Bittersweet Chronicles: Pax

by Selena Laurence

  “Are you okay?” I ask.

  She nods. “I can’t believe you’ve had to save me twice in one day.” She gives a bitter laugh.

  My heart is beating double time, but I’m not sure now whether it’s the anger that was unleashed by the asshole or the lust that’s unleashed by Carly.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask, watching her.

  She looks up at me now and I meet her eyes. My breathing picks up. I’m not sure if I noticed before, but her eyes are a deep green. Moss green, I think they call it. Like my sister’s favorite pair of suede boots with the fringe up and down the sides.

  “I was just walking by when I saw him. I came inside hoping to get away. Then I heard you singing. I couldn’t believe it was you until I got close enough to see your face.”

  I scratch my head. “Well, I’m glad you ended up here, but now I’m worried about the next time if I’m not around.”

  “I didn’t know musicians could fight like that,” she tells me, trying to detour the conversation.

  I fight the urge to puff up my chest or flex my biceps or something. Fighting might be stupid, but if you can win one in front of a hot girl, you feel like you’ve conquered the world.

  “Yeah, I don’t know that I’m much of a fighter, but I’ve had a few years of martial arts and I played hockey, so you know—lots of ice fights. Besides, that was more brains than brawn.”

  She smiles at me. “Well, whatever it was, I’m very grateful. Thanks so much.”

  “Sure thing.”

  “I should let you get back to your job though…” She brushes off her hands on her jeans. They’re white—the jeans—and tight. They hug her ass like I’d like my palm to. Plus, she has legs that go on for miles.

  I suck in a breath, trying to keep from reaching out and touching the sliver of skin that’s revealed along her waist as she moves around. “Do you have a way to get home?” I ask her, remembering that she’s not even old enough to be in the bar right now. She’s close to my age, but looks a couple of years younger.

  “Um, no. I couldn’t get my car started earlier, so I just left it at the beach.”

  Frustration rolls through me. What the hell would she do if big, bad dude was after her and she couldn’t get her car started? This girl needs help, but I know she won’t let me give it to her. I ought to just walk away. I’ve got a good life, it’s simple—I play music I love, hang out with women who are low maintenance, and have a few good friends. Carly is one big damn complication. She’s young, she’s in danger, she’s stubborn as hell. I shake my head and run a hand through my hair. Then I remember what her small hand felt like in mine at the coffee shop. Yeah, I’m going to keep getting involved even though I know I shouldn’t.

  “Look, I need to finish up my set, but I’d be happy to make sure you get home safely. Will you wait for me? I can get you a seat up here by the front, some food if you’d like—whatever you need.”

  She thinks about it “Okay,” she tells me with a small smile. “I liked listening to you play.”

  “That’s great. I liked having you listen. Come on. I’ll get you set up.”

  The next hour consists of me playing music while I watch Carly like she’s the last woman on Earth. Everything she does is fascinating. The way she eats the burger I had the waitress bring her, how she looks at me while I’m singing, the color of her hair when the lights play off it. By the time my set is done, it’s official that I’m a lust-struck moron.

  After I’m done and packed up, I lead her outside to my truck. “You live in the dorms?” I ask as I help her up into the cab.

  “Gabriel Hall,” she answers.

  “I know right where that is.” I climb in my side and buckle up before I turn to her. “So, are you going to let me help you out now? I mean it’s pretty obvious the guy’s not going away.”

  She gnaws on the inside of her cheek, her eyes turned to the lights blurring by the windows as we drive along the main drag toward the college. She drops her gaze to her lap, winding her fingers together nervously.

  “I can’t,” she says. “I can’t let you get involved. I mean you’ve already put yourself in danger. He knows what you look like and where you work. You need to be careful.

  “And you still won’t go to the cops?”

  She shakes her head vehemently. “No. No cops. I know the way these guys work. I have a little money I can give them, and then if I just stay out of sight, they’ll get tired of hassling me.” She pastes a brilliant smile on and looks up at me. “It’ll all be fine. I’ve seen my dad go through stuff like this a hundred times. It always works out.”

