Once in a Lifetime: (Becky) (Unnamed Duo Book 1)

by Luana Ferraz

  “What?” I ask, anticipating a joke or snarky remark.

  “Nothing.”

  ***

  We get on the train and start to look at places where we can leave the tickets. We look through lists of tourist spots and easily choose three.

  First, we head to the Crookston castle. We choose it because 1) it’s a castle and 2) it’s called Crookston. It’s just too good to be true. We walk around for a bit, trying to decide where a good spot would be, until Pete finds a loose stone on one of the walls. He removes it, places a pair of tickets in the hollow space, and slides the rock back. He leaves a bit of the stubs appearing. Then, he takes a photo of me in front of the wall and posts to Twitter and Instagram.

  We sit on the grass, waiting a few minutes to see if we’ll get any reaction. We do. The fans go crazy—local ones arguing to try to guess what the place is, fans from other parts complaining we didn’t do something similar for them. Either way, it seems to lift Pete’s spirits. It’s only when we see the fans’ reactions that he actually starts to have fun.

  The second place we pick is The Lighthouse. I regret it the moment I see how many steps we have to climb to reach the top. I argue with Pete that only one of us should go and we play rock-paper-scissors to decide. He loses, but doesn’t complain. I take it as a good sign. I take a picture of his smiley face popping in the middle of the stairs from the ground floor. People immediately know where we are. Someone says they’re five minutes away, so Pete and I run outside and hide to see if someone is really coming. In less than five minutes, two girls in long coats and scarves run inside.

  The third and last one is the Necropolis, a Victorian Gothic garden cemetery outside the Glasgow cathedral. We walk around, trying to locate the most outrageous tomb or statue. Then we decide that will be too easy, so we try to find something that will not give away immediately where we are. We find a stone cross in front of a tombstone and decide to go for it. We lie down at each side of the cross, put the tickets on our mouths and close our eyes. It takes a few tries to get it right, but Pete manages. He posts online and we wait for the reactions. Fans immediately guess we’re in a cemetery, but they take a while to bet on the Necropolis. That is, until someone looks up on Google the time we would take from our last spot to this one and do the math.

  “These girls are too smart,” Pete remarks.

  We stop by a small store to buy sandwiches and Coke to eat in the train—which we almost miss. When we finish, Pete curls up to me, his head on my shoulder, his hand holding mine. I chuckle at the way his long legs take half the space in the corridor. Luckily, the train is not crowded.

  “Did you tell your parents?” I blurt out. I don’t know how to approach a subject slowly.

  “No,” he sighs.

  “Are you going to?” I insist.

  “I don’t know, Becks.” He buries his face further into me, probably indicating he doesn’t want to talk about it.

  “I think you should,” I continue. He grunts a little. “It helps. It helped me.”

  He stiffens when I say that, removing his face from my shoulder to look at me. I can’t look back. I still have more to say.

  “I don’t think… I don’t think I ever got to thank you and them for…” I stutter, feeling my face heat up. “… well, for everything.”

  “You don’t need to,” he says, sitting back up and squeezing my hand. “We’re family. Family takes care of each other.”

  “Yeah, when they don’t run away and leave you behind,” I blurt out. I don’t know where this comes from. Maybe because it’s all back on the surface again. Maybe because it’s all always on the surface.

  “You don’t really think that,” he says after a while, his tone quiet and cautious.

  “I don’t know what I think anymore,” I sigh. Not sad, or angry. Just… done. “It doesn’t matter, anyway. They’re gone.”

  We stay silent for a long time, but I can feel his eyes on me. So, I take a deep breath and turn to him.

  “What?” I ask.

  “Nothing,” he frowns, but his eyes are wide. He debates whether to complement his answer and I wait until he makes up his mind. “It’s just… it’s just you never talked about it before. You never talked about any of it before.”

  It’s not an accusation, it’s just a remark—an accurate one —, but it hurts, anyway. I should have. I should have talked to him. I should have talked to someone. I shouldn’t have carried it around with me for so long.

