When the Lights Come On (Barflies Book 4)

by Katia Rose

  Another snip, and I wince when I see the edge of a nasty bruise on her side. She really took a beating from the street. It’s no wonder she can barely lift herself out of bed.

  I cut high enough to reveal the black band of her bra. I can see the edge of a tattoo made of scripted letters just underneath, but not enough to read what it says. I’ve reached the point where I need to move her hair out of the way. My fingers graze the nape of her neck as I brush it over her shoulder.

  “Sorry,” I murmur.

  As much as the sight of her standing there in submission while I cut the clothes off her body is doing unspeakable things to me, I know this is a vulnerable position for her. She’s doing this out of necessity, and I want her to feel as comfortable as she can.

  “It’s fine,” she says, so low I almost don’t hear her over the sound of the bath.

  I make the final cut, and my breath catches as I glance down the length of her back. She really is stunning, even bruised and held together by a sling and splint. Just the back of her neck is enough to make me weak.

  “Your, um, bra.” I’m trying so hard to keep it together that I sound like a malfunctioning robot. “Are you—”

  “You can cut it too. It’s just some old plain one.”

  Fucking hell.

  “Right. Uh, where do I...?”

  Even in normal circumstances, bras are confusing. During a sensory overload like this, it’s impossible to decipher where I need to cut so it will come off her.

  She chuckles for a second, but it doesn’t do anything to loosen the tension in the room. If anything, I just seem to get even more hyperaware of how close she is.

  “Cut the straps and then beside the clasp. That’s the little hooky part at the back, in case you weren’t aware.”

  That’s the one part of a bra I do understand—sort of.

  I do what she says, and the whole thing slips forward, getting caught by the remains of the tank top before it can fall to the floor.

  She’s just a few sudden movements away from being half naked.

  “Now what?” I ask.

  I need a distracting task, and fast.

  “Can you help me get the sling off?”

  “Yeah, of course.”

  She turns around, her good arm clutching the slashed fabric to her chest. I know I’m going to lose it if I look at her, so I focus on the sling. I’m still working on figuring it out when a new realization hits.

  “Wait. How are you going to get your pants off?”

  “With my not-broken hand?”

  I stare at the skin-tight black jeans. They look like they would take some effort to get off with even two fully functioning arms.

  “You sure that will work?”

  I don’t know what I want more: for her to say yes or no.

  “I’ll figure it out, Youssef. Can you just do the sling?”

  The typical Paige tone turns my focus back to the task at hand. I finally get the sling off, and she winces a little as I help her lower her arm to her side but tells me she’s fine.

  “All right, you’re free to go,” she announces.

  I’m not sure where to look. I alternate between glancing at her arm, at her face, and at the wall behind her.

  “Don’t drown, okay?”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  I still have no idea how she’s going to manage getting out of the rest of her clothes and into the bath, but that’s her call to make. I’ll knock in a minute just to be sure she really hasn’t drowned.

  “Good luck.”

  I leave the bathroom and pull the door closed behind me, crossing the room to collapse onto the couch a second later.

  This girl is actually going to kill me.

  Eleven

  Youssef

  POLYPHONY: An instrument with the ability to produce more than one note at once

  Through what I’m sure is an effort of extreme force of will and unrelenting stubbornness, Paige gets herself out of the shower, into her bedroom, and puts on a pair of sweatpants and plaid button-up shirt without my help.

  “Your buttons aren’t lined up,” I tease when she calls me in to help her get the sling on. She glares at me in answer.

  When everything is all in place, she climbs back into bed. I’m about to ask her if she wants me to bring her laptop or something since she can’t possibly be ready to sleep again, but as soon as she settles herself on the pillows, her eyes start drooping.

  She looks so cute all sleepy like that. It softens the sharp beauty of her face, makes her less of a diamond and more of a rose.

  I step closer to the bed. “Can I get you anything?”

  She shakes her head, blinking at me.

  “You’re pretty wiped out, eh?”

