Vote Then Read: Volume I

by Carly Phillips

  So, I felt territorial about it—almost like it wasn’t something I wanted to share, even if I wasn’t exactly practicing right now. Will already had so much. He was rich, clearly, and talented enough that he could write stacks of screenplays in his spare time. Music was mine in this relationship. It was the only thing I brought to the table besides an empty savings account and a drunken mother. It was all I had to offer.

  “It’s stupid rich guy shit.” Will touched a padded wall wistfully. “I never use it. I had this idea at one point that I could learn to be a rock star. But I have no rhythm, no pitch, no musical talent whatsoever. It’s pathetic.”

  I tipped my head, ignoring the relief that coursed through me. “Well, you’re talking to the girl who literally moved to New York for eight years trying to make that happen. I’m the queen of pathetic.”

  But he just shook his head, making the flyaway strands of blond that framed his face rustle back and forth. “You haven’t heard me sing, Lil. I sound like a dying cow, and I play the guitar like a toddler. It’s not pretty.”

  I couldn’t help but chuckle. “Did you put anything down? Can I hear it?”

  “Maybe one day…” he said. “When, I don’t know, I lose a bet or something, I’ll play you the few shitty recordings I made when I was bored. But since I’ll probably lose you forever when that happens, I’m going to delay it as long as possible.”

  Sensing I wasn’t going to get any more out of him on that point, I turned to the instruments. Will had a beautiful collection—there were a couple of Fenders, a very pretty Dobro, and even a bass next to the drum set and keyboard. The guitars were all mounted on the walls, waiting to be played, though I did notice the strings on a few were starting to rust. Will’s house was immaculately clean, but a bit of dusting couldn’t deter the effects of neglect and waterfront property.

  I turned back to him. “This isn’t just for you. You have an entire band’s worth of equipment in here.”

  Will shrugged, but wouldn’t meet my eyes. He shoved his hands deep into his pockets. “Well, I have a wicked guitarist now, don’t I? Singer, too.”

  I ran a finger over the head of the acoustic Fender. It was a beautiful guitar, although not as nice as my Martin. I had saved for three years to buy that guitar. It was my prized possession.

  “Would you ever let me record you?” Will asked behind me. “Maybe that song you played by the fire? Or…or whatever you want, really.”

  I hesitated, looking around. It was funny. For a long time, this would have been everything I’d ever wanted. I’d paid to have an EP done, of course, plus a few demos recorded my my own computer and some rented equipment. But I’d never been signed, was never able to finance a full album. Now I had access to a beautiful studio offered to me on a silver platter…and I didn’t want it.

  Didn’t I?

  For the last year I’d been a shadow, afraid of everything. Afraid of being on stage. Afraid of trying new things. Until I met this strange, mysterious man.

  Being around Will made me feel stronger. Made me realize that maybe I didn’t want to say goodbye to all my dreams by coming back here. That maybe I really did have more to offer the world than just being Ellie Sharp’s pathetic bastard kid.

  I took the guitar off the wall and turned to Will. “All right.”

  He glanced between me and the instrument, clearly surprised. “You want to do it right now?”

  I weighed the neck in the curve of my palm. It felt good. Right. I inhaled, breathing the wood of the shiny floors, the slight metallic tinge that came from the equipment. “It’s now or never, Baker. You want these pipes, you better press record.”

  Will pushed off the wall almost immediately, then moved about the room for a few minutes, unspooling cords, arranging the mics, and doing all the small things necessary to get ready to record. Then he went to the console, and I sat down on one of the stools, balancing precariously, trying to calm my heart pounding away in my chest. For some reason, this was scarier than playing in front of five thousand people at Irving Plaza.

  “You ready?” he asked through the speakers.

  I nodded, unable to speak. I just needed to calm my nerves. Close my eyes. Remember why, once upon a time, music had set my soul free.

  “All right,” Will said. “You’re on.”

  A green light flashed on from the room, indicating that we were recording.

  And I. Did. Nothing.

  For nearly a minute. I sat there, frozen while I stared at the frets, looked at the way my left hand was poised over them, pressing so hard on a few. I knew how to start. A variation on a simple Travis pick, not much different than “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right.” A strum on the bass E-string at the third measure. Hammer on the A-string twice, then sing.

  But my other hand didn’t move, and my mouth didn’t open. I sat there like a statue. Completely paralyzed.

  “Lil?”

  Will’s voice was muted, coming over a loudspeaker from the console room.

  I closed my eyes. Suddenly, I was back on that stage. Back under those lights. A phantom terror watching me from the back of the room, there in spirit, though at the time he was still in jail.

  Except now he wasn’t anymore. My phone was at the house, but I already knew that when I got back, there would be another message or two waiting for me. Theo liked to play with his mice before he ate them. He loved to torment and tease.

  “Maggie?”

  I didn’t even notice that Will had entered the studio until he was sitting on the seat next to me.

  “I’m here,” he said quietly. “You don’t…just play for me, all right? There’s no recording. It’s just me and you.”

  I shook my head. “I…can’t. I can’t anymore.”

