A Fine Mess

by Hughes, Breanna

  “My mojo?”

  “Yeah. Do you have any idea how frustrating it is to see how talented you are and have you waste it by slaving away here?”

  “It’s peaceful here,” replied Harper.

  “Peaceful…another word for boring.”

  “It’s not the job that’s bothering me.”

  “So you admit something’s bothering you.”

  “I don’t know. I think it’s just the weather.”

  “The weather?” asked Kiley as she took a sip of her coffee. “Sure…yeah. It could be the weather. Or it could be one of the multiple stress-inducing factors in your life. Do you think there’s a slight chance that it might be about Emily?”

  Harper looked at Kiley. She opened her mouth to say something, but no words were coming out. She continued shelving books.

  “Or it could very well be your job. Working here while knowing there’s so much more you could do.”

  “I’m doing it. I’m playing my music.”

  “Yeah, two nights a week. And when was the last time you were in a recording studio? You’ve written so many new songs. You need to get them recorded and get them out there for people to hear.”

  “I’m working on it,” Harper replied half-heartedly. She knew it was pointless to argue with Kiley when it came to her music. Kiley was Harper’s biggest fan and she’d made that known since the day they met. The overzealous reaction she got from the older girl after her first performance at Tyson’s Bar said it all.

  ***

  For Kiley, it started out as any other dull night at her place of employment. It was a warm Saturday night in July and she wasn’t exactly thrilled to be working at her new job as a bartender/cocktail waitress at Tyson’s Bar. But she had recently dropped out of community college, and this was the only job she could find that didn’t involve stilettos and a pole. Being perpetually single, fairly personable and twenty-two, a bar seemed to be a good fit since she wanted tips, but abhorred any kind of food service. Luckily for her, this place only served appetizers. Appetizers, she could handle. Angry customers complaining that their meat wasn’t cooked right with their kids screaming for more soda, she couldn’t. Kiley had only been working here three weeks when Graham, the bar’s owner, informed her they would start showcasing local musicians a few nights a week. After several nights of bad music by wannabe rock star bands, she was hoping for someone with at least a hint of talent. She figured tonight would be like any other night when in walked this petite, timid, unassuming girl, holding two guitar cases–one in each hand.

  “Why the two guitars?” asked Kiley, as she wiped up some spilled beer from the bar.

  Harper looked over at her, surprised that someone was actually speaking to her. She turned to see a tall, slender brunette looking at her quizzically.

  “Oh, the spare is for my own peace of mind. I tend to break a string whenever I perform. Never when I rehearse, mind you. Just when I perform. So I’ve gotten in the habit of always bringing an extra guitar. I don’t have time to change a string on stage.”

  “How…efficient,” replied Kiley.

  Harper gestured to one of her guitar cases. ”Two capos, too…in case one breaks.”

  Kiley looked at Harper skeptically. ”You’ve got a little bit of crazy in you, don’t you?”

  “No, I’m just kind of a klutz,” replied Harper as she put one of her guitars down and leaned it up against the bar. Unfortunately, it didn’t stay that way for long when Harper pulled out a bar stool and accidentally knocked the guitar over. She cringed as it hit the floor with a loud bang, the sound echoing through the bar.

  “Shit.” Harper bent over right away to pick it up. ”See?”

  Kiley smirked. She could immediately tell there was much more to this girl than what was on the surface.

  “Well, the stage is over there when you’re ready to set up,” she said, pointing behind Harper. ”In the meantime, can I get you something? Wait…you are over twenty-one, right? You look kinda young.”

  “Turned twenty-one last month.”

  Kiley looked at her skeptically.

  “You can ask Graham if you want. He knows me.”

  “No, that’s okay. I believe you.”

  Harper reached out her hand. “I’m Harper, by the way.”

  “Kiley Young.”

  Once Harper gently placed both guitar bags on the ground, she sat down on the stool, reached into her pocket, pulled out two guitar picks and placed them on the bar.

