“Yes. OK? Yes, I fucken want her.” I come as close to shouting as I ever get, and with those dangerous words falling off my lips, I catch Shae looking over my shoulder. And I know. Before I even hear her steps startup, I know. Tia’s been standing on the stairs listening. For how long? Goddamnit.
CHAPTER 42
Tia:
Taz stands in our entryway, looking lost. His garbage bag of secondhand clothes drags from one hand, a battered guitar case gripped tight in the other. Shae ditched him here.
Before leaving, the Giant leaned down from Mount Olympus and whispered to me, “So you know, Gib didn’t speak to me, not one word for the first two months after I met him. Give him time. Be patient.” He then made an excuse about errands to run and headed out with his little boy asleep on his shoulder. When Taz tried to follow, Shae literally shoved him back and told him, “Your scrawny ass is staying put. Play nice. I’ll be back in a couple of hours, and you’ll be right here. This is a good place for you.”
So now he’s stuck at my house and pulled tighter than a clothesline, T-shirt hanging off his sharp, tense shoulders. Whatever kept him away from me for the past week is still between us. I wonder what to do about him and don’t let myself think about the cost of the water tank. Who needs food? Or gas in the Ark? We can flush the toilet again. Happy thoughts.
I point at the guitar case. “Will you play for me?”
Taz shrugs and stares at the front door. He and Ingrid have that in common, but I don’t trust either one not to run off.
“How about something to drink? Coffee? Water? Or, um …” While he shakes his head, I realize there’s nothing else, because the orange juice spilled. Since the twins handled the clean up, I’m guessing the floor is still sticky. “Maybe you’re hungry? Want a sandwich? Peanut butter and jelly? Grilled cheese?”
He’s switched from shaking his head to outright ignoring me.
“Apple? Pencils? Marbles?” I’m testing him. He’s not doing well. “Tarantulas? Snot? Jockstrap?”
Aha. Finally! I get zapped by his eyes. I take the jolt and smile back at him. “Just making sure you’re listening. C’mon.”
I head to the couch, glance over my shoulder and interrupt Taz staring at my butt. He catches me catching him, stumbles and gets so adorably embarrassed, I’m a goner. Now I regret my stained pink Bauer hockey shirt and worn out jeans. I am one step away from living in my pajamas.
I deliberately plop down in the middle of the couch and pat the space next to me. Taz kicks my optimism aside and sinks into the armchair. Booger hops up onto the coffee table, throws a leg up and starts licking his crotch. Why is cat porn so uncomfortable? I shoo him, get hissed at and vow to get even later.
Mora is currently giving Tully her bath. My brothers disappeared downstairs to air out hockey bags and do laundry. Even with the volume low, I recognize the sound of the Xbox. I should yell at them, do my homework, scrub something, start dinner, sell my kidney to make some money, but I’m preoccupied by the world’s most difficult boy.
I step up to bat one more time and say, “Lemme hear you play.”
His case is scuffed and dented. The instrument he unearths is in worse shape, which is just sad.
He plucks a single string, huffs and lifts the guitar bow-and-arrow style to stare down the neck of it. Frowning, he digs a T-shaped tool out of his pocket and starts fiddling. He’s still rockin’ the hat, keeping his hair off his face while he switches between turning knobs and strumming a single note. Every time he tests a string, his lips purse, his eyes roll up and the temperature in the room climbs a couple of degrees. I’ve never seen him so certain and focused, with none of the wariness. The duck is in water.
The guitar sounds fine to me, but Taz isn’t satisfied, so the tuning process goes on and on and on. I entertain myself with multiple choices. A). This is the extent of his skills. B). He’s a stickler for perfection. C). He’s trying to get out of playing for me.
“Do you know any actual songs?” It’s a legitimate question, but I get the pointy end of a glare. Ouch.
I wait another minute and ask, “Do you take requests?”
No answer.
“I play a mean Sweet Caroline on the recorder. Maybe we could duet?”
He huffs and I’m suspicious his thoughts are unkind.
Taz finally draws the guitar into his body and curves to it. There’s something in the way he settles that has me leaning forward, tingling with anticipation. His fingertips test the strings oh so lightly and fall into familiar motions. His strange twitches and flutters suddenly translate into a melody as fluid and colorful as paint from a brush. Music fills my living room. I don’t recognize the song, but the notes sway and tug, and I close my eyes to better follow them.
