Blood and Guitars

by Heather Jensen

O’Shea walked in and paused at my side, looking around with mild interest.

  “Actually,” the red head continued. “She’s not here during the day often. She’s a bit of a night owl. She usually shows up around closing or after. I look after the place during the day for her.” She looked up and saw O’Shea and her face brightened immediately. “But, I’m sure I can help you with anything that you might need. My name is Kacie, by the way.”

  O’Shea, never one to miss out on meeting a pretty girl, stepped right up and kissed her hand. She blushed a little and bit her lip, gazing at him. So much for getting help. I took a moment to walk around, gazing at the paintings that were on display. One thing was immediately apparent to me. All of the paintings on display involved a night setting. They were either of sunsets, or had the moon hung high in the sky. Surprisingly, they were still really colorful, just in a different way than most paintings are. There was detail in everything, even the shadows.

  I paused in front of one that showed a lone fountain forgotten by time. The water poured from a crack in an old stone wall and hints of purple light surrounded it. The painting was done inside an oval centered on the canvas. The solid black that framed it bled to the edges of the canvas.

  Another painting was an abstract design done in black and shining metallic silver, with shades of grey in between. The paint had been used heavier in some places, creating a rough textured look. A single long-stemmed rose was positioned in the middle as if suspended in midair. The stem was black, and the thorns were menacing, but the pedals, outlined in silver, were emerald green.

  The paintings really were amazing, and only made me want to see Aurora more. After all the nights I’d dreamed of my mystery woman and not known her face, now it was easy to believe that Aurora could have been my muse all along.

  But she still seemed so out of reach.

  Then I realized that if nothing else, I could take a piece of her home with me. O’Shea and Kacie flirted behind me and I effectively ignored them as I studied the images in Aurora’s paintings. I wasn’t sure how I was going to pick one, they were all so great. Then I saw it, one of dusk on Pier 60. The picture was spread across five separate pieces of canvas that ran horizontal but didn’t line up straight across. Instead, they were offset so that the painting was centered closer to the tops of some of them, and toward the bottom on others. A lot of the paintings in the gallery were done this way, but it was a cool effect I’d never really seen done before, not that I’m a connoisseur of art by any means. There was a band playing without an audience as the ghostly pale moon rose up over the sea. As I pored over the details in the Pier 60 painting, I was intrigued by the ethereal quality she’d given to a place I knew so well. I’d spent a lot of time at the pier as a kid, and I could almost hear the music playing and the waves crashing up against the nearby shore. The irony was in the fact that the pier is usually full of artists and vendors and a crowd that includes locals and tourists. It struck a nerve in me to see it so empty and lonely. The featureless faces of the musicians made me feel like I could almost see myself in the painting. How cool would it be to play on the Pier in the dark like that? It would make a killer music video. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it before. I definitely wasn’t leaving without this painting.

  “I’ll take this one,” I said resolutely. I turned around to see O’Shea pause mid-sentence and gawk at me.

  “You’re buying a painting?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Why not? It’s Pier 60. It’s sick.”

  O’Shea shrugged. “No reason, I guess.”

  Kacie smiled at me and said, “Would you like that delivered?”

  “Sure. That would be great.”

  “No problem. I’ll get you the form to fill out for payment and delivery.” She walked behind the desk that was positioned a few yards away against the left wall and opened a drawer.

  “What are you doing?” O’Shea muttered under his breath, throwing a charming smile in Kacie’s direction when she looked up as she rummaged through some paper work.

  “I’m decorating my house.” I grinned at him.

  “Whatever.” He smiled back. “You’re losing your mind.”

  “Me? You’re the one flirting with the manager.”

  He opened his mouth to retort but Kacie was fast approaching and so he thought better of it.

  “Here you go.” She handed me a clipboard with a form to fill out. I took the attached pen and began writing in my information. I handed the completed paperwork back to her a moment later along with my debit card. She ran my card and handed me a receipt.