  I slow the truck down as we near the main doors to Gabriel Hall. When I roll to a stop she’s out the door before I can blink.

  “See you around, Pax,” she tells me as she hops out.

  “Carly—“ I call, but she’s already bounding up the steps and reaching for the front doors of the dorm. Damn.

  **

  Five days later Vaughn rolls into town. Vaughn and I grew up together although we went to different schools. His dad was one of the sound techs who worked on my dad’s albums at the infamous Studio B in Portland. My dad and Vaughn’s have been working together for more than twenty years, and Vaughn and I grew up in the lounge of Studio B, listening to the guys lay down tracks and messing with his dad’s sound equipment. Even as teens, if Vaughn or I heard that the other one was going to be hanging out at Studio B, we’d come down and just shoot the shit for a while. Catching up on what girls we’d been chasing or our most recent vacation.

  I haven’t seen Vaughn in over a year. The last time we connected was at the Birmingham airport when he had a layover and I drove up to hang out for a few hours.

  He pulls up to my condo about four p.m. on this sunny, late summer afternoon, and I walk outside to meet him at his rental car.

  “Six Pax,” he says, using the nickname he created for me when we were fourteen and I first got abs that could actually be seen by the naked eye. He pulls me in for a slap on the back. “How the hell are you, man?”

  I smile, realizing just how much I miss Vaughn and my friends back in Portland. We communicate some, but it’s just not the same as being there face to face. It’s damn good to see him after all this time.

  “I’m doing fine,” I reply. “How was your flight?”

  “Well, I got the flight attendant’s phone number, so I’d say it was great.”

  I laugh as I shoulder him out of the way and grab his bag from the trunk. “I see some things haven’t changed.”

  “You know, there are just so many women and so little time, son. I can’t ever take a break or I’ll never finish.” He winks and I roll my eyes.

  We head on inside and Vaughn whistles as he sees the place.

  “Dude, that’s a view and a half,” he tells me.

  I’m almost embarrassed to live here, but it is what it is, I guess. And if anyone understands the situation with my folks, Vaughn does.

  “Yeah, I let Dad spring for it. I’m doing everything else on my own, but it’s kind of tough to turn down free housing.” I walk toward the bedrooms. “I have a spare room, so if you’re good sleeping next to my guitar and keyboard, it’s all yours.”

  “This is great, dude. I can’t thank you enough for letting me stay with you. My cousin, man… It’s a mess.”

  I sit down on the couch that will fold out to be Vaughn’s bed. “Oh yeah? What’s going on? She taking her dad’s death hard?”

  He flops down next to me and picks up a drumstick that’s lying on the coffee table. It’s one of my dad’s. I know how to play drums, but they’ve never interested me all that much. These days though, I find myself tapping out a beat on the furniture because it makes me feel closer to my dad when I’m missing him.

  “It’s way more than that,” Vaughn says twirling the stick between his fingers. “Her old man was a bastard, you know? My dad hated him so much he wouldn’t let him come visit us. My mom would go alone to see him every few ye
ars, and she tried to keep tabs on my cousin, but things down here were always a mess.”

  “What about your cousin’s mom?” I ask.

  “She took off when Carly was tiny—“

  My head snaps up. “Wait, what did you say?”

  Vaughn looks at me perplexed. “My cousin’s mom took off?”

  “What’s your cousin’s name?”

  “Carly. Why? You know her?”

  “About five foot eight? Long, dark hair?”

  “Yep, that’s her. How do you know her?”

  “Dude, I saved her from some loan shark who was dragging her around the beach just last week.”

  Vaughn’s up off the sofa in record time. “What? Was she hurt? Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”

  “Vaughn. Calm down. I didn’t know she was your cousin. We didn’t trade stories about extended family. But, later that night he was after her again, and coincidentally they ended up in a tussle in the bar I was playing at. But I made sure the bouncers tossed his ass out and I took her home to the dorms. That was it.”

  In the back of my mind, a little voice is laughing at me. That was it. Yeah, right.

  Vaughn runs a hand through his blond hair and takes a deep breath. “Okay. I’m sorry. I know you’re right. But I don’t get why the hell she didn’t call me or my mom. She knew one of us would be down here in a few hours if she needed help.”

