by Tempest Phan
Funny how most would likely dismiss him at first glance, relegating him to the ranks of uneducated, noise-making, womanizing hoodlums.
But I knew better.
I sighed. “Can’t sleep.”
“Yeah. I can see that, Captain Obvious.”
I closed my eyes again.
Dame . . . I met someone . . .
“It’s about your girl, isn’t it?”
My eyes snapped open and I glared at him.
“She ain’t my girl, asshole. How many times will I have to say that?”
“A rose by any other name, Damien.”
The world’s most underrated genius post-hardcore shredder was now quoting Shakespeare.
“She’s not mine. In fact, she just told me she’s with someone.”
He let out a low whistle.
“I see.”
I took a swig of milk before setting it back down on the coffee table, a tobacco-colored horror with clawed feet. This, too, courtesy of our resident drummer.
“It’s ok. She deserves so much. I hope he makes her happy.”
He looked at me, his pale blue eyes piercing through me, making me feel utterly naked.
But all he said was, “Ex nihilo nihil fit.”
“What was that?”
He sighed. “Never mind. If you say so.”
Dame, I met someone.
I closed my eyes as the familiar pain closed in around my heart, my throat.
“You’re missing her again.”
It wasn’t a question, but somehow, I answered anyways. “Miss her again? I miss her, always. Missing her is so engrained in my damn lungs that most days, I can’t breathe,” I said softly, feeling those sharp fingers tighten around my throat again, shocked that I’d said out loud what haunted me in the dark of my nights.
I let out a long breath, watching him as he looked at me through pale blue eyes, sympathy evident in their clear depths.
I shook my head. No, I wasn’t going to go there tonight. I ran my hand over my face and tried to change the subject.
“So did you get a chance to upload the demo to Bandcamp?” Band matters seemed so much safer than talking about the girl whose very existence took my breath away.
“I did, man. I totally think the new mix on Cherry Blossoms is the right one.”
“Yeah, definitely a harder sound. And by the way, the bar is down with us shooting our shitty video before it opens next Saturday, so we’ll have to let the guys know to clear their schedules.”
Syn nodded. “Things are lining up, man. I can feel it.”
I heard a bedroom door open, followed by the shuffling of bare feet.
Crash came out, his hair a dark mess. Dude was also completely naked and didn’t seem to give two shits about it, either. He never did.
He let out a loud yawn.
“Fuck, man. Why you guys got to be so fucking loud at three in the morning?”
Syn raised an eyebrow as he looked at Crash, his gaze pausing ever so slightly on him before he quickly turned away and picked his book up again.
“Sorry, dude,” I responded, getting up and grabbing the carton of milk. I drank the last dregs before stretching and turning toward the kitchen, when I heard Crash call out.
“By the way, I hope you don’t put the fucking milk back in the fridge, dude.”
This was followed by Syn saying softly, “Carton was clearly empty, asshole. I’m sure he wasn’t going to. He’s not Luce. And how ‘bout you go and put some fucking pants on? I don’t need to see your hairy dick staring me in the face at all hours of the day.”
“Not all hours, but still sometimes, eh?”
Syn snorted but the sound came out strangled.
Huh. Interesting.
I smiled in spite of myself as I rinsed out the carton and tossed it into the recycling bin.
***
Bella
Lukas was holding me in his arms, breathing softly next to me.
I set my phone down. Perhaps it was wrong to tell Damien about Lukas while he was still sleeping by my side, but Damien was, first and foremost, my best friend. I couldn’t imagine not answering his texts right away, not when he’d been trying to reach me for hours.
I looked at Lukas until his eyelids fluttered, and sleepy grey eyes stared back at me.
“Hello, love,” he whispered, his voice rough from sleep.
“Hello, Lukas,” I responded, running gentle fingers down his cheek.
“Bloody hell. That was so good,” he sighed. “I didn’t dream it, did I?”
