“Take my hand,” I instructed.
“I’m fine. It’s about time I learned how to walk in these torture devices.”
“Not at the expense of busting your face open.”
Letting go of her stubborn will, we interlocked fingers and walked to the front door. After showing Big Willy our IDs, we got ushered inside the smoky bar that hadn’t changed since I’d worked there. There were still framed pictures of B-rated musicians hanging on the far wall with their signatures scrawled on the glass. A jukebox blasted oldies but goodies and Tricky, the bartender with a heart of cement, slinging drinks. Camille and I grabbed two barstools closest to the stage. A man in his late thirties was crooning into the microphone about, what else? Heartbreak. He strummed his guitar like an amateur and sang like one too. Nonetheless, I gave him credit for having the balls to show off his lack of talent. I just wished he’d do it in private, like his bathroom, in front of the mirror.
“What do you want?”
The distinctive growl of Tricky’s voice pulled my attention toward her. “Hey! Remember me?” I asked.
Her hazy blue eyes considered me for a half second before they narrowed in suspicion. “Are you the tax guy who showed up here yesterday? I told you I’m not giving you my stinking money.”
“No, it’s me. Matthew Lee.” When it didn’t register, I resorted to the nickname she had given me. “How ‘bout Stumpy? Does that ring any bells?”
Awareness dawned on her worn face. “Stumpy! What the fuck are you doing here? I thought you left this shit hole.”
From the corner of my eye, I saw Camille grinning, probably at Tricky’s use of my nickname.
“I did leave five years ago, but I’m in town visiting my folks.”
She grabbed a rag and wiped down the counter. “How fucking cozy. You were always the good lil’ boy, weren’t you, Stumpy?”
Camille couldn’t hold her tongue any longer. “Why ‘Stumpy’?”
The rag stilled as Tricky jerked her chin up. She pinned Camille with a death glare that would make most women cry, and had. Camille though stared right back, with a smile no less.
“Who’s this?” Tricky asked me.
“Camille. She’s my…” I faltered over what Camille was exactly. Friend? That seemed cruel, considering where my tongue has been. Girlfriend? I wished on a thousand stars that could be possible but wasn’t. I settled for just her name. “Her name is Camille.”
Her smile faded, as did the light in her eyes. Dropping her gaze to the napkin, she began to fiddle with it. A telltale sign I had hurt her. Crap, I couldn’t win.
Tricky, unaware of my gaffe, grunted her displeasure. “She looks as fucking perky as a pair of breast implants.”
“And you look like a slab of leather left out in the sun too long,” Camille spat.
A heady silence threaded between them while regret began to filter into Camille’s expression. I hadn’t seen anybody talk back to Tricky before, so I was unsure of how she would react. My body tensed, ready to defend if need be, when Tricky’s throaty laugh rang free. It morphed into a hacker’s cough as mucous rattled in her chest. “Fucking cigarettes,” she wheezed. Gulping a cup of water, her lungs cleared and she set her watery gaze on Camille. “You have a ball of fire in your belly, don’t you, girl?”
A customer flagged her down from the other side of the bar. Mumbling, she moved off without taking our drink orders. No matter, I didn’t want to have a hazy filter on tonight. I wanted to remember Camille gaining the respect of the Grinch.
“You are full of surprises, Camille,” I said. “Truly.”
She compiled the torn napkin shreds into a pile. “I learned in Catholic School bitches had to be dealt with with an equal amount of bitchiness. Otherwise, they will treat you like dirt.”
“What else did you learn?”
“Nuns are assholes and to not wear your uniform on the bus ride home.”
“Why is that?”
She glanced sideways at me with a wicked gleam in her eyes. “Those uniforms incite sexual fantasies in old and young men alike.”
An image of Camille dressed in a short plaid skirt with a white button-up tied at her bellybutton caused a surge of lust. I don’t know much longer I could go without knowing the sensation of her tight pussy clamped around my dick. Based upon the painful twist of my balls, I would say not long.
