but this time you guys keep in contact? What about when she gets a man?”

  Instinctively, my hands clenched around the steering wheel.

  “Main man, you can’t even handle the thought of her with someone else . . . what will you do when it actually happens?”

  I couldn’t answer him because I didn’t know what I would do. Die, probably.

  “She’s still into me,” I said. “I kissed her on the pier the other night and she kissed me back. She was hungry for me, man. She wants me as much as I want her, I know she does.”

  “That’s great,” May said, dryly. “But fuck all has changed. She’s still in Southwold and you’re not.”

  I remained silent.

  “Let’s say both of you realise you’re right for each other and you can both do long distance until Frankie’s situation changes with her mum because the woman is, I hate to say it, dying. Let’s say you get back together . . . d’you really think Frankie can handle being thrust into our lifestyle? The pap
s, the fans, the white-hot spotlight on her life. After last night and how she reacted, I don’t know if she can hack it, man.”

  May was speaking nothing but the truth and the weight of his words was crushing me.

  “I know she’s not meant for this life,” I hissed. “She’s a small-town girl, she can’t come on tours and live in America and have a camera in her face whenever she leaves the house. I’m stupid for even thinking she can. I know this, May. I know. I just . . . I just can’t stay away from her.”

  “You’ve given up one addiction for another.”

  “Don’t ask me to quit on her,” I glanced at him. “I can’t do that.”

  “I’m not asking you to, man, I just don’t want to see you back in that pit you were in. You broke my heart when you crawled your way down that hole before. I won’t let you do that to yourself again. I won’t.”

  I stopped at a red light and looked at my best mate.

  “I never meant to hurt you, or anyone, with the shit I’ve done but I know I did. I found a reason to start my life over and that reason isn’t Frankie, it was me. I got sober for me. If I get hurt over her again, I’ll cope. I won’t go back to that place. I promise, May.”

  He bumped his fist with mine and I knew he believed me when he nodded. We drove to Mary Well’s then, we were both hungry for some breakfast and, of course, I wanted to see Frankie. Knowing she was working the morning shift at the diner made Mary Well’s the obvious spot for us to head to. When we pulled up, my eyes widened. Out at the front of the diner, there was a police car. Joe, the owner of the diner and Anna, the waitress that May screwed, were speaking to an officer. May and I got out of car after I parked.

  Anna spotted me and she glanced over her shoulder.

  “Is everything okay, Anna?”

  She looked back at me and nodded. “Just a little incident, everything is fine though.”

  “Where’s Frankie?”

  Anna jabbed her thumb over her shoulder. “She’s inside.”

  “Go ahead,” May said to me. “I’m gonna stay here for a bit.”

  Anna’s attention shifted to May and just like that, I was forgotten. Without another word, I walked into the diner. I saw Frankie leaning over the counter next to the till, she was looking at something. When the doorbell rang, she turned. I smiled her way but the look I received in response caused that smile to falter. I approached her and she turned her back to me and began wiping down the counter. She wasn’t a rude person so there had to be a reason for her to give me the cold shoulder.

  “Hey, Frank.”

  She mumbled a response that wasn’t coherent to me.

  “Is everything okay?” I questioned. “Joe is out front talking to—”

  “I said I’m busy and I can’t talk. Are you deaf?”

  I didn’t even have a second to ask what was wrong, but I knew something was wrong. Frankie turned and walked directly into the kitchen of the diner. The ice in her tone had caught me off guard. I watched her go for a moment before I snapped out of it and followed her. She was in the kitchen on her own and from what I could see when I entered the diner, the place was devoid of customers. It was just the pair of us.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Staff only!” Frankie jumped with surprise, turned to face me and quickly put her hand behind her back. “You shouldn’t be in here.”

  I frowned. “What’s happened?”

  “Nothing,” Frankie blurted. “Nothing happened, so you” – she glared at me – “can leave.”

  I bristled at her tone.

  “I’m going nowhere until you tell me what the fuck is going on.”

  “Don’t you speak to me like that, Risk Keller,” she snapped. “Get out.”

  Joe and Anna entered the kitchen just as Frankie shouted at me.

  “Frankie,” I said firmly. “What the fuck did I do?”

  “Stop cursing!”

  Christ.

  “Tell me what I did to piss you off so much and I will. And while you’re at it, tell me why the police are here.”

  Joe and Anna glanced at one another, then left the kitchen without a word spoken, leaving us alone once more. I was getting more and more pissed off by the second so I crossed the space between us.

  “What. Happened?”

  “Nothing.” She shifted her stance. “I handled it.”

  “Handled it?” I repeated. “What the fuck is ‘it’?”

  “Stop. Cursing.”

  I felt the muscles roll back and forth in my jaw as I stared down at Frankie.

  “So help me, if you don’t tell me—”

  “You’ll what?” she interrupted. “Write a horrible song about me? Too late, you’ve already bloody done that.”

