by L A Tavares
I nod. Tears fill my eyes and overflow, running down my cheeks. I use the back of my hand to wipe under my eyes. She returns to the living room, leaving me by myself in the bedroom. I fall backward, crash into the bed and stare at the ceiling, wondering where we go from here.
There must be something I’m missing or some information I’m not privy to. Blake is no quitter—clearly. It’s what got us into this mess.
But quitting the band? That’s not Blake.
He’s easily the most persistent person I know.
* * * *
Then
Everyone’s enthusiasm leaves our classroom noisy with almost graduation excitement. Studying and preparing for exams has gone completely out of the window.
At the other side of the room, a blond-haired boy sits on his desk with his feet on his chair talking his long haired, loud-mouthed best friend.
My heart breaks a bit knowing this is the last classroom Blake Mathews and I will ever share. For years we’ve done this back and forth routine where he wants to be with me and I say no and when I’m ready for him, he asks someone else to prom.
It hurt more than I’d like to admit. He and I just always seemed to be in different places, going different directions. I suppose it’s not worth overthinking now. We’re graduating soon.
That and his band is about to make it big. I can feel it. He will be somebody, on the road, in a million cities where people know his name and I’ll be here, tied to this town.
His best friend, Xander, got a head start on his heart breaking. Xander dumped my best friend Rina as soon as caps and gowns were ready for pick up. It’s just another sign that things wouldn’t work for me and Blake either. The bell rings and Blake jumps down from his desk, exiting through the doorway without even looking back at me.
Blake and I don’t have the next class together but Xander and I do. We’ve never been friends necessarily, but I know exactly who he is. We’ve been in the same class since preschool. I still remember a time when Xander was Alexander. He had braces and glasses and a face full of acne. Somewhere along the way he grew out his hair, changed his style and found his voice.
“Kelly.” Xander takes the seat behind me, though it’s not his usual one. “I need to talk to you.”
Georgy Harris runs down the row of desks with his overstuffed backpack swinging back and forth, hitting other students as he passes through.
“That’s my seat,” he says to Xander. Xander leans back into the chair and looks at Georgy.
“See that chair right there?” Xander points across the room.
“Yeah,” Georgy says, hesitation in his voice.
“That’s your seat now.” Xander turns back to me and I stifle a laugh. “Anyway…as I was saying,” he continues as Georgie finds his way to his new home, “you need to go out with Blake.”
“No, thank you.” My answer is stern and steadfast, my eyes are fixed on the doodles I’m drawing on my notebook cover. “That ship left the port months ago.”
“Why?”
I can’t answer him. The idea of Blake scares me. Their music is so good and they are growing so fast that I am sure I would just be setting myself up to be let down.
“Is this still because of prom?” Xander presses.
“Yes,” I lie because it’s easier than admitting I’m too afraid to take a chance on him. “Did he send you to talk to me?”
“No. Yes. Maybe. Just give the boy a chance, Kel.” I don’t answer him. I just continue to scribble in my notebook.
Blake and I still have one class left together, and it’s the last period of the day. We sit in groups to quiz each other on the study guides for our upcoming finals, but most people are talking and socializing rather than being productive. The desks are turned in groups of four and Blake sits two makeshift tables away from me. I stare at the back of his head for most of the class, rather than focus on the study material in my hand. I consider Xander’s words. Maybe he’s right. What would be the worst that could happen if I just walk up to him, tell him how I feel—and have felt all these years—and finally take a chance on him? It takes all of the courage I have to get up from this chair, but just as its legs screech against the tile floor, the bell rings. Blake gathers his belongings and exits through the door without so much of a glance over his shoulder as he leaves me behind. The day is over—and so is the one fleeting moment of confidence I had.
I don’t even stop at my locker as I stomp toward the main exit, beyond ready for this day to be finished. One day closer to graduation I think as I place my hands against the metal bar of the door.
“Miss Montoy,” someone says as they join me in the foyer.
