Heartstrings

by Riley Sierra

  Cal had grown up, but he hadn’t changed that much.

  Blake sank down onto the black leather sofa and hunched over against himself, on the verge of tears. He barely heard Cal return, the door slamming shut somewhere behind him. He heard twin thumps as his bags hit the ground.

  “Hey,” came a soft voice from above him. “Welcome home.”

  Blake lifted his head, meeting Cal’s eyes. Cal’s brow creased in concern, the smile vanished from his face.

  “It went that good, huh?” he asked. Then he stooped down and collected Blake up into his arms, smoothing his fingers over the fabric of Blake’s coat.

  Cal wore a leather jacket, the beat-up biker-looking kind that was probably a thousand years old. It smelled like some sort of woody resin, and underneath it a hint of that unmistakable musky maleness. Cal smell. Blake buried his face in Cal’s shoulder and inhaled, burrowing into the coat somewhat.

  “I feel like this was my chance,” Blake mumbled, helpless. “This was my one chance at my dreams. And I blew it.”

  Cal was silent for a long while.

  “First off,” he eventually said, “Rhett’s the one who blew it. Not you. And second off, I... know that feeling pretty well.”

  A heavy sigh gusted out of Cal, rippling over Blake’s hair. He felt the arm around his shoulders tighten.

  “Blake,” Cal murmured, stroking his fingertips along the side of Blake’s jaw, no longer swollen but still a little bruised. “You hear yourself? The one chance at your dreams? You dream bigger and work harder than any person I’ve ever met. I know it doesn’t feel that way now, but this is just a roadblock. You’re meant for better things.”

  Then Cal tenderly kissed Blake’s hairline.

  A short sob forming in his throat, Blake clenched his eyes shut and clung to Cal for dear life. This was the one thing nobody could take from him, not anymore. Life could take his record contract, take his band, take his songs, take his money, but now that he had Cal back he was never, ever letting him go.

  Emotional though Blake could be, he wasn’t one who cried for very long. A few token tears slid down his cheeks, his teeth clenched tight, but the worst waves of grief passed before too long.

  He still felt wretched. But holding on to Cal gave him strength. Or at least gave him access to strength he couldn’t quite get to before.

  “You can stay here as long as you like,” Cal said, kissing Blake’s temple.

  Blake drew in a sniffly breath, then explained the current situation to Cal. The Sinsationals had scattered back to their homes for now, awaiting word from their various legal representatives. The accountants were looking into cutting final paychecks from the aborted tour. Blake apologized over and over about Cal’s cut of the pay, until Cal shut him up by putting a finger to his mouth.

  “I don’t care,” he said.

  “I know. It’s not a care thing,” Blake stammered. “It’s just—it pisses me off because out of all of us, you’re the one who could actually use this money, you know?”

  Cal tapped Blake’s mouth again, audibly shushing him.

  “Blake.” His voice was calm and flat, like a parent talking to a child mid-tantrum. “I don’t care about the money. I don’t need the money. I know this apartment doesn’t look like much, but I don’t live here because it’s all I can afford.”

  Blake hiked in a deep breath, some of his anxiety easing off.

  Cal’s words genuinely surprised him. Blake had seen the state of The Garage. Which, granted, had never been a pretty place. But between the dumpy quality of the bar and the decidedly working-class nature of Cal’s accommodation, Blake had assumed his finances weren’t great.

  Maybe he was wrong about that, too. He’d been wrong about a lot in regards to Cal.

  Cal turned his head, taking the room in. Blake followed his gaze, shifting so that he rested against Cal’s chest on the couch.

  “I know this place isn’t much to look at, but I don’t live here because of some dire financial need.” Cal smirked, a lopsided curl of his mouth. “I live here because this is what I’m used to. This is what’s comfortable to me. You might be used to eight-hundred-dollar-a-night hotel rooms. I’m used to concrete porches and chain link.”

  Blake couldn’t help but ask, now.

  “And the bar?”

