Ended?

by Kilby Blades

  * * *

  Roxy (One Year Later)

  “You’re drunk,” Jagger accused with entirely too much joy, his eyes alight with humor, saying the word in a way that drew out the “r”.

  He moved his feet from where they rested on the lower rungs of my bar stool long enough to let me climb back on. I’d just returned from my second trip to the ladies’ room and the place was emptying out—getting quieter the later into the night it got.

  “That’s what happens when you put a twenty-dollar-bill in the jukebox an hour and a half ago and it still hasn’t played your songs,” I retorted, grabbing a peanut.

  But Jag just smirked. “Actually, that’s what happens when you drink three sidecars and Joe’s pouring.”

  Jag jutted his head toward the space in front of me. It seemed that, while I was gone, Joe had poured me number four. The man had been bartending at Googie’s since Jagger’s college days. The place was on Sullivan Street, around the corner from all the bars on Bleecker that had live music. It was Saturday night and Jag and I had just been to see a band.

  “Why aren’t you drunk?” I asked, narrowing my own eyes as I crushed the peanut shell in my fingers and let it fall into my hands.

  “Easy…” Jag’s smile widened and he held his own newly-filled highball glass up in silent toast before taking a drink. “This is just seltzer with lime. I pay Joe to water it down.”

  “Shut up,” I admonished, giving his knee a little slap a second before I snatched his glass from his hand. It was full enough that it spilled a little. My eyes stayed on his as I brought it to my lips, and he half-laughed while licking clear liquid off of the heel of his hand. Clear liquid that turned out to be a gin and tonic so strong, it made me sputter. That was all it took for Jag’s half-laughter to turn to full laughter.

  I threw him an apparently un-menacing glare as I handed him back his glass. He took a healthy sip before putting it down.

  “Not all of us can be 6’2” and a hundred-seventy-five pounds of pure muscle,” I muttered petulantly. He had a clear advantage. I was barely a buck thirty-five.

  “Oh, you like this, do you?” He put on a sultry voice and brought his hand to his midsection, running his fingers up and down. Even through his shirt, I could see the faint ripple of his abs.

  “I plead the fifth.” I popped a peanut in my mouth, looked down the bar and feigned disinterest. My gaze snapped back to him when I felt the barstool beneath me pull forward in a quick slide. His feet were on the rungs again and the stools were as close together as our tangle of limbs would allow. Jag had reversed his feet and pulled me in by my toes.

  “But you’re so honest when you’re drunk,” he said with a little pout.

  “And you’re so flirty,” I came back, not too drunk to speak the truth.

  He shrugged as he shucked a peanut of his own, cracking it at the seam with two agile fingers. “Don’t blame me. You’re the one who’s hot.”

  And, there he is.

  Not that I was going to complain about flirtatious Jag. Something about the two of us now was easy—like things we’d been careful of once upon a time, we’d gotten over. When flirtatious Jag was gone again, I would overthink whether the way we’d been this time was a good or bad omen for our long-term prospects. For now, I would enjoy how close he was sitting, and the too-delicious scent of his more-chiseled-every-time-I-saw-him-body.

  “I dunno…” I said lightly. “You’re the one who’s been working out.”

  His gaze stayed on me as he gave me a cheeky smile. “So you do like it…”

  I just shrugged and picked up another peanut.

  “Does Dan work out?” Apart from his smile, Jag’s eyes now held a wicked glint.

  “You’re never gonna let me live that down, are you?” I groaned.

  Jag shelled a peanut of his own and grinned like the Cheshire cat. “Nope.”

  Jag had been in town for a week already, in from L.A. for some sound mixing workshop that sounded technical as hell and that had taken up most of his time. It was just as well. I’d been on deadline for two freelance articles and I owed my boss, Carson, pages for a memoir we were ghosting.

  My apartment was Jag’s apartment so, of course, he was staying with me. Two days earlier, he’d walked in on me and our neighbor, Dan, in the mail room. Jag was a minute behind me, shooting the shit with the doormen. By the time he caught up to me so we could take the elevator up to the apartment together, there was Dan, trying to ask me out. Again.

