Tranquility

by Ava O'Shay

  Where had that thought even come from?

  The girl had got him off, not the guy. The thought of her tight little body pressed up against the wall… Quill grabbed the bill of his hat, lifting it up only to quickly replace it firmly on his head. His newest nervous habit. He’d pretended the girl he’d been with was the girl he wanted to be with. Not a good plan, especially when the actual girl was standing in the room looking at him with doe eyes.

  “Jesus Christ,” he muttered, trying to avoid her.

  “Hey.” The girl side stepped into his path and gave him a sly smile. She wasn’t ugly by any means. Long, reddish hair, tan skin, pretty blue eyes. She looked tired and as hung over as Quill felt.

  Quill felt his shoulders relax a little. Maybe she had a soul and felt some remorse for letting a guy she didn’t know nail her in the community bathroom at a dirty club. He knew he didn’t deserve better, but she should expect more.

  He gave her a sideways look and a slight nod. Nothing too familiar. He didn’t do repeat performances and did not want to have the conversation where he told a girl to fuck off.

  The girl kept close to his side as he picked his way through the seats in the auditorium.

  Please go away, he chanted in his head. Please go away.

  No use. He settled in a seat off to the side, but not too far back. Mrs. Daniel, Jolin’s mom, told him that proximity was everything in getting good grades. Staying out late, getting drunk, probably wasn’t high on the list of good grades either, but all he could offer was an empty promise to try not to do it again. Ren was upset, and he had no doubt Mrs. Daniel would find out and want to talk about it.

  Dammit, he chastised himself. All blowing off steam did was make the feeling he got when his world started closing in worse and give him the overwhelming need to smoke a bowl. He easily could fall back into his pattern from high school. He struggled to accept the fact he had people relying on him, and he didn’t want to let them down again. Now, sitting next to his latest conquest, the mortification at what he’d done, the guilt, was already being overridden by the need to do it again. To prove he could keep it up this time without having to think about a guy.

  The professor entered the classroom and stepped up to the podium. His latest fuck leaned in her seat so she was invading his space.

  “You’re kind of an asshole for leaving me in the bathroom,” she whispered.

  He would have moved away, but the chairs were bolted to the ground, and he was stuck. He was going to conjure up all the will power he could to keep from convincing her a janitor’s closet was a good place to get to know each other again. Casual sex was not going to make it better, he chanted in his head.

  “I was wasted. It happens.” Quill unzipped his back pack and dug around until he found a pen and the spiral notebook with the words Music Appreciation printed neatly across the top.

  “You can buy me a cup of coffee after class? Prove you aren’t a dick.” Her voice took him immediately back to the scene in the bathroom. A gravelly, grating voice he hadn’t enjoyed, and if memory served him right, he’d told her to shut up.

  He didn’t make eye contact, looking intently at the professor like he held the key to world peace. “Yeah. But I am.”

  The girl shifted and gathered her own materials for taking notes and thank God was stopped from continuing a conversation by the professor’s, “Good morning class.”

  “Ladies and gentleman. As you know, this is Music Appreciation. Or I would hope you know this, seeing as we have been together for the last two months.” He laughed at his attempt at humor. “We have looked at music from a variety of eras. From the roaring twenties to the Beatles invasion to the music hoping for a message of the seventies and bubble gum pop of the eighties. What I believe has come full circle is the fact that old music is simply made new again. Old riffs and runs are done again and again, but at different tempos and with, of course, different lyrics. It is really difficult to come up with anything completely new.” The professor walked the length of the room while he talked.

  Quill liked this class. He respected the professor, and it fell within his thin line of interests. But fuck girl was interrupting his train of thought.

  “Man, you’d think he’d get to his point already.” She sighed then mumbled on about something else.

  He wanted to tell her to shut the fuck up again, but he was trying the ‘I will not engage you in conversation’ routine.

