The Duet

by D'Angelo, Jennifer

  “She’s at some fancy store over in the outlets. They close at five, so she should be home soon.”

  Jay shrugged, but Cooper gave him a look that told him he wasn’t pulling off the nonchalant act.

  The party got going. The apartment was overflowing with O’Donnell’s all talking at once and food kept appearing in front of him as if it were multiplying in the kitchen. Jay had forgotten how much he missed all this. It seemed like six years, not six weeks, that he’d been gone.

  “I hope you left me a scrap of food, Tommy. Geez, can you fit any more potato skins in your mouth at once?” Jay heard her voice from where he was talking to Shane Jr. in the kitchen. He stepped into the doorway to the living room, trying to appear casual. Shane Jr. didn’t even notice that Jay had stopped listening to what he was saying.

  “We can’t all have as big a mouth as you, Izzy,” Tommy said, crumbs shooting out as he spoke. Mrs. O’Donnell smacked him on the back of his head for his poor manners.

  “Jay! They finally sprung you from the joint, huh?” She smiled at him, but didn’t come any closer. He was glad. What was the protocol for greeting your roommate who had been a practical stranger before, but whom you poured your heart out to on paper for the last six weeks? Were they supposed to hug; nod politely; rip each other’s clothes off in an effort to relieve the unresolved sexual tension?

  His bit his bottom lip to ward off the unwanted thoughts. If she was playing it cool, so could he. That was what he wanted, wasn’t it?

  “Izzy! Tell me all about your new job, girl!” Michelle yelled from across the room. Jay stayed where he was, listening to the conversations around him, but not really contributing much except a nod here and there.

  He wasn’t sure how it happened. The apartment was too small for everyone to be gathered in one room. But suddenly the kitchen cleared out, and it was only Izzy and Jay standing in there, surrounded by trays of even more food. The rest of the crew was gathered around Tommy in the living room, looking at something funny on his laptop.

  Izzy leaned against the counter and plucked a carrot stick off the drainer, popping it into her mouth. Her hair was still turquoise blue, but now it had a few pink highlights in there as well. She wore it loose around her shoulders. It was longer than he remembered. Her outfit was trademark Izzy, which is to say it was unlike any other outfit he’d ever seen. She wore a paper thin pale pink t-shirt with long sleeves that came down to her fingertips, and a black tailored wool vest, open in the front. She’d paired it with khaki colored cargo shorts and pink hi-top sneakers with black laces.

  He couldn’t help himself. He had to touch her. He took a few steps toward her and stopped. She raised one eyebrow. He reached up and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, watching his hand rather than looking at her face. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought he might have heard her take in a sharp breath as if she were nervous or completely taken by surprise.

  He finally looked at her face. First her mouth; all pouty, parted lips and the barest hint of a smile. Then her eyes; that unique shade of lavender, all lined in kohl and focused on him with laser precision.

  “So,” she said softly. “Hi.”

  He was mesmerized. Completely lost under her spell. He was vaguely aware of the apartment full of people – any of which could walk in to the kitchen at any second. But he didn’t feel like any of that really mattered. Because at the moment, all he could think about was the inevitable kiss that was about to happen.

  But then the strangest thing happened. As Jay was spinning and floating in front of Izzy in a trancelike state, he saw it.

  He saw the way Izzy was looking at him; expectantly, and so full of hope. And he knew that this was all wrong. He fell back to earth as the clarity reached his brain. What she was hoping for was never going to be. He would disappoint her. He would break her heart. And he simply could not live with that. Izzy was not someone he could take a chance on. She was too important.

  He backed up, putting some distance between them. He didn’t even have the balls to look at her reaction. Instead he rolled his eyes up to the ceiling, running his hand down his cheek in frustration, then walked away; out to the living room to hide behind the others.

  He didn’t see Izzy again the rest of the night.

