by Lexie Ray
“Why would you think something like that?” I demanded. “We’re neighbors, first of all, and friends. We used to hang out like every day. What happened to us?”
He expelled his breath in a long sigh and took his hands out of his pockets. “I guess everything got awkward after I asked you out.”
I cringed. “So it’s my fault.”
“I think I can take some credit for being part of the problem,” he said. “I’m sorry, Jennet. I didn’t mean to alienate you after you said no.”
“And I didn’t mean to alienate you for asking in the first place,” I said. “I just wanted to hide my face for a little while. I’m sorry. I wish I felt differently about you.”
“Your feelings are your feelings,” he said. “I was wrong to pressure you about it. I guess spending all this time apart made me realize how much I value your friendship. It’s not a thing I want to lose over something as silly as a date.”
“Exactly,” I said, leaning against the wall and pantomiming mopping my forehead with a handkerchief. “I am relieved to hear you say that.”
“So, friends again?” he asked, holding his hand out.
“Don’t be an idiot,” I teased, swatting his hand away before giving him a big hug. “Of course we’re friends again. We’ve been friends this whole time. Just idiot friends who don’t know how to talk to each other when something’s up.”
Nick squeezed me a little too tightly, and I hoped it was because he really did miss me around and not that I was leading him on by pressing our bodies together. He finally released me and held me at arm’s length.
“It’s just really good to see your face and know everything’s back to normal,” he said.
“I had to take a second job to fill up all my free time from not hanging out with you,” I retorted, laughing.
“You’re joking.”
“Scout’s honor,” I said, saluting him. “I’m working at the same strip club Faith used to work at.”
“Now I know you’re lying to me,” he said, his face flushing a little. “You used to tell me all the time how you would never do that. You were really adamant, too. You said you’d rather be homeless and penniless than let strangers ogle your naked body. I think those were your exact words, too.”
“I’m not dancing,” I scoffed. “I’m the DJ. I get to tell everybody whose naked body to ogle.”
“You’re serious.” Nick’s mouth practically hit the floor. “So that means you’re spending all your time there ogling naked bodies.”
“I don’t ogle,” I sniffed, holding my head up high. “I watch. Some of the girls are really talented. It’s actually pretty athletic.”
“Uh-huh.” Nick didn’t sound convinced. “Next thing you’ll be telling me is that you’ve been offered guest spots to swing around the pole. Just for fun.”
“I don’t think that’s really how it works,” I said, laughing. “But some of the girls have already offered to teach me how to climb the pole. It does sound kind of fun.”
“Please tell me you aren’t going to take your clothes off for money,” he begged.
“Hey!” I protested, scandalized. “I’ll have you know that what lies beneath this simple tank top and battered pair of jeans is worth top dollar! You’re acting like you’d pay me to keep my clothes on! How dare you!”
Nick threw his head back and laughed, the sound echoing down the hall. I really had missed hanging out with him, and I grinned.
“I am not implying that whatever’s beneath your clothes isn’t worth top dollar,” he said, wiping tears of mirth from his eyes. “I’m sure it is. But that doesn’t mean you should be taking your clothes off for money. Please don’t. If you’re that bored with your life, that desperate to find things to fill your time with, let me take you somewhere right now.”
“Where?” I asked, my guard instantly up. Was this just a sneaky way to get me to go out on a date with him? I hated myself for jumping to that conclusion, but I kind of hated Nick for putting that possibility out there in the first place. Could a friendship really ever recover completely from a romantic rejection?
Nick seemed to read my mind. “As friends, I invite you to open mic night at this coffee place I started going to,” he said. “Every week, they have an open mic night and anyone who wants to do something in front of other people can do it.”
“So, if I wanted to go take my clothes off in front of everyone…”
“Enough,” he said, elbowing me. “I’ve been playing there every week, and I think you should come. If you want to, of course. If you’re not doing anything.”