  “Jeez, the bar looks the way it does because that’s its whole... thing. It’s a renovated garage people drink beer and play pool in. The same crusty old weekend warrior Sunday bikers have been drinking there since I was born. If I took it out of Dad’s hands and turned it into some hipster craft-beer joint, that’d be like ripping the soul out of it.”

  Blake rubbed at his nose with a thumb. He’d barely heard Cal say that many words all at once before.

  Then it dawned on him: this was how Cal got when he was passionate. He talked about the bar the same way he talked about making music. It wasn’t just some job to him. He genuinely cared. He said it had a soul for hell’s sake.

  Blake got choked up all anew.

  “I love you,” he blurted.

  Cal blinked several times, his eyelashes fluttering rapidly. For a split second he was quiet, then he hugged Blake against himself with renewed vigor.

  “... Love you too,” he said, inhaling deep against Blake’s hair.

  40

  Cal

  Blake Bradley was a miserable house guest when he was depressed. But Cal didn’t mind. He was determined to help Blake through his rough patch, come hell or high water.

  He had no idea the situation with the band was quite so bad. Blowing up their record contract, canceling the tour, leaving it all hanging over Blake’s head like a ghost until the lawyers came to some conclusion. It galled Cal’s sense of right and wrong.

  They didn’t bother with the pretense of setting Blake up in the spare room. Not since they’d both dropped the L-word. Sleeping with Blake on a nightly basis was a rare treat, considering how much traveling they’d done on the tour. The first couple of days, they spent more time in bed together than out. Not even solely occupied with sex—although some mind-blowing blowjobs did occur—but just acclimating themselves to one another.

  Blake did his little nesting thing and unpacked his crap all over Cal’s apartment. But Cal, as minimalist as his lifestyle was, didn’t mind. He barely owned enough in his house to make a mess.

  And, he soon discovered, he only had one of everything. He ate at work so often that he didn’t have two plates that matched. He had two burger plates that hadn’t been returned to work, one big Corelle plate left over from years ago, one saucer that didn’t have a teacup, and one mint-green plastic plate that Yanmei had left at his place. It had once contained cookies.

  Blake got some of his old charm back, enough to eyeball the contents of Cal’s cupboards and call him an embarrassment. He never seemed to shake the worst of it off, though.

  So, naturally, Cal took him shopping.

  Being with Blake in a couple context was weird. When they’d done their tentative on-and-off hookups in their youth, they hadn’t been an out couple. Blake still wasn’t out in the media. But they went through the day-to-day domesticities of life together, the bits at home even more important than the bits when they were out and about.

  Yet Cal felt selfish. Blake brought him happiness. Blake brought warmth and color and life to his home. Unfortunately for Cal, the joy on Blake’s end wasn’t ever enough to cancel out his heartbreak.

  It wasn’t fair. Seeing Blake with a permanent damper on his happiness twisted in Cal’s ribs like a wound that wouldn’t heal.

  When it was time for his shifts at The Garage, Cal left Blake alone at home. He had his own set of keys. He had his rental Jeep. Cal kept hoping he’d come home and find Blake out somewhere. Gone to the nearest bookstore, gone to a gig, gone to get a stupid tattoo signifying his deep-seated misery.

  But it never happened.

  Whenever Cal walked through the door, Blake was either curled up on the loveseat with his laptop, o
bsessively reading music blogs, or sulking in front of the television. Or asleep. Even if Cal stopped home for lunch in the middle of the day.

  Slowly, the sense of unfairness Cal felt blossomed into actual anger. Not toward Blake of course, but toward Rhett fucking Ballard, who deserved to have his face beat in.

  Blake’s banjo was still in its case, sitting in the corner, collecting dust.

  They’d get through it. Cal had to believe they could. But it was hard sometimes, to love Blake and know Blake wasn’t quite as happy as he was. That guilt came creeping back, like it always did.

  * * *

  “I don’t know what to do,” Cal said, locking up The Garage’s staff entrance. The night’s chill dug in beneath his leather coat, a bit of winter returned despite it being the middle of spring. “The band thing has him so devastated. I feel like he’s miserable and I can’t help.”