  “YouTube, American Idol, The X Factor are all venues for new artists or aspiring ones to take the old and make it their own. In fact, you are encouraged to do just that. Phillip Phillip’s won the show by creating a bluesy sound out of popular songs of the past. So,” he clapped his hands together, “to get the ball rolling, we are going to have a guest in class today who has made a small following of her own by doing just that. Taking the old and making it new.”

  All eyes turned to the door as if on cue and a tiny girl walked in. She was dressed in dark skinny jeans and Chuck Taylors. A crisp, white blouse buttoned snuggly up her breasts, leaving a little tease of a lace camisole under it. Her hair was pulled back by a sparkly headband, holding short, blue hair out of her cherub like face. She’d classed up her look but there was no doubt it was rocker chick.

  “Holy shit,” he said quietly.

  Fuck girl looked from him to the girl and back again. “What?” she asked, confused. “Who is that?”

  Quill kept his eyes trained on the girl as she walked confidently across the room to where the Professor stood. In one arm she held a messy pile of papers and with the other she shook his hand.

  “Ladies and gentleman, this is Cori. She is a music major under scholarship with the department for some extraordinary things she is doing with digital sound and classical music. However, for today, she is here to prove my point. Which was?” He threw the question out to the class.

  Quill wanted to call out the answer. He wanted her to look at him with those big, dark eyes from last night, but before he could answer the question fuck girl ran a fingernail up his arm.

  He jumped at the contact, finally giving up his ignore and conquer scheme. He turned on her, lowered his voice to a menacing baritone. “Stop fucking touching me.”

  Her eyes got big, her mouth formed a thin line, and she shifted away.

  Thank God, he thought just as another student called out, “It is difficult to create anything completely new in music.”

  Rocker chick, or the newly named Cori, dipped her head and smiled. A weird feeling filled Quill’s chest.

  “Exactly. But it isn’t impossible to create something new from something old.” The professor clapped again. Cori walked over to the piano, which was shoved into a corner of the room, spreading the pile of papers she was holding over the top.

  “Cori has made a bit of a name for herself in the concert pianist world by taking songs one would consider top twenty on the charts and making them into music that can be played in competitions against re-known concert pianists. Of course, Cori is re-known in her own right.”

  Quill hadn’t taken his gaze off of Cori since she walked in. Well, after he nailed last night’s waste of time with a nasty stare. If Cori looked devilish last night, she looked absolutely angelic today. The blue hue of her hair was greatly subdued by the headband, and her make-up was light and fresh. If he hadn’t seen the rocker side of her last night, he probably wouldn’t have given her a second glance. This sharp and put together girl was way out of his league. He had nothing to offer someone like her, but then was that really his goal?

  “So, for the last half of class, I would like you all to sit back and enjoy a little musical interlude. Cori. Show us what you got.”

  Cori nodded toward the professor then placed her hands lightly on the keys of the piano. She looked so tiny next to the grand piano, Quill wanted to wrap his arms around her and hold her. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees.

  “What a snoozer,” fuck girl mumbled. “How is playing something at a diff
erent tempo that amazing? It’s stupid.” She crossed her arms and leaned back.

  Quill looked at her. “God. Shut up all ready.” “I thought we could… “

  “You thought shit,” he hissed.

  “But?” Her expression should have made Quill feel something, but all it did was irritate him.

  He looked at his feet then turned on her again. “We fucked. End of story.”

  The students sitting around him seemed to have physically moved away. The professor stood with his hands on his hips, and Cori’s hands froze, suspended above the piano keys.

  “Sorry,” he blew out. Waving a hand, he hoped Cori would start again and get all eyes off him. Quill thought he’d lowered his voice, but apparently he’d been louder than he’d intended.

  “You’re an asshole.” Fuck girl grabbed her stuff and stood, clamoring around for a minute before climbing over the row of desks and settling a few seats away.

  Quill lowered his head into his hands and sighed. “Yeah I know.”

