Smoke and Lyrics

by Holly Hall

  I join her without question, and once the stacks are depleted, the tree is bedecked in askance, rectangular photos. Aglow with light, they’re transformed into something more than just low-quality snapshots of time. Some of the photos are probably too inappropriate for traditional holiday décor, but all of them together offer an accurate depiction of us.

  “Probably the most dysfunctional tree of all time,” I say, nudging her with my shoulder. She smirks, pleased.

  “The tree of Lindsey and Jenson. Jendsey. Linson.”

  I stifle my snort. Typical girl, shortening normal words. Just then, saxophone notes drift from the speakers and Etta James begins her “Merry Christmas, Baby” serenade. The atmosphere seems to shift, darkening.

  “Dance with me.” I toss the phone onto the window seat and offer Lindsey my hand. She accepts it with a sultry shake of her shoulders and does a little spin into my chest.

  “I’ve never danced so much.”

  “Somehow I doubt that. You’re a music junkie.”

  “You know what I mean. Like this.” Her smile fades into one that’s more melancholic, and she rests her head on my chest. I feel her mouth the words to the music against my skin. She’s never sung in front of me. When I tell her so, she giggles. “I guess I’m a Jenson junkie, too. I’m high on you.” I fight the urge to drop my head back and sigh. Rarely is she this transparent. I want to soak it in as long as possible before she slaps her armor back into place.

  Then she shifts, fitting her head beneath my chin and pressing slow, sweet kisses across my neck. My nerves snap and fire in response to her lips and breath on my skin. I’m ticklish as hell and my neck is a spot that’s guaranteed to bring me to my knees. I inhale, my muscles tightening, hardening.

  At the end of the instrumental solo, I take advantage of the moment and dip her low, exposing her neck to me instead. She giggles again, a different kind of music. The sound stirs up my insides. God, this woman. I right us both and pull her flush against me, meeting her lips. She kisses with hunger, desperation. I’ll never tire of it. Using my shoulders as leverage, she manages to lift herself enough to where she can wrap her legs around my hips. I don’t need any more persuasion. I back up to the couch and sink down onto it, the movement jolting her against me. She smiles against my lips.

  Then she detaches from me and holds up a finger, pushing herself to standing. I watch her hands disappear beneath the hem of her sweater, and she peels her leggings off. Then she’s back in my lap, gripping my hair and having her way with my mouth. I skim my hands up her thighs, beneath her sweater, and find her completely bare. She moves against my fingers, pulling my head back roughly. Short hums of approval vibrate against my skin as she sucks beneath my ear. Control is waning, and I feel blood pooling beneath the surface, but I can’t find any fucks to give. I don’t care if I’m walking around tomorrow like a high school kid with his first hickey, I’m not stopping her. I have my vices and this one is my favorite.

  The song switches, and Otis Redding croons to us about a white Christmas. It’s idyllic, his dream, and right now I feel like I’m walking through one of my own. Except Lindsey is real and she’s in my arms, on my fingers, losing herself in me just as I’m losing myself in her.

  When her head falls back and she clenches around me, I put my hand in her hair and bring my mouth to her ear. There are countless filthy things I could say in this moment. Words that would barely pervade her euphoria but would drive her wild anyway. Instead, I let the moment carry me away, and the statement that’s grown inside me for the past few weeks becomes too large to contain.

  “God, I’m falling in love with you.” It comes out as a sigh, the statement both soft and powerful at the same time. It shocks me as much as it shocks her. At least I think it’s shock. Maybe more confusion.

  Lindsey is frozen in my lap, her lips slightly parted. Confusion is better than fear, right? Anything’s better than fear.

  Wrong.

  I watch as color leaches from her cheeks and her features sag. I thought nothing was worse than fear, but I was so wrong. Dread trumps fear every time. And right now, she’s filled with it. She’s not so much surprised as she is disappointed, like an expectation was met despite all her efforts to prevent it. She lays her palms on my chest, using the hands I love, the ones that create magic, to push herself away. Push me away. And I don’t even stop her. I know that look, and I know from experience you can’t cage a storm.