The sounds he creates are not simply the result of hours of practice but mined from somewhere deep in his soul. He speaks through these flawless notes. I hear his pain, his hope, his passion, the words he can’t say. I open my eyes and watch him. He is beautiful. This boy shines a light into my dark corners and something secret and new grows from there, unfurls and blooms. He has magic fingers.
Exceptionally long. Magic. Fingers. I sit on my hands to quit squirming like a horny cricket.
Taz goes still. I try to look innocent.
He peers at me with eyes the pale blue of pool water, so clear I can see the bottom, so deep I’ll never reach it, and says, “My dad used to stand behind me while I practiced. For hours. Sometimes all night long. We didn’t stop until I got it right. Mistakes weren’t forgiven.”
There’s the voice, the grit of gravel in a blender, and it’s so distracting it takes me a second to catch on to what he just said. Gibson Tazmerek has terrible timing. He could have had me at hello. Instead, he straps me into the front car of a runaway roller coaster.
“The gun,” he starts, then drifts his fingertips over the strings. “The night of the robbery. It wasn’t loaded.”
For all of one second, I am spared, and then he adds, “But I didn’t know that. I found out when I pointed it at my dad’s head and pulled the trigger.”
And there it is. The dull knitting needle he insists on stabbing into every conversation. He’s predictable in the very worst way.
He waits, hell bent on rejection and daring me to do it.
I take a deep breath to buy some time. Am I freaking out right now? Oh yeah. Do I have a clue how to react? Nope. Maintaining a normal expression is nearly impossible. There’s an MMA battle going on in my chest and my heart’s one hit away from a TKO. But I choose to believe desperation forced the hand of a thirteen-year-old kid. He isn’t the monster he would have me believe, and it breaks my heart that this is his default setting
“Something happened last week,” I say very slowly. “You won’t tell me. You won’t share. You’d rather try everything and anything to scare me off. But I’m still sitting right here, not going anywhere and really hoping you’ll give me a chance.”
I lose his attention to the guitar, but he tells me, “Sometimes wanting something isn’t enough.”
This boy, this boy, THIS BOY! I may need to physically tackle him to make him hear me, see me, finally let me in. He knows I overhead what he said in the basement. Oh yeah, I totally eavesdropped. Now, he’s trying to take it back. Too late. He wants me. He said it. Yes, I fucken want her, growled louder than I’ve ever heard him, like I make him angry and crazy and needy. It’s only fair and has me so stupidly satisfied I might embroider his declaration on a pillow.
“Dude.” It’s Theo, wandering in from the kitchen, eyes for nothing but the guitar. “Is that a Gibson Les Paul Burst?”
Taz looks up, nods and half of his mouth tilts up ever so slightly at the corner. Quick, someone take a picture. I need proof.
“What year?” Theo drops down next to me, totally hijacking my conversation. Since I’ve been forgotten, my scowl is wasted on both boys.
“1959.”
“No shit?” My brother cranes his head to study the prehistoric
instrument. “I’ve only seen them online.”
“Check the quartersawn neck.” Taz tilts it toward the light from the window and keeps talking. Let me repeat that. Taz keeps talking. “See the grain, how it’s so straight, tight and parallel? Makes it less likely to twist or warp. I think that’s why she’s still in such good condition.”
She? Good condition? Any worse condition and there’d be nothing left to do but roast marshmallows over it.
“Could I?” Theo, our selfless hindu cow holds out his hands in greedy awe and takes careful possession of the ancient relic. He literally holds his breath as he fondles it. “Wow. It’s even got the sunburst finish and the humbuckers. With the stopbar tailpiece.”
Is he still speaking English?
“They’re original,” Taz offers. Is he bragging? Someone pinch me. I’m dreaming.
“Flatwound strings?” my brother clarifies.
Taz nods. “I’ve lowered the action. She’s got perfect intonation.”
Theo gives me a closer look at the instrument, and I pretend to be all sorts of impressed. He then tells me, “This guitar is worth more than the Ark.” Handing it gently back, he admits to Taz, “I’ve got a secondhand, piece-a-shit Yamaha acoustic, and I’ve been trying to teach myself by watching YouTube videos.”