  She does her best to glare again. “No, I’m just—”

  A huge yawn cuts her off.

  “Right. You’re wide awake.”

  “You’re a—” She yawns again, and her words start slurring together. “You’re a...a goober.”

  I put a hand on my chest. “A goober? Wow, I’ve never been so offended in my life.”

  “Mmm.”

  I chuckle. “Okay, well, I’m going to be out on the couch all night if you need anything. I just have to run home now and feed Sufjan, but your phone is right there if—”

  “Sufjan?” A moment of lucidity comes over her. “You named your pet after Sufjan Stevens?”

  I laugh at her grimace. Back in high school, I was always trying to get her to listen to Sufjan Stevens’ music, and she would always complain about it.

  “Of course I did. Who else would I name my cat after?”

  “Oh my god, you’re obsessed.” She lets out a smaller yawn, and her head lolls to the side. “Ob-sessed. Ob-sesssssed.”

  Then she passes out.

  I grab a glass of water from the kitchen and leave it beside her bed, next to her phone and painkillers. I decide to leave the desk lamp on, since that will be safer if she needs to get up while I’m gone.

  I take a look at her face, smooth and carefree as she sleeps, and try to imagine all the things she’s done and seen and thought since she was sixteen. In some ways, it feels like nothing has changed. In others, it feels like we’re separated by a whole lifetime.

  I head for the door, the past heavy on my shoulders, and the sound of her voice makes me freeze.

  “Youssef?”

  I turn and find her with her eyes still closed. “Yes?”

  “Thank you.”

  I wince at the twinge in my chest. “Anytime.”

  Out on the sidewalk, the cool night air hits me like a head rush. I stare around the street like somebody who’s stumbled into the world by accident, and I guess in a way I have. My world shifted as soon as I spotted Paige’s face through the car window when we passed the accident. A million thoughts exploded in me at that moment, but they were all background noise compared to the one thing I was absolutely sure of: I needed to get to her.

  She needed me, and I knew without a shred of doubt that I needed her.

  I don’t understand it, and it doesn’t make much sense, but it’s the only thing I haven’t doubted in months.

  Since we’re just a few blocks from Station Mont-Royal, I decide to take the metro downtown. It’s almost ten, and the streets are quiet for a Saturday night. I show up just in time to catch my train and take a plastic seat near the doors.

  I moved into a downtown one bedroom condo just a couple months ago, and it’s the nicest place I’ve ever lived. There’s a pool and gym and everything. Mohammad and Nabil kept telling me I was crazy not to leave my dilapidated bachelor apartment as soon as I could afford better, but something about the money I pulled in from bigger gigs felt fake, like somebody was going to come along and pluck it out of my account after telling me it was all a mistake. It took me a while to believe I wasn’t going to end up bankrupt after signing the lease on this place.

  I get off at Station Peel and walk a few streets over to the high rise. The guy
at the desk and I wave to each other as I cross the tile floor of the lobby and head for the elevators. Sufjan meows and runs straight for my legs as soon as I reach my unit and open the door.

  “Hey, little dude.” I pull the door closed behind me and squat down to scratch his orange fur. “Sorry you didn’t get breakfast.”

  He purrs and rubs himself against my jeans. After a few pats, I stand up and flip some lights on before heading to the open concept kitchen.

  The whole building caters to the ‘young professional’ market, with exposed concrete ceilings and sleek, minimalist fixtures. I actually really like the look, but it comes off harsh and cold with half my stuff still in cardboard boxes piled against one of the living room walls.

  “We should get a bigger carpet, shouldn’t we?” I ask Sufjan as I evaluate the kind of pathetic-looking woven rug under the coffee table.

  Sufjan does not have opinions about the carpeting. He just wants food. He starts going crazy when I take a fresh can out of the cupboard and practically shoves his whole face in his bowl once I set it down on the floor. I collapse onto my leather couch while he eats and pull out my phone. I’ve ignored a few messages and calls today and figure it’s time to rejoin the world.