  All I can do is repeat myself, as if clarification might somehow force her to see sense. “I’m—”

  “I heard you,” she says quietly but forcefully, avoiding my eyes while she smooths down her sweater.

  My trepidation gives way to offense. Those words—words cities have fought wars over and people have died for—aren’t meant to invoke the kind of negative feelings now rolling off her in waves. But I’ve said my piece. I can’t shove it down my throat and pretend it never happened.

  I’m struck by the need to defend myself; I can talk my way out of anything. Until I remember how much trouble my “talking in circles” has brought me. How the most important things are shown.

  So I watch her.

  And watch her.

  And wait.

  She flattens a hand against her forehead, and her breath rattles through her teeth. “This wasn’t supposed to happen.”

  I narrow my eyes, and behind them, sorrow and anger fight a battle in my mind. But there’s nothing to be won, and I always come out on the losing side in the end.

  “It’s not like I did it on purpose,” I manage to say. I rise to my feet and adjust myself in my pants, feeling more vulnerable than ever. Sinatra mocks me from the speakers, and I force myself to mute the volume instead of pitching my phone across the room. I track Lindsey’s movements as she stuffs her legs into her tights and yanks them up, avoiding my eyes. She is everywhere all at once, picking up her things, disheveled, leaving.

  “Talk to me, Lindsey. You have to be feeling something.”

  “Oh, I felt a lot of things, Jenson. I felt everything I could within the constraints of what this is.”

  She’s launching her statements like weapons, but I’ve faced too much to be afraid of the things fear makes people say. I take a step in her direction, and her hands fly up in front of her.

  “Just . . . don’t. Please. I can’t.”

  “Can’t what? Admit you feel the same way? Admit you’re scared to? Which one is it?”

  “I don’t. . . I’m not scared, Jenson,” she seethes, heading for the door.

  Abandoning caution, I hurdle the couch and close the distance between us in a few strides. I can’t stand idly by as she’s leaving. Not like this. I’ve done everything I can to play by her rules, make sure not to move too fast, not to do anything that would scare her off. But everything she’s done so far has told me what her mouth hasn’t. She speaks all the time, even when she’s not talking. I’ve just learned to listen.

  “Then say what you mean.” My voice hitches with passion, and I draw to a stop as she opens the door. The threshold is the line in the sand. Once she crosses that, I’m not chasing her down. Nothing I say can compete with the narrative in her head.

  “What I mean?” she says weakly, stabilizing herself against the door.

  “You speak to me without words all the time. Just, for once, say what you mean.”

  She swallows, fists a hand in her hair, and says, “Good bye.” Then she’s gone. She’s over the line and out of my life.

  And I guess good bye is all she means.

  Lindsey

  I gasp once I push into the parking garage. It’s cold, but the air is flavored by exhaust and oil, and instead of being refreshing, I just feel more stifled. Everything is bearing down on me. The remnants of anger at my dad, the anger I still feel toward Jenson, the cloying melody of the classic song that will forever be marked in my mind by him, the pump of blood through my veins that he coerced to the surface, the phantom feeling of his hands beneath my sweater—gripp
ing, worshiping, loving. Those words.

  I’m falling in love with you.

  My throat constricts, and I choke on a sob as I unlock the door to Isaac’s car. When he saw the look on my face after my dad’s phone call, he didn’t even put up a fight when I asked for his keys. I didn’t think twice about coming over to Jenson’s. I just did. His apartment became a haven to me before I even realized it was happening.

  It takes me three tries to get the key into the ignition, then I’m squealing out of the garage. I’m half afraid to see him in the rear-view mirror while at the same time mourning the fact that I don’t. I’ve never felt more torn. I’ve never felt more.

  The roads and city lights are chaos to my strained emotions. So I drive, and drive, and drive. Mostly around the outskirts of the city, until eventually I make a beeline for the one place in Nashville I don’t associate with memories of Jenson.