  “You gotta give the guy credit for trying.” I swayed a little in my seat.

  Jag laughed heartily. “I do? That guy was old enough to drink before we were born. I’ve never been so embarrassed watching a guy trying to pick up a woman in my life. You’d think he’d have learned some game in all that time…”

  "Some women might consider him to be a silver fox…" I baited, just to mess with Jag.

  The hallmark of Dan's look was his swish of black-gray hair that was arranged in a stylish pouf tendril on top of his head, and his impeccably-groomed, medium-cropped silver beard. Jag was probably right—Dan was probably around twice their age, but fifty was a stretch. His face was somewhat youthful and I’d always guessed he’d simply gone gray prematurely.

  “I’ll bet he was hot shit back in his day…" I continued.

  "And when would that have been? 1968?”

  “’68 was a good year. That's the year Simon & Garfunkel released Mrs. Robinson.”

  Jag blinked, then said, indignantly, “Yeah. On the soundtrack to The Graduate—a movie about an inappropriate relationship between a parental figure and an innocent young man.”

  I giggled. Jag was funny and not many people could make me laugh like this. Definitely no one in New York.

  “You should be thanking me, Rox…” He shelled another peanut. “Friends don't let friends date men who groom their beards in public, and, before you ask—yes, I’ve seen him on the street corner whipping out his comb.”

  Even Jag himself couldn’t keep a straight face as he reported this egregious little morsel. I swayed in my seat again. I was definitely on my way to being drunk. I took sweeping breaths in order to slow down my laughter.

  "Well, you saw for yourself. Me and Dan are not gonna become a thing. And even if I didn't have the situation under control—which I totally did," I said with emphasis, "you going all papa bear pretty much cinched it."

  Jag bit his tongue against anything he might have said at that moment, but didn't look repentant. “Papa bear” was kinder than the more accurate term.

  Jag had all but pissed on me when he’d walked into the room, throwing out a, “Hey, man…long time, no see”. He’d halted at my side and thrown a hand over my shoulder while "catching up" with Dan. It had thrown Dan totally for a loop to see that the former and current tenants of 10C seemed to know one another—maybe like that.

  And the message Jag’s eyes telegraphed was loud and clear:

  Hey, man… How you been? Yeah, that's right. I'm still in the picture. The girl in 10C isn't just some hot, young thing. You’re twice her age, you perv. So stay the hell away from her. Capisce?

  "So what does it take to impress a woman like Roxy Vega these days?" Jag changed the subject and turned on the charm. “Do you still only date guys who are devastatingly handsome, immensely talented, and filthy rich?"

  I bit my lip and cocked my head. "Actually, I thought I’d make a change and start looking for guys who are modest."

  The corner of Jag’s lip quirked up.

  "Besides…” I continued. “I don't really care about all those things."

  I don’t know what was making me go there with him. Alright—I did know. It was the alcohol. I’d always been a sappy drunk.

  "So what matters to you now?” Jag prodded gently. “My information is outdated. What's it take to win you over?"

  And in the moment I paused to take a breath—to surrender to the notion that I’d go ahead and say it—the first of the songs I’d put in the juk
ebox came on. The Caterpillar was my favorite love song by The Cure—even before Jag had once let it slip when we were in college that he sometimes listened to it when he missed me.

  “Not much,” I said finally. “When it's the right person, you can have fun anywhere, doing anything."

  I was shy all of a sudden—of his intense look and the way he studied my face. It prompted me to look around the bar. Googie’s was kind of a dive—dark and with a huge barrel of peanuts next to the jukebox and a well-availed tradition of throwing the shells on the floor.

  When I couldn’t not look at him anymore, I turned to him and asked the same question. ”How about you?" The room spun a little then. “What does it take for a girl to impress Jag Monroe? And to win his precious heart?”

  For days thereafter, I would remember the gruffness in his voice when he spoke his answer and how dark his eyes looked in the light.

  “A lot.”

  16 Let me Love You

  I used to believe

  we were burning' on the edge of something' beautiful,

  something' beautiful.

  Selling a dream,

  smoke and mirrors keep us waiting' on a miracle,

  on a miracle.