  There’s a text from Nabil letting me know my manager checked in with him to see if he knows where I am, followed by a few increasingly concerned messages throughout the day. I don’t want to deal with Mohammad right away, so I distract myself by giving Nabil a call. He answers after the third ring.

  “Yo, you’re alive!”

  “Still breathing, yeah.”

  “What’s up, man? I could tell Mohammad either had really good news or really bad news.”

  “I, uh, haven’t called him yet,” I admit. “Been kind of a crazy day. I just got my first chance to check my phone.”

  “Crazy?” He pauses and then drops a few Arabic curses. “Wait, wait, wait. You were hanging out with Paige last night. By crazy do you mean—”

  He starts doing some really bad ‘bow-chicka-wow-wow’ type beat-boxing thing.

  “I definitely do not mean that, whatever that was.”

  “That was beautiful.” I can picture him dusting off his shoulders. “So what happened, then?”

  “Uh, well...”

  I launch into a brief recap of everything that’s happened up until me feeding Sufjan.

  “Oh shit,” he says once I’m done.

  “Oh shit is right.”

  “Youssef, this is the perfect opportunity.”

  I sigh. “Nabil.”

  “What? It is! I mean, I hope she’s okay and stuff. That’s really crazy. I hope you’re okay and stuff too, but you have to admit this is in some ways a very fortunate situation, man.”

  “What exactly is fortunate about Paige getting hit by a car?”

  He sighs too. “Youssef. Look, I don’t know her very well, but something tells me it would take that girl getting hit by a car before she gave anyone a shot at getting close to her. This is your chance! The stars have aligned!”

  He sounds way too excited and poetic for regular Nabil.

  “You got laid, didn’t you?”

  “I mean, I’m not gonna confirm but...” He starts doing the beat-boxing thing again.

  “Well, congrats, man, but I’m not gonna logic with a guy who just got laid for the first time in half a year.”

  “Hey, that’s the best kind of logic there is! I’m telling you, this is your chance to make a move.”

  I tip onto my back on the couch and rub my temple with my free hand.

  “I’m not going to make a move, Nabil, for many reasons, including the fact that she’s severely injured. That’s like, unethical, for one thing.”

  “I don’t mean a move like that. I mean a move of the heart.”

  I burst out laughing. “A move of the heart?”

  “Yeah, you asshole! Tell her how you feel. Tell her that all your shit from high school is just part of the past and that you want a shot with her now.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  There’s some rustling on his end, like he’s moving to a different room.

  “And why’s that? Oh wait, are you gonna tell me it got complicated?”

  I can hear the air quotes in his voice. I consider bullshitting him or brushing the question aside, like I’ve done every time the matter of Paige has come up over the years. Even the times I’ve started drunkenly rambling about it to him—or anyone who will listen—I’ve kept the details vague. Vague details are easier to face, easier to forget and get over.

  Or pretend you’ve gotten over.

  There’s not much room left for pretending now, not when the facts start pressing in every time I look at Paige. I’ve been tempted to just let it all out to her at least a dozen times, all the questions and hurt that have kept me up at night even all these years later.

  I don’t know where to begin, though. I don’t know if we should begin, or if she wants me to, or if I even want to. I don’t know what will happen if we do. I just know I have to let it out to someone or I’ll start losing my self-control.

  “Promise you won’t be an asshole about this.”

  “Oh shit.” He whoops into the phone. “Am I finally getting the deets?”

  “Don’t call them deets.”

  “Les détails, Monsieur?”

  “I’m really going to regret this, aren’t I?” I pause and take a breath. “Okay, so, she started grade nine when I was in grade eleven. Our lockers were pretty close together. That’s how we met.”

  “Aww, cute.”

  “Fuck off.”

  “Sorry. Continue.”

  I gather my thoughts for a few seconds, letting the sounds of the crowded hallways fill my head as I watch Paige tuck a piece of hair behind her ear for the first time.

