by Kristi Ayers
That was his specialty; taking whatever the hell he wanted without regard for anyone else. The moment he believed he was the shit was the moment he turned into a callous, self-absorbed jerk.
~*~
The drive home Friday afternoon wasn’t strained like I worried, thanks to Douglas. Truly, Douglas saved the atmosphere in the van. As I drove, he chatted nonstop about whatever flitted into his mind, but I could tell Holland was inwardly worried, if her flickering glances my way were any indication. I caught her numerous times in the rearview mirror, and each time she’d drive her eyes back to Douglas in the front seat, or down to her hands, which were resting in her lap. I offered her shotgun, but she said she was fine in the second row. Periodically, she laughed at Douglas’s sense of humor, thank goodness, as I would have felt horrible if the entire way back was nothing but radio silence.
Something I was going to keep mum was the item that sat in the very back of the van covered with a sheet. It was Holland’s Christmas present. Whether we were friends or not at that point, I planned to give her that gift.
My phone, along with Douglas’s, alerted us to a text message at the same time. He flicked his phone with a swipe of his finger. “It’s Adam. Group message.” He quickly typed a reply.
“What did he want?”
“To practice tomorrow. I said okay.”
I nodded slowly, my thoughts going to the other night performing with Holland. I wanted that high again. I wanted Adam to see how awesome we were together. I wanted my heart to skip a beat and fall right out onto the floor again.
Douglas watched me a few moments before I shot him a what are you staring at look. He cleared his throat and started typing on his phone again. I glanced in the mirror at Holland, who sat in the back holding her phone and looking conflicted. Were they messaging each other, and if so, what the heck about? After a few more chimes sounded from Douglas’s phone, he sat back looking smug. I glanced at Holland in the rearview mirror and tried to read her, but she didn’t leave herself open. Facial features neutral, eyes looking out the window feigning interest in trees, cows, whatever we passed.
I knew I’d been an ass and I really needed to talk to her, give her an explanation, but what would I say? I don’t want to go forward with a relationship until I’m certain Adam won’t be an issue? No, it was better to offer an explanation that made sense and didn’t detract from my self-confidence. I just had no idea what those words would have been at this point.
We pulled up to Adam’s to drop off the van. If we were lucky, he would come out and see I spent the entire holiday with her, but unfortunately, he wasn’t home. Douglas and I unloaded the back of the van. When I took out Holland’s violin case, I handed it to her and asked, “Got everything? Ready to head that way?”
She looked at her duffle bag in my hand, and mine in my other. “I can carry mine.” She reached for it.
“I got it.”
“What about your guitar?” She watched as Douglas shut the back of the van, as if it were too difficult to hold my gaze.
I shook my head, dismissing it. “It can stay here. Douglas will put it in the house.” That was my hint for him so that I’d have a private moment with her. He got it, sending me a quick nod, and started to take the guitar and covered picture inside. We turned toward the sidewalk to head to the dorms, each step coated with silence that got more awkward by the second. I had to think of something to say. “I hope you had a good time,” I blurted. Seriously?
She looked surprised. “Oh, yeah. I did. Thank you for inviting me.”
That sounded like a generic comment that could be used for anything. I cursed in my head and looked away. Ugh, why was this so hard?
Her gaze focused straight ahead, not even letting me into her physical or mental space. With painful specificity, she was shutting me out. I dug for the perfect words to convey what I ultimately didn’t want to admit, but nothing came out of my mouth. If I knew Adam wouldn’t be an issue, I could turn this whole thing around.
But I was too afraid to go down that road again.
~Senior Year of High School~
Douglas hopped into my father’s old, clunky truck as I turned the ignition. We were going to Tucker’s party where our band was going to play, and it was going to be one of our first paid gigs. Tucker was loaded. The guy lived in a mansion; trust fund money handed down a few wealthy generations. His parents both had traveling media jobs that took them out of town often. The mass text inviting the entire senior class, plus a few juniors, for a night of drinking and drugs was the underground talk of the town for the last week. Tucker’s hospitality was everyone’s much anticipated distraction; a way to escape your annoying family or bad grades, to let loose and forget all your troubles. And for our band, an opportunity to get paid to do what we loved.
