by Ina Zajac
The side basement door flew open and she jumped a foot off the couch. She looked over to see it was just Alicia and Kaytlyn. The guys stopped playing. She sat up and tried to appear casual.
Alicia shot Nick a sexy grin and sat down on the end of the couch. “Hey, Via.” She had always been nice, but was usually pretty quiet. When she wasn’t at the club she looked pretty normal, like a busty soccer mom with extra long fingernails. Sometimes they had designs painted on them or sported tiny fake diamonds. Tonight they were plain old metallic violet.
Kaytlyn didn’t bother to sit down or take off her tight brown leather jacket; she seemed to be more interested in examining the white powder residue on the coffee table. “Hey, Vixen. How’s your husband?”
Ouch. Mortified, Via tried to compose herself. Nobody said a word. She couldn’t bear to look up at Matt, who still stood on stage. “Fiancé,” she finally answered. “And, I have no idea.” Her hair was hot and heavy against her scalp. The back of her neck was damp with sweat. “Fine, probably.”
Kaytlyn cocked her head to the side, muttered, “So shady,” and flopped down on the other couch. She looked up to Matt. “Carlos wants to know if you’re coming in tonight.”
He leaned over and unplugged from his amp, hard. The cord’s end flicked like an aggressive snake. “I’ve already talked to him today,” he said. “Don’t worry about it.” He set his bass on its stand and jumped down from the stage.
“Aren’t we running through the new ones?” Nick asked. “Gotta get on the new shit—you’re killing me.”
“Later,” Matt said as he grabbed Via by the hand and led her toward the stairwell. His hand felt hot and frustrated wrapped around hers. He must be so pissed, she thought. He was going up the stairs two at a time.
“We’re going long tomorrow, then,” Nick yelled over. “Or you owe me a hundred bucks, fo sho —consider it a slacker tax!”
She could tell Nick wasn’t too mad because he was using his ironic urbonics. And it sounded like he had already refocused his attention onto Alicia. “Alley Cat, come check out that Macklemore song I told you about.”
***
VIA
UPSTAIRS, HE DIDN’T SAY a word, just closed and locked his bedroom door, then yanked her into his arms. She didn’t want him to feel how sweaty her neck was, so she leaned away. For all this talk of being a germaphobe, he never seemed to mind her cooties.
He came back in for another pass, less Wile E. Coyote this time. “I’m sorry about her,” he said. He put his hands on her hips and pulled in her close. She leaned in for a hug. His t-shirt smelled fresh from the dryer. She was going to start associating sex with the little Snuggle fabric softener bear.
“Is that why you pulled me up here? Sex?” she asked. “I was scared that you were going to break up with me.”
He didn’t answer at first. His lips were investigating the crook of her neck, moving along her jawline. But then, he pulled back and gave her a smug smile. “If you were afraid I’d break up with you, that means you’re admitting we’re together,” he said.
He had her trapped. Right there. She couldn’t manage to form any words, but she could tell by his grin that she didn’t have to. The cat had torn through the bag.
“Is that okay?” She just had to ask.
“You finally want to know what’s up,” he said. “You want to know what I’m feeling.”
“I just...”
“Why are you so embarrassed?” he whispered in her ear. He planted mini-kisses down the side of her neck. She couldn’t just ask for what she wanted. It was a fuzzy foreign concept. She couldn’t very well tell him that what she really wanted was for him to drag her into bed so they could sex away the afternoon, snuggle through the night, and forget about tomorrow. She couldn’t tell him he brought out something hopeful in her, something real and alive.
He wasn’t giving up. His eyes entreated hers. “Then tell me what to say. What should I say?”
“You don’t need to say anything,” she said. “Just be nice to me.”
He pulled back a little, but his hands didn’t leave her hips. The smile she was growing to love disappeared. “I’m not being nice to you?”
