Background Music

by J. R. Rogue

  Were the flowers from him? Surely not. I wrung the water from my hair and stepped from the shower, reaching for a towel. Reese had to know how I felt about him. He knew to stay away. And it had been so long since our little fling or whatever it was. I didn’t even know what to call it, what had happened between us. He was a lot of things, but he wasn’t the kind of man to harass a woman. My stomach sank when another option flashed into my mind. My ex-husband. Charles. No. The divorce was final. I went back to my maiden name. It was over.

  I changed my phone number as soon as I moved out and kept to email-only correspondence for the past two and a half years. I hadn’t seen him in so long, not since the night he showed up outside my shop, bloody and bruised. The night Reese left. Was this connected? No, I was reaching. I shook my head and banished the thoughts of both men from my mind.

  I dried myself off and walked into my small bedroom, pulling panties and my robe on after applying lotion to my warm skin. I walked to my bedroom window and pushed it open. This time of night was sometimes cool, and I loved the feel of the breeze on my arms after a scalding shower. I reached for the record player next to my bed but stopped as the sound of music flowed into my apartment. I pulled the curtain to the side and looked outside. My bedroom was on the far right and had a window opening to the top of the office next door, that was only one story, as well as a window looking out onto the street below.

  In my annoyance over the sight of Reese, I hadn’t stopped to see why he was across the street. The windows to the comic shop were open, and the sound of music echoed down the abandoned street. Band practice. Wow. I didn’t know he did that anymore. I left my record player untouched, retreated to my living room, and powered on the TV, trying to drown out the voice slipping in through my bedroom window.

  After a couple of hours of mindless cable, I powered everything off and followed the sound of background music coming from my bedroom. I pulled the covers back on my bed and crawled in, pretending I wasn’t listening intently to Reese’s voice. I was exhausted and wanted to sleep but I didn’t want it to stop. I clenched my eyes and began counting. It always helped me drift off. After starting back at number one twenty times, I gave up.

  I heard the band stop playing and about twenty minutes later the sound of the guys talking in the street, then eventually the sound of their vehicles driving off. I let go of the breath I didn’t know I was holding and double-checked the alarm on my phone. I peeked out my window one last time and noticed Reese’s truck still parked in front of the comic book store. Weird. I lay back in bed and tried again to fall asleep.

  Just as I was drifting off, I heard a tap on my window, the one leading to the roof of the office next door. I froze in my bed. What the hell? My heart raced in my chest, and I lay completely still. Why hadn’t I closed that one? The different ways I could pay for that mistake flooded my brain, and my eyes welled up. A voice cut into my room.

  “Kat, are you awake?”

  I bolted upright in recognition.

  “Fuck, okay, you are. Jesus, you scared me,” Reese said, clutching his chest.

  “I scared you?” I screeched, pulling the covers off my body and walking toward him, causing him to pull his upper body from the window. “What are you doing on the roof in my window?”

  He recovered quickly. “The question is, why do you have your window open so some murderer or rapist can just climb up here and crawl through your window?”

  I flinched at his words, and his face immediately softened.

  “I’m sorry,” his voice rushed out. “It’s just, very dangerous.”

  I nodded in response. He was right. “Seriously, what are you doing up here?” I asked again, leaning out to where he was kneeling.

  He fell back and sat down, pointing across the street. “I was having band practice. I saw your window open and all the lights were off.”

  “You could have called.”

  “I didn’t think, after everything, you’d take a call from me,” he said.

  “You could have texted.”

  “Same song, different verse,” he laughed.

  His laugh. God, his laugh. I didn’t smile. I wouldn’t let him make me smile. “Well thanks,” I said dismissively.

  He pushed off the roof and began walking away. I watched him walk and then stop, suddenly turning and coming back my direction. I shrank back into the window as he filled it.

  “Your ex-husband was next door today. I work there now. Please shut your windows. Please.”

  Then he was gone, taking all of my air with him.

  I had been called a lot of things in my twenty-two years of life. Stubborn was definitely one of them. It was pretty unoriginal, not nearly as colorful as some of the rest, and I often let it roll off my shoulders when it was placed there. “You’re going to be glad you went home,” my mother said a week ago. And she was right. I was glad to be back home. I just didn’t want to admit she was right, but I was glad she encouraged me to go back.

  My stepsister Sera recently moved back to Missouri and was living in her childhood home out in the woods. I hadn’t seen her in a while and, goddamn, she was one of my favorite people. We didn’t share blood but you wouldn’t know it by the way we got along. She was seven years my senior and I looked up to her. I admired her above all others. She was making a living doing what she loved—being an artist, being creatively free—and I envied that.

  What was my greatest accomplishment? Well, as of late, it was that I had successfully avoided an argument with my father since returning late on a Friday night and found myself in a chipper mood two days later when I arrived at my sister’s house for a BBQ. I had called the band up, letting them know my little retreat to my mother’s house in Kansas City was over, and practices could resume. To celebrate, they joined me on Sunday for the fun.