  “Need anything else?” I asked.

  “That should be it. I’ll call you tomorrow to schedule a delivery time.”

  “Great. Thanks.” I cleared my throat. “Well, I guess we should be on our way then.” Kacie almost pouted at my announcement, but recovered quickly. “Would you mind telling Aurora that I stopped by?”

  “Sure thing,” Kacie said. “But you guys feel free to come by anytime. You might just get lucky and catch her here.” Then, for O’Shea’s benefit, she added, “I’m always here.”

  “Good to know,” O’Shea said with a smile.

  “Thanks again.” I pushed O’Shea toward the door.

  Chapter 12

  As I drove to The Waking Moon, I savored the lingering effects of fresh blood. I’d fed from a woman behind a bookstore just moments before, and then gently sent her on her way back down the alley. Feeding really was easier when I could use the moon-given ability to read minds. I had simply reminded the woman that she was late for dinner with a friend and pointed her in the right direction. She’d hurried off, thanking me for my help. I pulled up to The Waking Moon and parked in back, taking just a second to sit quietly and center myself, while at the same time enjoying the rush that ingesting fresh blood had given me.

  “How’s everything?” I asked as I let myself in the backdoor. Kacie had heard me pull up and was waiting for me near the desk.

  “No complaints.” She gave me a wry smile. “A couple of hot guys came in yesterday.”

  I picked up the sales receipts on the desk and began to shuffle through them absentmindedly. “Yeah?” I asked, pretending to be interested.

  “One of them was looking for you. His name was Trey. Does that ring a bell?”

  I looked up at her in surprise. I’d spent way too much time in the last week pondering why this one particular human had been able to charm me. “Trey?”

  “He was tall with chocolate brown hair and gorgeous blue eyes. His friend was really cute, too. His name was O’Shea and he had black hair and …”

  But I wasn’t really listening as I pulled the image of Trey and his friend from her mind. It was a strange sensation, seeing Trey stand in the middle of The Waking Moon, and I shook my head to clear my mind. I still wasn’t sure why I had gone with him that night at Carlie’s, and more importantly, why I hadn’t even fed from him in the process. I’d just let him walk away and then I’d had to go back out and find someone else to feed from to satiate my need for blood. “Did he say what he wanted?” I asked, trying not to sound too curious.

  “He was looking for you.” Kacie worked on her fingernails with a file. “He didn’t really say why. In fact, he didn’t say much of anything. He just wandered around looking at all of the paintings while I talked to his friend. Then he bought ‘Dusk On The Pier’.”

  “He what?” I couldn’t hide the surprise in my voice. Apparently I should have probed deeper into her thoughts.

  “The sales receipt should be in there somewhere. I had it delivered today.”

  I flipped through the sales receipts in my hand more earnestly until I saw Trey’s name at the top of them. Kacie was right. Trey had shelled out three hundred dollars to buy my five canvas spread of Pier 60. Despite my misgivings about the night I had spent hanging out with a human, it secretly pleased me to know that Trey had paid a visit to The Waking Moon. I was surprised that he’d actually purchased a painting, bu
t it brought a smile to my face, even against my better judgment.

  “So, who is he?” Kacie asked.

  I looked up and shrugged nonchalantly. “Just a guy I met at a lounge a few nights back. I can’t believe he even came in.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me you met a guy?” I shrugged like it was no big deal, but I didn’t need to read Kacie’s mind to know that she wasn’t buying it, although technically what I had said was exactly true. “Well, he’s super cute. Don’t worry. I told him he’d have better luck catching you if he tried back around closing some time. I just hope he brings his friend along.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Thanks a lot.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  I finished glancing through the sales receipts and Kacie took off for the night. Then I walked upstairs into the loft above the gallery. I dropped my purse and keys on the table distractedly and was tempted to collapse on the nearest chair and wrack my brain about Trey, but the fact that I wanted to do that at all was a good indication that I needed to do something else entirely. There wasn’t a lack of work to be done, so instead, I busied myself by finding a piece to hang where Pier 60 had been displayed. It didn’t take me long to hang another piece in its place.

