A Cruel Kind of Beautiful

by Michelle Hazen

  He takes a sip and winces when he burns his tongue. “You know, while I’ve got you two here, I really think we should talk about hiring a keyboardist to lay in a track or two for the new album.”

  “For the last time, we do not need a freaking keyb—” I pause, squinting at him. “You’re stalling. What’s going on?”

  His eyes twinkle above his coffee. “Well, it just so happens your poor old dad scraped up a gig for you. At a little music festival I like to call Things That Go Bump In The Night.”

  I shriek.

  I’m not proud of that reaction, but at this moment, I am not dignified either. As clearly evidenced by the caffeinated-koala impression I proceed to execute, leaping on my dad as he laughs and swings me around the living room and doesn’t say a blessed thing about the chiropractic bills I probably just cost him.

  When he sets me down, I run both palms over my totally numb cheeks, and then my hair.

  “As an opener, right?” I ask him, eyes huge. “Or one of the side stages, maybe?”

  “An opener...” He taps a finger to his lips, pretending to consider. “If you consider being the top billed band for the pub crawl an opener, then yes.”

  Danny’s still sitting down but nodding...and nodding, his smile growing with every second.

  Bump In The Night is the biggest off-season music festival in the Pacific Northwest, and while playing as an opener on the main stage might be a bigger crowd, the pub crawl bars are more intimate venues. That means it’s easier to get the audience stirred up, and if we do that, we can draw in the crowds passing on their way to the other bars. Including, hopefully, the record label scouts who swarm to this festival.

  I grab Dad and press a near-assaultive kiss into his cheek. “You’re a band-management genius. I have to call Jax. He’s going to tattoo your name on his ass when he hears this.”

  Dad laughs as I pull out my phone and speed dial. I bounce on my toes, grinning over at Danny, but it goes straight to our bandmate’s voicemail.

  “Jackson freaking Sterling!” I yelp into the phone. “The sky is falling, the birds are singing, and I have the best damn news of your life. Call me. Call me, call me, call me!” I hang up.

  Dad, still smiling, glances toward the door. “I should head back to the office. I was showing a house to a client a few blocks down and I wanted to see your reaction in person.”

  Danny jerks to his feet, holding out a hand. “Thanks. Uh, thank you.” He pumps Dad’s hand a few too many enthusiastic times, and I can’t hold back a snicker.

  “I’ll call you tonight and we’ll talk details.” Dad goes to let himself out.

  Danny looks at me, blinking like he’s still trying to process what just happened. I shake my head, grinning hard enough for both of us. “Holy shit.”

  My best friend chuckles, the sound a little lightheaded. “Hey, breaking a mirror is supposed to be seven years of bad luck. Maybe breaking a picture window is the opposite.”

  Reminded with a jolt, I reach in my back pocket and yank out the envelope, eyeing it with even more nerves than the first time I saw it. There’s no way it contains anything good. Dad’s news probably just ate up my next decade’s share of good karma. I need to go cure some hamsters of AIDS or something to stock back up.

  “And the Oscar goes to...” Danny prompts as I continue to stare at the envelope clutched in my fingers.

  There’s a bounding, sparkling sensation deep in my belly that has nothing to do with our upcoming show and everything to do with knowing this envelope came from Jake Tate’s house. Maybe even from his bedroom. And I’m officially not thinking about that.

  I rip open the envelope. Instead of notebook paper, there are bills inside. I leaf past them, but there’s not even a scrap of paper on which a note could be written. Okay, well, money’s good, too. I guess.

  Danny retrieves my notebook out of my backpack and flips from the back until he finds the lyrics and chord notations on the last used pages.

  I count the money. Thirty-seven dollars.

  What the hell? Not enough to pay for the window but not a nice round number for a payment against the full amount. What is the significance of the extra two dollars? Emotional damages? Rental fee for use of my hammer? A poor substitute for the nude picture I maybe sort of wish it was?

  Maybe since Jake quit the team and lost his scholarship, he didn’t have enough money to pay for the whole window and was too embarrassed to admit it. It makes sense—in my experience, family drama usually comes along with bills. One of the reasons I moved in with Granna instead of living in the dorms was because her insurance wouldn’t approve home health nurses until the very end. Whatever Jake’s family faced, it left him chucking newspapers instead of baseballs.

