by Jeff Zentner
It makes my bone marrow throb. It steals my breath, but not in a panic-attack way.
“Is this—”
She peeks at me, blushing from between fingers. Her nails are painted matte black.
“—you?”
She nods.
Of course she would have to be brilliant at this too. There’s no respite. She’s actively trying to destroy me inside. “Wow. You are incredible.”
“Shut up! I’ve been working on it for a while.”
“So—do you want to be a classical pianist or this?” I nod at the stereo.
“All of the above.” She picks up her iPod. “Okay, that’s good.”
I put my hand over hers. “I want to keep listening.”
“Eeeee. No!”
“Yes! In fact, I expect a copy of this.” Because this also makes me forget everything. Oh, how this makes me forget.
Even though skyscrapers don’t have chimneys, downtown Nashville somehow always smells of woodsmoke by mid-October. And it’s perfect jacket weather. The night air tastes like chilled apple cider and the sky breathes with stars. We park and walk the few blocks to the Ryman. The crowd gradually thickens as we approach. Groups mill around, chatting excitedly.
I walk a little taller as I catch a pack of frat boys eyeing Jesmyn as we pass. That’s right, bros. But I wish I were holding her hand.
Then: “Carver! Jesmyn! Hey!”
I look over to see Georgia, Maddie, and Lana waving. “Oh, shit,” I mutter, and wave.
“What?” Jesmyn asks, veering in their direction.
“Nothing. Just—Maddie and Lana can be obnoxious.”
Georgia greets Jesmyn and me with a hug. “Are y’all as completely shitting yourselves in excitement for this show as I am?”
“More,” Jesmyn says.
I avoid eye contact with Maddie and Lana.
“Well, hello to you too, Carver,” Lana says loudly.
“Hi.”
“Hello, Carver,” Maddie says as loudly as Lana.
“Hey.”
“Are you gonna introduce us to your friend?” Lana asks.
“This is Jesmyn. Jesmyn, Lana and Maddie, my sister’s friends.”
“…And?” Maddie asks.
“Yeah, Carver, and? Are we not your friends?” Lana asks, eyes boring into me.
I stifle an eye roll because it’ll only make things worse. “And…my friends.”
“Awwwwwwww,” they say in unison.
They introduce themselves warmly to Jesmyn, who gives me a look saying, What’s wrong with you?
Georgia glances at her phone. “Okay, we’re gonna grab our seats. Where are you guys?”
“Balcony,” Jesmyn says.
“Cool,” Georgia says. “Maybe we’ll see y’all after.”
“Bye, Carver,” Maddie says, still being loud. She catches Jesmyn’s eye and shakes her head.
I wave. We head up to the balcony.
“Those two seemed nice.”
“Seemed. From the first second my sister brought them home from college, they’ve loved tormenting me. They think it’s hysterical.”
Jesmyn purses her lips and grabs my chin. “Oh, you poor widdle thing. Bwess your heart.”
I grin and pull my chin away. “Don’t you start.”
We find our seats in the balcony.
“Did you listen to that Dearly mix I made you?” Jesmyn asks.
“Of course.”
“And?”
“It was awesome.”
“I hear he’s way better live.”
I’ve never seen her this way. She’s gleaming. I can sense her heat on my face. She cranes her neck to try to look at the stage setup.
“Sorry,” she murmurs, still craning. “I’m geeking out over the keyboard gear.”
“It’s okay,” I say quite sincerely, because the way she’s positioned, I have an unobstructed view of the geography between her ear and her jaw. Suddenly, I want to kiss it so badly it makes me delirious.
But then Pierce appears on my shoulder—a cartoon demon—whispering: You don’t deserve this. This moment is not yours. She is not yours and never can be. And you can never be hers. You’re borrowing this for a few hours. Both of you belong to my dead son.
She snaps her head back to me, about to say something, but her expression changes when she sees me. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“You okay? You had this Carverish look.”
“Yeah…just thinking…of a story idea. About a musician.”
