by Easton, BB
Bath and Body Works Warm Vanilla Sugar candles.
Rain
The aromas and sounds of home assault my senses as I fight with myself to stay in control.
Don’t do this. Not now. Not here.
My chest tightens. I take deeper breaths, but the air’s not getting in.
Don’t panic. It’s just a smell. A smell can’t hurt you.
But it does. It hurts because I miss it so goddamn much.
I force myself to round the side of the fountain and come face-to-face with the only thing I want to see … surrounded by everything that I fear.
Wes is sitting on the edge of the fountain, tuning a guitar that looks exactly like the one my dad used to play when I was a kid. My pink duffel bag—the one that Mama bought me before my first sleepaway camp—is wide open on the floor next to him, and everywhere I look, there are lit vanilla candles dotting the floor and fountain.
“Wes?” My voice comes out so screechy you would have thought I’d found him handling live cobras, not lazily tuning a guitar by candlelight.
Wesson Patrick Parker lifts his head, and for a moment, I’m suspended in the space between fear and reason. That brief moment of clarity where you’re not being lied to by your emotions or manipulated by your logical mind. That tiny gap where everything moves in slow motion and you’re able to see things as they really are.
And what I see is Wes looking at me with one bright, twinkling eye. His shiny brown hair has fallen in front of the other one, curling slightly at the bottom where it fits behind his ear, and his lips are parted in an easy smile. The guitar he’s holding, it’s just a guitar. It can’t hurt me. The candles he lit, the fragrance I smell—they can’t hurt me either. This beautiful person brought these thoughtful things from my house, and for a moment, I am honored and humbled and crushed by the weight of my gratitude for him.
But then Wes points to a small beige throw blanket spread out on the floor a few feet away, the one Mama and I used to snuggle under when we would watch movies on her days off from the hospital, and at the sight of it, the scent of cigarettes and hazelnut coffee smashes into me like a wrecking ball.
Clarity, gone. Gratitude, demolished.
I am fear and feelings and anguish and, and …
“I can’t,” I mutter, shaking my head as the breaths come faster and faster. My feet scream at me to run, but I manage to keep them rooted to the floor—my need to stay close to Wes somehow overpowering my need to escape this situation.
“You can’t what? Rain, are you okay? Why don’t you sit down?” He gestures to the blanket again.
“I can’t!” I force the words through my gritted teeth as my hands plunge into my hair. I tug hard, trying to distract myself from one type of pain with another.
“You can’t sit?” His voice is low and soothing but laced with concern.
I shake my head, still tugging, still fighting with some unknown demon for control of my body.
“Okay …”
I hear the hollow thrum of the guitar being set aside and feel Wes’s strong hands wrap around my waist. Guiding me toward him, he pulls down, gently, and my body follows his silent command. I land on his lap sideways and immediately bury my face in his warm neck.
“Can you sit here?” he asks, wrapping his arms around my hyperventilating body.
I nod. The weight of him soothes me like a heavy blanket. The scent of him reminds me of the present, not the past. And the utter gravity of him is enough to pull the panic out of my body through my pores.
I take a deep breath and am shocked when my lungs actually inflate. Then, I exhale so hard I feel dizzy.
Wes exhales too, but it doesn’t sound relieved. It sounds defeated.
Letting go of me with one arm, he runs a hand through his hair. “I just keep fucking this up.”
I shake my head, wanting to argue with him, but my words haven’t come back yet.
“I wanted to get you something for your birthday while I was out, but then I realized that you wouldn’t want anything. You don’t care about stuff. In fact, the happiest I ever saw you was when you were climbing on the back of that motorcycle, ready to leave everything you owned behind. You didn’t even know where we were going.”
Wes wraps his arm back around me, and I realize that I’m not hyperventilating anymore. I’m not in my body at all. I’m lost in his words, wrapped in the rough timbre of his deep, soothing voice.
“So, I asked myself what I would have done for your birthday if April 23 had never happened. If things were normal, you know? And I don’t think I would have gotten you anything. I think I would have put you on a plane and taken you to Coachella.”
“Coachella?” The word tumbles from my lips as they curl into a curious smile.
“Mmhmm. It’s a huge music festival in California. They have it every year in the spring. Or … had it.” Wes’s voice trails off.
“I’ve heard of it. Is it fun?”
He shrugs. “Never got a chance to go. It looked fun. Everybody would get fucked up and dance around with flowers in their hair.” Wes reaches for something next to him. It’s a little yellow daisy he probably stole out of Carter’s bouquet.
The image of him doing it makes me smile.
“I want to see you like that,” he says, tucking the flower behind my ear.
“What? Dressed up like a hippie?” I tease, my cheeks tingling as his fingertips slide through my hair.
“No … happy.”
Happy.
I think about that word … about the fact that this man wants me to feel that word. I think about the fact that this man is here at all. And then something occurs to me.
“I am.”
Wes gives me the side-eye.
“Now that you’re here.”
“So, what was all that about?” He gestures to the place where I was standing a few minutes ago.
“I can’t …” I shake my head and try again. “I can’t … see things … or … smell things …” I feel my chin begin to wobble, and the tears begin to pool, but I push through. I don’t want to admit it out loud. It sounds so stupid and shameful and ridiculous, but there’s a freedom building behind these words, pushing on them, begging to be let out. “I can’t even touch things that remind me of home … without …”
“Having a meltdown?”
I drop my eyes and nod.
“And I just showed up with a duffel bag full of shit from your house.” Wes pinches the bridge of his nose and shakes his head. “I’m so sorry, babe. I’ll get rid of it. All of it.”
“No,” I snap. “Leave it. I need to …” I take a deep breath.
I need to get used to this.
I need to get over this.
I need to get better so that the next time you leave, I can leave with you.
“You sure?”
I nod, keeping my eyes screwed shut.
“Well, I can’t pretend like we’re at Coachella if you’re sitting in my lap.” Wes smirks. “Here.” He moves a few candles and guides me to sit next to him on the ledge of the fountain.
Picking my dad’s guitar back up, he asks if I have any requests.
“I don’t know what you can play.”
“I played on street corners in Rome all day, every day for two years. If I don’t know it, I’ll bullshit my way through it.” He begins to strum absentmindedly. “What’s your favorite song?”
“Uh …” I search my brain for something original. Something that feels like me. But all I come back with are Carter’s favorite songs.
“Twenty One Pilots?” Wes asks.
“No,” I blurt, opening my eyes to glare at Wes.
“Okay.” He chuckles and holds up one hand, his other firmly wrapped around the neck of the guitar in his lap. “So, you don’t know what your favorite song is?”
I shake my head.
“Challenge accepted.” Wes grins, and without even looking, he shreds out a heavy metal riff that catches me off guard and makes me crack up.
I tilt my head, trying to figure out where I’ve heard it before.
“If you don’t recognize Garth, then you are definitely not a country fan. Okay, what about …”
Duh-nuh-nuh, chicka-chicka, duh nuh-nuh …
The opening notes of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana have me smiling and bobbing my head immediately.
“Actually, that doesn’t help at all. Everybody loves Nirvana.” Wes grins.
“What did people request the most?” I ask, wanting a little glimpse into Wes’s life before the world fell apart.
I want to pretend like I’m a beautiful college student studying abroad, and he’s a beautiful street musician sitting on a fountain in front of the Pantheon.
“I dunno. Whatever was popular. I can’t even tell you how many times I had to play ‘Call Me Maybe.’" Wes smiles. “But it was classic rock that got everybody singing—and more importantly, tipping. It didn’t matter if they were young, old, rich, poor, or if they even spoke English. If I played The Beatles, The Stones, Journey, The Eagles … I made fuckin’ bank, and everybody walked away from my fountain happy.”
Happy. There’s that word again.
“Will you play me one?”
Wes eyes me up and down while the jukebox catalog in his head flips to the perfect song. Then, with a smirk, he says, “I got it.”
