Strings

by Emma Lea

“No,” Nadine replied and started to turn away before she turned back to the cashier. “Is Mandy still here? Maybe she knows what happened to it.”

  “Who’s Mandy?”

  “She works here,” Nadine said, getting more annoyed by the moment. “Dark hair like mine and um blue eyes?” Did she have blue eyes? Nadine couldn’t really remember but she seemed to recall Mandy looking at her with similar colored eyes to her own. Why hadn’t she noticed before?

  “I don’t know who you’re talking about,” the girl said. “If you’re not going to order something, I’m going to have to ask you to move so the people behind you can.”

  “Fine,” Nadine said with a huff and stepped out of line.

  She walked over to the booth where she had been sitting earlier and checked under the table and around the seats, pushing her hand between the cushions hoping that by some miracle her phone had slipped undetected between them. No luck. She sat for a moment and thought about what she was going to do.

  With a sigh, Nadine got to her feet and strode outside. There was nothing for it, she was going to have to cancel her phone plan and organize a new one and a new phone. She stood on the sidewalk trying to decide which way to go when she saw a familiar person in the distance, walking towards her. Nadine smiled while she waited for her sister to get closer, but as her features came into view Nadine realized that it wasn’t Vanessa at all, it was Mandy. Why hadn’t she noticed just how alike they were before? It was kind of weird.

  “Nadine?” Mandy asked as she got close enough to speak without yelling.

  “Hey Mandy,” she said, taking in the other woman.

  Her eyes were blue. Eerily similar to Nadine’s eye color and of course the hair was the same. Had she really suggested Mandy get her hair colored almost identically to her own? She’d had fans try to emulate her look before, but this just seemed… odd.

  “Are you looking for this?” Mandy asked as she held up Nadine’s phone.

  “Thank god,” Nadine said in a rush of relief. “Where did you find it?”

  “You left it behind when you were here earlier,” Mandy said, handing the phone over. “I slipped it into my apron pocket so that it wouldn’t get stolen and then forgot it was there. It wasn’t until I got home and was about to throw my apron in the wash that I remembered. I tried to catch you at the studio but they said you’d already left. I figured you would come here when you realized you’d left it behind.”

  Nadine examined her phone, but it was undamaged and she was damned relieved to have it back in her hand. She checked her messages to see that there was one from Gabe telling her that he was having dinner with his sister tonight and that they would see each other tomorrow. She felt irrationally let down by the text. He hadn’t introduced her to his sister yet, although he’d talked about her a lot. Was he too embarrassed by her to introduce them?

  “Hey, are you okay?” Mandy asked looking at her with concern.

  Nadine forced a smile to her face and nodded. “Yeah, I’m fine,” she said and looked up from her phone. “My boyfriend just texted me to say he can’t see me tonight, that’s all.”

  “We should do something,” Mandy said.

  “Do something?”

  “Well, yeah. You have a free night and I’m not doing anything either. I know this great place that does the best barbecue and then we could see a movie or something.”

  Nadine looked at Mandy and rolled the suggestion around in her head. Her alternative was to go home and spend the night in stilted conversation with Jace. Yeah, not something she was keen to do.

  Nadine shrugged. “Okay,” she said.

  Mandy clapped excitedly and then hooked her arm through Nadine’s and turned her around. “Come on,” she said, “it’s just down the road a few blocks.”

  Mandy had been right. The barbecue was really good. So were the drinks. Nadine hadn’t meant to have so many. She hadn’t touched alcohol since going into the sanitarium and these ones went straight to her head. By the time they stumbled out of the little back alley bar, her head was woozy. She didn’t actually remember how much she had drunk, certainly not enough to feel this wasted. Nadine only actually remembered ordering one drink but then maybe Mandy had gotten her another? She couldn’t remember.

  “So you want to go and see a movie?” Mandy asked.

