It’s beyond tempting to drink, but it won’t solve anything. I don’t need to be sick as well as fucking dead inside.
I look back to the dance floor, but Willa and Ava are gone. I turn all the way around in my seat, being wildly obvious in my attempt to locate them. Morgan gestures to the stage door, tucked in the corner behind one of the massive speakers. Oh hell. Why would Willa go off with her alone? Ava really has no shame.
I leave the booth and wade through the crowd to the other side of the hall. Security is shit here, and I walk right through the unmarked stage door without anyone noticing. Backstage, it’s all smoke and gloom. The band on stage is using a fog machine and the wings are choked with vapor. Beyond that, where the stairs lead down to the rooms below stage, the smoke from cigarettes and other pleasures hangs heavy in the air. I know where Ava will be—where she always stages her trysts—so I head straight down without bothering to check the wings.
There are six rooms under the stage: an electrical room and storage closet, three dressing rooms, an equipment closet, and a bathroom. One of the dressing rooms is open and Ava’s drummer is smoking like a murder suspect.
“Have you seen Ava?”
He looks at me with a hard eye and says, “Don’t tell me she’s fucking you now.” Shit, so she’s already screwed and tossed this drummer. He’ll quit the band within the month.
“No.” Tried and failed that. I leave him to make love to his ashtray and head down to the smaller dressing rooms at the end of the hall. The one on the left is occupied by a sleeping piece of jailbait, probably waiting for the band on stage to come back so she can glom onto their five minutes of fame. I try not to wake her as I leave. The other dressing room is empty.
I check the bathroom, but it’s empty too. The electrical room is locked for safety reasons. The only room left is the equipment closet where they keep spare chairs and microphone stands and crates of liquor. The light is on when I open the door, but it looks empty too.
Then I hear whispers.
“This isn’t half bad.”
“It’s cheap, but I like it.”
I look around I stack of chairs, into the far corner of the room where crates of vodka are piled high. The girls are slouched on the floor, passing a small joint back and forth. Ava does most of the smoking, but it makes me wonder if Willa is only into girls when she’s less than sober.
Ava leans over to kiss Willa and she turns her head. “You only get one.” Ava still tries to touch her, to get a hand inside Willa’s shirt or down her pants. Willa passively accepts it for the most part, but she won’t kiss Ava or even look at her.
I shouldn’t be watching his. I feel sick.
“Touch me,” Ava whispers.
“Why the fuck would I do that?”
Ava isn’t deterred. She’s palming Willa’s tit like she owns her. I can’t take another second of it. I turn to go.
*
“Did you find her?” Morgan asks. I pick up my bottle of water and try to drink, but the fluid gets stuck in my throat and I cough. I don’t have to say anything. The look on my face says it all. Morgan offers me another shot.
“No.”
It’s twenty long minutes before Willa reappears at the stage door. It’s after midnight; Ava and her band have to start preparing for their set. She didn’t even do Willa the courtesy of walking her back upstairs after taking advantage.
Willa’s hair hangs over her face. I can’t read her expression. She heads across the dance floor, toward the center of the mob and the mosh pit at the front. She’s trying to get lost in the crowd.
I get up before I lose sight of her altogether and weave through the press of bodies. Willa bumps up against my front before she realizes it’s me, and then she looks up at me with the deadest eyes I’ve ever seen on a living person. My hand fists the front of her shirt. It’s loud and hot and crowded and I don’t know which to do first—comfort Willa or crack Ava’s fucking skull.
“I need a little air,” I say. “Come with me?”
She touches my neck. I foolishly dare to hope that it’s affection, but her fingers still on my pulse point. She thinks I need air because I’m lightheaded. Her kindness has everything to do with me being sick.
“Okay.”
We grab our jackets from backstage and go out to the alley. The pavement is wet, but the rain has stopped for the moment. I lean back against the brick and Willa amuses herself by kicking stray pebbles into the nearby sewer grate.