  -D.J. Snake (Featuring Justin Bieber), Let Me Love You

  * * *

  Jagger (One Year After That)

  “It’s not too late for strippers,” Declan leaned over and said from next to me on the covered fly bridge, with a completely serious look. I surveyed the water that surrounded us on all sides.

  "I don't think there’s an island full of strippers hiding in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico,” I reasoned.

  Declan rolled his eyes. “What century are you living in? There are apps for this sort of thing. We tell them where the house is…what time we’ll be back, and they just show up.” Declan held up his cell phone and waved it a little in his hand. “And, look—we’re still within range."

  Uh, no.

  “When Gunther said he wanted to spend a weekend fishing with his boys, that wasn’t a euphemism for something else. How about we save the strippers for your bachelor party instead?"

  I slid my eyes to Gunther, who sat next to his brother twenty feet away. Gunther and I had settled the matter months before. When I'd stepped right in to my best man duties and offered to throw him a party, establishing that there wouldn’t be scantily-clad entertainment had taken all of ten seconds.

  “We’re not doing strippers, are we?" I'd asked, suspecting I already knew the answer.

  "Not the kind of party, son,” he’d replied.

  And that had been it. From there, I’d taken his theme suggestion and surveyed his buddies who lived down south about what might be an ideal fishing getaway. And so it had happened that ten of us were headed out on a boat, awake and drinking at this ungodly hour. I’d rented a sick mansion on South Padre Island for the long weekend. Apart from not getting too seasick, my goal was to make sure Gunther had a great time.

  “Well, at least let's order some edibles," Declan insisted. “Annika doesn’t let me do shit,” he said under his breath, then began thumbing through his phone, presumably in search of a different kind of delivery service.

  "You're not in Oaksterdam anymore, Dorothy." I smirked. "Are you sure it's even legal down here?"

  Declan ignored me, then yelled over the sound of the motor to no one in particular, “Yo, who brought the party favors?"

  "I got you covered, brother," came a muffled voice from the other side of the fly bridge—Gunther's friend from Shreveport who I’d met the night before. He raised the hand holding his beer in a mini-toast to Declan and smiled conspiratorially. "It's real good shit, too."

  Declan dropped the hand that he was using to thumb through his phone and gave me a, “See? That’s what I’m talking about,” kind of look.

  He leaned forward a little in his seat. "Oh yeah? Whaddaya got? Maui Wowie? Purple Kush?”

  Gunther’s friend frowned briefly and waved his hand in dismissal. “Not that shit…” Then a slow smile came over his face. “We got a case of General Custer.”

  The guy on his left side hit him with a hard pat on the back. His friend next to him gave him a congratulatory bro handshake.

  “What’s General Custer?” I asked.

  “The most authentic Civil War-era-style moonshine you’ll ever find,” Mr. Shreveport’s brother piped up.

  “A hundred dollars a mason jar is what it is…” Gunther trailed off, rolling his eyes a little at his friends.

  “Only the best for you, brother,” Mr. Shreveport replied, tipping his beer bottle toward Gunther and raising it again in silent toast. Declan looked back over at me and pinned me with an “Are you serious?" kind of look.

  "I'm sorry. Have you met Gunther?" I snarked after the guys on the other side of the boat returned to their own conversations. “You know he lives for this. His friends brought enough alcohol to survive the second uprising of the south.”

  "I can't believe this shit,” Declan mumbled.

  “Let him have his geeky fun. It’s his bachelor party,” I pointed out.

  “True,” Declan conceded. “It’s not like he's gonna be doing this too often once he's married."

  Now it was my turn to give Declan an incredulous look. “Come on, man. Their wedding is just an excuse for Zoë to throw a party and buy an expensive dress. Those two have been married since their first date."

  Declan said nothing, but seemed, somehow, to brood. I pulled newly-acquired trivia out of my pocket. "Feeling the seven-year itch?" I asked.

