Playing by Heart

by JB Salsbury

  I follow his gaze, trying to see the place through his eyes. Cheap diner decorated with grandma-style curtains and photos of baked goods framed on every wall. As if he didn’t already think I’m a loser, my place of employment would only confirm that I am. “Jesse, you shouldn’t be here. Someone could recognize you.”

  “I don’t care. I can’t stay locked up forever.”

  I’m still not entirely sure why he’s here. “If you’re hungry, I can’t help you. The kitchen is closed. I might be able to get you a piece of pie—”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Okay.”

  “Can we sit?” He motions to a booth.

  “I guess so.”

  I direct him to the nearby booth, and I make sure we sit on opposite sides from each other. I require the distance between us because even now, there’s a gravitational pull that has me leaning into the table toward him.

  He takes off his hat and runs a hand through his hair. The reddish-brown mess is longer than it was when he got here, but it still looks completely Hollywood. Think Robert Pattinson post Twilight but better. “Listen, I’m sorry about what happened today. I shouldn’t have touched you.”

  But… but… but… shut up, Bethany! This is what you wanted! “Oh, okay.”

  His eyes latch onto mine as if he’s trying to see inside my head.

  Bad idea! I can’t let him see what’s in there. “Do you want some coffee?”

  He grins. “Yeah, that’d be cool.”

  I hop up and duck behind the counter to brew a pot of decaf. Motown filters in from the kitchen where the cooks, Rick and Leon, are wrapping things up. Thankfully they leave out the back door every night, so Jesse should be safe from being noticed without his hat.

  I pour fresh brew into two cups and add a little cream and sugar to mine but leave Jesse’s black the way he likes it.

  His gaze follows me when I return with two cups. “Sexy.”

  “Huh?” I set down his cup and hope he doesn’t notice the way my hand shakes all because of that stupid non-kiss. I can’t be myself around him!

  He flicks a gaze toward my apron.

  “Oh. This ol’ thing?” I quickly untie it and toss it into the booth.

  “So this is your gig, huh? Professional waitress?”

  I can’t tell if he’s being blatantly insulting or if he’s trying to start conversation. Rather than launch into him about how much of an asshole he is, I give him the benefit of the doubt. “No, actually. I have one more year of school before I get my degree in child development.”

  His eyes narrow. “School? I call bullshit.”

  “I had to take a little hiatus.” I sip my coffee and avoid his eyes. “School is pricey.” A half-truth, but he doesn’t need to know it all.

  “So, what, you want to be a teacher?”

  My stomach swirls with guilt and a lot of regret. “Is that so hard to believe?”

  He shakes his head. “Nah, I can could see you being a teacher.”

  “What about you? Did you always know you wanted to be a rock star?”

  He chuckles and braces his forearms on the table, turning his coffee mug but not drinking from it. “Yep. From day one.”

  “You must miss it.”

  He frowns. “I do. I miss getting drunk.”

  Is that why he’s here? Is he about to fall off the wagon? Calm down. Don’t react. I have no experience with this. What do I say?

  “You drink?” he says.

  Not anymore. I shake my head. “No.”

  He shrugs one shoulder, still focused on his mug. “I probably shouldn’t have come here. I couldn’t sleep, and being stuck in Ben’s room, I felt like I was going stir crazy. I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go.” He peeks up at me shyly, which is an entirely new look from him and equally endearing as his confidence. “You ever look back on your life to one specific thing that set shit in motion and wonder if you’d done things differently, how you’d end up?”

  I open my mouth to respond but close it instead.

  “No. I don’t suppose you do.”

  A twinge of irritation tightens my lips. “You think you know me so well.”

  “You say that like you’re a mystery.” He follows up quickly with, “No offense.” He smiles. “You’re a really good person, that’s all. It’s not meant to be an insult.”

  Rather than confirm or deny his assumption, I look away before he can see the guilt and shame flaring in my eyes. “You might want to talk to Dr. Ulrich about this stuff.”

