by Hazel Jacobs
The shirt is a torn up black number that looks like it’s been put through the ringer already. A little blood would probably just finish the look off perfectly.
“You’re lucky you’re so pretty,” Sersha tells him. “You can pull off the bloody nose.”
He blows her a kiss.
Dash plucks a melody out on the strings of his guitar, kicking his brother’s chair in a beat.
“Dash!” Mikayla snaps, still tapping at her phone. “If you don’t stop kicking that chair, I will feed you that guitar.”
Dash drops his foot and pouts at her. “Sorry, Mik,” he says. He looks sorry, but there’s an edge of humor to his face that makes Sersha think that this is a common scene in their little family.
He keeps plucking out the melody. Sersha recognizes it after a moment as the verse from ‘Termites in the Toothpaste.’ Logan hums along and Slate taps a light, constant rhythm on the cymbals. It’s a beautiful melody. One which makes Sersha feel like dancing a foxtrot, even though she has no idea how to foxtrot. Still, it feels like a foxtrot-worthy song.
Then the door opens and the music abruptly stops.
Sersha spins around and catches sight of the two people in the doorway—Danielle and Tommy. Danielle has her chin raised and a tight green shirt on that shows off her cleavage, her lovely dark hair falling over her shoulders in waves. Sersha stares at her hair, which looks like spun water, shiny and flowing, and makes Sersha’s own hair itch. She’d rolled out of bed that morning in a hurry, slipped into an old, loose PizzaJohn shirt and baggy jeans, and her hair is in its usual bird’s nest style. She resists the urge to reach up and touch it when she sees Danielle standing there.
Tommy looks as though he’s trying to smile, but it’s coming out as more of a grimace. He’s got his hands in his pockets, his shoulders hunched. Everything about his body language screams discomfort.
“Hi, everyone!” Danielle says. She sounds so chipper that Mikayla actually winces. “It’s good to see you all.”
“No it’s not,” Slate replies from behind the drum kit.
Danielle ignores him.
“I ran into Danielle outside,” Tommy says. His voice is a bit listless, but he seems to be making a serious effort to sound okay with the situation. “She’s getting a studio ready for Lost in Time.”
Dash frowns. “But Lost in Time doesn’t work out of this studio”
“They do now,” Tommy replies. He tries to slip past Danielle, but she’s standing so close to the wall that he has to brush past her breast to get through. He comes to sit beside Sersha, nodding to her. “How’s your day been?” he asks.
“Fine,” she replies, playing along. “As you can see, I had a fight with a bear.” She gestures to her hair.
The corner of his lip turns up. “Did you win?”
“Of course not, it’s a fucking bear.”
He chuckles at her. Sersha grins in triumph, he looks way better when he’s not looking like a deer in headlights. When she glances over his shoulder, she blinks at the sight of Danielle still standing in the doorway. She’s glaring at Sersha like she wants to rip her throat out.
That’s jealousy, Sersha’s brain offers before she has the time to really consider it.
Sersha supposed that it makes some level of sense. If Danielle were interested in rekindling a relationship with Tommy, then the fact that he’s smiling at another woman would be a bad sign. Sersha doesn’t understand why she’s so worried—Danielle being jealous of Sersha is like Charlize Theron being jealous of Kristen Stewart in Snow White and the Huntsman. It just doesn’t add up.
“Is there something we can help you with, Danielle?” Dash asks.
Danielle tears her eyes away from Sersha and turns to Dash. “I was hoping to introduce you all to Lost in Time,” she says. “Since they’ll be opening for you in a few weeks, they should get to know you guys. I know how much you love fostering new talent. I mean, look at the lyricist.” She gestures to Sersha. “What’s your name again, sweetheart? Sansa?”
“Yes,” Sersha says. “Sansa is my name. Lady Sansa of House Stark, Queen of the North.”
“She’s not the queen,” Slate points out.
“Yes, she is,” Dash tells him. “Queen of the North and queen of my heart.”
He and Sersha high-five.
Logan turns the page on the sheet music. “Her name is Sersha Walsh,” he tells Danielle. “And she’s been in the industry since she was a kid.”
