Sound Bites: A Rock & Roll Love Story (16 page)

Walter took the liberty of ordering the fried spring rolls for an appetizer and two giant plates of Sriracha noodles for our main dishes, which were so spicy that one scorpion bowl quickly turned into three. I wasn’t all that hungry anyway, since Dylan had pretty much killed my mood and appetite for the evening, so I happily sucked down one bowl after another in hopes of recuperating what was left of the weekend.

After we left the restaurant, the excessive amount of alcohol I’d consumed hit me all at once, and through my drunken haze I decided to call it a night. Walter and I took a cab back to Times Square and were dropped off across the street from my hotel. Once we hopped out and started walking, Walter brought up the subject that I had been trying to avoid all evening.

“So, what’s up with your friend?” he asked, looking concerned.

Ugh. Talk about a buzzkill.

“I’m going to be honest,” he continued. “I really like you and I had a great time tonight – which I think you can already tell – but if something is going on between you two, then I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes.”

I shook my head. “Trust me, nothing is going on with us. Absolutely nothing.”

He looked at me doubtfully. “Nothing at all? Did you guys ever date?”

“Nope,” I insisted. “Never.”

His uncertainty quickly faded to curiosity. “Well he’s obviously crazy about you. That’s the only explanation that would make sense for his behavior tonight.”

“No!” My Irish whisper had gone into full effect again, no doubt due to the amount of booze in my bloodstream. “You don’t understand. Dylan is an asshole. It’s who he is, it’s what he does. He’s rude to people for no reason. Even earlier today, he gave some old guy the wrong directions, just for kicks. I wouldn’t take his attitude towards you personally, and I certainly wouldn’t take it to mean that he likes me. I can assure you, he doesn’t.”

Walter lowered his eyes suspiciously. “Now let me ask you something: does that bother you?”

“Does what bother me?”

A slight smirk emerged across his face, as if he knew something I didn’t. “Does it bother you that he doesn’t think of you that way?”

I sighed and plopped myself down on a nearby bench. This conversation was definitely not going to be short enough for me to last standing up. Walter followed suit and sat down next to me, waiting for my response.

“The reason I ask,” he continued, “is because when you say that he isn’t interested in you, your tone of voice isn’t very, well, nonchalant about it. You sound almost upset by it.”

I buried my face in my hands and tried to seek out a response. Walter was a great guy; that was obvious. He was so great that I was actually able to push Dylan out of my mind temporarily. But as the night went on, the thought of Dylan had slowly started to resurface, despite the fact that I’d tried my hardest to suppress it. I had used a gorgeous man and excessive amounts of alcohol to try to block Dylan out of my mind, but as luck would have it, it didn’t work. Nothing worked.

Love conquers all.

I raised my head to meet eyes with Walter, but I didn’t have to say anything. He already knew. I could easily have told him that I had no interest whatsoever in Dylan, but I didn’t want to lie to him. From what I could tell so far, he was a genuinely nice guy and deserved to know the truth.

“Walter, I think you’re a great guy…”

“Oh, here we go.” He rolled his eyes like he’d been down that road before. It made me laugh.

“No, really, I’m serious,” I insisted. “If we had met under different circumstances, I’d be all over you. I mean, come on. Look at you. You’re…” I stammered, trying to tone down the number of perverted adjectives that were dancing through my brain. “You’re…”

Mouth-wateringly, coochie-shakingly delicious? An orgasm with legs? What sex would look like if it presented itself in human form?

“You’re gorgeous,” I spit out. “And you’re fun. I just… I just can’t. It’s not the right time.” I forced a smile. “I’m not swearing you off forever, just for right now. I have to straighten out this situation before I can even think about dating.”

He looked at me knowingly. “You love him?”

I nodded reluctantly, surprised that I was even admitting it. I hadn’t even wanted to admit it to myself. “Very much. I’ve been trying to fight it because I don’t think he feels the same way and I don’t want to ruin our friendship. But considering I do have feelings for him, it really wouldn’t be fair of me to start anything with you knowing that, even if he doesn’t feel the same.”

What I loved about Walter was the fact that he was so understanding and appreciative of my honesty. He leaned back and put his arm around me, listening and offering suggestions with the patience of a social worker. I wasn’t sure where on earth this perfect being had beamed down from or why the hell he was still on the dating market, but I made sure that when he slipped me his phone number and instructed to call him if I changed my mind, I tucked that bad boy into a safe place. I had to keep my options open. Just in case.

“But before I go, I have one more question,” he said, standing up to see if any cabs were coming down the street.

“Shoot.”

He waved his arm into the street and flagged a cab over, then turned back around to face me. “Are you ever going to tell him how you feel?”

That was the question I had been tormenting myself with for the last few months, over and over again. But no matter how many times I replayed the situation in my head, I could never come up with an answer.