  He shakes his head. “Nah. He doesn’t get me. He might get paid to get me, but he doesn’t, not really. He pretends. I can see it in his eyes. I’m an entitled Hollywood brat to him.” He goes back to studying and turning his coffee. “Everyone looks at me like that. Except you.”

  “Oh no, you’re wrong. I absolutely think you’re an entitled Hollywood brat.”

  He chuckles and nods. “Even still, you don’t tiptoe around me or kiss my ass like they do. When you look at me, it’s like… I don’t know… it’s like you see me as a person.”

  I blink. “You are a person.”

  He slumps back in the booth but keeps one arm outstretched. His fingers drum on the table. He sucks in a big breath and blows it out. “Ben used to get me. We were best friends growing up.”

  That piece of news surprises me.

  “We used to play music in my parents’ church. It wasn’t a laid-back church like Ben’s. It was whacked, but my parents were sold on it. Ben was an amazing musician, much better than I was.”

  “I didn’t know he could play.”

  “He gave it up.” He drums his fingers again. “When I was thirteen, I discovered rock-n-roll. Slayer. My parents said it was from the devil. I hid CDs under my bed, and when they found them, my dad beat me pretty bad.”

  “That’s awful.”

  “They were church-approved beatings, spare-the-rod type shit. But I couldn’t walk away from the music. I kept getting caught, and the beatings got worse. At one point, my parents dragged me in for a cleansing ceremony that involved snakes.”

  I gasp then cover my mouth. “Sorry.”

  “No, don’t apologize. It was fucked beyond belief, trust me. The shit went on and on, and the worst part is my brother never tried to stop it. He totally bought into all their bullshit brainwashing. Dedicated his life to serving the same God they followed.”

  I understand now why Jesse wouldn’t pray in church. He’s wrong, but I’m not going to tell him that. Not now.

  “That chair, the one I put in the closet…”

  My stomach turns at the memory of what happened on that chair, those silvery marks on his back.

  “All the beatings… how can Ben have that thing in his room…” He shakes his head. “How can he even stand to look at it?”

  “I don’t know. I know I’ll never be able to look at it again after knowing what it was used for.”

  The corner of his mouth twitches. “See? You get it.” He frowns. “Why doesn’t my own fucking brother?” He sighs. “I was seventeen the last time my dad beat me. I was bigger than him and decided I couldn’t take it anymore. I fought back. My parents disowned me that night, told me I was the son of Satan and that I was dead to them. We haven’t spoken since.” His eyes are warm and open, fixed on mine. “They moved to some psycho religious colony or some shit. I don’t think they even talk to Ben anymore.”

  “Probably not a bad thing.”

  “No,” he chuckles. “I felt so free that night I left. I hitchhiked to Hollywood, lived on the street. I was playing my guitar for money when Dave discovered me. We changed my name, and I reinvented myself as Jesse Lee. He’s the only person I’ve ever told my story to—until you.”

  “I won’t tell anyone.”

  “I know you wont.” He nods and stares blindly at the table in front of him. “What’s weird is now that I’m in Ben’s house, watching him with his kid… I made him out to be monster, but he seems just as fucked up as I am.”

>   I smile at his choice of words. “Why are you telling me all this?”

  “I don’t know. Being sober, all this shit keeps bubbling to the surface and spilling over and I don’t know where to put it.” Both hands go into his hair. “All I want to do, rather than think of this shit, is drink until I go numb and remember how much I hate my brother.”

  I want to tell him that I’ve been there. The confusion, shame, regret, I’ve felt it all. “That makes sense to me.”

  His chin jerks back in surprise. “It does?”

  I nod.

  “So what do I do? I can’t drink, can’t snort a line. There aren’t enough women in the world to fuck this out of my system.”

  “Sexy.” I throw his own word back at him.

  He chuckles.

  “Sounds like you only have one option left. Time to open up that closet and face it all head-on.”

  “What does that look like? Practically speaking.”

  I chew my lip. Do I tell him? Can I possibly share with him my deepest, darkest secret? His eyes sparkle with hope and anticipation as he waits, looking desperate for anything I have to offer. Who am I to refuse him?