“She’s legacy,” Slate says.
“Isn’t that nice,” says Danielle, in a way that implies the opposite.
Tommy is staring at the mixing board like it’s the most interesting thing in the room, and he starts picking at a spare grain in the wooden bench. Sersha wants to ask him about the song, about the weather, about literally anything to get his mind off of the woman standing in the doorway.
“We’re happy to meet Lost in Time,” Mikayla says. When Danielle turns to her, her face briefly twists into the sort of expression Sersha would expect from someone who smelled something really bad. But then she drops the look and smiles cheerfully. Anyone who wasn’t paying attention to her wouldn’t even have known that the first expression had graced her beautiful face. “Are they here right now?”
“No—”
“Well then, you won’t mind giving us some privacy,” Logan says. He pushes himself to his feet, slips past Danielle, and opens the door for her. “We’ve got a rehearsal to get started and—”
He cuts himself off. There’s something dark behind his eyes and he’s clearly holding back from saying something scathing. Sersha catches his eyes flicker to Tommy after he says ‘and,’ and he promptly shuts up, giving Danielle a look that tells her that she shouldn’t try to resist.
Danielle looks like she’s going to try anyway. But then she looks around the room. Slate and Dash are both glaring—there’s no humor in their look, just anger and warning. Mikayla has a similar expression. Sersha is avoiding the Danielle’s eyes because, frankly, this isn’t her fight and she’s not about to start glaring at strangers. Tommy is still staring at the mixing board. He hasn’t looked up since he sat down.
“Okay… I didn’t mean to interrupt,” Danielle says. “It was good seeing you guys. Tommy?” She looks at the man hopefully, and Tommy finally looks up. “I’ll see you?”
He grimace-smiles again. “Sure,” he says. “See you.”
She doesn’t look too happy with that response. For some reason, she shoots Sersha another glare before turning and leaving the room, apparently not waiting for any of the rest of the band to say goodbye to her.
When the door closes behind her, there’s a collective sigh through the room.
“Jesus Christ! Drama,” Slate says in a high pitch voice, running a hand through his hair.
Logan strides over to Tommy and puts a hand on his shoulder. “You okay?”
Tommy shudders minutely, turning his head so that Logan can see his grimace-smile. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine,” Sersha says.
Tommy’s head turns sharply, and his upper lip curls like he’s about to snap at her, but he restrains himself. “I’m fine,” he says.
Logan squeezes his shoulder. “You say the word and Mikayla will go after Danielle like a mountain lion going after a goat.” Mikayla nods solemnly. “We shouldn’t have to deal with Danielle after what she did.”
“Don’t, it’s…” Tommy takes a deep breath, clearly gathering his thoughts. “I just want to forget it ever happened and move on.”
His eyes shift toward Sersha when he says that. Sersha looks away. She doesn’t want to be his ‘move on’ option. He’s got groupies for that. Her heart breaks for him—he’s obviously having a tough time with this—but she thinks too much of herself to put herself into a position like that.
Logan sighs. “You’re going to have trouble forgetting it while she’s still sniffing around here.”
“Maybe she’ll leave us alone?”
“You
said you ran into her downstairs?” Dash asks. “Was she talking to the receptionist?”
Tommy thinks about it. Then his chin dips down to rest on his chest. “She was hanging out near the front door.”
The band share dark looks.
Sersha shivers and pulls her cardigan closer around her body. It’s suddenly gotten colder, as though the room is filling up with all the negative emotion left over from Danielle’s presence. Or maybe it’s just the cold air from the door opening and closing. The snow had been thick on the ground when she’d caught the bus that morning. So thick that she’d noticed a homeless man building a tiny igloo near the Starbucks at the end of her street.
That’s one thing she hasn’t gotten used to since moving to the states. All the Starbucks and homeless people.
Tommy picks at the grain of wood again, Logan’s hand still on his shoulder.
“Hey, Tommy,” Sersha says, deliberately making her voice light as though Danielle had never even been in the room. “Did you have a chance to look at those notes I sent you?”