“No. I mean, yes.” She was confusing herself now. “I mean, keep being nice.” What was with him? All she wanted to do was get down to it, to feel his warm skin all over her. Talk was scary. It was like the more she shared the more he wanted. Soon she would say too much, or say the wrong thing. Then maybe he wouldn’t want her at all anymore. She started to unhook his belt.
He trained his eyes upon her lips and his stubbly cheeks pulled back into a semi-smile. He brought his hands up her back, through her hair and up behind her ears. He backed her toward his bed. “Now we’re talking.” He pulled her sweater up and over her head and tossed it on the desk. “I love that bra,” he whispered. He seemed to say that no matter what style or color lingerie she wore. She helped him out of his sweatshirt.
Her lips meandered a trail of kisses from his neck down his chest to his stomach, but she stopped just short of his boxers. “I don’t want to come off like a groupie,” she said. His stomach heaved as he laughed, and she stood up tall for an instant before he flung her down onto the bed. “You’re never going to forget that, are you? Brat.” He straddled her. She laughed until he brought her arms up over her head and pinned her. He came in for a kiss.
“Stop it,” she begged. Panic rushed her.
He released her, his face horrified. “What?” he asked, sounding baffled. “Did I hurt you?”
No. He hadn’t been the one to hurt her.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, sitting up and reaching for his hand. He hesitated before bringing his hand over to join hers. Their fingers intertwined.
“It’s just, I just don’t like being held down like that.” She wanted to backtrack, to tell him it wasn’t a big deal, but from the look on his face it was clear he would never believe that.
Her father had pinned her down, more than once. It had never been sexual. He had never touched her. It hadn’t been anything weird like that. He had never hit her, though that last time her arms had been bruised. Memories of those last months had been terrorizing her more and more.
Her father’s questions were relentless. His furious face just inches from hers. “Where did she take you?” He sat on her, and held her hands above her head. He was so heavy. He pushed her wrists harder against the hardwood until her knuckles split and stung. “Did she take you to see some man?”
She was so scared.
Her mother’s voice was on top of them. “Please. Leave her alone.”
His weight was gone. He was stalking after her mother now.
Mama’s voice was farther away. “We were at the store. Bags are in the kitchen. Bags are in the kitchen. Check the kitchen!”
“Why do you lie to me?” he yelled after her. “Why do you make me crazy?”
Via couldn’t stand to be in that old place, so she smiled now and tried to will it all away. She still wanted Matt. More now. She needed him to take her away to some new place in her head. She would focus on him, how sensitive he wanted to be. She moved in closer to him and pushed it all aside. “Pinning you would be another story, though,” she said. “I would be cool with that.”
“Are you sure I didn’t hurt you?”
She shook her head and tried to smile. And then she remembered their first time—on the stairs under the orange oval vortex. When he had asked if she was okay. “We can play the gingerbread man game,” she said, hopefully. “I can jump upon your stomach and you can carry me across the river.”
His laugh was tentative at first, but then he rolled closer. “Hell yeah, I’ll carry you across the river.” She straddled him and they just sat there awhile. He looked up at her and she couldn’t believe how lucky she was.
He rested his hands against the sides of her waist. “I need you, want you.” His voice mirrored his expression, soft and sure. “I want to be as close to you as I can possibly be.
How can we make that happen?”
His words were as welcome as Seattle sunlight in February. Without a doubt, she finally understood. This was what love felt like.
***
MATT
MATT’S PHONE BUZZED atop the bedside table. He reached over and read Nick’s text. SHFT w/AC d-n-d. Good for him, he thought. Alicia was cool. Then another text popped up, KC, Josh gone. Thank God, he thought. Miss Kandy Cane had finally taken the hint. Relieved, he turned off his phone and put it back on the table. He didn’t want to be an asshole, but he absolutely would be if pushed hard enough. He figured any man would.