“You’re killing me,” I groaned while I adjusted my position on the barstool.
“Is it bad I take a sick amount of pleasure in that?”
A group of rowdy men traipsed into the bar, interrupting us. They hooted and hollered, holding their arms above their heads. If you didn’t know them, you would figure they were drunk. I did know them though. They were my old bandmates -- stone-cold sober yet acting like they were still seventeen years old. Spotting me, they yelled my name in one collective long vowel.
“MAAAAAAATT!”
The other customers shot them nasty looks, which they ignored. Jessy, Lance, and Ben didn’t follow the rules society had implemented. They were adventurers, wanderers, and the lost boys of New York, which was why our band had fallen apart. They weren’t reliable, and eventually venues got sick of our constant no-shows and general lateness.
Ben draped his arm around the back of my shoulders, planting a smacking kiss to the side of my head. “It’s good to see ya, man!”
Jessy and Lance echoed the same sentiments but in a less affectionate way. The emcee climbed on the stage and announced we were up next.
Camille looked over at me, wide eyed. “You’re singing tonight?”
“This goddess is with you?” Ben assessed her as if she had materialized from heaven. “Holy shit, how the hell did you manage to pull that off?”
A rosy tinge colored the apples of her cheeks, which provoked a roaring flame of jealousy to ignite. I grabbed Ben by the forearm and dragged him to the stage while he hollered at Camille.
“Will you have my babies? I love you, my beautiful goddess!”
“Shut up,” I snarled.
Laughing hysterically, he danced out of my grasp. “Ah! Romance is in the air and it smells like possession.”
“Dude, calm yourself,” Jessy said as he swung his guitar across his chest. “I knew you shouldn’t have had that third Red Bull.”
“I won fifty bucks!” Ben fished the money from his pocket and waved it in the air. “It was worth it!”
Rolling my eyes, I shoved the bass into his hands. “Are you going to be able to play tonight without having a heart attack?”
“I’ll be as smooth as Jell-O.”
I walked to the front of the stage. Adjusting the microphone, I sang a couple of notes to test the sound and made a few improvements. Once that got checked off the list, we were ready to jam. At my signal, the clicking sound of Ben’s drumsticks started. At the four mark, I found Camille in the audience and locked eyes with her as my voice ripped from my throat. My frustrations, my fears, my hopes, and my dreams got poured into the lyrics I had constructed after our first kiss. They were everything I wanted to say to Camille but couldn’t.
“I’m the darkness in your dreams
You’re the moon that lights my starless sky
I’m the crow by your windowsill that sings – a broken lullaby”
As the last line echoed amongst the walls, the room faded, leaving only us. The air stilled while we stared at each other, me panting, Camille expressionless. Baring my soul to her, I waited for any kind of reaction, good or bad. She blinked as if she was stirring herself from a dream. The audience clapped, but I paid them no heed. The only person that mattered was the woman that held my beating heart in the palm of her hand. She lifted herself from the barstool. Is she going to clap? Run to the stage and stick her tongue down my throat? Please God, make it any of the above. Camille, though, shocked the hell out of me as she exited The Alligator, crushing my heart into a bloody mass. I abandoned my bandmates and ran after her.
The devastation in Matthew’s eyes almos
t made me turn back around and re-enter the club, but I couldn’t. That song. Holy shit. There were no words. It was raw and devastating and the way he sang it with such longing ripped my soul in half. I wrapped my arms around my middle to fight off the chill of the night. My shaking though wasn’t a result of the cold; it was a result of the half billion emotions that had bubbled to the surface. If I wasn’t imagining things, it seemed as if Matthew wanted us to have a future equally as much as I did. Then why the hell did he falter when Tricky asked who I was? His secrets made me want to scream until my voice ran dry. The front door banged against the brick wall. Spinning around, Matthew’s form was backlit by the hazy light of the interior of the bar. He looked around wildly before he pinned me in his sights.
Stalking to where I stood, he glowered. “Did you find my singing so awful you had to run away?”