“Honestly,” I said. “I have absolutely no idea.”

***

From the time I stepped foot into the lobby ‘til the time I reached our hotel room, I had played dozens of different scenarios in my head, all of which contained my paranoid revelations of Dylan’s revenge ploys against me. What if he brought a girl back to our hotel room to spite me? Or if he didn’t come back to the room at all? What if he’d picked up some
girl
at the show and decided to spend the night at her place instead?

My ridiculous
thoughts
were put to rest the minute I walked into the hotel room and found that Dylan was not only present, but he was alone. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, leaning forward with his chin cupped in his hands. He didn’t even acknowledge me when I walked in, just continued staring at the floor. The TV and radio were both off, making the room completely and awkwardly silent. He looked so deep in thought that I almost didn’t even want to disturb him, but I knew we had to talk.

“Hey.” I realized I was whispering and I wasn’t sure why. Maybe because our room was so quiet.

He looked up and made eye contact with me, forcing a smile. I could tell right away that he wasn’t mad anymore. He had a sad, distant look in his eye that made me want to slither up beside him and bury my face in his chest.

“Hey,” he mumbled. “Did you have a good night with Wally boy?”

I shot him a look that said
don’t even start
, which usually he would find funny, but something about his whole demeanor was different. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I sensed that something was definitely on his mind. I took off my shoes and sat down on the bed next to him.

“Do you mind telling me what that was all about back there?” I asked, referring to the incident at the theater.

He shook his head and refused to look at me. “Not really.”

His gaze alternated from the floor to me for about half a second before resuming its original focus on the floor. I couldn’t tell if he was upset with me or he just wanted to be alone.

“Listen,” I said, with as much compassion as I could dig up. “I’m sorry I got upset with you earlier. But you have to understand, you can’t be rude to people just because you’re pissed off that some kids in the crowd were being
jerks
.”

He shook his head again, his expression still blank. “That’s not it.”

“What’s not it?”

“That’s not why I was upset.”

I put my hand on his arm, thinking that it might provide some sort of level of comfort. I was surprised when he didn’t pull away. “Okay, so tell me why you were mad.”

“I’d rather not.”

I threw my legs up on the bed and sat Indian-style, waiting for him to explain himself, but he didn’t. Instead, he was about as talkative as Bianca. I was getting nowhere.

“Dylan, we’re friends, right?”

He shot me a look of dread, like I was going to give him some maternal lecturing speech.

“You know you can talk to me about anything,” I pressed.

“Not anything,” he mumbled, toying with the hole in his jeans. “So, how was your night out with Wally?”

Despite my annoyance that he was purposely changing the subject, I went with it anyway. “It was okay.”

His attention was now focused on me, and he was looking at me with that all-too-familiar intensity, like he was trying to decipher some hidden meaning. “Just
okay
?
”

I rolled my eyes. “Come on, you’re changing the subject to get out of talking about what’s bothering you. None of this is important.”

“It’s important to me.” He mumbled it in such a barely audible whisper that I was almost positive I hadn’t heard him correctly.

“What did you say?”

“Nothing.”

“No, tell me what you just said.”

“You heard me.”

I had heard him. My chest started to ache. I wasn’t sure if he was insinuating what I thought he was, but I hoped, I prayed, that he was.

Please God, I begged. Please tell me he’s saying what I think he is.

I wasn’t sure if I even believed in God, but I thought about the fact that if God really did exist, he must think I was
the most selfish person on the planet
. The only time I ever prayed was when I wanted something, or needed something. And it wasn’t even a real prayer, it was more of a half-assed one where I just said a quick few lines of “give me this, please” and ended it with an Amen. No wonder I was up shit’s creek. God didn’t grant wishes to selfish people who couldn’t even pray right.

“Well, if you really want to know, I told Walter that I think he’s a nice guy, but I don’t plan on seeing him again.”

Dylan sat up straight and leaned in towards me. “Why?”

If there was one thing I knew about myself, it was that I never told someone how I felt about them without knowing how they felt. It set you up for rejection and failure. Everyone knows that the person who says “I love you” first is almost always the one that gets dumped in the end. Stupid girls did that. I wasn’t a stupid girl.

“I’m done answering questions,” I said, pulling back from his stare. “I’m not answering anything until you start talking. I want to know why you pulled that attitude earlier and I want to know why you’re giving me the third degree about my night.”

“Why do you
think?
” Dylan yelled. He stood up and started pacing around the hotel room in the same circular motion as he was earlier during his wardrobe crisis. After about ten laps, he stopped pacing and sat down on the bed next to me, reverting back to his original position, with his chin cupped in his hands and his eyes focused on the floor. As I watched him, I saw a familiar emotion resurface, but this time it had nothing to do with music. It had nothing to do with a stage and an audience that consisted of hundreds of people. I wasn’t sure of the cause, but I knew one thing for sure.