Beatless

by Amber L. Johnson

  “Can’t talk to someone who doesn’t exist, Mallory. You are on this stage to do a part. That’s all.”

  “You’re so full of shit,” I hissed, thrusting the script in his face.

  He nodded and gazed toward Landon. “Maybe. But I guess you’ll never find out.” Waving his hand, he got Bastian’s attention. “She’s got this. I don’t need to show her again.”

  Watching him walk away felt like a punch in the gut every single time.

  I crossed to my mark again, careful to move in time to the music that was playing. My mind was swimming, and when I landed on the X, I forgot what the scene even was. So when Landon placed his hands on my neck and dipped his toward mine, I froze.

  Because I’d forgotten the kiss.

  Was that why Tucker was stalling?

  “Wait,” I said hastily, taking a step back.

  Landon smiled, staring at my lips. “That’s not your line.”

  I nodded quickly and laughed. “Yeah, I know. I’m sorry. ”

  Bastian placed his hands onto the stage and cocked his head. “Take it from the kiss. Mallory, stop looking like you’ve got a massive stick up your ass.” His green eyes were wide, and he was smiling, but I knew he was being serious.

  So I shook my shoulders, reset my posture and prepared to let another boy kiss me like he meant it, right there in front of the one I’d once felt everything for. Then when it was over, I shifted to the side to look for Tucker’s reaction . . . but he was nowhere to be found.

  ***

  Landon called almost every night. He claimed that he just wanted to talk about rehearsing, but it felt like there was more to it. I’d heard about people getting involved with their co-stars based solely on the fact that they were always together. That they had to be in intimate situations that forced romantic feelings to suddenly appear. I didn’t feel that way about Landon. And I had so much on my plate, that the thought of starting anything new made me want to pass out and sleep for days. Like Aunt Sam.

  He was persistent, though. And on Valentine’s Day he showed just how tenacious he could be.

  We’d had another rehearsal, and I was settled into the middle row of the auditorium, feet propped up on the chair in front of me, highlighting a piece of dialogue that I could never get quite right. I heard him before he approached and I smiled, knowing he’d sit down right next to me. He always did. What I did not expect was for him to nudge against my shoulder and produce a light pink rose from behind his back.

  “What is that for?” I didn’t touch it, I just stared.

  “For you?” He was usually a pretty confident guy, but the humiliation on his face almost made me laugh.

  “Okay. But why?”

  “Because it’s Valentine’s Day.”

  It caught me so off guard, all I could do was grimace. I was flattered, of course. But . . .

  “That’s really nice, but . . .”

  Landon, blonde hair askew across his forehead, handed it to me and then hesitantly placed his hand on my thigh. I just stared at it like it was some alien thing I’d never seen before.

  “Listen,” he started; his voice just above a whisper. “I haven’t exactly been vague about how I feel about you.”

  “Umm . . . I have no idea what you’re talking about. You call. Talk about plays. I listen. How is that obvious?”

  He leaned even closer. “When we kiss . . .”

  “Yeah, no. I’m sorry to be the one to break it to you but that’s for . . .”

  “You don’t have to say it’s just for the play just because he’s here. I know what you did to get the part.”

  I stiffened and shot a look Tucker’s way.

  He was clearly watching.

  “I heard about you two. That you hooked up and then, whatever happened, you know?” His hand slipped higher on my thigh and I fought the urge to vomit. His hand wasn’t right. His face was wrong. His smell was off. “I’d be better . . .”

  I stared ahead at Tucker, gripping the rose in my hand until I was sure the stem would snap. Exhaling with disgust, I turned back to Landon. With as much strength as I could muster, I looped my fingers around his wrist and twisted, pulling his hand from my body.

