by Danica Avet
“Anders?” My voice emerges as a squeak and I still can’t look away from the system, which looks almost exactly like the one my dad used to have. I swear, I feel as though if I blink, I’ll see Dad sitting on the floor in front of it, waiting for me to join him to go through the records.
But when I do blink, Anders comes to me since I can’t go any farther, can’t look away from the record changer, or the beautiful sight of my dad’s legacy proudly displayed. Anders wraps me in his arms, the familiar scent of Ivory soap and laundry detergent helping to ground me.
My fingers scramble for purchase on his shirt, gripping tightly because I’m not sure my legs will continue to hold me up.
“Merry Christmas, baby,” he murmurs against my crown, his warm breath washing over my scalp.
That’s when I start to sob, so overcome by varying emotions, I feel slightly insane. But this is the most beautiful, most amazing thing anyone’s ever done for me. I already love Anders because of the person he is and appreciate him for the way he treats me. But this? It’s like he gave me my dad back, gave me a piece of my heart back. And I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to thank him enough for it.
“I thought she’d be happy,” a nervous voice says nearby.
I continue crying, as I turn to see Rien and Beau standing off to the side looking bewildered and freaked out. I know my face has to be as red as a beet, my eyes already starting to swell from my tears, my nose running, and my skin all shiny, but I can’t find it in myself to care how bad I probably look.
Anders’ arms tighten, drawing my attention to see him looking down at me with concern. “She’s happy,” he says defensively. He glances at the others, then turns back to me. “You are happy, right?”
I somehow find the wherewithal to let go of his shirt, only to throw my arms around his neck. “I’m so happy, I could die,” I choke out on another sob. “I-I can’t be-believe you did this!”
He kisses my cheek and the man deserves a goddamn—pardon my French—medal for not caring about my appearance or the tears streaking down my face. “I wanted to make your first Christmas with me special,” he murmurs.
“Hey, man, don’t take all the credit,” Beau says, sauntering forward as though he was just waiting to make sure I wasn’t mad. “Root bought it, but Rien and I put it together.”
I let out a watery laugh and throw an arm around the Golden Boy of Sauvage State, bringing him in for a big hug. “Thank you, Beau. Thank you so much.”
He isn’t as brave as Anders, bussing my forehead instead of the damp mess that’s the rest of my face. “Merry Christmas, Leeena,” he says with a big smile.
Rien gives me a nod, a small smile flirting with his mouth. “Merry Christmas, girl.”
To say my relationship with Rien has changed over the last two months would be stretching things a bit. The only times he glares at me is when he’s unhappy with my progress during the self-defense lessons he’s been giving me and the other girls. There’s nothing quite like having over two hundred pounds of seething, tattooed man glaring at you to motivate you to work harder. Other than that, though, he’s mellowed out towards me. Or maybe he’s just too exhausted from renovating my mom’s old house.
Shocking, isn’t it? But it seems Rien Beringer is all about the DIY projects. When he isn’t working for Johnny T at Wicked Bones Tattoo, that is. Apparently, Rien has an artistic side he discovered in prison that translates well to tattooing people, and he’s made quite a name for himself in LaSalle. Anders has mentioned Rien would like to buy the shop from Johnny T when he’s raised enough capital, which makes my man happy because it means his brother’s gone legit.
“Thank you,” I mouth to Rien now, giving him a shy smile. He’ll always intimidate me and I have a feeling he’ll still be calling me ‘girl’ even when I’m eighty, if Anders and I are together that long, but I find I don’t mind it.
“Go ahead and pick some more music out and get ready,” Anders says, drawing my attention once more. “The others will be here soon.”
I glance at the clock and see he’s right. The girls, Crash, Cuba, and Tight are coming over and I don’t have much time to change clothes.
Still, I can’t resist giving him another hug.
“This is already the best Christmas ever,” I whisper. “I love you, Anders.”
His smile is huge and happy and I kiss him. He groans, his arms tightening around me as though he’s ready to deepen it, but I push away with a laugh. There’s a ton of 45s calling my name.
Hours later, I’m a sweating, panting mess, slumped over my equally sweaty boyfriend and I feel like the luckiest girl in the world. And not just because Anders has evolved into the Viking sex god I always suspected he could be, but because he’s… Anders. His warm hands stroke the skin of my back, making my muscles ripple in reaction, as though he just can’t help himself.
“Need to get rid of the condom,” he murmurs against my temple.
I nod and roll off of him, my arms and legs flopping onto the mattress without an ounce of grace or care. Staring at the ceiling as I wait for him to get back to bed, I smile like an idiot. Tonight has easily been the best night of my life.
Good friends, good food—except for the yams Becca made, which were awful—and good music. What more could I ask for?
Okay, no, things aren’t perfect. I’m still in counseling, but I find I don’t mind it. Yes, it dredges up a lot of stuff I’d rather not think about, but when I leave Dr. Keller’s office, my soul feels lighter. Anders has come with me a few times, enough that he decided to schedule his own appointments to help deal with his anger issues. He hasn’t been in a fight since and the anger management classes he’s had have even made him a more effective football player. Don’t ask me how, but he swears it has.