  “Lil.” Will placed a wide hand on my knee and the warmth of his touch soothed my rapidly fraying nerves. “It’s just me and you, Lil. Just us.”

  “I don’t want to,” I whispered.

  It was a lie. I wanted to play right now more than I ever had. I had about a million emotions running around inside me, crashing into each other like pinballs. Music had been my release my entire life, providing an outlet for that energy that would have destroyed me otherwise. But I was stuck in place.

  “Look at me, Lily pad.”

  Will’s voice was barely more than a whisper, but I obeyed. I turned to him, and found his green eyes wide and open. Loving. Kind. He smiled, and my heart leapt and calmed at the same time. Slowly, my heartbeat fell back to normal.

  “Let me hear you,” he murmured, his voice so low I almost couldn’t hear it.

  He leaned over the guitar and pressed a light kiss to my lips. His scent surrounded me, blocking out the nerves, the awkwardness, the fear.

  “Will you play for me now?” he asked, his breath still mingling with mine.

  I blinked. He was so close that my eyelashes brushed the tops of his cheeks. Then he sat back, his expression warm and open.

  Finally, I nodded.

  And then I played.

  23

  I went back to your house for a funeral.

  You showed me around.

  Said I was beautiful.

  But you didn’t have to try so damn hard.

  Wrote me a letter a little later that year.

  Couldn’t read it for a while.

  Brought me to tears.

  Should’ve known you’d be back here someday.

  And that fallin’ in love is bound to hurt anyway.

  Finally someone to save me.

  You can do what you want now that you forgave me.

  And if forgetting’s a little much to ask.

  We can move on somehow with our heels in the past.

  You showed up at my house around one.

  Bags beneath your eyes,

  Scraped knuckles and palms.

  You wanted ice, a cold shower, a beer.

  You said I asked you a little too much.

  Have more questions than answers,

  More
vicious than just.

  But what could I offer instead?

  Was on my way out the door, when you grabbed me and said:

  Can’t you be someone to save me?

  You can do what you want so long as you forgave me.

  And if forgetting’s a little much to ask.

  We’ll move on somehow, with our heels in the past…

  In the morning I woke up alone.

  Don’t know why I was so surprised;

  I was the one who sent you home, but

  I miss your eyes…your smile…your brown hair.

  And when I look to that goddamn door, I’m scared to death you’ll be there…

  Ain’t there someone to save me?

  You can do what you want, now that you forgave me.

  And if forgetting’s a little much to ask.

  We’ll move on somehow, try not to think about the past…

  I finished out the last few chords, letting the song end on the fourth, in that drifting way it always had. It was a song I’d never figured out how to end properly, and every time I played it, I closed out in a different way. Maybe it was because the feeling of the song, that searching for someone, a savior, a rescue, even if they were bad for you, never quite ended either.

  When the notes finally faded completely, I exhaled. That song always took it out of me.

  “Jesus.”

  I turned and found Will staring at me, his green eyes shining brightly, as if they were deeper than the lake waters outside.

  “Maggie, that song…” He swiped under his eyes, then blinked quickly, as if he were trying to chase something out of his vision. “When—how—where did that come from?”

  “I wrote it the night my ex went to jail,” I said quietly. “It’s the last thing I wrote, actually.”

  “What did he go in for?”

  I stood up and replaced the guitar on the wall, then paused, still facing the instruments. They were all so shiny and new. Completely unmarred.

  “Rape.”

  I spoke clearly, trying and failing to control my voice when I said it. Instead, I warbled like a bird. It wasn’t a word I ever said out loud, particularly since I’d had to say it so many times in the last year. In front of a judge. A jury. Lawyers. Theo. Again and again and again, while people tried to tear it apart, tell me I was fine, prove that the way my body had been violated was a figment of my imagination. “He was only sentenced for sexual m-misconduct, but that’s what it was. R-rape, I mean.”

  I shook my head, trying to ward off that persistent stutter that had emerged ever since that night, a speech impediment that, among other things, had made it hard to perform like I used to. But Will needed to hear this. He carried his baggage around like a cross and still managed to open himself up to me. He deserved to know what he was getting into.

  I took a deep breath and turned around.

  Will stood stock-still. His eyes were still shining, dark, turquoise depths that carried an even mix of sympathy and anger. His hands were clenched into tights fists at his sides, but other than that he didn’t look violent or poised to bolt. It was like he knew that in this moment, there was nothing else to do but listen. To bear our burdens together.

  “Once?” he asked.

  I looked at the ground. “More than once.”

  It had taken a long time to understand just what Theo had done, and I still wasn’t sure it had totally sunk in. Over the course of two years together, he had wheedled and guilted and conned me into doing a lot of things I didn’t want to do with my body. I had been little more than a trophy to him—something to conquer, something to dominate. And it was hard, really, to comprehend the fact that sex under any kind of duress, emotional or physical, was not done with my full consent, as the YWCA counselor had informed me every time I sat in her office. More than once, I’d shown up drenched in sweat after a particularly difficult day of the trial.

  The worst had been the day I was deposed by Theo’s gang of lawyers, all of whom had cross-examined me, made me out to be a hysterical, manipulative psycho while on camera. Why didn’t you tell anyone until the end, they’d asked, working their hardest to prove that the last time, the time that was physically violent, which ended with me in the hospital, was really just a result of the kinds of attention I’d courted during our relationship.