“I would love to come see you play,” I said, relieved even further that this wasn’t some kind of ruse to get me to agree to a date. There would be loads of people at a coffee shop, and not an ounce of romance. “Let me just freshen up a bit. I smell like smoke and money and sweat and pole dances.”
“You look fine to me,” Nick said, ambling into my apartment behind me.
“You have an untrained eye — and nose,” I told him, dropping my purse on the couch before going to my room. This felt good. This felt just like old times. We would roam between our two apartments, always keeping the doors unlocked and practically open, treating the two as if they were just a big suite — the north wing and the south wing of some shared abode. I’d missed this a lot, and was glad to have Nick back in my life as my friend.
I shrugged off the wrap dress I’d worn to the club in an effort to look nicer and wriggled into my favorite pair of jeans. Dresses were so stupid. Why did we women have to do that to ourselves to look polished and put together? Why couldn’t jeans be the professional look of choice?
I dug around in my dresser for a T-shirt and caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of my eye. I’d only pulled the door shut to a crack, as I usually did, but I could’ve sworn Nick had passed by the open gap. Was he spying on me? Trying to sneak a peek of the goods after all that talk of pole dancing and taking off clothes for money? I frowned, puzzled. I thought he’d agreed to be friends, but wanting to take a gander at my goods was something a little beyond that. The possibility that he’d tried to see me naked should’ve bothered me a bit more, maybe, but I was still trying to be thankful that I’d have Nick as my friend again.
Maybe he’d been just as lonely as I had been during our time apart.
I yanked on a clean black T-shirt and checked my hair in the mirror. I think I liked magenta better than blue. It seemed more cheerful, somehow. More hopeful.
“You haven’t said anything about my hair,” I called out to Nick.
“Your hair?”
“You know.” I stepped out of the room, tossing my head for dramatic effect. “How it changed colors?”
He laughed a little awkwardly, standing halfway across the room. Maybe he hadn’t tried to sneak a peek to begin with. Maybe I was just being paranoid.
“It looks good,” he said. “Of course it looks good. Everything looks good on you.”
“But you didn’t so much as bat an eye,” I said, putting my hands on my hips. “Does magenta look that natural on me, or what?”
“You’re going to think I’m a weirdo,” he began.
“I already think you’re a weirdo,” I teased him. “What is it? Now you have to tell me.”
He toyed with the edge of a rug with the toe of his sneaker. “When you started keeping more regular hours, I guess after you got the job working at the club, I could look out the peephole of my door and see you come and go. I saw your magenta hair a while ago, I guess. I thought it looked good then, and that it looks good now, too.”
“Well, thank you,” I said, blinking in surprise. I was actually jealous that I hadn’t thought of spying on Nick through the peephole of my own door. That had been a good idea, but hopefully, our days of spying on each other were over. We could just step across the hall and ask each other whatever we wanted.
“We should get going,” he said, clapping his hands as if the sound would scare away any lingering awkwar
dness and help usher in a new era of our friendship. Or maybe that was just what I wanted the gesture to mean.
“Your car or mine?” I asked, grabbing the slouchy tote bag that was serving as my purse right now.
“Mine,” he said, holding the door open for me before yanking it shut, engaging the lock. “I already have the guitar in the back.”
Nick’s car was a beat-up station wagon. It was reliable, but old and hideous. He kept it clean and washed — just like he kept himself and his apartment clean and washed — so it wasn’t a complete travesty to ride in. My car was no better, but I preferred the lime green color and compact nature of my ride. Nick’s car was like riding in a boat.
“If you could own any car in the world, what would you get?” I asked, running my finger over some of the cracks in the vinyl dashboard. The Miami sun was unforgiving on cars, and if you didn’t use some kind of shade in your windshield, it would age your car beyond its years. There was no putting this station wagon out of its misery, though. It had been in this exact condition when I’d first met Nick.
