Love Out Loud

by Aimee Salter

  Well, okay then. I hand the guitar back to Tommy. “Thanks.” I pack up my books.

  “Don’t go, Kel,” Tommy says, putting a hand on my wrist.

  I pull away and keep packing books and pens into my bag. “Maybe I can come to your house sometime or something instead?”

  “Of course, but—”

  “This was a bad idea.” It’s true. But it breaks my heart. I grab my purse from beside Coda and haul it over my shoulder. “I’ll be careful pulling out of the driveway. Is there a button for the gate or—”

  The door rumbles in its slider again and I freeze. Crash stomps out, a different notebook in his hand that he tosses on the table. It’s open to another page of scribbles, chicken scratch, and side-ways lines where he’s run out of room. “Can you fix this one too?”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Two Months Ago

  Crash

  It’s pure, undiluted torture watching Kelly play my guitar. She rounds her shoulders over the instrument on her lap—a little big for her—and lets her hair fall past her face in a way that half-obscures it. Her graceful fingers shift on the frets and strings in the way that shows she’s practiced enough it’s becoming natural. She still has to look sometimes. Occasionally stumbles or forgets to press hard enough. But mostly she’s just beautiful. I swallow a lump in my throat.

  Someone else taught her to play.

  They put her fingers in the right spots.

  Leaned over her shoulder to point to a section of the fretboard.

  Corrected her fingering.

  Took her wrist in their hand to relax it when she strummed.

  I shove my hair back with both hands, tapping my foot on the deck, and belting the song so she can harmonize with me, and fuck. I forgot how good it felt to make music with her.

  She’s a lot less shy about her voice than she used to be. That’s good. I wonder who helped her feel strong? The thought makes me mad only because it wasn’t me. Someone else got her to believe in herself when I couldn’t. Got close enough to touch her.

  Shaking off that thought before it reaches its inevitable conclusion, I let go of the note I’m holding and shake my head when she echoes the line in the space my voice left.

  She’s smiling, nodding in time. When I don’t come back in on the next line where I’m supposed to, she scrunches her nose, and growls the line—in her pitch—and it’s so perfect and fucking sexy my jeans get tighter.

  I lean forward, elbows on my knees, pretend I’m watching Tommy tear up the guitar solo when I’m actually covering my crotch so she can’t tell.

  Kelly keeps strumming the chords, beaming at Tommy. Then she head-bangs the transition between verse and chorus and laughs.

  I’m gone.

  Done.

  Everything that happened to take her away from me—me away from her—flashes through my head between one beat and the next.

  The knife slides neatly behind my ribs like it only just happened.

  The song—a shameless, exuberant anthem to summer love that I wrote last year right before we broke up—repeats, but I don’t sing another note.

  Pick up the notebook to make it look like I got inspired and have to write something down, when I couldn’t sing even if wanted to.

  This is the fifth song Kelly’s made come alive and it’s freaking me out. She’s here. I need her. Crash Happy needs her. I need to make her see that, even though everything that happened wasn’t her fault, she should forgive me.

  Scratch that. She shouldn’t forgive me. But damn, I want her to.

  The song jerks to a frantic halt, and Kelly’s laughter peals into the near-dark of twilight.

  Tommy’s chuckling too, but he coughs. “Need a drink,” he says, clearing his throat. He puts his arms on the arms of his chair when Kel leaps out of hers and, placing my guitar gently against the table, just like I taught her years ago, trots across the deck.

  “I’ll get it. I need to pee anyway. What do you want?”

  Tommy tells her he wants a beer while I wait impatiently for her to walk out of earshot.

  “Crash?” she asks like it’s natural.

  “I’m fine.”

  Her smile falters, but she just opens the sliding door to head inside.

  Through the glass, I watch her close the door and trot deeper into the house. I stew for several minutes, arguing with myself about what I want to say before I finally turn to Tom.

  “You need to leave.”

  Tommy pauses in re-tuning his guitar. “What?”

