The kid returns and starts mopping around me. Finally, he decides to release his decree and instructs me to step away, warning me to watch out for shards. Of course I step on one and it crunches under my sole, and the kid gives me an exasperated look that says he can’t take me anywhere.
My step away from the bomb zone moves me closer to Abigail. She’d stayed out of the blast radius and has, as far as I can tell, avoided spatter.
“There’s glass in there,” she says after I crunch the shard and get the dirty look from the mop boy.
“I hear.”
“Are you always this clumsy?”
“Only when people surprise me, sneaking up from behind.”
“All I did was to say your name.”
“From behind.”
She smiles a halfway smile. It’s somehow mocking yet playful. It’s a beautiful expression — something unique to Abigail, as far as I’ve ever seen in my life. I want to capture it in a photo, but it’s gone as soon as it came. Every moment with her, I feel like I’m trying to hold back water leaking through my fingers. I don’t know why, but I’m struck with twin impressions: I only have precious few moments, and no matter what I do to try and hold onto them, they’ll slip away. All things are like that. I have memories in layers of Grace, but what do they matter? In the end, the best memories are but figments of the past, left as specters to haunt your future.
“I’m sorry. Next time I won’t say hello.”
“To be fair,” I tell her, “you didn’t actually say hello.”
“Hello, Gavin.”
Hearing her lips speak my name sends a shiver through me. I think it’s a good shiver, but only for a second. Within me, joy likes to mingle with pain. I flash back to Saturday night, when I was enjoying her company, being with her, soaking in all that is uniquely Abigail. But then I imagined us together, and something broke inside me. I had to go. It was too nice. Too playful and happy. Alarms brayed. In my ears, those alarms sounded like my lost love screaming.
But I force myself, to be polite if nothing else, to respond in kind.
“Hello, Abigail.”
She’s still smiling as the kid mops behind me. I don’t know why. I don’t deserve this. I want to ask her why she’s in a good mood and why she’s not, seemingly, angry at me. But I’m afraid to shatter the spell, so I say nothing.
“Making spaghetti?”
I look back. “Not anymore.”
“You could buy another jar.”
“Do I have to buy that one?” I say, glancing back.
“I doubt it.”
I watch her. All the thought I’ve spent on her over the past few days comes flooding back. Why is she always in my head lately? Why have I been pondering the freckles she seems to have covered with makeup as if they bother her? Why have I been spending my nights alone, without going to see her? Why do I seem to want her … but not in the way I usually would? And most pressing of all, why does that desire make me so uncomfortable, as it did on Saturday?
I feel split. There are two people within me, each pulling on one end of a rope, fighting for control.
I open my mouth to say goodbye, that it was nice to see her. To ask her, on parting, why she doesn’t hate me.
Instead, I find myself blurting something unexpected: “Will you have dinner with me tonight?”
Her smile vanishes.
“I mean, if you don’t have to work.”
But she’s no longer having fun, suddenly all serious in the face of this asshole before her. So, after another long second, I say, “Never mind” and begin to turn, already feeling like an idiot.
Before I can so much as twist my shoulders away, Abigail says, “I’d love to.”
CHAPTER 19
Abigail
“Bitch.”
I look back. Lisa’s behind me, standing in my doorway. I’d closed the door, so the fact that she’s there, now staring at me in my underwear, says that she’s opened it without my permission and behind my back. I swear, if I ever have sex again and do it in this apartment, I’m not going to be able to hang a sock on the door as a signal. I’ll need a deadbolt and one of those door-jammer bars, then tell the guy to finish us off before Lisa gets the battering ram.
“I’m sorry. I think my door was closed.”
Lisa is eating a brownie. I’m 99 percent sure it’s not a normal brownie, in part because I can clearly see roughage in the center of her last bite mark. I’m also sure you aren’t supposed to bake pot brownies using the stuff like parsley, but Lisa either doesn’t know that, doesn’t care, or is too high while baking to know what she’s doing.
“It was.” No further explanation is offered. She seems annoyed at me for having closed it to begin with.
“What’s up, Lis?” I say, turning back to my bed. I’ve laid out the only three decent dresses I own. I hate being a cliché, but I honestly can’t decide between them. The dresses I grew up wearing in Hartford were frilly debutante sorts of things, and these days I always wear pants. Guys tell me I’m cute in dresses, probably because they make me look like a girl for a change, but I’m out of practice when it comes to selection.
“I just wanted to stare at your ass.”
“What’s really up, Lis?”
“What, you think I don’t really want to stare at your ass?”
“You just said, ‘Bitch.’”
“Oh, right.” Lisa takes a bite of her reefer patty and repeats around a mouthful of fudge, “Bitch.”
I pick up my first option — a little white sundress with flowers speckled across it. I hold it up in front of me in the mirror.
“Why am I a bitch?”
“We were going to stay in tonight.”
“You can stay in tonight.”
“Like an old maid. While you go out with some guy who you’ve already told me you think is an asshole.”