  12

  Performing on stage came naturally to me, but it wasn’t a passion of mine. In fact, for reasons I couldn’t completely define even in my own head, I really didn’t enjoy being on stage at all. Yes, I could belt out a killer rendition of Nirvana’s Lithium or my personal favorite – Lovin Touchin Squeezin, by Journey. And yes, I had the whole image going for me; a little creation of my own. Kind of Sheryl Crow meets Gwen Stefani. And I had unbelievable pipes, probably the one and only thing I inherited from my dearly departed dad. Oh, and did I mention how very humble I was? I had that going for me as well.

  No, I had no illusions and no aspirations of doing anything with my remarkable stage presence. I was in this for the money – as meager as it was – and because I hated exercising, and this was the best way I knew how to let off some steam.

  I finished up the last song of my seven song set – Bohemian Rhapsody, a nod to one of the most entertaining front men to ever grace the earth – and rushed off the stage, full of adrenaline and dripping with hard earned sweat. It felt good. Maybe someday I could shed my daddy issues and learn to enjoy this.

  Someone handed me a towel and I took it without looking. I wiped off my face, careful not to smear my eye makeup and raised my head to those goddamn emerald eyes.

  “You were… that was incredible, Izzy. They loved you.” He said it with equal parts nonchalance and awe, if that’s even possible.

  I blinked up at him and bit my bottom lip. “Thanks.” Brilliant words from the outspoken Izzy Delaney. Why did Jay bring out the chump in me every single time?

  Someone shoved me from behind, and I lost my balance, falling into him. His arms came out to steady me, and I felt the adrenaline rush turn to something much less stabilizing. My head felt dizzy and my legs were weak. He steadied me, then immediately stepped back, breaking contact. But his eyes still searched mine.

  “Come on, Archer. We’re up in five. Let’s get this started.” Cooper handed Jay a glass of clear liquid, then slapped me on the back. “You’re in, Iz! Darden loved your act, and he wants to offer you a contract to open for us every weekend. I told you, didn’t I?”

  I tried to let Cooper’s words sink in as I watched Jay down the shot of tequila. I remembered Cooper telling me that Jay suffered from intense stage fright, and there was a whole ritual he had to perform every night before going on stage. It started with ten minutes of absolute quiet, then a double shot of tequila. Right before the performance, he would loosen up his hands by playing scales double-time on his guitar, then take two drags of a menthol cigarette, and he was on. I had never seen the ritual first-hand, but I was suddenly mesmerized by the lengths he had to go to, just to perform. Cooper and I both thrived in the spotlight. It never occurred to me what it would feel like to fear something that came so natural to me.

  The weird, intense moment was long over between Jay and I, and I knew he needed to get his head straight and focus on the show, so I backed up slowly and left the band to their business.

  A few songs into their act, during a spectacular version of the Foo Fighters’ Hero, I was sitting at the bar when I felt a hand on my bare shoulder. I turned to see a perfectly acceptable male specimen eying me up like I was a shiny new bike on Christmas morning.

  “I like your tattoo,” he said. “It suits you.”

  Okay, so he wasn’t exactly a poet, but I’d heard much worse pick-up lines, and he had a voice that was smooth and smoky. And I’d had just enough Captain Morgan to feel tickled by his attention.

  “It does suit me, doesn’t it.” I didn’t have a lot of ink, but the two tattoos I had were very meaningful to me. The one on my shoulder was a blackbird, inspired by the Beatles tune that was one of my favorite all time songs. I
got it with Cooper the first day I was back in California to signify my need to fly away from my nest. The fact that I hadn’t exactly landed yet was an irony that wasn’t lost on me. I had another one on my hip that was a small cluster of roses with a single lopsided daisy poking out the middle. A little odd, I know, but it signified my resistance to conform to everything around me. I was one of a kind – maybe not as beautiful and as perfect as most others strived to be – but unique in my own way, scars and all. I had been lucky enough to find a tattoo artist that nailed the exact imagery I was going for. I had gotten that one right after being fired from corporate hell for my hair color.

