by Katia Rose
I hover under the neon sign above us, looking up at the swarm of insects being drawn to its light.
“You mind if I walk you home?” Ace asks.
“Right.” I grin at him. “You’re scared of the dark. All those monsters.”
He taps his head. “Yeah. In here.”
We make our way up the street in silence. I stare down at the tips of my Keds, watching them land on the cracks in the sidewalk.
Don’t step on a crack or you’ll break your mother’s back.
I never knew that English rhyme until I heard one of my students reciting it as she skipped up a tiled hallway at the studio. When I realized what she was saying, I laughed out loud—a hard laugh, a bitter laugh, like tea that’s been left to steep for too long. It was the laugh of the old Stéphanie.
It’s too fucking late for that, I thought to myself.
“You look pissed.”
My shoe lands on a crack. “Just thinking.”
“About what?”
I shake my head. “It doesn’t matter.”
He lets it go. That’s one thing I’ve come to appreciate about Ace Turner in the weeks since I met him: he knows when to let things go.
“I like your shoes,” he says suddenly. “They...they’re just part of you, you know? When I think about you, you’re always wearing those shoes.”
I stop walking. “You think about me?”
He stops too, and we square off a few feet from a streetlamp. I can see a dozen potential responses warring inside him, and I hope he’ll say something stupid. I hope he’ll crack a bad joke. I hope he’ll go against whatever instincts are pulling us together right now. I hope the light casts enough shadows on my face that he can’t see how breathless I am, how fucking petrified I become when he tilts his head to the side just a fraction of an inch and murmurs, “Frequently.”
I can’t stop this. I can’t run. All the control I’ve spent years trying to build gets obliterated the second I’m near him.
I don’t think even he realizes how dangerous he looks right now, because of course ‘frequently’ is a wild understatement of how much I’ve thought about him. Sometimes his voice is the loudest thing in my head. Sometimes when I lie awake in bed at night, I can picture his inked arms wrapped around me so clearly I swear I hear his heartbeat. Sometimes when Molly plays one of his songs, I have to lean against a wall while my knees shake and heat pulses in my core.
“Do you think about me, Stéphanie?”
His voice curls around the accent in my name, and this time he isn’t mocking me. This time, he’s saying my name like he owns it.
He’s wicked. He’s a wicked, wicked thing. He’s the night personified, looming in front of me, and all I want right now is for his shadow to melt into mine. I want his darkness. I want him to have my darkness.
“Toujours,” I breathe.
Always.
And then I’m in his arms.
At first, we don’t kiss. At first, just breathing is enough. He fists the back of my t-shirt and I press my cheek to his chest, letting my hands reach up to cup the back of his neck. His body is hard and wiry against mine, the two of us clinging to each other like we’re scared the sidewalk is about to crumble away so the earth below can swallow us whole.
“Stéphanie,” he mutters into my hair. “Stéphanie, god, you—you have no idea...”
His voice breaks, and so does my last shred of resolve.
“I do,” I say against the fabric of his shirt. My voice sounds thick, as if I’m about to start crying, even though I don’t feel like I am. “I do, Ace. I know. I feel it too. I’ve felt it since the beginning.”
One of his hands digs into my hair and I tilt my face up to look at him. His eyes are blazing, two coals in the dark, and I see a man who is both impossibly strong and disastrously broken inside.
I kiss him. There’s no easing into things. My lips meet his, and it’s like we’ve dropped a match into a barrel of gasoline. We’re just mouths and tongues and teeth and heat. There are moans and curses hissed between gasping breaths. I don’t realize we’ve moved closer to the house beside us until my back is up against the wall.
I thread my fingers through Ace’s hair and pull. Hard. He breaks away from my mouth with a sharp breath and rests his forehead against mine. We’re both panting.
“The things I want to do to you, Stéphanie...”
I arch my back and press my hips into his. He swears.
