Just a Girl (4 page)

“Go get the brushes,” he reminded me.

Apparently not.

I nodded and made my way back through the racks to the ramp, feeling uncertain about pretty much everything.

Replies:

@MissJones2U @RekkingTommy You sure do, sweet thing.

@RekkingTommy @MissJones2U You flirting with me, Marcella?

@MissJones2U @RekkingTommy Now now. Let’s not get the press all riled up.

@RekkingTommy @MissJones2U So you ARE flirting with me.

@MissJones2U @RekkingTommy You can’t handle me, Tommy.

Play on Repeat until you can make eye contact with people again.

No one said anything about me running out earlier when I returned to the jam session. Paul came back to the room a few minutes after me, and although he took the seat beside me again, he kept his hands on his lap and never let his knee bump into mine. He glanced at me occasionally, or leaned a little closer to make a quiet comment about the performances going on, but that was it.

I tried to emulate him, but my mind wouldn’t settle, no matter how chilled out I forced my posture to be. What was going on inside his head? The thought was obsessing. Had he just been along for the ride back there? Did it not even matter who was on the other end of his lips? Why had he stopped so easily when we were interrupted? Brendan had never been like that; he had always been intent on getting his rocks off. Was Paul into pity orgasms? Did he see himself as some kind of superhero, swooping in to make pathetic girls come, then flying off again?

I peeked at him out of the corner of my eyes. He had a well-defined profile, like a statue of a Roman emperor. His dark eyebrows made him look very serious when he was concentrating, but the expression never lasted for very long. His eyes would crinkle and his lips would curve just slightly whenever he’d hear something he liked. I wanted to turn and study him more thoroughly—try to see inside his head, maybe—but that would have gone against my ambitions to play it cool.

So I just kept pretending everything was fine. The session wore on toward midnight, as it always did. But eventually people started to filter out. There was never a formal end to a Thursday night. You never knew which song was going to be the last one.

That particular night, it wrapped up around twelve-thirty.

“Presley!” my mom called when the last stragglers were packing up. “Come have a drink with us.” Whenever Tommy was in for a Thursday night, it inevitably ended with everyone having a whiskey on the rocks in my dad’s office. I’d had my first when I was thirteen and declared old enough to handle it. I’d nearly choked to death on my first sip, and they’d all laughed themselves sick over it.

“Just a minute!” I called. I knew I should say something to Paul. I couldn’t just give him a “See ya!” and disappear into the offices. But what the hell was I going to say? I bit my lip.

“Paul, you come too!” she shouted.

I turned to him. “Do you…want to have a drink? You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

“I, uh…” He paused. “It’s very uncool of me if I say I would throw my mother in front of a bus to have a drink with Tommy Newberg, isn’t it?”

I stifled a laugh. “Maybe a little.”

“Okay, then let’s say I didn’t say that.”

“I won’t tell if you won’t.”

“Just promise you’ll kick me or something if I start rambling in front of him.”

He didn’t ramble. In fact, he didn’t talk much at all, except to stammer through an answer when Tommy asked him what he played. The most delightful shade of red colored his cheeks as he talked.

Squeezed as we were into the smaller confines of my father’s office, the careful distance Paul had kept from me was impossible. We perched on the edge of the desk, our hips pressed together by the limited space left by the many piles of paper. We were so close, we each had to hold our coffee mugs of whiskey in our outside hands.

The conversation flowed for a while, mostly my parents and Tommy regaling one another with stories they already knew. But eventually my dad started to yawn, and it was time to call it a night.

While Tommy packed up and my parents went through the store checking locks and shutting off lights, I walked Paul to the parking lot, ostensibly to help him carry out his guitars. Not that he needed me. He carried them both every day he worked.

Out in the lot, he led me toward a Subaru I’d noticed before. Only the yellow and orange bands of the long narrow rainbow decal below the license plate showed in the dim light, but I knew the rest of it was there. I could also see the white letters of a “Coexist” sticker and a blue decal with a yellow equal sign in it. I wouldn’t have pegged this as his car by a long shot.

He must have seen a look on my face, because he sighed. “It used to be my mom’s car,” he said. “One of my moms’ cars.” Then, almost as an afterthought, he added. “I’m not gay.”

“I kind of assumed.” I gestured vaguely toward the end of the store where the sheet music room was.

He smiled. “Right. You probably picked up on that.”

An awkward silence stretched between us until I held out the guitar case I was carrying. “You want this?”