I’ve had a few…setbacks, specifically if I happen to see Ivan on campus. Not that he did anything to me personally, but after I learned how he postponed telling Anders so he could earn a favor from Johnny T, he isn’t my favorite person in the world. Thankfully, it seems the hacker is purposely staying away from me, or at least out of my sight because crumbling to the ground in the grips of crippling anxiety attack is not fun. At all. But I’m lucky. My friends—no, my family—have stepped up to stay with me throughout the day just in case I do see him. Even Cuba and Crash have helped, without knowing what was wrong, just that I needed someone to watch my back.
Then there’s the girls. I sigh deeply. While my relationship with Anders has steadied and settled, theirs are…much different.
Jolene’s relationship with Josef has started to weird me out, but she won’t talk about it, saying she’s happy with him. Yet it’s clear there’s tension between them and not the good kind. I’m sure Becca and Nessie have picked up on it as well since they kept sending me equally puzzled looks most of the night.
I did find out that Nessie has been more subdued because she went to work for her uncle’s private investigation firm. Apparently the cases are depressing, but I’m hoping she’ll either grow immune to the constant exposure, or she’ll find another job. No one as sensitive as Nessie should be working in that field. Which is going to be problematic when she finishes her Sociology degree. I grimace at the thought. I’ll just have to make sure she knows I’m always there for her. I think she realizes it, but so far she hasn’t reached out.
Oh and that isn’t all. Ivan works with her. As in the same guy she screamed curses at when he nearly ran us over. They’ve been working together for months and she never told me. She claims there’s nothing to say. They get along like oil and water, so it’s just work at work and they ignore each other outside of it. I’m not entirely sure I believe her.
Then there’s Becca who still hasn’t let up on Rien, although I don’t think the tension between them has anything to do with sex or attraction the way I originally thought. But once again, it’s hard to pinpoint problems with your friends when you don’t see them enough.
One of the bad things about the winter break is we
aren’t together nearly every day the way we are during the semester. With band classes, we were able to keep close tabs on each other, but now that I’m working as many shifts as I can, Nessie and Jolene doing the same, and Becca’s doing whatever it is she does, we only see each other now and then.
But once the Spring Semester starts and we start having band again three times a week, I know things will get back on track. They have to.
The bathroom light goes out and Anders climbs back into bed, dragging me across the mattress so our bodies are fused together. I sigh, my worries momentarily suspended.
“Did you have a good night?” he asks.
I laugh. If he only knew just how great it was. “It was wonderful,” I answer, staring into the darkness of the room. “I’ll never be able to thank you enough for the stereo system.”
“Babe, I didn’t get it so you’d thank me. I got it because music’s a part of who you are.” He nuzzles my neck. “You think I didn’t see how many times you went through the boxes of records, just looking at them? They deserve to be heard. You deserve to listen to them. All I needed was to see how happy you were to do so.”
I lace my fingers with his where his hand rests on my belly. “It doesn’t seem possible to love you any more than I already do, but you somehow make it happen.”
“Love you too.”
I lay there, staring out the window, the quiet surrounding me as I listen to Anders’ breathing slow and deepen. My poor man had a busy day setting up my surprise present, which still blows me away.
Thinking about how wonderful it’d felt to finally hear Dad’s records, remembering everything he ever told me about them, naturally brings him to the forefront of my thoughts. What would he think about everything that’s happened? I know he’d be glad I was enjoying his music again, sharing it with others who’d either grown up with it themselves, or never listened to it before. But what would he think about Mom? About me not agreeing to see her back in October.
That’d been one of the hardest things for me to do. The person I was before Anders came into my life would’ve caved in and agreed to it. I would’ve listened to whatever excuses she came up with, and I would’ve forgiven her even though she never bothered to say she was sorry. Ever. But I’m not that person anymore.
I’m not saying I’ll never forgive her. I try not to hold grudges, but I can’t forget what she did. I mean, it isn’t as though she embarrassed me like Becca does, or tried to overprotect me like Anders does. She lured me out of the restaurant for the promise of drugs and was going to let her husband sell me to settle his debts. That isn’t something I’ll ever be able to just forget about. Act as though it never happened. So no, while I might be able to one day find forgiveness for her, I’ll never trust her again, or want her in my life.
And it feels as though I’m letting Dad down by not letting her back in, not agreeing to see her. My eyes sting at the thought and I know I need to get up or I’ll just sit here and be depressed. I glance over my shoulder to see Anders is out cold, his breathing deep and even.
Carefully climbing out of bed, I tiptoe across our bedroom to throw on some clothes before making my escape. No, not an escape. More like a momentary retreat so I can pull myself together, stop thinking about Mom and what Dad would think.
The house is dark with only a few lights on for anyone who might get up in the middle of the night. Like me. The living room is even darker, but I’m glad for it. I make a beeline for the stereo system, needing the comfort of music to ease my mind, to help me get through this bout of the blues. Anders wouldn’t be happy to know I left our bed to come out here and cry, but sometimes a girl just needs to bawl her eyes out to make herself feel better. I know, I don’t understand it either, but it does work and I haven’t had a very good cry in several weeks.