Jesmyn’s eyes dance. “I want to read it when you’re done.”
“Totally.”
She starts to say something else, but the lights dim for the opening act.
During their set, she turns to me and says something. I’m able to read her lips, but I pretend I can’t so that she’ll cup her hand to my ear and put her lips to it.
“These guys are great!” she yells.
I could respond with a nod, but I opt to cup my hand to Jesmyn’s ear and put my lips to it, to say, “Totally. They rock.”
They play for about forty-five minutes and leave the stage. Jesmyn and I chat about nothing in particular while roadies change over the equipment onstage.
While we talk, a familiar but also new confessional yearning seizes me: I want to tell her how I feel about her. The second this hunger starts blossoming in me, though, I see Pierce’s face. I see Adair’s face. I see Judge Edwards’s face. I see the faces of the detectives and assistant district attorney who questioned me. I see the officers turning over my room. I see Eli’s face. Here you are, man, using my ticket to go see a concert with my girlfriend after you sent the text that killed me. Why don’t you tell her you’re into her? Maybe you two can get together. After all, my dad didn’t say you couldn’t. He only said he didn’t want to see it.
Jesmyn looks at me. “You having fun?”
I hadn’t realized I was staring at her; my mind was so distant. “Oh…yeah. Definitely.”
“We’ll make a music lover of you yet.”
“Dude, whatever. I’m always listening to you practice and I love your music that you played me.”
“I mean we’ll turn you on to some musicians who aren’t me.”
“Okay, but we’re going to turn you on to more books.”
“Deal.”
Then the lights dim again. Jesmyn bounces up and down and makes a little eep sound. She grabs my wrist, her fingers warm and smooth as sun-soaked driftwood, her rings cold on my skin.
It’s physically painful when she lets go and joins the uproarious applause for Dearly.
He strides onstage, tall, sleek, and lean, in black jeans, black boots, and a black denim jacket with a plaid western shirt underneath. The members of his band, cool and sharp like razors, follow close behind him and take their positions on the stage, illuminated by pinpricks of white light, so it appears they’re playing in a starlit sky. Dearly heads to center stage, slings on his guitar, and steps to the mic, his shaggy dark hair framing his unshaven face.
The band starts in like a tsunami. Dearly begins to sing. Jesmyn shivers next to me. She’s transfixed. I understand why. The music is stirring something deep inside me, too.
A couple of minutes into his second song, Jesmyn puts her hand on my shoulder, pulling me to her. “This show would have converted Eli.”
Not that I’d thought about it in advance, but that’s literally the last thing I wanted her to speak into my ear.
He finishes the third song, picks up a towel, wipes off his face, and takes a sip of water. “Hey, Nashville, it’s good to be home, sort of.” Everyone goes apeshit. He surveys the crowd. “Thank y’all so much for coming tonight. I see friends out there. I see people who are pretty much family. It’s such an honor to be standing on this stage.”
Jesmyn pulls me down again. “He’s from Tennessee. Right near Fall Creek Falls, in fact.”
My belly roils and creaks, turning in on itself. I try to unknot it. Jealousy is ugly. Especially wh
en it’s directed at—and the truth is that I don’t know at whom it’s directed. Dearly? Eli? All the people experiencing normalcy around me, enjoying a concert without fear that it might be the last one they see before going to prison? Jesmyn, for being able to enjoy something so unreservedly?
As Dearly thunders, soars, and bleeds through his set, Jesmyn has the same expression she had when watching the storm. When watching the waterfall. Like a symphony of colors is cascading over her. She focuses alternately on Dearly and on the impossibly hip and gorgeous blonde playing keyboards in his band.
Please just have fun. Please let her lend you her excitement, the beauty she’s seeing.
Even more than I want her, I want to not want her.
My thoughts descend in a spiral—blood washing down a drain. Where is your ability to create something so powerful? What about you could enthrall her this way? Your writing has only the power to kill, not the power to make her see vibrant color. The music is sublime. I’m furious with myself for allowing it to evoke such malignant emotion in me. It’s like being mad at a sunset.
