by J. Bengtsson
Then came the finish – arguably the worst part of the uncomfortable eavesdropping forced upon me. Good god, they were like two snowy owls hooting. I half expected their Potter patronuses to shoot out of them and gallop around the house. Tightening my grip on the pillow, I cushioned my ears and hummed the theme song to Friends. It seemed appropriate under the circumstances. I mean ,they were my friends... and roommates. But at nine o’clock on a Saturday morning, like clockwork, I hated their guts.
After I secured a job with an environmental survey firm, I took up Shannon and Stewart’s offer to share a two-bedroom home only a few short miles from where I’d lived in high school. It hadn’t been an easy decision, being so close to my mother again. She hadn’t gone to prison, but she’d been required to undergo mandatory mental health treatment as part of her plea agreement. Auntie Kim had kept the specifics away from me, and I was glad for it. I had no desire to be part of my mother’s life ever again, so what she was up to nowadays was not my concern. All I asked was not to accidentally run into her at the grocery store.
In the end, I took my friends up on the offer because it was the most fiscally responsible decision I could make. Once I saved up enough, I would find a place of my own and let the love birds fornicate in peace and harmony. And aside from their prolific love life, I really did enjoy their company. They included me in their life and never made me feel like a third wheel. If Shannon was cuddled up next to Stewart watching a movie, I was on the other side of him, resting my head on his shoulder as I shoveled popcorn into my mouth.
My besties were in love, and it was only a matter of time before Stewart got down on one knobby knee and proposed. They’d have some weird sci-fi wedding – no joke, they were already planning it – and there would be lots and lots of single tables for their scientist friends. A year or two later would come the little red-haired gingersnaps just as adorably precocious as their parents.
I was happy for Shannon. Truly, I was. But listening to her gush about her life and her future only reminded me of what I would never have. When you were born branded by Fate, there was no point in looking ahead. I’d chewed on Preston’s cruel words for months, angry not only at him but at the world for strapping me to my mother’s illness. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that what Preston was saying was true. I couldn’t risk passing on the disease to my own flesh and blood, much less forcing my special brand of crazy on an unsuspecting man.
Sometimes I wondered if I should’ve just taken Preston up on his offer. With him, I could have traveled the world, albeit in steerage when his parents were around, but at least I would have had a good man by my side. Trouble was, I didn’t love Preston anymore, and if I wanted to be totally honest with myself, I never had. Don’t get me wrong, I tried – I really did – but Preston could never break into that place in my heart that was reserved for someone else.
After Shannon and Stewart’s grand finale, I removed the pillow and stared at the ceiling, listening to the vibrations of my phone. Social media was blowing up, and for good reason. Today was the day we’d all been waiting for – the day the town’s prodigal son returned for a benefit concert at the fairgrounds. And even though his name wasn’t officially on the banner for the event, everyone knew who the surprise musician would be. Jake McKallister, the worst kept secret in the county.
Tickets were hard to come by, but luckily I had an ace in the hole by way of Shannon, one of Jake’s unlikeliest of superfans. While many townsfolk followed his career, you’d have been hard-pressed to find one as committed as Shannon. She’d taken the extra creepy step of stalking him online and knowing where he was in the world at any given moment. So when the concert was announced with a mystery guest, and Shannon could pinpoint him back in town during that time, she was the first one online snapping up the tickets the minute they went on sale.
“Wake up. Wake up!” My McKallister-obsessed roommate burst through the door and into my room, instantly crawling over me like a six-foot spider.
“Go away.” I shuddered. “You’re covered in Stewart slime.”
“Were you listening to us again?” she asked, fingers digging into my side.
“It’s not listening if my ears just hear you.”
“Oh, no. You were counting, weren’t you?” She laughed. “How long did he last this time?”
“Forty-seven seconds.”
“Huh.” Shannon jutted out her bottom lip. “That long?”
We dissolved into a fit of giggles.
