The Duet

by D'Angelo, Jennifer

  “Jesus, Jay. I’m doing the best I can.”

  “No, you’re not.” He sighed and rubbed his cheek. “Can I ask you something?”

  “What?”

  “Do you relate to this song? Even a little bit?”

  I swallowed, thinking of the words. I’ll try to fix you. Yes, I related. The song was about us. I’d known it all along. That’s why it was so difficult to sing it.

  “Turn around,” Jay said.

  “Why?”

  “Just turn around so that you’re not looking at me. I want you to close your eyes and forget that I’m here. And then I want you to sing to whoever you picture when you hear the lyrics. Sing like you’re the only two people in the world; like your whole heart is hanging out there.”

  I did what he said, but it seemed silly since the one I pictured was standing right behind me.

  “Ready?”

  I nodded, closing my eyes as the first guitar notes kicked on. I sang the first verse, harmonized with his pre-recorded part. I squeezed my eyes tighter and clenched my fists at my side as I listened to the words in his solo verse. They affected me. I can’t be what you need me to be. I finished the song, and the room was silent. I tried to gather my wits before turning around. He hadn’t stopped me, but he hadn’t told me it was good either.

  I turned around slowly, thinking I’d see him behind the glass, adjusting something or other on the sound board. But he wasn’t there. He was standing right beside me, very close. I reached up to take off my headphones, but his hands covered mine and we lifted them off together. He tossed them aside, his emerald eyes never looking away.

  We stood toe to toe, our bodies just a hair apart, but not touching. If he was waiting for me to do something, he might be waiting a while. This time I was following his lead.

  The seconds stretched out, and unable to take the tension anymore, I cracked. “So, was that good?” I asked. I guess breaking the ice with a bit of a joke was better than just standing there. I hadn’t completely caved; I still hadn’t kissed him, despite every single cell in my body crying out for me to do so.

  “Yeah,” he said, his voice hoarse. “That was good.”

  More time-standing-still moments. My heart was racing and inside my head I was begging him to read my mind. His hand finally rested on my hip, touching the tiny sliver of skin exposed between my top and my skirt. The contact sent jolts of electricity up and down my spine. His eyes were now staring at his hand as his thumb drew small circles on my hip. When he looked up, his eyes were much darker. I licked my bottom lip, and that was the spark he needed. His hand came up behind my neck, pulling my face toward his. I felt his lips meet mine as his other hand traveled up my side, grazing my breast and making me shudder. I tipped my middle toward him and he grinded against me. I let him back me up against the wall. His body felt so delicious against mine; hard and powerful, and commanding. I had always been a big fan of foreplay, but I’d never wanted someone inside me this badly. This wasn’t going to take long at all.

  Jay pulled off my shirt with one fluid movement, and my skirt hit the ground not far behind. I kicked off my boots and watched with utter fascination as his own shirt was peeled off, revealing a perfect male torso, the right hip covered in scrawling script that I would read up close later. Right now, there were other matters to attend to.

  I tucked my shaky hands in his waistband and started unbuttoning his jeans, but he backed away a little, just out of my reach. He was looking at me, wearing nothing but bra and tiny little matching underwear. It was as if he were drinking me in. But I was like a woman possessed with need. I pulled him to me again.

  “Look later, Jay. Please…” I begged.

  I didn’t need to tell him again. He shed his pants, then pulled me down on the floor with him. My bra was unhooked, my underwear discarded – I have no idea how – and I was straddling him. He lowered me onto him and we both groaned in perfect harmony, our bodies still for just a moment, savoring the feeling.

  I started to move, closed my eyes for just a second, then reopened them when he sat up, one arm pinning me to him at the waist, the other hand fanning through my now loose hair. My legs wrapped around his back, and I leaned backward just a little. We fit perfectly together, rocking in absolute synchronization. If I died right now, I would have lived a full life. He felt amazing, better than I could have ever imagined.