“Maybe I changed my mind.”
“Why?”
I wonder if Lisa would understand the truth. She probably would, even high — which, honestly, she’s immune to at this point. Lisa is supersmart and surprisingly insightful and supportive if you can get her out of her sarcasm rut. She’s had her heart broken before, which is probably one of the reasons she always leans toward the joke. But she knows the way affection isn’t always rational — the way it can work on you even when you don’t want it to.
“I just get a feeling.”
“A feeling between your legs?”
“Not exclusively.”
Lisa enters my room uninvited and sits on my bed. She’s right beside the remaining two dresses, so she picks one up and begins to look it over.
Then, her voice uncharacteristically serious, she says, “I don’t actually think you’re a bitch.”
“I know, Lis.”
“I do think you need to be careful.”
I turn around. Today, Lisa’s nearly white hair is filled with beads and multicolored strands of something or other. The ornaments aren’t even all beads; some seem to be little plastic trinkets that are merely bead-sized. It’s like a kid’s charm bracelet exploded over her head.
“I’m sorry. Did you just say something serious?”
“I can be serious.”
I stare at her. It only takes ten seconds before she snorts a laugh.
“I can still be serious, even if you do that,” she says.
I turn back to the bed. I lay the white dress back on the comforter and pick up the second. This one is light blue, plain, with a modest bust line and spaghetti straps. I never think it will work with my coloring and red hair, but am always surprised to find that it does.
“Why should I be careful?”
“Because you’ve been humming that song all week.”
That’s not the answer I expected. I turn in surprise.
“Constantly,” Lisa says, taking another bite of her brownie. This is Lisa being good. I’ve restricted her smoking because I’m tired of leaving our place reeking of weed. She usually has to go out on the balcony wi
th her joints, except when she forgets, which is all the time.
“What about the song?”
“It’s his, isn’t it?”
“So what if it is?”
“I dated a musician once. It’s like they’re using pheromones, with that music. It gets in your head and makes your panties wet.”
“Lisa!” Then I take a moment and wonder at what she’s saying. Finally, I decide that my best strategy is to go on the defensive. “You’re the one who keeps hinting that I like him.”
“I think we’ve established that one.”
“Yes, but, like … like it’s good that I like him. Like you approve.”
“Oh. Well. If I approve, then clearly he’s right for you.”
It’s hard to know if she’s being serious. Either way is a little absurd. She might be mocking her own approval, or maybe restating what she considers to be truth, which doesn’t work because it’s not like she’s my mother or my relationship coach.
“You keep saying I need to get out there. And you’re all hinty about Gavin whenever I bring him up.”
“Oh, don’t get me wrong. He’s hot. He’s sexy. But he also has baggage.”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you know about Firecracker Confession?”
“His band,” I say, proud to have beaten Lisa to the punch.
“Right. And you know what happened?”
“What?”
“They were about to be signed by one of the big labels, but two of the members were killed in a car crash. They were a trio: guitar, bass-slash-vocals, and drums. So after the accident, only Gavin was left.”
I didn’t know that. I looked the songs up on YouTube and noticed that almost all of them were sung by a pretty woman with brown hair. I suddenly think of the song Lisa is referring to, and its presence, in my head over the past few days, feels like it weighs a thousand pounds. I assumed I’d been playing with a toy, letting that little refrain follow me around to fiddle in my subconscious. But now I feel like I’ve trespassed. As if I’ve had my fingers all over something sacred, like decorating the gravestone of someone else’s loved one.
“What does that have to do with me?” I ask, already knowing the answer.
“I hear you singing his song, Abs. But you said it doesn’t have lyrics.”
“I didn’t say that.” Of course I probably did. Even when I was mad at Gavin, I suspect I talked to Lisa about him at obnoxious length.
“And last I heard, he’d totally blown you off,” she adds.
“You were the one who kept implying he was perfect for me.”
“Yeah. In the one-day period between you meeting him and going gaga and the next day, when he blew you off.”
“He might not have been blowing me off. He might have been freaked out.”
“Because you’re so scary.”
“I don’t know, Lis. If he’s got issues, then — ”
“Then you need to be careful,” she finishes. “It’s obvious that you dug him right away, but then he’s up and down, and a musician. They have an unfair advantage with impressionable young girls like you.”
I roll my eyes.
“You liked him. You hated him. Then you liked him again. And then for two days, I had to hear about how he just walked off with some slut while you were talking. Since then, I keep hearing you working on that song that’s not even yours, like you’re helping to build it. And at the same time, Gavin keeps coming up as much as he did last weekend, but now he’s okay. Now he’s misunderstood, like all sexy artists. Now he’s redeemed himself, despite that you hadn’t even seen him again until today.”
“So nobody is allowed a second chance?”
“He managed to redeem himself in your mind before you ran into him at the Pavilion,” Lisa says. “Think about that for a second, for shit’s sake. He was an asshole. Then he became less of an asshole. And he pulled that transition off without even seeing you again to do any redeeming.”