  Kiley looked at her suspiciously.

  “Don’t tell me you’re one of those OCD people who have to do things in twos…”

  “Me? No.”

  “Okay. Well, what can I get you?” asked Kiley.

  “Two beers.”

  Kiley took a step back and felt her perpetual cynicism washing over her as she stared at Harper. She found this girl to be rather perplexing and couldn’t decide if it fascinated or frustrated her. Kiley easily towered over the younger girl by at least five inches, deducing that Harper couldn’t have been more than five foot three.

  Harper wasn’t fazed. ”Leffe, if you have it.”

  Kiley obliged and reached into the fridge to grab two bottles of Leffe. She opened up the bottles and gave them to Harper. Harper grabbed the beers and handed one to Kiley.

  “This one’s yours. Cheers.” She clinked her bottle against Kiley’s and took a swig of beer before she got up, picked up one of her guitars and headed over to the stage without giving Kiley another look.

  Kiley stood there, impressed with this girl’s gumption. She smiled as she took a drink of the Leffe and wondered if Harper was as talented as she was witty. She was hoping, for her ears’ sake, that she’d at least be more talented than the other performers that had recently taken the stage at Tyson’s Bar.

  ***

  Kiley was silent for a moment. She looked away from Harper and kept her focus on the ground. ”Okay, I’ll let up on the music thing…for now.” Kiley casually ran her finger over the bookshelf, absentmindedly checking it for dust. “It could also be your parents. Or the fact that you live alone in that house?”

  Harper stopped what she was doing and looked at Kiley incredulously. ”That house is all that’s left of my family. I’m not getting rid of it.”

  “I know, I know. It’s just…maybe you should get a roommate or something.”

  Harper smiled at Kiley. “Is this your way of telling me you’ve been evicted and need a place to crash?”

  “Evicted? No. A place to crash…maybe.”

  “What happened?”

  Kiley continued to look away from Harper and took another sip of her coffee. She hesitated for a moment. ”I may or may not have slept with Jane’s boyfriend.”

  Harper dropped the books she was holding and winced as they landed on her foot. Kiley knelt down and helped her pick up the books. ”Kiley, you slept with your roommate’s boyfriend?”

  The disappointed tone in Harper’s voice was enough to make Kiley jump to her own defense. “They were fighting! And I was drunk. And really stupid. And a complete asshole, I know.”

  “Poor Jane.”

  “She’ll get over it. He was a dickhead. And what happened with us just proved it,” said Kiley, defensively. “In the meantime, until she calms down, I may need to stay at your place for a few days.”

  Harper was silent for a moment. Kiley could tell she wasn’t happy about what she had just heard.

  “Are you mad?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Kiley stood up and took a spot leaning against a bookshelf. She absolutely hated when Harper was mad at her. Not enough money for rent, she could handle. Her car breaking down–no problem. Her parents telling her she’s wasting her life away, she couldn’t care less. But if Harper cast even the slightest disconcerted glance in her direction, Kiley’s heart would stop and an uneasy feeling would come over her and not leave until she knew her friend was no longer displeased
with her.

  “I don’t know why I do these things. I really don’t. I don’t even like Jason.”

  “Justin,” corrected Harper.

  “Right. Justin,” she paused for a moment. ”Justin? Are you sure?”

  “Yeah. I’m sure.” Harper pulled off the last few books from the top level of the cart and shelved them in their rightful place.

  Kiley knew it was best to change the subject if she knew what was good for her.

  “Anyway, back to your dilemma.”

  Harper smiled and playfully rolled her eyes. ”I’d much rather talk about your philandering.”

  “Really?”

  “No. Not really.” Harper turned around and started pushing the cart towards the next aisle. ”I really should focus on finishing this.”

  “Because it’s so very tricky?” Kiley followed her, refusing to drop the subject. “You know, we’re leaving out one very key reason for your poor state of mind.”