  I moved faster, more urgent. I was very close, and he knew it. He bit my bottom lip, then held my head in place so that we were eye to eye. His piercing green gaze locked on me as I fell over the edge, and he wasn’t far behind. There was a final shudder before we were both still, the moment too huge to analyze or contemplate. I didn’t want to leave this spot. Ever.

  “Izzy?” Jay asked, breaking through the silence.

  “Yup.” My head was resting on his shoulder, my ankles crossed behind him.

  “I have to get up.”

  “No. Stay right here.” I nuzzled in closer, my cheek brushing against the smooth hardness of his chest.

  He chuckled, and I felt the vibration down to my toes. It was the most incredible sound; Jay Archer, laughing at something I said. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.” He gently lifted me off him, and I flopped onto my back, staring at the ceiling and hoping he wouldn’t be gone more than five seconds.

  He pulled on his jeans, and I almost moaned in protest. Then he went outside and came in a moment later with a blanket. He spread it over me and I held up the edge so he would lie next to me. But instead he picked up his guitar and sat against the wall, just outside of my reach.

  I sat up on one elbow and watched as he leaned over his guitar, his hair covering his face. Then he lifted his head, just a bit, and he grinned. I mean, a genuine full-out smile, and I swear my heart grew to twice its normal size. The sight of Jay smiling was definitely a sight to behold indeed.

  His hands started moving over the guitar, and it wasn’t more than three notes before I recognized the song. Blackbird. Just like the tattoo on my shoulder. And he was playing it for me. I laughed out loud, and he started to sing. That perfect, smoky voice serenading me. You were only waiting for this moment to arrive. Oh, how true was that? I had been waiting, and now that the moment was here, it was better than I could have dreamed.

  I let him finish the song, but as soon as he was done, I wrapped the blanket around me and planted myself right next to him. He put his guitar aside and tucked a piece of hair behind my ear.

  “Hi,” he said softly, the hint of a smile still on his lips.

  “Hi yourself,” I teased. If he didn’t stop smiling, I might never take my eyes off him.

  “Do you know why I wasn’t mad that you read my notebook?” His statement was so random, I wasn’t sure what to do with it. But he so seldom talked, I was curious where he would go.

  “No, why?”

  He touched my nose with his thumb, then kissed me there. “I was relieved to tell you about Cooper. I felt like I’d been wanting to tell you for a long time. But that wasn’t the only reason.” He stopped and took a breath. I waited patiently, but anxious to hear the rest.

  “I wasn’t mad because… because I want you to know me. I can’t… I have trouble saying how I feel out loud. When I wrote you those letters, I meant every word I said, but when I came home, I looked at you and I froze. I was afraid I could never live up to what you deserved.”

  I put both my hands on his cheeks and kissed him with my eyes open, trying to convey how much his confession meant to me. I didn’t feel like gushing out words would be the right way to go about that.

  “Jay?”

  “Mmmmm?”

  “Could you stop talking now?”

  He chuckled. “Oh, sure. Now you want me to stop talking. Isn’t that rich?”

  I sat up on my knees, letting the blanket slide off me, and I smiled wickedly down at him. He was instantly struck speechless.

  I think I’d made my point.

  28

  “Snap out of it, sister, be
fore I put a boot up your ass!” Kate swatted me with a bar towel and I shook my head to clear it from the perpetual daze I seemed to be in lately. I guess I had Jay Archer on the brain.

  “That good, huh?” she asked.

  “What’s that?” I was distracted and there was no point trying to pretend otherwise.

  “Whatever’s got you all hot and bothered these past two weeks. I bet it has to do with a certain talented songwriter who you’ve been crushing on since I’ve known you.”

  I smiled, then made the universal sign of buttoning my lip just to piss her off.

  “Come on, give a girl a break here! It’s been so long since I’ve gotten any. Let me live through your stories. Please.”

  I chuckled and went over to the other end of the bar where the people were already starting to stack up. The band didn’t even come on for several more hours. This shift promised to be a backbreaking one.

