Hammers & Heartstrings

by Elle Bennett

I sat down on my couch and thrust a pillow into my face, letting out a scream of frustration. Andrew ran his hand softly up and down my back as I let my sorrow be muffled by the softness of the pillow.

  “It’ll be okay,” he said, wrapping his arm around my shoulders. I set the pillow down. “Shit happens, and we all get through it. Maybe this will turn out to be a good thing.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “I’m getting evicted, Andrew. Remind me how that’s a good thing? I have nowhere to go, unless I move in with my dad again. I really don’t want to move in with him again. I haven’t lived with him for years. I don’t know if I can handle it.”

  He leaned against the couch and tugged me closer to him.

  “Well, if that’s what you’ve gotta do, then do it. It’s not that bad, living with your parents. I do it. Millions of people do it. It’s actually pretty normal these days, honestly. And if you really don’t want to live with your dad, I guess you could live with your mom, right?”

  I realized I’d never told him anything about my parents. I didn’t want to get into it with him, so I simply said, “I don’t have a mother anymore.”

  Technically, it was true. My mother left my dad when I was only five years old, running off with a producer who promised her that he would make her a country star. Last I heard, Cassidy Shea was living in Nashville and failing miserably at her dream. Not that I looked her up often. She was dead to me. The first bridge I happily burned in my life.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. You never mentioned. Is she -”

  “She’s not dead,” I said, interrupting him. “She’s just not in my life. Hasn’t been since I was a kid.”

  I didn’t want to talk about it anymore. I didn’t want to think about the last time I saw her, her smug face, those blue eyes that looked so much like my own. The way I saw her every time I looked in the mirror, wishing I could look like anyone else in the world. So instead of talking about it, I distracted Andrew by trailing my hand across his stomach, beneath his shirt. I kissed him, not bothering to lead up to the intensity, the deepness, the passion. He broke away from me.

  “You should probably get started on packing shit. Call your dad and talk to him about living there?”

  I tilted my head at him.

  “I don’t want to yet. We have an empty apartment. A shower. A bed that’s clean, with fresh sheets. Super comfortable.”

  He gave me a sly smile.

  “I like where this is going.”

  He went back to kissing me. Soon enough, we were fumbling with the various buttons and zippers that lined our clothing and making our way towards the small bathroom. The shower barely fit the both of us, and my plan to have sex in there immediately went out the window. There was no way it was happening in there. At least, not the kind of sex I had in mind.

  Andrew had another plan, though. He soaped my body down, trailing kisses across my breasts and down my stomach until he reached his destination between my legs. He attached his mouth to me and I went still. After a moment, I gained control of my limbs again. My hands ran through his hair, and I had been right - his hair was perfect to hold onto while he went down on me. He didn’t stop until I couldn’t stand anymore, my knees weak and my head fuzzy.

  We rinsed off the soap as quickly as we could and ran to the bedroom to finish what we’d started. I was worn out afterward, and fell asleep in his arms. I woke up to him kissing my shoulder gently, his eyelashes barely brushing against my skin as his lips traced my freckles.

  “Get up, beautiful. We’ve got shit to do.”

  He handed me my phone and I let out a groggy groan. I didn’t want to call my dad, but Andrew was right. We had shit to do.

  “Are you back home?” my dad asked when I called him.

  “Yeah, but there’s a little problem with the ‘home’ part of that. There’s an eviction notice on my door.”

  My dad let out a sigh of frustration.

  “What the hell, April?”

  “Look, I need a place to live for a little while. It shouldn’t be long before I’m back on my feet. I can’t live on the streets, right? I mean, not when I have a dad who will totally let me live in my old bedroom for a while.”

  “You can’t crash with the guy you ran off with?”

  My frustrated sigh matched his.

  “No, dad.”

  I hadn’t even considered the possibility of moving in with Andrew. Maybe it would be different if he had his own place, but even if he did, it was way too soon to do that. Besides, I promised myself last year that I would never live with a guy for the sake of convenience again. Been there, done that. It never turned out well.

  “Fine, I’ll clean out the guest room for you. But you have to get back on your feet quickly. I’m sure it’s your own damn fault that you got evicted. Your problem to take care of. Not mine.”

  “I know,” I said quietly.

  “Pack up and get over here as soon as you can, then. Your dog misses you,” he said.

  I hung up the phone and set it on the nightstand. I wrapped my arms around my legs and put my head on my knees. Andrew wrapped his arms around me in a hug.

  “It’s going to be okay,” he whispered.

  For a split second, I had to believe him. Maybe it was because he was hugging me, and I felt calm with his arms around me. Maybe I truly did believe he was telling the truth, that things really would work out and be okay.

  I wasn’t too sure.

  “I guess I really should get packing. God, why do I have so many fucking clothes? I have too much shit.”

  “You don’t have that many clothes. My sister has at least five times the amount you do.”

  “Sister? I didn’t know you had a sister,” I said.

  “Yeah, Joan. Remember, she sang at Cranberry before I did, that night we first hooked up? I thought you knew that.”

  I shook my head. Apparently musical talent wasn’t a genetic trait.

  “I had no idea. What else don’t I know about you?”