  “I don’t know what you heard. My relationship with Tucker isn’t anyone’s business. Especially not yours. And I don’t know what you think is happening here, but I’m going to say no thank you, and give this back.” I thrust the rose into his hand and stood, grabbed my purse, and stumbled through the chairs to walk out the auditorium doors. I’d never wanted to violently slap someone so much in my entire life. Knowing that it would probably send me to jail, I collected myself, turned the corner veering into an empty stairwell and slid down the wall to try and compose myself. I would not break. Not today of all days.

  The sound of rubber soles echoing down the hall made me shrink back against the cream colored wall. But while I stared at the scuffed up floor, it wasn’t Landon’s Sketchers that stopped short. It was a pair of dirty Chucks that I knew all too well.

  “What the hell, Mal? We have a production to work on.”

  “Ugh. Please, please, please . . . I am begging you . . . just leave me alone. Haven’t you had enough?”

  He dropped to his knees and bounced a little.

  I looked away, furious.

  “What did Landon say to you?”

  “None of your business.”

  “I’m serious. Tell me what he said.”

  This time he wasn’t waiting for me to be ready. He was demanding answers.

  “He said we should get together. That it means something when we kiss on stage. And not to worry about what you thought.” My fists balled up and I pressed them to my knees. “Because he said he’d be better than you.”

  “In what way?” It sounded almost threatening.

  I finally forced myself to look at him. At his face. In his eyes. “In every way.”

  If rage had a face - a picture in the dictionary - it would be the anger that Tucker Scott held inside his body. No amount of music therapy would erase that from his chemical makeup. It radiated off him in waves and for one fleeting moment I was sorry I had said anything at all.

  I don’t know why I didn’t back away. I don’t know why I reached for him. But I did. And when my hand met his, he blinked a couple times, concentrating on where we were touching. Every old feeling came rushing back in the span of a few seconds and I closed my eyes to center myself, unwilling to get buried under the avalanche.

  “How does he know, Tucker?”

  The look of surprise on his face confused me. “I don’t know. How would I know? It’s not exactly a secret that we were together for a while. No matter what you want to tell other people.”

  “Just stop it. Have you been telling people?” I searched his eyes. “What have you been saying that would make Landon of all people think that I’d just drop my panties for the first guy that came along since you?”

  Tucker pulled his hand away. “Since me. Yeah. Like I believe that.”

  I nodded, angry at his insinuation. “Because I’m that person, right?”

  He shrugged and stood back up. “I couldn’t tell you what kind of person you are, Mallory. I don’t even know you.”

  “Oh! Really? Well that makes two of us. The Tucker I knew months ago would never treat me the way you have. Because I know everything about you. Everything. And I’ve never said a word to anyone because I know you trusted me enough to keep it a secret. Do you want to talk now? Can we just get this over with so I can stop hating myself?”

  He rubbed his ear for a second and shook his head. “Not yet. You didn’t seem to give a shit about that person you claimed to know. So, I figure it doesn’t matter anymore. You were embarrassed by him, remember?”

  “So you want me to hate you? You got what you wanted. I can’t believe how much I hate you right now. Are you happy now? Can’t you leave me alone and go be a jerk to your girlfriend or something?” The way the word girlfriend came out of my mouth was revolt
ing.

  He lifted his eyebrows and dropped back to his knees, but closer so that his face was only inches away from mine. “My girlfriend? What do you know about that?”

  I was embarrassed, but so much more furious at the way this was turning out. “Because I saw a picture of you two. On Instagram.”

  The chuckle he exhaled blew through my hair and straight into my ear. I shouldn’t have told him that. It made me look weak. Vulnerable. Like an internet stalker.

  His body moved closer, and I held my ground, waiting for contact. What I didn’t expect was for him to grab my face and hold it in both of his hands. His lips hovered just above mine and I fought the urge to touch him again, so I kept my fists balled tight at my sides. Self-preservation and all of that nonsense.

  “It’s adorable that you’re jealous of my cousin. And it’s so cute that you spend time behind your computer thinking about me. Frankly, I’m flattered. Do you think about me a lot, Mallory?”

