by Nell Iris
Cinnamon Eyes
By Nell Iris
Published by JMS Books LLC
Visit jms-books.com for more information.
Copyright 2017 Nell Iris
ISBN 9781634864404
Cover Design: Written Ink Designs | written-ink.com
Image(s) used under a Standard Royalty-Free License.
All rights reserved.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously, though reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Published in the United States of America.
* * * *
A big thanks as always to Addison Albright for invaluable input and unwavering support.
Thanks to Joakim Thåström for writing the song that in a roundabout way inspired the story and to my husband for late night serenades of said song on my answering machine.
And to my daughter because she’s fabulous and gives the best hugs <3
* * * *
Cinnamon Eyes
By Nell Iris
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 1
It was good to be home again, especially after the last couple years of my life. Years filled with nothing but despair and misery and serious doubts I’d make it in one piece. But I had. I even had hope these days.
At least on days like today. It was awesome, particularly compared to yesterday’s spectacular setback, when my body had, more or less, shut down. My limbs had been heavy and sluggish and my energy running so low, I’d never made it out of bed.
I hadn’t had a relapse in quite some time, and I’d been taken by surprise. That I’d been thoroughly prepared to expect it by my therapist, Dr. Liza Montgomery, hadn’t helped. I could practically hear her voice—surprisingly deep for a woman—in my head. Lecturing me.
Remember it’s a long process, Cory. Don’t be discouraged when the setbacks come. And they will come.
As always, she’d been right. I had been stupid to hope the relapses would be a thing of the past, but they drove me crazy. All I wanted was to get well.
Today was entirely different. I bounced out of bed this morning, eager to get some fresh air. I took a shower, trimmed my beard, and even had breakfast. Three solid improvements from yesterday, and more in line with how I’d felt the last few months. The relapse, this time, had been short and only lasted for a day. Another win.
After eating my granola—the only remotely healthy thing the hotel offered for breakfast—I went for a long walk up and down the streets of my old neighborhood with an unusual spring in my step. The scent of freshly cut grass filled me with joy and a sense of home. When I frightened a bushy-tailed squirrel so badly it chirped at me and scurried up a tree, I smiled.
“Sorry,” I called after it.
For hours, I wandered the streets, reacquainting myself with the city I’d left so long ago. It had changed a lot in sixteen years. Everything was different, and yet still the same.
My favorite hangout, where I’d downed a million strawberry milkshakes, was now a clothing shop selling awful floral-print dresses no one under the age of seventy would want to wear. The record store—the only place in town selling vinyls when they weren’t hip—where I’d spent far more time than I cared to remember, was just an empty shop with a boarded-up window. Wide-eyed, I stared at the colorful graffiti covering the sheets of MDF. New layers of spray paint on top of old ones told me the place had been shut down for a long time.
One of the images drew my eye, and I reached out and touched it. It was a stylistic representation of a record-player—done completely in black-and-white—and it was the only motif that hadn’t been sprayed over with other artwork. As if all the other creators had left it alone in an homage to the store. Had the artist been a frequent visitor and painted the picture because he was as broken-hearted about the close-down as I was?
I had to squeeze my eyes shut to prevent hot tears from spilling down my cheeks. Even if I’d passed the days of constant crying, this was too much.
How could it be gone?
My hand shot to my earlobe, and I pulled on it. When the tears refused to back off, I pinched. Hard. Pain flashed through my skull, and I whimpered. The pinch had the desired effect. When I was certain I’d regained control of my runaway emotions, I opened my eyes.
When was the last time I’d taken the time to sit down and listen to music? Pulled out a vinyl record from its inner sleeve and put it on the turntable, carefully aiming so the pickup would land in just the right place and not slide off the edge or end up a few beats into the first song?
I missed the familiar crackling of the needle tracing the grooves before the music started playing, the smell of a brand-new record, and reading the lyrics off of the inner sleeve.
A deep sigh slipped out, and I rubbed my neck. Another of my joys in life that had bitten the dust in favor of the soul-sucking job. I didn’t own a record player anymore, and I decided there and then that I was going to buy one.
If this town had a music store these days.
I turned my back to the abandoned storefront and walked away to stop myself from drowning in sentimental memories. I didn’t want to risk a relapse two days in a row.
It only took a couple more minutes before I arrived at my destination, and I stopped on the sidewalk next to a restaurant that hadn’t yet opened for business. Leaning against the brick wall, I stared at the bar on the other side of the street.
The reason I’d come back in the first place.
Not the bar itself, but the man owning it. The best friend I’ve ever had. The boy who’d preferred chocolate milkshake over strawberry, but had loved buying records as much as I had.