There was another reason, for me, at least. The last few weeks at school, a certain long-legged beach blonde who had straight A’s and an eclectic love of music started talking to me on the daily. I was smitten but tried to hide it from everyone. She saw right through my façade, though.
Callie Rose was an enigma. How she could be so popular, studious, and a song genius was a puzzle to me. The girl had a flair for knowing every song out there. So, at Tucker’s party, I was going to have my chance to wow her with how well we played, and hopefully have our first kiss before the end of the night.
We ended up going on after the majority of our classmates arrived and had become sufficiently loosened up. A blooming haze of pot surrounded our makeshift stage in the backyard by the inground pool. Callie Rose sat in a lawn chair by her friends, holding a red plastic cup and smiling up at me with thick, fluttery lashes.
It was a night that put our band on the map. Other parties started asking for us after that. For a teenager who loved music, it was a high better than weed. I loved the adrenaline rush.
After our set was over, I had full intentions of hooking up with Callie Rose. Seeing others all over each other made me feel brave enough to go a little faster than I would have otherwise. Her eye contact throughout each song told me she had the same plans in mind.
What I didn’t plan on was Adam sweeping in and laying on the charm behind my back. I went to the restroom; he went to Callie Rose. I stopped by the kitchen to get two drinks; Adam kicked a bedroom door closed.
Assuming in error that she went to the restroom, I stood outside with the pot smokers, patiently waiting. The fleeting glances of her friends told me they knew exactly where she went. A white-hot panic stirred inside me.
“Where is she?” I growled, looking down at them and barely containing my bubbling anger.
“Who?” one of them asked, playing dumb like a fake bitch.
“You know exactly who.” My blood boiled, thick and slow like lava coming out of a volcano that was very close to erupting full force. I couldn’t comprehend how Adam could do this to me, but I knew in my gut it was true; he did it to other classmates.
I looked around to see if anyone else was holding this secret as well. A few friends averted their eyes, giving me all the confirmation I needed. I stormed to the first bedroom I came across and jerked the doorknob open, but no one was in it. The second bedroom next to it had people making out on the bed, but it wasn’t them. Without an apology, I angrily shut the door.
In the back of my mind, hope toyed with me as I pictured them simply outside, having an innocent conversation as they both got some fresh air away from the pot smokers. Callie Rose would be holding a beer for me, her eyes frequently glancing at the door for me to come out. Adam would be making sure no other guys tried to take advantage of her.
Little did I know he was going to be that guy.
I opened the next door to see what would forever be etched behind my eyelids as the single most shitty event of my life thus far. An image so appalling that it would rip apart my ego within a half second’s time and leave me questioning if I wanted to pummel my friend’s face or just walk away.
Ultimately, I chose the latter
. I couldn’t rip him apart after his father was murdered not even a year ago. Everything he had done lately was out of pain and not being in his right mind because he wanted to escape the confines of reality. No matter what unspeakable thing he did to himself, or me, I couldn’t hate him. Not since the fateful night a few months ago when he was drunk and sky high and fell on top of a knife that was in his pocket.
Fell? Who really knew? He claimed he lost his balance, but why did he have a big-ass pocketknife in his leather jacket that just happened to be pointed at his gut when he fell over and face-planted on my garage floor? I looked around to see what could have tripped him up, if anything. In what seemed like slow motion, he rolled over and a bright red circle of blood soaked into his shirt. It was a lot, and more was oozing out fast.
“Call 911!” I yelled at Douglas, who was over to practice with us that night. My mind went into rescue mode, my vision tunneled to focus on him, and everything else around me seemed to disappear. I needed to control the bleeding, so I yanked my shirt off and pressed it firmly against his wound.