Taz caresses the strings with his fingertips and every inch of my skin responds. I’m a little flushed and breathless when I blurt, “Will you teach him? Lessons. If I pay you, will you give Theo guitar lessons?”
“Tia,” Theo cuts in. “There’s no money for that.”
“I could pay in other ways.” My unfiltered response sends my brother into cardiac arrest and Taz wheezes as if he swallowed a bug. “With meals,” I clarify. “Give my brother a guitar lesson and then stay for dinner.”
“You trying to pay him or poison him?” Theo snorts, then turns to Taz. “No worries. You’ve for sure got better things to do than teach me.”
Taz is going to refuse. I see it all over him. He’s going to reject my brother, reject me, run from my house, from every kindness because it’s easier than trusting, because he doesn’t understand what he’s never had, because the cow jumped over the moon and the dish ran away with the spoon. How the heck should I know? But Theo is one of my favorite people, sweeter than candy corn and deserves better. So do I. And so does Taz.
I point at Taz. “Not one word.” Which is kind of like warning an ostrich not to fly. Then I tell Theo. “Put in an order for pizza. Taz and I will pick it up. You’re in charge while I’m gone.”
I don’t think about how I’m going to pay for this impromptu extravagance. There’s always prostitution. I wonder how much I could charge to rent my older brother out by the hour.
I look back to Taz and surprise surprise, Mr. Sour Pants is wearing the expression of someone who just chugged a gallon of pickle juice. Standing up, I hold out my hand. “C’mon.”
He curls into the chair, one hand clinging to the guitar, the other cuffed on the back of his neck, the picture of stubborn refusal. Nice try.
I actually laugh and sound way too much like my mother. “Either get your ass in the Ark or I’ll leave you to babysit and tell Tully you’re dying to play magic pony dress-up.”
CHAPTER 43
TAZ:
I’ve texted Shae like twenty goddamn times, but the giant jackhole won’t pick me up. So I’m stuck riding shotgun in the ugliest minivan on the planet. It smells like a cross between fingerpaint and sour milk and everything’s sticky. The brakes squeak, one wheel vibrates and the muffler’s dying from emphysema. The noises are driving me out of my bleeding head, and Princess Barbie can’t drive for shit.
She takes turns too wide, crowds the yellow line and pays close attention to everything but the road. I’ve got one hand braced overhead, the other flattened on the side window, both feet jammed against the dash, and I’m trusting my life to a frayed seat belt. I feel like a crash test dummy.
“Hold on,” she warns, punching the gas, cranking the wheel and aiming at a parking space tighter than a chihuahua's asshole. Without a tube of lube, we’re never gonna fit.
The front wheels jump the curb, underbelly scraping pavement as pieces of chassis get left behind. “No, no, no,” I chant and FYI, she’s looking straight at me as we nearly trade paint with a fire hydrant. I point forward and hiss. She locks the wheels, combining a wish and a miracle to skid to a stop just shy of impact. Exhaust smoke billows around us and the engine weeps.
Shifting into park, Tia wraps her forearms over the wheel and stares out the windshield. “Hear that?”
Sorry, too busy peeling my spleen off the roof of my mouth.
“No brothers and sisters asking me for anything.” She nods, gives me the head tilt and a nanosecond of quiet. “Let’s go.”
I open the passenger door, land on shaky legs and bloodhound the smell of hot grease and cheese to a nearby pizzeria. My empty belly rises to its hind feet and growls.
“Pizza won’t be ready for at least twenty minutes or so,” Tia calls back, already headed down the sidewalk. “C’mon.”
I whimper a little but fall in line. She leads me to a dinkyass park with teeter totters good for nothing but ass splinters, brush burn metal slides, wasp-infested monkey bars and some hanging rubber diapers that might be swings. She sits in one, waits for me to do the same and tells me, “You’re a prickly pear.”
If that’s her idea of an insult, it bounces right off me. I’m fucken Superman when it comes to that shit. She’s gonna have to try a lot harder to do damage.
Grabbing the chains on either side, she pumps her legs and swings. I sit with my knees bent up and go a little nuts because those chains make a weird squeak. I feel it in my teeth. How does she not notice it?
