The Broken Hearts' Society of Suite 17C

by LeighAnn Kopans

  “Jesus, I’m sorry. It’s cold,” Crash said. Before Rion could protest, he shrugged out of his jacket and swung it around her shoulders. The scent of him, the sharp guy smell, practically made her swoon. She almost protested that she wasn’t cold, but she couldn’t exactly tell him, “I shivered because I imagined what it would be like to scream your name with you inside me.”

  So she just said, “Thanks,” and let him pick up her hand and blow on her fingers, trying not to let how amazing his breath felt on her skin show. And then she looked into his eyes, only giving half a damn about whether it looked like she was coming on to him, and said, “Lead the way.”

  “Holy shit,” Rion said as she leaned against the rigid back of the cheap plastic booth in the Hole in the Wall diner that Crash had taken her to. Yes, it was actually called that. Yes, she was actually charmed by that, as much as she hated to admit it.

  “Banana chocolate chip waffles,” he responded, leaning back to mirror her. “Fucking blow my mind every time.”

  “You’re not kidding. I have to say, I might go out with you again if it involves this place.” She would never have said it so easily if the past hour hadn’t been filled with the best conversation she’d had in—well, years. All it had taken was Crash knowing, and loving, the vast majority of her favorite bands to get her to start talking. Before she knew it she was tearing up when she told him about the stark, simple beauty of Jim Morrison’s lyrics, and Crash responded by quoting The Ghost Song: “We have assembled inside this ancient and insane theater to propagate our lust for our life and flee the swarming wisdom of the streets.”

  It was a line she’d always loved, and had never thought could sound more beautiful than it did in the original song. But coming from Crash’s lips, with his head softly bobbing to the unaccompanied rhythm of the words, it made her head spin and the world feel unsteady, in flux, all around her.

  Rion simply couldn’t manage any words. She let out a soft sigh and felt a smile creep on to her lips.

  “You smiled. Rion Burke, you smiled at me for what I think is the first time ever.”

  “How do you know it was you? What if it was the pancakes?” she said, nodding toward her plate, which was empty except for wide smears of syrup and a streak or two of chocolate.

  “If the pancakes make you smile, I will bring you here every day,” he said, his expression dead serious, his body still relaxed. He rolled his shoulders back, pushing his pecs out so they stretched his shirt, and Rion had to blink hard to get the image of licking a line all the way up his torso out of her head.

  He held the door open for her on the way out, leaving a narrow space for her to pass through. Goddammit, if she accidentally touched him one more time she really would tackle him.

  “Okay, well…I had a good time. Thanks.” Rion tried not to make eye contact with him, just to make sure there was no way he could see how badly she wanted to kiss him. She could see Harrison from here. If she was lucky, she could be back home and under a blanket, wallowing in her own patheticness, within 15 minutes.

  Because no matter how clean Crash was, falling for him felt more dangerous than any drug.

  “Oh…okay.” Crash said as he let the door swing softly shut behind him. “Do you have class now? I thought you were on the schedule for a couple hours from now.”

  “I…” Dammit, she couldn’t lie to him. What the fuck is wrong with you, Rion? Spending another hour with him won’t push you head over heels.

  “There was just something I wanted to show you. Do you have a minute?”

  “Where?” Rion surveyed the street. There were people here and there, ducking out of Starbucks or into Northern’s bookstore.

  “Just down the street, actually. You’re not too cold, are you?”

  Rion wiggled her arms inside his jacket, which she hadn’t taken off the whole time they were in the diner. “No, I’m good,” she smiled.

  “Looks cute on you,” he said.

  “I…”

  “Come on. It’s just a few blocks this way,” he said before she could think of anything remotely coherent to say. So lightly, but with a firm hand, he brushed his fingertips down two inches of her spine, turning her to the right.

  The freezing rain had turned to a freezing downpour the night before, and dingy puddles filled the trenches between Francis Street and its curbs. The air whipped into a mild breeze, lifting Rion’s hair into wild tendrils and making her shake the heavy arm of the jacket down so her fingers were free to fix it.