  “I don’t know. I offered to help her out as well and she turned me down flat. She’s kind of stubborn if you ask me.”

  “Well, that’s going to end,” Vaughn says. “She’s eighteen damn years old. There’s no way my family’s going to leave her alone with her dad’s shit raining down on her head.”

  “So, he was a gambler or what?” I ask, trying to sound casual but feeling this thrill of excitement when I realize I’ve found an ‘in’ with Carly. I’ve been beating my head against a brick wall for the last week trying to come up with a way to see her again. I know where she lives, so I could run into her without too much trouble, but then what? I need an angle or she’ll blow me off again, I’m sure. Now that I have Vaughn here if I stick to my old buddy like glue, he’ll take me right to the gorgeous Carly. My heart races at the idea of seeing her again.

  “Yeah.” Vaughn sits back down. “Her dad was hopeless. Selfish, manipulative, and always going on about the next ‘big’ thing. He always had some scheme or plan or campaign for how he was going to strike it rich. It’s no wonder he got offed before he hit fifty.”

  “Wait. He was murdered?”

  “Yeah, man. It was gruesome. They found him nailed to a wall in a warehouse down by the docks. My mom cried for days afterward.”

  “Holy shit,” I breathe out, remembering the story in the local papers. It was one of the most violent murders in Bittersweet history. Especially since we only have about one a year here. “And no one thought Carly might be in danger after that?”

  “Hell yes they did. The cops tried to convince her to go home with my mom, but she refused. She’s eighteen, but legally, that’s all she needs to be. We can’t force her to come to Portland if she refuses.”

  My mind spins with memories of the sleazy guy who had his hands on her. What might a guy like that do to a young girl if he got her someplace alone? I shiver, my fists clenching at the thought.

  “Well, dude,” I tell him, feeling anxious to see Carly and be assured that she’s okay, “text her. Let’s go get her and find out what the hell’s going on.”

  “On it,” he answers.

  I try to still the agitation in my heart and in my limbs. Carly. I have my access, and I feel like my life just got a hundred times more complicated and a hundred times more beautiful all at once.

  **

  Vaughn can’t reach Carly, so we decide to go to the dorms and wait for her. I don’t have a gig tonight, and I’m free to camp out as long as we need to.

  We pull up in the driveway where I dropped Carly off almost a week ago. It’s almost seven o’clock and the sun is starting to set. As we come up the long entry to the cluster of residence halls, Vaughn says, “What the hell?”

  I follow his gaze to where I see the top half of a girl hanging out the window of an older-model American sedan. She’s bent over the window frame, pounding on the side of the car while it rolls along past the front of the buildings.

  The parking lot is one-way in and out, so the car starts to weave down aisles to maneuver around until it’s coming toward us. My truck is hardly moving at this point as Vaughn and I try to process what’s going on. He’s the first one to say it when the vehicle gets close enough.

  “Shit! That’s Carly!”

  My mind goes on autopilot. I see the car moving right at us, and it’s picking up speed. Vaughn has unplugged the iPod so we can hear better, and the engine of the sedan is revving as the driver hits the straightaway that’ll take them from the dorms on out of campus. All I know is that, once they’re out of this parking lot, the chances that we can help Carly diminish. A lot.

  Vaughn says some very foul words as I jerk the car to the left, placing it crossways in the road. We both look, wide-eyed, as the car continues to barrel down on us.

  “Vaughn!” I yell, adrenaline punching me in the chest. “Out! Now!”

  He goes one direction and I go the other. The sedan screeches its tires as it careens at my truck, which I just finished paying for (yeah, the stuff you think of at a time like this). It comes to a smoking, roaring stop mere inches from the side of my only form of transportation. Then we hear Carly.

  She’s still leaning out the passenger’s side window, pounding on it and screaming her ever-loving head off. The girl’s got a set of lungs on her.

  “Let me out, you jerk!” she shrieks as she struggles to crawl out the window.

  Her voice seems to spur both Vaughn and me into action. He runs at the driver’s side, I go to the passenger’s side.

