by Sybil Bartel
“Myles turned down a couple offers. He built a recording studio and wants us to go that route first.” I was along for the ride.
“Do you want to be a musician fulltime? What if the band took off?”
I’d thought about this a lot. “I used to only want to be a musician. My dad told me I needed something else to support myself. I wasn’t great in school, so he taught me to work on cars. Now that I have the shop, I like it. Would I like to take the music to the next level? Yeah, sure, but if it doesn’t happen, I’m okay with that to. I don’t relish being in the spotlight. This sounds shitty, because if it weren’t for the fans the band would be nowhere, but I don’t like dealing with them. There’s no better high than playing in front of a live audience but once I’m offstage, I want to be left alone.”
“You could be a studio musician.”
Carly was so genuine, unaffected, I liked listening and talking to her. I ran my fingers through her hair, watching the fine silk slip past my rough hands. “Yeah, I could.” Everything about her was so pretty. “What about you? You want to write fulltime?” If I was being honest, I wouldn’t mind her quitting the bartending gig.
She smiled. “My dream is to support myself with my writing. I’ve written two novels, I’m on my third and I have a ton of short stories. So far, I haven’t sold anything.”
“Be patient, it’ll happen.” Her writing was good.
“You sound like my father.” She flushed, turning her head.
I caught her chin. “He’s a smart man.” Holding her gaze, I wanted her to know how great she was. More, I wanted her to succeed. “Your writing is great.” God, I wanted to kiss her again.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
I forced myself to let go of her. “You’re welcome. You ready to hit it?”
She didn’t move. “You’re a great writer too,” she said shyly.
“I’m not a writer.”
“You wrote ‘Break.’”
“There’s a difference between writing a book and writing a song. Anyone can write a song.” I moved to leave.
She caught my hand. “Not everyone. The difference is a musician versus a performer. You’re a musician.”
“And, we’re leaving.”
She broke into laughter. “I’ve never seen you so uncomfortable.”
“Now you have. Let’s go.” I pulled her to her feet and gave her the briefest of kisses. When I straightened, my blood went ice cold. Gemma was standing in front of us, a dangerous smile on her face.
“Carly, isn’t it?” Her voice dripped saccharin.
My stomach hit the floor. Fuck. Fuck, fuck fuck. I was sunk. I was fucking sunk and Carly was about to get hurt because of me. Again. Goddamn it. I was a fucking idiot to think I’d escaped at the club. My only option was damage control so I squeezed the hand I had around Carly’s shoulders, moved us forward and spoke before Carly did.
“Back off, Gemma.” I used my most menacing voice.
My tone would be a giveaway to Carly, but I didn’t have a choice. A small, stupid, fucking part of me, the part that was idiotic enough to give away Carly’s story like it was nothing, that part hoped to God Gemma would keep her mouth shut.
Gemma smiled like a cat. “I really liked Lightning Strike.”
Oh God.
Every muscle in Carly’s body stiffened. “Excuse me?” Her voice was a shaky whisper.
Fuuuuck.
I pulled a shocked Carly against my chest and glared at the bitch. “You made your point. Back off.” I was a fucking tool. A total fucking piece-of-shit tool. A tremor went through Carly. I stopped glaring at Gemma long enough to kiss Carly’s head and rub her arms. “Shh, shh baby, it’s okay.” I shoved past a now-ashen Gemma and propelled Carly out into the cold.
I was so fucking angry with myself, I wanted to hit something. I wanted to hate Gemma, and part of me did, but I couldn’t blame her. I was the problem, not her. Two steps outside and Carly pulled away from me. It felt like scabs ripping off when her body left mine but I let her go. I had no right to touch her now and I knew it.
Miserable, I followed a half step behind her as she speed-walked to the car. I owed her an explanation but I didn’t want to hurt her more. Fuck. “Do you want to know what happened?”
No response.
Goddamn it. She was going to hear it anyway, at least some of it. I couldn’t let this go down without a fight.
