Red Velvet Crush

by Christina Meredith

  Anticipation and dread and excitement: I understand all those. But pride is new to me. I take a step back. I want to soak it in before the sweat starts to dry and I forget how this feels. I probably look like a smiling, sweaty idiot.

  “Next time we should start bigger,” Jay says, throwing his arms out, almost smacking Ginger as he moves in, closing up the circle.

  A steady stream of smoke escapes from Winston as he exhales and agrees. “Definitely.” Then he turns toward the bar, zeroing in on the hottest waitress.

  “Let’s get this party started!” he says, heading for the other side of the room. Billie is right behind him, with extra-jumpy Jay and Ginger on her heels.

  Before my boots can grip onto the dusty floor, Ty grabs my hand.

  “Let’s stay here,” he says, pulling me back toward the stage.

  “Do you mean forever and ever?” I ask, hitching myself up onto the edge of the stage.

  “Well,” he says, climbing up and scooting in close, “at least until we get paid.”

  Winston is at the bar, a fresh pitcher of beer pulled by the hot waitress in front of him, waiting for the bartender to cash out. The overhead lights dim. It is almost closing time. Last call.

  Billie and Jay and Ginger are in a shadowy corner in front of the jukebox. Jay is unrolling dollar bills from his front pocket, and “Freebird” fills up the spaces between the clinking of glasses and the soft slam of the cash register drawer.

  Tiny white Christmas lights twinkle from the rail above the bar.

  “You don’t want to join the party?” I ask.

  “I’m good right here.”

  I lean in and rest my head on his shoulder.

  It may seem like a small move, but to me it is huge. It is needy and dependent and feminine and says it all: I need you and I want you and I am trusting you.

  Ty doesn’t shrug me off. He doesn’t even hesitate. He wraps his arm around my waist and pulls me in, warmer and closer.

  Under my cheek is a small, secret bump where the bones of his chest are supposed to lie flat. I run my fingers over it carefully.

  “Bicycle crash,” he says. “While high.”

  I look up at him. He breathes in, his eyes distant, and it reminds me of Dad. There will be nothing for the longest time, and then there it is, spilling out, and you’d better be holding on because it is going to be fast and true and probably never mentioned again. I can’t help it, my heart hammers.

  “Who gets stoned and rides a bicycle?” I ask. Winston just sits. Or watches TV.

  “My license was taken away for a while, so I had to ride my dad’s Schwinn everywhere.”

  From the outside, he looks like a regular boy. A hot one, but regular, not wrecked or wrung out. I know better than that, though. It’s not like you get a free tattoo the first time you roll a joint or check out of rehab.

  I trace his collarbone and picture him airborne, waiting for the landing.

  “The doctor in the ER didn’t set it straight; maybe he figured I deserved it. He wouldn’t write me a prescription for pain pills either. My parents sent me to Shorehaven the next day all slinged up. The ER doctor was on staff there.”

  He laughs low in his throat. “He clapped his hand onto my shoulder every time he saw me. Swear to God.”

  Shorehaven is a private hospital outside town, hidden down a long curving driveway behind a wrought-iron gate. Cheerleaders from school disappear there every so often, usually the ones from the top of the pyramid, the cutters and anorexics and obsessive counters. What the hell did Ty do?

  “No strong stuff at first,” he tells me, reading my mind. “You know, occasionally some pot, but that seemed kind of dirty. Then oxy back when you could crush it, Codeine, booze, Percocet . . . Whatever I could get my hands on in the end.”

  He glances down at me. I don’t know if he expects me to be angry or disgusted or totally freaked out. I am not any of those things. I am kind of amazed that he is telling me: flat out, up front, admitting to something that most people would try to push under the rug or pretend never happened until some unforeseen situation forces it out into the light later on and by then it seems even bigger and uglier because of the wait. The truth always finds its way out.

  I remember the wasted nights and fights in the dark and Mom and Dad’s voices chasing down the hall. Never knowing for sure what was going on, never hearing the whole truth. I grew up in a house full of tangled bed sheets, dark circles under tired eyes, light sleepers.