  “Yeah sure,” Nadine replied. Did her words sound slurry? Was slurry even a word? And why didn’t Mandy seem like she was affected by the drinks? She was pretty sure they had gone drink for drink. “I’m drunk,” Nadine said to no one in particular.

  Mandy laughed. “Yeah, you are. I didn’t pick you for a light weight.”

  Nadine looked at her confused. “What do you mean? And why aren’t you drunk too?”

  “We only had two gin and tonics,” Mandy said with a roll of her eyes. “Come on, there’s a great little independent theatre just up the road.”

  Mandy looped her arm through Nadine’s and led her down the road. Nadine leant on her more than she would have liked and tried to work out how she could be this drunk after just two drinks. Back when she was on tour and partying all the time, two drinks wouldn’t have even touched the sides. Six months later and without having touched a drop of the stuff and she was a cheap drunk. So weird.

  The theatre was dark, not at all what Nadine expected.

  “Are you sure it’s still open?” she asked as Mandy pulled on the door.

  “Yeah,” she said in a whisper. “It’s kind of an underground thing, you know?”

  “Oh, okay,” Nadine replied not really understanding at all. Who had ever heard of underground movie theaters?

  “Shh,” Mandy hissed at her. “The movie has already started so we need to be quiet.”

  Nadine let Mandy lead her through the dark foyer. She couldn’t make out anything in the non-existent lighting. There was no concession stand or ticket booth. No marquee telling them when the next movie started and no posters advertising any of the movies they were showing. It was the strangest theatre Nadine had ever been in.

  Finally Mandy pushed her down into a seat. The big screen in front of them was dark and Nadine would swear that they were alone in the theatre. It was kind of creepy actually.

  “Stay here,” Mandy whispered in her ear. “I’ll go and get us some popcorn.”

  Nadine couldn’t understand where Mandy was going to go for popcorn, but she just shrugged. Not her problem. She adjusted herself in the seat and laid her head back. Her eyelids were heavy. It had been a long day and the stress of dealing with Jace was starting to take its toll on her. She let her eyes close. It was too dark to see anything anyway and she was sure once the movie started that it would wake her. So she let herself drift off to sleep as she waited for Mandy to return.

  Nadine blinked her eyes open slowly. Her head ached and her mouth was dry. She looked around and didn’t know where the hell she was. A sliver of panic slipped down her spine as she took in her surroundings. She was on someone’s couch in someone’s living room, but she had no idea who or where. She sat up slowly, her head pounding and she squinted against the bright light that came in through one of the windows. The apartment - or wherever she was - wasn’t exactly a palace. The rugs on the floor were threadbare and the walls were a grimy off-white that looked like they needed a decent scrub and then to be repainted. There was a small television tucked into one corner and a couple of bookshelves stuffed with paperbacks. A scarred coffee table and the couch she had been laying on. It was clean enough, just not very modern.

  “You’re awake.”

  Nadine looked up as Mandy walked into the room carrying a cup of coffee.

  “Is that for me?” Nadine asked hopefully and Mandy smiled, handing over the mug.

  As Nadine took it from her, she noticed Mandy’s arm wrapped in a compression bandage.

  “What did you do to yourself?” she asked before taking a sip of the coffee and moaning appreciatively.

  Mandy smiled as she looked down at her forearm. “Nothing
,” she said, “don’t you remember? You took me to a tattoo place. I got a tattoo.”

  Nadine raised her eyebrows as she looked at Mandy’s arm. It was the same arm that Nadine had her tattoo on and she had a weird sneaking suspicion that it was even the same tattoo. Why didn’t she remember doing that?

  “Can I see?” she asked.

  Mandy sat beside her and unwrapped her arm revealing the colors swirling along her forearm. Nadine sighed with relief when she realized it wasn’t the same tattoo. It was similar and from a distance it would probably look the same, but up close they were completely different. Well, not completely. They were the same color, but Mandy didn’t have a violin as part of the design. Hers was just a swirl of butterflies that started at her wrist and dissipated at her elbow. It was beautiful work and must have taken hours to do.

