Sound Bites: A Rock & Roll Love Story

by Sound Bites (epub)

  “I don’t know. I mean, don’t you have a preference as to where we live?”

  Dylan shook his head. “Not really. As long as I’m living with you, I could care less. I’d live in a fucking closet with you for Christ’s sake.”

  “Aw,” I said, suddenly feeling like I’d become one of those cheesy girlfriends I’d always hated. But I had to hand it to him, for someone who was usually a sarcastic prick, Dylan had definitely developed a sweet side. It just wasn’t like me to fall victim to overplayed love clichés. I was supposed to be the jaded one with the tumultuous past, leaving my guard up until hell froze over.

  “Well, the reason I’m thinking Quincy is so we’re not directly in the city, but not too far from it either, I continued. “And your mom is on the south shore, so we’ll be closer to her, too.”

  “Fine with me, babe,” he said. “If you want to start scheduling appointments for us to look at a few places, count me in. Just make sure they’re nice apartments, like maybe one of those places in a multi-family house rather than a gross complex like this one.”

  I told him that was exactly what I had in mind.

  He stood up and dumped his dirty dishes into the sink. “When is your lease up anyway?”

  “In about two months,” I said. “But I have to give the landlord thirty days notice that I’m moving out, which means we have this month to decide on a place.”

  He walked slowly over to where I was sitting, slid the laptop away from me and started kissing my neck.

  “Let’s look for places as soon as we’re done…” He didn’t have to finish his sentence. He was already luring me into the bedroom. But afterwards, I insisted, there would be no fucking around. When I set my mind to something, I made it happen.

  And we were going to find an apartment, damn it.

  ***

  Five days and eight apartments later, Dylan and I decided on a condo that was being rented near Marina Bay in Quincy. Marina Bay was a fairly new developed area that had a bunch of fancy restaurants and night clubs right on the water. There were a vast amount of condos right on the bay too, but the rent was astronomical. We settled on one that was a few streets over. It wasn’t a normal condo building with multiple floors. Each condo unit was next door to each other, so no one lived above or below you, and the entire building was in the shape of a U. Our condo had two floors. The living room and kitchen were downstairs and the bedroom and bathroom were upstairs. The part that I loved most was the spiral staircase. I’d always wanted one ever since I was a kid.

  The building itself was really cute, too. It was painted a pale yellow with white trim. I liked the fact that it wasn’t in a giant building because then it would’ve felt like a complex. From the outside, it looked like a series of little houses that were all connected to each other. I couldn’t wait to move in.

  Dylan and I gave the landlord a post-dated check so he’d hold the apartment for us. By the surprised look on his face, I don’t think he expected us to move so quickly, but there was no way in hell I was going to let anyone else have it. It was by far the best place we’d seen. The good thing was that the people living there still needed another month to move their things out, so there was no rush for us to move in.

  “Dylan, I love it,” I said, once the landlord had pulled out of the parking lot. “Do you love it too or did you just pretend you loved it because you knew I loved it?”

  The corners of Dylan’s lips curled up into a faint smile. “I do love it,” he agreed. “But even if I didn’t, I’d probably pretend that I did because I haven’t seen you this happy since I agreed to sing with the band. Seriously though, this is definitely the best place we’ve seen.”

  “Are you excited?” said I, the five year-old.

  He pulled my face towards his and kissed me. “Yes, I’m excited. And I love you. And I’m starving. Let’s go eat.”

  Such a typical guy. We had just participated in a life-altering event and all he could think about was food.

  Chapter 19

  Crossroads was exactly the way I remembered it. The same neon caricatures still covered every inch of the walls, the ceiling panels still practically grazed the top of my scalp. Beth was sitting at a table in the corner waiting for me when I arrived. She’d told me over the phone that she had two important announcements to make, but refused to tell me any more until I saw her. I hated when she did that. It reminded me of when you were a little kid and your friends would say “I know something you don’t know” and you wanted to strangle them.

  I sat down across from Beth and told her that before she made her announcements, I had one of my own.

