by Anna Bloom
I thrust the thought of Luca out of my head. If I thought of Luca, then I thought of Blue... and I didn’t want to think about either of them right now. I couldn’t.
Dark started to fall, the air much cooler, when Alex led his merry gang of willing followers, and me, down a couple of quieter streets. The facades of the buildings became shabbier, the paint peeling, the walkways getting narrower. Down a couple of dark alleyways, he stopped outside of a bar with a flashing blue sign.
Blue’s bar.
And there went any chance of me not thinking of Blue. It was literally a bar created to torment me.
With the windows blacked out, a pound of a beat came from behind the door. A doorman opened up, a huge guy with dark tattoos stretched over wide arms. He nodded to Alex and then swept his gaze over us.
Eva tugged on my elbow and stepped closer. Music blasted through the now open door, live by the sound of it, live and heavy.
The doorman stepped aside, stamping our hands as we passed him by. He gave me a smile as he printed VIP on the back of my hand.
Inside, the music thudded so loud my ears actually buzzed. A four piece on stage ripped the life out of their instruments. The singer jumped up and down, screeching into a mic, his hair across his face in sweaty strings.
The crowd in front of the stage moved with the beat, jumping up and down, their feet landing at the same time as the lead singer.
I met Eva’s wild stare. Brittany and George instantly dove into the crowd, hands above their heads finding the rhythm of the dancers. Alex grinned, his white teeth blue under the lights.
“Welcome to the best bar in Boston,” he shouted, leaning in closer to us, his nose skimming my cheek as spoke straight into my ear. “Drink?”
“Just a diet soda,” I replied.
He shook his head but didn’t say anything as Eva asked for a beer.
I watched the band, my back to the bar. They were tight. When I’d first walked in, I’d figured they were some college band with little practice, but now watching properly, I could see the connection between the four. Every beat, every note perfectly timed, even with all the jumping around.
A shot glass was thrust under my chin and I frowned and pursed my lips. Alex just laughed, flashing those perfect teeth again. “You can have your diet soda once you’ve done your tequila.”
I took the glass and downed it in one making him whoop over the music. He thrust another at me, a challenge, and rolling my eyes I knocked it back. I actually liked the taste of tequila.
“That’s my girl.” His warm breath licked across my skin as the alcohol burned through my veins, and I remembered a moment too late that I hadn’t eaten that much.
The buzz flashed hot and fast, and gratefully, I let it ease my brain, rubbing out the memory of seeing Jack Cross and his angry eyes.
Alex passed me a soda and I drank it down, creasing my face at the slight aftertaste, but I guessed it was just cheap crap they sold at high prices.
Eva downed her shot and I grabbed her arm. “Come, let’s go dance.” A wild rush coursed inside me and I wanted to move. I gave Alex my glass and wove through the crowd, edging our way nearer to the stage. The bass thumped so loud it echoed in my chest, pumping with my blood as little tingles of adrenaline mixed with the oxygen in my veins.
I didn't know how many songs we danced to like that, arms above our heads, Eva and I wordlessly grinning at one another.
When the room swirled a kaleidoscope of colors in front of my eyes, and beads of sweat rolled down the back of my neck, I tried to slow. My heart raced too fast though, my throat almost pinching so tight I wanted to hurl. In an instant my memories transported me back to Raven Smoake’s cream-hued front room and the burn of vodka in my veins.
Blue.
Everything was blue, and I hated it. The strobes lighting the dance floor were blue, streams of neon flashing across Eva's top. Even her wide grin shone with blue as the lights reflected off of her teeth.
My throat tightened even more. “I need to get a drink,” I hollered over the bass, motioning drinking from a cup with my hand.
Eva pointed to the bar. “I’ll come with you,” she shouted, but I shook my head and held up two fingers.
“Back in a moment,” I shouted over the music and chatter.
With a quick glance at where we were, so I could find her again, I pushed through the other dancers. Bodies rammed tight, the air humid and increasingly hard to pull into my lungs. By the time I made it off the dance floor even the backs of my hands were sweating.