  Unless none of this is about budgets at all and he just ran off because he caught on to my bicep-ogling ways and he thought if he paid at least a few bucks, maybe I wouldn’t contact him again for the rest.

  My toes curl in my sneakers as an image of soft brown eyes flashes through my mind. It’s just that...he seemed nice. Of course, Andy was nice, too. And handsome. I am not about to get sucked into second-guessing another guy’s actions, trying to decide what he’s thinking about me. What matters is what I think about me.

  I toss the envelope onto the table and lift my guitar out of its stand. “Come on, let’s see if we can finish that song before we both have to go to work.”

  Unlike men, music has never let me down.

  Chapter 5: The Compliment of Gluten-Free Soup

  I’m strolling down the canned vegetable aisle when my Friday afternoon decides to kick me in the teeth.

  “Excuse me? Hi, um...”

  The familiarity of the voice behind me thrills my skin with goosebumps. I’ve never seen Jake Tate in this store before. Did I conjure him with my guilty daydreams about his biceps? I stumble, then recover, checking the way my arms are placed on my cart to be sure they feel natural and not too stiff. Good? Good. I have successfully proven my ability to ambulate and wildly fantasize about strangers at the same time. Next step: get a life.

  “Not sure you remember me... Jacob? With the newspaper, and the window?”

  I turn around, and my smile falters as his brightens a notch. Sweet baby Jesus riding a duck, he has beautiful cheekbones. And I’m wearing an old Audioslave tee shirt I swiped from Danny.

  I flick my hair back over my shoulder, irritated with myself. I wear whatever’s comfortable these days, but apparently I still haven’t broken my habit of thinking about my looks in terms of men’s approval. He’s the vandal—I’m not the one who should be worried about making a good impression. “I don’t think we got around to names. But yeah, I remember you. What with the disappearing act and the mysteriously appearing board and the tip you left, it’d be a little hard to forget.”

  As soon as I say the word “tip” his jaw flexes and he looks down.

  “I am going to pay for it,” he says in a low voice. “It’s not like I thought thirty bucks would be enough, it’s just that I—”

  “Thirty-seven.” I figure he should get credit for the seven extra bucks, but he jerks a single solemn nod, as if he’s taking responsibility for a crime, and I cringe. That came out sounding all wrong.

  “It was everything I had on me that day, and I thought you’d rather have a down payment instead of waiting until I could get it all.”

  “No, no, of course!” I hesitate, trying to choose my words more carefully this time so I don’t make him feel any worse. Of course a guy considerate enough to board up the window wouldn’t just drop a few bucks and run. My eyes fall as I think and then I realize he doesn’t have a cart—just a handheld basket with a single can of gluten-free lentil soup.

  My own cart sits accusingly between us, the pile topped with kale, organic tomatoes, extra creamy Mocha Almond Fudge ice cream, and oil-free acne wash. I reach in and casually bump the kale over until it covers my face wash, wishing it were a sleek bottle of Products for Beautiful People Who Don’t Ne
ed Products. I swear, grocery shopping is way too personal to do in public. The last time a cute guy stopped to talk to me in here, my basket was headlining anti-fungal cream.

  “Payments were very thoughtful, and I wasn’t dogging on the amount or anything.” I shrug one shoulder. “It’s just that if I were going to pick a random amount I would have gone for forty-two.”

  “Right.” He grins. “The answer to everything.”

  He got my Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy reference. A smile tugs the corner of my mouth up.

  “I should have scraped up another five bucks to be witty. Live and learn.” He heaves a sigh that jumps my eyes up to his, which is definitely a mistake. I don’t know if it has to do with the gentle color or maybe the tiny lines of worry at the corners but...he has the kindest eyes I’ve ever seen. And it absolutely murders me.

  I clear my throat. “Well, thank you for boarding up the window, Jake.”

  “Jacob. Some people call me Jake, but...” He exhales. “Call me Jacob, please.”