  “No,” I lied. It was his freaking cousin. And all of a sudden I looked crazy.

  He inched in farther, and then lightly ran his lips along mine. I breathed out in surprise at how familiar it still felt. How badly I still wanted it. He took the opportunity to part his lips and, pressing in so gently, he slipped his tongue into my mouth, just once, and tugged gently on my lower lip. My face followed his as he backed away. His fingers drifted through my hair and then he placed them on his knees before he stood and stared down the hallway.

  “He’s wrong about one thing,” he said quietly.

  I struggled to find my voice, and when my words came out, they shook. “He’s wrong about a lot of things.”

  “I mean what he said about the kiss.” He shrugged and shoved his hands into his pockets. “I know what a really good kiss is . . . you know, the one that changes your life? I know what that feels like.” He still didn’t look at me as he turned to walk away. “That stage kiss doesn’t mean anything.”

  Mal,

  I wanted to tell you that you’re not the first teenage girl to question her place in this world. To wonder what her worth is. I see it every day on the internet - these girls who need to feel like they are part of something bigger. Like their lives have no meaning if someone doesn’t tell them that they’re pretty or talented.

  If you haven’t heard it recently:

  You are beautiful.

  And so, so talented.

  Please believe me when I say it gets better. You’ll shake it all off someday and grow into your skin. It may be at the age of thirty or forty, which sounds like an awful long time, I know.

  But trust me when I say that it goes by so fast.

  So fast.

  You’ll almost be afraid to blink.

  Sam

  ~*~15~*~

  Some of the cast had gotten together over the weekend for a party, but I opted out, unsure of how I would handle seeing Landon. Or if Tucker was invited. I was sure he was, since he’d been one of the driving forces behind the entire production.

  It was best to lay low. Best for my self-esteem. Best for my head that was finally getting on straight.

  Tucker had kissed me. And it wasn’t the angry kiss that he had left me with so many months ago. It meant something, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. I tried not to dwell on it, but in the silence of my house, it was hard not to drift back to the feel of his lips on mine. His tongue. His hands. The way my heart, so guarded for the period we spent apart, had cracked right open like a dam breaking - destroying everything I’d worked so hard to bottle up.

  It lingered on my lips for hours after he left me alone in the hallway. I smelled him on my clothes. The places his hands had touched tingled with phantom pressure from his fingers.

  I hated it, and at the same time, I was scared to let it go.

  I lay in my bed, and for the first time since we’d fought, I allowed myself to remember the night we spent together in my bedroom. How I’d felt - nervous and unsure. But the more I thought about it, the more I was certain that I hadn’t made a mistake. He was the only one I would have given it all to.

  He needed to know. And as soon as he stopped being a complete asshole, I’d tell him.

  I anticipated that it would take some time. I’d need to earn his trust back. To prove to him that I had made one mistake and that he needed to get over it.

  My plan was to make him talk to me again, but without the hurt and anger that we’d expressed just a few days before. I could make him talk to me if I was level headed and apologetic. But I would not let him run all over me again.

  What I didn’t expect was to pull up in the parking lot full of students nervously chattering about something that had happened over the weekend.

  “He hit a tree.”

  I stood by my car, craning my neck to hear what they were talking about.

  “He’s so lucky it wasn’t worse.”

  “Broken arm and fractured rib.”

  “Texting and lost control.”

  I rushed through the crowd of bodies, suddenly filled with dread that it was someone I knew. “Please, don’t let it be him,” I chanted, making my way to his first class. I scanned the desks, my heart hammering in my chest at an alarming rate. He wasn’t there.

  Turning quickly, I started to rush out of the room when I smashed directly into him, sending me bouncing back before Tucker’s hands caught me.

  “You’re here.”

  His face was somber, dark cycles under his eyes. “Yeah, I’m here. Were you looking for me?” The question was skeptical - almost disbelieving.