“What?” I snap, more aggressively than I’d intended. I turn to find Principal Wheeler standing at the top of the stairs. “Oh, I’m sorry, Principal Wheeler. Yes, sir?”
“I just thought you might like to know the yearbooks came in today.” He hands me a maroon leatherbound book with gold writing on the cover that gleams in the lights overhead. “I know how much work you put into these. I thought you might like to get the first copy.”
“Thank you so much.” I smile as I assess the cover. “I appreciate it.”
“You deserve it.” He winks and turns away before I exit through the doors and start my walk home, yearbook in hand. I head to my house and meet Natalie there to show it to her.
Later, Natalie sits on my bed, flipping the pages in the finalized yearbook. No one else has seen them yet. I’m the only one who had broken the binding on one of these highly anticipated books. Joining the yearbook staff wasn’t initially part of my high school plans but it turned out to be something I loved and exceled at.
She turns a page and looks up at me, rolling her eyes dramatically. I smile, knowing exactly what she’s thinking. She looks at me again, one eyebrow raised then tosses the book my direction like a frisbee.
“Hey!” I squeal as the yearbook falls open in front of me. “What?” I sign, all smiles and laughter.
“Could you have taken any more pictures of him?” Natalie signs, her sarcasm evident in the way she shakes her head and draws out the speed of the signs for emphasis.
“I missed my chance with him,” I sign back to her, sad.
“Why don’t you just tell him how you feel?” Her eyebrow arches in a curious form.
I shrug. “Every time I try to, I freeze. I can’t say the words.”
“So, write them,” she suggests, leaning forward and pushing the yearbook closer to me.
* * * *
The cafeteria is alive with excited classmates waiting to get their yearbook. Dozens of boxes of the final product are being unloaded onto the table around me while I sort through and check names off on a list.
“Hey, Kel,” Blake says. My gaze shoots upward at the sound of his voice. His hair is a bit longer, an unkempt style that I almost grin at but shut the smile down before it starts.
“Blake.” I keep the conversation short. We haven’t spoken since the day he told me there would be a someday for us. He’d said “Someday, you’ll see” and it’s all I have thought of since. I want to tell him he was right, that even after years of pushing him aside, he was the one I needed.
“About your yearbook…” I start, my palms sweating as I speak. His yearbook seems to weigh more than anyone else’s as it holds all the words that I haven’t been able to say over the last six years. I find my courage somewhere buried deep inside and drag it to the surface. Just when I’m finally ready to tell him I wrote something in his yearbook I’d like him to read, we’re joined at the table by someone else.
“There you are,” she says, wrapping her arms around Blake’s waist, and he drapes his arm over her shoulder.
Carissa Kennedy.
He looks…happy with her there, hanging off him. He deserves that. I had my chances, many of them, and I kept pushing them off, sending him away. I didn’t trust that we could make something work after the moment we tossed our graduation caps into the air.
; “You were saying something about my yearbook?” Blake says, finally tearing his gaze off Carissa and letting his gaze fall to me. That’s when I realize that he doesn’t look at me the way he did that day in front of the school.
“Someday, Kelly, I’ll be what you need. You’ll see.” Apparently, it’s not someday yet—and now I’m forced to wait my turn.
“Umm, yeah.” I kick his yearbook with my confession written in its pages further under the table. “It doesn’t look like you ordered one.”
He scratches his head. “Are you sure? I swear I brought a check and order form in. For me and Xander. Is he on the list?”
I use my finger to run down the rows of names, though I already know Xander’s is on there. “Yeah, looks like he already picked his up.”
“Do you have mine? I know I ordered one,” Carissa asks in this ditzy, dramatic way between gum chews.
“Last names A-K are at that table.” I point and Carissa skips away.
“So, yeah, anyway. It doesn’t look like we have one for you now. Sometimes we order extras. If there’s one left over, I’ll let you know.” The toe of my sneaker is on the book under the table, holding it down as if it’s going to jump up and out me at any moment.