  “It was one of those things where you see someone, and you just have to know them. You just look at them and know you’d do anything to get close to them. At first it wasn’t even romantic, you know? I mean obviously she was gorgeous, but she was a freshman, and even then, she wasn’t exactly the most...welcoming person. I just wanted to know what made her like that, what she was hiding. She seemed so separate from high school sometimes, like she knew things it would take all the other kids years to figure out. She seemed like she was going somewhere.”

  I couldn’t help wanting to go with her.

  A moment of silence passes, and I startle a little when Sufjan jumps up on my stomach. He kneads my shirt for a moment before settling down. “Look, I don’t mean to talk your ear off. We don’t need to have a heart to heart. I just—”

  “No! Keep going! I’m hooked, man. This is beautiful.”

  “Asshole.”

  “I mean it!” he protests. “You have to tell me the rest.”

  Now that I’ve started, it’s hard to stop. I give in and keep going as I stroke Sufjan’s back.

  “She always had headphones on. Like, always. Even when she wasn’t listening to music, she had them around her neck. One day I was walking past just as she was pulling them off her ears. I heard her playing some remix of an MGMT track and said something about it. I don’t even remember what. I did it without thinking. I’d been trying to come up with a way to talk to her for weeks, and it just happened.”

  “Did she tell you to fuck off?”

  “How’d you know?” I deadpan. “Yeah, she said something to that effect. I had an in now, though. Every time I got a chance, I’d ask her opinion on some DJ or band. Usually she’d just glare at me or say something sarcastic, but one day we ended up getting into this huge debate about Sufjan Stevens.”

  “Oh my god, you and Sufjan Stevens.”

  “Hey!” I snap as I give Sufjan a scratch behind his ears. “Sufjan Stevens is a fucking deity. Paige said he was overrated, and somehow, that led to us developing a friendship of sorts.”

  “Wack.”

  “Yeah. It was.” I grin at the memory of those early days. It was such a thrill to be around her,
like discovering a brand new sound. Just walking next to her in the halls made me feel electrified by the new beat running through my body. “It took some time, but eventually we were doing things like going to the park after school to talk shit and listen to music. She was still super mysterious and wouldn’t say much, but this one night she texted me to say she had a bottle of wine.”

  “Oh, damn.”

  “I mean...yeah,” I admit. “By then, that’s what I was thinking too, but it didn’t go down like that. We just...talked. A lot. About everything. I found out she’s biracial too—tri-racial, actually, and we had all this other crazy stuff in common. It was like I already knew her, you know? Like I was remembering things as she said them instead of hearing them for the first time. I was sixteen. I’d never felt anything like that before. It all just felt so...huge. So important. I didn’t know what to do with it. I don’t think she did either. So we stayed friends for a while. I bought my first DJ controller for Christmas that year, and she’d come over so we could mess around on it together. I mean, this girl was there for basically the beginning of everything I am now. So much of what I am is because of her. I know that sounds stupid since it was so long ago, but shit matters more when you’re that age. It sticks with you in a way things don’t when you’re older. People stick with you.”

  I’ve gotten so worked up I’ve stopped patting Sufjan. He lifts his head and butts it against my hand to ask for more.

  “What happened?” Nabil asks. “It must have been bad.”

  I’ve tried to tell myself it wasn’t, that it shouldn’t matter so much, that in the end, it made a lot of sense.

  I’ve never been able to believe it.

  “Her mom was kind of crazy. She was obsessed with making Paige and her sister famous. If you tell anyone this, Paige will kill us both, but she can sing. I’ve never heard her sing, but her mom had been hauling the two of them off to singing auditions all the time since they were little kids. One day, Paige...”

  I trail off. That’s not my part of the story to share.

  “Well, she just got sick of it. She decided to run away. She showed up at my bedroom window at like seven in the morning and said we should skip school and take the train to Toronto. I didn’t know she wasn’t planning on coming back, so I went with it. We had this...this fucking perfect day.”