by Dana Piccoli
Chapter Four
“And now let’s move into Sun Salutation,” the yoga instructor said softly as she canvassed the room. Nat, Paul, and Jackie had made a pact to get in shape and decompress after the tour. Hot yoga classes at The Space in Park Slope were on the agenda. The instructor, an attractive older woman with a gray pixie cut, passed by and corrected Nat’s posture. Paul and Jackie were on either side of her and Jackie was simultaneously texting and posing, while beads of sweat poured off Paul’s red face. It had been a few days since the trio arrived back in New York, and Nat was doing her best to avoid Melissa’s texts and drinking a bit more wine than she should. Her muscles were tight and dehydrated, and she felt a little unsteady on her feet, but she needed this release.
“Natalia, I’m dying. I’m actually dying,” whimpered Paul, the nicotine leaching out in his sweat.
“You’re not dying. You smoke two packs a day and you are a handsome, husky fool.”
“Didn’t you hear? I’m vaping now.”
“Focus please, ladies and gentlemen,” announced the instructor. Nat’s face grew red with embarrassment. “Let’s move into Downward Dog.”
Nat pulled herself into the inverted V position, and while holding the pose, she looked toward the floor to ceiling windows. Right beyond Jackie, who was somehow taking a selfie, Nat noticed a woman with wavy red hair. She had toned arms the color of fresh cream dotted with light, playful freckles. Her shoulders were bare and defined, glistening with perspiration, leading into a raspberry colored tank top. Just as Nat was thinking how lovely it would be to run her fingertips across those beautiful arms, the woman turned her head and met Nat’s gaze. Her lips curled into a grin that took Nat by surprise, so much so, that her sweaty hands gave way underneath, sending her tumbling from her pose, her head smacking against the blond wood floor of the studio. Everything went black.
When Nat opened her eyes, Jackie and the instructor knelt above her. She felt a knot rising on her forehead as Jackie applied a cold ice pack. Paul appeared with a cup of water, his face still red.
“You’ll be just fine,” said the instructor. “I’m a former nurse, and I don’t think you have a concussion. Just a small bump. Might be wise to get it checked out by your general practitioner, though. Can you stand?” Nat nodded and Jackie and Paul helped her up. She was a little sore but more embarrassed than anything. Her first thought was what an ass she had made of herself in front of that beautiful stranger. The rest of class had cleared out during the hubbub, so Nat, Jackie, and Paul gathered their mats and belongings as well. As they headed toward the lobby, the beautiful redhead rose from the window seat.
“Is she okay?” she asked Paul. She turned her concerned gaze toward Nat. “Are you okay?” Nat, touched that the redhead had waited to check on her prognosis, smiled and nodded yes. The redhead smiled back. Nat opened her mouth to speak, but the room was still spinning a bit, so she thought better of it.
“Oh, good.” The redhead slipped her mat under her arm. “Feel better,” she whispered before heading through the front door and out to the street.
Jackie poked Nat playfully in the ribs, bringing her back to reality.
“Wanna skip coffee?” Paul asked.
Nat reached up to brush some hair away from the swollen goose egg. “It’s too early for bourbon, right?”
“Oh girl, it is never too early for bourbon,” remarked Paul.
Jackie cocked her head at him.
“What?” he shrugged.
“Coffee is good. I could use a boost. Let’s go,” Nat declared as she linked arms with her friends.
Chapter Five
Nat and Jackie stirred their lattes at a café table in the coffee shop downstairs from the yoga studio. Paul stomped over with a magazine in his hand. “You are never going to believe this shit.” He tossed it on the table, causing the empty sugar packets to flutter onto the floor in its wake. It was a copy of the weekly indie rock magazine Market, and on the cover was none other than Melissa Hartford.
“Sweet Agony Lead Singer Melissa Hartford: Uncovered,” Jackie read aloud nonchalantly.
“They should hurry and cover the bitch back up,” sniffed Paul as he took his seat.