“I shouldn’t have forwarded it to her but I did. I wish I could say she was the only person who saw it but I have no way of knowing what she did with it, so I can’t make that promise.”
Carly walked faster.
What the fuck was I supposed to do? Tell her I was drunk and high and I’d fucked Gemma all night so don’t condemn me because clearly my judgment was off? Goddamn it.
“Carly.”
Nothing.
It took every ounce of self-control I had not to grab her and force her to look at me. Her silence was killing me but I did the only thing I could. I followed her to the car. I opened her door but she didn’t make eye contact. When I slid in the driver’s seat, I stared at her for a full minute but she kept turned to the window. An ache started in my chest and spread through my veins like poison. I couldn’t catch my breath and all I wanted to do was say the one word I swore I’d never say. But I was a fucking pussy, so I didn’t.
“I’m not asking for forgiveness or even understanding, I wouldn’t do that to you. All I’ve got right now is honesty. I know I fucked up. It wasn’t my story to tell. I never meant to hurt you. If you take anything away from this, I hope it’s that.” I shoved the key in the ignition and started the Barracuda.
“What’d you do? Fuck her then pull my email up and read her a bedtime story?”
I went dead still.
“Or maybe it was foreplay. Needed a good hook to get laid? Let me read you a sad story then fuck you?”
Her words cut like a knife. I couldn’t see her face but I didn’t need to. The pain in her voice was enough to slay me. I couldn’t bring myself to intentionally hurt her worse but she deserved the words. God, she deserved the words. Broken, less than a man, I chose the disgraceful path. “I’d been drinking. I pulled your story up to read it and she was sitting next to me. When she looked over my shoulder and asked to read it, I stupidly forwarded it. I didn’t know what it was about.”
Carly’s head whipped around. “That’s your explanation? Drinking? Drinking? What are you gonna do, Graham? Get married and cheat on your wife and say, ‘Sorry, I was drinking’? You gonna run over a kid with your car and say, ‘Sorry, Judge, the alcohol made me do it’?”
Because I couldn’t handle how horrible the guilt felt, I let it bleed into anger. Self-righteous, destructive anger. “No, I won’t. Because if I’ve learned anything in life, it’s that apologies are shit, total useless shit. Never apologize and never fall in love. Those are my two rules. My only rules. So, don’t hold your breath for an apology, sweetheart, because it ain’t happening.” I jammed the Barracuda in gear and peeled out.
“So that’s your excuse?”
Goddamn it! I pulled over and glared at her. “I never gave you an excuse. I owned up to my mistake. You made the excuse part up all on your own. You own it, because I sure as shit don’t!”
“Oh, that’s rich. Everything is someone else’s fault. How convenient.” Sarcasm distorted her pretty features and it was the shock I needed to see.
I’d put that there. I was responsible for all the hurt and anger on her face, in her voice, not some despicable track coach, me. I was driving a car she had no control over, yelling at her for something I did and making her feel like this was all somehow her fault. I crossed my arms over the steering wheel and dropped my face against them. I counted to ten, then twenty. When I looked back up, I quieted my voice and prayed that for once in my life, I looked sincere.
“I never meant to hurt you. If I could take it all back I would. All I wanted was to take you out tonight and show you how a real da
te should be. I didn’t mean to fuck that up too.” I pulled back onto the road and neither of us said another word.
Every mile the odometer clicked, the finality of my time with Hummingbird became more real. It was over and it was my fault. I always knew it would be but I’d been stupid enough to hope she and I weren’t going to be a spectacular failure. I didn’t even get a chance at goodbye. She was out of my car the second I pulled up in front of her apartment. I watched as she unlocked her door with jerky movements then slammed it shut.
“That was supposed to be a date,” I said to the empty car.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Alone
I can’t say it was the worst two days of my life, because it wasn’t even close. I had a roof over my head, more money in the bank than I knew what to do with, and I had cars to occupy my hands. I wasn’t a starving, homeless, abused runaway, but I felt just as lost. I worked all day and wrote songs at night. I didn’t drink, I didn’t go to practice, I didn’t call any women on my contact list. I ate and worked out and pretended I was sleeping when all I was really doing was trying not to see her in my mind. Time passed and I wanted it to stop.