“Nope, all real, Mr. Stone,” I smiled. He tugged me closer. It had been amazing. And it had been so long. So damn long.
I don’t know what came over me, but I said, “You’re the second man I’ve ever slept with. And it’s been over three years.”
He looked at me, surprise in his steel eyes.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” I said, laughing
“If you were looking at what I’m looking at,” he began, his eyes raking slowly down my body before coming back to rest on my face, “you’d wonder, too, how it could have been years.”
“And how you could only be the second one?” I sighed. “After him, I hadn’t really met anyone. Until you. But don’t let that scare you off.”
He smiled and brought me closer. “I fancy that answer. But most of all, I fancy you,” he murmured, kissing my temple, his hands sliding down my body to cup my bare ass. “Three years. Let’s see if I can help you make up for lost time, shall we?” He proceeded to kiss down the length of my neck to my breasts. “And you should know by now, love, that I’m not easily scared off.” His smile was so devilish before his hot mouth closed on one of my nipples. On and on he continued, until the waves caught up with me and I crashed over them for the second time that night, Lukas not far behind.
Bella
On our second date, Lukas took me to the ballet, and that’s when I realized that the cocky lawyer had a soft spot for the arts. I watched him, enthralled, while his face melted with pleasure as he took in the beauty of the dancers’ athletic, gravity-defying moves.
“Look at that fouetté,” he whispered.
I just smiled at him, not quite knowing what I was looking at but enjoying the spectacle and his enthusiasm for it all the same.
In fact, the passion, the fascination on his face made me think of Damien, whose whole body sang whenever he had a guitar in his hands.
The similarities were uncanny, even if, superficially, Dame and Lukas couldn’t be any more different.
My Damien felt more comfortable in his old, ripped jeans and his trusty threadbare, faded hoodie, which wasn’t a getup I could imagine ever seeing on Lukas. I glanced at him, at the slim, dark tux he was wearing, the black cashmere peacoat he’d wrapped around my shoulders as we’d made our way back to his place. Unlike me, he lived in the penthouse of a thirty-five-floor building overlooking the bay. Everything about his apartment, like him, screamed modern, understated luxury. He was filthy rich and didn’t need to show it. It dripped off him, off the clean, simple lines of everything he wore, of where he lived. I looked around me before walking to the tinted floor-to-ceiling windows, taking in the overwhelmingly gorgeous views of the bridge, the shimmering waters.
Somehow, this made me think back to that night at the lodge and the falls.
“Sometimes you remind me of my best friend,” I said, laughing.
“Ah. Is she tall, blonde, and devastatingly gorgeous too?” He winked at me.
“Oh, Lukas. Nope. He is dark and mysterious. And tall too.”
“Oh. I wasn’t expecting that one. He’s gay, right?” He laughed and then furled his brows together as he added, “Or is it that man you were with at the club? And actually, that man at the club, was he the one at the charity dinner? I remember a dark-haired boy with you.”
“You have an excellent memory, Lukas. One and the same. His name is Damien, my best friend since we were seven.”
“I had completely pegged
him as your boyfriend, the way he was hovering over you at the club. At the dinner too, come to think of it.”
I scrunched up my nose and looked at him dead in the eye. I didn’t like where this was going. “He’s my best friend, closer than a brother.” I paused. I guess that last part wasn’t a lie, although it felt odd to say, because people didn’t go around fucking their brothers. I continued, “Dame means the world to me, Lukas. The world. Nothing will ever change that, and no one can make me change that.”
He heard the unspoken implication, and I felt him stiffen around me. He just returned my stare, not saying a word, until finally he nodded. “I would never dream to ask you to give up a friend, love. What kind of pathetic, insecure man would do that?”
I leaned over to kiss him. “Good. And just so we’re clear: you’ve got nothing to worry about,” I said, forcing a laugh. Because he didn’t, right?