Chicka duh nuh-nuh nuh-nuh, duh nuh-nuh …
My eyes light up, and my heart overflows as he plays a simple song about an American girl raised on promises, trying to find someplace in this great, big world where she can hide from her pain.
“I love it.” I smile, swallowing back the lump in my throat.
“Tom Petty.” He shakes his head. “Goddamn genius.”
Lifting his eyes, Wes tips his chin at something over my shoulder.
“Sup?”
My heart stops, but when I turn around, it’s not Q and her crew; it’s Quint and Lamar, tiptoeing toward us from the food court.
“Guess it’s safe to go back into the tux shop now,” Lamar jokes.
“You can hang out, if you want.” Wes gestures toward the blanket on the floor that I refuse to look at. “We’re just trying to figure out Rain’s favorite song.”
Lamar and Quint share some kind of silent brotherly communication.
Then, Lamar speaks up, “Ahh … fuck it. Ain’t nothin’ to do in the shop ’cept stare at this ugly motherfucker all night. We’ll chill with y’all.”
Quint shrugs, and Lamar helps him over to the blanket. Holding him from behind, Lamar helps Quint ease down into the sitting position without having to move his head. It makes my heart swell so much to see Lamar stepping up to help his brother that I don’t even realize I’m looking at the blanket until both of them are sitting on it.
My eyes go wide as I jerk my gaze back to Wes’s smug expression.
Oh, you think you’re soooo smart.
Wes gives my thigh a little squeeze. Then, he turns his attention back on the Jones brothers.
“Do you guys know what Rain likes to listen to?”
“‘Free Birrrrrrd’!” somebody shouts from up above us. Actually, two somebodies.
My head snaps up to find Brangelina standing at the top of the broken escalator with their fists in the air. They stomp down the metal stairs and take a seat halfway down.
“No, no, no!” Not Brad shouts. “I wanna hear …” He switches to his hip-hop voice. “I did it all for the nookie!”
“What?” Brad chimes in.
“The Nookie!”
“What?”
They sing the chorus back and forth as Wes leans over and whispers in my ear, “I am not fucking playing Limp Bizkit.”
I giggle as Tiny Tim comes shuffling out of a dark second-story shop, holding his banjo over his head. “Did somebody say nookie?”
“Wes is trying to figure out my favorite song,” I call over to them.
“She looks like a Taylor Swift girl to me,” Tiny teases, taking a seat a few rows above Brangelina.
Wes looks back at me and raises an eyebrow. “You a Swiftie?”
I shrug, but before I can give him an answer, I notice a curvy silhouette stalking into the atrium from the hallway to the left—the one I never go down—shrouded in a cloud of smoke.
“Go ahead, Surfer Boy,” Q calls out, her voice slurry and slow as she snaps her fingers in our direction. “Play me some T. Swift.”
Wes glances down at me with hard eyes. The sharp line of his jaw flexes in the glow of the candles.
“You want me to play nice?” he whispers. The implication is clear.
You want to keep living here, or can I be a dick?
“No,” I say, his question giving me an evil idea. “I want you to play ‘Mean.’”
Wes smirks. “The song?”
I nod.
“You sure?”
I nod.
“All right, but you gotta sing it.”
“What? No. Wes—”
“Yes.” He lifts his thumb and slides it beneath the gash on my cheek, letting me know that he knows exactly who put it there. “You sing it.”
“But … what if I don’t know the words?”
“Everybody knows the words.”
Before I can argue anymore, Wes’s fingers land on the strings like he’s played the song a hundred times, and the “Mean” train leaves the station. I feel my chest constrict as I glance over at Q, who is now sitting on the bottom stair of the escalator, glaring at me.
When it comes time for me to sing the first line, I choke, but Wes just plays the melody again, this time murmuring the lyrics under his breath. I almost go for it, but it’s not until the third try that the words actually come out of my mouth.
They’re quiet at first as I tell Q that she’s a bully who enjoys picking on people weaker than her.
A little louder when I tell her that she has a voice like nails on a chalkboard.