“I had a pet rabbit once.” She sways to a slow, dusty stop. My sanity thanks her. “Someone must have just turned him loose, because I found this black and white bunny hopping down the middle of the road. It took forever to catch him. I named him Donnie. After Donnie Darko?”
I’m clueless.
“I thought if I could just hug and pet him enough, he’d realize I wouldn’t hurt him, that I just wanted to be good to him. My dad kept telling me to take it slow, but I didn’t listen.” Tia holds up her arm and traces a faint white line on the inside of it. “Donnie scratched the ever loving crap out of me.” She’s serious as a heart attack. “I tend to rush into things. But I don’t give up. I don’t let anybody I care about get lost. Ever.”
Hold on. Am I the bunny? Is she comparing me to a goodman rabbit? I need the ending to this story.
“What happened?” My voice comes out like a rusty saw blade. “To the rabbit.”
“Oh. Um.” She drags a figure eight in the dirt with her sneaker before glancing at me. “He bit me. I dropped him and then Sam started barking and chasing him round and round the living room. Mora kept screaming, and I think he was a very old rabbit. The excitement was a little too much for him.”
“Too much?”
“Heart attack. It’s actually not uncommon for rabbits.”
“You kidnapped and tortured a bunny?”
She startles. “I didn’t … that’s not the point.”
“He didn’t survive your rescue.”
She scowls at me. “Maybe Donnie wasn’t the best example.”
“Seems pretty cut and dry.”
“Forget the rabbit,” she sputters with a little wrinkle above her nose. She then takes an extra deep breath, twists to face me and presents her test-taking smile. “We’re going to play a game. It’s called Questions and Answers. I’ll start.”
I anchor my restless fingers into the loops of the chains, already knowing this is gonna turn into a bigger fiasco than riding in the passenger seat of her minivan.
“Ready?” she checks.
“No.”
She ignores that. “Why did you show up, totally blitzed in my backyard the other night?”
So much for starting simple. I can’t play this game.
I count the wasps circling the monkey bars and their buzzing triggers an echo in my brain.
“Why did you freeze me out for an entire week?” she tries again.
I’ve got no defense against her verbal beating.
“How about this, tell me what happened with Brandon, Marty & Kyle?” She waits for a count of three, then bounces right back with, “If you won’t tell me anything, maybe start by asking me something?”
I get less than two seconds this time.
“FYI, I think mayonnaise and frogs are disgusting, billboards should be banned and I’m really tempted to shave my head to save time in the morning. How about you? Still no? Nothing to add to our conversation? Not a flipping thing to share?” Her voice gets louder in direct proportion to the shrinking diameter of my windpipe. “C’mon Taz.”
I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. My mouth just won’t. There’s a missing switch somewhere between my thoughts and voice. One of my many head doctors said it was the only thing I had control over. Sounds like a crock of shit, because if I was in control I’d be able to talk if I wanted to. It’s more like hoping to minimizing backlash and backhands, which isn’t working right now. Her eyes go ballistic.
Tia leans over, maybe getting ready to kiss or spit on me, but actually pokes me in the forehead. Twice. My nostrils flare, my mental wiring fries a circuit and I’m on the verge of biting her finger. “Does that piss you off?” she demands. “Yeah? Good. Fight with me. Argue. Engage. Tell me off.”
I empathize with her rabbit. He ran himself to death, chased in circles, too scared to stop but even more terrified of getting away. His heart most likely exploded on a swell of want, hope and the fatal joy of seeing those same emotions reflected back at him. Lucky bunny.
Now Tia jumps out of the swing and plants herself right in front of me. “You need to quit acting like a jerk.”
“It’s not an act.”
Her palms slam into my chest. This girl is such a surprise. Always. I’m never expecting it, so I land on my back in the dirt, heels still hooked on the swing. Leftover echoes from the baseball bat ripple from skull to belly and I’m trying not to vomit on the sneakers of the prettiest schoolyard bully in the world as she steps over me, a foot on either side of my hips, her blonde head haloed in sunshine. I wonder if it hurt when she fell to earth.
Shatter (The Choosy Beggars Series Book 1) Page 19