Nat took a long sip of her coffee and the table was quiet for a moment.
Jackie broke the silence, her brown eyes flashing between them. “Soooo… Is anyone going to tell me the real story? I know you and Melissa had a thing and then a falling out of sorts—”
“Of sorts? Well, that’s the goddamn understatement of the year,” Paul said.
“All right, easy, mate,” Jackie said. “But I want to know the whole story. Since I came on board this tour, I’ve only heard bits and pieces from Paul.”
Nat shot a look at Paul, who shrugged his shoulders and said, “What? We share a van, for chrissakes. Long, lonely nights. I mean, frankly, I’m surprised I didn’t spill all the damn tea.”
“It’s fine,” Nat sighed as she shifted in her chair. She paused for a moment, then flipped the paper over. “Last year, Melissa Hartford’s band and our band booked a North American multi-city double bill. That much you know.” Jackie leaned forward with her hands under her chin. “Well, things were great at first. Melissa and I…hit it off.”
He rolled his eyes. “More like they spent every waking moment together,” he interjected, “which was annoying by the way.”
“Would you like to tell the story?”
“Well, I tell it much better,” he said with a smile.
“Fine,” She leaned back in her chair and gestured for him to continue.
He pulled his chair closer to Jackie. “Okay, so Natalia falls head over heels for Melissa, who is a soul sucking monster with really nice boobs and bouncy hair.”
“It was quite bouncy,” Nat agreed as she chewed on the end of her stir straw.
“Right, so these two are all duets and love songs and guesting in each other’s sets and shit. The crowds didn’t know for sure, but they could feel the energy and they loved it. They called them Natlissa.”
“I thought it was HartChamber?” Nat interjected.
“Whatever. The point is, they shipped it.”
Jackie narrowed her eyes. “Shipped it?”
He sighed. “Yes, it’s short for relationship. Are you ever on Twitter? Get with it, Jackie. Anyway…”
Paul then proceeded to tell the story of the worst day of Nat’s life.
“Oh, bloody hell!” exclaimed Jackie who looked at Nat with horror. Nat ran her fingers through her hair and pursed her lips.
“It was worse than you can imagine,” Paul continued. “Nat, Lara, and I still had to perform three more shows together. Nat didn’t speak to anyone save for me that last week. She breezed past Melissa during and after shows. To Nat’s credit, she was one hundred percent professional. Said she didn’t want to punish the fans for something out of their control. Lara was all tears and apologies. She begged Nat to forgive her. I mean they were bandmates and friends for years.”
“Some things you can’t get past,” Nat said as she peered out the café window.
“What about Melissa?” Jackie asked looking to Paul.
“Melissa was nonchalant, to say the least. She made it seem like Nat had never meant that much to her in the first place and that they were just having fun. I think that’s what hurt Nat the most.” Paul looked into Nat’s eyes, which were welling with tears. He reached over and brushed her cheek with his thumb. “I’m sorry, love,” he said gently.
“It’s the head bump.”
“Sure, doll.” He returned his focus to Jackie. “After that, Nat let Lara go and decided to go with a fresh new set up. Bass out, cello in. That’s where you came in.”
Jackie smiled.
“And we’re all the better for it, right Natalia?”
Nat took a deep breath. “Absofuckinglutely,” she cheered as she raised her paper cup to her bandmates. Paul and Jackie joined her in the toast.
“So, speaking of that, Oliver wa
nts us to get back in the studio soon,” Nat announced. “Which would be fine if I’d been able to write any decent new songs in months.”
Paul slurped his coffee. “What about that one you played for me last week? The one in six-eight?”
“It was shit. I tossed it.”
“I thought it was good.”
“It was trite and passionless.”
He laughed. “Those are some of my best qualities.”
“Well,” Jackie piped in, “perhaps you need a little inspiration. You seemed pretty inspired before you went all ass over tit during yoga.” She cast a raised eyebrow at Nat.
“How did you even see that? You were taking a picture of your own boobs,” Nat responded.