“Having a good time?”
Willa nods and kicks another stone. Her pupils are still a little narrow, but she seems fairly sober.
“So you like Ava?”
“She’s okay. She’s funny.”
“Was she telling you some good jokes backstage?”
Willa smirks at me, but her eyes are still dead. She doesn’t seem upset that she got caught. I’m not even sure if she’s sorry that she did it—she shuts down like this when she feels anything in abundance, be it good or bad.
She’s single, dipshit. She can fool around if she wants to.
“I’ve heard better.” Willa says. “The tongue ring adds a nice touch, though.”
I resist the impulse to add I know.
“Do you play both sides?”
“Not really.” She shakes her head. “I just sort of…go with it. She gave me what I wanted, so…”
“What if she did something you didn’t want to do?”
Willa shrugs. “I wouldn’t let her.” Something in my question makes her even more distant. What is she thinking? What did I remind her of?
“Hey.” I reach out and touch her jacket. “Come here.” I pull her in and she leans against me in a one-armed hug. She’s slightly damp from exertion and she smells like the inside of the bar. Her hair smells like weed.
“I shouldn’t have let you go off with her.”
Willa pulls away from me. “You don’t protect me.” Her words sound like both a declaration and an accusation. I want to protect her. She needs it, even though it might pain her to admit such a weakness.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“I’m fine.” I can tell she’s going to stick to her story no matter how hard I push, so I let it be.
“I’ve been thinking.”
“Uh-oh.”
“Hey.”
Willa taps my forehead and tells me not to blow a fuse. I grab her hand and hold it.
“I’ve been working on this whole forgiveness thing. Trying to wrap my head around it.” She needs to know that she has someone in her corner—that I’m trying to stop judging her, trying to understand her. And that I won’t let her go off with someone I know is bad news ever again.
Willa’s face goes blank. She steps away from me and takes her hand back. “Forgiving me for my sister, you mean?”
I nod.
“That’s a venture you’d best stop before you start,” she says. “You’ll get nowhere.”
“Just because you didn’t…”
“Fuck off.”
“I don’t want to hate you.” I should be mad at her right now. Two weeks ago she was kissing me. This week she’s screwing around with my friend in the basement of a rotting concert hall. I should be royally pissed off that I meant so little to her, but I’m not. I’m…hurt. And I think she is too.
“That’s not the same as forgiving me. You don’t have to do that. I wouldn’t blame you if you never did.”
I put my hands on her shoulders and she tenses like she thinks I’m going to hurt her. I wouldn’t. I simply pull her close enough to speak into her ear.
“I still like you.”
Willa doesn’t say anything back. No argument, no agreement, no disagreement or affirmation…just silence.
“I hate it that Ava was all over you, and that she took you backstage alone. It was driving me fucking crazy earlier knowing that she was watching you get dressed.”
“Helped me get dressed,” Willa corrects me. My hands tighten around the shoulders of her jacket.
“Were you going to let her get you drunk?”
Willa doesn’t answer. Is that a guilty silence? The unpleasant thought creeps into my brain: that Willa might have done all this on purpose, knowing it would bother me. She only met Ava a few hours ago, and it’s a pretty low thing to screw the friend of an ex.
“Are you screwing around with my friend to piss me off?”
Willa tries to pull away. “Because it’s all about you, Harper.”
“Answer the question. Are you trying to make me jealous?”
Willa blinks at me like I’m not speaking English. “Jealous of what?”
“I still like you.” She must have known; God…
“So?”
That’s all she has to say? I tell her I like her and she says so?
Willa shrugs my hands off her shoulders. “Don’t you dare.”
“What?”
“You’re gonna complicate this. Isn’t it enough that we’re talking? That we’re friendly? It’s okay that you still resent me for what I did, everyone does, but don’t twist that around and try to make something out of it. It’s not gonna work.”