Tommy looks up at her through his floppy brown fringe, fixing her with those eyes so blue that she thinks she could look at them for years and never get bored. It seems to take a moment for him to figure out what she’s talking about.
“Oh, yeah, I did,” he says. He squirms around to reach for his back pocket where he keeps the notebook he loves so much. “I thought it might be good for a song about planning for the future? The metaphor of the snowflake might work there, I think.”
“Great idea,” Sersha says. She actually does think that, she’s not just saying it.
Logan squeezes Tommy’s shoulder one last time, giving Sersha a nod over Tommy’s head and returning to his chair. The rest of the band and Mikayla nod approvingly to Sersha. They’ve picked up on her scheme to take Tommy’s mind off of the issue even if he hasn’t. He’s too busy pulling his notebook out of his pocket and babbling about the ways that snowflakes could represent organization, planning, and fragility, not noticing that the rest of the room is looking at him fondly.
Sersha and Tommy lean over his notebook while the rest of the band bash out a melody for a song that Tommy had written months ago. Sersha pulls out her laptop and opens the word doc that she’d been working on, quickly typing up the ideas that Tommy has. Together, they work on the song just like they had at the coffee shop weeks ago.
It feels good to work with someone who can keep up with her. Sersha doesn’t think that she’s ever met anyone so excited by words, who can play with them like she does, who understands that words often say more than anyone means.
While they’re working, Sersha finds herself getting distracted by the length of Tommy’s eyelashes. When she glances over at Mikayla, she sees her watching the two of them with a soft smile. Sersha has to look away from both Tommy and Mikayla.
It’s such a shame, she thinks, that he’s so far gone for his ex. It’s such a shame that he’s still healing.
The band works feverishly over the next few weeks, preparing for the album launch tour. Instead of the usual big stadium, Mikayla arranges for Black Lilith to play a free concert in the heart of Central Park. There had been some concern that it would be too cold for the band to perform, but a tent had been set up for them. Heating lamps inside would keep their fingers from cramping on their instruments.
They’ll be opening with the song that Sersha and Tommy wrote for the fans.
“It’s a crowd pleaser,” Mikayla says. “And it’ll be out on iTunes by then, so they’ll be able to download it straight away.”
Mikayla thinks of everything.
Sersha and Tommy have to put their songwriting on hold. Not because the band is too busy, but because Tommy is too distracted. Every time they meet at a coffee shop or the studio—always neutral ground, somewhere where there’s no bed or privacy within an easy distance—Tommy will have an initial burst of creativity before fizzling out. Sersha tries to rally him, but she can never get far.
The problem, she decides, is now that he knows Danielle has returned, he’s expecting to see her around every corner. It doesn’t help that he occasionally does see her around every corner. She has a nasty habit of appearing at odd times.
“Tommy?” she’d called from across the coffee shop one morning, about a week out from the tour start.
Sersha had groaned into her tea. Danielle had crashed the band’s rehearsal the previous day to introduce Black Lilith to the all-female punk band that would be opening for them. They’d seemed like nice women, and Sersha had seen Slate chewing on his tongue to keep the unflattering things he had to say about their manager in check. He didn’t even try to flirt with any of them.
Now, Danielle was crossing the café with a latte in her hand and a surprised look on her face. Tommy, who had been sitting across from Sersha with his pen poised over the notebook in front of him, had frozen. Sersha could see the creative energy draining out of him as he’d watched Danielle coming toward them.
“Hey, Danielle,” he’d said, his lips valiantly pulling up into a smile.
“Are you here alone?” Danielle had asked.
Sersha had raised an eyebrow, but it was Tommy who had answered. “No?” he’d said, confused. “Sersha’s here?”
“Oh!” Danielle had clutched her chest as though she’d only just realized that Sersha was present. “So sorry, Sersha, I didn’t see you there.”
She pronounced Sersha incorrectly and could feel her own expression pulling into its usual resting bitch face, and she had felt no desire to correct it. Especially not when Danielle had invited herself to sit at their table.