He leaned in against me, kissing the top of my head, before turning as if to walk away. In a sudden and surprise move, however, he stepped back just as quickly and swept me off my feet, both literally and figuratively. He cradled me against him as we disappeared down the long, windowed hallway to what I knew would be his bedroom. He proceeded to fuck me until we both fell asleep, completely raw, in each other’s arms.
It was dawn when I awoke, and the bed was empty. I looked around me. I threw a T-shirt on and padded out of the bedroom. Light streamed from a room down the hall, so I headed toward it. I walked in. It appeared to be a study or a studio of sorts. Canvases, some blank, some not, lined the walls on the floor. An easel stood in the corner, displaying an unfinished oil portrait of a lovely, middle-aged woman, with fair hair and stormy eyes reminiscent of Lukas’s. In fact, she looked strikingly like him, and I could only assume it was his mom.
Lukas was sitting behind a desk, crouched over a drawing pad. He glanced up, smiled at me, and quickly closed the pad and tossed down his charcoal.
“Hello, love. Up already?” He walked around his desk toward me, wiping his hands on his boxers.
I looked around me, swept away by the gorgeous art. Could it be that this great legal mind was secretly an artist at heart?
I realized that this could very well be the invisible thread that pulled me to him. I’d always felt a kinship of sort with artists, the softness in their souls, the light in their hearts that enabled them to create, no matter how well hidden their talent. All of this spoke to me, whether they were painters, dancers, or . . . musicians.
“Did you paint these, Lukas?”
He smiled and nodded. “I like to doodle.”
I snorted. “I’d call this so much more than doodling, Lukas. They’re amazing!” I walked toward the easel. “Is this a portrait of your mom?
“It is . . .”
“You look just like her.”
He smiled.
“She’s beautiful. Perhaps I’ll get the chance to meet her one day?”
His face clouded over. “She passed away when I was thirteen.”
I turned to him. He tried to look impassive, but I saw the hurt in his eyes.
“I’m so very sorry, Lukas. So very.”
He shrugged, turned away, and ambled toward the window, clearly not wanting to talk about this.
“Let’s go back to bed, love,” he whispered. “I would much prefer to take this shirt off you than reminisce about inconsequential things.”
I wouldn’t call his art—or his mother—inconsequential, but who was I to prove him wrong, at this point. It wasn’t like he was Damien, Damien whom I knew inside out. I had no right to Lukas’s past, to his pain. I walked over to him, and he led us out of his study and back into his bedroom. Safer to keep it to that.
Bella
And so the inevitable happened between Lukas and me. It happened so organically that I don’t know exactly how we became inseparable, but we did. Looking back, I can’t recall the details exactly, only that days ran into night, and that, whenever Lukas was by my side, I laughed through them all.
Next came my graduation from Stanford which Lukas attended. Conversely, Damien and my father did not. One because he’d been tied up with another emergency related to his mom. The other because he’d been caught up in another one of his seemingly endless “important” cases. And did he not fly in for my birthday just two months prior?
And then, shortly after, Lukas was named head of Stone L.A. He moved to Southern Cali. He’d commute to San Francisco on the weekends to see me. One day, as we laid breathless in my bed, he’d turned to me and said, “Don’t move back to Seattle. Come to L.A. with me. I bloody miss you like crazy during the week.”
I’d looked into his steel grey eyes, remembered the pride radiating from his face as he sat next to Lynda, nearly alone among strangers in that packed stadium, one of two to come out for me when I received the diploma that my father had dismissed out of hand. I’d looked into his steel eyes, felt the deep loneliness in my own heart, and, without hesitation, said yes. Within months of having walked back into his life when I’d headed up the elevator to that glass building in San Francisco, I’d moved in with him, in his bungalow by the sea.
Life there was easy. He’d leave to go to the firm every day, and I’d sit on his private beach with my laptop, masterminding the launch of my nonprofit for underprivileged children, all centered around music. Just like I’d told Damien, all those years ago, as we sat under the waterfall, his face bathed in moonlight. Except Damien was nowhere near me, this time. And now, armed with a double major in Economics and Business Administration, I was closer than ever to that dream.