  “I don’t wanna hear it,” warned Harper.

  “Finn.”

  At the sound of Finn’s name, Harper’s breath caught in her throat. “Could you please leave him out of this? It’s not the situation with Finn that’s bothering me. It has nothing to do with him. I’m fine. And Finn is fine.”

  Kiley looked at Harper skeptically.

  Harper reiterated. “He’s fine.”

  CHAPTER 3

  To say that the usually easy going and good-natured Finn Lewis had been a little down lately would be quite an understatement. Finn, along with anyone who’s ever known him, always considered himself the quintessential “nice guy.” He was temperate, tolerant and would always have your back in a fight. He was also a good man to have around whenever you needed a favor, though he was growing rather tired of that description of himself.

  Today was a particularly hard day for Finn. The shrill sound of the alarm clock refused to let up until he reached his arm out and knocked it to the ground. He was adamant about not getting up today. He pushed himself up, picked up his pillow to flip it over and fell back down onto the bed, allowing his face to absorb the coolness of the other side. Yup, there was no way he was getting up today. He was just going to stay in bed until the sun went down, then get up to brush his teeth, and go back to bed to start the whole thing over tomorrow. Finn sighed as he rolled over onto his back. He slowly reached his arm over to the other side of the bed, not exactly sure what he was reaching for. He closed his eyes, hoping to fall back to sleep, repeating to himself “I’m not getting up today. I’m not getting up today.”

  He scoffed at his own empty attempt at stubbornness as he reluctantly removed the covers and pulled his six-foot, medium-build frame out of the bed. He yawned while running his fingers though his dark, wavy hair and braced for yet another day of his seemingly unending agony. He walked to the bathroom, turned on the faucet and splashed cold water on his face. Instead of drying off, he let the beads of water stream down his face as he walked into the living room wearing only his sweatpants and plopped down on his couch. He grabbed the remote and starting flipping through the different channels on the television. It wasn’t even a minute before he clicked the power button and turned off the TV. He looked over at his cell phone, determined to win the battle this time. He was not going to call her. He was absolutely sure he was not going to call her. He was just picking up the phone to check the time. But as his hands started dialing numbers, panic started to set in. He closed his phone immediately and threw it next to him on the couch.

  Finn stood up and walked to the kitchen to raid the fridge. He wasn’t too hungry, but he knew he needed to eat if he wanted to start gaining some weight. In the past couple of months, he had lost seventeen pounds and had a few dizzy spells from lack of food. He took some orange juice out of the fridge and drank it straight from the carton. Then, he pulled some bread out of the bag on top of his microwave and put a couple pieces in the toaster. He pulled himself up onto the counter and waited. As he looked around, he noticed that everything was a mess. Half empty boxes were piled everywhere and clothes were scattered around his living room. There were several three-week-old pizza boxes and empty beer bottles on the table–relics from when his friend, Seth, came over and played video games with him all night.

  Finn slowly began to realize that he’d never really stopped to take a look around at his apartment. Until now, he had just been going about his day, putting one foot in front of the other. Just trying to remember to breathe, not paying attention to the filth he was living in. He looked down at himself, then lifted his arm and hesitantly sniffed his armpit. He immediately pulled away and exhaled.

  “Wow,” he said to himself.

  He hopped off the counter and popped up his toast. Instead of taking it, he left it in the toaster and headed to the bathroom to take the first shower he’d had in four days.

  ***

  After another long and barely gratifying day at work, Harper sat in her garage strumming her guitar. With a pen by her side, she was concentrating hard on trying to create new lyrics to the melody she couldn’t get out of her head. Unfortunately, her brain wasn’t cooperating and the melody wasn’t translating properly. For some reason, she was having more difficulty than normal. The music in her head refused to travel from her brain to her fingers and from her fingers to the guitar. She had absolutely no patience for writer’s block, or music block for that matter.