  The room filled with an uncomfortable shuffle before music began to fill the air. Cori started off with a soft tune, warming up the audience with the clink of keys, but soon her hands were flying over the piano as she played Michael Jackson’s The Man in the Mirror like it was Beethoven.

  It was fucking amazing.

  Quill closed his eyes and let the music flow through him. She played and played. Guns and Roses, The Beatles, Fall Out Boy… all with the class of a classic pianist. He had never heard music controlled in this way. He found himself singing the words to himself as she plinked out the notes.

  When it ended, he was on the edge of his seat, hanging on the notes as they faded into the air around him.

  The room was silent for a moment before the crowd burst out in whoops and cat calls. Cori stood up and bowed, then gave a goofy courtesy.

  .five

  Quill Diaz

  September 10

  8:30 a.m.

  Cori gathered her mess of papers after her display of musical genius. Or at least that was what the Professor called it.

  The class had filed out shortly after the professor’s suggestion they go find a song to turn into something new and be ready to present it by the end of the quarter, but the guy from the bar, that she had immediately caught sight of when she entered the room, had yet to move.

  He didn’t think she would recognize him.

  He felt like she had shared her music with him alone. He knew she was fulfilling a commitment to the professor, and a room full of students had heard her play, but in his heart, he felt she had shared a part of her soul. And he was the only one who seemed to understand that. Or at least he told himself that. He was the only one still sitting in the class. Sometime during her performance she was no longer the girl he wanted to nail but instead someone he wanted to know.

  Quill had sat back and closed his eyes. He was oblivious to the fact another class would be coming in soon. She scooted the bench away from the piano. The noise drew him out of his daydream. He raised his head to meet her dark eyes. She stood frozen, half on and half off of the bench. Seemingly embarrassed, she dropped her gaze and gathered her messy folder of music in her arms.

  Quill sat up straight, watching her.

  Suddenly Cori dropped the folder, sending her sheet music floating off in every direction. “Crap,” she muttered. Pulling the bench out from the piano, she began gathering the papers until they were in a disheveled pile, then proceeded to crawl under the piano.

  “What the hell?” He said before he got up and moved to the far side of the piano, resting one hand on the lid and leaning over. “Lose something?”

  Cori jerked at his close proximity, bumping her head against the bottom of the piano. The large instrument let loose with a mess of notes, which reverberated through lid.

  “I lost my ring.” Cori peeked out, rubbing her head. Quill leaned over farther. “A ring?”

  “Yeah, Sherlock, a ring. You know, it goes around your finger.” Her words muffled as she disappeared back under the piano.

  Quill paused for a moment, then kneeled down and crawled after her. “What are you doing?” She seemed frantic that she couldn’t find her ring. “Helping.” He crawled in a small circle like a dog chasing his tail.

  “I don’t need help. I’m not even sure it fell off in here. I’m just retracing my steps.”

  He shuffled around to face her. Cori was so short she was able to sit crisscross under the piano with only a slight bend to her neck.

  “Well, I’m down here, so I’ll help.” They locked their gaze for a moment before Cori rolled her eyes and looked away. He chuckled to himself.

  “I have an idea. Move over there.” He grabbed her knees and pushed her away on the slick floor.

  “Hey.”

  He flattened his body on the tile. “Lay down flat and put your face next to the floor.

  You’ll be able to see any difference in the shape of the floor. A bump, a rise… “His voice trailed off when Cori placed her face near his.

  His scent filled the air around them and without thinking, she breathed in a deep breath. A shit eating grin spread across his face.

  Cori sat up again. “It’s a ring. It isn’t that small. I don’t think we need to lay down to find it.”

  “Probably not, but it was nice. I’m Quill, by the way.” He smiled again.

  The strange feeling he had when he saw her last night returned. Quill didn’t know what was going on with him. This girl seemed different. He just couldn’t figure out why.

  “Do you see anything?” Cori asked.