  Ty’s fingers play along his leg. His feet wiggle to the music. His eyes search mine, asking if I will stay past the scary part.

  I reach down and take his hand in mine, finally understanding why he sets himself apart, why his attitude and appearance are so straightedge. He is a little bit broken. But so am I.

  I put my head back down onto his shoulder.

  He had laid it all out for me. He didn’t run.

  “Are you done?” I ask.

  “Yep.”

  He squeezes my hand. We sit by ourselves, leaning into each other, listening to the jukebox and the conversation humming from the bar until the twinkling lights go dark and it’s time to go home.

  8

  The sun is barely beginning to crack through the window over Billie’s bed when my cell phone rings the next morning. I scramble to slip it out from under my pillow. Ty’s number glows before my eyes.

  Why doesn’t he just text?

  I press the phone tight against my ear. “Hi.”

  “Hi,” he says.

  I roll over and switch sides, smiling at the sound of his voice and hoping we won’t wake Billie.

  Her pillow bounces off the wall over my head and knocks over our lamp.

  “What was that?” Ty asks.

  “Well . . . Billie’s awake.”

  I slide out of bed. My toes curl when they touch the cold floor in the hallway. I can’t take any more chances talking with Billie in the room—we don’t have another lamp.

  The house is quiet; the sky, chalk blue.

  “What are you doing later?” Ty asks. He sounds like he’s been awake for hours.

  I climb onto our couch and reach for the plaid wool blanket that is always hanging off the back. I drape it over my shoulders and tuck it in under my feet.

  “Something good, I hope.”

  We canceled our plans to practice today . . . since we crushed our first gig last night and all.

  Ty pauses. I can hear a car humming in the background, the rub of the tires on the road.

  “I’ll come pick you up,” he says.

  “Like a date?”

  “Can you define ‘date’?”

  “Most people hold hands and eat pizza and watch movies. Or mini golf.”

  “Are we most people?”

  I look around the room at the worn-out recliner, the Jack Daniel’s ashtray on the coffee table, and the latest issue of Motocross Magazine that Winston left behind. “Probably not.”

  “What about The Wall of Sound?” Ty asks. “Was that a date?”

  My toes rub together under the blanket. “I thought that was an audition.”

  Ty laughs. “What makes it a date then?”

  I give it some thought. “Kissing.”

  “By that definition, does my basement count?”

  Does it ever.

  “Let’s listen to some records later,” Ty says.

  I let my head drop back against the couch. “Can you define ‘later’?”

  “After this meeting I have to go to, but way before it gets dark.”

  The sound of the road in the background slows and drops away. I hear the soft bing, bing, bing as his car door opens before he pulls the keys. “I promise,” he says, “there will be kissing.”

  I picture his bright smile in a foggy parking lot somewhere. His car door slams shut.

  “Then it’s a date,” I say, and hang up.

  I curl into the corner of the couch and set my phone on the cushion next to me. The kitchen floor creaks. I hea
r the poof of the gas burner, the click of the coffeepot. My dad peeks around the corner, looking embarrassed. Oh, God, he must have been there the whole time. He heard everything.

  “I never see you up this early,” he says.

  “I never see you up this early,” I say, pulling the blanket around my shoulders and slumping toward the kitchen.

  He’s usually up and out well before we wake up for school. He leaves money on the counter for lunches, sometimes a Post-it that says, “Buy milk.”

  I sit at the table and watch him making his sandwiches. Cheese. Meat. Cheese. Meat. Long pull of plastic wrap. The teakettle starts to steam. He reaches over and turns the burner off before it can whistle.

  “How’s it going?” he asks, dumping a packet of hot chocolate into a mug and setting it in front of me. Then he pours in the hot water from the kettle, and the dusty chocolate floats and swirls. He leaves enough room at the top for stirring.

  “Okay,” I say.

  He hands me a spoon, waiting to see if there is more.

