Know Me (Truthful Lies Trilogy - Book One) (16 page)

Then he slammed his own chest like a
gorilla. “In
here
!”

He was a really intense dude. Still is, I
guess.

“
It brings out the dark in a person,
Błażej
.
” He also knew
me from Greenpoint. “It calls to a level deep down, far beyond
anybody’s reaches. The head-doctors”—he tapped his temple—“they
never gonna figure it out. It’s too ugly down there. But it also
takes you up into the heavens—the art, the creation.” He raised his
arms, pointed up to the sky. He had a fat hipster beard back then,
so he reminded me of Moses or some such guy.
Like I said, real
intense
. “And they’ll
never reach up there either.” He looked at me. “The art—it brings
out the
real
in you.
Even if it’s a mucky cesspool. It shows you who you really are and
makes you face it. Brings out what you’re hiding, what you’re too
scared to talk about with words. You, me, the ones who created this
stuff...” He gestured around to a back-to-back graffiti piece on a
wall that we were looking at. “...We
know
.”

See what I mean about
intense
?

When I mix,
I’m vaguely aware of what I’m mixing. This time, I
start with
Seven Devils
by
Florence and the Machine
. It’s a dark song that makes me think of old cathedrals
with hidden waterways in them and rafts on those waters being
sailed by vampires, blood dripping from their teeth.

And it’s
also got a good BPM—one hundred and seventeen
beats per minute—which makes it such a killer song to mix with
something equally gothic and housey.

I scratch in Birdy’s
You Light me
Up
. Because, despite its
pie-in-the-sky name, its lyrics scream of pain.

I think of falling into pieces, being picked
up.

Images form in my mind like billowing clouds
of color.

The drums crash.

The guitar riff kicks in.

Her voice sinks deep into my
blood.

I set an echo effect on it.

The images turn to ones of me and Declan
in the
near-darkness, on
the bed to my left, a light golden glow washing in from the
windows. Me riding him.

The drums crash again.

The guitar riffs harder.

I ride him.

I throw in a bass loop, four beats.

I’m sweating. I put
Birdy’s voice on a lower, longer echo. It
makes it sound lonelier, darker.

In my mind,
I hit Savva’s face.

I see Declan’s face.

I see me riding him again.

My skin breaks out in goosebumps.

Birdy’s voice is everywhere, towering,
screaming, high in the heavens.

A sweat breaks out on my forehead.

Before I know it, the sun is
low near the horizon. There’s
banging on the door.
In my mind...?

No, the banging is here!

I take off my headphones, realize I’ve been
mixing for close on four hours.

Bang bang
bang
.

I wipe the sweat off my face.
I’m in that dark
place Patryk told me about
, down in the depths of it, and I’m trying to bring myself
back up to reality.

The door bangs a third time. “Blaze, you
OK? Blaze!”

It’s Deck. It comes to me that he’s
probably been banging frantically for minutes and I didn’t hear
him. “Deck, I’m OK. Just give me a second.”

I look around the room. See my brick
walls, menacing at first, then, simply tiring.
Same old...
I shake my head, come up slowly from the
past.

A year ago,
I might occasionally even throw in the likes of
sunshine-loving artists like Colbie Caillait or that chick who
sings
Call
me Maybe
into my mixes.
Now, except for those teeny-bopper parties I have to mix over in
the city to pay the rent, those songs never even see the light of
day in my tunes.

T
his is what I mix now: Four-hour long stints of screaming
pain.

“
You OK?” Deck’s face is a wash of worry.
In his hand is a brown paper bag.

“
I’m good. I’m sorry. I was mixing. I
didn’t hear you knock.”

“
I called as well.”

“
Phone’s on flight mode. Come
in.”

He looks at me suspiciously. My mind’s
still adrift. When he kisses me, I hold onto him a little tighter
than I did earlier. And he brings me back. “You know, you have an
amazing kiss, Declan Cox.”

“
I could say the same about you, Blaze
Ryleigh. You sure you OK? You feel a little shaky.”

“
I haven’t eaten much. Haven’t eaten at all
actually. Maybe that’s it.”

He doesn’t call my bluff. “Good thing I
brought a sandwich.” He holds up the brown paper bag. And just like
that, my stomach catches up with my mind, and my mouth starts to
water with ravenous hunger. He holds it out to me.

“
Are you, like, psychic or
something?”

“
Nope. Took a long shot. And if you weren’t
gonna eat it, I would’ve.”

I stop mid-bite of the warm chicken and
mayo sub.

“
It’s cool!” He laughs. “I’m not hungry. I
can just eat anything anytime so, if you didn’t eat it, I
would’ve.”

I don’t even answer. I just start wolfing
the thing down. Even my head hurts suddenly. “God, I can’t believe
how hungry I am.” In a dim state of consciousness, I realize I
probably have lettuce and mayo on the side of my mouth. But I just
don’t care. I’m freaking starving!

“
So, you ready to go see a bunch of sweaty
guys lifting weights? I mean, after you finish eating of
course.”

It’s just me and the sandwich now. Deck’s
gonna have to wait
just
a second
longer.

When I’m done,
and after the food has settled like lead in my
empty stomach, I say, “I can’t wait.”

Declan Cox

After she’s done guzzling the chow
down,
I hold her small
oval face in my hands. She licks her teeth and tries to pull
away—maybe to go and brush them—but I don’t let her. I want her
lips to mine, salad and all. I press mine to hers. They tremble.
Her body joins in, quivering lightly. And mine quickly follows
suit. There’s an intensity about her that oozes out into my space,
my aura.
Our
aura. It
radiates off her skin like hot fire.