  “I like it,” Nadine said and Mandy grinned at her.

  “You’re really fun to hang out with,” Mandy said. “Although you did get drunk really easily.”

  Nadine shook her head ruefully and then groaned as her headache spiked. “Yeah. I haven’t been drinking for a while so it must have just gone straight to my head. I don’t really remember much about last night.”

  Mandy laughed and pulled her phone out of her pocket. It looked a lot like Nadine’s and she patted her pockets to ensure she still had hers. The familiar lump in her back pocket settled her.

  Mandy turned the phone towards Nadine and showed her a photo of them at a club. They were both laughing and had their arms around one another. It looked like she was having a blast. It was a pity that she couldn’t remember any of it.

  “I should go,” Nadine said, standing and swaying slightly until she managed to get her balance.

  “Oh, sure,” Mandy said, the smile falling off her face. “I have to get to work anyway.”

  Nadine felt bad. She didn’t mean to upset her new friend, but the realization that she had had another blackout panicked her. Anything could have happened to her and no one would know where she was or what had happened. She was lucky that Mandy had brought her home and let her crash on her couch.

  She turned to Mandy and softened her face into a smile. “Thank you for taking me out last night,” she said and Mandy beamed at her. “I had fun.”

  “Me too,” Mandy said. “Maybe we can do it again sometime?”

  “Sure,” Nadine said. “I’d like that.”

  The words seemed to release the tension that Mandy had been holding in her shoulders and she stood and hugged Nadine. Nadine hugged her back. It had been a long time since someone had simply accepted her without wanting something from her or expecting her to act a certain way. Gabe didn’t count.

  Mandy released her and she stepped back, looking around for her bag. Mandy handed it to her with a smile. “I’ll walk you out,” she said. “I have to get to work anyway.”

  Nadine followed her across the apartment and out into the hall, waiting for Mandy to lock the door. If she had thought the apartment was run down, it was a far cry better than the corridor. Nadine tried not to touch the walls as they walked towards the stairs at the end of the hall. On the footpath, Mandy hugged Nadine again and then waved as she set off in the direction of the coffee shop. It took a moment for Nadine to get her bearings. She was a long way from home. Her car was still parked near the coffee shop, if it hadn’t been towed by now. All she wanted right now was a shower and some clean clothes, then she could deal with her car. She stepped into the street and hailed a cab to take her home.

  “Where the hell have you been?” Jace’s voice made Nadine jump as she came into the house.

  “What?”

  Jace looked mutinous. His face was flushed and anger sparked in his eyes. “Where have you been?” he asked again, enunciating each word carefully and infusing them with steel.

  “Out,” Nadine said.

  “That’s all you’re going to say? Out?”

  “What do you even care?” Nadine said, standing her ground and staring Jace down. “You don’t give a shit about me or what I do.”

  “That’s bullshit and you know it!”

  Nadine rolled her eyes. “Oh yeah, I forgot. You only care when it impacts you. How does me going out last night impact you Jace? Did I miss some big ‘band meeting’” - yes, she used air quotes - “or was it just the fact that you didn’t have eyes on me or someone you know didn’t have eyes on me? Were you worried that I was going to do something to embarrass the band?”

  “For fuck’s sake, Nadine,” Jace yelled, dragging a hand through his hair. “I was worried about you! No one knew where you were. I even called Gabe and he had no idea that you hadn’t come home.”

  “Seriously? You called Gabe to check up on me?”

  “What was I supposed to do? You left the studio yesterday and no one saw you again. You just disappeared! You haven’t done that since the summer. Of course I was fucking worried about you—”

  “Right,” Nadine drawled, drawing the word out and infusing it with every ounce of sarcasm she could muster. “You were worried about me. Don’t be an asshole, Jace. You weren’t worried about me, you were just worried that I’d get myself into trouble and you’d have to come and bail me out again.”