  I leave the car parked on a side street, then hike the rest of the way up the curving avenue that is Love Circle. Fitting. It’s supposed to be “closed” to the public after a certain time, but who’s going to notice a lonely girl in a dark sweater? It’s a place for lovers, anyway. And dreamers, I like to think. Near the top of the curve, the infamous site comes into view. The panoramic view of the city is enough to quell the burn in my legs and the ache in my heart, but only temporarily.

  I sit in the grass and light up a cigarette from the emergency pack in my bag. Aside from a car parked farther along the way, I’m totally alone. The infinite night sky unfolds above me, and stars wink just beyond the glow of civilization. Seclusion, the subdued ambience, is exactly what I need. I smoke my way through one stick and the next. The nicotine works its magic and somehow slows the wheels in my head. Individual strands of thought are easier to pick out and process, and the momentum carrying me from Jenson’s place to here seems to switch into slow motion.

  Why do I feel the need to make it obvious to everyone else that I’m the person who cares less? The one who won’t make compromises or exceptions, who can’t be affected by something so “minor” as another human being? Because I feel everything. I care so much that my heart is a hazard to itself. I know deep down that I don’t do anything halfway, so I won’t allow myself the time of day to look twice at something that might steal my focus. I looked more than twice at Jenson, and look what happened to him. And to me. I’m conflicted over something that shouldn’t have been allowed in the cards in the first place.

  My head and my heart are at war with each other, neither willing to surrender.

  But I couldn’t have prepared any better for this. I’d discounted Jenson as a stereotypical troubled musician. I didn’t know the seemingly insignificant moments spent with him would amount to me discovering the man behind the gossip articles, the hollow-eyed red-carpet photos, the haunting lyrics that seemed to run their fingertips down my soul.

  I didn’t account for my heart to recognize his.

  If I’m a slave to anything, it’s to my imagination, my passions, following them wherever they lead. I was determined not to let those passions wrap around a man, someone who could string my wayward heart along. So, I did something worse. I abandoned a man who’s been abandoned all his life.

  Guilt rises, all my feelings jockeying for position once again. How was it so easy for him to make sense of this and tell me those things so fearlessly? I’ve never felt so uncomfortable in the face of such brutal honesty. He trusted me with his bared soul, and I just had to run. Give him a chance to rethink things, decide this isn’t the path he wants to take. Maybe tomorrow he’ll realize he was only under the enchantment of feelings sparked by Christmas lights, and photos of us, and Etta James’s soulful voice. If anyone’s to blame, it’s her. And hormones.

  We were both under a spell for a time, and reality’s kiss was just enough to break it.

  Chapter 21

  Jenson

  I spend the next few days on alert for the sound of the door creaking open and Lindsey waltzing back into my apartment. But it never comes, and instead I’m just filled with disappointment at myself and my misguided hope. Is there more I could’ve done along the way to make her feel more secure in whatever it was we had? Should I never have said anything at all? I’m no stranger to questioning myself, losing myself in doubt, and it’s in those times that I’m hell-bent on dousing those feelings in whiskey.

  Lindsey mostly distracted me from the alcohol for a while. Not all at once, but gradually. I didn’t want to be numb around her. I wanted to feel everything she had to offer, and not just the physical parts. She filled my world with passion when I’d lost it. She challenged me in ways that made me uncomfortable at times but initiated change. No one in my life has come close to doing that. But maybe nobody’s really seen me for me, and I know it’s my fault, my defensiveness and fear of not being enough, that’s to blame.

  I blow off the band for the bottle, citing a sinus infection and a need to rest my voice. I turn my phone to “do not disturb” and miss rehearsals. I’m sure Brad’s shitting his pants right about now. Our comeback show is next week, the weekend of Thanksgiving, and he’s been up in arms about preparations. But I can play these songs in my sleep. It’s better I’m not there, anyway; they should be thanking me for being so attentive to my mental health.

  So my apartment becomes my sanctum and my prison, and nobody comes knocking on the door.