  I like that better—the name matches his eyes instead of his letterman jacket shoulders. Except I shouldn’t be thinking about either of those things. “It was nice to officially meet you, Jacob, but I should get going.” I lean into my cart and head down the aisle.

  “Hey, hold on a sec.”

  For a second, I consider pretending I don’t hear. This man calls up every flirtatious impulse I have, and silence would be easier than corralling my conversation into the “platonic” zone. I mean, it’s not that I particularly love being single, but I definitely like myself better when I’m not twisting myself up in knots to please a guy. Also, I’m up to T-minus eighteen months since the last time I ruined someone’s life. Not too shabby.

  “I never caught your name,” Jacob says, matching my stride.

  “It’s Jera.” I flash a quick, polite smile. See, Granna, I’m not totally a lost cause. “Jera McKnight.” Part of me braces for the inevitable “What kind of name is that?”

  Jacob brightens instead. “Jair-ah.” He spaces out the syllables. “Am I saying it right? That’s a cool name.”

  I shrug. “Hippie parents, you know. It happens.”

  “Don’t they normally go for the New Age ones, you know, Rainbow and Aura and all that?”

  My lips quirk in spite of myself, and I peek up through my lashes at him, leaning on my cart. “It’s a freaking acronym. Come on, if that’s not hippie, what is it? OCD? Bureaucratic? Irresponsible?”

  His eyes go vague as tries to puzzle it out. “Oh God, why did you do this to me?” he mutters. “I’m not going to be able to think about anything else all day.”

  “Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Roger Waters and Art Garfunkel,” I rattle them all off in one well-practiced breath and he grins, nodding along with every famous musician that I list. “It took my dad until I was two to confess to my mom what it stood for. She just thought it was pretty.”

  “It is.”

  Breath, meet lungs.

  As I try to manage my own response, his eyes flick from my face to my hair, which is still drifting long and wavy from the rain I biked through this morning. My pulse ticks up at his interest and yeah, I’m so over riding that particular rollercoaster. I scrape my hair back into a strict knot, then dig one-handed in my messenger bag for a pencil to skewer it with. Jacob’s gaze follows my fingers with a flicker of disappointment.

  “I won’t get paid again until next week, but maybe I could do some chores around your place, work off a little of my debt in the meantime.” He clears his throat and shifts his basket from one hand to the other.

  “Nah, the house is in good shape,” I lie, my pulse thrilling to the Diet-Coke-commercial-like images of him shirtless on a ladder: nailing on fresh shingles, or fixing that wheezing rattle in my ventilation system. “The money is no big deal, really.”

  “Can I be honest?”

  No. Christ, no. “Sure.” At the single word, the trepidation in his eyes abruptly matches the trembling in the pit of my stomach, and I hate to see him look so nervous. I smile to cover it, for both of us. “Hey, if you can’t make a confession in front of the canned beets, where can you make one?”

  Relief rebounds into his face and he says, “I’m about to the point where I’d sell a kidney to take back that window. I’m glad I got the chance to meet you, but I don’t want you to think that I...”

  “What, that your best pick up line is vandalism?”

  His grin debuts back into the canned vegetables aisle and it’s possible that I might dissolve into a semi-liquid state right here, puddling amidst the Veg-All and the lima beans.

  “Actually, while we’re being honest, that very well might be my best pick up line.”

  “Oh?” I manage.

  Flirtatious I can handle. Confident I can walk away from without a hitch in my step. But sheepish? How am I supposed to give the cold shoulder to sheepish?

  He peeks back up at me and his smile goes crooked. He rests a finger across his lips. “Don’t tell.”

  My resolve lies, tattered and gasping, under the wheels of my grocery cart.

  “No worries,” I rush to assure him. “It’s covered under vegetable aisle privilege. Lawyers and doctors have nothing on us.”

  “So, can I...” He edges out of the way of a passing cart. “Help you shop? To work off my debt?”

  He is killing me. Absolutely killing me.

  “Don’t you need to get your own things?”

  “Nah. I mean, it can wait.” He shifts, then considers the rows of pickled beets. “Actually, I sort of saw your car. In the lot.”

  “How do you know what my car looks like?”