“I like my car just fine, thank you very much,” he said, laughing. “A boat’s not so bad, is it?”
I rolled my eyes at him for remembering my consistent complaint with it. “It also looks like a hearse, you know.”
“A hearse that can carry all the people I love in it,” he said. “But mostly my guitar, and my amp.”
“A station wagon isn’t a lady magnet, Nick,” I said. “You need like a convertible, at least. Sol’s talking all the time about Xander’s convertible and how she makes him ride with the top down at all times, even if the forecast is for rain.”
“That’s Sol and Xander, not me,” he said. “How’s Faith doing, by the way? She and Luke still at Adam’s, I’m assuming.”
“She’s fine,” I said. “Just busy. No time for former roommates. She came over the other day — but I bet you already knew that, creeper. That’s why you’re asking.”
“I’m asking because I was curious,” Nick said, laughing more. “Jeez! I shouldn’t have told you about the peephole thing. I wasn’t watching constantly. Plus, you know how thin the walls are in that place. I heard Faith in the hallway. That’s how I knew.”
“I heard you playing your guitar constantly,” I moaned. “It was the worst.”
“My playing was the worst?” he asked, confused.
“No!” I said quickly, giggling. “It was just the worst because I could always hear it. It made me miss you, and stuff.”
“Why did we let the silent treatment go on for so long, Jennet?” Nick asked. “That was stupid.”
“I thought you were mad at me,” I confessed. “And I was kind of mad, too.”
“I wasn’t mad,” he said, sighing. “I don’t know what I was. Hurt, maybe. But we don’t have to talk about it anymore, right? Can’t things be back to normal?”
“That’s all I want,” I said. “Really. It was stupid it went on for so long, but maybe we just needed the break to get our thoughts in order.”
“Here we are,” he said, steering the enormous station wagon into a tiny parking space.
“Hey, this place is pretty packed,” I observed, looking at all the people walking in. “All here to see you, I’m sure.”
“I’m not the only one playing,” he said, his ears and neck flushing an attractive shade of pink. “You’re probably the only one here to see just me.”
But he was simply being modest. When Nick’s turn rolled around, all the women in the coffee shop started screaming and hooting and hollering. He was clearly popular here, and he simply grinned at me and started strumming.
I realized I recognized the tune, realized that the whole time we’d been apart — not fighting, but simply ignoring each other’s existence — he’d been writing this song. It was the strumming I’d heard from my apartment, through the thin walls we all suffered through.
The words, however, made me raise my eyebrows a little.
“Blue used to be my favorite color,” he sang. “So much that I’d go blue over you. I see your blue everywhere I go — in the flowers, in the oceans, in the sky.”
Was this a love song to me? I was somewhere in between scandalized and flattered. Oh, and surprised. I had no idea that when Nick invited me to an open mic night at a coffee shop that he’d try to use the opportunity to serenade me.
But he didn’t look at me. I was kind of glad he didn’t look at me. I was probably making an awful face. I swiftly rearranged my expression before he happened to look up and lock eyes with me by chance. It really was a beautiful song, if only I could ignore the fact that he’d written it while he pined for me in his apartment.
I was mostly thankful that my hair wasn’t blue anymore. I didn’t want to get between any of these burgeoning fan girls and their prey.
He finished the song and the room erupted into cheers and applause. Nick looked happy and thankful, making a few awkward bows as he got up and made his way from the stage. Plopping down in the chair beside me at our table, Nick leaned close.
“Before you say anything,” he began, “let me explain. Yes, the song was about you. Yes, I wrote it after everything that happened. But did you like it? Was it good art? I don’t want you to feel weird about it. Sure, it was based on some feelings from the past. But after I wrote the lyrics, the melody sort of just came together and I thought it was really good. What do you think? You don’t know how many times I wanted to knock on your door to play it for you, but I knew it would come off wrong — especially if we weren’t talking still.”
