by Sienna Blake
I rolled my eyes again, but there was the hint of a smile on my face. He was one of the few people who actually managed to coax them out of me.
“I still haven’t heard why you’re here interrupting my productive writing session.”
Rickie let out a snort as he downed the rest of his first glass of whiskey. “Please, you and I both know that you’ve not written a song in months. You’re as blocked as a geriatric’s asshole. That’s why you came to the college to see me the other day.”
I sighed. Why the fuck did I have to confess to him? I should have known he’d find some way to turn it around on me.
“And?” I asked. “What harebrained scheme have you come up with?”
Rickie leaned forward on his hands. “Truth is, Danny, you’d be doing me a favour. I’m in a real bind.”
My fingers stopped moving along Casey. My eyes narrowed. “You need bail money?”
Rickie let out a hearty laugh. “No, son. I have more money than I fucking know what to do with.”
Lucky for some.
“Then spit it out, Rickie. Stop wasting my fucking time. I have a deadline, remember?”
Six months. That’s how long my savings would allow me to live while I came up with the rest of the songs for my upcoming album. Why the fuck did I go indie again?
Oh, that’s right. To stop the record company from raping my soul.
So far, I’d written the grand total of…none. Well, one, if you include the indie smash hit of last year, “Give Up All the Stars”, that I’d already written.
They called it the “break-up song of the year”. Idiots. That song had nothing to do with breaking up.
I had to come up with another eight or nine tracks just like that one. Or I’d be penniless. Forced to get a job. I’d end up the laughing stock of the music industry. The son who tried but never came close to the success of his famous father.
I was not a fucking one-hit wonder.
I was not.
So why weren’t the songs coming?
Rickie crossed one of his ankles over his knee. “One of the teachers has quit last minute. Left us all in a bind, really, with semester starting tomorrow. We’ve managed to divvy up her class load except for one…”
Here we go.
“Advanced Performance & Arrangement,” he said. “Sounds right up your alley.”
“No.”
“Come on, Danny boy. Think of all those young fresh minds, the sheer volume of raw creativity in the room. You’ll have your album written in no time.”
I tapped my chin and hummed under my breath. “How about…fuck, no.”
“It’s only a day a week. You’d be paid handsomely for it.”
I paused. The money was a tempting offer. I owned this apartment but I’d stupidly bought it back when the money was flush and the market was better. I couldn’t sell it without making a loss. A loss I definitely couldn’t afford.
“Still, no.”
Rickie sighed. “Come on, lad. I need your help on this. You know I wouldn’t ask ye if I wasn’t desperate as a priest in a strip club.”
Of all the people in the world, Rickie was one of the few I’d do anything for. Even bail him out of jail if he needed it. Again.
“Don’t make me beg.” Rickie fell to his knees. “Look, here, I’m doing it. I’m begging.”
“Get up, old man. You look pathetic,” I said, my voice tinged with affection.
“Pleeeeeease, Danny.”
Farrrrk. I could feel my resolve slipping.
I let out a groan. The old bugger grinned, knowing he almost had me.
“I’ll give you free reign of all our studios and equipment after hours,” Rickie said, dangling just the right carrot in front of me.
If I could use their studios, then I could record my next album with little out-of-pocket expense. It’d save me months in production and money. Money I was quickly running out of. There was no fucking chance in hell I was running back to my old man for money. I’d rather starve. I’d rather play staid traditional Irish tunes in an overdone garish Irish accent for clapping American tourists in Temple Bar every night.
“Fine,” I said before I could change my mind.
Rickie slapped his knee in victory, a twinkle in his eye. “I knew I could count on you, lad.”
“Yeah, well,” I said with a grumble. “I hope I don’t regret it.”
3
____________
Danny
Then – Dublin, Ireland
Hopelessness felt like a mouthful of grit, crushing between my teeth, making my jaw ache. Like cyanide tainting my blood with bitter poison.
I strode through the hallways of the hospital like a man on the warpath. At sixteen I was tall for my age so people around me scattered out of my path, the black cloud around me like a noxious gas. I wanted to kick something. To hurt something. To wrap my hands around God’s throat and squeeze.
I should have been able to protect her from his. But I couldn’t.
I didn’t know where I was going. I didn’t even know where I was, but the crack finally widened in my armour enough that I knew the dam was going to burst.
I flung myself into the closest room, slamming the door behind me and collapsing into a heap. Chest heaving. Doing all I could to just keep breathing.
You know that moment when you tipped back off a chair, your whole body jerked alert, arms and legs waving, reaching out for something—anything—to grab onto to stop the fall. Have you ever been skydiving? When you freefall, your body reacted this way, too. Except now there was nothing to hang onto. No ground. No chair or table to reach for. So the panic folded over and over as you strained and reached, heart banging at the insides of your ribs so hard you thought you were going to burst, your brain shrieking louder with every failed attempt at grabbing onto clouds.
That was what this felt like.
Infinite panic freefalling into hopeless nothing.
“Are you okay?”