I aimed for the neon blue strip lighting of the bar, sure that was where Alex and his friends would be, but I didn’t recognize a single face.
I was going to be sick. It clawed up my throat, looking for any available exit route.
Without thinking, I pushed for the blue flashing exit sign, vaguely registering that it was blue and not the standard green.
I staggered out into the dark. A queue lined around the corner of the building and it seemed natural to follow it. I glanced down at my sweaty hand to check I still had the stamp so I could get back in.
I followed the line around the corner where it became dark and people no longer seemed to be waiting in line, but more huddled in crowds, the air pluming with thick smoke. I glanced up quickly into the flared red of someone’s face illuminated by the glowing end of a blunt.
“Want some?” he called out to me from under his hood, the shadows of his eyes almost hollow in the dim light.
“No thanks.” I made sure to meet his dark gaze.
Stupid whispers from the past circled my head, ‘Always make sure you look every person who walks toward you directly in the face’.
My childish giggle echoed back at me with the slap of my feet on the asphalt, ‘Why?’
‘People are less likely to attack you if they think you will recognize them in a line-up’.
I’d always thought it preposterous advice, but I heeded it nonetheless.
I walked past the group smoking dope and turned a corner. I wanted to go back to the club and find Eva, but I also didn’t want to walk past the groups of hangers-on again. Slipping my hand into my pocket, I pushed my room key through my middle and pointer fingers and gripped the base tight in my curled fist. Another stupid safety lesson I couldn’t forget.
I tried to work out the layout of the streets, unable to recognize a single thing.
My feet slapped against the sidewalk, a lonely beat.
Until I noticed the beat that wasn’t just my own. I sped up, taking another left, hoping that somehow I would loop around the block and would soon see the line for Blue's bar.
I didn’t.
Another deserted gangway that had seen better days, more prosperous days, yawned before me.
“Hey, pretty girl, don’t walk so fast,” a voice called from behind me. I snuck a glance, breaking all the safety rules ever written. It was the stoner in the hoody, and a friend.
With my mouth dry, I stepped up my pace, turning again. My free hand snuck into my pocket, but I realized a moment too late that with all the drama from earlier, Eva and I hadn’t even swapped numbers yet.
I ran, uncaring of the pad of feet behind me, or the fact I’d given them a target to chase. I ran. And as I ran I knew I was utterly lost, with absolutely no damn place in hell to go, and the only number in my phone that might be of any use was for a person who I didn’t think existed anymore.
Chapter Ten
Jack
I locked the car and pocketed the keys, contemplating the stairs I’d normally run up. My legs were shaky though, in some pathetic display of overreaction, so instead I leaned on the wall by the elevator and waited for the doors to open to take me to the penthouse.
The whole way, I rolled my shoulders, and tugged at the collar of my dress shirt, pulling at the buttons. Greene was such a fussy, old-fashioned bastard.
The doors whooshed open straight onto the monochrome top floor for the apartment block. Emptying my pockets of wallet, k
eys, and phone, I tossed them into the bowl on the Napoleonic chest in the hallway. Stupid ugly thing. Stupid ugly every-fucking-thing.
Bastard Greene. That was not Lee Ching, an eighteen-year-old musical prodigy with bad skin and a desperate social life, who I should have been meeting today.
What the hell happened?
I stalked for the fridge, and ripping the door wide open, stared at the row of brown glass beer bottles on the bottom shelf. They were dewy with condensation, and I could all too easily imagine the chilled slip of the pale liquid as it quenched down my throat.
I slammed the fridge door shut and grabbed a bottle of water off the counter, then settled down in my leather armchair and stared out at the city. Lights were on now, dancing pretty patterns on slick sidewalks.
Shadows almost encompassed the room and I still hadn’t moved, when the front door opened, the click of heels on the marble floor grating my nerves. “Sweetie, there you are!” The heels clicked closer, surrounded by a mist of Chanel Miss Dior. Hands slid around my neck, dark hair falling over my neck and throat. “I’ve been calling you for hours. I wanted to go for oysters at that new champagne bar. Why haven’t you answered?”