  “No, Nadine, that’s not it,” Jace said, no longer yelling. His voice sounded tired, but Nadine refused to let it douse the flames of her anger. “We leave to go on tour in three weeks. Three fucking weeks and you pull a disappearing act. What am I supposed to think?”

  “Yeah, right. The tour. That’s all you really care about, isn’t it? You’re worried that your fucking tour will be disrupted by your crazy sister. This is your big shot, right? This is the one where you are finally going to achieve all your wildest dreams and the last thing you need is for your flakey sister to go and ruin it for you! Well fuck you, Jace! You don’t give a shit about me and if that’s all you really care about then fine. I’ll leave the band so you don’t have to worry about me messing up again and stealing your shot at fame and fortune.”

  Nadine turned to stomp away and caught sight of Vanessa hovering in the doorway, her face pale and her eyes wide.

  “Stop being so fucking selfish, Nadine!” Jace yelled, pulling her attention back to him. “If we didn’t want you in the band then we would have called it quits back in August when everything went pear-shaped. Why can’t you understand that I was worried about you? You! Not the tour, not the record deal, not the fame or the fortune. I was worried about you. My sister. Why don’t you get that?”

  Nadine stood frozen as his words washed over her. She wanted to believe him. She really wanted to believe him, but something held her back. It was almost a relief to have him yelling at her again except that it had taken her disappearing for a night to bring it on. If he really cared about her, why had he been treating her with such indifference up until now? He had withdrawn from her since the incident. The only thing to bring him back was a potential threat to the tour. No. It wasn’t her he cared about, it was himself that he was trying to protect.

  “If that was true, Jace,” she said, her voice dull, “then you wouldn’t have been so distant all these months. If you really cared about me then you wouldn’t have been treating me like some sort of leper. You barely look at me anymore and you don’t speak to me unless it is about the band or a song we’re working on. The only reason you’re so upset right now is because you think I’m going to fall apart on tour and that your last chance to make it big is going to be ripped away from you. This isn’t about me at all. This is all about you.”

  “No, Nadine. No. That’s not—”

  “Yes Jace, it is. Your words are saying one thing, but your behavior tells me something else. You would have preferred if I had died that night. Then I wouldn’t be such a burden to you now.”

  Nadine spun on her heel and walked out the front door. She had no idea where she was going to go but she knew she had to get as far away from there as possible.

  “Nadine!” Jace called to her, but she ignored h
im and kept walking. He didn’t chase her, which really told her everything she needed to know.

  Chapter Eleven

  She looked at the door and froze. She didn't know what the fuck she was doing here. The last thing Gabe needed was Nadine’s shit in his life. Nadine could not understand for the life of her why someone like Gabe, someone who had his shit together, would want anything to do with her. And yet…

  When Gabe looked at her, everything seemed to right itself in her mind. He steadied her and when she was in turmoil she found herself turning to him, like now. She had been drawn to his place like a homing pigeon. She hadn't consciously made the decision to come here, but here she was. Her subconscious mind had known what, or rather who, she needed and so here she was standing outside his door like some stalker.

  She really should turn around and go somewhere else. It was too early in the morning to be dumping this on him. Not only that but he dealt with this kind of crazy every day at work, the last thing he needed was to deal with it at home as well. Maybe she should take the advice he had given her weeks ago and find a new therapist. Maybe then she wouldn't have to rely on him so much and they could just be, well, together. If she could keep all her crazy behind the doors of a therapist’s office then they might actually have a chance of making this relationship work.

  So, yeah. She should go. She turned to leave but the door opened.

  “Nadine?”

  Nadine dropped her head for a moment before turning around to face Gabe. She felt guilty but she didn't really know why. She felt his hand on her shoulder and she turned, burrowing into his chest, her hands gripping the cotton of his business shirt.

  “Hey now,” he said as he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close. “What's going on?”

  “Jace and I had a fight,” she mumbled against him.

  “Come inside,” he said, pulling her into his apartment and closing the door. “Give me a second to call the office and tell them I'm running late. Do you want coffee? I made a fresh pot.”