  I spent the better part of the next hour talking with my new friend, Tyler or Taylor or Thomas or whatever his name was. He plied me with more rum, fed my ego, made me feel sexy, and took my mind off Jay, which was all I really wanted.

  I only glanced toward the stage twice. Once to see Jay, head bowed low as he hammered out a perfect crowd-pleasing guitar solo, and once to see him looking my way, though I couldn’t be certain it was me he was staring at over the crowd. After that, I felt my mood plummet, and I knew it was time to leave.

  I walked out of the club with my over-eager suitor, and after a gentle but firm rejection, got into a cab and went home alone.

  13

  Jay tossed his notebook into the corner with more force than he had intended, and plucked his ear buds out as he fell back onto his bed. He didn’t want to listen to music anymore. It had been necessary to drown out the sounds of Cooper and Trisha fighting, and then making up, in the next room, but every song was a constant reminder of Izzy.

  It was four in the morning, and he would never be able to sleep. All he could think about was her leaving the club with that tool. She’d sat with him forever, talking animatedly, flirting, laughing. It should have been him with his hand on the small of her back, guiding her out the door and taking her home to bed. But instead, he was sitting in the apartment they shared, with one ear listening for the front door, getting more and more pissed that she never came home.

  Sometimes he wished she’d never come back to Kingston. Why couldn’t she have stayed in New Jersey where she belonged? Far away from him.

  He’d been scribbling in his notebook nonstop for hours, but it hadn’t brought the usual calm it normally did. In fact, it had the opposite effect; he wanted to hit something, break something. Anything to release the tension he felt every time he imagined that guy’s hands on Izzy.

  He had no logical reason to feel this way. She wasn’t his, and she never would be.

  It was times like this he wished he was more of a drinker. Maybe Cooper had the right idea; going through life with a perpetual buzz. It dulled the sharp edges, it numbed the feelings.

  But he never drank other than the shots he had before a show. He knew that once he went down that rabbit hole, there would be no climbing back out. He’d watched both his parents kill themselves that way, and he wasn’t ready to throw in the towel. Not by a long shot.

  Jay lay in his bed, the side lamp still casting a dim, eerie glow about the room. The minutes ticked by slowly. He let his mind wander, compiling random phrases and lyrics like he had so many times before. His hand itched to reach for his notebook and write it all down before he lost it, but still he lay there, unmoving.

  At around six, he finally gave up on sleep and rolled out of bed. He threw on an old pair of running shoes and tugged on a t-shirt. Trisha was quietly closing Cooper’s door just as Jay left his room.

  “Oh. Hey,” she whispered. “I didn’t wake you up, did I?”

  “Nah, didn’t hear a thing.” Jay inwardly winced as he thought about all that he had heard between songs. The walls in the apartment were way too thin, and why the hell did they put the bedrooms side by side? Who wanted that? If Izzy had brought her date back to the apartment, he would have been subject to listening to them all night as well.

  At least his roommates were getting some. Maybe that was Jay’s problem. He needed to get laid. Surely that would solve his insomnia. Maybe he would work on that tonight, after the show. It wasn’t like he had to try very hard, and Trisha was always bringing friends. Maybe that blonde one with the big…

  “So, I’ll see you,” Trisha said, picking up her shoes from beside the front door.

  “Yeah, see you tonight at the club, right?”

  “Uh, no.”

  “No?”

  “Yeah, I won’t be there tonight. We broke up.”

  Jay ran his hands along his unshaved jaw to keep his face from showing any expression. The truth was, it wasn’t all that shocking. Cooper and Trisha broke up every other week, it seemed. But it sure did sound like they had made up last night. And here she was sneaking out while Cooper still slept peacefully. Whatever. And there went his chance with that busty blonde friend of Trisha’s. Well, shit.

  He let her slip out the door without saying anything else. He didn’t know what to say anyway, and she looked relieved when he didn’t ask her any questions.