My arms slipped around Miriam as she settled herself on my lap. “I turned my phone off.”
She nuzzled into my neck, her lips brushing across my jaw. It tightened in response and I held my breath. “You seem moody.” If she was horny, it meant she was drunk.
I pushed her back a little bit, meeting her pouty gaze. “Just because I don’t answer my phone doesn’t mean I’m moody.”
She pouted even more, and my stomach turned. “It does, you miserable old grump.”
I curved an eyebrow knowing that she purposely goaded me. One thing Miriam liked more than drunk sex was pissing me the fuck off.
At the mere thought of sex my dick stirred to life. I dropped my gaze to her plump, ripe-plum colored lips. All I could see was Lyra biting down on her bottom lip in Greene’s office, white teeth punishing a nervous lower lip wobble. Fucking Lyra.
Miriam giggled low in her throat as she squirmed on my hard-on. Seemed stupid to waste it. Without speaking, I pushed her off my lap down onto the floor gently. I wasn’t a total asshole. Her eyes darkened as she licked her lips. Lyra slipped back in my head, my body tightening, tensing around images of her, both today, and in the past.
Leaning back in my armchair, I unhooked the button on my suit pants and unzipped the fly. Miriam leaned forward, her dark hair falling over her shoulder, her breath coming in little pants. “Promise you won’t be grumpy,” she smirked.
I rolled my head back. “Actually, I’ve changed my mind.”
Miriam’s ebony gaze swirled with annoyance. “Any reason why?”
I shook my head. “You mean other than the fact we really don’t like one another? I don’t think we have to pretend within the walls of our apartment, do we?”
Her eyes flashed with fire. “It’s a free blow job, Jack. What’s not to like?”
I laughed, low and acidic. “Nothing is free with you, Miriam.”
I pushed myself back into my pants and zipped up. “I need to pop back to the office.”
She scowled. “What about dinner? I wanted to go for oysters. Lectures haven’t even started yet.”
“I know. But Greene is being his usual paranoid self.” I stood up, ignoring her curse under her breath.
I contemplated changing out of my work clothes, but then decided I just needed to go.
In the pit of my gut, a tight tension twisted that I knew even a blow job wouldn’t release. Lyra.
Pushing my hand through my hair, I stalked over to get my keys. “Want me to pick something up on the way back?”
Miriam was in front of the fridge, holding the door open, counting the beer bottles. I shook my head.
“You okay to drive?” she asked, tone light.
“Yes.” My tight response closed down the conversation.
Without saying anything else, I moved for the door, but at the elevator I paused. “Miriam?”
“Mm?” She already held a bottle of champagne in her hand, the one with the yellow label that gave me raging heartburn.
“Did your dad mention anything about this year’s scholarship?”
Distracted, she focused on pouring the pale liquid into a stemless champagne glass. Each glass cost more than my mom earned in a week when I was growing up. A fact I knew because the other week I’d broken one and had to order a new one.
“The scholarship?” She took a sip.
“Yes, you know. The scholarship. Your dad funds it every year?” I couldn’t even attempt to keep my tone even.
“He told us when we were on the Cape. Don’t you remember?”
I pulled at my hair. “Clearly not.”
“That Chinese boy, his visa didn’t come through. Dad couldn’t pull any strings. So the board decided to offer to the next on the list.”
I stared at her blankly. I had no memory of this conversation.
“Second on the list?”
“Yes, some mixed-race girl, or what are they called now, bi-race? I don’t know. The board had to make their choice inclusive after that whole drama last year.”
I shook my head. The ‘drama’ had centered around the Collins Foundation being accused of institutional racism, and only accepting white privileged students or Asian gifted prodigies as their benefactors. “You do remember I’m Latino, right?” My questions dripped with acid, but she waved her hand at me in dismissal.
