Rhythm, Chord & Malykhin

by Mariana Zapata

  Pushing those thoughts out of my head, I skipped to my room and showered as quickly as possible so I could be ready for my nightly visitor. Was it a little desperate? Maybe. But I didn't care. It wasn’t like anyone saw me.

  The knock on my door came just a couple minutes after I finished smothering lotion all over my skin. "What's the password?" I asked walking toward the door.

  "Gaby is the princess of the universe."

  I snorted. My hands paused on the deadbolt as I smiled to myself. "Anddddd…?" I asked, just to be a pest. Like what he said wasn’t enough.

  There was a pause. "I have cookies."

  "Bingo!" I unlocked the bolt and didn't even bother ushering Sacha in. He did his usual routine, kicking off shoes, peeling off his hoodie and plopping onto his side of the bed.

  He tossed over a packet of cookies he had more than likely bought at the vending machine. "Save me half of one," he requested sweetly, wiggling his butt onto the mattress to try and get comfortable.

  I nodded at him, already tearing the package open before jumping on the other side of the bed. I had to crawl with the cookies in my mouth over to a spot right by his chest, where I crossed my legs. He looked over and patted a spot slightly closer to him. “Come keep me warm.”

  He could have put a jacket on, but I didn’t remind him of that.

  The small part of my brain that still hadn’t recognized he was my friend and only my friend, wanted to say that if he wanted to, he could crawl under the sheets, but only someone with an IQ of 20 would say that to him.

  I also could have messed with the thermostat in the room but… nope.

  In hindsight, what I should have done was turn down the air even more so I could give him a reason to cuddle. I didn't do that either though.

  What I did was scoot closer to him. So close he reached out to palm my knee. I stared at his hand and kept my mouth closed despite knowing how stupid it was.

  Sacha flipped through channels with one hand at the same time the other one patted my kneecap while I ate the sweet vanilla cookies he'd brought. I was more focused on his long fingers rubbing my legging-covered legs than the movie he'd put on.

  "Do you have any Chapstick?" he asked me a second later.

  I moved my head in the direction of my backpack, which was sitting on the floor right next to him. "Top pocket," I answered in as lady-like a way as I could without spitting crumbs all over the place.

  He nodded, reaching over the edge of the bed to grab my backpack and planted it on his lap to search through it. The top pocket was unzipped and he reached in, looked at whatever he was holding and made a face. "What's this?" he asked, holding something out.

  I coughed all over him. Literally. Crumbs went all over his shirt and sweats but I couldn’t find it in me to give a single shit when I recognized what he held.

  My little bullet, which looked like a lip balm tube made of metal, was sitting in his palm. I'd bought it while we were still in Darwin the day after we left Perth, on an outing with Carter when we had nothing to do at the venue for hours. I'd ditched him at the music store while I ran to the shop next door and bought my new friend.

  "I'm sorry!" I gasped, trying to wipe at his chest. There were tiny pieces of cookie all over his heather-gray shirt. I snatched the small vibrator out of his hand, slipped it under my thigh and then started brushing his clothes off.

  He laughed and shrugged, picking pieces off too, popping the larger ones into his mouth. "Was that what I think it is?" he asked in a low, amused voice.

  "Lipstick? Yes," I lied, keeping my eyes on his T-shirt while I finished picking off the remaining pieces.

  Sacha nudged my knee. "Liar."

  "You're a liar," I muttered.

  "I am?" he asked me in that same voice he'd used with his last question.

  I slowly dragged my eyes up to his gray irises.

  "Yeah." My skin got itchy all of a sudden. "Your passport says that you're a male but you're really a female."

  "Gaby," he groaned, trying to disguise his laugh. "You're giving my manhood a complex."

  Thank the lord I didn't have any more cookies in my mouth at his use of the word manhood.

  Looking up at him, I saw that his eyes were trained on the leg that I'd shoved the bullet under. Then he looked at me and I swear his lids looked heavy.

  Three hours later, when I started swaying with sleep, he pulled back my bed sheets. "I'm leaving. Lock the door after me before you fall asleep," he whispered, and then he kissed me on the tip of my nose.