I want him to do those things, too. I want him to hold me harder, kiss me harder, fuck me harder. I want to know what it feels like to be fucked by him, and then I want to show him all the things I’m trembling at the thought of doing to him.
I don’t care that we’re in the middle of a street right now. I don’t care that our pizza box is probably lying face down on the sidewalk. I don’t care that I’m making a fucking spectacle of myself. I want this. I want Ace to be bad to me, and I want to be bad right back.
I take one of his cheeks in my palm and slide my thumb over his lips, those lips that were made to sip champagne. I’ve never had anything so elegant touch my skin.
He takes my thumb in his mouth and I almost convulse at the wet heat of his tongue. Then I feel the scrape of his teeth and start moaning. He lets my thumb go and leans in close to my ear.
“You act so good, but I bet you know how to be bad.”
“Câlice!” I explode, pushing on his shoulders so hard he takes a step back.
I fall forwards, bracing my hands on my knees as I gulp air down into my lungs.
“Stéphanie?” Ace urges, his voice betraying actual worry. “Are you okay?”
It’s too much. It’s all too much. This isn’t who I am anymore. I buried this girl. I locked her away, and I only let her out when I’m up on stage or tucked away safe in a studio.
“Did I go too far?” Ace continues to plead. “Stéphanie, I’m sorry. If any of that wasn’t okay, I’m sorry. Please talk to me.”
I try to put him out of his misery. “It’s fine. You didn’t go too far.”
I’m the one who did.
I set my mouth in a tight line to keep it from trembling. I won’t do this. I won’t let myself give in.
I straighten up and press my back against the wall again. “I just...I got carried away. We’re in the middle of a street.”
Ace’s face is completely bloodless right now.
“Really,” I tell him, “you didn’t do anything wrong. I should go, though.”
“Stéphanie...” He sounds tortured.
I leave him standing there under the streetlight, a diamond glittering in the gutter.
11 Wait Up || Tokyo Police Club
ACE
“She won’t answer my texts. Or my calls. Nothing.”
I pace the length of my apartment, dodging guitars and scattered pages of ink-smudged notes. The floor is so full of random shit that it’s less like pacing and more like navigating a minefield.
“Look I’m sure it’s, ah, not that bad.”
Matt makes a weird Yoda-like noise into the phone. He’s sounded distracted the whole time we’ve been talking, like he’s browsing the internet or waiting for the metro or something, but I just keep droning on about Stéphanie. I haven’t bitched to him about a girl in years, and even in his spaced-out state, I can tell he’s surprised we’re having this conversation.
“She just...She looked so angry after, and I don’t know where things went wrong. If I knew what was wrong, I could do something about it.”
“Yeah, I totally get what you, uh, mean.” His voice is so strained it cracks at the end of his sentence.
“Dude, are you...okay?” I venture.
“Yep, I’m great. I’m just, oh, fucking great. Mmhmm.”
“You sound like Yoda on the verge of having an orgasm.”
And then it hits me, just before I hear Matt cover the phone with his hand and mumble, “Fuck, Kay. Fuck.”
“Tabarnak, man. Are you getting head from your girlfriend whil
e you talk on the phone with me?”
“No. No that’s—oh shit—not what I’m doing at all.”
“God, you two are disgusting.” I rub my hand over my eyes. “Now hang up and show that woman some respect. Who picks up the phone in the middle of getting a blowjob?”
“Wait!” he shouts, just as I’m about to end the call.
“Was that meant for me or Kay?” I ask dryly.
“For you. Just wait a second.”
I hear a noise like a belt buckle clanging.
“Five minutes,” Matt whispers to Kay, even though I can still hear him perfectly. “This is really important for him.”
“Matt, just hang up the—”
“Ace, listen,” he continues at a normal volume. “To me, it sounds like this chick has some major hang-ups, and if she said you didn’t do anything wrong, I think you should believe her. She’s supposed to be your meditation teacher, not your fuck buddy, and you are also one of the most famous people in Montreal. She’s probably got some shit to adjust to.”