  I felt as if I had been punched in the gut because I knew instantly what song she was referring to.

  “Don’t even deny it,” she continued. “I know it’s about me.”

  “You’re talking about ‘Cherry Bomb’?”

  “Yes.” Frankie sneered. “Real classy, Risk.”

  I lifted my arm and ran my hand through my hair.

  “Why’re you bringing it up now and not the night when I came by to apologise to you? We’ve been cool since then.”

  “Because I didn’t listen to it until today. It was on the radio.”

  That surprised the hell out of me.

  “That record was on our last album, it came out two years ago.”

  “Oh.” Frankie held up her hands in mock defeat. “Am I supposed to not be pissed because I’ve only just heard it?”

  “No.” I held her gaze. “I’m sorry.”

  “That’s bollocks and you know it,” I snapped. “You wrote that to be hateful and cruel!”

  She was upset. She was shouting at me and she looked meaner than a bee-stung dog, but I could see the hurt in her green eyes. She was sad . . . my song made her sad. If there was one record I regretted writing, cutting and releasing it was ‘Cherry Bomb’. Christ, any time I thought about it, it left a bitter taste in my mouth.

  “I didn’t write it to be cruel and hateful,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm and collected. “I didn’t, Frankie.”

  “Bullshit,” she practically growled. “I listened to every word, you evil bastard. Fuck you! We’re not gonna be friends or anything of the sort. Get the fuck out of my life and stay the fuck away from me, you arsehole!”

  In all the years that I had spent remembering Frankie, I forgot how mad she could get once she got going.

  “Frankie, listen—”

  “No!” she shouted. “No, Risk. D’you know what it feels like to have a song like that written about you? A song millions of people have listened to?”

  She was right, millions of people had listened to it, I just didn’t understand how she hadn’t listened to it. Frankie was the original Sinner. Back in the day, she had been in the studio for each record we laid on our EP, and most of the records on our first album that were finished ahead of time, too. She heard our music over and over and she always did so with a smile on her gorgeous face. On one hand I was glad she hadn’t heard ‘Cherry Bomb’ up until now, but on the other, it rattled my very soul to think there was a record of mine that she didn’t hear.

  I spoke to her through my records; if she didn’t listen to them . . . how would she ever hear me?

  “Why didn’t you listen to it before today?”

  Her eyes flashed with an emotion I couldn’t decipher.

  “Because I knew it was about me,” she suddenly said. “‘Cherry Bomb’. Even a dumb small-town girl like me could figure it out. We had broken up; I was scared to hear what you had to say about me.”

  Hearing her explanation made the weight that had settled on my chest lift instantly. She listened to my records, to my words . . . she just couldn’t listen to ‘Cherry Bomb’ until now, and I couldn’t blame her.

  “I was right to feel that way. Wasn’t I, rock star?”

  “Yes,” I answered. “You were, but if you let me e
xplain—”

  “No. Get out.”

  “Listen. To. Me.” I raised my voice. “I wrote it when I felt angry and upset and was fucking missing you!”

  “Missing me?” she repeated with harsh laughter. “I wonder which part of me you missed. Oh, I think I know. How do the lyrics go? ‘My cherry bomb’s hips keep me awake at night, she’s got an ass that’d make a holy man cry. Big enough for me to take a bite,’ and those are the nicest lyrics in the fucking song! You went on to objectify me to nothing more than a body that you missed fucking.”

  “Frankie—”

  “I don’t wanna hear it, you prick!” she bellowed. “All this time I’ve wished you nothing but the best and you’ve been objectifying the memories you have of me for the whole fucking world to hear. I can’t believe you would do that to me, Risk. I just can’t!”

  I felt like the room was closing in around me.

  “That’s the only record where I’ve ever talked about you in that way and it was only because I was hurting. Fuck, Frank, I wrote that shit when I was out of it. I snorted coke and drank my weight in vodka that night. I can’t even remember cutting the fuckin’ thing.”

  She recoiled the second the words left my mouth.

  “Stupid idiot,” she spat. “You’ll kill yourself ingesting all of that poison. Is that what you want? To die? You bloody dope. You think you’re some big-time hot shot because you’re famous? Well, you’re still the stupid boy I’ve always known, but at least that boy didn’t take drugs!”

  I stared down at her and I surprised us both when a chuckle left my mouth.

  “This isn’t funny, wazzock!” She reached out and shoved me. “This is your life, you don’t get to risk it like that. D’you understand me?”

  “Yeah, Frank,” I said. “I hear you.”

  “You don’t look like you do. What’s so funny?”

  “You are.” I shook my head. “All five foot nothing of you is ready to kick my arse because I said I took drugs.”

  It was dumb of me to be so happy that she still cared enough about to get angry over my drug use and alcohol consumption. She could have brushed over those facts or ignored them completely, but she called me out on my wrongdoing in true Frankie Fulton fashion.