  “Dylan and I are moving in together,” I blurted out.

  Beth clapped her hands, something she always did when she was excited, and her jaw dropped to the floor. “Oh my God! Congratulations!”

  “It’s not going to be for about another two months,” I explained. “That’s when my lease is up, and the people living there need at least a month to move out. We’ll probably start moving our stuff in by the end of next month.”

  After I finished filling her in on the details of our new condo, my nosy self took over to dig up the dirt she was hoarding.

  “Okay, enough about me,” I said. “I want to hear your big news. Spill.”

  Beth giggled nervously and fidgeted with her napkin.

  “Eddie and I are back together,” she said.

  Now, if she had dumped this on me prior to clueing me in on her recent roll in the hay with him, I would have fallen off my chair. But since I now knew that there were still mutual feelings, I really wasn’t all that surprised.

  “I figured that might happen after your little bedroom romp,” I said. Beth looked disappointed that I wasn’t completely and utterly shocked by her news, so I feigned a slightly surprised expression. “So, what happened?”

  Her eyes darted around the room like she was waiting to catch Eddie crouched around the corner. She leaned in towards me and spoke in a low voice. “I don’t know. I just realized one day that I made a mistake by breaking up with him. I’ve dated a few guys since him, but I think he was really the only guy I ever loved, you know?”

  Did I ever. I didn’t even know what love was until I met Dylan. I always thought I knew what it felt like, but in reality, I didn’t have a clue. I shared this with Beth and her eyes softened like she was going to cry.

  “I’m so happy for you,” she said. “I really am.”

  “I’m happy for you, too,” I told her. “So, fill me in on the details.”

  Beth blathered on for the next twenty minutes with every minor detail about how her relationship with Eddie had resurrected. She easily turned a two minute story into a twenty minute story, including a bunch of useless details: what she was wearing, what Eddie was wearing, what the person next to them was wearing, how many times her cell phone rang, whose car they drove, where they stopped for gas, and every other unnecessary element she could dig up. I loved Beth, but over the years I had learned to tune her out.

  In the midst of her ramblings, I realized that she had told me she had two announcements to make and we had only covered one of them. I prayed to God she wasn’t pregnant. That was always my immediate thought when someone said that they had important news. Beth was a nice girl and all, but she wasn’t exactly maternal material. She could barely make toast.

  “Beth,” I interjected, cutting her off. “You said you had two announcements to make, right? What’s the other one?”

  Beth gasped and covered her eyes with her hands. “Oh my God! I can’t believe I forgot to tell you.”

  I could believe it. Beth got so wrapped up in her own stories sometimes that she lost her grasp on the outside world.

  “Justine called me the other day.” A gossipy tone crept into her voice, which was the first inclination that she was about to lay down something serious. The second inclination was that Beth and Justine didn’t speak all that often, nor had they spoken since the incident, to my knowledge. So this had
to be good.

  “I wasn’t sure if you’d want to hear it,” she continued. “But I thought…”

  “It’s okay,” I assured her, knowing I was now in a position where I could handle the mention of Justine or David without wanting to catapult myself off a rooftop. I also knew that Beth wouldn’t be able to keep the information to herself for long, because she had just as big of a mouth as I did. I couldn’t keep a secret if my life depended on it. Every time someone confided in me, I was the girl who was already plotting the next person to share the news with, even when the words “Of course I won’t tell anyone” were escaping my mouth.

  “Well, apparently she and David had been seeing each other this whole time,” Beth said. “I think she was really crazy about him. But a few weeks ago, he broke things off with her.”

  There was a part of me that suspected this, as I couldn’t imagine Justine throwing a ten-year friendship down the tubes for a one-night stand. But having my suspicions confirmed was still surprising. It made it real.

  “She’s a mess,” Beth continued, her eyes widening. “I guess he told her that getting together with her was a huge mistake and that was it. She hasn’t seen him or heard from him since. She dropped by his house last week but I guess he’s been M.I.A.”