  “Okay,” Crash finally said after three blocks of Rion’s short legs rushing to keep up with Crash’s long ones. “It’s right down this alley.”

  Rion raised her eyebrow at him. “You want me to walk down an alley with you.”

  “Yep. In midday, with tons of people around. And look,” he said, pointing up and to the right, “even a security camera, which tracks everyone who goes in and out. Hand to God, I’m not dangerous. As if you couldn’t be sure of that by the fact that Olivia hired me in the first place.”

  Crash tugged Rion by the fingertips around the corner into the alleyway. She gasped when she looked up.

  The two-story expanse of bricks was an explosion of color, texture, and impossible light. Flowing shapes pierced by sharp angles and filled in with everything from fish scales, ombre effects, and miniature scenes within scenes all combined into something that covered at least half of the wall, and completely took her breath away.

  “Holy fucking shit,” she breathed, gaping at the beauty of it. She knew her mouth was hanging open, and when Crash saw it, he laughed.

  “That’s a good thing, I guess?”

  “Yeah. This is incredible. This is like…every cool art technique possible combined to make one perfect piece of art.”

  “Okay, are you reading my mind or something?” He shook his head at her, a bemused smile on his lips.

  “Well it’s true, right? When did you discover this? I’ve been here for weeks and it’s not like everyone knows this is here. Not like all those lame sculptures the campus is so damn proud of.”

  Crash chuckled and scuffed the dusty ground with his toe. “I do love a girl who has her opinion about art.”

  “I don’t know much, but holy shit. This is incredible,” she repeated, well aware at how dumb she sounded re-using words. She didn’t care. “So,” she asked again. “How did you find this?”

  “Promise you won’t tell?” he asked.

  She raised her eyebrows and dipped her head down. “I guess.”

  “I painted it.” He beamed now, and for the first time she noticed how perfectly even his teeth were behind those kissable lips.

  “Shut up. You did not.” She pushed him on the shoulder, the firm muscle under her touch not lost on her, but she couldn’t resist getting closer to the art. She moved up close to the wall, as close as Crash had been to her when he almost, she could swear, kissed her the other night. This mural felt more like him than the pompous guy who made her want to hiss and swear. This was simple and complicated all at once. She ran her fingertips over a couple bricks covered in a pattern of circles within circles, small and large, looking kind of like the slides of cells she and Amy and Arielle had been analyzing for biology class.

  “Yeah, I did. This is what I really want to do—large scale public art. The tattoos make sure my rent and my bills get paid, but this is what I bust my ass for. And spend half my money paying for paint for.”

  “I seriously thought you were bullshitting me when you told me you were an artist.” She looked at him, then looked up at the wall. Pride lit up his face, and seeing it, knowing that her words had brought it out, made Rion’s heart jump. She wanted to do it again. “This is real art. Just fucking gorgeous. I mean, not that tattoos aren’t art, but…”

  “No, I’m not only a tattoo artist. Though my tattoos are awesome.”

  There was the cockiness. But for the first time, it made Rion smile instead of bristle. She stepped back and moved a few paces farther down the
wall. There, in one of the trapezoids that slotted perfectly into a curving oval shape, was a painting of the same alley she was standing in. Two people holding hands. One of them a tall guy, and one a petite girl with long, bleach-blond hair topped with dark roots. Holding hands.

  “You painted us,” she said breathlessly. There was no way he could have known what the weather would be like today, gray and misting, injecting a chill into your bones even though it was well above freezing. “You painted us, here, today. You knew we’d be here.”

  “I didn’t know,” he corrected. “I hoped you’d come with me. Sometimes I like to think…I don’t know, it’s stupid.”

  “No, it’s not,” Rion said softly, turning and looking intently into his eyes. She knew he had her mesmerized, and she didn’t even care. “Say it. Whatever you’re going to say isn’t stupid.” She was never this sentimental, but being here with him, staring at the one thing this near-stranger had poured his heart and soul into, made her own heart feel like it was stretching and twisting and growing back a part that let her feel things she’d lost a long time ago.