  “Oh, plenty. I once went swimming in a public pool and peed in the water. Left a flaming bag of shit on this kid’s porch in high school. I dressed up as a princess for Halloween when I was seven.”

  “Wow. You’re never going to bore me, are you?”

  With a smile, I got up and started to clear some CDs off of my nightstand, stacking them in no order whatsoever. I really needed an organizational system for my music.

  “I guess I should get some boxes,” I said.

  “You might want to get dressed first,” Andrew pointed out.

  I looked down at my naked body and shrugged.

  “I guess.”

  We got my apartment packed up within a few days. I threw out old clothes and took boxes to my dad’s place, one car trip at a time. The last of the boxes were in my car, and my apartment was completely empty, save for myself and my portable speaker.

  On my very last day in the apartment, Andrew stopped by. I had the door wide open, and the music on my phone was turned up to eleven. I wanted to make sure I disturbed the neighbors. They were never nice to me, after all.

  “I thought you weren’t going to bother cleaning, since you weren’t getting any deposits back?” Andrew asked.

  “I’m not exactly vacuuming here. I’m spackling,” I said. “I can’t leave a place without spackling first. It’s the best part of moving. It’s the greatest joy in life. It’s the only thing that rivals my love of music, honestly. It’s so satisfying, filling up the little holes with spackle.”

  He let out a laugh and leaned against the wall next to my speaker.

  “Oh!” he said, standing straight again, “I know exactly what you need. It’ll make spackling even better.”

  “That’s impossible! Spackling is the epitome of incredibly awesome fun-time! There is nothing greater in this world! Nothing! Greater!”

  I took my spackling tool and went after another wall. There was no way they weren’t planning on repainting this place after I was gone anyway. I was saving the hand
ymen a step. And I got to have fun doing it. Andrew was out the door before I filled the hole I was working on, and he was back by the time I finished smoothing it out, guitar in hand.

  “One - do you carry that everywhere you go? Two - I’m already listening to you sing, silly,” I said, pointing to my phone and speaker sitting next to it.

  “Yeah, but this is even better than my recordings. It’s live,” he said with a wink, hitting the pause button on my phone. “Besides, I don’t have this song recorded. And I already know you love singing it with me…”

  I was confused until he began to play the opening chords to “Dancing Queen” and I couldn’t help but burst out in laughter before going after another hole in the wall. For a moment, I considered getting a nail and creating some more holes so I could spackle until the sun rose.

  God, I love spackling. I even loved the word “spackle.”

  Andrew started to sing the song as I laughed and danced around while spackling. The sounds of our voices and his guitar bounced off the empty walls of the small apartment and echoed back at us. It was almost as if the walls were our amp and microphone, the apartment was our stage, and the entire world outside the door was our audience.

  I sang along with him, we laughed, messed up the words, and harmonized. I ran to the door and shut it, causing our noise to echo even more off the walls. We didn’t need an audience. We needed each other. We only needed to sing for us.

  We sang in tandem, and I put down my spackle, sitting down in front of him. I placed my hands on his cheeks and gave him a quick kiss. I got a bit of spackle on his face, but I didn’t think he’d really care.

  “This is fun,” I said after I pulled away, my hands careful not to touch his guitar with my dirty hands. “I wish life could always feel like this.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “Good. I wish life was always this good,” I said. “Like, I wish I could always be this happy, even with shitty circumstances trying to pull me down.”

  “Keep me around, and it might just stay that way,” he said with a smile.

  I smiled back at him and grabbed my spackling tool to wipe a blob of the paste against his nose. I laughed and watched it drip down his face, onto his shirt. I wasn’t concerned with ruining his clothes, I was fairly certain the plain white t-shirt he wore came in a twelve pack.

  “Whoops,” I said.

  I went back to singing ABBA and he played his guitar again along with me as I sang, ignoring the spackle drying on his nose.

  “Got anything to spackle at your place? Because seriously, I want to spackle everything I can, as much as I can. I can’t get enough. I might be addicted. SPACKLING!!”

  My voice echoed off of the walls, and the word sounded five times louder than it normally would. The sensation of my own voice echoing back at me got me riled up and I ran my spackling tool over a large portion of the wall that didn’t even have any holes to fill up. I stepped back to admire the work I’d done. I was sure my ex-landlord would appreciate that one.

  “If I ever need a room spackled, I promise you’ll be the first one I’ll call,” he said. “I can see you’re the spackling queen. I should make you a crown.”

  “Only if it’s made of spackling paste, please.”

  After I finished the last of the holes, I sat down and leaned against the wall where my couch used to be, staring up at the blank ceiling. Andrew sat his guitar on the floor, far away from any drying spackle.

  “I’m badass, did you know that?” I asked as I held out the spackling tool as if it had a sharpened blade.

  Andrew let out a chuckle and kissed the top of my head.

  “Yes, you’re the biggest badass when it comes to spackling.”

  “Thanks. I’d almost forgotten about this upside to moving,” I said.

  I rested my head on his shoulder. He wrapped his callused fingers around my spackle covered fingers.

