A Cruel Kind of Beautiful

by Michelle Hazen

  “What?”

  “She’s the only PU Finance major who owns The White Album on vinyl.”

  Jacob shouts with laughter, and the group of girls crowding the register turn to stare at him. A tall redhead’s eyes linger, and I’m tempted to stick my tongue out at her. Yes, he’s hot. Yes, he’s here with me. Well, kind of.

  “To be fair,” I relent, “I’m only a Finance minor. Majoring in Music Theory and Composition.” I was a double major, but after I crashed and burned at pleasing everyone, I thought I might try out pleasing myself, so I dropped Finance. A semester later, I missed it, so I picked it up again, but just as a minor.

  “No shit? You write what, symphonies? The whole thing?”

  “Modern concentration, not classical. So, more rock songwriting than Beethoven.”

  “Seriously?” He’s unabashedly staring at me now. “Can I hear one of your songs?”

  My eyes go vague for a second as I focus on the music playing over the speakers in the ceiling. The current song is by the Satan Pigs, so no way it’s piped-in satellite. This is local radio, which is something you’d only see in chain coffee shop in Portland, maybe Seattle, probably Nashville. Our people sip indie albums right along with their fair-trade dark roast.

  “They’re playing a local station. If you wait long enough, one of my band’s songs will come on. ‘Out of Order’ or maybe ‘Wilderness.’” His eyes go round, mine dropping as I smile a little. “Fair warning, though, you may have to wait two or three days. We don’t get that much play.”

  “Do you sing?” His gaze falls to my lips.

  “Not on those songs.”

  I really want to tell him about the radio interview the band has scheduled for next week, but if we’re just hanging out it’s not like I should even care about impressing him, and he doesn’t know me well enough to be excited that this is a big deal for my band. I change the subject instead.

  “Hey, don’t think I didn’t notice your dodge. You didn’t tell me your major.”

  “It’s engineering.” He reaches across to massage his right shoulder, a ruddy hue touching his cheekbones.

  I scoff out a laugh. “You’re a nude model and you blushed over engineering?” As soon as the words are out, I freeze. He didn’t actually say he was modeling, he just mentioned that he worked for the art department. And yeah, obviously my dirty mind was going there anyway.

  Jacob shrugs. “I’m not like a model model. The art department just needs visible muscular structure to draw. I do a little freelance for artists around town, too. Pay’s good and all I have to do is sit still.”

  “Okay, but you still have to be naked in front of a whole bunch of strangers. That sounds way more embarrassing than admitting you’re learning how to build a bridge.” He looks suspicious, so I try to reassure him. “Engineering is perfectly respectable, Jacob.”

  “Coming from a music major, I can’t decide if that’s an insult.”

  I scoff. “Music majors are just snooty to engineers because they’re secretly math phobic.”

  “Not you, apparently, with that finance minor.”

  I roll my eyes. “My mom does mortgage financing, and she’s determined that if I ever make some money at music, I’ll know how to manage it. If you met my bassist, you’d understand: he’s exactly the kind of oblivious guy whose accountant would run off to Guam with all his cash. Plus...” I make a dismissive sound. “I’m weirdly good at it.”

  “I don’t think it’s weird,” he says quietly.

  I shift in my seat, realizing he’s hardly looked away from me the entire time we’ve been in here. I like that, way more than I should. God, my hormones are like idiotic little lemmings, forever tugging me toward the cliff that is the male gender. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say I’m their cliff.

  My messenger bag interrupts, playing the theme from Psycho.

  “Do you need to get that? It sounds dire.”

  “It’s my alarm. I have to go.” I push out of my seat and gather my bag. “I’ve got Digital Music Production in half an hour. I’m going to have to fly to put my groceries away if I want to make it on time.”

  Jacob rises. “I could come along and help. It’d be faster.”

  “Except you’re on your bike and my car doesn’t have a bike rack.” I make my way toward the exit. He reaches past me to push the door open and waits while I slip through. How long has it been since somebody other than Dad did that for me?

  “It’s no big deal to help. I’ll jog back here and get my bike when I’m done. It’s barely three miles.”