By the third day, I was hungry enough to venture out for lunch. I told myself I wasn’t going to drive past her apartment and it was a fucking struggle every second not to go to the bar to see if she was there. Maybe it wasn’t a choice, or maybe it was, but I found myself at the coffee house near her apartment and I did something I never, ever did.
I sat down at a table.
I never ate out alone. I always got takeout or I cooked for myself. Today, I took my coffee and one of the premade sandwiches and I sat at a table in the back. I could lie and say I was having lunch but I wasn’t. My stomach in knots, I didn’t touch the food. I wasn’t eating. I was waiting.
I waited for an hour. The longer I waited, the worse I felt. I went through a litany of reasons why I should call her or go to the bar, then I came up with just as many why I should leave her alone. In the end, I went back to the shop and worked till ten.
The next morning I was at the coffee shop at six-thirty. I took my coffee and sat at the same table. Ignoring the stares of the girls who worked there, I messed with my phone a few times, but mostly I watched the door and the stream of people in and out. At seven-thirty I went to the shop. I was back at noon, wasting another hour.
I kept up my new routine all week, an hour in the morning, an hour at noon. I varied the times I went slightly, hoping it’d make a difference but I never saw her. All I wanted was to see her smile. Just once. Just once and then I’d let her go. I couldn’t get the image of the last time she looked at me out of my mind and I didn’t want it there. I wanted to remember her smile, the one she had for me, not the crushed, angry expression that was haunting me.
By the end of the week, I knew I’d have to let it go. Myles had been calling. I needed to get back to practice and I needed to pretend I was fucking present in my life. Carly had the day off, so at least the urge to go to the bar tonight wouldn’t tempt me. I showered and dressed and went to work. Because it’d become habit, I was ready for a break at noon. I forced myself to work another hour then went out for a sandwich. Tossing the takeout bag on my front seat, I swung by the coffee shop before heading back to work, telling myself I just wanted a coffee.
Knowing she wouldn’t be there, I didn’t scan the place when I went in. I walked up to the counter but before I could place my order, my name was squealed in a high-pitched screech and tiny little arms wrapped around my leg in a fierce hug.
“Graham!” Big blue eyes, bright blond hair, Jenny grinned up at me with delight.
Shocked, I didn’t think about the arms extended high in the air, asking to be picked up. I scooped her up and pushed my sunglasses off my face. “Hey, Jenny.”
Pint-size hands caught my cheeks, not letting me look beyond her. “Are you having hot chocolate too?” Big doe eyes smiled in excitement.
She smelled like peppermint and chocolate and innocence. “Nah, I’m a coffee man.” My heart was beating in my throat. I knew Carly was near. I could feel it.
“You should try hot chocolate,” she said decisively, with all the authority of a five-year-old.
“I should?” I carefully looked nowhere but at the forty-pound bundle of sunshine in my arms. I wanted to see Carly so bad, I was almost shaking, but I was also terrified of what her reaction to me would be.
“I like coffee.” Max’s determined little voice spoke with petulance.
I squatted and set Jenny down. “Hey, Max.”
“Hot chocolate is for girls.” Max eyed me suspiciously.
“And kids and Christmastime.” I ruffled Max’s hair as her boots came into view.
I stood up and my breath caught. She was beautiful. Haunted, tired eyes, she looked how I felt. “Hi.” My voice faltered.
“Hi.” She stared.
I couldn’t stop myself. I leaned down and kissed her cheek, ignoring her flinch. “You look beautiful.”
Her breath hitched. “Don’t,” she whispered.
Heartsick, I nodded. Jenny tugged on her sleeve. “I’m right, Carly. Tell Max I’m right. Hot chocolate is better than coffee.”
Carly glanced down. “You and Max go back to the table. I’ll be right there. Give me a minute to talk to Graham.”
Jenny looked at us curiously. “What are you going to talk about?”