  I filled a half a dozen orders until there was no one needing my attention. Then I went back to my thoughts while completing the mindless tasks of getting ready for the real rush later on.

  I hadn’t seen too much of Jay since the studio that day. He got some new job at a fish market or something where he had to be at work in the wee hours of morning, and he slept most of the afternoon away. I had toyed with the idea of moving back into the apartment but had decided against it. Though Jay and I had definitely turned a corner, our relationship was still very fragile, and I wanted to handle it with care. With the release of the video just a few days before, the media attention had gotten out of hand. I would rather let things die down awhile than risk getting caught up in all the hype. So keeping a bit of distance seemed the smart thing to do.

  Thoughts of Jay serenading my ‘theme song’ to me on the floor of the studio, along with some other images that would make a lesser woman blush, flashed through my mind. Smart thing be damned. I had plans for Jay Archer tonight after the show, and I didn’t really care how tired he was or who snapped our photo while we made out backstage.

  I was still grinning from ear to ear, lost in my own personal fantasy, when Trisha took the stool right in front of me.

  I wiped the bar off and threw down a cocktail napkin as if she were any other customer.

  “What’s up, Trisha? Where’s Cooper?” I would be civil, but there was no need to put up the pretense that the two of us would ever be friends.

  She shrugged. “Probably still at home. I was hoping you’d talked to him.”

  “Nope.” I pulled out a martini glass and raised my eyebrows, silently asking if she wanted her usual sour apple vodka martini. How apropos. She nodded and I busied myself making her drink.

  “So Cooper says your dad used to be a singer,” Trisha said as I centered the glass on her napkin.

  I glanced to my left and right, wishing Trisha wasn’t my only customer. “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “My dad was in the entertainment business too.”

  “Is that right?” I wasn’t sure why she thought I particularly cared or how that gave us something in common. And ‘entertainment business’ could mean anything. Maybe her old man was into porn or something, for all I knew.

  “He was always aiming higher, but never seemed to get the attention he deserved.” Trisha’s voice was melancholy. I wondered if this was some attempt to call a truce. I was skeptical. “He mostly produced music. That’s how I knew Chad and the director who did your video.”

  Ahhhh, so she was looking for a gigantic thank you. She actually thought that she was doing me and Jay some huge favor by feeding into this frenzy.

  “You’re speaking of your father in the past tense. Did he die or something?” I knew my bluntness could be off-putting, but with Trisha I learned that throwing it all out on the table was the key to wrapping up a long, dramatic explanation.

  “He died a few years back, but he wasn’t around too much when I was younger.”

  “Hmmm, yeah. I’m sorry to hear that.” I wasn’t really. Trisha struck me as the kind of person who went through her whole life trying to get people to feel bad for her because she had an absent daddy. The world was full of those people. Yeah, it sucked not having the idyllic childhood with two loving parents, one sibling and a golden retriever in a house with a white picket fence and a community pool, but hey – get over it. Trisha did not corner the market on crappy childhoods. We all had our crosses to bear.

  Trisha looked right at me and I watched as her face changed from sad to almost menacing. It was a little alarming. “You know, I don’t hate you because your friends with Cooper,” she said.

  I narrowed my eyes at her. “Then why do you hate me, Trisha?”

  She sucked down her entire martini in about three gulps, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and stood up. “I don’t know why.”

  She walked away, leaving me scratching my head. That was quite possibly the strangest conversation I’d ever had.

  29

  Jay tried to spot Izzy from his place on the stage, but Darden’s was so packed, he couldn’t see anything. For a moment, he wished she still had red hair, so she could easily be picked out. Although every one of his dreams in the last two weeks contained the current dark-haired version of her.

  He shouldn’t have fallen asleep. He had wanted to get to the club early so he could talk to Izzy before the band went on. He’d been doing a lot of thinking lately, and had come to the decision that he was tired of being such a pussy. He would ask her to move back in. Life may be a little crazy for him, with his new job and all the new demands of a rising band, but at least he could spend his nights with her.