  “Ha!” I let out a cry of victory. If it was physically possible for me to do a back flip, I would’ve done one right then and there in the middle of the bar. This was, by far, the best news I’d received in a long time. I couldn’t believe Beth had been so selfish and droned on about her boring reconnection with Eddie instead of clueing me in on this ground breaking newsflash.

  Before I could get in another word, our waitress, a petite little blonde with a pixie haircut, greeted us and asked if we needed any drinks. Her name tag displayed Courtney in bright blue letters.

  “Hey, Courtney,” I said. “I know this isn’t a fancy bar or anything but do you guys sell champagne here?”

  Judging by the way Courtney looked at me, you would’ve thought that I had Uncle Fester’s Love Slave tattooed across my forehead. I was certain that no one had ever asked her that question before. “Um, yeah, I think we do. Would you like a glass?”

  I shook my head. “Bring us the bottle.”

  Courtney disappeared behind the bar and reappeared a minute later with a bottle of champagne and two wine glasses.

  “This was all we had,” she said apologetically, motioning to the bottle. It looked fine to me.

  I gave her the thumbs up sign. “It’s perfect. Thank you.”

  I poured two glasses of champagne for Beth and myself and raised my glass to a toast.

  “To karma,” I said.

  Beth rolled her eyes like she thought I was acting childish, because, well, I was, but I didn’t care. I was in my glory.

  “What?” I asked, kicking her under the table. “Don’t look at me like that.”

  “I don’t know. I kind of feel bad for her. She sounded like she was in really rough shape.”

  “Beth, she fucked my boyfriend,” I snapped. “And you’re defending her?”

  “I’m not defending her at all. I’m just saying that sometimes people do stupid things, like…”

  “Like fucking their best friend’s boyfriends.”

  She sighed. “Yes. And I don’t condone what she did, but I don’t think it means that she doesn’t care about you. I just think she made a bad decision. Maybe she was really in love with him. I don’t know. But whatever the reason, I’m sure she’s kicking herself for it now.”

  “Well she should be,” I said firmly. “I don’t care if she was in love with him. She should have told me how she felt instead of fucking him behind my back and lying to me.”

  “I agree. All I’m saying is that you can’t avoid her forever. Now that David is out of the picture, she could very well end up moving back here someday.”

  Ouch. I hadn’t thought of that. I really didn’t know how I’d react if we ever came face to face, but it wasn’t something that I’d imagine would go over well.

  I looked up just in time to see Dylan saunter into the bar lugging his guitar case. He was wearing a pair of faded jeans and the same black t-shirt that he'd worn to the show in New York, along with a black leather jacket. His dark hair was a disheveled mess as usual.

  “Hey beautiful,” he greeted, taking a seat next to me. He looked up at Beth and smirked. “Hey, Beth. I heard you and Eddie rekindled your old flame, eh?”

  I smacked him on the arm. “You knew about this and you didn’t tell me?”

  “Oh, relax. I just found out earlier today. Justin told me.” He nodded his head toward the bottle. “What’s with the champagne?”

  “Just doing a little celebrating.”

  He scrunched up his nose the same way he always did when he was around champagne. He thought it tasted like “skunked orange juice.”

  “What’s the occasion?”

  “Justine got dumped,” I replied.

  My response was apparently deemed unfavorable, as Dylan rolled his eyes and mumbled, “That’s mature.”

  So I wanted to bask in a little vengeance, is that so wrong?

  “So, I heard you guys are moving in together,” Beth piped up, quickly changing the subject in an attempt to salvage the conversation.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Dylan answered, sliding his arm around me. “As long as Renee doesn’t get back together with her ex now that he’s single.”

  “Oh please,” I scoffed. “That’s not even funny.”

  I knew he was joking, but his words couldn’t be further from the truth. Dylan was everything I had ever wanted. Going from someone like Dylan to someone like David would be like taking a bite of filet mignon and washing it down with a glass of pickle juice.