  “It’s parked in your driveway every morning when I deliver your paper.”

  I consider face-palming at my own stupidity.

  “The vines...the cool spiky ones on the bumper, you know? I haven’t seen them anywhere else. Did you pay someone to do them?”

  I drop my eyes, looking only at the kale. Kale is safe. Clean. Moral. “No.”

  He pauses for a beat.

  “I guess I didn’t think Sharpie would last so long on a car.” The basket jiggles in his fingers. “Or that anybody would be brave enough to just go for it. Permanent ink, you know? On metal.” He sounds wistful. “Not that I think you’d screw it up or whatever. It’s just that...”

  It’s just that permanent is so damned real.

  “Yeah. I know.” I clear my throat. “I didn’t do them myself, though.”

  The main thing Danny had to be trained for when he became a tattoo artist was how to deal with people’s indecision. He just couldn’t fathom how someone wouldn’t know what images they wanted their bodies to showcase for all the uncountable decades to come. Sharpie on a car bumper doesn’t even register on his commitment scale.

  “So, what were you looking for?”

  I startle. “Excuse me?”

  He tips his head, his smile lopsided. “As your personal shopper, ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to be a little more specific.”

  “Uh, corn?”

  Jacob smiles as if I’ve said something amusing. “Okay, can do.”

  As soon as he turns away, my fingers start plucking at my shirt, and I slam my hands back onto my cart. My body has gender role issues: I’ve got tomboy arms, all corded muscle and agile, tree climbing shoulders, but somewhere along the line, my bra size filled out from “adequate” to “obvious” and my hips traced themselves into a line more suited to 1950s dress catalogs than to pipe-legged skinny jeans. I used to dress to play up my best features and hide my worst, but I gave all that up a year ago. Now, I throw on whatever’s convenient because I need my body to run and drum and dance, and I love it for doing all those things. It doesn’t have to please anybody else, not anymore.

  I hate Jacob a little bit for making me so conscious of my appearance again, even though he hasn’t done a thing wrong.

  He adds a can of corn to my cart, and when he looks up from that to my face, tingles ex
pand warmly across my skin.

  Crap, what’s wrong with me? I’m not doing this again.

  “You know what? That was it.” I yank the pencil out of my hair and snap a dark line across the last item on my shopping list, holding it up as proof. “The last thing I needed.” My hair tumbles down around my shoulders, drawing his eyes.

  I duck my head, stuffing the shopping list into the messenger bag at my hip, then shove my cart down the aisle toward the cash registers.

  He comes along as if he didn’t recognize my brush off, and I bite my lip. I really don’t want to hurt his feelings, and I’m not sure how to make myself clear without being rude. Sweetly shy guys like Jacob don’t usually pursue me.

  When we round the aisle, Jacob replaces his lentil soup on an end cap of identical cans directly across from the door, avoiding my eyes. An achy kind of heat licks down my whole body as I realize he only picked up the can as a prop after he saw my car and decided to fake a grocery shopping mission. And then proceeded to blow his own cover by not buying the soup and telling me he came in here to talk to me.

  I’m starting to think guys like Jacob don’t usually pursue anyone.

  He folds the handles of his basket and half-jogs to the front door to put it back on the stack. I push my cart into line, placing a bright rack of magazines between me and the temptation to watch the man returning to my side.

  He arrives just as the conveyer belt in front of me turns over an open spot, and he starts unloading my cart: cans and bottles first, then cardboard boxes, then the more delicate items on top. This guy has obviously been doing his own shopping for a lot longer than the first couple of years of college. Is he older than me?

  “Hey, you don’t have to do that.” I grab the last couple of items and put them on the belt.

  “I don’t mind helping.” He pushes my cart through to the end of the check stand and unfolds my wad of mismatched reusable bags.

  I shift, at a loss. It seems oddly intimate, letting him handle my shopping bags. Especially since he blurted out that he felt guilty for being attracted to me because of how we met. What signal am I sending by letting him bag my groceries? Is this one of those things like on Seinfeld where “going up for coffee” is not at all about beverages, caffeinated or otherwise? I’m totally letting him “bag my groceries” right now, aren’t I?