  We all piled into my truck and made the short drive out to the old house in the country. When we arrived, a smile warmed my face as I saw my sister walking down the steps of her porch to me, grinning. “Everyone should be around back,” I said to my friends as they hopped out. I slammed my door and walked around the front of my truck to meet Sera.

  “The resident country star is home, I see,” my sister laughed as she waved to the guys walking around the house to the sound of voices.

  I puffed out a breath of air and rolled my eyes. “I’m not a star, I mean in some circles, maybe.” I reached up and ran my hands over my chest. “I’m sure some ladies would say I am a star in some areas.”

  “Oh, gross, shut the fuck up,” Sera said.

  “I’m sorry your baby brother is a sex symbol now, get over it. I had to get over my sister writing porn.”

  “Seriously, shut the fuck up,” she repeated, taking a swing at my arm.

  I cut her off and pulled her into a hug instead. “So what are you doing back here? Hiding from the paparazzi?” Sera was a wildly successful author and had recently dated the mega movie star who headlined the movie adaptations of two of her books. They had just broken up, and occasionally I would see her name and face covering tabloid gossip magazines or on the Entertainment Weekly Facebook page. It never stopped being weird. I couldn’t imagine how it felt for her. That kind of fame wasn’t supposed to come with her profession, and she wasn’t an attention seeker. I could tell from the blush growing on her cheeks that she didn’t want to talk about it.

  “Oh, shut up,” she said, pulling out of the hug and finally landing that punch. “And, kind of.”

  I laughed and started walking around the house with her.

  “Who’re the dudes with you?” she asked.

  “My bandmates,” I said.

  “Oh, cool,” she said as we reached the backyard.

  I found the guys pulling the volleyball net from the garage with the help of my best friend Chace, who also lived out here. I stuck a finger up, letting them know I would help in a minute, and walked over to where my father and stepmother were seated. I saw that my sister’s best friend from high school—Kat—was al
so seated there. Her lean pale legs were stretched out on the wicker recliner in front of her. I tried not to stare and pulled my eyes back up to hers and her red hair. That didn’t help either. She was gorgeous. I hadn’t seen her in years. Not since she and Sera graduated high school. I looked away to everyone else watching our approach.

  “Hey everyone,” I said as I reached them.

  “Finally wake up?” my father said in response, smirking a little.

  I laughed, not wanting to get into it with him in front of everyone. I guessed the honeymoon of peace was over. My stepmother rolled her eyes at her husband and smiled at me. I grinned back. “Anyone want to play with the guys over there?” I motioned behind me to where the net was being set up.

  I saw my stepmother nudge my father as he reached for his beer, nearly making him spill it. I was surprised he let loose enough to have a drink.

  “I’ll play,” I heard Kat say. My sister looked at her with wide eyes, and her friend pointed to the cocktail she had just set down, blaming it for her decision. I guessed that playing sports was not in her normal everyday behavior.

  “Okay, I will too,” my dad said, clapping his hands together.

  I tried not to look too shocked and slapped him on the shoulder as he walked past me. I looked at my sister and she shook her head adamantly. I laughed as she took a seat and pulled her own drink to her lips.

  The afternoon flew by, and I had a great time. My father and I were still getting along, my sister was home, and I was ready to get back into the swing of things. Our band needed to get ready for the busy summer season at the lake. We needed to get a set list together and start booking gigs. Our small town wasn’t very promising, but the touristy nearby “Lake of the Ozarks” would be very profitable if we could make the most of it.

  I made it back to my room at nightfall and found my phone laying on my bed. I had forgotten it. It was a bad habit. I grabbed it and saw a few missed calls and texts on my home screen. One text was from a number with no name attached to it. It was a local number. I pulled it up.

  Unknown number: Hey, it’s me.

  My heart sped up at the sight of the first text. It’s me. Me.

  Last year something crazy happened. I texted a wrong number. Okay, yeah that isn’t crazy, I know, but there’s more. I had the digits of a possible keyboardist written on a napkin in my pocket. So I texted it. And I got it wrong. I was one digit off. And that had led me to her.

  The anonymous girl on the other end of the phone and I never exchanged names, but we exchanged every secret we had ever kept inside. I wanted to exchange more. I wanted to meet her, but it never happened. She was married, very unhappily married, but not free.

  The texts stopped coming New Year’s night. I tried to get a response a few times, then started to feel silly and stopped. What if she started to feel guilt over our connection? What if she decided to focus on her marriage? My incessant texts would only ruin things. So I stopped. And I never heard from her again. Until now. Over two months later. And the number was different. She had changed it. Odd.

  I pulled the text up again and began reading the ones under it.

  Unknown number: I know I haven’t texted in a while, and I’m sorry for just dropping off the map like that with no explanation. But a lot happened. A lot. Wow. And I’m tipsy, that’s how I got the nerve to text you again.

  Unknown number: Now I am rambling, ugh. I left my husband. I moved out. It’s over. I needed time to process it all.

  Unknown number: I’m hoping we can start talking again. That we can be friends again. You were the only one I went to about our problems, and I’ve felt very alone without your presence. I hope you’ll reply.