“Oh…okay then,” Blake says. “Well, I guess that’s that. It just sucks. Someday down the line I’m going to miss certain things…certain people…and I won’t have anything to remember them by.”
His velvet voice, so much deeper and stronger now than it used to be, melts me into the cafeteria floor.
“Any plans for the summer?” he asks. I wish he wouldn’t make small talk. I just want him to go away so I can mope in peace and get rid of this damn yearbook that’s burning a hole through the bottom of my shoe.
“Not really. I got a job at The Rock Room. That should be pretty fun.” I smile, because, as much as the Blake and Carissa scene is depressing, The Rock Room is exactly where I want to be. Music. Lights. Crowds. People. I have no idea what I want to be when I grow up or where my life is going, but I know all my favorite things under one roof is a good start.
“The Rock Room?” A genuine flash of excitement and support shines in his kind eyes. “Maybe if this music thing doesn’t work out, you can convince them to hire me.”
“The music thing will work out,” I whisper, not meaning to have said the words out loud.
“How do you know?” One corner of his lip turns upward.
“I just know.” I shrug and give my very best Blake Mathews impression. “Someday, Blake. You’ll see.”
High school had dragged by and taken its sweet time year after year up until the last three weeks of our final senior semester, when the hands of the clock became unhinged and the days passed in the blink of an eye.
“Is that him?” Natalie signs. I turn over my shoulder to peek without making it obvious. I nod, turning away from Blake. He doesn’t even look like himself in his black button-up shirt and dark gray dress pants. His hair is semi-styled. Clean cut almost looks odd on him but he’s as striking as ever. He talks to Xander and Xander’s mother at the corner of the room. Leave it to Xander to wear ripped jeans and sunglasses to graduation, though I suppose they will be covered by a gown in just a few minute’s time.
“He’s cute,” Natalie signs, “and they’re coming this way.” She’s hurrying off before I can say otherwise. I turn and tuck a loose strand of hair behind my ear.
“Congratulations, Kelly,” Xander says. “Didn’t think we’d ever make it this far, eh?”
“I didn’t think you’d make it this far,” I joke. Blake lets out an enthusiastic ‘oooooohhhh’ at the jab.
“Last in class both in grades and alphabetically, but I’m here,” he says with a laugh. “I’ll see you guys after we graduate.” He claps his hands on Blake’s shoulders, gives him a good shake and heads up the stairs where we are set to graduate in front of all our friends and family.
“Don’t forget about us little people when you go do whatever great thing it is you’re going to do,” Blake says. He’s always had more confidence in me than I’ve had in myself.
“I should be saying that to you, I think.” Then again, I’ve always had more confidence in him than he has had in himself too.
“Mr. Mathews, Miss Montoy, it’s time to go upstairs,” Principal Wheeler says. Blake nods in agreement.
We take the stairs together, just the two of us, walking toward the event that will close the door on this part of our life and send us down paths that will most likely never lead to each other.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Now
“Kelly?” Debbie says with a double tap on the door.
I sit up too quickly and the room spins. “Is he back? Did Blake come home?”
“No, sweetie, he’s not back yet.”
I drop my head to my hand. I don’t know what I was expecting. Surely sitting down with all of us wasn’t going to just magically change his situation, but I wasn’t expecting him to quit and walk out either.
“He’s one of the good ones, you know.” Debbie enters the room and sits next to me, occupying the spot Natalie had been in. “He’s loved you as long as I’ve known him. He’s a little mixed up right now, but he’ll come back around. He always does.”
“I hope you’re right.” She places her hand on mine. “I just wish I’d done things differently.”
“I’m sure he does too,” she says. “Everyone is still here, and we ordered pizza.”
She keeps my hand in hers as she guides me back to my closest friends—my family—but I’m not hungry.
I walk to the front door with my arms crossed as I lean into the doorframe, looking out to the street as if Blake will walk up it at any moment and tell us he changed his mind. He takes it back. He’ll get help.