  “Yeah, this isn’t bad at all. I can’t say I have a thing to complain about in the world right now.” He rested his chin on the top of my head.

  “Really? I have a few things I could complain about.”

  “I’m sitting here with a beautiful woman who can sing ABBA with me and not mock me for it. There’s nothing to complain about.”

  “Moving in with my dad. That’s what I can complain about. I haven’t had to live with him since I was seventeen. I moved out early. I didn’t want to be there anymore. I don’t want to be there now. And once I tell Erica about this, she’s going to lecture the shit out of me because she fancies herself the mother I never had.”

  “You haven’t told her yet?” he asked. I shook my head. “Why not?”

  “I’m kind of sick of being the only one who cares about our friendship. I text her, and I get nothing back, sometimes for weeks. If I call, I get her voicemail. I’m just… I’m done with that. A friendship goes two ways.”

  “But she’s your best friend,” Andrew says, as if that solves the fucking problem.

  “Supposedly. Sometimes I feel like I’m more of a hassle for her, her annoying friend from high school that’s never going to go anywhere in life. What’s the point in sticking around my life when I’m not like her, in school, working on changing the world?”

  He wrapped his arm around my shoulders and gave me a squeeze.

  “You have other people, though, right? She’s not your only friend?”

  “She kind of is,” I admit. “Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t a social recluse in high school, but those friendship didn’t really last after I left. Erica was the only one who stuck around. We all drifted apart, but lately it feels like she’s yet another person who’s going to leave me. I’m waiting for the day when she drifts away for good, when the wind picks her up and takes her too far away to ever come back to me, if I even want her back after that.”

  He sighs.

  “And here I am, years after high school, in a band with three guys I’ve known since we hit puberty.”

  “Not everyone gets that lucky when it comes to friends. Not everyone stays that way. People change. Friendships fall apart. People leave. People always leave.”

  “Yeah, I guess technically they do,” Andrew said. “But sometimes they come back.”

  “Trust me, you don’t want them to come back. It’s not the same.”

  “What makes you say that?” he asked.

  “Trust me. I know.”

  My mother taught me that lesson five years ago - you don’t want them to come back. It’s nothing like you expect it to be. And it’ll leave you a shattered mess.

  “Does this have something to do with your mom leaving when you were a kid?”

  Damn it.

  “Okay, Freud. You can stop now. I don’t want to get into it. Just. Trust me. You don’t want them to come back. When people leave, let them stay away.”

  He cleared his throat.

  “Okay, if you don’t want to get into it… We’ll talk about something else. Have I ever told you my biggest secret?”

  “Um, no,” I said.

  “I love disco,” he said.

  “I already figured that out. You do love ABBA, after all. And you knew how to play ‘Dancing Queen’ without even practicing it. I figured you’d played it before.”

  He shook his head, his hair brushing against mine. He drummed his fingers against my shoulder. It sounded like the beat to a song I knew in my heart.

  “Honestly, I had played it before, though it doesn’t take me long to figure out the chords to a song after I hear it once. But that’s not the point. The point is that I really love disco. Like, I want to go to one of those disco roller skating rinks someday, if there are any still in existence. If I weren’t in Peristerophobia, I might actually start up a disco band.”

  I laughed at that image.

  “You are so weird,” I said.

  “That’s the appeal, isn’t it?”

  I smiled again, but it fell back to a frown quickly. His quick subject change hadn’t worked. My mind w
as still on the previous conversation. People always left. Andrew would probably leave me someday. And if he did, I didn’t think I’d want him to come back either. I never wanted them to come back.

  “You okay?” he asked, noticing my silence and my frown.

  “I don’t know. I’m just thinking about how things always fall apart for me, how people always leave. About how you’ll probably leave me someday, and I’ll have to stop buying your albums because there will be songs about some random girl that’s worth sticking around for on them. You’re going to end up being another bridge I’ll burn to the ground. I’m pain and I’m sadness, Andrew. That’s what you have to look forward to with me. I’m sorry in advance for anything I do that will make you leave me.”

  “Hey. Hey. I’m not leaving you.”

  “Yeah, you say that now,” I said. “But I know what will happen. What always happens. We’re happy, then things go to shit. Then I think I’ll never see you again, but if I do see you again, you’ll ruin my life. That’s how it goes.”

  He shook his head again, and his frustration with me was clear in his voice. I needed to stop talking, I knew that. But I couldn’t seem to stop. All my insecurities were coming out at once and he was just going to have to deal with that. If he couldn’t deal, then maybe he’d leave a lot sooner than expected.

  “Where is this coming from? We just got together, April. We’re happy. I’m happy, at least. Aren’t you?”

  “Yes. Yeah. You make me happy.”

  For now.

  “You make me happy too.”

  He wrapped his arms around me, like he was expecting me to cry. But I wasn’t going to. I tucked my head into his chest and listened to the couple in the apartment below us shouting. I snuggled my head deeper into his chest, and I heard him say something so quietly that I wondered if he even meant for me to hear it.

  “I love you.”

  I sat up straight and wrapped my arms around his neck, pulling him closer to me. I kissed him, and my body whispered the words back to him with every last movement.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I can taste you

  Between each drag