“Let me die,” he gritted out.
Bewildered, I took in his face, then said, “Fuck, no. Just shut up. Help is coming.”
I would never forget the look in his eyes then. Moody brown orbs full of dark anger every day since I met him, had softened. At first, I worried he was slipping away, but later realized he was finally believing that someone really cared about him. His private world and the pain it caused him must have been irreparably damaging to place that amount of defeat into someone’s soul that he’d consider dying as a plausible alternative.
The trauma would destroy anyone, but he used his pain like a phoenix to rebuild himself from the scattered ashes of his former self, as if it could erase the haunting memories. He found renewed reason to morph into someone with confidence and the ability to ensnare the attention of every girl in our school. Something he’d never had before. He took solace in becoming someone everyone wanted to be around.
Needless to report, I never spoke to Callie Rose after the night of the party, and Adam made a full recovery from his injury.
As much as he didn’t deserve it, I always forgave him. Compassion was sometimes a weakness of mine.
~*~
Holland and I stepped up to the concrete steps of our dorm, which meant in less than a minute she’d be in her room and most likely out of my life. I chose to let Adam get in the middle of us and ruin what could have possibly been epic. I felt like I already had twenty-twenty hindsight and knew I’d regret our goodbyes, but I didn’t have much of a choice, proactively deciding this was best.
Most girls hadn’t caught my soul like Holland had. Not even Callie Rose, probably because she didn’t speak music. Holland did. When you played music, you spoke it. It was a language that only musicians knew. And the strange thing was that I didn’t know her at all when I first felt a spark, but with each time we were in each other’s presence, I felt a stronger and stronger connection. Her reliable calm demeanor, except during a storm. Her propensity for being a musical savant, full of passion for playing the violin. Captivating eyes that drew you into her private world with unspoken words. Everything pulled me in, and I became a fool carrying a torch for her in Adam’s vicinity.
“Thanks for the weekend. See ya around, Max.” She turned and quickly ascended the stairs leading to her floor.
And I lost her.
I lost her.
In my room, I sat with my head in my hands until Douglas opened the door and came in. I didn’t move as he dropped his stuff around the room. When he was finally quiet, I knew he was looking at me. “Tomorrow will be better, Max. You’ll see.”
Chapter 13
Holland
My violin sat innocently on my bed, taunting me with what I agreed to do with it that day. It was only because Douglas asked. If anyone else had, I would have said no, but I had a special soft spot for him, not to mention the weasel could throw out some convincing arguments.
When we texted in the van yesterday, he asked me to come to practice, that Adam needed to hear Max and me together. I struggled with a legitimate excuse not to go, toggling between the truth, which was that Max and I weren’t really talking much, or to fabricate a lie that could let me fade away from their lives without any discord. I went with the truth, hoping he’d retract his invitation so that there wouldn’t be any weirdness at their practice. They needed to focus, after all.
I wasn’t the one trying to get gigs in local hot spots. I was doing my best to just get by with focusing on my grades and working as a barista, both challenges for me, when I also needed to be practicing pieces for the chamber orchestra. It was enough that I deemed myself wallowing in a flat-broke college student’s purgatory, and I didn’t need to add my time to any possible—no, probable—failure. I wasn’t one to perform in front of people without structure and much practice with my fellow musicians. I wanted to become a teacher or part of a professional orchestra, not a performer in a rock band.
Against my better judgment, I started off to Adam’s, violin and crushing trepidation in hand. Hopefully, Douglas told Max I was joining them. I didn’t want to endure any more awkward silences and tip-of-the-tongue words that were never voiced. This wasn’t going to turn into exciting changes, and I wasn’t going to subscribe to the notion that it could. This was a one-time thing, for the sake of musical enjoyment. The songs I played outside of the orchestra, ones heard on the radio and playlists, were going to be played merging the sounds of rock and refinement.