I let her go. “Forget I said anything.” She takes a step back from me. “You’re clearly over…whatever we did. Go tongue-fuck Ava a little more. Put your face between her fucking legs; I don’t care anymore.”
Willa blows out a long breath. “I’ve been stealing kisses from you while you sleep.”
It’s moments like these where people either find God or they don’t—the times when the breath slips out of you and you can’t get it back. Time slows and then stops entirely. Nothing matters except that the impossible is suddenly possible, and it’s necessary to rearrange the entire universe around that newfound fact, piece by piece. Awe reigns alongside disbelief, and when it all comes back into focus, you realize that you’ve been staring like a fucking imbecile for an awkward length of time.
Willa turns to go back inside. I try to tell her to stay but all that comes out is an incoherent and very undignified squeak. If she notices, she ignores me. The fireproof door shuts behind her with a heavy thud.
“Fuck!”
Sure, now you can talk.
Do I go after her? What do I say?
I open the door and rush into the dim, foggy space between the door and the stage. I’m short exactly one plan and rational thought is a stretch at the moment—I just have to find her.
God has a sense of humor. I run smack into Ava on the stairs.
“Have you seen Willa?”
“Uh…”
“Since you toyed with her,” I clarify. Ava points to the stage door over her shoulder, and I leave without another word. I know where Ava lives. I’ll deliver hell on her doorstep later.
I burst through the stage door, only to run into a wall of bodies. It’s almost one and The Plains is at capacity. The dance floor is packed and the people in the booths and at the bar are crammed in cheek to jowl. I press through the crowd, using my unhealthy weight to my advantage as I slip through the cracks. I wish Willa was taller. I can’t see her anywhere.
The churning motion of the crowd shifts as the band’s last song winds down. Their set is done. Some people head to the bar, cutting me off, and the rest stand in groups waiting for the next set to start. It’s hard to weave through a stagnant crowd, but that makes it easier to spot the girl I’m looking for. I take a step toward her just as the lights go up again and Ava draws her bow across the strings, teasing the audience with a blast of sound. The responding noise level from the crowd is almost as deafening.
Ava chuckles into the mic. “This one is for everyone who’s got the balls to go after what they want.” The drummer breaks into a relentless rhythm, and the chaos begins. It’s beautiful.
So is she. I grab Willa by her nearest arm and pull her against me. She looks genuinely frightened. Why?
Even with my mouth next to her ear, I have to yell to be heard over the music.
“Why the hell didn’t you wake me up?”
Willa shrugs helplessly. “We’re fucked up, Jem.” Yeah, granted, but every couple needs their thing.
I bend down and give her a fully conscious, articulately sensory, much desired kiss. It’s a brutal sort of relief to do this with her, because I’m barely satisfied before I want more.
Willa is a very giving woman.
Willa: May 20 to 25
Saturday
I wake up on the couch with the sunrise shining in my eyes. I roll to avoid it and find Ava passed out in the recliner. I didn’t even hear her come home. She stayed at the bar later than everybody else and was supposed to get a ride home from a band mate.
I get up and cover Ava with a blanket. It’s seven-thirty and the house is still quiet. I head to the bathroom and hear snores from the other two rooms. Everyone else is still asleep.
Jem slept in Ava’s room last night. I poke my head in on the way back from the bathroom, just to check on him. We didn’t say much last night. There wasn’t much to say, and I didn’t know how much he knew about Ava and me. We stayed with the crowd where it was too loud to talk, but he was greedy for small touches and signs of affection. After the show things kept coming up—finding the people we came there with, talking Kyle out of that one last vodka shooter, making sure he got home in one piece…
Jem is still out cold. He’s in his usual sleeping position: curled up on his side with his chin tucked to his chest. He still has his hat on, which amuses me but fails to surprise. Jem doesn’t like to show his scars, and as a guest in a house full of people it’s hard to hide. I crouch beside the bed to touch those pouted lips and he stirs.