  For the first time, he didn’t meet her advance. Instead, he gazed at the wall, his eyes moving smoothly from one panel to another. “Sometimes I think that if I paint something, it’ll happen. Some things are more abstract, like that blue and white panel? That’s from a memory—a family vacation on a lake. It’s for calm. I needed to be calm when I painted this.”

  “And you painted us looking at this wall because…”

  “I’ve been hoping it would happen since the first time I saw you.”

  It was like all the air had been sucked out of that alley. Rion heard the words, but couldn’t translate them into meaning, into an appropriate response. They washed over her, like something strange and warm and entirely right, but alien all at the same time.

  Crash stepped toward her. “I don’t know a lot about you, but I know that whenever I’m with you, I feel a little better. A little steadier. I know you’re funny, and I can tell you’re smart. I feel at home at the studio, and as far as I can tell, you do too. I just want to get to know you a little better. It might not make sense to show you my art, this thing that I’ve only shown one or two other people. But I wanted you to know…I’m not all talk. I like you. When I found out that you won’t get high or drink, that we have that in common…well, that’s not a small thing. That means a lot to me.”

  “Really?” Rion’s curiosity suddenly went into overdrive. She didn’t think staying away from substances would mean a lot to anyone at Indiana Northern except for her.

  “Yeah. I have my reasons. I didn’t say anything at first, and then you told me, so I didn’t really have to,” he said, motioning to her to follow him back out of the alley. Now she hung on his every word, needing to know how he came to the exact same brand of unlikely misfitdom as she had.

  “But,” he continued, moving his arm around to her back in the same so-close-yet-too-far-away way he’d done earlier, “Yes. I won’t date girls who use either.”

  “You’re shitting me,” she said.

  “I shit you not,” he replied, smiling gently at her. He pressed his hand in just the slightest bit, so now his palm pressed against the small of her back instead of just his fingers.

  Rion fought to keep her breathing even. They came to the end of a block and waited at the crosswalk. She tried to focus on the light.

  Watch for the “walk” sign to come up and you’ll feel calmer. You’ll be able to talk to him again.

  What would she even say, once she regained some sense? My opinion of you has totally changed? Have you been tested for STDs because I’m pretty sure I’m about to force you to fuck me silly? Please tell me you have your own place?

  Okay, that was too far. She was horny, not stupid. As shitty as things had been lately, she wanted to stay alive, and going home alone with a guy you barely knew was grade-A stupid. The opposite light turned yellow, and Rion realized she had no clue what they were doing next. Was the date over? Did she want it to go on longer, or should she take a moment to cool off?

  “Crash, I—” and then, with her mouth wide open, a humungous blue pickup truck barreled past, slicing through the water puddled against the curb, splashing right into Rion’s wide-open mouth. She was frozen solid for a second, then whimpered, then wailed. Freezing cold water dripped from her hair, now flattened against her skull and plastered against the outline of her neck.

  “Holy shit!” Crash screamed at the pickup, throwing his hands up in the air in a “What the hell?” gesture.

  Rion stared down at herself, taking in the completely soaked front of her jacket and jeans. The front layers of her hair hung stringy and mud-streaked against her threadbare Chemical Brothers concert shirt. She shivered in the breeze, which kicked up right as the cold was hitting her and made her shake to the bone.

  “Oh my God, fucking bastard!” Crash yelled after the truck, which was long disappeared from view.

  Rion managed a laugh. “I appreciate the outrage. I’m just sorry this cut things short.” Leave it to Rion to find her courage to speak when she was soaking wet and looking like a drowned rat. And feeling even worse.

  “No. No way we’re ending things like this. You need to change.” Instead of crossing the street back toward campus, now he turned and led her back toward Francis. Back toward work.

  “Are you taking me back to the studio? I don’t have any spare clothes there or anything.”

  “Yeah, sort of. I live right above it, and I have spare clothes.”