  “Leave. Now. Make an excuse. I need to talk to Kel alone.”

  Tommy scoffs and goes back to the pegs. “Not happening.”

  “What do you mean not—”

  “It means,” Tommy stops messing with his guitar and leans closer to talk low so she won’t hear, “it took us almost a week to get her in the door because of you. Hell, she almost refused to come at all. I’m not letting you corner her when she’s just starting to relax. Hence, not happening, Crash.”

  “But—”

  The slider zips along its runner, startling me.

  “What do you want to talk to me about?”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Two Months Ago

  Kelly

  When I leave the main bathroom and turn right towards Crash’s bedroom instead of the living room, deep down I know what I’m doing. The urge has been building to slip deeper into the house and open Crash’s bedroom door. I need to face it alone.

  The room is revealed, the sun beaming in through the frosted window, the skylight revealing deep blue broken only by fluffy white.

  He didn’t make his bed this morning. The rumpled sheets beckon me and make me feel sick.

  The room smells like him—pine, and rain, and something earthy.

  I flee.

  Cursing myself for my weakness, I stride faster and faster back down the long hall. I’m reminded of a quote I read. The problem with nostalgia is that you only remember the good parts.

  It should be my mantra.

  Singing with them today was the beginning. My first mistake, because I love it. But now, being in that room, smelling him, watching sunlight play on the walls of the room where I gave myself to him, it’s as if my body has forgotten everything he ever did to hurt me. All I can see is a slideshow of gentle touches, quiet smiles, deep kisses—all the ways he put himself between me and the world when the world hurt too much.

  He left me. He took what he wanted, then left me. It doesn’t matter if he’s hot, or talented. None of that is worth the day he made me feel like nothing.

  I stalk away from that room to the kitchen, find the glasses and get myself some water from the door of the fridge, willing my hands to stop trembling. Grab a beer out of the fridge and head back to the sliding door. This means nothing. Have a drink, listen to a song, then leave. Don’t talk about it. Don’t let him see how much you feel. Just be a friend, smile at Tommy, and go.

  I’ve convinced myself I can do it until I’m about to open the door and I hear their voices, muffled but discernable because I didn’t shut the door properly when I went inside. With the sunlight outside, they haven’t noticed me standing a couple feet inside the door.

  Tommy leans toward Crash. “It took us a week to get her in the door because of you. Hell, she almost refused to come at all. I’m not letting you corner her when she’s just starting to relax. Hence, not happening, Crash.”

  “But—”

  Juggling the glass of water and the beer, it takes a second to get the door open, but they both startle as I shove the handle with my elbow.

  “What do you want to talk to me about?” I hate that my voice is shaking. “C’mon, Crash. You wanted me here. You keep watching me. And now you’re trying to manipulate Tommy. What do you want?”

  Crash looks at Tommy then back to me. I hand Tommy his beer and plunk my glass on the table, fold my arms. “Anything you can say to me, you can say to Tommy, too.”

  He sits back, running a black-nailed ha
nd through his hair. “I wanted to apologize.” He’s devastating. I try to shrug off the draw I feel to throw myself at him.

  “You already did.”

  “Yeah, but there’s a lot more.” Crash doesn’t break eye-contact. “I want you here. Around. With us. Writing with us. And being here. Friends.”

  The word falls between us, twitching like an animal in pain.

  He tries to recover. “I don’t want you to worry. I won’t hurt you again. I won’t walk away like that again. Ever.”

  My heart hums. In the ensuing wave of emotion, I have to take a knife to it. Hurt myself with memories. He told me he wanted forever, that he wanted to marry me hours before he broke up with me.

  I have no doubt he believes himself right now. But I don’t believe him. I can’t. “I guess we’ll see. Won’t we?”

  Crash looks away. Calls Coda up so he can scratch the old boy behind the ears and I want to yank the dog away from him.