“I never said I wanted her to be my fuck buddy.”
He snorts. “Right, you want to actually date this girl.”
My half-second of silence is all it takes for him to drop the sarcasm from his voice.
“Shit, you do actually want to date this girl. Oh my fucking god.”
“I never said that either!”
He doesn’t pay any attention to me. “Damn, Ace. This is serious. We’ve got to get you two back on track.”
“I just—”
“Oh wait,” he interrupts me. “Kay is saying she wants to talk to you.”
Before I can protest, there are some jumbled noises from the phone being passed around, and then Matt’s girlfriend comes on the line.
“Hi, Ace.”
“Hello, Kay.”
Technically speaking, the two of us are on good terms, but I haven’t forgotten the time an article she wrote almost destroyed our band’s reputation and Matt and I’s friendship in the process. Again, technically most of that was Matt’s fault and not hers, and technically the thing that’s come closest to destroying the band’s reputation is me and my drinking, but that hasn’t stopped Kay and I from remaining nothing more than cordial.
“Sorry to get in the way of your, um, afternoon fun,” I tell her.
“If you tell anyone about this, you’re dead.”
“Hey,” I urge, “Matt’s the one who should be embarrassed about this situation. The fact that he sounds like Yoda when he’s getting head is definitely making it into my best man speech at your wedding.”
A wedding that, at the rate they’re going, will probably be soon. The sketchy start of their relationship aside, I’ve never seen the dude so happy. If I were him, I would have asked her already. Any girl who can put up with his cult-like devotion to Sherbrooke Station’s success is a keeper in my books.
Kay laughs. “You know what? I’ve never thought of it before, but he does sometimes sound like Yoda when he’s getting head.”
I hear Matt in the background, shouting at us both to fuck off.
“Look,” Kay continues, “I, um, couldn’t help overhearing your conversation, and as the only person here who has actual experience with what it’s like to date a member of Sherbrooke Station, I thought I’d pitch in. I think Matt’s right. This girl clearly wants to have something with you, whether that’s an actual relationship or not. You just have to give her time to come to terms with her own feelings. She’s probably spent weeks telling herself not to think of you as anything other than a student, and now she has to undo all that work.”
“You think?” I ask.
“Matt was only ever supposed to be my source. He had a lot of work to do, winning me over to the dark side.”
She lets out a sudden squeak, and I assume Matt just did something inappropriate to her.
“Okay,” I say quickly, “I’ll think about that. I have a meditation class with her today. I was hoping we’d get our shit sorted out before that, but I guess I’m going in blind.”
“She’s probably waiting to see you in person,” Kay assures me, and then squeaks again.
These two and their weird sex noises. It’s enough to give a guy nightmares.
“I’ll leave you to it, then.”
I’m about to hang up, but Matt shouts for me to wait again and then takes hold of the phone.
“You got the message from Maxime, right? About the party on Saturday?”
Atlas just hooked us up with a director for the ‘Nevermore’ music video, and apparently we’re supposed to show our faces at an ‘entertainment networking event’ in someone’s huge-ass loft while the director scopes out cast members.
“Yeah, I did.”
“Is that going to be...a problem for you? I think everyone will be drinking.”
“I’ll be fine,” I grit out. “Now go back to getting your dick sucked.”
He seems only too happy to oblige and hangs up right away. I spend the hour I have before meditation class restringing one of my guitars and deciding which of the clothes on my floor need to go in the laundry.
When I’m finally standing outside the AMM house, I pause on the crooked doorstep. Despite Matt and Kay’s assurances that Stéphanie clearly feels something for me, I’m not convinced. It felt physically painful to watch her walk away from me after we kissed, and if she can ignore the pull between us that easily, then maybe it’s not as strong for her as it is for me. Maybe I’m walking into the end of this, instead of the beginning.
I open the door and kick my shoes off before rounding the corner into the library. There’s a middle-aged man sitting on one of the folding chairs.
“You’re Ace Turner?” he asks in a French accent.