Asher Cross.
We’d been fifteen the last time we’d seen each other. He’d towered over me, tall and gangly, with limbs that had grown too fast and refused to be controlled properly. He’d reminded me of a newborn foal: staggering around on long, unfamiliar legs, trying to gain his footing. With coal black hair in a wild mess and bangs slanted over his forehead—more often than not, covering his eyes—he’d been the cutest boy I’d ever seen.
His hair was one of the many things that had driven my mother crazy.
And it had been one of the many things that had lit my heart on fire every time I’d lain eyes on him.
He hadn’t known. I’d just started to figure it out myself. Figure out why I had a hard time breathing as soon as he was around, or why my stomach had ached in the most delicious way.
I hadn’t had time to work up the courage to talk to him about it. My chance to find out if he f
elt the same had been taken away from me when my parents decided to move across the country.
Sixteen years later, when my therapist had asked me in one of our many sessions what I wanted if I could choose anything in the world, the answer had been easy.
I want to see Asher again.
So here I stood. Staring at his bar, trying to find the courage to walk over and knock on the door.
I pulled off my baseball cap, rubbed the back of my neck, and exhaled so hard, my lips made a sputtering noise.
My eyes were glued to the three-story building in front of me. Big neon, rainbow-colored letters covered the entire front of the narrow house: Broken Brick Bar.
The ground floor was made up of enormous windows, but the second and third stories looked like a residence with red brick walls and white trim. The building was dark, except for one of the classic Budweiser signs hanging on the door and a dim light coming from the single third-floor window.
When I’d rushed out of my hotel early this morning, I hadn’t taken into consideration that any time before noon wasn’t prime hours for a bar.
Before I had time to start obsessing about what to do next, my phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out and groaned when I saw who was calling.
Of course.
I smacked the hat back on my head, turned, and started walking back from where I’d come before accepting the call.
“Hi, Mother.”
“Cory? It’s Tuesday. You didn’t call yesterday.” She sounded genuinely worried, which was unusual for her. I also had to give her credit for waiting until a decent hour instead of calling at six A.M. like she would have done a few months back.
“No.” I grimaced. “Yesterday was a bad day.”
She was quiet for a few seconds. “I thought you were supposed to be better now?”
As usual, that was all it took. Merely alluding to the big, forbidden D-word turned her worried tone into steel, and she went back to her regular, demanding self.
“I told you it’s not that easy.”
“It’s been over a year, Cory.”
I stiffened but didn’t bother to answer. We’ve had this conversation more times than I cared to count, but she never listened.
“And I don’t understand why you can’t tell us where you are.”
Drawing a ragged breath, I repeated for the millionth time. “I need to do this on my own, Mother.”
She would explode if she knew where I was. She’d detested everything about Asher; primarily that he came from a “middleclass family”—always said with a wrinkled nose like it was the most disgusting thing in the world.
Thinking back, I was surprised she hadn’t forbidden us to be friends.
“Why can’t you do whatever it is you’re doing here in New York? Where your home is?”
My control started to waver. I jammed my hand in my pocket to keep it from shaking. “Do we have to talk about this every fucking time?”
“Language, Cory!”
“I’m thirty-one years old, Mother. I say what the fuck I want.”
She inhaled sharply. I had no trouble imagining her thinning, white lips and her ramrod straight back. After all, I’d seen it a lot this last year, after I’d finally learned to say no to my parents, instead of bowing down to their every wish.
“This…time off…will not look good on your resume.”
Time off? She made it sound like I was on a fucking vacation.
“You know I don’t care about that.”
“But you need to think about your career. The Senator knows of a place in need of an HR Director. He said he’s going to call the CEO and set—”
“Mother!” I bit my tongue to keep from lashing out and yelling at her.
When had they talked to The Senator about me? Their first instinct had been to hide it from him, telling him I was on a sabbatical. God forbid I disappoint my grandfather, the venerable ex-senator of the United States of America.
My eye twitched in beat with my thumping heart, and my hands trembled. She knew exactly which buttons to push to rile me up.
“We only want what’s best for you.” She sighed, a suffering sound meant to guilt me into obeying her command.
Instead, it triggered Liza’s training. Just say no, Cory. You don’t have to obey them. You’re not a child anymore.
Just like that, the twitching in my eye stopped. I was going to have to send my therapist a big bouquet of flowers to show my gratitude.
“I know you do,” I said. “But you have to trust that I’m the only who knows what’s right for me. Can you do that?”
The silence coming from the other end of the line was deafening.
“Mother?”
“I’ll try.”
“Thank you.”
“Could you…could you call once more this week?”