I blinked at the torrent of words that had just poured from his mouth. From virtual silence to all of this, all at once, was a shock. It was also strange to hear him speak so casually about something that had nearly torn us apart. But the light in his eyes, the excitement he had over me hearing his song — something he was so passionate about — was endearing.
“It was a really good song,” I said finally. “And I’m not just saying that because I’m your friend. I liked everything about it. I think you could have a real hit on your hands.”
His eyebrows quirked together a little. “A real hit?”
“Yeah.” I nodded eagerly. “Like a single, definitely!”
“I don’t know that I wanted it to be a hit single,” he said, smiling gently and looking down at the table.
“Why not?” I demanded. “You play music all the time, Nick, and you’re good at it. Why wouldn’t you want a hit single? Isn’t that what every musician wants?”
“I think we measure success in different ways,” he said, tapping his fingers over the table’s surface. “I don’t know that I want to be some pop star.”
“Again, why not?” I asked, biting off each syllable. “It’s a damn good song. You’re a starving artist. Isn’t it your goal to make it big? That song could get you out of your shitty apartment. That song could help you get rid of that shitty car and into, I don’t know, a Ferrari.”
“Ferraris aren’t that great,” he said, laughing. “And the apartment’s not that bad, either.”
“How would you know that Ferraris aren’t that great?” I asked, confused. “And the apartment is bad. I know. I live in one.”
“I just wanted you to like the song, that’s all,” Nick said, his voice quiet. The next act had already started, and I had to lean close to catch his words.
“I did like the song — I do,” I said. “It’s just…why don’t you want to be successful? Half the people in here are only playing because they hope a record exec might stumble in and sign them on the spot. That song is so wonderful that I know for a fact it would earn you money.”
“Money isn’t everything, Jennet,” he argued. “All I want to do is make music I can care about.”
“But if you can do something that you love and get paid for it, that’s the dream, Nick,” I said. I just couldn’t let this go. I didn’t want to. There was something here, but I just couldn’t put my finger on it. “Besides, the only people who say t
hat money isn’t everything are those who have too much of it.”
Nick opened his mouth to say something but lapsed into silence, clapping instead for the musician who had just finished playing. I clapped, too, if only for something to do with myself. I hadn’t heard a single chord or lyric from the performance.
When the applause subsided, Nick looked at me again.
“I really don’t want to fight,” he said. “Not when we’ve just come off a doozy.”
“We’re not fighting,” I said. “You’re trying to tell me that you don’t want to use the amazing talent you have to help you earn money. You won’t have to work from bar to bar anymore, hoping someone will show pity on an acoustic guitarist and book him for an evening. That’s miserable, Nick. That’s not a good way to live. You’re struggling.”
“I don’t really feel like I’m struggling, honestly, Jennet,” he said, shrugging at me and smiling. “It might seem strange to you, but I like playing for just a few people. Just like I did in here. I don’t mind that it barely pays the bills, or sometimes doesn’t pay them at all. I like what I do, I like that life is simple. Money just brings problems, understand?”
“I’d understand if I ever found a bathtub full of it in my apartment,” I grumbled. “And then it would be like, ‘oh, dear! However am I going to clean myself with all this glorious cash?’”
Nick laughed at me. “Think about it. Why are you still working at the snack shop after all this time?”
“Because I’m the best damn Corn Queen Jared could ever hope for,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest.
“You are an incredible Corn Queen,” he allowed. “But why not move on up in the company? Why don’t you try to become manager of the place? You certainly have the experience. Or why don’t you see if you can save up enough money to buy Jared out? Make your own snack shop. Call it the Corn Queen. Hire more people to hawk snacks on the street. Expand. Sell franchise for Corn Queen snack shops across the city. Go national. Go global. You’re the Corn Queen CEO. You have five Ferraris. Zero problems. Bathtubs full of money.”
“That all sounds very complicated,” I said, pouting. “Except for the bathtubs full of money.”