  Yeah, I suddenly wasn’t so sleepy after that.

  * * *

  "What's the password?"

  "Gaby's birthday should be a national holiday."

  I grinned like an idiot, and fortunately, I was in my room alone so he couldn't see my facial expression. It had to be bordering on ugly from how hard my cheeks strained in such a short amount of time. "Andddd?" I asked, in what had become our game.

  He laughed from the other side of the door. "I bought you a book."

  My grin widened exponentially while I unlocked the door to let him in. He'd barely made it in before he was kicking the door closed and putting a hand on each of my cheeks. I hadn't seen him all day.

  When Eliza woke me up that morning for breakfast by drumming his fists on the door in beat to a Ghost Orchid song, my first thought had been: I feel like hell. My body hurt, I had a raging fever and I just felt like overall crap. Eli took me to the doctor, where I was told there was a virus going around that I could have caught from anyone. I ended up staying in my room with my brother for the majority of the day until he caught a cab to the venue in the evening.

  “I don’t think you should be in here. I don’t want to get you sick,” I warned.

  He rolled his eyes, not moving his palms off my face. “I don’t get sick. I’ll be fine. Are you still feeling like shit?" he asked me softly.

  I nodded, staring straight into his bright eyes. "Yeah."

  He leaned forward and examined my face. "I've been worried about you all day. Mason didn't tell us you were sick until we were halfway to the venue. I just thought you and Eli went to go do something on your own."

  "You missed out on a doctor's visit and the strangest-tasting soup I've ever eaten," I smiled at little at him.

  Sacha gave me that lopsided grin I liked. "Party animal." His hands brushed down my neck to rest on my shoulders. "Want me to go get you something?"

  I shook my head and gestured toward the bags on the nightstand. "Rosemary’s Baby brought me a sandwich and juice when you guys got here, but thank you."

  I don't know why every time I thanked him, he smiled. Always. He reached behind him for a second, his elbow wobbled in the air, before handing me a book. "The lady at the bookstore said that since you’re a history nerd, you’d probably enjoy it,” he said, setting the paperback into my outstretched hand.

  Memoirs of a Geisha was the title.

  I threw my arms around him and hugged him weaker than I normally would have, slightly smirking at him calling me a history nerd. I did like my historical fiction, especially since I hadn’t had time to read much while I was in school. "Thank you."

  Sacha wrapped his arms around the middle of my back and squeezed me to him tightly enough to make up for my lacking strength. "You're welcome."

  “You’re the nicest man I’ve ever met. I don’t care what anyone says about you.”

  He chuckled lightly, rubbing my back. We pulled apart after a minute, and then he was taking off his shoes and lying on the side of the bed I hadn't contaminated yet. "So you have a virus, huh?" he asked, flopping his long arms open across the mattress.

  "A big, stinking virus," I told him, sticking out my tongue. "I should be better the day after tomorrow supposedly."

  He made a face while I put my present on top of my backpack. "That sucks," he replied, watching me. A slow smile crept across his cheeks. "Poor little sick baby."

  Snorting pathetically, I took a sip out of the bottle of water I
had on the nightstand before flopping on the bed next to him. I sprawled out on the queen-sized mattress, which didn’t say much because I wasn’t exactly a supermodel-like height. "Suck it."

  "Suck what?" he laughed.

  "My invisible nuts," I snickered, turning my head just a little to face him.

  He was sitting up on the bed while I was laying down flat. "I forget about those things." The hand closest to me reached over to grasp my forearm. "I see this girl who's usually pretty fucking gorgeous and the last thing I expect is for her to have a pair under her clothes," he chuckled.

  I soaked up his compliment for all of a split second. "Wait a second. What you mean by ‘usually?’"

  "You're sick," he explained with amusement tinting his voice, ignoring my question about the nickname.

  "So you're telling me I look like shit?" I finally laughed despite the sharp pain in my throat, not at all insulted by what he was implying. There was no way I didn't look the way I felt: like a big, old pile of poo.