  Yanmei put a hand to his back, leaving it there, a tentative brush of camaraderie.

  “I can’t blame him. It sounds like apart from you, his life fucking sucks right now.”

  “Any words of wisdom, since you were so ready with them last time?”

  “I dunno, Calvin. Do something fun with him. Take him out. Take some time off work yourself. Come play laser tag with me and Travis.”

  The laser tag Cal would have to pass on. But she was right: leaving Blake alone for hours at a time while he worked wasn’t helping either of them. Whenever he was apart from Blake, his whole body thrummed with the need to see him again.

  He thanked Yanmei for her help, however few words it may have been, and started the walk home.

  “Hey, wait!” she called from beside her car. “What about like, some not-band music? Get him to come out here and play a gig. If he’s so torn up about it, maybe remind him that life was okay before the band made it big.”

  She had a way with words. They had been okay just playing songs for one another. With one another. Back before Blake’s success, the music itself was all they had. It had been pure. Untainted with any of the stresses that eventually fractured the Sinsationals.

  Or maybe Blake didn’t want music of any kind right now. Maybe it was too painful a reminder. There was only one way to find out, Cal supposed. He had to try. He couldn’t stand finally getting Blake back, to feel so happy himself, if Blake couldn’t feel that happiness.

  Back when he’d been an awkward, transplanted Texan struggling to make real friends outside the wrestling team, it was Blake who had taught him how to unwind a little. How to enjoy more than just the rush of endorphins after a workout. How to sit out under the stars in silence and admire them and feel at peace, rather than feeling like he was wasting his time.

  Cal knew deep down there was nothing he wouldn’t do to bring that warm glow back to Blake’s eyes. He just had to figure something out.

  41

  Blake

  Never before had Blake been in an artistic funk. He’d had his ups and downs over the years—an especially prolonged period of down after Cal first left the band—but throughout all that, songs had sprung up inside him like weeds. Music was a part of him like his nerves and his blood vessels. When he woke up in the morning, notes wandered into his mind. When he practiced, he felt centered and calm.

  Some days, when Cal was at work, Blake hefted Cal’s guitar off the wall and tried to play it. He wasn’t quite as proficient on guitar as he was on banjo, but he’d still played it for a good seven years. The banjo was too painful to look at these days.

  He thought the guitar might offer a reprieve.

  But when he plucked the strings, nothing sounded quite right. He double- and triple-checked the tuning, but the guitar was tuned correctly. Something sounded off, but it wasn’t in the guitar itself.

  It was in his heart.

  He waited by the phone like a lovesick teenager for word from Palmer. He texted with Lily and Carlo sometimes, but not much. Just check-ins and how-you-doings that he couldn’t even guarantee they were answering honestly.

  Shopping with Cal was nice. Carving out a little living space for himself amid all the heavy wood furniture and solid-walled Cal-ness of the place was also nice. Blake wondered just how lost he’d feel if Cal wasn’t around to brighten his days.

  On their ninth day of no word on the Sinsationals’ future, Cal came to Blake with an idea.

  “Hey,” Cal said, home early from tending the bar. Blake, who was curled up on the loveseat, lifted his head.

  “Hey yourself.” He smiled. The sight of Cal walking through the door, greeting him as if they were an actual couple, it was something he’d never grow tired of.

  “I have a proposition for you.”

  Cal folded his arms and leaned in the doorway, watching Blake with a bit of a squint.

  Blake sat up, setting his phone down. Cal’s tone was oddly mischievous. He didn’t get that way often.

  “You up for a side job this weekend? A buddy of mine runs that comedy club down the road from the bar. He had a comic drop out at the last second, needs someone to fill the gap.”

  Blake twisted his mouth downward, cautious. A solo show? With no Sinsationals songs? What would he even play?

  “I thought maybe we could suit up like old times. Keys To The Old Horse, Greatest Hits Edition.”

  Blake sat up even straighter, interest piqued. Not solo, then.