He put his arm back against Via’s back and drew her in closer. He felt the most amazing sense of mellowness. They were listening to The Foo Fighters, and he knew “Everlong” would never sound the same again. It would be burned into his brain as “Having Sex with Via” music, like Marley, Johnny Cash, and Billie Holiday. She turned on her side and laid her cheek against his chest. She still wasn’t close enough, so he pulled her in and used his feet to lace her ankles over his. He wanted to get tangled up with her.
Why did this girl make him feel like such...a girl? He was the guy. He was supposed to be lazy and aloof after sex. She was supposed to be chatty and try to negotiate labels and commitments.
He wondered if she was sad, missing her parents. Should he ask about them?
“I want to know more, about you,” he said. Damn, that sounded smooth, he thought. It hadn’t been a line. He had meant it.
She slid over until she was on top of him and leaned her chin against her hands halfway up his chest. “Am I too heavy?” she asked.
Why did girls always ask that? The answer was always no. He let out a little “whatever” groan and started playing with her hair, which spanned the width of his chest and tickled him. “It’s really hard to keep my hands out of your hair,” he said as he worked his fingers through like a slow comb. He was love drunk. They resonated. He had never been so sure of anything in his life.
“You want to talk about your parents?” He had no idea where his words had come from. They’d just arrived on the scene as awkward as religious freaks at the door.
The moment was toast. He could hear it in the oppressive silence. Still, he needed to know. How could they possibly have anything real if they didn’t go there? “I know how it ended.” He made a point of not saying he was sorry. “But, were there some good times, before that?” He would get her to think about something positive. There must be something.
“He was mental,” she finally said. “They thought bipolar, but it was more than that. They could never get his meds figured out. He would go off sometimes, hit my mother. I don’t know, maybe he was just abusive. A lot of people are bipolar and they don’t kill people.”
Her words made him beyond uncomfortable, but he didn’t squirm. He wouldn’t do that do her.
“I don’t remember a lot,” she said. “As the anniversary gets closer, I feel like I’m remembering more, and I hate it.” She hugged him hard. God, she was stronger than he had realized.
“Anniversary?” he asked and felt her soft breath tickle into the crook of his neck.
“The shooting was ten years ago, December 21st.”
“Just before Christmas?”
“He was an artist, like you. A painter.”
“What?” He pulled back far enough that she had to look at him.
“Is that bad?” he asked. “I mean, that I paint? Does that scare you?”
“You would think so, but no,” she said. “You’re nothing like him. Not at all. You seemed balanced.”
“Me?” He laughed out loud.
“He was fixated. Sixteen hours a day—every day—for months on end. His world hung on the end of his brush,” she said. “But, you’ve been able to take a break, shift to other outlets. It doesn’t own you.”
“Nick calls me a renaissance slacker.”
“I love that. Slacking isn’t the worst thing in the world. My father let his need for perfection tear him up.” She paused a moment, then asked, “What about your parents? Why didn’t you go to Arizona with them?”
Of course, he realized. I’ll share my shit with her. That will make her feel better.
“I was a senior in high school when they moved. Grandma Daney offered, and staying with her and Nick just seemed the thing to do. My parents worked a lot, so I was over at Nick’s all the time anyway.”
“They’re pretty normal?”
“They are normal,” he said. “Me, not so much.” His chest felt tight, heavy. “I was never a normal kid. Learned to read when I was three, blew out the standardized testing, that kind of thing. They wanted me to be a physicist or something. When I was in the fifth grade, they transferred me to the Highly Capable program. It was at a different school and I kind of freaked out.”
“Like panic attacks?”
“I’d get worked up, then couldn’t settle down. I started repeating things to sooth myself. ‘I’m good, I’m good, I’m good.’ Pretty much, I just wanted to be left alone. My parents were desperate to fix me. I’m their only kid; they couldn’t have more. The more they pushed, the worse I got. It got to the point where I refused to go to the doctor anymore. I didn’t even want to leave my room.”
“And then you got into music?”