Behind his joke, I saw the vulnerability in his eyes. “No,” I said quickly. “It was amazing.”
Matthew raised his eyebrows, encouraging me to explain my runaway bride act, but I didn’t know how to. There were too many things I wanted to say that they became muddled.
He lifted my chin with the tip of his finger. As if he could tell my brain was a mess of crossed wires, he spoke. “Start from the beginning.”
“Was that song for me?”
“Yes.”
His confession injected another layer of fog into my brain. It felt as if I was swimming blindly, missing the sandy shore by inches. “But I don’t understand. Why?”
“Because you inspire me.”
“I inspire you to write a song about a man who could never have what he wants?”
A sadness sank into his grey eyes. “Yes.”
I grasped his wrist while desperation sprinkled with a surge of hope took hold. “But you can have me, Matthew. I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere. You can have me. All of me. Crazy parts and all.”
His hand reached out as if he wanted to touch me but then dropped to his side. Disappointment almost knocked me to my knees because I knew what he was going to say.
“I can’t have you,” Matthew said, his voice just above a whisper. “It wouldn’t be right when there is a man out there able to give you what you deserve.”
“What I deserve is someone that ignites butterflies to flap widely in my stomach when they look at me, someone that makes me laugh even when I want to kill them, and lastly, someone that makes my panties wet with a single touch. That someone is you.”
Darkness flashed in his eyes as a low growl got carried in the breeze. “We can’t be together, Camille, okay? Get it through your thick skull. We are a fucking hurricane bound to destroy everything in our path. It isn’t a good idea.”
“No, not okay,” I was screaming now, unable to contain the fury that had built inside me. “You can’t make predictions like that without telling me why. Why do you see us as a hurricane, when I see a rainbow after a storm?”
“Because that’s how you are. You have a trusting nature that somehow can cast the lowest of the low in a godly light. You can turn the fucking devil into a saint, Camille.”
My anger cranked to a low boil as it hit me. “Is that how you see yourself? As the devil?”
With one long stride, he loomed above me. I tilted my chin upwards, meeting his cold, unfeeling stare.
“I am the devil. You don’t know the things I have done. If you did, you would leave this parking lot and never look back.”
“The past doesn’t shape who we are; what we do afterwards does.” Laying my hand over his heart, it beat steadily against my palm. “The man I have gotten to know the past few weeks would give shirt off his back to a stranger. Let’s both let go of the nightmares that haunt us and move on together. Start fresh.”
“Start fresh?” His bitter laugh struck me through the heart. “We both know that’s impossible. You can spout all the hippy bullshit you want, but the past does define us. It clings to our skin like a fungus, infecting our decisions and our state of mind.
Frustration at his unwillingness to get out of the stew of misery he was soaking in caused my patience to thin like a sheet of ice in the springtime sun. “It only infects us if you fucking let it. Obviously, you are because, unlike me, whatever secret is in your past is throwing up a roadblock to not give this,” I gestured between us, “Whatever this is a chance. You aren’t even willing to explore it. We have a connection, Matthew. You can deny that till the cows come home, but we do and it won’t go away.”
A beat passed while a battled raged behind his grey eyes. My spine stiffened, preparing to fight for the man who blazed into my life like a comet. And I would. I would fight till my throat became raw from screaming, until he tore my heart to shreds and showed me that he truly didn’t want me.
Once he spoke, his words were like shrapnel that dug into my wounds. “We don’t have a connection. We have lust.”
“If that’s true, then why did you stay with me at the hospital when I cut my foot open and then proceed to drive me home? Or why is it you have respected the agreement so thoroughly that even when we were half naked, you didn’t push for more? You are full of bullshit.”
“You are so fucking relentless, Camille!” he screamed, his head tipped backwards to the heavens, his fingers tugging at his hair. “Why can’t you be content with what this is? And stop asking questions you don’t want the answers to. Huh? Is that so hard??” Letting out a breath, it hung suspended in a white cloud. “Is it?” His body folded into itself, dejected.