We’d had a bitter disagreement after I’d told her to stop calling me several times a day, presumably to check in, but what she really wanted was to guilt me into getting back to work. I hadn’t been able to handle her incessant nagging when the depression had been at its worst, so I’d stopped taking her calls.
Until Liza had told me to stop hiding. We’d worked for weeks on how to tell my parents—mostly my mother—I needed space and independence. It hadn’t gone over well, and it had taken countless arguments before we’d finally settled on one phone call a week.
I didn’t want to agree with her request, but I wanted to argue with her even less, so I relented.
“Sure. I’ll call you Friday.”
“Good.”
“Sure. Gotta go.”
I ended the call and powered down the phone completely before cramming it back in my pocket. My fingers flew to my ear, and I pinched the lobe until I whimpered. I hated confrontations with a passion, and they added to my stress and made me extremely uncomfortable. No wonder I’d gone along with my parents’ wishes my entire life.
But not anymore.
As I’d spoken to my mother, I had walked without paying much attention to where I’d been going. Looking around, I recognized the street. I was just a couple blocks away from the hotel. Perfect. I could grab a shower and rinse away my mother’s disappointment before coming up with a new plan on when to see Asher.
I sped up and jogged the rest of the way.
Chapter 2
Later the same evening, I was back outside the bar. I hovered on the sidewalk for a few minutes, trying to look casual—probably failing spectacularly—while talking myself into going in. I drew a deep breath and pinched my earlobe, and was half a second from running off, when a blond guy in a suit exited the door.
He held it open for me. “Going in?”
“Sure. Thanks, man.” I smiled and hurried inside, not wanting to take up his time more than necessary and weirdly happy someone had taken the decision out of my hands.
The place was surprisingly crowded for a Tuesday. Several of the tables were occupied, and a few people hung by the bar, elbows on the shiny copper surface with frosty beer bottles in front of them.
It was a cool place, with bare brick walls, dark wood ceilings, and a row of big, naked light bulbs over the bar, casting a warm light throughout the interior.
“Nice,” I mumbled as I walked up to the end of the counter and signaled the bartender.
He finished up with his current customer before sauntering over to me with a wide, come-hither grin all over his face. “Welcome to the BB-Bar, handsome. What can I get you?” he asked and winked.
He was undeniably cute, in a clean-faced, twinky kind of way. I might have considered flirting back with him in my old life.
“Whatever IPA you have on tap.” I smiled back, but it was my polite, thanks-but-no-thanks expression.
He caught it and backed off immediately. “Sure, man.” He got to work, still smiling, but without the flirtiness.
I appreciated his sensitivity. I had no problem with flirty bartenders—everyone had to make a living—but the ones who wouldn’t take no for an answer anno
yed the crap out of me.
A minute later, he put a frothing, frosty pint with an amber-colored beverage in front of me. My mouth watered. I hadn’t had a beer in so long, but figured a few sips wouldn’t hurt.
I paid for my drink, gave him a generous tip, and decided to go for broke. “Is, uh, Asher Cross in tonight?”
He raised a questioning eyebrow and seemed to look more closely at me. I tried not to fidget under his stare. “Sure, he is,” he finally answered. “But he’s…” He let out a little snort before continuing. “He’s kind of busy right now. I’ll let him know you’re looking for him as soon as he’s available, okay?”
“Thanks.” My mouth felt raspy, as if clad with sandpaper. I grabbed my glass and took a big gulp of the liquid to moisten my tongue. Crap. If this was my reaction just asking about Asher, how would I feel standing face to face with him?
After shooting me an amused look—what was that all about?—the Twinktender was off to help another customer. I took my glass and wandered over to a free table tucked away in the corner, where I climbed the high stool and took another sip.
I closed my eyes and focused on the feeling of the cool beverage flowing down my throat. Alcohol and depression were a terrible combination, and I hadn’t had the tiniest drink for a long time. I’m sure my therapist would glare at me and my IPA if she were here, but I ignored her imaginary stare. I wasn’t going to drink even half anyway.
As I sat there deep in thought, I became aware of music playing. A dark, raspy voice sang, accompanied by a single acoustic guitar. My eyes flew open.
How had I not noticed the music when I entered the bar? Had I been that anxious?
On a raised platform across from the floor-to-ceiling windows, the singer was perched on a high stool just like mine, playing a beat-up guitar almost completely covered in stickers.
He hunched over his instrument, with his head bent down, making the wild, coal-black hair fall over his forehead. Rocking from side to side, he seemed completely absorbed in his music.
I couldn’t take my eyes off him.
Never before had I heard a voice like his. It rumbled in his chest, almost like it sent out sound waves that made every cell in my body vibrate along with it.