  Then I went back into the loft, plugged my iPod into the dock in the corner and put on some music while I retrieved my paints. I stared at the large blank canvas laid out in front of me and chewed on my bottom lip contemplatively. Several minutes passed while I tried to think of something else to paint, but the image burning in my mind refused to back off to make room for something more sensible. Without consciously planning it out, I began mixing colors and started to brush paint onto the surface of the canvas with sweeping motions. Within minutes I had the basic shape of a stage that dangerously resembled the one from Carlie’s. And I wasn’t stopping there.

  Chapter 13

  I strolled into the recording studio with a smile on my face and a small stack of papers. O’Shea and I had recorded our vocals for “Midnight Poison” the day before and things had gone really well. I hadn’t heard everything put together yet, but I was sure the song was going to be a hit, especially with Karatz’s magic touch. I found everyone in the control room but Jonas, who was apparently posting some video footage of us online for the fan club.

  “You’re in a good mood,” O’Shea observed.

  “Why shouldn’t I be?” I asked.

  “I don’t have everything on ‘Midnight Poison’ worked out yet,” Karatz said. “But I spent a few hours piecing it all together last night after you left.” He was sitting on his big black leather chair, rolling from left to right in front of the soundboard.

  “Let’s hear it,” Chase said enthusiastically.

  I watched as Karatz made a few adjustments on the board and then turned up the volume on the monitors from his computer screen. He started the playback and I listened intently. The guitars sounded incredible. It started with just rhythm guitar which, thanks to Karatz’s suggestion, was actually O’Shea and I both playing rhythm in two parts combined. When my voice flooded the room, I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. It was better than I had imagined.

  We listened to the rest of the song in silence, although Chase was now dancing around behind us, and then in a succession of high fives and manly slaps on the back, expressed just how much we liked it.

  “The rest is in the details,” Karatz said. “I’ll have it finished by the end of the week. But you guys did a great job. It sounds amazing.”

  “Thank you … thank you.” Chase gave a little bow. “I’ll be here all week.”

  “Don’t remind me.” Jonas rolled his eyes at the drummer.

  I chuckled and sighed happily. “Oh yeah, I have a little something here I’ve been working on.” I took the first two sheets of paper in my stack and handed them to O’Shea. Then I walked over to Chase and handed the next two to him, saying, “I took your advice. Again.”

  “Which was what … exactly?” Chase questioned, not sure if he wanted to own whatever it was I was about to blame on him.

  “I had some stuff I needed to sort out.” I handed Jonas and Karatz their copies. “Specifically, Nikki. She really did a number on me and I’ve been trying to pretend none of it ever happened without working through it. To make a long story short, I wrote another song called “Sweet Disguise” and let’s just say I’m feeling much better about the whole thing now.”

  Everyone was silent for a moment as they read over the lyrics. I waited patiently for their responses. O’Shea was the first to speak up.

  “It’s about time. Why don’t you show us what it sounds like?”

  I smiled and headed into the live room to find my guitar. Since all of our instruments were there, it only took a few minutes to get ready. Karatz gave me a mic and was in the process of setting one up for O’Shea as well when I began strumming the chords I had written about my last relationship, if you could even call it that.

  I’d met Nikki on a plane, believe it or not. I’d been traveling with the band to LA to make an appearance on a late night TV show and she ended up next to me in first class. I know, it sounds like the stuff of movies, but as you can guess, the ending wasn’t so happy. I hadn’t had a serious relationship since Catalyst had made it big. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to have a girlfriend, but everything about dating was hard once we had success. It was hard to meet people in a real setting and have actual conversations, let alone get to know someone well enough to be in a relationship with them.