But he won’t. When he said the words, when he stood in that room in front of the bandmates he has played beside for somewhere in the ballpark of fifteen years and declared he was out, he’d meant it.
As long as I’ve known him, he has been part of that band. It’s how we met, it’s how we continued to grow. It kept us together even when we were apart. So many of our memories circulate around Consistently Inconsistent, and now I’m realizing we will never have the chance to make new ones.
Xander joins me in the entryway and places his hands on my shoulders. He is equally the last person I want to see and the only person I want to see. I turn into him and he wraps me in his arms. I collapse there into his chest and sob wet tears into his T-shirt. My chest rises and falls against his abdomen and he rubs my back, offering a quiet ‘shhh’ and ‘we’ll figure all this out’ every few seconds—and though he tries to hide it, I swear he’s crying too.
* * * *
Then
The winter after graduation I walk home from The Rock Room and pass a small event space. The music that blares through the walls sounds familiar, a song I’ve heard a million times. It’s either Xander Varro or a damn good cover. A flyer with familiar faces on it catches my attention at the doorway. The advertisement says Consistently Inconsistent is set to take the stage in a battle of young stars, a music competition to help teen musicians get to the top.
I push open the door, walk in and hang out in the back of room. Xander is as good as he’s ever been, whirling around the stage and teasing the crowd in a way that makes it impossible to not want more.
Blake continues to strum his guitar as he moves toward Xander on the stage. Everyone else cuts out and Blake creates an impressive few chords in a solo he once referred to as a ‘lick’—I remember it specifically because yuck—but damn it if it isn’t a thing of perfection. As if that’s not enough, he leans into the microphone, and as Xander sings the words I’ve come to know and love in this song, Blake adds a background piece, a secondary lyric I had never heard before.
The harder I tried to make you part of my past, the faster you became my future.
After their set, I push through the crowd and locate Blake by the stage.
“Hey,” I yell, but he doesn’t hear me over the music. I reach forward and place my hand between his shoulders. His T-shirt is slick with sweat, sticking to his skin in all the right places.
He turns and looks at me in a way that says he’s excited to see me but it’s not the way he used to look at me. Now, I’m just another classmate he hasn’t seen in a while.
“Kelly!” He pulls me in for a hug. “How the hell have you been?”
“I’m doing okay,” I say, competing with the loud music. “You were great up there. I told you Consistently Inconsistent would do well.”
“We’re done, actually,” he says, and I’m surprised. “This was it, Kelly. This is the last show for us.”
“What? No! That’s crazy.”
“We had a small summer tour set to go but it didn’t work out. We lost a lot of buzz from the singles and we’re not keeping up enough to keep the money coming in to record new ones. I’m taking that spot in Minnesota next semester. Dom and Theo both have school offers, and Julian wants to play football. That’s just the hand we were dealt.”
“You can’t walk away. You’re too talented! You can’t just quit, Blake.” But what’s my opinion worth? Nothing.
“Hey.” He places his hands on my shoulders. “It was good to see you. I have to go.” He leans in and hugs me, pausing to give me a light kiss on the cheek, barely there, so soft I could have imagined it.
For the days that follow, I hope to see him again. It’s a small town, after all. Every time I drive by the local gas station, take the train into the city or walk past a group of people, I secretly hope he is one of them. Even now at work, in the city, miles from our tiny hometown, every time a door opens, I hold my breath and hope it’s Blake—but it’s not.
In many ways, The Rock Room makes me miss high school. I wanted to graduate, wanted to be on my own and be out of school hallways but this is much harder than I thought. Almost everyone I work around is older than me, and they’re always in a rush or bad mood. I wash a lot of glasses for the bartenders and clean up after fans, but I also get to run errands for the bands and those moments make it worth it. Being backstage is so exciting, even if I am only delivering coffees or whatever trivial thing they must have before they can take the stage.