“Hardly, Jack. Now run along and go do what you need to do. I want my dinner.”
Wordless, I turned on my heel and stabbed my finger on the elevator button, sweeping my key card against the pad so it took me down to the basement.
Why the fuck was I going back to campus?
In the car, burning through the nighttime traffic, I banged my hands on the steering wheel.
Lyra. I hated her. Hated her for what happened that night, hated her for the fact I hadn’t seen my mother for four years. Hated her for the fact I’d never been able to go home and claim what’s mine—not much, but mine all the same. Hated her for ever fucking hooking me in.
Hated her brother even more.
Now everything had changed.
Now she was swimming in my head, gnawing at my thoughts, and I’d only spoken a handful of words to the girl.
She was a goddam witch.
Cursing under my breath, I cruised the Audi around campus, automatically pulling up outside Hamilton.
I breathed deeply in through my nose and out through my mouth, calming my emotions, trying to stop my body from instantly launching into fight mode.
The sensible thing would have been to leave.
Through some mental feat of Olympian magnitude, I’d put the car into reverse, when in the rearview I caught sight of that small girl who must be her roommate running down the stairs to Hamilton. She clutched her phone, shaking her head. Another girl waited at the bottom of the stairs, her arms folded across her chest.
Automatically, I lowered the window so I could hear what they were saying.
‘She’s not here.” The small girl’s face was pale under the streetlamp. “What the fuck are we going to do?”
That was it. I got out of the car. “Hey, what’s going on? I’m Mr. Cross, one of the teaching aides.” Usually I felt like a twat whenever I used my formal title, but not right now.
The girl’s bottom lip started to wobble, her eyes filling with tears. “We were in town, at a bar, and my roommate walked away and never came back.”
My blood turned to ice, my heart thumping too loud. “Your roommate? The girl I saw you with earlier? The one who’d not been feeling well?”
She blinked up at me, I guessed placing me from this afternoon. ‘Yes, what should I do? Should I tell the Warden? Lyra and I didn’t exchange numbers, so I can’t call her to make sure she’s okay. George and I came back here to see if she came home. I don’t know, maybe she hooked up with someon
e.”
The chilled ice in my veins melted to molten hot lava. George snorted, looking bored, and more than a little drunk. “She looks the type.”
I glanced over to Tom, the warden, reading a magazine in his booth. At a hundred in the shade, he had the reactions of a snail.
“What bar were you at?”
She winced. “Blue’s bar. Ah crap. Listen, I know we weren’t supposed to be. You won’t report us, will you?”
Blue’s bar?
Alex Collins—the instigator, he had to be. The Collins family were a curse on my existence and make no damn mistake. If I knew Lyra, she wouldn’t have wanted to say no.
What a dick… If I knew Lyra…. What did I even mean, if I knew Lyra? Had I ever known her at all?
Without another word, I ripped the door of the car open and slid in, gunning the engine and pulling out of the gates before Tom even lifted his head from his read.
Luckily, the traffic flowed smoothly. Back Bay was filled with people eating out in trendy brasseries, or at bars where the drinks were priced for their location. I raced down the roads, weaving in and out of pedestrians and parked cars. Through the amenable end of town, I took a couple of fast left turns, heading into the bleaker streets where the shops became more spaced, and less successful.
Turning onto 34th, the crowds lingering around the bar—all of them unsavory—blocked the sidewalk. I scanned each face for Lyra, but whether I was looking for the fourteen-year-old girl I once knew, or the young woman I met again today, I couldn’t say. My chest tightened. What if I couldn’t remember what she looked like now?
No, don’t talk stupid shit, Jack. She looked the same as she always had.
That simple, almost startling fact filtered into my consciousness, but I filed it away for later, when time and urgency didn’t require all my focus.
Four and a half years ago
“Hey, Mom.” I banged through the back door, dropping my basketball onto the ground and stopping it from rolling away by placing my foot on it.
“Hey, baby boy.” Mom shot me a wry smile and stepped closer, wrapping her slender arms around my shoulders.