  It was time to take that leap.

  He looked out at the mob of people and frowned. There was no way Darden could continue having The UnAmused play here. In fact, as soon as their set was over, he was going to suggest that this be the last weekend. The small venue simply couldn’t handle the crowd anymore. Even though the band hadn’t actually signed with a label yet, the word was out that they were recording and would have a record deal and a debut album out within the year. The release of the video for the duet didn’t help tame their popularity either.

  The final version of “Don’t” ended up being an over-the-top sappy tragic love story played out by a couple of actors, and had snippets of Jay and Izzy from when they originally performed it on stage. Izzy hated it, and Jay wondered if it was because she knew the director had completely misinterpreted the song.

  He plugged in his guitar and began the intro to their first song; a little Satisfaction, to get the crowd warmed up. He watched as Cooper strutted out on stage, as if he were Mr. Jagger himself. He was all swagger and confidence, but Jay didn’t miss the way he swayed – slightly off kilter – or how his eyes were more glazed over than most nights.

  He shook off the worry, promising himself that he would have a long chat with Cooper in the morning, and he let himself get lost in the music, like he so often did. They were halfway through their first set when he finally looked up again, surprised to see that the crowd had thickened even more. There were still people pouring in the door, and the whole club was wall to wall bodies. He still couldn’t see Izzy.

  The band took it down a bit, playing their only two acoustic songs, just Jay and Cooper on stage. Jay was finding it difficult to ignore the way Cooper’s hand was shaking as he crooned out the opening bars of All Apologies, or how he messed up the words during the chorus of Maggie May. How high was he? He seemed even worse than usual.

  The band came back on after a short break in which Jay tried unsuccessfully to track down Cooper to make sure he was alright. But Cooper had disappeared, and didn’t come back until Jay had played the second set intro of Green Day’s Basket Case at least a half a dozen times.

  But Jay’s anxiousness over Cooper’s ability to stand up for much longer, quickly took a backseat to a more pressing situation.

  He smelled the smoke just a split second before everyone else reacted. The change in the air was not a gradual one. From his
vantage point on the stage, he watched as the panic spread through the crowd like a wave. Putting his own fear aside, he ripped his guitar strap off and jumped from the stage. The crowd was moving away like a herd, slowly making more open space near the stage. Jay stayed behind the crowd, helping people who’d fallen and trying to calm those who were freaking out the most. His main objective was to find Izzy, but there was no way he was fighting through the throng of people, so he might as well be useful along the way.

  Cooper was by his side before long. For the moment, he appeared to be a little steadier on his feet than he had been. He tried to herd people and keep them relatively calm while also attempting to steady a hysterical Trisha who was pulling at his arm.

  The smoke was now visible. It was near the bathrooms, and it twisted out into the main room like a slithering snake. People weren’t moving fast enough. It felt like he’d been in the same spot for a while. There was only one exit, a fact that Darden would surely pay for when this was over. The back door could be used, but there was a dumpster blocking it, to avoid people sneaking into the club without paying. There was no way to open it from inside, but if someone thought to move the dumpster, they would be able to evacuate the club in half the time.

  Jay spotted a small opening in the crowd. Before taking too much time to think, he grabbed Trisha, yelled something to Cooper, and piled through the bodies, trying hard not to knock anyone down or start a riot by shoving. He made it out the door somehow unscathed, set Trisha down on a curb a good distance from the building, then ran around to the back.

  Darden was already there, cursing and putting all his body weight against the uncooperative dumpster. Jay joined him and it finally budged, ever so slightly. They gave another solid push, and Jay could feel every muscle in his body being stretched to its limit. The dumpster finally moved enough for Darden to unlock the door and open it a crack. Cooper was on the other side of the door. He squeezed through the crack and the three of them were able to free the door completely.