“Right,” he said again, releasing the hatch on the car. He loaded the two guitars before turning to me. “Thank you for inviting me to stay. It was seriously incredible.”

“I’m glad you liked it.” I focused on the tree roots visible below his right shirtsleeve. “And thanks for—” I gestured again toward the sheet music room while heat spread across my cheeks and chest. “I’m sorry Mickey…interrupted.”

“It’s okay.” He stepped closer to me and rested one hand on my hip as he bent to kiss my cheek. “Maybe we could try again sometime?”

My knees went weak so I steadied myself, grabbing his arm. “I’d like that.”

He smiled for just a moment before he kissed me. Softly, on the lips, but without the intensity of earlier. Still, it was enough to send my pulse racing again. I could have easily sunk into him, pulled him into the backseat of his car, and turned “sometime” into right now.

But Paul kissed me one last time, then straightened up. “Good night, Presley.”

June 7

Me

So, I made out with the guitar player.

Liv

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL! I KNEW IT! Was it good? Is he hot? Do you have a picture?

Me

No pics! We work together for God’s sake!

Liv

Oh so you’ll screw him, but pics are going too far?

Me

I didn’t screw him! We made out. No big deal.

Liv

Can I tell Brendan?

Me

FUCK NO. Nononononononononono! NOOOOOOOOOO.

Liv

Please? The porn star dumped him. He’s banging idiot groupies like he’ll get a free burrito if he fills his punch card.

Me

Don’t tell me these things.

Liv

I thought you’d like to know how much of a shitbag he is. Now that we hate him. I like hating him, BTW. I’m way better at this than pretending I like him.

Me

It makes me feel cheap. I do not want to be on the same level as a burrito punch card groupie.

Liv

You aren’t! You were the only good thing he ever did!

Me

Eww.

Liv

I didn’t mean it like that! You’re perfect. I miss you! When are you going to come back home?

Friday is always a busy day at the store. Lots of musicians have weekend performances ahead of them, so Friday is the day they realize they don’t have a replacement G string, or their favorite drumstick is lost, or they’ve fried one kind of cable or another on the sound equipment.

So I didn’t pay any attention when the footsteps on the ramp announced that someone else was coming into the sheet music room. There had been people in and out the entire time I was in here. We’d gotten a new shipment in and I was playing my least favorite sheet music–based game: Can I possibly wedge another copy of this song behind all the others without ripping every one of them? It was proving especially difficult today with the cracked shelves—ahem. I had a dispenser of packing tape for an attempt at repairing the broken area.

“Look at all that damage. Some people are so inconsiderate.” Paul’s voice startled me and I jumped, then whirled around to look at him.

“We seriously have to stop sneaking up on each other,” I panted.

He smiled. “Sorry. I figured you heard me come in.”

“I was concentrating.” I waggled the packing tape. “World-class restoration work going on here.”

“So I see.” He hesitated for a second. “How are you?”

“I’m good.” I put the hand that wasn’t holding the tape into my back pocket. Intensely casual. “You?”

“Good.”

He seemed to be waiting for something, but I couldn’t tell what. Was this a brush-off conversation? I could almost hear the words “last night” and “mistake.”

“What?” I finally asked.

“You free after work tonight?”

The opposite of the brush-off? “Um, I think so. Why?”

“I thought you might want to hang out.”

I nodded. “Yeah, I’d like that.”

“Cool.” He hooked his thumbs into his jeans pockets, which made the corded muscles of his forearms stand out enough to grab my attention. Would it be weird to just run my hands over him a little? Maybe just check out if that faded green shirt was as soft as it looked?

This was all too awkward. I couldn’t handle it. There were two options as I saw it: 1. Give him a definite signal that we were going to be nothing more than coworkers who have a drink after work; or 2. Give him a definite signal that I was…interested.

So I stepped closer to him and went on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek. “Just so we keep away from the sheet music racks tonight, okay? I don’t want to have to fix them again.”

One of his hands barely touched my hip as he turned his head to reciprocate with a kiss near my jaw. “You got it.”

June 7

Me

Now I am going out with the guitar player. On a date. I think.

Liv

You think?

Me

I don’t know. He asked if I wanted to hang out. Is that a date? I haven’t been asked out in, like, ever.

Liv

You have so been asked out. All the time. All those guys who begged you to go out with them and asked you to marry them?

Me

Drunk fans don’t count.

Liv

Whatever. You loved it.

Me

NM that. You’re not helping. Is this a date?

Liv

Do you want it to be?

Me

I don’t know. No.

Maybe.

Liv

Then it’s a date.

Me

Ugh. What if he doesn’t think it is? This SUCKS.

Liv

I guarantee you that you are out of this guy’s league. He should be the one worrying.

Me

You’re the best. xoxoxoxoxoxoxo

Liv

I know.
: x

My regression to my high school self was complete when I had to tell my parents I wasn’t going to go home with them after work. They wanted to know where I was going, who I was going with, and how long I was going to be there. It’s not that my parents are particularly overprotective, but they are nosy as hell. After I told them enough to stop the barrage of questions, my mom spent the rest of the day making kissy faces at me. At closing time, they even told me I could go without vacuuming the practice rooms, and giggled. They fucking giggled together.

I swear to God, I might be the most mature person in my family.

But I was hardly going to pass up the chance to escape early. Especially when the alternative was to stay and get teased more.

I found Paul in his classroom.

“You ready to go?” I asked breathlessly.

“Oh.” He looked genuinely surprised. “I thought you’d have to do your usual Queen of the Vacuum routine.”

“Not tonight. You wanna go?”

“Sure. Let me pack up.” He started to fit the pick in his right hand into the strings at the top of the neck of his guitar, but he was moving too slow for my taste. I hunkered down and flicked open the latches on his case with practiced ease. When I had it ready, I turned to take the instrument from him.

He sucked in a breath like he wanted to say something or stop me. He did it more than once as I set the guitar gently into the plush lining and closed the lid, but to his credit he stayed silent.

Musicians in general can be kind of weird about their instruments, but guitar players are by far the worst. Some of them even name them. I’ve always thought that was pretty stupid, so I decided not to ask Paul if he had a name for his. I was better off not knowing.

I checked the latches on his other case. Closed. So I stood and hoisted them both before offering the heavier one to him.

“You really want to get out of here,” he observed with a soft laugh.

“Trust me. You want to get out of here before Rick and Dinah see you, too.”

Instantly, his face sobered. “Wait. Are they pissed? Am I going to lose my job?”

A sharp laugh burst out of me. “Uh, no. They are the opposite of pissed. There is no policy against interoffice dating at the Continental.” Now it was my turn to go stone-cold serious in an instant. “Not that we’re dating. I just meant—I mean I know we’re just—not dating.”

Amusement made his eyes sparkle. “Don’t look at me. I’m not the one who said it.”

“I’m—” I closed my mouth, because seriously the only direction you can dig a hole is deeper. And this one was plenty deep already for my taste. “Let’s just go.” I led him out of the lesson area and made a beeline for the front door, but my mother was waiting behind the main register. Like a giant spider in a web.

“Good night, Presley! Good night, Paul!” she sang out. “Call me if you’re not coming home, Pres.”

My retaliation instincts had been honed sharp by years with the idiots of The Luminous 6, so it took a lot of mental strength not to flip her off. Instead I gave her a well-practiced look of death. “Bye, Mom.”

“Bye, Dinah,” Paul said quickly as we passed the register.

The door chime rang out as I exited, already scanning the lot for Paul’s Subaru.

“This way,” he said, fishing in his pocket for keys as he led me to the far end of the lot.

I didn’t speak again until he had the hatch open and the first guitar loaded. When he turned to take the acoustic from me, our eyes met briefly. “I’m sorry about that,” I said.

“It’s no big deal.” But the tips of his ears were red, and I didn’t think it was the sudden shift from air-conditioned splendor to June humidity.

“My parents are—they can be a bit much.”

“Everybody’s parents are weird, right?” He slammed the tailgate and indicated a window decal I hadn’t noticed last night. It read, “My Shelter Dog Is Smarter Than Your Honor Student.”

I grinned. “I guess so.”

“So, what are we going to do now that we’ve escaped?”

“I’m up for anything,” I said, and meant it.

“Can I buy you a beer, or do you only drink whiskey out of coffee mugs?”

The answer came to me suddenly. “Buy me a fifth of whiskey and take me somewhere outside.”

He looked confused.

“I’ve been a bit of a shut-in since I came back. I just want to breathe.”

“You got it.”

I didn’t even wonder where we were going as I dropped into the passenger seat. It just felt so good to be away from the Continental and away from my parents’ house. I opened the window and settled in as Paul backed out of his parking space. The night air was humid, but comfortably cool, and the speed of the car made for a pleasant breeze against my face.

We didn’t talk much over the wind and the Foo Fighters. For the first time in weeks, I found myself wanting to hum along, and even mouthing a few lyrics. It wasn’t singing, I told myself, but it was closer than I’d let myself get since L.A.

Paul turned into the first liquor store we passed, which wasn’t that far away.

He’d taken me at my word. Good listening, Paul.

Inside, the selection was small, but they had what I was looking for on a shelf behind the counter.

“A fifth of Glenfiddich,” I told the cashier. He carded me, and I had a flash of fear as I handed over my license. I’d been twenty-one for only a few months, and I still wasn’t used to being legally able to buy. Even though I was legit, a little part of me was always convinced they were going to take away my ID and call the cops. I passed inspection, despite the blonde hair in the picture.

“Interesting choice,” Paul said as he handed over some cash.

“Single malt or nothing,” I said loftily.

Back in the car, I considered asking where we were going, but it was better not knowing somehow. He drove for a while, finally pulling into a park. The lot was all but empty, with only a half hour until it officially closed. It was dark, but a river flowed nearby and the crickets were singing.

“This okay?” Paul asked.

“It’s perfect.”

“You wanna take a walk?”

“Yes.”

We got out of the car and I let Paul choose a direction—toward the river. There was a dimly lit path that ran along the bank, and we started south on it. He walked close enough that our shoulders bumped occasionally, but he didn’t touch me. I cracked the seal on my scotch and took a sip. It burned my throat, but in just the way I liked it. Though on the rocks would have been better, I could work with this. I offered the bottle to Paul.

“Thanks.” He took a sip and impressed me greatly by not grimacing.

We walked, passing the bottle back and forth for a few rounds, but then he put up a hand. “Driving,” he reminded me.

After a few minutes, Paul said, “This way,” and stepped off the path. He led me across a wide grassy area and up a slight slope.

I could smell the garden before I could see it. Roses and lilacs. A border of low hedges was broken by two walkways. Paul led me through one into a moonlit English-style garden with gravel paths and beds of flowers. Even in the dark, I could see how beautiful it was. I wondered what it looked like in daylight.

“What is this?” I asked.

“A garden.” Paul shrugged.

“What’s it for?”

“What’s any garden for?” he asked.

“True.”

Our feet crunched over the gravel as we moved through the garden. The scent of flowers was almost as intoxicating as the scotch starting to work in my brain. We reached a series of stone alcoves marking the end of the garden. There were benches set into the alcoves and Paul took a seat on one, patting the spot beside him. I sat down, once again close enough to him that our shoulders touched.

“It occurs to me that I don’t know much about you, Paul,” I said.

“What would you like to know?”

“I guess we should start with your last name.”

He laughed. “I guess that’s a good place to start. It’s Kellerman.”

“Hi, Paul Kellerman, I’m Presley Mason-Schmidt.” I held out my hand, and he shook it.

“I didn’t realize you were hyphenated,” he said. “On Wikipedia, you’re called ‘Mason.’ ”

“You seriously looked me up on Wikipedia?” I couldn’t decide if that was creepy or flattering.

“God, no. I mean, yes, but—” He cut himself off with a frustrated sigh. “I told you your parents used to sell The Luminous 6’s album at the store. So, I looked you up. But that was before I met you.”

I laughed. “It’s fine. I get it.” Nudging him with my shoulder, I added, “But if you have a page, I’m reading the whole thing later.”

“I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed.”

“Then you have to make one up for me.”

“You want me to make myself a Wikipedia page just so you can read it?”

“You can just tell me now if you’d rather.”

“What, like, tell you my biography?”

“Yes.”

“Paul Kellerman was born in a little log cabin he built himself.”

“Ha ha.” I elbowed him, and unscrewed the cap from my bottle of scotch to take another sip.

“All right, all right.” He took the bottle from me and took another small swig, then set it on the bench to his other side. “Well, I think you figured out by now that I have two moms and a sister.”

“The tattoo artist,” I recalled as the urge to check out the rest of his tattoo returned to me in a rush.

“Yes. And I went to school for music, and I’ve been teaching guitar for a couple years now. But I’m also in a band.”

Of course,
I thought. “What kind of band?”

“Local. Kind of a fusion thing. We’re no Luminous 6.”

I snorted.