Jem takes a sleepy swipe at me and grabs the front of my t-shirt. “The hell?” he mumbles. His eyelids flutter as he tries to wake up. “You’re supposed to wake me up for this stuff.”
“I did.”
Jem tugs harder on my shirt, pulling me closer. I slip under the quilt with him and he wraps an arm around me with a sigh. For the next half hour, I’m his human teddy bear.
*
I make myself some toast with jam for breakfast. I need something sweet to kill the taste of stale whisky on my tongue. As I wait for the bread to pop up I think about the contents of the fridge. The only thing in it that’s safe for Jem to eat is yogurt, but I don’t want to just write him off with a crappy, boring breakfast if there’s something I can throw together.
I sit down at the kitchen table, wishing I’d brought some honey or rice bread for the road. As I brood and chew, I feel an arm wrap around the front of my shoulders in a hug. It’s not Jem—her hair tickles my neck and she smells like the bar.
“Aren’t you an early riser,” she says sweetly, and kisses the back of my head. Why the fuck is she still touching me? I told her last night that I wasn’t in that basement to do anything but inhale.
“Oh, I’m just full of tricks,” I tell her dully. I don’t want to tell her off when I’m a guest in her house, but if I bore her she may lose interest and leave me alone.
Ava chuckles and nuzzles the back of my head. “So I’ve heard.” What did she hear?
“Want me to show you how to make a newspaper into a weapon?” How’s that for a trick? Maybe I’ll demonstrate how to draw blood and break bone with it, too—she can be the dummy.
Ava laughs and heads to the fridge. She says she doesn’t think it’s possible to make a newspaper dangerous. I resist the urge to look for one to prove her wrong.
I get up to wash my plate without a word while Ava pours a bowl of cereal. I’m wrist-deep in suds when she comes to stand behind me, hugging me and resting her chin on my shoulder.
I want to elbow her in the gut.
“Do you not grasp the concept of being used for weed and nothing else?”
Ava sighs in my ear and pets my hair. “Do you like him?” Now I really want to hit her. “He’s not ready for anything serious, you know,” she whispers. “So much of him has changed, he’s not ready for…intimate relationships.”
In my short eighteen years, I’ve met a lot of people who were full of shit. People who, by all rights, should have had it coming out their ears—who I should have been able to smell a mile away. But Ava’s insightful pile of bullshit makes me wonder if she even knows Jem. I bet he’s never told her a secret. I bet she’s never been allowed to witness a weak moment.
My hand stills on the dish sponge. “What do you see when you look at him?”
“Oh, he’s still in there,” she assures me. “But he’s…different.”
No. He’s dead.
“Ava?”
“Yeah?”
“Get off me before I shank you with a butter knife.”
She chuckles like I’m joking and kisses me on the cheek before departing with her cereal. I rinse my dish and put it in the drying rack, eager to go get dressed, to get out of her company for five minutes. When I turn around Jem is standing right there, leaning against the kitchen wall with his arms folded. He doesn’t look happy.
“What time do you want to get out of here?” he asks.
I shrug and tell him it’s up to him. Jem gives Ava a scathing look—which she misses—and says the sooner the better.
“I’ll get dressed.”
I head down the hall to the bedrooms and Jem follows me. I assume he’s going to get changed too, but before I get to Ava’s bedroom door he grabs me by my upper arms and holds my back against his front.
“Don’t listen to a word she said,” he says in my ear. “She’s…”
“Full of shit, I know.”
Jem blows an angry sigh out through his nose.
“How long were you standing there?”
He ignores my question. “What do you see when you look at me?”
I roll my eyes. “Do I really have to tell you again?” His grip loosens a little and I walk away from him, into the bedroom. I lock the door behind me. I just want five minutes of peace to get dressed.
He knows what I see. I’ve been telling him for months. He just never listens.
*
I sit up front with Eric on the ride home. I figured it would be less awkward this way, and Jem has the whole back seat to lie down if he feels tired.
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