  I can’t do this. It hurts too much. “I think it’s time to go home.” They both whip to face me, protests on their lips. I can’t listen. I can’t give in. “I’m not mad or anything. I’m just tired. I need some space,” I say, my voice getting weaker with every word.

  Tommy scowls at Crash, who frowns back. There’s an entire conversation in the looks passed between them. Then Crash rubs his hands on his jean-clad thighs.

  “Will you come back tomorrow. Please?” he says in a voice that reminds me of when he was thirteen and his voice was breaking.

  I hesitate. I have to check every word before I say it, make sure it won’t get me into trouble. But even with a prepared excuse, what comes out is, “Yeah. I’ll come.”

  Tommy gets to his feet and, with a grim smile, wraps me in a bear hug. I feel brittle and cold. But his arms are nice and even though I haven’t forgiven him for his part in this, I also feel like we took a step that way today.

  When he lets me go, I step back. “Bye, Crash,” I say, hastily starting toward the stairs. I have to get out of here before I break.

  He reaches toward me as I pass, but I sidestep, ignoring the look of hurt and pleading that crosses his face. Where does he get off looking like I hurt him?

  “Kelly—” he gets to his feet. I’m about to tell him not to follow me when the slider rumbles again and we all look at it in surprise.

  My stomach sinks to my toes.

  Amber, their manager, cuts a fantastic figure framed by the door, a bright smile on her face. She’s a curvy woman who likes to flaunt it with pencil skirts and low-V necklines. She’s got a legal envelope under one arm, and her suit-jacket over the other.

  The interruption is jarring.

  Amber, never easy to fluster, steps onto the deck. “Kelly! You’re back!”

  I twist my fingers together and try to fake a smile for her. But the look she gives me says I’m not successful.

  “Hey, Amber. No, I’m not back. Not really.” I trail off miserably and glance at Tommy. How do I get out of here?

  Crash says, “Yeah, we convinced Kelly not to ignore us anymore. She’s helping with the new album.”

  Amber’s faux-friendliness is gone for a blink before she draws it around herself again and forces that over-bright smile. “That’s great!”

  Oh, no you don’t. I’m not falling for that again.

  I used to be intimidated by Amber. Threatened by her close relationship with the guys, and the way she built their success until they were completely dependent on her. I used to be jealous of all the stuff she got to share with them.

  But if this time apart from the boys has given me anything, it’s perspective on this woman: She’s a snake. She never liked how much Crash listened to me—or the fact that we sang together and he’d take my suggestions on a song. Like, somehow she was threatened by me. Amber had his ear the whole day before Crash broke up with me. I know she had an influence on that. So I hold her gaze.

  “Better than great,” Crash says, and it takes me a second to remember he’s responding to Amber’s fake comment. “She’s fixed four of the songs I was struggling with.” He looks at me, brow furrowed. “Would you mind, Kel? Can we play them for Amber before you go?”

  Oh no.

  Amber sees the look he gives me and rightly catches my reluctance. Her real smile curls, raising my hackles.

  I look at Tommy. Does he want me to do this?

  “It’s up to you. I’d love to play them again. But if you need to go, you can.”

  “I’m sure we could do it another time, if Kelly needs to leave,” Amber says, one brow quirked.

  “No, it’s fine. We can play.”

  Amber’s smile freezes, which makes me want to be super-mature and stick my tongue out at her. But, as if he’s afraid I’ll change my mind, Crash grabs the guitar I’d been using and hands it to me, our fingers brushing on the neck of the instrument. Then he puts a hand to the small of my back, ushering me back to my seat.

  Heart pounding, I lean away from him until he goes back to his own seat.

  “This will be good!” Amber’s an impeccable liar.

  Shoving down my tension, I strum the guitar once. “Let’s do Road to Nowhere first,” I say.

  Crash grins. “Good idea.”

  “Great!” Amber declares again and pulls out a seat next to Tommy, slinging her arm on the back of his chair.

  Tommy ignores her.

  As he launches the song, I pretend I’m sitting in my living room with nothing but the camera on my phone.