“I’m an excellent multi-tasker. Come on, I play cello and sing harmonies at the same time. I’m goddamn spectacular!”
“That you are.” Nat smiled. “Considering I literally fell flat on my face in front of her, I’m going to venture to say that I didn’t make the best first impression.”
“I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” Jackie said with a knowing smile. “Even I felt those sparks.”
Nat chuckled at that thought. “Sparks, eh? No, that was the look of pity for a poor woman who is apparently as coordinated as a newborn giraffe.”
“Nah, there was definitely sparkage, right Paul?” Jackie playfully punched him in the arm.
“Loads. Sparks. Sparkles. Glitter!”
Nat couldn’t help but smile. Could there really have been sparks? No way.
Chapter Six
Nat sat in bed, carefully licking orange cheese dust off her fingers. In the two days since she’d fallen ass over tit at the yoga studio, she’d been nursing her wounds and laying low. It wasn’t so much the bump on the head, but the conversation with Paul and Jackie afterward.
Seeing Melissa on the cover of that magazine shook her. She’d spent the last year trying not to think about Melissa, and all that did was remind her of the pain and frustration of the situation. She hadn’t dated anyone since the breakup, and the double whammy of losing one of her best friends along with her lover was too much to bear. She’d compartmentalized it, but sometimes she just had to admit it really sucked. So there she sat in bed, Eddie sprawled out on his back in a sunbeam, while she looked disheveled and covered in a thin layer of nacho cheese powder. She ignored a soft knock at the door and searched through Netflix for something to watch for the umpteenth time. With annoyance, she tossed her iPad and laid down in a huff.
“Chambers, you look like shit,” Paul said, suddenly standing in the door frame of her bedroom.
She screamed with surprise. “Jesus H, Paul! What are you doing here and why are you trying to kill me?” She tossed a throw pillow at him.
He gingerly held up a keychain. “Remember, I have a key?”
“That’s for emergencies only.”
Paul shrugged and sat down on the bed. “You didn’t respond to my text for like, five hours. I figured that meant emergency. But now that I see you, I’m guessing…more lezmergency than actual emergency.”
She glared at him. “Lezmergency?”
“Yeah,” he said as he picked up little pieces of trash and discarded clothing from the bed. “It’s when your lesbian best friend is brooding over a woman and you have to come and try to fix it.”
“Who says I’m brooding?”
“Well, the state of your hair for one thing. Also, I know that the Melissa thing got under your skin the other day.” He pulled out a joint and offered it to her. She shook her head. “Good thinking.” He lit up and took a drag. “You are the worst on pot.”
“Thanks. Remind me again why you’re here? Just to torture me?”
He grabbed her by the shoulders. “That’s always fun but no, I’m here on official best friend business. So, let it out.”
She huffed. “There’s nothing to let out.”
“Bullshit.” He took another drag and blew it out the side of his mouth. “I can see you are hurting, so let’s talk.”
She pulled at a loose thread on her comforter. “Fine. I guess, it’s just that every time I think it’s over, that I’m not hurt or angry anymore, something happens to remind me that I’m not over it.”
“Maybe it’s not that you aren’t over it. Maybe, it’s that you hold on tightly to things, even pain, and it brings you some sort of weird comfort to have this big bad emotion in your life.”
She scrunched her eyebrows. “That’s nonsense.”
“Is it?” He stubbed out the joint on a nearby plate of cookie crumbs. “Do you still love Melissa?”
“No,” she said with assurance. She didn’t.
“Do you miss her?”
“God, no.”
He motioned for her to move over and he laid next to her. “So, it comes down to pride then?”
“What? No. I don’t know. Maybe.”
“I mean, it makes sense. If our roles had been reversed, my pride would have been wounded too. The ego is a bitch of a thing to battle against. I think, and I may be wrong, but I doubt it, that you’re more hurt about Lara than Melissa.”