Flicking on the small lamp near the entertainment center, I switch on the turntable and receiver, careful to make sure I lower the volume before I start playing anything. The light is enough to see what I’m doing at the stereo, but doesn’t reach far enough to the records for me to read the labels, not that it really matters what I listen to. I just need to listen to something.
Choosing 45s at random, I don’t even look at the titles before stacking them on the spindle. Record players are so much more tactile than CD players or MP3’s. You can put your hands on the music, feel the grooves in the vinyl, and see the machine working. All you do is flip a switch and the ballet begins. I stare at the system as the turntable spins. One of the records, the one on the bottom, drops with a soft click and the tone-arm lifts from its brace and swings out over the revolving record.
The instant the needle touches the vinyl, my heart warms. There’s nothing like music on vinyl. Nothing at all. Taking a step back, I sink on the ottoman to listen to whatever song fate had chosen for me.
At first it’s just a single guitar. Sounds like a ballad and I frown. I’m not sure I recogn—
The voice is unmistakable, the words ones I remember listening to when I was much younger. Conway Twitty, one of my grandfather’s favorite musicians. I didn’t understand back then, why Dad didn’t like listening to this song often. When you’re young, you don’t really pay attention to lyrics, but now that I’m older I understand why it wrecked him to listen to this because, as soon as Conway Twitty begins to sing, tears sting my eyes.
“That’s My Job” is the title of the song and, as it progresses with the son going from a child to a man, to a man who loses his father, tears roll down my cheeks. Listening to this song makes me miss Dad more than ever, but there’s so much love in the simple lyrics, which is probably why it gets to me now. I remember sitting next to Dad those rare times he played it, the scent of his aftershave surrounding me in the familiar, his husky, sorrowful voice singing along, his arm wrapping around my shoulders as he sang the chorus. Not to his dad, but to me.
A sob bursts free just as I feel an arm slide around my shoulders, a warm body depressing the ottoman next to me. But instead of the scent of Old Spice, I smell Anders. Turning into him, I let him comfort me as Conway sings his sorrows and I let go of the guilt about Mom, the sadness over losing Dad, and all the pain both brought me. I just let him have it and Anders takes it without question, without trying to stop my sobs.
By the time the song ends, I’m all cried out, yet I feel lighter. I don’t know what strange coincidence had that song being the one I pulled after thinking about Dad. I have well over a thousand records, with very few able to coax that kind of reaction from me, but somehow, that was the one that played. Weird. I mean, I know there was nothing guiding the record player. I’m not that crazy yet.
Dad would laugh if he were here, with me thinking God or some higher being was trying to tell me something. I’m sure any song that played tonight would’ve brought me to tears just because I needed to cry, to get it all off my chest. I roll my eyes and swallow a watery chuckle, sniffling into Anders’ chest. His skin is soaked from my tears and I’m about to apologize when the changer clicks again, dropping the next song.
It starts playing and I push away from Anders to stare at the stereo system. No way. But there’s no mistaking Louis Armstrong’s “What A Wonderful World”. A shiver slides down my spine followed by warmth that doesn’t have anything to do with Anders whose arm is still around my shoulders. So much warmth and peace envelopes not my body, but my heart.
I turn to look at Anders, who’s watching me with concern and love. I don’t know what it is—Divine intervention?—but it’s as though someone really is trying to tell me something. That it’s time to let the past go for good and look toward my future. With Anders and all his beauty.
“I love you.”
His expression softens, although he can’t hide his concern from me. “I love you too, Lena. Today, tomorrow, as long as you’ll let me.”
The song changes again, this time to something upbeat and poppy. I rest my head on his shoulder and close my eyes.
Where he can’t see me, I mouth, Thank yo
u, Dad.
The End
Bring Me the Horizon “Follow Me”
Senses Fail “Mi Amor”
The Black Keys “I’m Your Man”
Depeche Mode “Shake the Disease”
Saint Asonia “Waste My Time”
Foo Fighters “Walk”
Bon Jovi “Living on a Prayer”
Snow Patrol “Chasing Cars”
The Association “Never My Love”
Barns Courtney “Fire”
Citizen Zero “Go (Let Me Save You)”
Bishop Briggs “Wild Horses”
Dire Straits “Romeo and Juliet”
Bruno Mars “Uptown Funk”
Parliament “Flashlight”
Gap Band “You Dropped a Bomb on Me”
Ohio Players “Love Rollercoaster”
Conway Twitty “That’s My Job”
Louis Armstrong “What A Wonderful World”
Danica Avet was born and raised in the wilds of South Louisiana where mosquitoes are big enough to carry off small children and there are only two seasons: hot and hotter. With a BA in History, she figured there were enough fry cooks in the world and decided to try her hand at writing.
Writing is how she gives the voices in her head a way out. They speak to her constantly wanting their stories told and she does her best to accommodate them.When she isn’t writing, working, or contemplating the complexities of the universe, she spends time gathering inspiration from her insane family, reads far more than any sane person would want to, and watches hot burly men chase an oblong ball all over a field.
Website: www.danicaavet.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Danica-Avet-Writer-108148517161/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/DanicaAvet
Contemporary Romance
Crushes to Cravings series: