Real Ugly

by C. M. Stunich

  My throat is dry now, and I'm having trouble breathing. I swear to god that I'm about to pass out. I want to blame it on the heat, but I can't. It's Turner. It's always been Turner.

  “What if you had to quit?” I ask him, voice breathy. Turner hears it, too, and takes a step forward, wetting his lips, holding his hands out, so that his fingers brush the thin hairs on my arms. I hate him, and yet I want him so bad it hurts inside. But after what he did to me, can I ever forgive him? Do I want to? Why am I even asking myself these stupid fucking questions? Even if I did admit to myself that in some fucked up, Stockholm syndrome type of way that I liked him still, he'll never change. He's always be an arrogant, cocky whore, and there's nothing I can do about that. “What if you had to quit the fucking and the drugs and the booze and the … ” My words trail off and my breath catches in my throat as Turner leans in so close that I can see the beads of sweat on his upper lip, hear the thumping of his heart. “And the music? Would you do it?”

  “Well,” he begins, and I realize now that I'm paralyzed, that I can't drag my eyes from his. I should be kneeing him in the balls right now, watching him suffer with glee, but instead I'm standing here and breathing in the smoke from his joint, gazing at him like one of his stupid groupies. Fuck me sideways. “I know that I love that kid. I know for sure, even without meeting 'em. I mean, with you as a mother and me as a father, how could we go wrong?” Turner tries to grin, but it falls flat. He's trying to come across as self-assured, but it isn't working. He's nervous right now, and he's thinking too much and too hard. My guess is that he's been thinking about this non-stop since I told him. “And I'd do anything for love.”

  I swallow hard.

  “But you know,” he begins as his fingers finally touch my skin, clamp around my bicep and pull me close. “That you can never really quit the music.” He shrugs and tosses his joint into some bushes behind me. “But the rest of the stuff … ”

  I want to tell him; I have to. Not for him, but for me. For that kid he's so obsessed with that doesn't exist anymore, the one that I kind of wish still did.

  “Meet me after the show,” I say as I make the second hardest decision of my life and step back, drawing my arm from Turner's grip and finding myself icy cold in the middle of all this desert heat. “Meet me after the show and I'll tell you everything.”

  After talking to Naomi, I feel like I'm having an out of body fucking experience, floating above myself and wondering how I've let my life get the way it is. I have the chance and the opportunity to have everything, and yet, I still have nothing. I've had sex with over a hundred girls (I stopped fucking counting a long time ago), but I've never had a girlfriend. Never. Not once. Naomi makes me wonder what I'm missing out on at the same time she pisses me off and makes me see red. She's interesting, that's what it is. I find her so fascinating that I want to grab her and keep hold, make her mine just so I can see what it is she's gonna do next, even if I hate it, even if it pisses me off. And I don't even know her. I wonder if that has anything to do with it, if maybe after I get to know her that she'll be less interesting. See, the thing is, I have no experience with which to base this shit on.

  So I convince myself that maybe I should find out and head back to the bus to slip on a hoodie. I hide in the back of the crowd, and I watch as Amatory Riot heads onstage, letting my eyes follow Naomi in her tight, black tank, her short shorts and her ripped tights. She's got on these steel-toed boots that look like they're meant to stomp the world into shreds, and I can tell that the crowd likes her, maybe even more than that skinny bitch at the mic. What's her name?

  I cross my arms over my chest and let a smile slither across my face as Knox slips her guitar over her head and hits it, drawing the crowd – myself included – into the music so fast that it makes their heads spin. She bites her lip and she sweats so hard that she's splattering the crowd with moisture as she flings that axe around and destroys them. And when she does sing, her voice nearly overwhelms Skinny up there, and I know without a doubt that if she wanted to, she could steal the show same way she did when she challenged me.

  My smile turns into a fat ass grin as I lean back against the wall and slip my hand down to the waistband of my pants. It's dark and crowded and sweaty in here, and I guarantee that I'm not the only one doing this. My fingers sneak open the button and fly on my pants, hidden beneath the baggy folds of the sweatshirt. When I finally get a good grip on my cock, a groan escapes me, melting into the collective moans of the crowd as they eat up the music, the words.

  “Soaked in your betrayal, drenched with pain and disbelief, I wander. At first I walk, but then I run because I can't stand being here even a second longer. With you. With you. But most especially without you.”

  I stroke the length of my shaft with strong fingers, using the sweat from my heated body to glide up and down with long, slow strokes, just the way I'd like to do to Naomi. God, I wish I could remember what she felt like beneath me that night, if things would be different if I could remember. I doubt that, Turner. You would have smiled at her and kissed her goodbye, tossed her a T-shirt and said have a good life. Count yourself lucky that you stumbled out of there before she woke up. I squeeze my dick harder and try to focus on the here and now. Like I said, fuck the past.

  Naomi's desert eyes start out dry, but after the first song, they're moist as fuck, lit up by the wetness that leaks down her face and betrays the tight set of her jaw, the straightness of her knees, the screams that burst from her throat as she riles the crowd into a frenzy so powerful that I get swept away and have to button up my pants, climbing into the mass and getting into the music in a way I haven't been able to for a long, long time.

  When she sees me, she knows. Even the hoodie dripping over my face can't keep her from locking gazes with me, from holding me with that stare as I'm shuffled through the crowd, pushed forward by unseen hands. I don't know if it's just chance or fate, but I end up at the front with my body pressed against the metal fence that separates the crowd from the bouncers who guard the stage. Girls press up against me, and for the first time ever, I don't really notice them. Right now, Naomi's got my full attention, drowning me in melodic mind fucks and rampaging riffs. I stop being Turner Campbell, frontman for Indecency, and start just being. Can't even tell you how good that feels.

  “No, I won't let you ruin me; I won't let you win. Pushing me down only lifted me up, and now I'm here to stay, and it's your turn to feel this way, this broken, bloody, shattered way.”

  There's this charge in the air, and it takes me awhile to get it at first, to really put it all together. It's melancholy.

  I never stop to wonder if it has anything to do with me.

  By the time I get around back, Milo is having one of his customary panic attacks, pacing back and forth and bitching to anyone that'll listen. When I glance at my phone on the way in, I see that I have several missed calls and a couple of texts. In a jovial fucking mood from watching Naomi, I snap a friendly shot of my ass and message that to him, smiling when I see his face register the photo.

  “Miss me?” I ask as I slip into the darkness stage left and toss him a nasty smirk. Milo's blonde hair is sticking up every which way, and his eyes are round as marbles in his pale face. I stare at him for a moment and try not to let him ruin my good mood. “Dude, you need to chill the fuck out.”

  “Turner,” he says, but that's all he can get out because I'm walking on stage and grabbing the mic, pulling the band out behind me without using a single word. That's the way I like it. I lead, and they follow. I've lived too long with life being the other way around, and I'm done with that shit. In fact, today, I don't even pick a girl out in the crowd like usual. I just smile into the mic and say what I'm feeling. If the crowd doesn't like it, they can go fuck themselves.

  “Hey there, Tucson,” I growl, and I watch as they ripple with shudders and gasps. God, I'm on top of the fucking world right now. Maybe it's a false high, but that's really all anything ever is. Temporary. Fleeting
. “I hope you enjoyed Amatory Riot,” I say and cheers go up, violent ones, like a horde of howling fucking demons. My eyes flicker to stage right, and there she is, standing there, watching me with those stupid fucking shades on, arms crossed over her tits, sweat sticking her shirt to her skin. “Because I've got a big ass crush on their guitarist.” I pause and listen to the collective voice of the room. It stretches out before me into the darkness, eyes and cells winking at me from the balconies, from beneath the chandelier that hangs precariously above them all, heavy and drooping with glass teardrops.

  I smile.

  “And I'm going to try to fuck her tonight.” More cheering, hissing, some whoops. “But first,” I continue, eyes sliding to the side. Good sign. Naomi's still standing there; if she hasn't left, good things could be in store for me. I slide the mic out of the stand. “First, I'm going to fuck the shit out of you.”