  I’d recently seen the classic film while out on a date. A year in L.A. had taught me that, for someone building a career around film scores, my knowledge of movies was lacking. You had zero cred in that town unless you knew everything about the movies, inside-out. I’d made the mistake of mentioning to a studio head that I’d never seen The Shawshank Redemption. I was pretty sure I’d personally insulted the man.

  "Eight years next month," Declan said without much joy. The way he said it made me sit up a little.

  “You and Annika doing all right?"

  Declan shrugged and didn’t answer, which was guy vernacular for, “No, but I don’t want to talk about it. When he looked out at the horizon and took another long gulp of his beer, I didn’t push. If he wanted to talk, he’d talk.

  “We’re not like you guys,” he said finally.

  “Who guys?” I wanted to know.

  “Zoë and Gunther. You and Roxy. That special something you have. We don’t have that kind of glue.”

  The mere mention of me and Roxy and a special something poked at that place inside me that I didn’t like to think about. But this wasn’t about me. Deck and Annika had always seemed tight, in that adversarial, hate-love kind of way. He was lovably unrefined and she kept him in line the way only a woman with four brothers could.

  “She gets off on being bossy. You get off on being bossed. There’s no law that says you have to be as saccharine as Zoë and Gunther,” I pointed out.

  But Declan just shook his head again.

  “There’s this way you move together…this way you are together…” Declan cut himself short, as if searching for the words. “I don’t know why, but it matters more now.

  “And I never hear the end of it…” There was a bitter edge to Declan’s voice. “How Gunther sends Zoë Boba tea at work when she’s having a bad day…how he had that oil portrait made for her of Lady Antebellum wearing a period dress…”

  I just blinked at him for a second. Lady Antebellum was Zoë’s toy poodle.

  “Dude. What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “You’re just as bad,” he accused. “I heard all about the writing room you had built for Roxy; and how you found the one delicatessen in Paris that made matzo ball soup and had it delivered to her hotel room when she was sick; and for seven goddamned years I’ve been hearing about how you wrote Roxy that song. I’m an Architect for Pete’s sake. What does Annika want? For me to build her t
he Taj Mahal?”

  “Annika told you about Paris?” I wasn’t surprised that Annika had gotten wind that I’d converted the useless spare bedroom in my New York apartment into an office that was ideal for Roxy. It had custom gray stained-wood shelves laid into the walls with the shelf heights on the bottom the exact size of LPs. On one side was a minimalist writing desk on a fun patterned throw rug. On the other side was a leather bean bag chair on a shag rug next to a listening station. I’d waited until Roxy went on a long trip and had it all done by the time she got back.

  But if Annika knew about chicken soup in Paris, did that mean Roxy talked about me? And what did Deck mean, Annika had talked about Roxy’s song for “seven goddamned years”? Was it Annika who had a long memory or did Roxy talk about it, too?

  “Annika tells me about everything you and Gunther do for Roxy and Zoë that I don’t do for her. Ever since all our friends started getting married, she wants us to be this perfect couple. She’s like a bridezilla already and we’re not even engaged.”

  Declan let out a long breath through pursed lips as he cast his gaze down toward the deck and shook his head.

  “Because she’s waiting for you to propose, you dumbass.” Yeah. Roxy talked too. “And why haven’t you, by the way? The two of you have been together forever. That’s probably why she’s getting crazy. You’ve seen how it goes. Half the weddings I get invited to, the couple’s only been together for, like, two years.”

  Declan swung his gaze back over, a glint of hardness still in his eyes. “You’re missing the point.” His bass voice sounded even lower.

  “Which is?”

  “That the more she compares us to other couples, the more obvious it is she’s not in the relationship she really wants.” Declan hid it well, but I saw his pain. “We’ll never finish each other’s sentences, or have the same thought at the same time. I never even know what to get her for her birthday. And, you know what? I can’t even blame her for wanting what you have.”

  But what Roxy and I had was a mess of bad luck and longing. Loving her had doomed every other relationship I’d ever tried to have. And I resented Declan idealizing the tangled web I’d woven with Roxy in any way. No one knew the toll it had taken on me to be able to hold her but not kiss her; to sleep next to her but keep my hands off; to tell her how much I loved her—it had never gone away—my impulse to tell her every single time we talked.