  “Who was that?” he asks.

  “Ty.”

  He looks at me, wary. I’ve never had a boy call me at the crack of dawn before.

  He’s heard us practicing, seen us hanging together in the garage. But up until this morning I don’t think he knew about Ty and me. Now he wants to see the whole picture. He wants to know if we are serious.

  Steam curls up from my mug. I should probably spill and tell him everything, but keeping Ty to myself is sweeter than any mug of hot chocolate will ever be.

  I take the spoon, staying silent.

  “Stir that,” Dad finally says, nodding toward my mug.

  Then he bends down and kisses me on top of my head before he walks away.

  I sit on my bed that afternoon, guitar in my lap and notebook by my side. I have the room to myself since Billie found a ten in the pocket of an old coat while digging around in the front closet and convinced Winston to take her to the mall.

  The clock ticks. It is shaped like a cat’s head, and its eyes flick back and forth on the table by Billie’s bed, clicking away the thousands of impatient seconds between Ty’s early phone call and when he is going to pick me up for our date.

  I strum and then scribble, lost in the flood of songs rushing through my mind. I make a quick note about starlight on the top of the page and another about magic.

  “The door was open,” Ty says.

  He’s standing in the middle of my doorway in a halo of dust and sunshine. “It always is,” I say as the notes drop away and I return to the real world. “We don’t have anything to steal.”

  Ty quirks his mouth and pauses. The word ‘true’ is probably crossing his mind, but he doesn’t say it.

  “What were you playing?” he asks, moving in and grounding me.

  “When?”

  “Just now.” He laughs, nodding at the guitar sliding off my leg.

  “Oh.”

  My hand is frozen over my guitar, a twang of metal still skating along my skin. I’ve always been waiting for someone to ask what I am working on, for someone to want to know.

  Winston and Billie and Dad hear bits and pieces as I hum and write, but it is background noise to them, filler, like the creak and hiss of the radiator. They never ask to hear more or for me to play that one again. I shift around on my bed, trying to cover the page with the body of my guitar, wishing my notebook were invisible.

  “It’s nothing.”

  “Come on. . . .”

  He smiles, crossing his arms. His T-shirt stretches tight over the tops of his shoulders.

  “It sounded like you were searching,” he says.

  Exactly, I realize. I was. But now you’re here.

  Ty reaches out and touches the half-hidden notebook page. The last word —‘spun’—dragged off the margin when I looked up at him.

  “I’ve been there, too,” he says.

  But he doesn’t press. He stays silent. Waiting. For however long it takes, he holds on while I decide if I can let him in.

  Everything I want to say to you is here, I think; everything unsaid but felt, unedited and private and personal and rhyming is here, practically at his fingertips.

  All I have ever wanted or picked at or even attempted is laid out on these pages. And even though I am dying to let you read it, to let your fingers slide down and across what I have written, it will be like handing over my heart.

  It is one thing to be seen, something else entirely to be known.

  I can’t meet his eyes, but I hand him the notebook. Because he’s already told me his story. He trusted me first.

  His hand, warm and steady, brushes mine when he takes it from me.

  He doesn’t say anything right away or for a while. He sits on the edge of Billie’s bed, legs splayed out, reading with his eyes locked on the page, lips moving. Utter concentration. For a smart boy, he is a slow reader.

  Please, I pray as he flips back and starts again at the beginning, just please know that my heart is in your hands, and it is small and fragile and not sewn together very well.

  Yet here I am, offering it up like a fool to the very first person who asks.

  The comforter wrinkles under his legs as he pushes back, getting more comfortable, carefully turning each page. He is way too big for Billie’s twin bed. His back mashes against the yellow flowers we painted on the headboard when she was eight. He pushes her pillows to the side. He takes up all the space.

  I lean forward, listening to his breath, to the skim of his finger on the page.

  Finally he closes the notebook and looks over at me. His fingers tap along his thigh, his eyes flick over my face, working from my mouth to my eyes, then back again. The wrong look or word or reaction will rip me open, and thankfully, he seems to know it.