Isn’t this what you deserve? Pierce asks me with his vacant eyes, hard and dark as gunmetal. Enjoy my dead son’s ticket. Enjoy my dead son’s show. Have fun sitting beside my dead son’s girlfriend in my dead son’s seat.
I watch her. Her face; her shimmering eyes that become glassy and distant during the quietest moments; her lips silently mouthing the lyrics; her movement in rhythm with the music. It’s like I don’t exist beside her. Some gossamer veil separates us.
Dearly finishes a song and his band exits the stage. He stands alone with his acoustic guitar. “This next song I dedicate to a friend I lost in high school.”
“Oh,” Jesmyn murmurs. She tenses up palpably, bracing herself.
Tears cascade down her face as he sings. I touch her back and she moves slightly toward me. The song is pulling long, scarlet threads from my heart too, making it unravel in a blue twilight. I’m able to lose myself in it until it ends. For those few minutes, my mind rests.
Jesmyn wipes her eyes through Dearly’s next two songs, for which his band rejoins him. When he bids the crowd good night and walks offstage, she alternates wiping her eyes and clapping. The crowd chants for more. Dearly and the band return for an encore.
When they start playing, the crowd goes bananas. Jesmyn squeals and pulls me down to her. “They’re covering a Joy Division song called ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart.’ ”
I nod as if I’m familiar.
Even though I’ve spent the last hour and a half in turmoil, I’m not ready for it to end. I want to keep watching her bathe in the colors that she sees sound.
And I’m uncertain what to say to her when the world falls silent again and we have to fill it with our speaking.
The signing line is a mile long, but it’s clear we aren’t leaving until Jesmyn has a signed poster.
We finally make it to the front of the line, where Dearly sits behind a table, signing T-shirts, posters, records, and the occasional body part.
Jesmyn buys a poster and hands it to Dearly with trembling hands. He exudes easy confidence. I guess I would too if I’d done what he did in front of throngs of fans screaming my name.
“Hey. I hope y’all had fun tonight,” he says, with a sudden hint of bashfulness as he meets our eyes.
Jesmyn laughs and smoothes her hair. “Oh, yeah, completely. It was amazing,” she stammers.
The way she’s all jittery and giggly and looking at him. My stomach coils again.
“We were near where you grew up last week,” Jesmyn says as Dearly signs her poster.
He looks up with a slight, sad smile. “Oh, yeah? I don’t go back there much.”
Jesmyn tucks a lock of hair behind her ear. “So—I’m a musician too.”
“Nice,” Dearly says. “What do you play?”
“Classical piano. But I also write and record songs.”
“Man, music was my refuge when I was your age.”
“I’d love to play keyboard for you after I finish college,” Jesmyn says.
Her fawning tone is making my blood froth.
Dearly twists around to a man standing behind him, chatting with a couple of beautiful women who seem to be VIPs. “Will? Hey, Will? Give me your card.” The man hands Dearly a card.
Dearly turns and hands the card to Jesmyn. “When you finish college, contact Will; he’s my manager. But only when you finish college, okay?”
“Okay,” Jesmyn says, breathless. “So. One more thing. That song you played for your friend really meant a lot to us. I just lost my boyfriend, who was his best friend.” She points at me.
I shift my weight uncomfortably from side to side. Trying to look casual.
“I’m sorry,” Dearly says softly. “I’ve been there.” Something else has replaced his bashfulness. “I hope you find peace eventually.”
“Did you?” Jesmyn asks.
Dearly gets a wistful and distant look in his eyes. “Not yet.”
“Any tips?” Jesmyn ignores the tangible impatience of the people behind us.
Dearly ignores them too. “Stick with the people you love and who love you. Stick with the music.”
“That sounds like solid advice,” Jesmyn says. “Anyway, amazing show. Thanks.”
Dearly thanks us for coming, and we leave, making way for the next devotees in line to receive Communion.
“Okay, I am, like, buzzing right now. I’m probably going to stay up all night playing music. That was intense,” Jesmyn says.