“Yeah,” I answer cautiously.
He stands up and offers me his hand. “I’m Luc. Stéphanie couldn’t make it in today, so I’ll be covering your session instead. I hope that is all right?”
I barely even feel his hand in mine as he shakes it.
“Is she sick?” I ask.
“She had a last minute conflict with her schedule at her other job. She’s very sorry.”
This definitely feels more like an end than a beginning.
12 Broken || Lovely The Band
STÉPHANIE
Watching Jacinthe apply lipstick in her mirror feels like déjà vu of last week, only this time I have a thick layer of makeup on myself.
“You’re saving my life,” Jacinthe repeats, for probably the sixth time tonight. “These aren’t the kind of parties you can show up to alone. I’d look desperate.”
Somehow—somehow—she’s convinced me to go along with her to one of her fancy model and dancer schmooze fests, where she’s hoping to charm a new agent and a director or two. The friend she was supposed to go with bailed last minute, and I know she wouldn’t be asking me unless this party really was important for her career. She’s already assured me she won’t leave my side all night, and that if I feel uncomfortable at any point we can leave.
I know people will be drinking. Hell, I know people will probably be snorting coke in the bathroom, but just because I avoid the nightlife, doesn’t mean I can’t handle it. I’ve been trying to convince Jacinthe of that too.
“That dress looks amazing on you, by the way,” she adds. “Ben sexy.”
I found it at the back of my closet tonight, after forgetting I even owned it. It’s a black skater dress with a halter neck the shows off my shoulders. I paired it with one of the only sets of high heels I still own—some strappy nude sandals—and Jacinthe decked me out in a few pieces of silver jewelry worth more than the entire contents of my apartment.
We call an Uber, and on the ride over, Jacinthe pesters me about a subject I’ve been silent on all evening: Ace Turner.
“So you kissed...Are you going to screw him now?”
‘Kiss’ feels like such an understatement. ‘Kiss’ only covers the surface, the sensation of lips on lips and the brush of soft skin.
What passed between us was so much more than that. The tug I felt when I first met him, the coiling knot of tension that kept roping us inwards, now feels like it’s wrapped itself around all my limbs. I want him so bad it’s constricting my body and crushing my ribs into my lungs.
I blew off our meditation session. I haven’t missed a class at the AMM or the studio in over a year, but as soon as I knew Luc could cover for me, I took him up on the offer.
“I don’t know what to do,” I groan. “I can’t be with him. I can’t. He...throws off my balance.”
Jacinthe laughs. “What, does he have bad chi or something? Does his aura not align with yours? You spend too much time at the meditation place, Steph, and you spend way too much time up here.” She leans over and taps my forehead. “It’s been forever since I’ve actually seen you interested in someone. Stop getting yourself so worked up. Tabarnak, if you want to screw the guy, screw the guy. Live in the present moment and let go of your past. Isn’t that why you’re supposed to be teaching people?”
I glance at where the Uber driver is doing his best to pretend he can’t hear us.
“I guess,” I offer.
We pull up in front of a huge and expensive looking loft complex in Griffintown. Jacinthe calls out a, “Merci et bon soirée!” to the driver as she swings her long legs out the door. I follow her into a dazzling chrome and marble lobby with a very modern water feature made out of giant, raw slabs of stone.
“Whose apartment are we going to, again?” I ask, my voice echoing even though I’m barely speaking above a whisper.
“His name is Léon. He runs a talent agency in Montreal. The party is supposed to be in honor of some big deal he just made, but everyone knows it’s a chance to network.”
I take some comfort in the fact that the host is Québécois. I was worried we’d walk in here and suddenly be nothing more than ‘The French Girls.’
We take the elevator all the way up to the top floor, where there are only two units. I can hear music blasting behind the door at the left end of the hall, and before Jacinthe and I have even made it over, the handle turns and three girls in mini dresses spill out. Two of them are holding up the one in the middle. She stares at us with glassy eyes and then smiles.