  Hindsight is 20/20, and so looking back, I can see all of the things that I refused to see then. Nikki was an aspiring actress who was moving to LA to get her big break. She was from a small town and had seemed really innocent and genuine at the time. She was also really cute, with long blonde curls and brown eyes. We’d talked the entire flight, and although she obviously recognized me and knew the band, it didn’t bother me. I realized that if I was going to have to try to find people who weren’t fans to date, then becoming more successful as a band would only hinder my chances at having a girlfriend. I had blindly followed my heart and called Nikki two days later. We’d started dating, although it was often long-distance. It was nice to have someone to call during a long day on the road, or after a gig. Nikki was all too willing to fly out to see me, wherever I happened to be, and so I often brought her out to shows and events that I was expected to attend and then she would go back to California to work.

  I can admit to myself now that I was just a vehicle to get her where she wanted to be: the limelight. I became aware of that slowly, and so it was easy to ignore the feeling in the pit of my stomach that was warning me to get out. After the six month period that I acted as an accessory for her at all the big events and award shows, she had managed to network well enough that she no longer had a need for me. She landed her first big movie roll and dropped me flat on my face. Within a week I learned that she’d been dating some hot shot actor on the side for a few months. Although deep down I had almost seen it coming, I had started to care about her. It’s hard to invest that much of yourself and then find out it was all a lie. Worst of all was having the entire ordeal plastered all over every magazine and reported on every entertainment news show.

  So, with a bruised heart and in serious need of a distraction, I had hit the road with Catalyst and toured for almost a year. Life on the road had been good for me, as had spending time with the three guys I consider my brothers. The music from ‘Recycled Coma’ made for a great live show and the fans had eaten it up like candy. My lack of girlfriend had taught me to focus on the fans and I gave a hundred and ten percent of myself every night on stage. It paid off, too. We sold out a ton of shows and the record went platinum. In short, having my heart broken had been good for the band.

  I didn’t speak about Nikki, and none of the guys brought her up. It was easier to ignore what had happened and get lost in the rush of touring. But now, almost fifteen months after the breakup, I was trying to write for the new record, w
hich meant getting inside my head. I realized I needed to vent my frustrations and get it all out there. Otherwise, Nikki was still getting the best of me.

  Don’t get me wrong, I was over Nikki in the sense that I didn’t want anything to do with her, but the little boy in me wanted revenge. If telling the world what she had done to me in a song would give me some closure, then why shouldn’t I?

  Still strumming my guitar, I sang the words I had written. Once I’d shown everyone what it sounded like we set to work adding the other instruments to the mix. Karatz helped piece things together and took some of the transitions I’d come up with and smoothed them out for me. Within a half an hour, we were getting through the entire song, although it wasn’t perfect yet.

  We took a break to eat some Krispy Kreme Doughnuts that Serena brought for a treat. Ken bounced Joshua on his knee while we talked about the song, trying to decide what we could change to improve it. After four doughnuts, which was about three too many, I walked outside to get some fresh air. I strolled over to Ken’s pool and gazed into the crystal clear water. My reflection stared back at me knowingly. Writing “Sweet Disguise” had been like lifting a fifty pound weight from my shoulders. The writing process was therapeutic. I hadn’t realized how much I needed that release of pent up emotion until now. Sharing it with the band and turning it into a real song was just icing on the cake. The weight that had slowly been crushing my chest was dissipating.

  My thoughts turned to Aurora, and for the first time in a long time, I realized that I might be ready to try and get to know someone again. The Pier 60 painting had been delivered to my place this morning. I hadn’t had time to hang it yet, but I already had the perfect spot picked out above my fireplace and I couldn’t wait to get it up on the wall. It would serve as a visual reminder that I was ready to move on and trust someone again.

  I heard soft footsteps in the lush grass behind me and turned around to see O’Shea approaching. “Run out of doughnuts?” I asked.