Nat’s stomach dropped at the mention of Lara’s name. Friends since their early days in New York, Nat and Lara had been more like sisters than friends. “I hate to admit it, but you may have a point. I put so much anger toward the situation, I didn’t really take the time to process how sad I was about it.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I don’t miss Melissa but I do miss Lara.”
He leaned on one elbow. “I wasn’t going to tell you this, but now that you’re having your come to Jesus moment, I think you can handle it.”
“Okay?” She prepared herself for the worst.
“I ran into Lara the other day.”
“Really? Where? Last I heard she was moving to LA.”
“She did. She was in town for a gig, I guess. We bumped into each other in Hell’s Kitchen on the street. New York is such a small town.”
“Well?”
“She’s good. She let her hair grow out. She’s working with a new band she likes a lot. She was with a guy who it turns out is her boyfriend. Cute.”
“Is this supposed to make me feel better?”
He sneered. “I’m getting there. Anyhoo, she asked about you. Told me she misses you a lot and regrets what happened every day. She’s happy now but she wished she could change how things happened. Turns out Melissa told her you guys were opening up the relationship and that she didn’t have to worry.”
“That dick.”
“Yeah, exactly. I mean, it’s not like she was using that as an excuse, because let’s face it, fucking your best friend’s girlfriend under any circumstance is not cool.”
Nat rubbed her face. “And?”
“And, she’s sorry. She was also harboring this hidden jealousy of you, and it found a way to worm its way out in the worst possible way.”
“She said that?”
“Yeah, she’s been doing a lot of meditation and therapy. Don’t roll your eyes.”
“I didn’t!”
“You wanted to. The point of all this is, Lara is really sorry and she wanted you to know that. I know it’s not the closure you were probably looking for, but it’s out there in the universe now if you want to grab hold of it.”
Nat sat quietly for a moment. She wanted to forgive Lara and maybe that was the key to moving forward. “I’ll think about it.”
“Okay, you do that. Meanwhile, I’ll order us some Chinese while you take a shower. You smell like regret and processed cheese. Normally that’s appealing to me in a person, but not today, buddy.” He hopped up and headed into the living room. Eddie trotted behind him, hoping for a treat.
Nat sniffed her armpits and decided Paul’s advice was best taken.
Chapter Seven
Nat sat in the rehearsal studio the next day with a pen in her hand and stared at the empty page before her. Well, technically it wasn’t empty. It was full of false starts and crossed out lines, so
in her experience that was as good as a big, fat nothing. She sighed and tossed the pen across the room. It accidently bounced and whizzed past Jackie’s ear as she rosined her bow.
“Oi!”
Nat sat up. “Oh my god, I’m sorry! I have terrible aim. I can’t do sports.”
“Apparently,” Jackie scoffed as she resumed rosining.
“Once, when I was a kid, my parents sent me to softball camp. It was a nightmare. Not only did I hit the girl I had a crush on in the nose with a runaway pitch, but I also fell asleep in the outfield. I was subsequently shunned…and pantsed.”
“I was rather good at sports,” Jackie replied, blowing some light, sticky dust from her bow. “I was on the football team. It was rather like Bend it Like Beckham, but without all the lesbian subtext. At least for me.”
“Yes, I know. You are tragically straight.”
Jackie pursed her lips. “I really am. I tried in college, Nat. I really did. I just couldn’t get it to take.”
Nat laughed.
“Anyway, my parents were worried it would interfere with my classical studies so they pulled me out.”
“And how did they take it when you left the classical world to play rock music?”
“Oh, about as well as damp squib. Imagine having to tell your Nigerian parents that you are leaving the symphony to travel the world with a bunch of American girls with blue hair and nipple piercings.”
“Ah yes, your first band. How was touring with Moxie?”
Jackie rolled her eyes. “Well, it was rather like Bend it Like Beckham, but with all the lesbian subtext.”
“I heard that about them.”
Jackie ran her bow across the cello’s D string, moving her finger and creating a beautiful vibrato. “Then somehow I ended up with you corkers.”