  As painful as it is to look at, I leave the Christmas tree just as it is. Maybe I’m a sadist, but I’ve done plenty of things worth punishing. Those photos are all I have as evidence that she even existed in my life. They make me angry and melancholic, introspective and insane. She wanted to make art that forced people to feel things, and I can personally testify that she succeeded. Her art invokes every emotion, from lust to hate. And when I’m sick of feeling everything, I drink.

  I don’t expect her to apologize, or even to recite those words back. I understand her fear, I guess. Love isn’t easy. Falling is easy, but reconciling those feelings is near impossible, and making sense of something so pure amid a tainted world can be daunting. It’s hard to put something out there that most of modern society is built to attack.

  So I drink, and I get angry at Lindsey for not having the balls to talk to me, to give this a chance. And then I regret that I ever felt anger toward her and I drink some more. Most of the time I pass out before it’s even dark out, and then I’m so consumed with the disgust I feel when I wake up on my couch, disheveled and unwashed, an empty bottle on the floor beside me, that I crack open another to drown it out once again.

  My life is all about vicious cycles. Crawl out of one grave only to dive into the next. And still, I bury myself. Again and again.

  I ignore all the notifications on my phone, pretending they don’t exist. Like the dark time after Lindsey left was a vortex that sucked down my purpose. I call Brad and tell him I’m recovered, and he orders me to “get my ass in the studio by noon today.” Being that he works for me, and therefore I can fire him, he’s being pretty bold. But I save the arrogant retorts and tell him I’ll get myself there.

  I shower and tie my hair back—haircuts haven’t really been a priority since I haven’t done any official appearances lately—and drive myself to the rehearsal studio. It might be winter, but I’m sweating. I should’ve expected this. After a week-long binger, it’s difficult to get up and get moving without the liquor. I know I’m going to be hurting for however long this rehearsal takes, but that’s my cross to bear.

  Not bothering to take off my sunglasses—it’s bright as hell outside, where the hell are the clouds?—I make it to Room A at fifteen after.

  “You’re fifteen minutes late,” Brad tells me when I walk in.

  I toss my jacket onto the couch and ignore all the looks I’m given by the guys. “Yeah, I had a thing.”

  The silence is deafening, the stares are heated, and it’s pissing me off. Mostly because I know I deserve it. I grab a bottle of water from the mini fridge and chug half, then st
art warming up my voice by myself. If they’re determined to make a point, they can do it alone. I’m here, and I’m ready to go.

  “Let’s start with ‘Hellion’,” our director suggests.

  Goddamn this damn song. Naturally it’s about Lindsey, and naturally it’s one of our more emotionally charged tracks. But this is my job and it’s time to step up to the mic. I nod without looking at him and stalk over to the stage, Carter at my back. The rest of the guys—James, Travis, Korey, and Nick—take their places around me.

  “Can I get a stool?” Thank God the sunglasses block some of the lighting, but I don’t trust my legs not to shake while I’m standing up here, sweating my ass off. One of the techs runs one over, and I take a seat, guitar in my lap. I play a few chords and feel the music sink in. I’ve carried this instrument with me since the early days, and it’s the only thing that feels natural anymore. The one thing I don’t have to force.

  Carter counts us off and we begin. And every word of the chorus is like a knife to my chest.

  Hellion, where have you been

  You’ve wreaked hell on my heart

  Yeah, you did me in

  Now I’ll follow you down

  Into an ocean of sin

  Hellion, Hellion

  Where have you been

  Hellion, where have you been

  You resurrected me

  Brought me to life again

  Now I kneel before your lips

  Find salvation in your skin

  Hellion, Hellion

  I’m alive again

  The last riff of the fiddle is low and haunting and reverberates in my marrow, and when it’s all silent, I feel myself physically sag. It would’ve taken everything I had not to perform it like Lindsey wasn’t the only thing on my mind, so I didn’t even try to push her out. I pictured her right in front of me and sang those words like a man exorcising his demons.