  I exited out of the text message app and fell backward onto my bed, letting my iPhone drop to the floor. Fuck. What did I do? Did I text her? It all felt so real now. I could meet her. I could meet her and that scared the fucking shit out of me. It was never a game to me, but I could let my guard down knowing that maybe nothing would come of it. That eventually she would get bored with me and go back to fully investing in her marriage. Her marriage with a man who obviously did not deserve her.

  She was infatuated with the me I let her see. Reality was much grimmer. I was twenty-two years old, and my shit was all over the place. I did not, in any way, have it together. I didn’t have a job. I needed to find a damn job. I had one the last time I talked to her, at least. I lived with my parents. I was always living with one of my parents. Four years out of high school and I had no clue what it was like to be out on my own.

  I had this silly dream, a dream that was getting me nowhere. I wanted to play music for a living. I wanted to feel the fire that kept me breathing every day I took the stage, for more than the summer.

  I was trying. I was. The thing they don’t tell you is that while following your dreams is the romantic thing to do, it doesn’t always work out. For every ten people who chase down their passion, how many of them actually get to grip it with their own two hands? One? Two? This was real life. This wasn’t a movie with a swelling score and a lovable hero. I was lovable, sure, but I was a fuck up, too.

  My mystery woman was thirty years old. She knew what it was like to work hard for her money, to take care of a home, to commit to one person, to balance a fucking checkbook. I couldn’t remember to pay a bill on time, and I only had a couple to keep track of.

  What was I good at? I was good at a good time. I excelled at that. If that’s all she wanted, I was the man. I could remind her that she was desirable. I could remind her of all the things her husband had let her forget. That wasn’t really where I saw all of our conversations leading us though; it was more with her.

  Along with never exchanging names, we never exchanged photos of our faces. This could be disastrous. What if she didn’t like what she saw? And fuck, sorry to be shallow, but what if I didn’t like what I saw? Our little plan was obviously flawed.

  I pulled my phone off the floor and looked through my messages again. I stared at the one from her, again and again, wondering what to say. I responded the only way I knew how. With a song she should look up. I pressed send and closed my eyes. When I finally opened them again, I looked back to my phone. I had another unopened text. One from Carrie.

  Carrie: I heard you’re back in town, want to hook up?

  I quickly replied.

  I was obviously flawed, too.

  I was shaking. I could not stop shaking. Why did I send that text? I was such a fool, but I missed him. I missed him so much, and he responded. He responded with what I needed. A song. A song to get me through.

  After I got home and made it inside my apartment, I let my purse and phone fall to the hardwood. I walked to my couch, in the center of the rubble that was now my world. Getting my new place together since moving in had been a struggle. Sera, my best friend newly home from New York City, was helping me. She was also helping me keep things together. She had been forcing me to eat, forcing me to get out of the house when I just wanted to stay put. She didn’t understand. She couldn’t. I had only been feeding her half-truths. No one knew. No one but he and I.

  I was always the good girl. All through high school, college, and my twenties. I dated clean-cut boys, and I was faithful. I didn’t put out on the first date, and I was loved by my boyfriends’ mothers. I met my husband right after moving back to Missouri, fresh out of college. He was nearing the end of law school up north and home in nearby Springfield for a minor league baseball game. The first time I laid eyes on him he was sitting at the end of his group of friends in the stands, his seat right next to mine. We struck up a conversation and exchanged numbers as the game wound down. The rest was history.

  We married two years later. Four years of our marriage were happy. So happy. I thought, anyway. We had your usual problems. Timing and goals didn’t always line up. I was ready to start a family, Charles was ready to get his law firm up and running. Every time we argued about it, I found myself giving in. He would offer up an extravagant vacatio
n or a new pair of shoes I had been eyeing. I wasn’t one to give up easily, but I wanted to make him happy as well. And we were young. We were in our twenties. I felt like we had time.

  My affair happened slowly. It snuck up on me. It surprised me. I didn’t know I had it in me. I never slept with another man. I never touched another man. But I fell for another man. One I had never met. I fell for his words and the comfort he offered, while my husband was working late and pretending he didn’t hear me crying in the shower. The last year of my marriage was the loneliest of my life. I reached for Charles; I reached for him, and he pulled away. Physically as well as emotionally.

  I wish I hadn’t suspected that he was cheating on me, but I couldn’t help but to land on that conclusion eventually. He was working late. So late. So often. I went down to his office. I creeped. I parked a few blocks away, and I walked close enough to see his window. I did it more than once, too. He was always squinting at his computer when I found him. He was always working. He was always where he said he was.

  It should have made me feel better to know that he was being faithful, and it did for a while. I offered to come help out at the office after I shut down my shop, but Charles said I would just distract him. So it went on like this for months. It bled into the weekends, and before long I didn’t know where one week ended and another began. I wanted to talk to my friends about my issues. I know they saw them; I was always free to spend time with them. When we were invited places, I always went alone. If my husband wasn’t working, then he was catching up on his sleep.