  Amber’s watching me with that knife-edge gaze. When she first signed the boys and I complained about the way she made me feel—small and insignificant, an irritant—right before she died, Mom told me she thought Amber was threatened by me. Said Amber probably didn’t like how the boys asked me what I thought of Amber’s advice. But I always told them to listen to her—what do I know about making someone a rock star? Yet, there’s always been this tension between us. When she showed up in the door just now (she must have a key and a clicker to have gotten in without Crash opening the gate, right?) my heart sank to the floor.

  She’s beautiful, successful, and personally responsible for the meteoric rise of Crash Happy. For the boys’ sake, I can’t thank her enough. But it doesn’t mean I like her.

  She reminds me of a rat: Always sneaking through the background, leaving little shitbombs behind like breadcrumbs in a fairytale.

  But she made promises to Crash and Tommy, and she kept them.

  Without her, they’d have just graduated and now be trying to figure out how to balance working and doing gigs.

  Because of her, they’re rich—several times over. They’re famous. And they don’t just have jobs, they have careers.

  So I pat the guitar in my lap a little harder than necessary to set the beat, and strum. I’ll show her how amazing Crash’s songs are. Then I’ll leave.

  Strumming, I only let my gaze linger on Crash for the moments when I need to follow his timing. Because watching him singing in that gorgeous rasp, is like cutting my chest open and cracking my ribs so he can take whatever he wants.

  This place is too much. My memories are too much. Crash is too much.

  But Amber doesn’t deserve to have them to herself.

  So I play. And when the memories haunt the back of my closed eyelids, I take the emotion they bring and pour it into the song. And purposefully ignore the look on Crash’s face, like I’m water in the desert.

  Chapter Sixteen

  August, Last Year

  Kelly

  We can’t stop kissing.

  I’ll hand it to Crash, he’s trying to keep his hands to himself. But we’re in this amazing house alone—with no curfew.

  I can’t stop staring at him, and every time he catches me, he kisses me. My hands have messed up the jagged spears of his hair. He looks like a little kid who just got out of bed.

  Or a really hot guy who just had sex.

  Desire and nerves spear from my chest to the apex of my thighs.

  T
hen Crash laughs and tries to break it up again, pushing my hands away when I try to pull him in. I’m delighted to learn he’s ticklish on his ribs.

  Every time he turns back to the movie, or returns to the couch after grabbing more popcorn, I can’t stop myself kissing the tendon that runs down his neck, or tracing his collarbone that’s poking out of the neckline of his shirt.

  I shiver when he slides his finger into the hair at the nape of my neck.

  “Kel—”

  I slide my hand up his thigh and against the hard length I can feel in his sweats, my heart thumping faster and faster.

  It isn’t the first time I’ve done that, but me touching him isn’t something we get a lot of time and space to do. I’m always nervous Dan will catch us.

  Crash shudders. His kiss goes deep. I can’t get close enough. Screw the movie. Screw dinner. Screw everything.

  Screw Crash.

  I giggle at my own joke and he pulls away, grinning. “What’s funny?”

  I plunge both hands into his hair, letting my fingers claw and drag across his scalp until he tips his head back and groans again.

  Then he drops his forehead to mine, our quickened breaths mingling. I circle my hips against him and bite my lip, fighting back a nervous giggle.

  “Kel. You’re killing me. I want to do this right.”

  “I want to do it right now,” I say, then kiss him, wishing I felt a lot braver than I do.

  I’m not scared of Crash. I’ve wanted to sleep with him for months. But there’s always something to hold me back: The fear of it being weird. Of not being good at it. The thought of Dan finding out—it all terrifies me.

  I shiver, and Crash thinks it’s because I’m aroused. He growls in his throat and nips the spot under my ear, distracting me from my fears with the feelings he’s wringing out of my body.

  My skin tingles wherever we touch. My lungs pump fast because I need extra oxygen. I’m flushed, every nerve ending tingling—sensation heightened. And trembling with need.