  That is not sexy.

  Not.

  Sexy.

  “No, it’s okay. Thank you for the offer, though.” I hold out my free hand. “Can I have that?”

  Without question, Jacob hands over his coffee. I drop it into the trashcan outside the door and keep walking.

  “Hey!” He’s half-laughing as he jogs to catch up.

  “That was not coffee.” I pass him my whole milk, half-a-shot-of-walnut latte. “This is coffee.”

  He takes a quick sip, not looking away from me until the last instant, and then stares down at the cup. “God. That is not just coffee... What is that?”

  “Magic.” I toss him a smile and goodbye wave, ignoring the tug in my chest as I start to unlock my car. This is no big anything, so what does it matter if I don’t know when I’ll see him again?

  “Can I say something?”

  I close my eyes for one tiny scrap of a second, and against my better judgment, I turn back. “I should really go. I’m going to be so late.”

  “I own the entire collection of The Beatles on vinyl: every record they ever released. Plus every one from Pink Floyd and all but one Led Zeppelin. Mostly because my little brother managed to lose it.”

  My eyes are as round as greedy gold coins. I have no idea why he just told me that, and I don’t care. I want that collection, want to shoot it into my veins and roll naked in it and drown in the gorgeous, classic sound of song after song brought to life by the needle of my beloved antique turntable.

  As I swallow to disguise the watering of my mouth, Jacob laughs. “That’s exactly what I thought your reaction would be. Which means you definitely have to come over and listen to them.”

  I’m missing one record of Pink Floyd’s The Wall, and I haven’t been able to listen to the album straight through ever since, except on MP3, which is about as satisfying as looking at a postcard of a Rembrandt. But this sounds dangerously like a date.

  “Or, actually, why don’t we go to your house?” Jacob says quickly. “I saw you had a turntable, and your place is nicer than my crappy apartment anyway.” When I still hesitate, he goes on, “I know I busted your window and ran out on you like a barefoot lunatic, but I promise I’m not always that awkward.” He pauses. “Tuesdays and Thursdays, yes, but I’m usually okay on Mondays.”

  Damn, why does he have to be so sweet about it? “Look, Jacob, I don’t think it would be a good idea for us to get involved. Because I can’t...” I look away. I could tell him all the many things I’m no good for, and that would end this conversation really fast.

  “Look, it’s okay if you don’t want anything serious. Honestly, that might be a better idea for me anyway.”

  So that’s what this is really all about.

  I start to laugh. Granna’s probably doing back flips in her grave at my manners but I can’t help it. He couldn’t have picked a worse girl to proposition for a friends with benefits package. Though at least he finally made it easy for me to turn him down.

  “Yeah, thanks but no thanks. I’m not in the market for a boyfriend, and I’m nowhere near volunteering for a casual fuck.”

  His head jerks back. “Jera, when I said nothing serious, I meant we should hang out as friends, not that we should—”

  “Oh, God.” Both my hands jump to cover my mouth. Now he knows I was thinking about sex, and he wasn’t thinking about sex, and I look like a horny predator who talks about hooking u
p in the parking lot of the Stop N’ Shop. “I’m so sorry. Can we please forget I ever said that?”

  Jacob stuffs his hands in his pockets. “No, it’s my fault if I made you think I was trying to get you to...” He clears his throat. “I guess maybe other people don’t actually listen to music together, and so it sounds like a line, but I really meant—”

  “Yes, that’s fine. Records are fine,” I blurt, because I’d say anything to stop his awkwardly earnest explanation of how giant my ego is that I thought he was hitting on me instead of just being friendly.

  “Okay. Tonight?”

  I grimace. “I have dinner with the parents tonight. I swear, that’s not an excuse, I really do.”

  “Sunday?” He still looks mortified. I am such a jerk.

  “Yup, Sunday, okay good.” I just wave and jump in my car, because if I keep apologizing, I’m only going to make it worse. Which I then proceed to do, by popping the clutch and killing the engine right in front of him. I’m pretty busy avoiding eye contact and babying my shitty transmission, so it’s not until I pull out into traffic that I realize what I’ve done. I’ve invited Jacob Tate over to my house, to listen to beautiful music together. Alone.