  “We?” he asked, hopeful.

  “Yeah, you think just because I’m working at the bar again I never want to play music with you anymore?”

  Blake didn’t admit out loud to that being exactly what he’d worried. Instead, he unfurled from the sofa and bounded across the floor, leaping up toward Cal and corralling him in a full body-weight hug.

  “Easy, easy!” Cal said, though he returned the hug fiercely. “Neighbors downstairs, remember?”

  “Oh, shit.”

  Blake laughed breathlessly, tucking himself in against Cal’s warm body. He kissed his neck, toyed with the hair at the nape. Calvin Lindsay was an incredible man. Blake didn’t know how he’d gotten so lucky. Nerves still tingled in his stomach at the idea of a show without the rest of the band, but as long as he had Cal in his corner, everything would be fine.

  * * *

  For all her humility about being a small-fry bar manager, Yanmei was a hell of a promoter. In less than a week’s time, she’d whispered in enough ears that Blake was going to make an appearance at Follies that tickets sold out. Cal’s friend Clayton was over the moon.

  Secretly, Blake was too. Practicing with Cal in the lead-up to the show was the highlight of his day.

  Performing at a venue like Follies was a nice change of pace. No commotion backstage, no dozens of people to meet and greet, no caterers, no surly bandmates throwing punches. Just a few guys who worked there, one token person per occupation: lighting guy, sound guy, security guy. The smallness of it was refreshing.

  Blake and Cal took the stage right on schedule, a guitar in each of their laps. Blake still hadn’t touched the banjo, so he acquired himself a nice little number with nylon strings to fiddle on in the meantime. It was smaller, rounder, the sound almost ukulele-like compared to the warm steel tones of Cal’s guitar.

  They contrasted beautifully together. Just like Blake and Cal.

  Their set list was minimal: a few old standard covers, the only Keys To The Old Horse singles that were ever released, and a couple Sinsationals instrumentals that Rhett didn’t have any claim to. They played a rousing rendition of “Whisky in the Jar” that was in equal parts inspired by Thin Lizzie’s version and Metallica’s. When Blake sang, he mimicked that James Hetfield growl. The eight-hundred-strong crowd got a kick out of it.

  But most importantly, when he looked over at Cal, there was a hint of wetness in the other man’s dark eyes. Eyes that had seen Blake at his worst and were smiling now. Making music with Cal had always had a strangely magic quality to it, as though there was some alchemy going on that nobody else could ever duplicate.

  This show just proved
it. Blake played and sang his heart out, and by his measure he sounded phenomenal, even with a half-broken heart and playing his secondary instrument. Cal’s guitar sounded incredible, too. The tone was just as he’d imagined it’d be up close.

  They played not one, but two separate encores. They dug out every song the two of them knew. Blake fingerpicked a banjo version of “Cripple Creek” on the guitar to wild applause. Cal showed off his own skills and played the riff from the Top Gun soundtrack, which was a ridiculous song to even play on an acoustic guitar.

  “Top Gun? Really?” Blake said into his mic as Cal played. Laughter broke out in the audience. Cal casually rolled a shoulder and kept on going, tearing into the instrumental with vigor.

  “Okay Cal,” Blake joked. “Take my breath away.”

  By the time the curtain finally came down, they’d overstayed their welcome by almost half an hour. But nobody on venue staff seemed to care. And not a soul rose from their seats early. Because when Cal and Blake made music together, it was captivating like nothing else.

  42

  Cal

  Blake was, without a doubt, the most stunningly sexy individual Cal had ever laid eyes on. Watching him on stage was stronger than the most potent aphrodisiac. Being so close to him, close enough to touch and smell and taste on a daily basis...

  As soon as the show was over, Cal knew he had to have Blake to himself. As soon as possible.

  There was no after-party. There wasn’t even a “let’s hang around and have a drink with our pals.”

  Blake drove them straight home in that ridiculous rental Jeep of his, and the very second they stepped through the door, Cal shoved him up against the wall.