And by the time we get to the chorus, I’m declaring—not to her, but to myself—that one day, I’m gonna leave this place, and all she’s ever gonna be is mean.
“Yeeeeee-haw!” Tiny calls out as he joins in on his banjo, walking down the escalator stairs and right past Q, who takes a puff from her bowl and tries to act oblivious.
Brangelina stands up, arm in arm, and sways back and forth as they help me sing the second verse about how I walk with my head down because she’s always pointing out my flaws.
But it’s not until Loudmouth shows up out of nowhere, jamming out on his accordion like it’s a cherry-red electric guitar with flames painted on it, that I finally feel confident enough to use my full voice. It’s not pretty. It’s not perfect. It sure as hell wasn’t good enough for the Franklin Springs First Baptist Church choir. But when I look Q in the eyes and tell her she’s a pathetic liar who’s gonna die alone, it sounds pretty damn good to me.
Sophie comes running up beside me and starts dancing and singing at the top of her lungs, and by the last chorus, even Wes and too-cool-for-school Lamar are singing along.
When the song is over, Tiny Tim keeps it going about two minutes too long with the world’s worst and most enthusiastic banjo solo. We all burst out laughing as he holds the instrument over his head like he just played Lollapalooza.
But the sound of gunfire shuts us up real quick.
As the blast echoes through the two-story atrium, making my heart stop and my hands reach for Wes, the body of the banjo explodes, showering Tiny in splintered wood.
Q stands up, unsteady on her feet, and replaces all of our laughter with a deep, stoned chuckle of her own. “Y’all muhfuckas a buncha … comedians, huh?” She swings a small black handgun around in her limp wrist, gesturing to all of us with the barrel. “Y’all a buncha rock stars now?”
She stumbles as she takes a few steps forward, a self-satisfied grin on her sleepy-eyed
face. “Well, you know what rock stars eat?” A slow, evil laugh vibrates through her smiling lips. “They don’t eat shit.”
Her heavily lidded eyes land on Tiny, who’s holding what’s left of his decimated banjo and looking like he wants to cry. Walking over to him, she pokes his portly belly with the barrel of her gun and sneers, “So tomorrow, y’all ain’t gon’ eat shit.”
Everyone holds their breath as Q sashays toward the hallway she came from, that slow, closed-mouth chuckle punctuating the silence as she drifts away.
Taking our joy along with her.
Wes
As soon as Q walks off, I realize how badly we just fucked up.
Not only are we on that cunt’s shit list now, but we got the runaways in trouble too.
One phone call. That’s all it would take for Rain to get a bullet between the eyes on live TV, and we just made a whole lotta new enemies.
Everyone scatters back to their own corners of the mall, grumbling and giving us shitty looks, while Rain sits with her hoodie-covered hands over her mouth, staring at the dark hallway that Q just disappeared into.
“Soph! What the fuck was that? Get back in here!” a deep voice echoes from down the hallway behind us. I know without looking that it belongs to that smug little shit Carter.
“Coming!” Sophie calls out. Then, she turns to Rain with big, sad eyes. “I gotta go. Carter didn’t want me to come out here. Happy birthday though.”
“Thanks, big girl.” Rain fakes a smile and spreads her arms for a hug. “You go tell your brother he’s not the boss of you.” She sounds so different when she talks to kids. Stronger. More confident. She sounds like a mom.
But a good one, not the piece-of-shit version I was cursed with.
As soon as the girl is gone, Rain’s posture wilts like the dying daisy I tucked behind her ear.
“Q just fired a gun like, twenty feet away from her.” She shakes her head.
“She’s fine.”
“She’s gonna go hungry tomorrow. Because of me.”
“No, she’s not.” I cup Rain’s jaw and turn her miserable, beautiful face toward mine. “Everybody here has food stashed somewhere. Nobody’s gonna starve, okay?”
Rain’s eyes land on the floor. “This isn’t the end, Wes. Q is gonna do something else. She’s gonna try to get me back for this.”