  “I know,” I say, squeezing his hand back. I smile, but he keeps frowning.

  “What happened on that trip?” he asks after a while.

  And it’s just when he asks that it dawns on me—yes, it was the trip. It was coming home, and making peace with grandma, and seeing his parents, and…

  “Nothing,” I say. He sighs, frustrated, but I have an explanation. “Literally nothing. I thought… I thought it would be so hard, you know? The house, grandma, the memories… But it wasn’t. It was painful, yes, but not overwhelming like I thought it would be. Like last night. It was horrible, but this morning, it was over. I don’t know. I thought that I had to push everything away to stop feeling these things, but I realized it’s impossible. I’ll never stop feeling these things.”

  I stop for breath, trying to gauge his reaction. But he has that expression of someone who’s never seen me before. It makes my heart ache because, maybe, he hasn’t. Maybe he doesn’t know me all that well. And maybe it’s all my fault.

  “Not talking about Alex doesn’t mean I’m not constantly thinking about him,” I continue. He flinches at the sound of his name the same way I think I do. Or did. I don’t know, it’s just a name now. “Staying away from Alnwick doesn’t mean I’m not constantly thinking about my parents. And I miss things, you know? I miss grandma, I miss your parents and your sisters and how chaotic it is being around them. And I only realized I missed them when I was there. I miss…”

  I hesitate, afraid of what I’m going to say next. But I say it, anyway. It’s true.

  “I miss Alex. I miss what I thought I had with him, you know? I miss the good parts, the laughter, the quiet nights, the… the intimacy,” I feel myself blush with that and have to look away. “Not only the sex, but other things, silly things, like holding hands, you know? Playing with each other’s hair, talking over movies, watching the rain. I’ve never had that before him. I never had that after him.”

  I sigh, the anxiety of saying all of it out loud slowly dissipating.

  “I thought I didn’t need it,” I continue, looking back at Pete. “I thought I didn’t want it, any of it. But… but I do. I want grandma, I want your family, I want…” Tyler. I stop myself. It’s not him that I want, specifically. It’s just what we’re doing. It’s just the fun. Right? “I want it all,” I complete, “pain included.”

  He just looks at me in silence, nodding slowly, kind of smiling, kind of not. And then it occurs to me that, again, I made it all about myself. I must be the most selfish person he knows.

  “What happened while I was gone?” I ask, then, hoping my impromptu monologue will encourage him to do the same.

  His expression softens and he smiles—for real. I think it’s the first one I’ve seen in days.

  “I realized…” he starts and trails off. He sighs and looks away, as if resisting to admit what he has to admit. “I realized I don’t know myself at all. I’m only the person other people need me to be. I’m a big brother to you, I’m a cheating boyfriend to Lindsey, I’m a knight in shining armor to Tris. I just adapt. Like that song says, be that girl for a month, except that in my case, I manage to play the role a little longer.”

  I feel my heart shrink in my chest. I want to tell him that’s not true, but I can’t. Because it is. In my case, anyway. I needed someone to take care of me, I needed someone to be strong for me, and he was that person. He was that person even when he needed someone to take care of him and be strong for him. I wonder how many times it happened. How many times I was so blin
ded by my own woes that I didn’t see his?

  “I never know what I want,” he continues, after a while. “I can’t make choices. When things get a little bit harder, I give up. Move on. Move away. To the next role, to the next version of myself. I just throw myself wholeheartedly at everything and everyone and then resent them when they don’t do the same. And I don’t even know if my heart is ever really with the people I love. I don’t even know if I know what love is.”

  He pauses and I have to bite my tongue again. Did he feel the need to interrupt me as I was talking, too? Did he disagree with me the way I’m disagreeing with him now?