The waves outside of the bungalow played their soothing soundtrack as I snuggled closer to Lukas. With gentle fingers, he lightly touched my face, my nose, softly, softly, like he was trying to memorize it all. His hand went down to my throat, my naked chest, moving down, down. Touching, memorizing.
“What are you doing, Lukas?” A small gasp escaped my lips at his barely there touch.
“I’m painting you, love. Painting you in my mind. You are so lovely. Your creamy skin, your black hair. What colors would I mix to even get close to the dusty, blushing rose of your lips?” He smiled and bent down to kiss my breasts. “I don’t know that I could ever reproduce your beauty. Or capture your soul.”
I giggled. “You’re so silly tonight, sweetie!”
He smiled back.
“Your Lukas Stone is indeed a tad stoned.” His face clouded over. “But don’t laugh, Bella love. I worship you. It terrifies me, as I’ve never felt this way about anyone.” His hand stroked my arm, following the tattoo up my shoulder, and now across my collarbone, my upper back. The tattoo I’d expanded upon again, during a last hopeful visit to Saint before leaving San Francisco, as a way to say goodbye to Damien and to his invisible hold on my heart.
He continued, “When I first met you, that day you opened the door at your father’s dinner party and I was a right proper wanker, my first thought was that you would break my heart. And I think I fell a little bit in love with you then.”
I just looked at him, the words not crystallizing. I remembered that evening. Damien had rushed me home on his skateboard after his car had broken down. Damien, always Damien.
“You were wearing a lovely pale pink dress, and when you opened the door, I felt disgusting for wanting to touch a seventeen-year-old. Oh, but I wanted to touch. Touch you so badly.”
That evening, Damien had zipped up my dress, when all I’d wanted was for him to rip it off me. My heart bled at the memory.
***
Damien
I opened my eyes and stretched, still exhausted from back-to-back shifts and too little sleep. I glanced at my phone. Nine in the morning, and a text from Bella baby.
BELLA:
Dame, you know how in Seattle, it’s always like, eighty degrees in October?
BELLA:
WHOOPS! I meant L.A.! #SorryNotSorry. Here comes the sun! Woo hoo!
ME:
Hey sweetie! Way to rub it in. I’m fr
eezing my ass off here. Especially since some girl never shipped back the hoodie I left at her place three years ago.
ME:
PS: Kidding. You can keep it. You got your snot all over it. ;)
I started to type a follow up to my dig, then deleted it. Started again, then deleted a final time. She didn’t need to know that I thought she looked so much cuter in it, anyways.
BELLA:
Pshh. You’re never cold. (And yeah, never returning it. It’s my fave thing to sleep in, snot and all.) So, it’s October, and nine am, and I’m ON THE BEACH getting my tan on! You should get your pasty ass down here. Pronto.
BELLA:
PS: I mean it. Been too long, MDJ. I miss you. Like crazy.
I sent her a smiley face. What else could I say to that? And got up to head toward the kitchen. She’d recently moved to L.A. to be with that lawyer dude, on some private beach somewhere. It was bittersweet to think she was even further away now, out there under the Californian sun with her perfect boyfriend, living a perfectly happy life, wearing my threadbare hoodie.
When I came out into the kitchen slash living area, the boys were lazying around in various states of undress. Crash was watching some random show, sprawled on the couch in his boxers and nothing else. At least he’d had the decency to put some on, which wasn’t always the case. Lucien was hunched over a laptop next to him. Syn was nowhere to be found, likely still in bed with whichever girl(s) he (and Crash) had ended with last night, if the racket coming from Syn’s room had been any indication.
I yawned and rubbed my stomach as I headed toward the kitchen counter to pour myself a cup of coffee.
I threw out to the both of them, “We just got an email from the Ruby Princess about a gig next week. Sounds like some hair band canceled and they need some entertainment. How do you mofos feel about playing the casino?”