“Yeah, it was cool,” I say without conviction, pretending to focus intently on the road.
“I mean, did it not blow your mind?”
“Pshew.” I make an exploding motion from my head.
“How is somebody even that brilliant?”
“Yeah, I thought you were about to ask Dearly to marry you.” I hope she takes that as a joke, so I can say it without consequence. But even I can tell that my accompanying laugh is a bit too caustic.
If Jesmyn were a video-game character, her “exuberance status bar” would have zeroed out after that hit. “Um. No.”
“I was kidding,” I mutter.
“So I’m some dumb groupie who just wants to get with a rock star?”
“No. I mean, you did offer to be his keyboard player, though.” I should stop talking, but I can’t. It’s like when you pissed your pants as a kid—you knew you were doing something gross and wrong but you couldn’t stop once you started.
She takes a deep breath through her nose. “Wanting to play keyboards in someone’s band is not wanting to marry them. Besides, he’s an adult man. With a girlfriend.”
“Oh, glad you checked.”
She rolls her eyes. “Why are you being shitty right now? After the best show of my life and you’re seriously crapping on me.”
“I’m just making conversation.”
“Not the kind Eli would have made after a great show.”
“I’m not Eli.”
“Look, can we please stop having weirdness? I don’t get what your deal is or why you’re being this way, but could you please stop?”
“Fine.”
We drive in strained silence the rest of the way home. At one point, we make eye contact and we trade terse, taut-lipped smiles.
There’s so much I want to say to her, and so much static in my brain. I don’t have a clear line on my thoughts.
We pull up to her house with my head still in a vortex.
“Okay. Well. Thanks,” Jesmyn says, reaching for the door handle. “I’ll s—”
“Jesmyn.”
She looks at me expectantly.
“I’m—” Don’t say you have feelings for her. If you’re going to do this, if you’re going to succumb, use any other phrase but that. “I have feelings for you. I like you. I like like you. As more than a friend.”
Her expression tells me immediately that’s not what she was hoping to hear. The air goes stiff.
She shakes her h
ead and puts her hand over her eyes, bowing her head and moaning softly. “Carver. Carver.”
My blood speeds. “It’s not like I chose for this to happen.”
“I’m sure, but I can’t. You must know that. I just can’t.”
I’m not sure I even can. But still. I’m in it now. The only way out is on the other side. “Why not?”
“Why not? Seriously?”
“I mean, the obvious reason I know.”
“Well, right. The obvious reason is the reason.” She buries her face in both hands, muffling her voice.
“Do you not feel anything back?”
“You’re my friend. I like you.”
“That’s not what I mean, and you know it.”
She raises her hands in front of her as though holding an invisible box. “Carver, I can’t. I can’t deal with this right now. I have a Juilliard audition to prepare for. My boyfriend—your best friend—died two and a half months ago. I am not ready for another relationship.”
“But with Eli you were ready after all of three days.”
“Oh my g— Can you seriously not see how that was different? I didn’t get together with Eli after my previous boyfriend had just died.”
I’m crumbling; splintering. “What? What is so wrong with me?”
“There’s nothing wrong with you.”
I suddenly feel ridiculous in my new clothes. Like Jesmyn saw right through my costume. “Is it that I’m not as brilliant as Dearly? Or Eli?”
“Your brilliance is not the problem. Not at all. I read the story you gave me.”
“And of course you didn’t say a word about it.”
“I don’t sit around telling people how brilliant they are. I show them. I showed you by the respect I’ve given you, which you don’t seem to have for me.”
“You had no problem telling Dearly how brilliant he is.”
“Well, he and I don’t eat lunch together every day.”
“Not by your choice.”
“Are you seriously jealous of one of my favorite musicians?”
I sit there with my mouth agape, trying to figure out how to answer no when the answer is yes. “No,” I say. This is going terribly. But I can’t stop. Some malevolent voice is telling me to burn my life down. “Eli wasn’t that great.” The words sear my lips as they leave. What are you doing?