A girlish voice broke through my fall. Soft and light as a feather.
My head snapped up from my knees towards the intruder, someone lying on the single hospital bed, looking fragile as a bird, so small she looked drowned in the white sheets as if lost in a snowdrift.
Scratch that. I was the intruder. I’d burst into her room.
I shoved up to my feet, rubbing my face to erase all traces of the tears that made a mockery of me. I could see more of her, but not much more. Pale limbs. Blonde hair wild against a pillow. She was half lying, half sitting amongst the tubes around her like a broken puppet.
“Who are you?” I demanded, my tone harsh as if it was her fault she’d caught a glimpse of my private show of weakness.
She pointed to the foot of her bed.
I didn’t understand. I shook my head to indicate so.
She sank back into her pillow. “Ailis Kavanagh. 15. Leukemia. It’s all in my chart for everyone to read.”
“Shit,” I cursed even though my ma taught me never to cuss, especially around girls. My ma’d be upset with me if she heard me. “That sucks.”
Ailis shrugged. Her face screwed up and she tore her red-rimmed eyes away from me. It was then that I realised she was crying, too. I had interrupted her private pain.
I started forward, my own sorrow lost. Halting by her bedside. Her slim shoulders tensed at my proximity but she didn’t stop sobbing, didn’t raise her hands to hide from me.
I was overcome with the need to fix her. To put her back together again. To soothe the well of ache that raged in her like a wild, untamed sea.
But how? I had no experience with calming crying girls. I barely knew what to do with myself when I was sad.
I did the only thing I knew how. The only thing I was good at. I began to sing in a low voice, Jeff Buckley’s “Hallelujah”.
She turned her surprised face towards me and I got my first real look at her. I almost missed a note, struck by how angelic her features were up close. Sweetheart face, delicate cheekbones, a m
outh like a rosebud. Dark green eyes glossy like cut emeralds, shining with the sorrow of a thousand tears among wet dark lashes.
I forced myself to concentrate, to keep singing, encouraged by the ebb of her sobs.
By the time the last note died down, she was breathing normally. The ache that had gripped my heart at the sound of her crying loosened so that I could breathe again.
She blinked at me with her wide doe eyes.
I shuffled on my feet, suddenly embarrassed. “I sound better with my guitar.”
“You play guitar?”
I nodded.
She gave me a soft smile. “I’ve always wanted to learn, but…”
I moved closer, overcome with the urge to pluck every piece of information from her as if they were gems. “But, what?”
She gave me a one-shouldered shrug. “Guitars are expensive. Lessons even more so. We have an old violin at home that my da taught me to play.”
Her parents couldn’t afford a guitar?
Something tightened inside me. It might have only been my ma and me for most of our lives, but money was something we’d never had to worry about. My father’s generous alimony payments, the only thing he was good for, made sure of that. I’d never even thought about what it’d be like not to have money until now.
Her eyes caught mine again. “I thought you sounded amazing even without the guitar.”
Her compliment made me blush. I was told all the time by my ma and her friends that I could sing. For some reason, this dying girl’s praise meant more than theirs. She had no reason to lie to me. She didn’t know me. Didn’t know who my father was. Didn’t want anything from me.
“Why are you sad?” she asked, her face open with curiosity, no pity in those lovely eyes. “Are you dying, too?”
I might as well be.
I shook my head. “My ma has cancer.”
She nodded solemnly, then patted the side of her bed. I sat on the edge facing her, my thigh brushing against her skinny forearm. A strange heat warmed my leg, rising up through my body like rising steam.
“Sing me another song?” she asked with a soft smile on the prettiest face I’d ever seen.
Anything.
Anything to keep that smile on her face.
4
____________
Ailis
When my ma asked me if I wanted her to bring anything to the hospital, I said “my strawberry lip gloss,” then I blushed and tried to hide my face with my hair.
Thankfully, Ma didn’t notice.
So when Danny came into my room a few days later, my lips were stained pink and smelling like berries. This time, when I smiled at the sight of him, my lips were ready, unlike the dry and cracked state they were in when he first saw me. Ready to smile. Ready to laugh. Ready…to be kissed.
My heart skipped across the inside of my chest as soon as I saw him. Dark hair long enough to curl over his collar and the most brilliant blue eyes I’d ever seen—just like the sea off the coast of Galway, he was as beautiful and wild as the Atlantic.
Last time he stayed in my room, just talking with me and singing until the nurse came around and kicked him out. I hoped he’d stay just as long this time.
This time, he held a guitar case in his hand.
He perched on his spot on my bed—yes, I was already thinking of it as his spot. I clapped my hands as he unzipped his guitar.
“Any requests?” he asked as his long, slender fingers plucked at the strings and he tweaked the tuning pegs until each string sounded just right. I noticed his fingernails painted black.
“‘Wonderful Tonight’ by Eric Clapton,” I said before I could stop myself.
He raised an eyebrow at me. “Great song choice.”
I blushed. “It’s one of my favourites. My da liked to sing it.”