All day
I was moving shit—a dresser the size of the Statue
of Liberty; a TV large enough to replace the ones at MetLife
stadium; a cupboard larger than what Brodrick Bunkley probably
lifts in one hand while eating a cheeseburger in the
other.

But
now, she and I kiss. Every moment that I think,
OK, enough
now
, I linger a little
longer. Maybe it’s her flavor—that flavor of
girlness
under the tomato and chicken. Or her
softness...

My arms feel weak. The thought of benching
two hundred tonight seems more and more impossible.

I let her go. I’ve probably got a
gaga
look in my eyes, dopey and
stupid.

S
he smiles. So I kiss her again, because I just have
to.

“
You have an interesting way...” She bites
her lips, puts her hands to my waist, looks down. “...Uhm, an
interesting way of making me forget.”

“
Forget what?”

“
Stuff... Should we go?”

I don’t want to. I want to stay here. But
Trev’s gonna be gone in two weeks. And I gotta spend time with my
boy. I’m even hoping, maybe, Blaze turns out to be “my girl.” I
know I feel something for her. Maybe it’s just that infatuation of
having seen her perform. I want to make sure there really is a
connection that’s more than the heat of the moment.

“
Deck?”

I love it that she calls me
Deck
. “Uhm—” Ah,
fuck it. I kiss her again. I push her up against the
door.

It gets hot quickly. She’s got her hands
all over my back. It feels like she needs this as much as I do. She
turns me, and now I’m the one against the door. We go at it for a
few minutes. Finally, we exhale, force ourselves apart. “OK, I
think we do
have
to go. I
can’t leave Trev hanging. He’ll be back at Penn State in about two
weeks.”

R
ed and flushed, she says, “I think you kissed
me
?”

I feel the grin forming,
because I want to
kiss you again, and again, especially if you look up at me like
that.
Behind me, I
fumble for the doorknob. “Let’s go. Let’s go
before”—
I
take your clothes off and make love to you—
“I... Never mind.”

I somehow stumble out
into the hallway with her, weakened by her
kryptonite eyes.

In the car, I ask her about her day. She
tells me about people wanting a piece of her, about the gazillion
tweets,
the so-called
agents. She plays it down, tells me it was “a little overwhelming.”
But I can see through the armor. I don’t call her on it, because we
all need to feel like our armor’s on good and solid sometimes. But
she looks a little freaked by it all.

“
You freaked out by it? All the
attention?”

She tugs at a strand on her jeans. “What
do you mean?” Her eyes flick quickly to mine, then out the
window.

“
Look, Blaze, I know we just met and
all,
and I don’t expect
you to spill your guts out to me. But you can trust me, that I can
promise you. I’m told I’m a good ear. And I
never
spill what people tell me in private. So if
there’s something else you wanna say about these things that
happened today, go ahead. There’s no judgment about it on my part.
I swear it.”

She
swings her gaze briefly at me again. “Well...it just kind
of made me nervous, all of it. You work and work and work for
something for what feels like your whole life, and then it just
falls in your lap? It almost feels like it’s weird that you
suddenly
don’t
fail. It’s
like it’s not real if something doesn’t go wrong. I’m just waiting
for the piano to drop, or for reality to strike home. That’s how it
always seems to go...”

She looks away, clearly thinking of that
dropping piano.

Friend of mine
ODed
, she said to me
yesterday, after I asked her why she stopped dropping Es. “Blaze.”
I put my hand on her leg (her sweet, soft, beautiful leg.) “I’m
gonna tell you something, OK?”

She nods.

“
My mom died when I was eighteen. Almost
four years ago.” I stop for a second to catch my breath because
mentioning it always hurts. “Uhm...cancer. She suffered for years
with it. Suffered horribly. In the end, I swear I cursed the
government for not letting that euthanasia shit into this country.
I cursed New York for not having something like that
Death with Dignity
Act
they got over in
Oregon. Because she was hurting like crazy. Unable to empty herself
properly. Needing constant care. Shaking most of the time. Not able
to recognize people. It’s...
hell
...just...nobody should go through that, you
know?

“
Pops, well, it really ruined him. Or maybe
he ruined himself.
We
had a fallout after she died.”
Because of his fucking whore.

We arrive at the gym’s parking lot and I
stop the car.

“
Anyway, my pops had this piece-o-shit
truck in the back that needed fixing but which he never fixed. So I
learned about cars, got a new carburetor for it. Wheeled and dealed
in various ways with people. Exchanged with hard labor for a bit of
cash. Anything I could do. And I got that fucker fixed and drove it
outta there as soon as I could. Trev put me up for a bit—over
in
East New
York
FYI! So, I started
moving shit for people, and soon I had enough dough to rent a place
in Bushwick. And, well, things took off after a while.”

Blaze
is staring at me with her adorable little mouth
open.

I turn and stare out my window, suddenly
thinking of Trev’s insistence I go see my pops.
Because he’s your
father...

I feel Blaze’s hand on my leg. “Uhm...it
seems I got a little carried away there,” I say. “I actually just
wanted to let you know that I understand what it means to lose
someone...” I pause for a long while, squeeze the shit out of her
hand for stability. Then: “...But turns out I ended up giving you
my life’s story.”

She whispers. Because that’s how Blaze
talks: In a soft, angelic whisper. Always. “I don’t think that’s
your life’s story. I think there’s a lot more to you than that. And
I appreciate you telling me.