  I open my mouth and I take a deep breath, drawing air into my lungs for that first scream, the one that breaks down the sound barriers and opens up the souls of the people below me. Usually, when I'm up here, all I do is drink in the attention, soak it up like a sponge, revel in the worship. Tonight, my focus is a bit different, and it scares the shit out of me. Yeah, I still like to be looked at, idolized, who doesn't? But there's one person that refuses to participate, and she's the only one tonight that I care about.

  “If you leave me for dead then you're making a mistake again,” I sing the words, and I try to charge them up with all the sexual tension that I'm feeling in my fucking bones right now. Naomi isn't just under my skin anymore; she's in my blood and my brain and all sorts of strange friggin' places that ache for her. I want to feel her body beneath mine, run my fingers through her hair, taste her lips again. I use my fingers in a subtle cue, invite her onstage with me. Somehow, I guess that if I can recapture that tension we had before, that excitement, that maybe I can breathe easier, better, but when I glance her way again, she's gone.

  I suck up my irritation, and I face the crowd again, belting out the next words to the song, wondering why I'm so worked up on this girl and this kid and this weird fairytale fantasy that's been growing in my head ever since I heard her tell me what happened between us.

  “And a mistake made twice isn't really a mistake at all.”

  Naomi Knox is waiting outside my bus when I finish my set, soaked in sweat and ready to tear into her for running off. I don't know why, but something about her makes my emotions go all haywire, like I can't even think when she's around. She fucks up my inner circuits or something. That should have been my first warning, but no, I guess I'm a glutton for punishment.

  She's sitting in one of Ronnie's cheap, plastic lawn chairs, smoking a cigarette. I like the way she's bent over, leaning her elbows on her knees, holding the cig between two fingers. She looks tough that way, and I like it.

  “Ran off pretty quick there,” I tell her as I come up close and lean against the red and black side of the bus. My heart is pounding from the adrenaline rush, and my head's as swollen as it ever gets, full of ego and self and knowledge that no matter what happens, no matter what anyone says, I am the shit. I worked my ass off to get here, and nobody is going to take that fucking away from me. “I was hoping you'd stick around for my set.”

  “I had some thinking to do,” Naomi says, sitting up, brushing some of her blonde hair behind her ear. It's natural, you know. Kind of a surprise. Not many like that, and I'm speaking from straight-up fucking experience. She puts her cigarette out in the dust near her feet and leans back. I watch a line of sweat drip down her neck and over the tattoo on her chest until it disappears between her breasts.

  “Yeah?” I cross my arms over my chest and wait while she stares out and up, presumably gazing at the sky though it's kinda hard to tell with those sunglasses on her face. My guess is that she put 'em on by accident and started to like how they made her feel – protected. The eyes are the windows to the soul and all that shit, right? Guess she wants her windows curtained. “About?”

  “You,” she says, and I can't help the smirk that crawls across my face when I hear that. She was thinking about little old me? Aw, how fucking sweet. Just the way I like it. “About why you were being so nice to me all of a sudden, flipping the switch from bad boy to concerned father in a single night.” My smirk drops into a frown. From the tone of her voice, she's not impressed. Fine. The way I was behaving wasn't an act. If she doesn't like it, she can go fuck herself six ways to Sunday.

  And once again, what the fuck is with all the mixed signals? One minute, she's getting all up close and personal with me in the parking lot, letting me touch her, gazing at me with dilated pupils, licking her lips until they're moist. Now, what, she's annoyed with me again? Jesus Christ, I don't understand this chick at all.

  “And I thought, just for a split second mind you, that maybe you had realized the error of your ways. Like, had a revelation or some shit.” Naomi sighs and removes her shades, showing me puffy eyes streaked with red, like maybe she didn't stop crying when she got off stage. Right. The melancholy, but how could I have forgotten? Guess whatever it is is my fault, too? “But I should know better,” she continues, staring at me with eyes so bright that I can't look away, not even with a stray fangirl shouts for me to look at her, snaps a picture with an old Polaroid camera. I don't even look when the bouncer comes to drag her away. Neither does Naomi. “People don't change overnight.” She pauses, smiles. In this light, I can see that her straight nose isn't actually all that straight, that in reality, when the light hits it right, it's a bit crooked. Fuck, Turner, since when do you care about women's noses? That's fucking weird, dude.