“What my girl wants, my girl gets.”
My girl. He called me his girl.
Danny began to play and sing. Oh, the sounds that he coaxed out of that guitar. He made it weep. He made it sing in harmony with his own deep crooning voice, reaching into my heart and kissed the very centre of me. I closed my eyes and felt my lashes grow damp, swaying along to the melody.
I sucked in a breath as he came to the chorus, anticipation building in me as the emotion in his voice did.
Before I knew what I was doing, I had opened my voice and was singing along with him. The surprise on his face broke into a wave of pleasure. I kept singing, encouraged by the awe shining in his blues like the moon off water.
He let me take led and he drifted into harmony, our voices melding, dancing around each other like two birds skimming along a pond. It was glorious and powerful, my skin erupting into goosebumps. It was like magic.
Finally, the song ended and our voices trailed off on the last note.
He sucked in a long breath. “Wow, you can sing.”
I blushed from my cheeks to my toes. “Thanks.”
“We should start a band. You and me. We’ll be famous.”
“Really?” Hope surged in me. I wasn’t as good as he was at singing. But if he thought I was good enough…
“Yeah,” he said, plucking the guitar strings absentmindedly, “we can be called…The Bleeding Patients.”
I laughed.
“No, wait. The Wonky Gurneys.”
“That’s even worse,” I half-cringed, half-laughed.
He grinned.
“I’ve always wanted to be a singer,” I blurted out. I slapped my hand over my mouth before lowering my fist into my lap. “I’ve never told anyone.”
He waved his hand as if snatching something from the air. Then he made a motion like he was placing the invisible object into a compartment in his chest.
“You told me a secret.” His eyes were pools of intensity. “That means I get to keep a piece of you, Ailis. I promise, I’ll keep it here,” he pressed his palm against his heart, “and never share it with a soul.”
The backs of my eyes pricked.
Danny shuffled closer, holding out the guitar. “You want me to teach you?”
My whole being brightened. “Will you?”
He was so patient. I was horrible, my fingers too short to be able to curl around the guitar stem properly.
“You play so well,” I said with a sigh. “I’m never going to get the hang of it.”
“You will. You just need to practise. I’ve been practising since I was four.”
“Since you were four! That’s a long time.”
He nodded. He took the guitar off me and strummed it as he cradled it in his lap. I wished he’d do that to me. Could you be jealous of a guitar?
“I’m going to be a famous musician one day,” he said in a hushed tone as if revealing a secret. “More famous than my da.”
“Who’s your da?”
His face turned into a scowl. He slid the instrument off his lap and leaned it against the bed.
He didn’t seem to want to tell me.
I didn’t want him to leave.
I reached out and took his hand, stopping him. “You don’t have to tell me, Danny. I don’t care who your da is.”
“Everyone else does.”
He seemed so sad. I tugged him towards me. He hesitated for a second before letting me pull him to sit right beside me. I leaned against his side.
“I’d buy your album, Danny. I’d buy all of them. A hundred copies of each one.”
A smile broke across his face. I loved that I could make him smile.
His arm went around me and I felt warm inside like I’d drunk a cup of the hot chocolate that Ma sometimes made for me during cold winter nights.
“Hey. So…” He sounded nervous. Danny never sounded nervous. I lifted my head to study him. He was worrying his beautiful bottom lip with his teeth.
“I may have written a song…for you.”
I sat up further, my heart colliding against my ribs as if his words had given it whiplash. He wrote a song for me?
Danny shook his hair off of his forehea
d and gave me a sheepish look that made my heart squeeze. “Can I play it for you?”
I nodded, because all words had failed me at that moment. He shifted on the bed and pulled his guitar into his lap, his fingers brushing lovingly up the long leg of the fretboard. A shiver went through my spine as I imagined him holding me like that. How strange.
“It’s called ‘She’.” His cheeks were tinged pink as he began to sing.
“She…had the voice that could tame the wind
A heart that could heal the greatest sin.
Eyes like emerald chips
Sweet strawberry lips
And I don’t think I’ll ever recover.
But she. She had broken wings
Soft steps and then
Hold her light-ly
In my hands, night-ly
till she’s ready to fly again.”
When I look back at this moment, I think that’s when I fell in love with him. At least, for the first time.
For the next few months we were inseparable, tearing up and down the halls of the hospital, me in a wheelchair, him pushing me, or him making castles out of tongue depressors, promising me he’d build me a real one someday.
And singing. We sang a lot. Our voices harmonizing together, like light and day.
At night he’d lie in my bed next to me, one arm around me, reading me my favourite stories by Enid Blyton and Roahl Dahl.
He was my best friend. My first love. My world.
Until it all fell apart.
5
____________
Ailis
Now – Dublin, Ireland
“Ms Kavanagh?” A week later I was back at my family’s home in the village of Adere, near Limerick, when I answered this call. “It’s Rickie Craven, from the DCM.”
My breath caught in my throat. It was the college. This was it. The decision that would decide my future.