  This is so not going to end well.

  Chapter 7: The Beaver Incident

  I step over my discarded jogging clothes, still damp with sweat, and hitch up my towel as I head toward the closet. Dinner with my parents tonight is going to require a step up from my usual jeans and tee shirt. For some reason, Mom thinks the way I dress now is proof that I’m depressed.

  Squatting down, I reach into the back corner of my closet, where I keep the pile of my clean underwear. I used to keep them in my top drawer, folded in colorful, matching sets as my training bras gave way to padded demis and then underwires to support my expanding bust line. After my high school boyfriend, Brayden, I just dumped them from the laundry basket to the floor.

  I snatch up the first underwear I touch and yank them on, the plain cotton as rough as the memory of the infamous panties that started all my problems with men.

  Brayden never actually broke up with me. Instead, the day after I gave him my virginity, I arrived at school to a rumor that he’d found better lays in the frozen foods section, and our school mascot’s statue wearing my panties on his face.

  Rather unfortunately, our mascot was a beaver.

  The panties weren’t half-bad: turquoise with a hopeful border of purple lace. I’d bought them especially for the occasion so the elastic wasn’t even sagging yet. It was just that when Brayden positioned them on the beaver, he put the crotch facing out, and it was not clean.

  There was no blood, of course. I couldn’t find them once the deed was done, because apparently Brayden hid them to keep as his trophy. Instead, there was a faint white film hardening the fabric and proving that at one point in the process, I must have been enjoying myself. If I did, I don’t remember it.

  Cold water drips down my shoulders, and I pull off my towel and scrub at my hair before I drop the towel and snatch up a bra.

  The worst part was that up until Brayden broke up with me via beaver, I had no idea there was anything wrong between us. I still don’t know if I was some kind of bet, or if his friends teased him about me and he threw me to the wolves, or if he just wanted to look more worldly. At the time, I really thought he liked me.

  After that, I started paying better attention. It turned out that people were giving me tons of cues about stuff they didn’t like about me. I started to notice peoples’ slightly curled lips, or sometimes a certain stiffness of tone. Report card eyebrow raises from my mom, and sighs from my dad during our music lessons. The way Granna would exhale through her nose when she was worried I was making a bad decision. Once I was looking, I saw the signs of disapproval everywhere, so I started trying harder in an effort to drown them out.

  I snap the hangers of my favorite clothes aside and dig deeper for an outfit that won’t make my mom worry. She’s almost certainly going to ask if I’m seeing anyone, and since running into Jacob this morning, boys are already way too much on my mind.

  I push past neat khaki skirts and buttoned blouses that are nearly five years old: relics of the beginning of the people-pleasing era when I started doing my homework earlier, practicing the guitar longer, not piping up at lunch unless I was certain I had something that would make my friends laugh.

  When my fingers catch in fishnet, I snort and start to laugh. God, I’d forgotten about all that phase. I finger the black, ripped drape of fabric that I think is supposed to be a shirt. Yeah, boyfriend problems are so not breaking news for me. You’d think my mom would get a clue and stop asking after all these years.

  Exactly one day post-beaver, Brayden showed up to school with a limp and a nose so swollen it was encroaching on his eye sockets. Danny’s destroyed right hand didn’t make it hard to trace the culprit. He scored a full week’s suspension for that stunt, but the only thing he ever said to me about it was, “Some guys are just dicks.”

  I figured he was right, so I didn’t join a nunnery. Instead, I got a subscription to Cosmo, helped myself to Danny’s collection of Playboys, and began the process of educating myself so my next lover couldn’t compare me to a refrigerated tilapia fillet. I had read my way into a thorough sex education by the time I met Tyler, but he still broke up with me when the imprint of his carpet was still fresh on my knees. Turns out it’s not enough if they’re having fun, you have to look like you’re having fun, too, or it’s weird. Lesson learned.

  With my next boyfriend, I paid even more attention, trying to anticipate what he liked so I wouldn’t get caught off guard again.