  A smile dawns slowly on his face. His amber eyes see right through me.

  “You’ve been writing a song about a boy,” he says.

  I am nervous and excited all the way to Ty’s house. It’s weird going on a date. We both know what we are going to do—probably at the end—but we don’t talk about it, even though we want to do it.

  We are going to make out. Touch tongues. Feel skin on skin and get a little bit sweaty as we breathe heavy, whispering secrets into warm ears and wrinkling up cotton shirts, condom wrappers, and couch cushions as we go. It’s possible one of us might get bitten.

  I slam the car door way too hard when I get out of the minivan. I slip on the grass in Ty’s front yard. He grabs my hand and steadies me. I look up at a sky full of stars and know that no matter what we do tonight, sharing my songs was barer and truer than any friction of skin will ever be.

  Still, I can’t wait to taste him.

  We hurry up the slope and push through the front door.

  His house is quiet again. We drop our shoes on the rug and slip down the stairs without a sound.

  “Where should we start this time?” Ty asks, standing in front of the bookshelf full of records. He is almost talking to himself, running his fingers across the tops of the album covers one after another. He reaches over and flicks a switch. The front of the stereo lights up, electric and blue.

  “How about with: Where are your parents?” I ask.

  Ty glances at me over his shoulder. “Where they always are, working.” He holds out an album like a pointer and turns to face the room. “How else could we afford all this stuff?”

  Sinking down to the floor, I study the soft leather sofa and chairs; the matching seashells, large and small; the framed photos and state-of-the-art electronics gleaming in the warm light. They all go together, like a picture from an interior design magazine.

  Most of our stuff comes from dead relatives or Winston’s suspicious trips downtown, or we find it curbside under a sign that says FREE! TAKE ME. Ask any poor person—eclectic is overrated.

  I lay back and run my fingers along the carpet. It is bouncy and soft.

  I want to escape into Ty’s world of tree-lined streets and tall house
s made from two-by-fours, squared and true and painted in the dark green shades of deep summer, where the furniture comes in sets and the power never goes out because somebody forgot to pay the bill.

  The record player clicks quietly as an album drops onto the spinning platter below. Ty lies down next to me. The music is atmospheric, hypnotic.

  He reaches for my hand, listening, waiting.

  I wait, too.

  One song. Two songs.

  Finally I say, “I kissed you first last time, remember.”

  “I remember,” he says, rolling toward me. “You skipped ahead.”

  Propped up on one elbow, Ty reaches down and traces a line across my stomach with his finger.

  He leans down, close enough to smell and touch and feel.

  “First things first,” he says as he slides one hand under the hair at the back of my neck and kisses me. We roll across the rug until we end up with my back pressing against the soft carpet.

  His hair comes to a small shaved point on his forehead that I trace with my fingertips. He closes his eyes.

  His mouth slides down my neck in a rush; his lips are soft and warm.

  Kissing him takes away the whirl that is Winston and the sink full of dirty dishes that is never not there, waiting for me. It all disappears, swirling down the drain with the dried noodles and bits of soggy bread.

  It doesn’t smell like smoke or grease here.

  The TV isn’t forever on, filling up the background with noise. Books are lined up, spines out, actually having been read at least once. There is always milk in the fridge.

  I grab his shoulders. They are solid and strong, a perfect place for getting lost, for letting go and making a choice that is finally just for me.

  We knit ourselves together, tight and warm, closer and closer, until my body and my breath move along with his and my thoughts of home and everything else in this world slip into the background, like overflow.

  His weight shifts. I feel the cool slip of clothing, a shirt, some jeans. I push my underwear down around my ankles, then over the tips of my toes.

  Ty slides his head past mine, short breaths over my shoulder. And when it hurts, when a sharp pain stabs in a place I never thought possible because it is so deep and private, he slows, and I arch my back, pulling him to me until he surrounds me and swallows me whole.