Tommy hadn’t told her to leave, so Sersha had felt like she couldn’t. She’d just listened while Danielle had gone on and on about this and that happy memory that she and Tommy had apparently shared. Tommy had nodded along, his fingers clenching and unclenching on the table as she spoke. When Danielle had gotten a call from Lost in Time, she’d tried to kiss Tommy on the cheek to say goodbye. Sersha had felt a surge of pride when Tommy dodged Danielle’s lips expertly, offering his hand to shake instead.
“She’s making an effort to be friendly,” he’d said when Danielle had disappeared. His notebook lay abandoned next to his fist as he’d fiddled with his pen. “That’s good, right?”
“I… uh… I don’t think I know enough of the story to offer an opinion.”
He’d hummed in agreement and stared into space for the rest of their writing session.
The thing is, Sersha may not know enough of the story to offer an opinion, but that doesn’t mean she hasn’t formed one. Danielle seems to want Tommy back. Maybe she’s yearning for what they had in the past, or maybe she has other, less noble, intentions. But the fact is that the effort she’s making is clearly not geared toward being Tommy’s friend.
Sersha thinks about that day as she does her hair for the Central Park show. She’d considered calling Dominique and asking for her help, but Sersha feels like Dominique’s powers should only be called on in a true crisis. This is just another rock concert, not dinner with the Queen.
What Sersha remembers most from that day is not the shit-eating grin Danielle had worn when she’d pretended that Sersha wasn’t there, or the increasing discomfort coming off of Tommy in waves. It was the fact that she did everything possible to remind Tommy of the good old days. Never a hint of the time before they broke up when she had—according to Dash and Logan—grown increasingly distant and aloof. Nothing about her stealing from the band. She’d offered Tommy her side of the story when she’d met him at the gala, but apparently since that night she hadn’t felt compelled to bring it up again. At least, not when Sersha was present.
Had she told Tommy in secret? Sersha thinks that Tommy would have told the band if that were the case. Was her side of the story, upon reflection, not as flattering as she’d thought that it would be?
These are all questions that Sersha can’t answer, especially not when the questions are above her pay grade and the answe
rs are none of her business.
She dislikes seeing Tommy looking so sad and vulnerable. She hates to see the light dim from his eyes, the way he looks up whenever someone enters the room like he’s half scared of who it will be. She hates to think that his words are being lost because his mind is too focused on appearing to be fine—on forgetting that anything happened, on moving on.
He still flirts with Sersha. She flirts back. But Danielle’s presence lingers over them like a bad dream.
Sersha pulls herself out of those thoughts. She realizes that she’s been staring at the mirror for the last minute, lost in memories. Her lips have formed the silently judgmental pout typical of her resting bitch face. Sersha rubs her cheeks to bring some color to them and gives her reflection a smile. She’s dressed casually—a long green shirt, dark skinny jeans and a blue scarf. She ignores the little voice in her head that reminds her that green is Tommy’s favorite color.
Then she runs downstairs, climbs into a cab, and heads for the city.
Sersha hears the crowd before she sees them. As she nears Central Park, the buildings flash past her, the snow still present on their windows and doorways despite the surprisingly sunny day. Winter is over, technically, but it will be some months before New York sees anything resembling a warm day. The cabbie drops her off at the closest point to the bandstand and she gives him a big tip. Sersha still hasn’t gotten used to American tipping, which has had the unfortunate side effect of making her a very generous tipper.
She walks through the park, her boots crunching on the snow, following the sound of excited cheers before she finally spots the white grandstand and the excited crowd around it. A free show would have brought a big crowd, but Black Lilith’s free show seems to have drawn in half the city. Men and women shiver in heavy down jackets and hold signs over their heads declaring themselves the number one fans of the band. One woman is wearing a wedding dress. An off-the-shoulder number.
Very bold for this weather, Sersha thinks.
Sersha takes out the lanyard that identifies her as one of the band’s guests and fights her way through the throng of lingering fans. She arrives at security clearance, gets waved through, and heads toward the line of private tents where she knows that both bands are waiting. She’s arrived early though you wouldn’t know it by the looks of the crowd outside. Lost in Time doesn’t open for another half hour.