“With you it will never be enough. I’ll always want more, so yes, it is too hard to settle for a noncommittal title and confusing mixed messages like bringing me here to meet your family and pouring your heart out into a song written for ME, but unable call me anything but Camille.”
“That’s your name.”
I gave him a seething glance that had his lips tipping upwards into a grin. God dammit, I wanted to hate him but he made it fucking impossible.
Matthew sighed as his expression turned grim again. “I have been selfish. Since the day I met you, it has been like basking in the hot sun, but it’s not reality. Eventually, the clouds will roll in and the rain will fall. I have also been weak because when you look at me with those emerald green eyes, the idea of walking away from you makes me physically ill.” He soaked me in with his eyes, almost as if he was trying to memorize my features. “But it’s time I do what’s best for you, and what’s best is if we sever this relationship before we are in too deep.” When I opened my mouth to protest, he cut me off. “I know you don’t understand but one day you will. I’m sorry, Camille. I’ll buy you a plane ticket home today.”
A jagged crack formed in my heart as it broke in two. Matthew was hell-bent on destroying us; all the screaming and pleading in the world wouldn’t make him change his mind. He was an idiot though, if he thought we weren’t already in too deep. We were in the middle of the ocean at this point and as Matthew looked through me, it felt as if ten-foot tall waves were crashing over my head, drowning me in their powerful surge. He didn’t deserve my tears, but that didn’t stop them from leaking from the corners of my eyes.
He glanced away and pulled out his cell phone. “I’ll call you a cab.”
I shoved my devastation into a locked box that would get re-opened when I was alone and had a bottle of red wine and cookie dough ice cream in arm’s reach.
“Don’t fucking bother,” I snapped. “I’ll call my own fucking taxi. Just leave like I know you so badly want to.”
Matthew stood there for a millisecond and a sliver of hope he had changed his mind rooted in the pit of my stomach. His grey eyes swept across my face while his lips pulled into a thin line. His expression as blank as a piece of paper, I hadn’t a clue what he was thinking.
Matthew jerked his chin downwards in a sharp nod. “Okay, be safe.”
His flippancy killed the hope in one fell swoop. Matthew’s boots echoed on the cement as he walked back toward the club without sparing me a second glance.
I had done it and I was still alive. Although “alive” was a relative term because being deprived of Camille was like being deprived of oyxgen. My feet put one in front of the other and carried me further from the parking lot. I fought the urge to look back at her because I knew if I did -- game over. There would be no second chances after that. I would claim Camille as mine, consequences be damned.
“You are a coward, Matthew Lee,” she screamed after me, “A goddamn coward,” her voice broke on the last syllable, as did my heart.
My steps faltered but I kept going, only three more feet until I would be safely inside and could nurse my battered soul with a stiff drink. Suddenly, an explosion of glass caused my hands to fly over my head as I ducked. Fragments covered my shoes, but otherwise, I was unharmed. Whirling around, I saw Camille, breathing heavily, staring at the spot where the bottle had broken. As she glanced up, she looked at me dazed as if she couldn’t believe what she’d done. I couldn’t either. Camille wasn’t the kind of crazy that threw objects at men. Then again, maybe this was a side to her I hadn’t witnessed until now. Outrage at how close the bottle had come to hitting me and lust mixed together in a potent cocktail.
Camille’s russet hair matched the flush in her cheeks. The dazed look in her eyes parted, revealing the intention behind her baseball worthy throw. She was pissed to the nth degree and had had every intention of nailing me in the head. Her hands slammed onto her hips as her chin lifted in a challenge, asking me what I planned to do about it. My brain clicked off and my inner caveman roared to life.
She let out a squeal of surprise as my mouth captured hers. Her body stiffened, but once my teeth nibbled her bottom lip, she sank into my embrace and wound her arms around my neck. I lost myself, wholly and completely in the way she tasted, like strawberries and cream, and the way she pressed herself flat against my chest, hungry for more. And more I gave until we were practically having sex in the middle of a dingy parking lot, for everybody to see.
Broken Lullabies Page 17