  His palm stroked my arm. "You don't exactly look your best, Princess, but you're still pretty," he offered me.

  I smacked his hand off and laughed, attempting to roll away from him.

  Sacha laughed louder, slipping an arm under my body and pulling me over. Part of the way onto him. "Quit fishing for compliments. You're still pretty." He crushed me to his bouncing, entertained chest. His other arm finished the circle around me, my breasts pressed against his ribs, the side of my head meeting his pec.

  "All I hear is blah, blah, blah," I laughed into the soft material of his red

  hoodie, ignoring the sirens going off in my head and the way my heart so suddenly pounded in my chest at his proximity. This wasn’t what friends did. This was absolutely not what friends did. But I sure as hell wasn’t moving or saying something to ruin the moment.

  He squeezed me to him tighter. "You're a pain in the ass."

  "Like you’re one to talk."

  "Shouldn't you be sleeping or something? Isn't that what people do when they're sick?"

  I nodded against him. "Yeah, but there's this annoying guy that likes to hang out in my room and keep me up every night."

  "What an asshole," he hissed, shaking his head as he said it.

  "I know, right?" I laughed.

  Sacha tilted his head down so that his lips were so close to my forehead I could feel their heat. "Want me to leave?"

  As if there was another possible answer. "No."

  He didn't say anything, but I felt him start wiggling his way down the bed. "I'll wait until you start to fall asleep, then."

  "Okay."

  We sat there quietly with the television so low it just sounded like a whisper in the background, until, "Hush, little baby, don't say a word—"

  "What are you doing?" I started laughing hoarsely.

  "I'm singing you a lullaby to put you to sleep," he said.

  I shifted just a little in his arms, tucking myself into his warmth and ignoring the voice in my head that said friends really didn’t do this kind of stuff. "Okay, continue."

  His chest moved with silent laughter. "Sacha's gonna buy you a mockingbird—" I snorted, trying to cover it. His chest shook more but it didn't break his song's stride. If anything his sweet, beautiful voice got a little louder. "And if that mockingbird won't sing, Sacha's gonna buy you a diamond ring."

  Chapter Eighteen

  "Flabby, why don't you dress like that?" Mason asked.

  We'd been sitting in this karaoke bar for all of fifteen minutes. Half of the guys at the table had been staring at the same two girls for fourteen out of fifteen of those minutes. The other half of them were busy chugging down as much beer as they possibly could as quickly as possible. Today was Julian's birthday, and the guy apparently had a healthy, amorous relationship with karaoke. Go figure.

  I didn’t even bother looking in the direction of the two women because I'd checked them out ten minutes ago. In skirts that showed more ass than my underwear do, and with shirts that plunged so deep I'm surprised nipples weren't laser beaming all over the place, I was completely uninterested. If I wanted to look at boobs, I’d look at Lucy and Ethel in the mirror.

  "Like a prostitute?" I asked him, taking a sip of water.

  Mason leaned into me from his spot on my right and nodded. "Ye-ah," he pretty much hissed it out with way too much enthusiasm.

  Sacha who was two seats down, next to Carter, who was on my left, was looking at me with a grin on his face. The fact that he was one of the few not checking out the two half-dressed girls hadn’t escaped me. It was his grin that fueled my fire of ridiculousness. "You know I quit the biz a long time ago."

  The guys closest to us started laughing, and Mason pulled on the end of my ponytail before grabbing where the hair band was and using my loose hair as a whip. "I'm glad you didn't grow up to be a slut," he said with all the seriousness that was Mason Meyers.

  Cocking my head to look at my longtime friend, I karate chopped him gently in the throat, making him gag. "I couldn't. You stole that role from me."

  "Asshole," he laughed, yanking on my hair one more time.

  Eli walked back to the table in that instant, carrying a large glass bowl between his paws. When we were debating what to do for Julian's birthday celebration and karaoke had been the one and only thing the new twenty-eight-year-old wanted, we'd agreed that each person would write down a song that we wanted to see performed. It had to be a popular, Top 40s type at some point in recent history. The problem was that there were some of us—moi included—that weren't musically inclined, so the consensus had been that we could pair up if we wanted to. Anyone who wanted to go multiple times could.