  Even now, months after the trial had ended and Theo had been served at least some justice for what he did to me, it was still hard not to feel guilty. Because after all, hadn’t I said yes to him countless times before? And after, when curled in a hospital bed, as I’d recounted the events to a stolid officer in blue, hadn’t my decisions ruined a man’s life? Just like my own?

  “When?” Will asked, breaking through that nasty cycle of thoughts that threatened to overtake me. Those spirals were fewer and farther between these days, but when they came, it was hard to get out of them.

  I swallowed. “The last time was almost a year ago. He…well, that was the one that put me in the hospital. But it was also when it ended. I—I finally went to the police. I mean, I had to. The hospitals, they call the police when there is evidence of it. Of rape, I mean.”

  “Then what happened?”

  I gritted my teeth. I didn’t want to tell this story. I wanted to pretend that the last years hadn’t even happened, and that was what I liked about Will. He didn’t treat me like I was damaged goods. He made me feel, finally, like I could move forward.

  “I found a lawyer,” I said. “And I took him to trial. And it took a long time, but eventually, I won.”

  “He went to jail?”

  I nodded wearily. I didn’t mention that he was out now. I was tired, so tired of this story.

  Will didn’t speak for a long time. But when he did, it wasn’t what I expected. “I’m not surprised,” he said softly. “I wish I were, but I’m not.”

  I blinked. “What? Why?” Suddenly, I wanted to cry. Was it that obvious? Were my wounds, the ones inside that I couldn’t stitch together, that transparent? Did I have “rape victim” etched so deeply into my soul that it appeared on the outside, like a tattoo?

  Will took a step toward me, moving very slowly. “I used to…I used to work in a business where…that shit was everywhere, Maggie. Absolutely everywhere. So, yeah. I know the signs.”

  I nodded. If he had been Benny Amaya’s assistant, he had been close enough to the entertainment industry to know how it worked. I’d been lucky to have Calliope as my manager. There were plenty of others who expected certain things of their clients, whether they said them or not. And plenty of other artists who offered it up on a platter to do what they needed to do.

  Will pressed his nose to mine, and his warm, clean scent engulfed me. Immediately, my heart rate slowed as my body relaxed.

  “I believe you.”

  Before I could stop it, a tear slipped out. I didn’t know how much I had wanted to hear him say that until he had. Even though a jury and a judge had too. Even though after I had fought for a year to have my story validated, to have some kind of justice served, somehow it meant more that the person in this room understood it.

  Will pressed a thumb to my cheek and wiped away the tear before he cupped my face, keeping me upright and facing him.

  “In a way, it’s g-good, isn’t it?” I whispered. “If I hadn’t lost everything because of him…I never would have come back here. I never would have met you.”

  Will sighed as he drifted his mouth over my forehead, eyelids, cheekbones, lips, chin. His fingers massaged gently around my ear and under my jaw, a slow, insistent motion that soothed my anxiety. My shame.

  “I’ll never be happy that happened to you, Maggie,” he said quietly. “That’s why you stopped playing?”

  I glanced back at the instruments around me. Slowly, I nodded. “He—he was a big part of my career at the end. But he resented me for it. Guilted me for it. He said I loved my music more than I loved him. He—he was right, and he knew it. And punished me for it.”

  I squeezed my e
yes shut, trying to shut out the memories of Theo’s hand finding my face. The time he broke one of my guitars and smacked me with the jagged neck. It was only after he was locked away that I played again, forced back on stage in order to pay my bills. But the magic was gone, and my shows had never gotten the same kind of following they had before. The showcase had been my last shot at making it work. At recapturing that magic that used to overtake me.

  But instead I’d failed. I’d looked out at that audience and only saw the eyes of a lover-turned-ghost. The music had escaped me. Until now.

  “I’m a lucky bastard that you crashed on my property, though,” Will said, pulling me back to the here and now. “I was a ghost until I met you.” His other hand cupped the side of my face, and he tipped it up so I had to look at him. “You brought me back to life, Lily pad.”

  My hands slid around his taut waist, finding the skin of his strong, solid body under his t-shirt. Something coursed through me when we touched—a warmth, an energy, a new kind of strength.

  I pulled him closer so our bodies were flush. “We brought each other back to life.”

  “Your music,” he whispered, his lips hovering just over mine as I ran my hands up his chest. “It makes me feel.”

  “Feel what?” I murmured, my voice pouring out like water. This moment should have been hard, but it wasn’t. Everything that had ever happened with Theo seemed very, very far away. All I could sense was Will.

  “Everything,” he replied hoarsely. “Anything. Anything at all.”

  He let me pull his shirt over his head before I removed my own. Though I was the one caged against the wall, Will moved with me, allowing me to do with his body what I wanted. He stepped easily out of his shorts and underwear, kicking them to the side, then tipped his head down obediently when I reached up to release his hair. When my hands slipped into the thickets of blond waves, he groaned, tipping his head back in ecstasy while I massaged his scalp.