  “I have an idea. You game?”

  He grins. “Yeah.”

  “Let’s go.”

  14

  Jesse

  “Are you going to be able to do this?” Bethany asks and goes back to chewing on her thumbnail while staring at the disgusting antique in front of us.

  “Is there a way we can do this without me having to touch it?” I fold my arms and slam my hands into my armpits, hoping to erase my memories of how the cold, unforgiving wood felt on my palms as I held on for dear life.

  She spits a piece of fingernail at it. “I don’t think so.” Then she switches to her other thumb.

  I pause to consider why nail chewing, something I usually find unattractive, is kind of cute on her. Or maybe it’s the fact that she seems just as invested in this quest to destroy that’s turning me on.

  Bethany explained her plan on the way to Ben’s house. Her face scrunched up as though she’d eaten a sour grape every time she spoke of the chair, and she became adorably flushed with excitement while laying out her plan.

  We pulled the plastic baby pool into the backyard and filled it with six inches of water. Now for the hard part.

  “Okay, I’ll get it.” I rub my hands together. “Open the door.”

  “You sure?” She lifts her brows then blows a long strand of hair that fell from her now-sloppy ponytail.

  “Yeah.”

  “Try to be quiet. We don’t want to wake Ben or Elliot.”

  I stare at the chair of nightmares. “Quiet. Got it.”

  She whirls around, and I hear the sliding glass door that leads from Ben’s bedroom to the backyard open.

  “It’s just a chair,” I whisper.

  In one quick swoop, I grip the hand-carved wood that was passed down from generation to generation of whacked-out, brainwashed Langleys, and I speed toward the backyard. The fucker is heavy—probably because it’s soaked with the tears and pride of a young Jesiah Langley.

  “Good! You got it! You’re almost there,” Bethany cheers me on quietly as I awkwardly carry the POS to the farthest end of the yard and set it in the baby pool. “Yes! You did it!”

  She holds up her hand and I smack her a high-five that feels really fucking satisfying. “Now what?”

  Her grin is half evil and one-hundred percent beautiful as she takes my hand and presses a cold metal container into it. “Time to send those memories straight to hell where they belong.”

  My mouth stretches in a sinister smile that matches hers, and I flip open the top of the lighter fluid. “This is going to feel so fucking good.”

  “Yeah, it is.”

  I saturate the wooden chair, getting a contact high from the pungent fumes—or maybe it’s the anticipated release that’s giving me the floating feeling.

  “How old is this thing?”

  “At least a hundred years.” I walk around the pool, paying extra attention to the back, where I was always instructed to hold on.

  “Perfect. It’ll go up like a roman candle.”

  The giddiness in her voice grabs my attention. “Are you a pyro?”

  Her smile falls.

  “I’m kidding, genius. Good girls like you don’t play with fire.” The double meaning behind my words is one-thousand percent intentional. A sweet girl like her would never want to get messed up with a train wreck like me.

  I empty the rest of the can and toss it aside. I hold out my hand, and Bethany slaps a box of strike anywhere matches into my palm.

  “Now, think back to the most painful of the punishments,” she says. “Take all that anger, all that hurt, ball it up and shove it away and into that chair.”

  “Is this part of your child-development training?”

  She rocks into my side playfully and redirects my attention to the chair. “Once you’re ready, light it up.”

  Without hesitation, I pull out three sticks and flick them against the backs of my front teeth. They pop and ignite in a quick, hot sizzle.

  “Whoa.” Her eyes are bright and dart between the flames and my mouth. “That was awesome.”

  I smirk then toss the matches onto the chair.

  In a flash of fire, the object from my past goes up in flames. The heat sears my eyes, and I hook my arm around Bethany and pull her away from the fire. The flames shoot at least seven feet high, and I’m grateful for Ben’s block wall so no one will see it.