  “I love Lindsey,” he says, almost in a whisper. Then, he corrects himself, “I thought I loved Lindsey. I thought I was ready to commit the rest of my life to her. I thought I’d found my happily ever after. But I never for once thought about her end of this fantasy, you know? It never occurred to me that she might feel differently. It never occurred to me…” he trails off again, lost in his head. “I always want more. It’s like I keep testing everyone, always asking for more, always pushing their boundaries. Until it breaks and there’s no way to fix it.”

  Now it’s my turn to watch him in silence. I feel like I’m hearing myself talk. I’ve never witnessed him being so hard on himself. Pete! The most giving person to ever live! But that’s the problem, right? He’s always so ready to give his all that he loses himself into the others. I chuckle with the realization of how much of polar opposites we are.

  “What?” he frowns at my reaction.

  “We’re quite a pair,” I say. He smiles.

  “We are,” he says, squeezing my hand again. “Opposites attract.”

  Indeed.

  “Just for the record,” I say, making him look at me again, “I love you exactly the way you are.”

  He smiles—a certified Pete smile now—and throws his arms around me.

  “Just for the record,” he repeats, “I know.”

  We laugh. And spend the rest of the journey in silence.

  ***

  We’re late to the venue. Neil doesn’t seem surprised, though. I think he said four-ish actually meaning five-ish, which is the time we arrive.

  We go to our dressing room, finding Lindsey sitting alone once again. She asks how our little adventure was and when Pete starts to chatter about it, I decide to leave them be. Maybe a little time alone with him will help her, too.

  I wander around the venue until I find the way to the stage. I sit at the piano, running my fingers along the keys. I automatically start to play Clair de Lune. I remember the start of the tour and how nervous I was to do it. How resistant. How scared. I know past Becky had good reasons. I just wish I had realized sooner that avoiding the memories is still a way of keeping them. They’re always with me. I can’t hide inside my own head.

  The last time my father ever asked me to play the piano, I didn’t.

  It was November and I was 13 years old. There was going to be a school trip—we’d spend a whole day in London to visit the Natural History Museum. Pete’s parents had authorized him to go, and I spent the entire month talking about it to my parents. They still didn’t sign the consent form. They gave me reasons, none of which I remember, because I was so mad I wasn’t even listening.

  The Friday the trip happened, I didn’t say a word to either of them. The next day, my father invited me to go for ice cream. I declined. On Sunday, they went out to buy Christmas decorations and I refused to participate. When they came back, with bags full of holiday-themed ornaments and cookies, dad asked me to play some festive tunes. And I said no.

  I continued taking classes until I left Alnwick for good. It was a way of keeping him close, but also a way of punishing myself. Because every time I played, I remembered that Sunday in November and how I denied him the last thing he ever asked of me. I still do. It’s still equal parts comforting and painful. But I’m starting to think that everything in life is.

  When I’m done warming up with classical music, I try to put an insistent melody that has been playing non-stop on my mind into chords. It’s a simple melody, so I don’t take long to find it on the keys. I play it a few times, trying to build around it, but it still sounds bare. It’s been a while since I composed anything on a piano.

  Then something else pops up on my mind—Tyler, standing in the kitchen, under the morning light, singing. I’m slightly embarrassed by the fact that I can still remember the song, but also proud when I manage to find the right chords for it. I play it a few times. Then I play mine. Then I try to merge them together. They fit.

  With every run, the song becomes stronger, more fleshed out, and less punk. It’s too flowery, too pretty, too sweet. Some other day, it would give me nausea. Today, it makes me warm.

  I play it one last time, hitting the endnotes hard to enjoy the effect of the sound fading slowly in the air.

  “That sounds familiar,” he says from somewhere behind me. I smile. Perfect timing.

  I don’t turn around, but make space for him on the stool. He walks over and sits beside me, playing the song I’ve just written, but with much more elegance. His long fingers run flawlessly over the keys, his turns are seamless, his tempo is perfect. He’s such a good musician.

  “I like it,” Tyler says when he finishes.