  Dylan left the table once the rest of the boys arrived to help them set up the equipment. They began their set about twenty minutes later, opening with a new song that I’d never heard before. Dylan announced its name to the audience as “Three Steps Ahead.”

  After the first song ended, Beth and I finished the bottle of champagne then moved on to martinis, despite my initial hesitation. Vodka and I were not friends, namely because it graced me with the same regurgitative gift every time we reunited. Occasionally, I enjoyed a mixed or two, but consuming hard booze after you’d already polished off a bottle of wine was a disaster in itself.

  By the time the show started to wind down, the room had slowly started to spin and my high-pitched slur had gone into full effect.

  Now, hard booze doesn’t exactly bring out my best qualities as it is, but when my boyfriend’s ex happens to show up at the same bar after I’ve downed excessive amounts of it, all hell is bound to break loose.

  I spotted her towards the back of the bar – platinum bottle-blonde hair, giant breasts tucked into a very scary tube top and orange makeup galore. She walked in with her crew of concubines, eagerly poking her head around to catch a glimpse of the stage.

  Christina.

  I actually thought I might’ve been drunkenly hallucinating until I heard her let out a shrill, wailing cackle, and I recognized the whiny tone immediately. Her friends all looked like cheap knock-off versions of her, a disastrous blondetourage that instantly turned the once-fun bar into a safe haven for STD’s. I wanted to hose them down with a gallon of Lysol.

  This was not going to go over well.

  “Beth,” I yelled, grabbing her arm. “That’s Christina!”

  Beth looked at me like I was insane. “Who the hell is Christina?”

  I leaned in towards her so that no one could hear me, even though I was clearly speaking a few hundred decibels above a whisper. “Dylan’s ex.”

  “Oh boy. Which one?”

  “The one with the sparkly belt buckle.”

  “Oh God,” Beth said, twisting her face into a distorted expression. “It’s like attack of the whores. He seriously dated her?”

  I nodded.

  She shook her head. “Renee, I don’t know what’s worse, the
fact that he actually dated her or the fact that you’re actually threatened by her.”

  I elbowed her in protest, a little too hard I realized when her drink went flying out of her hand and splattered all over the floor. We collapsed into a fit of drunken laughter and casually walked away, hoping no one took notice of the spillage.

  Beth and I staggered up to the bar, downed two Kamikaze shots, and then opted to switch to beer. Not that it mattered at that point.

  The next ten minutes were spent ripping apart the laminating wardrobe that clung to the bodies of Christina and the concubines.

  “Look at their whore-drobes!” said Beth.

  “They’re whore-ible!” I said.

  “Whore-ific!”

  We had ourselves rolling with laughter until Christina suddenly noticed me and came barreling over at turbo-skank speed.

  “Hey,” she squeaked. “Aren’t you California?”

  Oh Lord. I had forgotten all about that nickname. It seemed like a lifetime ago when Dylan had last called me that.

  “That would be me,” I said.

  “California?” Beth gasped. “Oh, do tell.”

  “Are you here with Dylan?” Christina asked.

  “Yes,” I replied casually. “Dylan and I are together now.” I stressed my words as if I was speaking to a foreigner.

  “Well I came here to see him tonight,” she declared, like I was supposed to be scared. Like the big bad Queen Whore was going to swoop down from Whoreville and steal my precious Dylan away.

  “So, go see him.” I motioned to the stage, reminding myself that she wasn’t a threat and to remain calm, even if my blood alcohol level was slowly creeping into the triple digits.

  As I watched her turn and walk away, I realized the kamikaze shot had officially taken its full effect. I told Beth I needed to sit down so that I didn’t get sick, at which point she grabbed us both a glass of water and followed me to the table.

  Once the show was over and the band was packing up their gear, I decided to stay put at the table and gauge Dylan’s reaction to Christina from afar. Like clockwork, she ran right over and wrapped her arms around him in a tight embrace. I couldn’t help but notice her giant breasts suffocating his poor fragile chest, which made me feel more nauseous than I already did.