  I watch in awe as the worst of Jesiah Langley’s past burns. The rejection of my parents, the abandonment of my older brother, the disapproval, it’ll all turn to tiny embers and be carried away in the breeze.

  I can feel it.

  The weight, even if only momentarily, lifts.

  A surge of adrenaline courses through me. I turn to Bethany, who’s watching the flames with the same intensity I’m feeling. As though she understands my pain. I’ve lived surrounded by people—employees, fans, sold-out arenas. But this is the first time I’ve not felt completely alone.

  I grab her hand and pull her to me. She rips her gaze from the fire and looks at me with excitement in her eyes. The light dances along her face, and suddenly she’s the most gorgeous woman I’ve ever known.

  “I know you don’t want me to touch you.” I slide my hands around her waist and pull her hips flush with mine. “But for now, for tonight, can I—”

  “Just kiss me.” Her hands lock around my neck and she pulls my lips to hers.

  There is no prelude. No gentle coaxing like I would’ve expected a woman like Bethany would require.

  Our tongues crash together in a frenzied kiss. The meeting of our mouths isn’t pretty, there is no rhythm, but it’s a hot fucking mess of dick-hardening proportions.

  Her fingers bite into my neck and send a delicious sting down my spine, taking all the blood in my brain with it. I fist my hand in her hair, tilt her head, and deepen the kiss. She opens up beautifully, not giving up control but pushing back with a scrape of her teeth.

  I rip my mouth away and stare at her, trying to catch my breath and slow my racing pulse. “Where the fuck did you come from?”

  She doesn’t give me a chance to refill my lungs before she’s on me again. Her mouth forms perfectly to mine as we kiss as though we’ve been starved of each other for way too long. The heat of the flames at my back is no match for the fire that burns between us.

  I’ve kissed a lot of women. More than I could ever begin to number. But none have had this kind of instant effect on me. None before this one have made me lose my mind and forget my own fucking name.

  She tastes even sweeter than I thought she would, and I need more.

  I slide my hand up her ribcage and palm her tit over her shirt. The warm weight fits perfectly in my hand. There’s no padding in her bra and the tip pebbles under my touch. I brush my thumb roughly against her and swallow her answering moan. My dick is painfully
hard and I need to lay her down so I can explore her properly. I don’t want to miss a single fucking inch of her skin.

  I walk her backward, and she seems to understand my intention when she takes big steps back. I’m imagining all the different things I want to do, all the ways I want to touch her and make her feel good. We’re not moving fast enough.

  I take a bigger step at the same time she does. We’re knocked off balance. She goes down, and the only way I can help her is to go down with her and try to cushion the fall.

  We hit the grass hard, me on top of her, with my hands under her back and head. “Shit, are you okay?”

  Her entire body shakes with wheezing laughter. “Yes.”

  I roll off of her once I realize she’s trying to catch her breath. “Did you get the wind knocked out of you?”

  She pats her chest a few times, her laughter dying a bit. “A little.”

  I cover her hand on her chest with my own. “Take a few deep breaths.”

  She nods and sucks in air a few times then looks at me, smiling. “Bet you’ve never had a first kiss like that before, huh?”

  I can still feel her on my lips and my heart is pounding like a motherfucker. “I can’t say I have.” No kiss has ever come close to that.

  She covers her face with her hands. “That’s so embarrassing.”

  If she only knew how much she turned me on. I’m lying on the dirt with grass stains on my clothes after a disaster end to a hot-as-fuck kiss and I still can’t get my pulse under control.

  I peel her hands away from her face. “Bethany, what we just did?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Things between us—”

  “What in God’s name is going on out here?”

  “Great,” I mumble then peer up to see Ben standing in the glow of the fire. He looks furious.

  Bethany

  I push away from Jesse and scramble to my feet, brushing grass from my clothes. “Pastor Langley, I’m sorry. It’s not what you think.”

  His gaze jumps between me and Jesse, who is slowly getting to his feet. “It’s not what I think? I don’t know what to think. What happened out here?” He shoves a hand toward the fire. “What is on fire in Elliot’s pool?”