  I flick past the black fishnet creation. That one was for Nix and his slam poetry nights. Next is a J. Crew sweater that I wore when I was dating Corey and hanging out with his friends at the mall. I shove the rest of the clothes to the side with a sigh and just grab a plain tank top.

  It didn’t matter how close I watched or how hard I tried. Sometimes I got tired of them first, sure. But if I liked a guy enough to stick around, they’d get bored of me and dump my ass, no matter what it was clad in at the time. I was batting a big fat zero with the opposite gender by the time college rolled around. Then I met Andy. He was blond, and fun, and thought me being in a band was the coolest thing ever. I fell hard and figured love would solve all my problems.

  It so didn’t.

  I step into a pair of jeans with snakes sketched up both outer seams, tangled and knotted together, their opened mouths hissing with fangs. Thankfully, Jacob doesn’t seem to have anything in mind for Sunday besides music. Considering that my heart tries to turn itself inside out every time I look at him, it’d probably still be safer to cancel, but I don’t have his number. Besides, the thought of all the vinyl he mentioned...I’d hang out with Adolf Hitler for a shot at a record collection like that.

  I just need to stop thinking about the expert way Jacob bagged my groceries, his hands quick but always aware of the fragility of some items, the dangerous weight of others. Or the way he blushed when I said “fuck” as if that word was jarring in contrast to whatever he was actually thinking in that moment. Which should be my reminder that before he comes over on Sunday, I need to grow some boundaries. Friends are definitely not supposed to daydream about one another.

  Grabbing my messenger bag and stepping into ballet flats, I head for the door. By the time I pull into my parents’ driveway and shut off the car, I’m a little bit late, but hopefully they won’t notice. I hurry a little bit going up the sidewalk, just in case.

  “Hey, Mom,” I call as the front door slams behind me. I toe off my shoes by the old coat tree, soothed by the familiar sight of its scratched wood and over-laden hooks. I drop my bag next to my shoes and breeze through the living room to the kitchen, catching Mom in a quick side-hug since her hands are buried in a bowl full of raw chicken pieces. Her hips are softer than they were when I was a kid but my arm still fits around her slender waist. If I want to be in
the shape she’s in when I’m her age, I need to start liking running a hell of a lot more. “Need some help?”

  “Thought you’d never ask. Your dad wanted kabobs. He knows how long it takes to get everything on these darn little sticks, and suddenly poof, he has a late showing of that house on 10th.” She rolls her eyes at me and I chuckle. “Plus, he just texted me an emoticon that was shooting itself in the head, so I’m thinking that means the client’s a talker and he’s not going to be home to help with the barbecuing either.”

  “Bummer.” I brush a strand of hair away from her face for her, since her hands are busy and the bun she wears for work is starting to slip. A few years ago, that bun would have been a perfect match for my own sun-streaked brown but a few more threads of gray have crept in since I started college.

  I grab a mushroom and pop it into my mouth, then head for the sink. “You want to do bell pepper slices or squares?”

  “Squares. Did you wash your hands?” she asks just as I’m reaching for the faucet.

  I roll my eyes. “I am washing my hands, right this absolute second. Believe it or not, I’ve somehow managed to keep from poisoning myself in the three years I have been doing my own cooking.”

  “You didn’t wash your hands before you ate that mushroom,” she points out. “Are you sticking around after dinner? I got the Les Mis DVD from Netflix just in case you had some extra time this week.”

  Guilt needles through me. “Mom, I can’t. Homework.” It’s true, but I still feel like a jerk.

  My mom is kind of a freak as far as band wives are concerned. She doesn’t even own a single freaking MP3. She loves movies, though, so she’s always palming me off on my dad to go to concerts while she tries to bond with me over musicals. Ever since I outgrew Disney, I haven’t had the heart to tell her I kind of hate musicals.

  She gives me a sidelong look, skewering some more chicken on a wooden kabob stick as I set up a fresh cutting board and a bell pepper next to her.

  “Regular homework, or are you starting to get behind because you’re doing too many radio appearances and rehearsals to get ready for this music fair?”