“Go, sit. I’ll be right over.”
“Oh-kaay.” Jenny huffed her tiny body like an adult. “C’mon Max.” She shuffled her brother back to the table like a mother hen.
One of the baristas who’d been here every day dumped a bin on a table next to us and began throwing dishes in. “He’s been here all week, Carly.” She said it like it pissed her off.
Carly’s eyes snapped to mine. “You’ve been coming here all week?”
I didn’t move, I didn’t blink.
“For me?” Confusion worried her brow.
I gave a slight nod.
“Oh.” Her lips formed a perfect O.
I didn’t have words, I had actions.
She searched my face and I knew she saw every single emotion I carefully hid from the world. I felt raw and exposed and there was nowhere else I wanted to be in this moment.
She slowly nodded and her face softened. “I’m not mad at you.”
A hundred pounds of shit lifted off my shoulders and I took my first full breath since that night. “Hummingbird.” It came out sounding exactly like what it was: a plea.
She took a stilted breath, as if she didn’t hear me. “I have to expect that people will read my work. If I forward my stories, they’ll get forwarded, again and again and maybe even copied or plagiarized. I can’t change that. Being a writer is about wearing your heart on your sleeve. Everyone will know my thoughts, and most will make assumptions. I can’t let it hurt me or even affect me because if I do, I’ll never make it as a writer. So, I’m not mad at you, at what you did. I just...I feel betrayed.”
The weight, the ache, the poison, it was all back. But worse.
“Jesus,” I whispered. Say the word. She needed the word. She needed the words to match. I knew that. But I couldn’t. I just couldn’t give this perfect, fragile, strong bird everything I had. I would have nothing left. I would be nothing. Honest, hurt, bottomless blue eyes that were more beautiful than anything I’d ever seen waited for me to do the right thing. So I did what I should have done a year ago. I turned to walk away.
“Graham.”
Goddamn it. Keep moving, one foot then another, just keep going. But my heart spoke and my body followed. I turned around. And wished like hell I hadn’t. The pain I saw was crushing. “I never meant to hurt you, Hummingbird.”
“You’re walking away?” Disbelief, anger, hurt, it was all in her expression.
“I betrayed you.” I didn’t care if everyone in this place heard us. I was beyond caring what other people thought. I only cared what she thought.
“Please.”
Her voice broke. “Stop.”
Angry, at myself, at her, at this whole fucked-up situation, I snapped. I took a step toward her and forced myself to speak in a hushed tone. “Stop what? Hurting you? Isn’t it clear I can’t do that?”
She didn’t back down. “It’s better to be sorry than to be right.”
“I’m neither.”
“I forgive you,” she whispered.
I walked out.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Apology
I didn’t go back to work. I went home to my bass and my piano. I poured it all into the notes. And the words came. Two hours later, I called Myles.
“We still gigging tonight?”
Myles hesitated. “I don’t know. You tell me.”
I hadn’t been to practice and he’d texted me yesterday, asking if we were still on but I hadn’t replied. “We’re on but I want to end with a new song. If you’ve got time, I’ll come over and we can run through it.”
“Hell yeah!”
I almost smiled. “You home?”
“No, I’m at the club.”
“See you in a few.”
I took a quick shower, changed and grabbed my bass. When I walked into the club, Hank came out of the security office looking pissed as hell.
“Problem?” I still hadn’t forgiven him for letting Carly in back that night.
“I’m only going to say this once. The next time I see Carly upset over you, it’s not going to matter that you’re my boss.”
My hackles went up but more than anything, I wanted to know his angle. “Who is she to you?”
“My friend.” He didn’t say it, he threatened it.
I wanted to hate him but even I couldn’t deny Carly needed protecting. “Good.”
For a split second, Hank looked surprised then he was right back to being pissed. “She’s too good for you.”
“Never said she wasn’t.” No point in lying. Hank had worked for me since we’d opened the club. I shoved past him and found Myles on the stage with his guitar.
“Took you long enough. What was that all about?” Myles inclined his head toward the security office.