  Though she seemed like a natural when she performed, music didn’t always come easily to Harper. As a kid, she always wanted to learn to play an instrument, so her father started paying for piano lessons when she was seven. She never had an actual piano and was only able to play at her teacher’s house. Her parents did surprise her one Christmas with a big electronic keyboard, which she used to practice on. She got a lot of use out of that keyboard and practiced constantly for three years, but something just wasn’t clicking. It always took her a while to learn a song and whenever she tried to create her own, it would just sound too rudimentary for her liking. She wasn’t satisfied and after three years of struggling to master it, she wasn’t happy with her progress and decided to retire from piano at the ripe old age of ten. But the music always stayed with her. Then, a few years later, she started coming up with lyrics and writing them down. Soon thereafter, she started putting a melody to the lyrics and suddenly, Harper decided she wanted to create music again. This time, she would pursue a different route. She thought about the drums and had fairly good rhythm, but she wouldn’t have been able to put her lyrics to drum beats. Her dad, once again wanting to encourage her “hobby” as he would call it, took her to Music World where she picked up her first guitar. She loved the way it felt. It fit so naturally in her arms and though she didn’t know how to play a note at that time, she knew right then and there that this was her future. Her dad, unable to say no to those pleading eyes, bought her that guitar. It was a decent guitar–rather inexpensive–but Harper loved and cherished it. And this time around, everything was different. After a few lessons, her guitar instructor said she must have been born with a guitar in her hands. Harper owned the instrument in every way possible. From the first strum of the first chord, it was easy to see she finally found what she was looking for.

  That natural talent, unfortunately, wasn’t doing her any good this evening. After hitting another flat note, she became increasingly annoyed and gave her guitar one dramatic, irritated strum, just to get the point across. The Gibson didn’t like that gesture very much and as soon as her strum hit the strings, the d-string snapped and broke. This startled Harper as a slight adrenaline rush came over her. Once her heart stopped palpitating, she relinquished and put down her guitar. But refusing to be entirely defeated, she got up to look for her extra guitar strings, which she kept in a box on the shelf next to the rest of her musical equipment. She dug through the shelves to no avail and as her hunt continued, she realized several other boxes were missing, too. Not only had the box with her guitar strings disappeared, but a
lso the boxes with her— microphones and cables. She stood there for a minute pondering where they might have been taken. Then, it hit her.

  “Damn.”

  ***

  Despite doing pretty much nothing, Finn felt he had a fairly productive day. He just finished throwing out the last of seven full garbage bags. He managed to put most of his clothes away, and he had felt so refreshed after his first shower, he decided to follow it up with a second one. Today marked the first time in 63 days he didn’t spend every minute thinking of her. Granted, there were only about 23 full minutes in the day where his thoughts weren’t with her, but that’s called progress. Finn sat comfortably in his recliner watching Sports Center. He was quite proud of the four bites he had already taken of his microwaved pasta and was enjoying a cold beer when his cell phone started ringing. A feeling of dread and despair washed over him when he glanced at the caller ID. He stared at the phone for a moment, contemplating what to do. Finally, he put down his beer, took a deep breath and answered.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey Finn.” Harper tried to sound as casual as possible. When her voice cracked while saying his name, she knew she was failing miserably.

  “Hey.” He winced slightly at the sound of her voice.

  Harper waited for him to say something else, but he didn’t. “So, how are you?”

  After a long pause, he finally answered. “I’m doing great. Just walked in the door, actually.” It was the first time he’d ever lied to her.

  “Oh. Good, good. Um…so the reason I called is…well…”

  Finn braced himself for what was about to come. It could have been anything. Maybe she wanted to see him. Maybe she wanted to get back together. Maybe she was lonely and just wanted to make love to him one last time. All he knew was he was tired of doing favors for everyone. He was tired of being the good guy who always helped out. He was tired of being used as a proverbial punching bag. He knew if it was some sort of favor she was asking, he’d hang up on her on the spot. He refused to let people treat him like this anymore.