“So?”
“So maybe it’s just you. Idealizing him. With a song in your heart — literally, in this case.”
I pick up the third dress. I barely see it as I hold it in front of myself. I’m mostly doing this so I can pretend this is all casual, and that I’m not annoyed by Lisa’s intrusion. Why did she have to move into the über-rare Serious Lisa mode? Why couldn’t she have walked in here stoned, rolling on the floor and saying hilarious things to make me laugh?
“Do you think I shouldn’t go to dinner with him?”
Lisa waits for me to look over and then meets my eyes. “I think you should do what your heart tells you. But while that’s happening, I think you should be careful, and remember who you’re dealing with.”
“Someone who’s been through something difficult. Who’s using his art to cope.” I try to keep Pollyanna out of my voice, but I can’t. Rather than shocking or alarming me, Lisa’s story about Gavin’s friends intrigues me more. It explains a lot of his worst behavior, and it makes him a hero of sorts — a man who’s taken a beating and kept on living.
“Maybe,” Lisa says. “But just keep something else in mind. Okay?”
I sigh. “What do you want me to keep in mind, Lisa?”
“That it’s also possible he’s using you to cope.”
CHAPTER 20
Abigail
We decide to go to the Friendly Whale, across Old Town from the Nosh Pit but essentially the same kind of place: my request. I don’t actually care, but I know that if I didn’t say something, Gavin would try to take me somewhere like Ragazzi. I know he can’t afford it, or wouldn’t want to. I don’t think he’s cheap, but I do think he’s driven, and I’ve seen a few things from him that tell me any dollar not saved for the future is a dollar wasted. I figure this is a good sign. Gavin is guarded and mysterious, but anyone who squirrels his pennies for some big hit later is planning ahead. And you don’t plan ahead if you don’t care about your future.
Lisa told me she liked Firecracker Confession’s music. She followed them when they were hot and was crushed when their shooting star hit its tragic end. She didn’t know that Gavin had ended up in Inferno Falls until after she’d followed Push marijuana’s siren song here, but she wasn’t surprised. The band’s old circles weren’t far away, and like the drain at the bottom of a trendy tub, everything cool has seemed to end up running toward Inferno over the past decade.
Lisa told me that Firecracker fans had been wondering about a solo Gavin Adams effort almost from the start. Because the band itself never got signed (close doesn’t count in music, it seems), the wondering was restricted to a splinter of a subset, but those who loved the band in their cult-like way stood waiting. Then a year passed, and another. Still there was nothing, and it began to look like Gavin might just go away.
But if he’s saving? If he’s planning? If he’s trying out new songs? It could be the beginning of that new future. And I won’t let this date derail him if that’s something I can help.
I’ve never been to the Friendly Whale, but despite its name it actually turns out to be pretty nice. Like the Nosh Pit, it’s technically a diner, but also like the Nosh Pit, it’s more a diner for hipsters than for average townies. Everyone here dresses casual. That works for me in my multipurpose light-blue dress, and it works for Gavin, who’s worn a nice collared shirt but kept it untucked, and stuck to jeans and brown shoes.
We settle into a throwback booth — new but kitschy and made to look old and refurbished, all velour with chrome accents. The menu is full of common bar food, but classed up and made delicious by what must be a creative head chef — but, to my relief, all reasonably priced. There are slowly turning bamboo fans overhead. Like my dress, they shouldn’t work, but do.
“I’ve never been here,” Gavin says, looking around. “It’s nice.”
“I keep seeing it when I come by here.”
“You come by here often?” He kind of laughs because to both of us it’s almost like a cheesy pickup line.
“Do you
know Ticket to Ride?”
“No.”
“Stables. I used to take lessons. It’s not far from here.”
“Lessons?” His eyebrows draw together. “I thought you hadn’t been here long.”
“Adults can take riding lessons.”
“Really. Isn’t that an expensive hobby?”
I shrug. In truth, it is — and the more you allow it to be expensive, the more expensive it is. Most horse people are crazy. They’ll spend money on horses that they won’t spend on rent. I realize how much I’m giving away right off the bat, and not even meaning to. He’s confused because I’m a waitress, but when I first came here my parents still held illusions about dragging me home. So for a while, I’d had their money, even if my pride usually told me not to use it. That was at the start. Before they’d cut me off.
“It’s not too bad.”
“Did you have your own horse?”
“I just took lessons.”
“Why would you take lessons if you don’t have a horse?”
I reply halfheartedly about enjoying the experience, but I can see he’s already seeing through me. His brow smooths a little, and I want to be angry because he clearly thinks he’s figured something out and caught me.
“You did have one, didn’t you?”
“Where would I keep a horse?”
“At a stable,” I say, as if he’s stupid to ask.
“Where did you grow up, Abigail?”
I sigh. “Hartford.”
He nods. “Money.”
I don’t know why this shames me, but it does. Most people are proud of coming from wealth. I’m the opposite.
The Forbidden Muse (Inferno Falls #2) Page 11