“Of course, The Luminous 6 is no Luminous 6 anymore, are they?”

“They’re still using the name.” I considered reaching over him for the scotch, but didn’t want to show my frustration.

“They’ll tank without you,” Paul said, as if it were a foregone conclusion.

“That would serve the fuckers right.”

He laughed.

“Let’s not talk about them. I just wanted to breathe tonight, remember?”

“Right.”

I tilted my head back against the stone wall and looked up at the few stars I could see. The lowest parts of the sky still had a faint blue glow. It was nearly the summer equinox and the daylight clung late into the evening. “It really is lovely here,” I said.

“When you said ‘outside,’ it was the first place that came to mind.”

“You chose well.” We sat quietly for a few minutes, though I had to slap at a few mosquitoes who found my skin in the dark. “So, Paul Kellerman,” I said. “Tell me the name of your band.”

“Jukebox Bleu. It’s spelled the French way, but we say ‘blue.’ ”

“And what does Jukebox Bleu want?”

“What do you mean?”

“Are you guys hoping for a record deal? Your songs on the charts? Radio play? Big tours with opening acts like my shitty band that will not be named?”

He sighed. “I don’t know.”

I raised my eyebrows. “I sense disagreement in the ranks.”

He shrugged, but didn’t answer. Having been there—both band drama and not wanting to talk about it—I decided to do him a favor and not ask. After a moment, he decided to talk anyway. “A couple of the guys would like to be more serious. But our lead singer is in the Army Reserves, and his unit hasn’t been called up for a while, so it seems very likely they will be. So it’s not like we can plan big tours. I don’t know, maybe that’s just an excuse. We don’t play a ton of originals. People don’t go out to bars to hear a band they don’t know play originals, you know?”

I knew. I’d been there. “How are the originals?” I asked.

He laughed. “Musically decent, lyrically…okay.”

“Been there.”

“Who wrote the lyrics for you guys?” he asked.

“Dixon. It used to be me,” I confessed. I wasn’t much of a composer, but back in the early days, when it was just me and Brendan, I’d been the one. We stopped doing my songs after Dixon and Shawn changed the sound. I could never decide how I felt about that.

“Yeah? Which one of you wrote ‘Little Disaster’?”

“Dixon.”

“Ah, well, that’s good.”

“Huh?”

“I’m glad it wasn’t you. Those lyrics are shit.”

I laughed, a loud surprised laugh. “What if I
had
written it?”

He shrugged. “I would have lied.”

After I elbowed him in the ribs, I had to admit, “They were kind of shit, weren’t they?”

“Drink me in, this is poison, but you like it,”
Paul sang in a high-pitched whisper, sounding like my voice with all the air let out.

“Ah, stop!” I put my fingers in my ears.

“The little death comes. I bet you’ll go down smiling,”
he continued, a little bolder to be sure I’d hear.

“Stop!” I took one finger out of my ear to put my hand over his mouth.

Laughing, he pulled at my hand, trying to keep the song going. I had to stand to try to keep my grip. We tussled for control, and Paul was laughing more than he was singing each time my hand slipped off his mouth. Finally he got a grip on my wrists, spreading them wide so I had no chance of shutting him up.

“She’s a little disaster, and you want her, want her, want her—”

I rushed at him, silencing his lips with my own.

He responded at once, yanking on my wrists until I had no choice but to straddle him on the bench. Our mouths opened hungrily together, igniting my fuse again in an instant.

I’d worn my favorite black pleated skirt today, and Paul ran his hands over my bare thighs. The pieces of clothing between us frustrated me. I wanted to tear at them, get them out of my way so our skin could touch. I wanted more contact than our awkward position on the bench could give me. Already the concrete was digging into my knees. But then Paul unknowingly solved the problem by turning sideways until he was straddling the bench and I was straddling him with my ankles locked behind his hips.

From that more secure position, he could brace me with his hands and lean me back to kiss my throat and collarbones. I dug my fingers into his short hair, humming with approval as his teeth nipped at the top of my breast.

I rocked my hips in time with his, already damp with excitement. Paul pulled me back up to claim my mouth once more and his hands found their way under my shirt. I copied his movements, tugging his shirt up until I could touch him. Oh God, his skin was so gloriously warm. He worked his way up to my bra and I gave him an encouraging kiss while he opened the clasp. Desire pulsed through me in dizzying waves as he cupped my bare breast and rubbed his thumb across my nipple.