  Outside, the crisp morning air felt good in his lungs. He took a few deep breaths, stretched a little, then started out at a medium pace. Kingston was just waking up as the first signs of daylight began to show. He wasn’t a huge fan of the town he’d called home for the past few years, but it was better than staying in his parents’ house. Too much happened there that made him want to be far away. It took everything in him to go to Cooper’s parents for dinner every Sunday. He would purposely avoid looking at his old house, and he drove several blocks out of the way so he didn’t have to pass the cemetery where both his parents now lay.

  What he missed, was the ocean. He’d lived in North Carolina until he was fifteen. There, he ran track at his Jr. High, and every morning he’d train by running five miles along the shore. The air was different there; thicker, but somehow cleaner. He missed the smells of the saltwater and the tingle of the ocean spray on his skin. He missed the give of the sand under his feet. He missed when life didn’t seem so difficult all the time.

  His father had come home late one night, after missing Jay win big for his team in all-states. He hadn’t even asked about the track meet. He just came in the house, sloppy and drunk, announcing that they were moving to California, and how he couldn’t stay in that house for another minute.

  The official story both his parents gave him the next morning, was that his father had gotten a better job on the west coast, and he needed to start right away. The real story was that his mother was caught cheating with one of his father’s co-workers, and in retaliation, his father had made a god-awful scene at work, which not only got him fired, but disgraced him so much, he felt the need to leave North Carolina altogether.

  So the three of them packed up a large rented UHaul, sold whatever didn’t fit, and trekked across the country. It was the longest week of his life. His parents alternated between cold silence and angry, biting comments to each other, which led to horrible scenes of screaming and sometimes physical violence, all while driving the car. They would have made it to California sooner, but at one of the motels they stopped at, his father got so drunk, it took him a day and a half to sleep it off.

  He couldn’t really remember seeing either of them completely sober after that night. And once they got to their new home, he might as well have been invisible. They were so wrapped up in their hate for each other, they didn’t pay him any attention. He was like collateral damage.

  Meeting Cooper had been the only thing that saved him. That, and writing. He wrote down everything, which was funny because he’d been held back a grade for dyslexia, and he had hated to write as a kid. But this kind of writing didn’t need to be mechanically correct. He was the only one who would ever read it, so it didn’t matter if he inverted letters or misspelled words. Writing was what he did to purge all the thoughts that didn’t fit inside his brain. If he didn’t get it down on paper, he might explode. And hanging with someone as normal as Cooper - someone who didn’t want to talk about his shit, yet understood
how huge it was for Jay to be welcomed into Cooper’s big, loving family - was like a lifeline to Jay.

  As his feet hit the pavement in a steady, hypnotizing cadence, Jay tried to remember when the most complicated thought in his brain was whether or not he would try to get to second base with Sasha at the Holiday Dance. He was confident, he was popular, and he was happy. He was blissfully ignorant of the ugliness of life. It felt like that kid was somebody different, someone he read about or saw in a movie; because he certainly didn’t recall the way it felt to be so carefree.

  He rounded a corner and headed back toward the apartment. As he passed the park a few blocks from home, he was surprised to see Izzy sitting on a park bench, a cup of coffee cradled in both hands. Her brand new fiery red hair was almost completely concealed with a baseball cap, and he could see her face in profile. She was staring out toward the park, away from his direction, and she had a smile on her face. Was she thinking about her super fun night with that asshole from the bar? Did he live nearby? Had she just left him, sleeping in the bed they’d shared? She took a slow sip of coffee, holding the cup against her bottom lip, then tilted her head back to look up at the sky.

  He’d seen her like this before, though it was rare to get a glimpse of her so unguarded and peaceful. When she was around him, she always had her back up. He wished things could be different. He wished she would talk to him like she talked to Cooper. He wanted to be able to communicate with her without coming off like a cold-hearted jackass. But whenever he tried, he clammed up. She knew too much about him, and he was uncomfortable with how naked and exposed he felt around her. Better to keep things like they were.

  He picked up his pace as he passed by the park, moving as if he could outrun his crazy, messed up emotional turmoil. If only that were the case.