  Quill looked across the floor and reached his hand out toward the edge of a dark colored tile to a little bump. Without a word, he fingered the circular object until it fit over the tip of his pointer finger. A small diamond was mounted into the band. Quill rolled from his stomach to his side, coming mere inches from her knees.

  She could see him struggling to keep a cocky grin from overtaking his face. “I found it.” His voice was soft but a little menacing.

  “Thank you.” She reached out to grab it, but Quill closed his fist around it. “Hey,” she complained.

  “I think you owe me for finding it.” Quill struggled to sit up and fit under the short instrument.

  “I didn’t ask for your help. I don’t owe you anything.” Her eyes narrowed. She didn’t trust him.

  Quill reached out and lightly traced the wrinkles forming between her eyebrows. “Don’t do that sweetheart,” he cooed.

  She jerked her head away from his touch.

  “I’m not your sweetheart,” she snapped. “And I’m not one of your fuck buddies.”

  Quill rolled to his back, looking up at the intricate woodwork of the bottom of the piano.

  He took a deep breath.

  “Coffee? How about you let me buy you a cup of coffee.” He crawled across the floor, standing, then holding a hand out to help her up.

  Cori ignored him and crawled out without his help, then began wiping the dust off her pants.

  Quill sighed. “It’s just a cup of coffee.”

  Cori straightened to her full five foot nothing height.

  “I am not getting coffee with you, so give me back the ring.” Quill scowled. “Why not?”

  “Why not?” She laughed.

  “Yeah. Why not. You don’t like coffee?”

  “Maybe because I saw you and your girlfriend last night in the hall.” “She isn’t my girlfriend.”

  “You know that doesn’t really help your case.” He frowned. “Yeah I guess it doesn’t”

  Cori bent down to collect her music folder.

  “You know you shouldn’t be so high and mighty. You were the rocker chick dressed in a skirt so short she gave the front row pussy shots all night, but apparently you have a set of higher morals when it comes to drinking coffee.”

  “I was not giving pussy shots. Whatever the hell that is. And even if I was, it’s different than sticking something in a pussy.” She crossed her
arms over her chest.

  “You afraid?” His cocky tone was back. “Of your herpes ass? I don’t think so.”

  Quill suppressed a laugh. “I don’t think you can get herpes on your ass.” “I wouldn’t know.”

  “Nor would I. Coffee?” He tried again. “You can’t get herpes from coffee.” Quill’s gaze dropped to her hands.

  Before they could continue with his argument as to why she should give him a chance to buy her a cup of coffee, the door to the room flung open and in walked fuck girl.

  “Awesome,” she said.

  “God,” Quill muttered. Grabbing the brim of his hat with both hands, he pulled it down over his face.

  Cori looked around him to the girl. “Your ‘not my girlfriend is back.’“ “I forgot my notebook.” Fuck girl pointed in the direction of their seats. Quill closed his eyes and took in a cleansing breath.

  “Give me my ring.” Her voice took on an edge.

  Keeping eye contact with her, he held out his hand and slowly opened it until the tiny ring placed carefully on the end of his finger appeared. “Please let me buy you a cup of coffee.”

  “Take it off,” Cori said.

  “You.” He kept his gaze on hers.

  With a huff, she grabbed his hand, pulling the ring off. “Apparently you can take herpes to coffee even if you can’t get it there,” Cori mumbled, glancing back over her shoulder.

  Quill smiled. “I didn’t ask her to coffee.”

  “Maybe you should so she doesn’t feel so bad about your wham, bam, thank you ma’am, ways.” Cori slid the ring on her finger. “I don’t roll that way.”

  “Then maybe you should get a longer skirt because you’re advertisement says you do.”

  Cori’s mouth opened and shut. Then she pointed at him. “That. That thing you just did right there?” She twirled her finger in a circle in front of his face.

  “Yeah?” He smirked.

  “That is why I will never go to coffee with you. And that is why, if she would have had a conversation with you for even a minute, you wouldn’t have had her against a wall. You’re a jerk.”