  “You can have it,” I say, since I already know I’m not going to use it.

  “Are you okay?” he asks, looking at me intently.

  “Almost.”

  He stares at me for a while with that curious expression he wears sometimes—a frown, biting his lip, head tilted. I wait. I already know it means he has something on his mind.

  “Paul is gone,” he says carefully. “Was it you or was it Pete?”

  “It was himself,” I say angrily.

  “I know,” he says, unaltered. “I was just wondering who he…”

  He trails off. He clearly doesn’t know, not about Paul, not about Tristan. Not about me.

  “Pete,” I say simply. He nods, as if he was expecting that answer.

  “What happened?” he asks quietly.

  “Weren’t you instructed to not ask questions?” I joke. He blushes.

  “Sorry, I just…” he stutters, looking away and restarting to play.

  “It’s not my place to tell,” I find myself explaining. He just nods again. He seems weird. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” he frowns, staring at his own hands while he plays.

  “I want the honest answer,” I say.

  He stops playing, sighing and running a hand through his hair.

  “I’m…” he hesitates. “I’m worried.”

  “About what?”

  “About…” he looks at me, frowning as if deciding whether to tell me or not. “Neil said he was fired under extreme circumstances.”

  He pauses, watching me. I don’t move.

  “I’m worried about…” he hesitates again. “We’ve been working together for many years. I never liked him very much, but I never like anyone very much, so I just never said anything. And he seemed to be pretty close to Todd and… and even Tris.”

  Okay. He’s not as dumb as I initially thought. I still say nothing.

  “I don’t know, I just…” he trails off again, looking down at the piano keys. He doesn’t play, though.

  “You should ask them,” I blurt out.

  “I did,” he says. “Both of them claim they don’t know what happened.”

  “Well…”

  “I don’t believe them!” he exclaims, getting angry. “I know they’re lying! At least one of them is.”

  “Then ask again,” I say.

  “He never tells me anything!” he complains. I know who he’s talking about.

  “He will,” I say. He gives me a suspicious look because now he knows I know who he’s talking about. “Eventually.”

  We stare at each other in silence for a while—he with that suspicious frown, me in what I hope is a blank expression. He’s the one to look away first, s
ighing and pressing his palms on his eyes. I reach a hand up, brushing his hair away from his face. It’s useless but I keep doing it until he opens his eyes again.

  “This helps,” he says, smiling.

  “Really?” I gasp, mocking him.

  And then he kisses me.

  ***

  “Ouch!” he yelps as I pull his head down.

  “Shhh!” I cover his mouth with my hand.

  He gives me an outraged look. I motion to the stage with my head. We both raise our heads just enough so we can see past the balcony rail. The boys are entering the stage and taking places at the instruments. Jake is with them, apparently filling in for the missing members. Us.

  “Should we join them?” Tyler whisper. I bite my lip.

  “They can manage,” I whisper back. His eyes glisten.

  We do have to move to another place, though. We’ve spent the last few minutes—or could be hours, for all I know—hiding behind the first row in the balcony. Doing what, you ask? Use your imagination.

  We crawl around, trying not to laugh too loud, until we reach the last row in the balcony. Tyler sits with his back against the seat and I immediately leap on him, restarting from where we left it. But when I reach the hem of his shirt, ready to run my hands underneath it, he stops me.

  I give him a what look. His face flushes in a deep red.

  “Just… calm down,” he says. I roll my eyes. “There are people just a few feet away.”

  “They don’t know we’re here,” I argue.

  “They will if we keep this going,” he raises his eyebrows.

  “They won’t if you keep quiet,” I mock his stare.

  “Me?” he scoffs. “I’m not the loud one!”

  And now I’m the one blushing. I dig my fingers at his sides, making him yelp again. He grabs my wrists, pinning my hands behind my back. I fight him, but he’s stronger than his lean arms suggest. He grins evilly. So, I stop, and instead of fighting, I thrust my hips against him. His eyes widen again.