“I hate you both,” Stewart said, apparently having been there the whole time to hear the unflattering attacks on his sexual prowess. “The thing is, Sam, you don’t know what led up to those glorious forty-seven seconds. I have talents that you can’t hear through the wall.”
“No,” Shannon replied, a mischievous smile stamped to her face. “I think Sam pretty much heard it all.”
Suddenly Stewart was yanking Shannon off my bed by her legs. “Take it back.”
On her way down, I grabbed my friend’s arms and we played a game of tug of war with her lanky body, the three of us giggling like the dorks we were.
“Stew,” I said. “I’m not sure if you’re into polygamy, but once you marry Shannon, can I be like a sister-wife or something?”
Stewart slid a hand through his bowl cut, the corner of his lip hitched in a crooked grin. “I suppose I could spare forty-seven seconds for you once in a while.”
“That’s all I ask,” I sighed, fanning myself for affect.
“Stop teasing my boyfriend.” Shannon stretched her leg out and kicked me in the thigh. “You’re going to give him a big head. I mean, look at her, Stew. Sam’s way too hot for you.”
“So are you,” he replied. “But I reeled you in with my superpowers.”
“Right, but we’re heroes in the comic book world. Sam here, she’s a real life one. Besides, she’s beholden to only one man. And my bet is he’ll be hanging around the stage today while his brother performs. If all goes as planned, my little sister-wife here will be getting some serious name-brand D tonight.”
My eyes widened. Sure, I knew there was a good possibility Keith would be at the concert today, but it was the first time I realized Shannon was plotting something wicked. Per my request, she and I never talked about Keith. She’d brought him up plenty in the early days, but talking about him only made me sad, so I avoided the topic altogether until one day she stopped asking.
“You’d better not be thinking of doing something to get his attention.”
“Me? No. That’s your job.”
“He probably doesn’t even remember me.”
Shannon rolled her eyes, knowing that statement to be as untrue as I did. No way had he forgotten me. We’d had something special – something I’d never managed to replicate with any other man I’d ever dated. So why was I fighting Shannon on this? If she had a way to get me close to my former flame, I should be jumping at the chance. But for some reason, Keith scared me now. The possibility of rejection hung heavy in the air, and after enduring Preston’s proclamation, my trust in men had plummeted.
“Oh, please,” Shannon scoffed. “You’re a blast from the past. No way is he going to say ‘no’ to a visit from you.”
“Unless he’s married with children.”
“Who gets married at twenty-four?”
“Lots of people, Shan. Not everyone has to wait on a Star Wars movie release schedule to get engaged and married.”
“Yeah, well, if you ask me, he’s too young, especially to have kids.”
“Apparently you’ve never watched Teen Mom,” I concluded.
“So, what’s with this Keith guy, anyway? I mean aside from the fact he’s the brother of Jake McKallister,” Stewart asked. “I thought he was just some high school sweetheart.”
“He was.”
“Yes, but they never broke up,” Shannon explained. “Neither of them ever got closure.”
I swiveled my head in her direction, surprised by her take on things
. After I’d moved away, Shannon had tried to give me updates on Jake and Keith, but I’d shut her down. In my mind, a clean break meant distancing myself from the McKallisters and the heartbreak of our sudden split. Not that that was so easy once Jake exploded onto the music scene. Suddenly Keith’s surname was everywhere, making the memory of him hard to ignore. You couldn’t turn the radio on without one of Jake’s songs blasting from the speaker, nor could you go into a public place anywhere in the county without overhearing a discussion about the McKallister family. They were legendary in these parts, and ignoring their infamy was not an option.
Now I was wondering if forbidding all mention of him had been a mistake. Shannon was right. We’d never had closure. Could that be why I was having so much trouble committing myself to love? Maybe seeing Keith would be a good thing.
“What split you up then?” Stewart asked, swatting on the chains hanging down from my ceiling fan. His head barely cleared the rotating blades.
“A serial killer.”
He stopped smacking the chains to address me directly. “So cliché, Sam. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard that excuse…”
“Oh, sorry.” I laughed. “I didn’t mean to bore you with my run-of-the-mill story of young love gone tragically awry.”
He grinned, interested enough to press for more information. “After Jake disappeared, you never saw Keith again?”
“Only once, on the beach, the day before I left. It was awkward. Jake had escaped the week before, and Keith was struggling to keep everything together. We talked, but not in depth. I helped him gather items from the beach to share with Jake, and then we went our separate ways. I never saw him again.”
“Like I said…” Shannon nodded. “Unfinished business.”
“As in, my business, Shan, so no matchmaking and absolutely no dragging me backstage.”
“Oh, please. Do I look like the kind of gal who gets summoned backstage? I’m a bleacher girl all the way. Now, listen up, Chicklet, my game plan is simple – we get you close enough to the action so you can at least get a look at the guy your seventeen-year-old mega-slut self shagged in the cab of his truck.”
I gaped at her insult even as the two of us dissolved into giggles. I couldn’t refute her claim. I had been a horny schoolgirl, that was for damn certain. Keith had revved my engines like no other, and to this day I still remembered every finger he’d strategically placed on my quivering body. There was no forty-seven-second sex in the Surfmobile, hell no.
“You had underage sex in his truck?” Stewart tsk tsk-ed. “And you give us crap about doing it missionary style in a comfortable queen-sized bed? Hypocrite.”
Shannon smacked him. “We’re lucky to be doing it at all. Sam here has options, and with any luck, she’ll get to start using them tonight with the rock star’s brother.”
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t just a little curious about grown-up Keith. Certainly I wasn’t expecting him to be an urban professional or anything, but I did hope he’d been able to pull himself together after the tragedy and make a decent life for himself. Over the years, I’d thought a lot about how he’d abandoned me and had come to the conclusion he hadn’t done it to hurt me. No one knows how they’ll react in a tragedy. Some seek out the comfort of a crowd, while others, like Keith – and like me – collapsed inward. I knew what it meant to implode. And I understood what it took to soar. My hope was that Keith had learned that difference too.
Maybe it was all the unanswered questions that kept him at the forefront of my mind. What if he was still a user, wandering homeless on the streets? What if he had it all together, complete with a beautiful woman by his side? What if – god, what if he were single?
“Fine, I’ll play along,” I huffed, pretending to be uncommitted to Shannon’s plan when in reality, I was all for anything that got me a step closer to my lost love. The truth was I’d never gotten over him, nor had I been able to replicate the passion and excitement he’d brought to my life. “But don’t embarrass me. No cowbells. Got it?”
“Relax. I already checked. They aren’t allowed.”
“Wait, why would you even think it would be a good thing to bring them to a concert?”
She shrugged. “I figured it would get his attention.”
“Ah yes,” Stewart smirked. “Cowbells are moosic to everyone’s ears.”
“Oh, no.” I waved my hand in his face. “You know the rules. No puns before noon.”
“That’s a real thing?” he asked. “I thought you were kidding.”
“After the pun-streak the two of you had in our group text last month when Stew was on the airplane, yeah, I added it to the house rules. I’m not kidding. Check the chalkboard.”
“You know what, Sam,” he replied. “You have a lot of baggage to claim.”
“Right?” Shannon jumped in. “She’s so Boeing.”
“I agree.” He nodded. “Just plane exhausting!”
“Out!” I squealed, squishing the pillow back over my ears. There was only so much a girl could take.
Shannon’s single-minded plan on getting us to the front of the stage had been an ambitious one. We’d made it within about fifty feet before the bodies formed a tight line of defense, blocking us from any further forward movement. With no other choice, we settled in where we stood.
“Sam?” Shannon grasped my shirt. “Look! Is that him?”
I didn’t even bother to follow her finger this time as the same sentence had been repeated at least a dozen times now. Shannon had been scanning the crowds since the minute we’d arrived, convinced she’d find Keith in the crush of bodies, and even though I’d been hopeful before arriving at the fairgrounds, once I saw the crowds, I knew there was no way he and I would be reuniting.
“Over there, standing near the stage. I’m pretty sure that’s him.”
Her rising excitement drew my attention, and curiosity got the best of me. I glanced in the direction she was pointing. At first I didn’t see what she was seeing, but then a brown-haired guy came into view, and even though I couldn’t see him clearly, just like on the beach six years earlier, I knew it was him. The way his body moved with sinewy precision was the telltale sign I was looking at my former flame. I remembered the way he’d stirred in my embrace, the way my nails trailed up his back, and the way his lips pressed feather kisses into my skin. I’d known him intimately, and that wasn’t something I could ever forget.
Swallowing hard, all I could do was nod in affirmation.
“Go to him,” Shannon urged, pushing me forward.
Digging in, I held back shivers. “No, I can’t.”
“Sure you can.”
This time I met her eyes and demanded her cooperation. This wasn’t a game. Not to me. “No!”
“Fine.” She sighed. “You leave me no choice. Stew? On your knees.”
“Huh?” he replied in bewilderment but neither of us was paying him any mind.
“You wouldn’t dare.” I stared her down as I stepped between my best friend and her significant other.
“Watch me,” she challenged, before addressing her man. “Stew!”
This time Stewart obediently dropped to his knees, allowing Shannon access to straddle his shoulders.
“What exactly are we doing here?” he asked.
“We’re getting Samantha’s shag buddy back.”
26
Keith: Reunion
The sound of the roadie tumbling off the side of the stage drew our attention. Lassen and I were just making our way to the family area of the stadium when his body tumbled head over heels and landed in a clump by our feet.
“Dude!” I jumped to help, but he was on his feet in a flash.
“I’m okay. Happens all the time,” he said, dusting himself off before hurrying away to rejoin his crew. An issue with the sound system had delayed the start of the benefit concert Jake was about to perform, and pandemonium among the crew had ensued. So frenzied was the atmosphere, Lassen had suggested an escape, and I’d t
aken him up on it. That stress was Kyle’s problem now, although to be fair, I doubted my little brother did much more than follow Jake around like a puppy dog all day.
“Slinky is one of the new guys,” Lassen announced gruffly. “I can’t say exactly what he suffers from, but I’m sure it’s hard to pronounce.”
I let out an amused chuckle. That was Lassen – never a nice thing to say about anyone. If you had told me a year ago that I’d be palling around with the likes of this guy, I would have scoffed in your face; but times had changed, and ol’ Grumpy Pants had unexpectedly become my friend. Jake had been right about Lassen. He was loyal to those he deemed worthy, and somehow, I’d made the cut.
“And yet, despite his obvious issues,” I said, “the human Slinky is an improvement over me.”
“How do you figure?”
“Well, he hasn’t screwed himself out of a job yet.”
Lassen grunted. “That’s true, I suppose, but your contribution to the tour will live on forever.”
“Oh, yeah? Tell me, what’s my contribution again?”
“You introduced Jake to his Yogis.”
I tossed my head back laughing. “Oh, shit. Yes, I did. Does he still have a steady stream of them coming and going?”
“It’s stabilized. For a while there you could practically smell the syphilis.”
His dry humor doubled me over. The mental image of poor Lassen banished to his camp chair outside the tour bus as Jake entertained a bevy of beautiful women was enough to keep me in stitches.
“If you tell your brother I said that…” He shook his bag of sunflower seeds. “I’ll cut you off.”
In my hands, I rattled an identical packet of seeds. It was like our ex-junky handshake. After I’d completed rehab nearly eight months ago, Lassen had stepped up for me in a big way, taking on the role as my AA mentor. Part of his duties, he’d claimed, was keeping me in a steady supply of sunflower seeds, his tried and true remedy for preventing a relapse. And although I’d never been a fan of the kernels myself, the dude had been sober for ten years, so who was I to question his methods? Soon I was carrying around my own emergency stash everywhere I went.