  “Oh? And finding out I had a kid didn't change me in the few seconds it took my brain to process that information? Oh, honey, if you were waiting for an overnight change, then you were waiting far too long. The second those words left your lips, I was a different man.”

  Naomi laughs and shakes her head which just further pisses me off. Who the fuck does she think she is? She joins my tour, disrespects me, turns my life upside down, and then proceeds to fuck with me. Bitch has a lot of nerve.

  But I'm still interested.

  Either I'm a glutton for punishment or the drugs really have done what the PA's always said they'd do, and rotted my fucking brain right out of my skull.

  “Is that so hard to believe, Knox?” I ask her and notice that her lips purse tight when I use her last name. I wonder why she hates it so much.

  Naomi touches her fingers to the tattoo on her belly, the one that's peeking out from beneath her shirt right now. I can't see what it says from here, but I see a set of angel wings on either side, so maybe it's something good? Our kid's name? I don't know, but I lean forward to get a better look.

  “It's hard to believe, Turner, because as soon as I tell you the truth, the whole, unabridged version of the truth, I know exactly what it is you're going to do.” She pauses again and bites her lower lip hard when Ronnie and Treyjan stumble around the front of the bus and see us there. I turn and flash them my worst do not fuck this shit up glare, and have to admit that I'm pleased when they leave without a fight. I'm still the boss around here, good to know. “My guess is that I've helped you in some weird, kind of fucked up way. Part of me knows that you'll work to make your fantasy happen, no matter how you have to go about doing it.”

  “My fantasy? What the fuck are you smoking, Naomi? I just want to know about my kid.” Not entirely true, but she's obviously not up for anything else tonight. That much is obvious. No matter. I'll get the kid, and I'll get the mother. It's a fact of life. Whatever she says to the contrary, anything about not wanting to see the child or how its adoptive family might act, I know she's in pain. It's etched into every line of her face, every word she speaks, every breath she breathes.

  “You've somehow got it into your mind that there's going to be this big ass fucking reunion with some miracle child who will just throw themselves into your arms and shout, Daddy!” Naomi stands up sudd
enly and throws her arms in the air. “That they'll just come away with you, and I'll follow, that you'll have the family you've always wanted. Am I right, Turner?” She smiles wickedly at me. “Tell me I'm right about that.”

  I stare right back at her, and I think about what she's saying. Is that what I'm doing? Trying to put together a family all of a sudden? Maybe. I try not to delve too deep into thoughts like that, but yeah. Yeah. Sure.

  I tell her the truth. After all, it's my fucking policy.

  “What's wrong with that?” I take a step closer to her, wondering how far she'll let me go before she runs away again. I lock my eyes with hers and wait for the answer to the question.

  “From whore to family man in just a matter of days?” she asks this sarcastically, and I get the feeling she's actually trying to rile me up. Doesn't work. I cross my arms over my chest and tilt my chin back.

  “A kid changes everything. Most people have time to get used to this shit. You just sprung it on me. What do you want me to do? I have a six year old running around out there somewhere that I've never met. You know how fucked up that is?”

  “Turner,” Naomi says, shaking her head like she can't believe what it is she's about to say. “There is no – ”

  “Naomi!” A voice cuts through our conversation and a second later, pretty boy emo fag Dax is standing behind her panting. In his eyes, I can see that he thinks he's in love with her, and it makes me sick. I don't know exactly what it is that I want from her, but she's right – a family might be it – so I don't like the idea of Dax moving in on what's mine. Pisses me the fuck off.

  “What?” she snaps, and I'm glad to see her taking her anger out on him, too. Dax looks at her carefully and speaks very, very slowly.

  “Naomi, the police are here, and they're looking for you.”