  Rion fumbled for her phone. “Just need t-to tell my roommates,” she said, the shivers rippling through her words. She texted Amy:

  Headed to Crash’s place. Got caught in the rain. Back soon.

  She winced with how stupid that sounded, but she trusted him. Dammit, even that thought sounded stupid. So she added Above the Studio.

  Amy’s return message came screeching through almost immediately.

  ABSOLUTELY NOT. BACK TO HARRISON.

  Then, after a second, You barely know him.

  Rion sighed. Arielle was right, damn her.

  She’d read somewhere that you should always tell your girlfriend where you were going, and how long you were planning to be there. She’d scoffed when she read the advice to beginning college students in the waiting room magazine. She didn’t have any girlfriends at all—it was best to watch your own back in the group home, never to rely on anyone else. She knew she’d have roommates at Northern, but seriously doubted she’d ever be friends with them.

  She didn’t know if she could possibly be friends with anyone. Well damn, she’d even managed to surprise herself.

  She was about to shoot back a reply about how Crash was fine, really. But then he looked over her shoulder and saw the screen. “Dammit,” he said, turning around and nudging Rion along with him in a split second. “She’s right.”

  “No, she’s not,” protested horny Rion. Suddenly all she could think about was getting in Crash’s pants. It had been so long, and she had felt so alone, and she could really use a really good orgasm…

  “Yeah. I don’t piss in a cup for a girl and then show her my best work in the city if I’m going to fuck her and leave her.” He snuck a quick look down at her. “Not that that’s, like, a thing I do. I’m not an asshole.”

  Warmth bled down through Rion’s body as a smile pulled up the corners of her lips. “Okay. Well, um, Harrison’s not that far away.”

  Not that being soaked to the bone didn’t make it feel farther away. By the time they arrived in the lobby, Rion was shivering even more, despite Crash’s coat. Maybe because of his coat, since it was damp too. When she realized that, she groaned. “Shit, I’m sorry. Your coat. Do you…want it back?” She looked up at him, waiting for his response to dictate what would come next. She didn’t want to say anything, even though he’d made it clear that he liked her.

  After a few very intense-feeling seconds, Crash chuckled. They must have made a strange sight
, her soaking wet and him a tall, tattooed, clearly older-than-freshman guy. Looking at each other awkwardly, in the middle of the lobby, where nobody hung out. “I don’t know what to do,” he said. “Your shirt’s white, so you really should keep it on till you change clothes.”

  “Yeah. I should.” Somehow, she ignored how disgusting she must have looked and felt, how damn unsure she felt about this whole thing, and looked back into his eyes, daring him to make the next move.

  “Do you…want me to walk you up?” He said slowly, carefully. Giving her space to say “No, maybe next time,” and not have it be awkward.

  But she wanted to be closer to him now. Wanted to put an end, once and for all, to her questions about this beautiful guy and whether he wanted the same thing from her as she wanted from him.

  “I could show you my secret…thing. I mean, hobby. I mean, passion. I mean…oh, Jesus Christ.” How did she explain how she felt about her music and what it would mean to share it with anyone, let alone Crash, without making it sound like an innuendo? “I mean, my thing. Like the street art is your thing.”

  “Whoa,” he said, smiling. “Yeah. That would be good.”

  Rion knew Amy and Arielle would both be in class until 3:18, which meant she’d be alone with Crash for three hours. Maybe he’d leave after ten minutes. Maybe he’d stay the whole time, and they’d walk to the Studio for work together. Maybe she’d finally get to see the tattoo-and-muscle gorgeousness that was underneath that shirt.

  Damn. She needed to get a fucking grip.

  Now that she was leading the way, Crash’s fingers no longer lingered against the small of her back. When he’d first rested them there, it had annoyed her, felt like an extra appendage she hadn’t asked for and hadn’t wanted. But now that he was standing all the way across the elevator from her, not really staring at her but definitely watching her, it didn’t feel close enough. Now the not touching was the thing that made her feel uncomfortable. Unsettled.