  When I reach Carly, I wrench the door open, pulling her with it. She topples out right into my arms. I manage to keep from falling but just get the two of us righted before the bastard from the bar and the beach is out of the car and on me, shoving Carly to one side as he jumps on me.

  Carly yelps when she lands on her ass on the pavement. I’m not sure what Vaughn’s doing, but given the noises I’m hearing from the far side of the car, he has the driver out and someone is getting the crap beaten out of them. I can only hope it’s not Vaughn.

  The dude on me has me flattened on the ground, and I gain my bearings just in time to see his fist cocked back, ready to fly. I take the heel of my hand and shove it into his chin as hard as I can, feeling his teeth crack when I do. He screams out in pain and falls off me. I roll over and pin him, narrowly avoiding his knee to my most valuable assets. I grab his shoulders and give him a good, hard shake, knocking his head against the asphalt. He groans and his head lolls to the side, blood trickling from his lip where his teeth sliced it open.

  I climb off the guy, stumbling as I shake out my wrist where I fell on it when he tackled me. It’s my left. No guitar for a few days. Dammit.

  “Oh my God. Are you okay?” Carly says, turning me to face her.

  I look down at her big, green eyes, which are wide with fear. Her breath is coming fast and her lips are trembling. Her hands are on my shoulders and I can feel the heat where they press into my cotton T-shirt.

  “I’m so sorry,” she says, very quiet.

  I blink at her, thinking that I’d do it all over if she’d keep looking at me like this. Then I take a breath. I’m pretty sure I’ve forgotten about respiration for several seconds, maybe even minutes.

  “It’s okay. I mean, I’m okay.” I try to fight past this feeling of fuzziness in my head. Did I get hit? I’m not sure. Then I hear a loud grunt come from the far side of the car and Vaughn stumbles over, rubbing his head.

  “Shit, you get coldcocked, man?” I ask.

  He shakes his head and spits out, “Nah, just got the wind knocked out of me before the jerk took o
ff.”

  Carly looks at Vaughn now and shrieks. “Vaughn? Oh my God! What are you doing here?”

  “You knew I was coming to town today, Carly. The more important question is what’s going on?”

  From the corner of my eye, I see the guy I knocked out starting to move around. “Uh, let’s have this discussion in the truck, Vaughn.”

  He nods and grabs Carly’s elbow as I head around to the driver’s side.

  I hear Carly protesting as he stuffs her in the cab. “Vaughn, you can’t just come charging in here and start bossing me around.”

  “Go, Pax,” Vaughn says as he climbs in after Carly and slams the door shut.

  I do the world’s fastest K-turn and haul out of campus.

  “Vaughn? Did you hear me?” she demands.

  Vaughn sighs and rolls his eyes to the ceiling. “Carly. You were in the process of being kidnapped. Are you going to bitch at me about rescuing you?”

  She opens her mouth then clamps it closed with a click. I try to smother my smirk, but she sees it and turns to glare at me. “And how in the world do you know my cousin? What, did you guys meet at rescuers anonymous or something?”

  Pax busts out laughing. “God, you’re as big a pain in the ass as your old man was, Carly.”

  “I grew up in Portland,” I tell her. “With Vaughn. We’ve known each other our whole lives.”

  “What are the odds?” she mumbles.

  “Now.” Vaughn looks at her sternly. “What the hell was all that back there?”

  She opens her mouth, but Vaughn can tell that she’s going to protest again.

  “Don’t even, Carly. I’ll get my mom down here on the next flight, and she’ll have the police camped out in your hallway before the day’s done. You might be an adult, but you’re far from capable of making your own choices. Spit it out. Who were those guys and why were they hauling you away in a car?”

  I pull into my driveway and turn to look at her. Her hair is mussed from the scuffle and she has a smudge of dirt on her cheek. I refrain from wiping it off like I want to. Vaughn doesn’t have any sisters, so I don’t know if he’d be one of those super-protective big brothers, but I’m starting to guess that he’s a pretty protective older cousin. As much as I want to get to know Carly, I might have to negotiate Vaughn’s approval first.