“Yeah, and I was good. It gave me a sense of control, somehow. The more time I spent with Nick and G-Dane, the better I felt. She got me into meditation. She’s the one who taught me to paint. She used to paint too, before the Parkinson’s got bad.”
She nuzzled in closer. “And so you moved in?”
“My junior year my parents spent the winter in Arizona; they grew up there. I just stayed with Nick and G-Dane. My parents sent G-Dane checks—for my art classes, for food, whatever. When they came back and told me they wanted to move down there permanently, I was like, ‘Nope.’” He paused to collect his thoughts. Slowly, she brushed her hand across his chest and waited. “Nick and I had been working for Carlos and he’d been paying us cash. Music was where I wanted to be anyway, so I didn’t see a need for college. That was really hard for my parents. They still bug me about getting a degree. Still think I have potential.”
She turned into him and kissed his neck. A tender little kiss. Her lips lingered there and he closed his eyes until he felt her reposition herself against his chest again. That one little kiss meant the world to him.
“And lucky numbers?” she asked.
“Twos are my favorite,” he said. “I don’t know why. And repeating numbers are all lucky.”
“Repeating numbers?”
“Like 111, 1111, 222, 2222—no matter what number it is, that’s lucky. G-Dane calls those angel numbers. She says that when you see them, it’s the universe’s way of telling you that you are right where you are supposed to be. That day we did Molly you said you hated the number four,” he added, “but what about 444 or 4444?”
“It was four p.m., four days before Christmas,” she said then rolled away from him before he could stop her.
“Wait,” he said. He had gone too far, asked one too many questions. Why couldn’t he have left well enough alone?
She was getting out of bed, suddenly in hyper-drive.
“Don’t get up,” he said, reaching over for her. “More snugs?”
She hung her legs over the edge of the bed. Did she even know? Did she even realize that she held the power now? Hadn’t he made that as clear as that Jimmy Cliff song?
Her gaze upon the desk chair was seemingly fixed, scared even. He wondered what he was going to have to say to get back to where they had just been. He held out his arms and tried in vain to coax her back into bed.
“Can we go downstairs and do another line?”
“Now?”
“I’m coming down. I can’t deal with it right now.”
“Coming down is unavoidable, you know,” he said. “That’s why it’s a terrible high. After the first few lines it’s not about being high anymore, it’s about no
t coming down. That’s how people get hooked.”
She stood up, pulled his t-shirt on over her head, and let it fall over her naked body. “Please? Just a little more?”
He had no clue as to why the sight of her wearing his shirt was such a turn on. It was like she was his somehow. And now that shirt would smell like her. He knew he was in trouble; he was in love with her. He knew her interest in nose candy was a problem, but the larger part of him wanted her too much to say anything about it. That would be another talk for another day. She was just going through a hard time, and he would help her. He had already told her she was pretty, earlier downstairs, but he almost said it again.
CHAPTER 24
NICK
NICK PULLED the special brownies from the oven and took a whiff. Ah, they smelled like stoner heaven. He left the pan on top of the stove because most of the countertop was occupied with tasty-looking vanilla cupcakes topped with white frosting. He took a seat at the kitchen island where Via sat frosting one of her creations. Her hair was up in a bun. She looked like a librarian, but not in a good way. Matt seemed to like the minimal makeup thing. Nick thought at times she looked like she could still be in high school.
“So, tell me more about this fifty-thousand-dollar donation thing,” she said as she spread white frosting, twisting the cupcake as she went.
He wasn’t surprised she was curious. He still couldn’t believe it. “Well, Obliviot has a no-request policy,” he explained. “So, we’re headlining the Kidz Rock holiday concert at the Showbox, and somebody sent them a fifty-thousand-dollar donation, but Matt has to sing a chick song—Sheryl Crow.”
“Bizarre,” she said.
“If he accepts the challenge, that is. He never sings, except on a couple Cake songs. And that’s really more like poetic rhythmic talking.”
She frowned. “Of course, he’ll do it,” she said. “Right?”