  "Choose your doom, bitches," Eli called out, placing the bowl in the middle of the two tables we had pushed together.

  In no time at all, we filled the bowl with pieces of paper with song titles on them. Carter, my partner from the moment the duets had been made a possibility, gestured with his head for me to go pick out our choice. We'd agree to get it over with first. Each person or team—there was only one other duet that consisted of two of the TCC lackeys— would choose a slip when their turn was up, to keep the choices a surprise.

  "Let's see what we," I started to tell Carter as I opened up the slip to see Justin Bieber’s “Baby” written on there. "Damn it, Eli!"

  My twin grinned. "How do you know I chose it?"

  "Mom," I groaned. It was the song he'd saved as his personal ringtone on our Mom's phone when he called her. Fucking idiot. Something about him being her baby. Like I wasn’t technically the baby in the family. If that wasn't enough, I could recognize his chicken-scratch handwriting from a mile away.

  He threw his head back and laughed. "Oh, yeah."

  Carter made a face and sighed. "I guess it could be worse."

  I couldn't even disagree with him. It could be. He got up to join me with sagging shoulders, and Julian threw his hand out to knuckle-bump us on the way to the stage. The karaoke stage was one of the biggest I'd ever seen, but I didn’t let it intimidate me. The guy working to the side of the stage asked us what song we wanted to sing and when we told him, he smirked but nodded, handed over two microphones and waved us up. My brother had already spoken to him about our large group, and we'd agreed to switch on and off with the other people at the bar.

  "FLABBY!" my brother bellowed from the table.

  I could see them all laughing their asses off when the music started up and the lyrics appeared on the screen behind us. I glanced at Carter and slapped him on the back. "Remind me never to do this again unless I've been drinking," I told him, pulling the mic away from my face.

  He grinned and nodded. "Remind me never to do this again, period."

  That was an even better idea. Swallowing hard, I pointed at the birthday boy in the audience and said, “Happy Birthday, Julian!”

  Then we started.

  I sang the lead and Carter sang the chorus. We were only about a quarter through the song when I was laugh
ing too hard to actually sing along. The rest of our performance was just an awkward mess of us mumbling, and the guys catcalling.

  "I wanna be your baby, Carter boo!" That was Eliza.

  "Be mine, Gaby!" Mason cackled.

  When it was finally over, we bowed and ran off the stage. A few people I didn't know threw out their hands for high-fives as we made our way back to the table. The guys all began whistling as we got closer to the table, and I went to sit down in Carter’s old seat to be next to Sacha.

  "How bad was it?" I asked him. My face was so hot I was sure I was blushing all over.

  He was grinning from ear to ear. "You weren't bad at all, but I wouldn’t plan on releasing a solo album anytime soon," he laughed. "Or ever."

  "Jerk." I poked him in the side and smiled. The same thought I’d been fighting with for the last few days rolled through my head. Did Sacha really like me? My deductive reasoning said that chances were high, but I was still too scared to be the one to say something. To say anything.

  Mason went up a few minutes later when no one else approached the stage and sang along to “I Kissed A Girl”, which was atrocious but funny enough to make me cry. But it was when my brother went up to sing to “My Heart Will Go On” and instead decided to start stripping halfway through that it got ridiculous.

  "Take it off!" Julian had yelled.

  Eli began peeling up his shirt, which made me scream, "Put it back on! Put it back on!"

  I don't think it was intentional for that song, but it was then that I felt Sacha put his arm around the back of my seat. I turned to look at him over my shoulder and gave him a little, shy smile. We stayed like that through Julian and then Miles's performances, until Sassy decided it was his turn.

  Something warm pressed against my bare shoulder as he drew his head back, and I knew, I knew he'd kissed me there. Holy shit. A moment later, he pulled a slip of paper out of the bowl and marched up to the stage, shaking his head the entire time. It was when the opening beat to “Since U Been Gone” started that I almost peed myself. It was the song I'd chosen.