I would play a song over and over until it sounded perfect, and the same for songs I composed. Repetition was my rock. It grounded me. Going in blind with other people was the staggering opposite. And don’t get me started on the emotions in the room that I knew would be there in sixty-four crayon colors.
I stepped up to Adam’s door at three pm sharp and knocked, only then realizing the other guys might not be there yet. Great. I’d be alone with Adam.
The door swung open to a surprisingly fully clothed Adam. I blinked a few times, curious. “Hey. Um, Douglas said you knew I was—”
“Come in.” He extended his arm, an arm that sported a long-sleeve dress shirt. Why was he so dressed up?
Still perplexed, I asked as I took a few steps into the foyer, “Are you heading out?” Fearful I missed a text cancelling the practice, I glanced at my phone. No new messages.
He smiled and fingered my side braid. “No, Cates.” He smelled good. A sophisticated cologne I’d smelled somewhere before, at a hotel or airport maybe. Someplace that had businessmen. It was haltingly intoxicating, and I was feeling disarmed.
I cleared my throat. “So thanks for letting me come over during practice. I didn’t want to get in the way. You guys need to focus without me, but Douglas insisted.” I was rambling as I set my violin down in the foyer against the wall.
Adam’s mouth quirked up on one side, probably well aware I was becoming off kilter. Of course, he knew his effect on girls. And, again, why was he so dressed up? He did not need to look like a clothing model or smell like Heaven in human form. He also didn’t need to be so close, so I took a step to the side and meandered into his living room, intent on looking at anything except him. A sparse bookshelf became very interesting, but I felt his gaze on me, pulling me toward him mentally. He could insidiously invade my mind; walls didn’t matter. Locked doors didn’t matter; he had a skeleton key.
My entire body was hyperaware of him and all I could think about was when are Max and Douglas going to walk through the blasted door. I was told a certain time and the guys should uphold the same courtesy.
I knew he was even closer now, his eyes studying me, his cologne clouding my thoughts as effective as alcohol on an empty stomach. My feelings were becoming a jumbled mess. I fought the irrational urge to turn around to see if he’d kiss me because I knew that was what he desired. I could see it in his eyes every time I looked at him.
Would I kiss him back?
I mentally
shook myself, cursing at the audacity of his cologne as if it were a living person getting into my personal space, and more importantly, my headspace. I tried to think of something mundane to talk about, but I didn’t have to because he beat me to it, and it ended up being far from mundane. “I happen to follow an acquaintance on YouTube—subscribed actually—so I don’t miss any of her videos. She documents things that move her. Art, sunsets, water trickling at a stream.” I walked over to the couch to put space between us, but he followed. “Concerts she attended inside an amphitheater, outside in a park, and…in her very own living room.”
The last part was supposed to be a hint, based on the knowing smirk and inflection in his voice. His brown eyes flashed that he knew something I didn’t. It could have been any number of online personalities and he was acting like I was supposed to know. “I don’t really keep up with any of those.” I shrugged.
He ground his jaw and looked down, clearly angry with me. I couldn’t believe he was getting upset at this. I didn’t care about things he watched online. Frustrated, I looked out the window, hoping to see the guys. Not a soul was out there.
“Her name is Michelle.” I looked back at Adam, still just as blank as I was a minute ago. “Crossley.”
Oh…
Music. Living room.
Me and Max.
Oh hell. Michelle had filmed it and I had no idea. Max probably didn’t either. It explained why Adam was so dressed up today. He had enough time to fume over it that he was calm and collected at this point, which seemed worse than getting drunk and belligerent somehow. I didn’t know how to approach this unexpected revelation, so I just swallowed and mentally cursed my agreeing to go on the trip, even though Max had nothing to do with his sister filming and uploading proof we spent the holiday together.
Or did he?
Maybe he knew Adam subscribed to Michelle’s channel.
Embarrassment and anger coursed through me like a drug intravenously, each heartbeat pushing it deeper into my body. I was a pawn and Max and Adam kept taking turns moving the weakest piece, little unassuming me.