  “I heard someone got into an accident. I was afraid it was you.”

  He shook his head and led me into the noisy hallway. “It was Landon. He left that party on Sunday night and . . . I don’t know the whole story, but he lost control of his car and hit a tree.”

  That was exactly why I had been afraid to drive for so long. Now it was hitting way too close to home.

  “Was he drinking? Were you there?”

  “I was invited, so I went.” He pressed a hand to his face and breathed out roughly, ignoring my first question. “I feel like it’s my fault.”

  “Why would you think that? He was texting or something, right?”

  Tucker leaned wearily against the wall. “I told him to leave you alone. He got pissed and left. It’s my fault, right? I mean, I didn’t hit him, even though I wanted to. Because, trust me, I wanted to.”

  “I’m so confused.” I faced the wall and rested my forehead against the cool bricks. “Why would you do that?”

  His hand on my shoulder caused my head to swim and he turned me to face him, his eyes bloodshot and questioning. “You know exactly why, Mal.”

  “Is this one of those things where if we can’t be together, you try and stop other people from dating me?”

  “Jesus. You said it yourself,” he lowered his voice and narrowed his eyes. “In the hallway you said you wanted him to leave you alone. Or something similar. And I knew you wouldn’t do it on your own.”

  “Maybe I would have,” I countered.

  “Are we done here?” His tone was biting.

  “I don’t know. Are we done?”

  He pressed his lips together and disappeared into the room.

  ***

  Rehearsal could not come fast enough. I had no idea how we were going to go on with the show after what had happened. I carried my own guilt for being part of the reason Landon left that party so abruptly. I felt bad for telling Tucker anything about how I felt that day. I should have just left well enough alone.

  The theater was quiet, and Mr. Hanks addressed us all with a somber expression. He adjusted his glasses and then removed them to wipe the lenses on the hem of his shirt. “I’m sure you’ve all heard by now that Mr. Pope was involved in a car accident over the weekend. There will be a no-texting contract that all the schools in the county are asking students to sign tomorrow.” He shook his head. “Mr. Pope was very lucky that he walked away from that accident with just t
hose minor injuries.”

  A hand went up in the back of the room and Mr. Hanks nodded his head to acknowledge them.

  “What are we going to do about his part? Will he be back in time?”

  “No. We’re going to be forced to replace him with someone else.”

  That’s when a movement from across the stage caught my eye. Tucker stepped forward, hands in his pockets and his head tilted down as he stood next to Mr. Hanks.

  “I’ll be stepping in for Landon.”

  I got lightheaded, and had to cover my mouth with my hands to stop from making a sound.

  “Who knows the part better than me, right?” He raised his focus to a spot somewhere at the back of the room. There was tittering from behind me, the other people either nodding in agreement or shrugging like it really didn’t matter.

  But it did matter. It mattered to me.

  ***

  I signed the texting contract in the commons. They showed all of these really disturbing pictures of car wrecks and statistics that proved exactly why I hadn’t wanted to get behind the wheel of that stupid metal death trap my aunt had insisted on. I made a mental note to have a long talk with my mom when she got home. She was going to have to get me another car. Even if I had to pay her back for it until I was thirty.

  The crowd behind me shifted and I finished signing my cards, shoving the wallet sized one into my pocket before following the stream of bodies exiting into the hallways. A warm hand on my shoulder stopped me and I turned to see who it could be.

  “Hey.” Tucker was looking around at the other students filing by.

  “What’s up?” I had practiced playing it cool in front of my mirror for an hour the night before. I knew at some point he was going to have to talk to me. We were co-stars now.

  He started to reach toward his hair and then stopped. “I needed to ask if you have time after school to run lines together. I know them by heart but we . . . you know. We need to . . .” The tone of his voice was flat and hollow, like all the fight had gone out of him.

  “You don’t have to do this, you know. I can’t tell you enough that it’s not your fault. Don’t feel obligated.”