Rock My World

by Coulter, Sharisse

  As Jenna continued to run through her mental friend list she realized the rest belonged to one of two categories: Airika’s friends or Alex’s friends. She couldn’t think of anyone after high school that was just her friend. She’d taken for granted that she had a best friend and a husband. She hadn’t needed to go looking for friends.

  Suddenly, a name popped into her head. It surprised her, but Noelle was the closest thing to a real friend she had right now and maybe the only one able to give some much-needed perspective. And, though their last conversation was odd, she knew Noelle wouldn’t sugarcoat her opinion.

  Chapter 36

  Most mornings Noelle took her coffee out on the deck. She’d worked hard to achieve autonomy in the world—a word she ranked higher than equality—and she chose to enjoy it. She preferred knowing she could take care of herself. She’d fought a tough battle to learn that lesson, and she respected it.

  After 32 years with George they still lived next door to one another, rather than together. They chose not to marry and enjoyed a closeness of proximity, both geographic and emotional. They called on each other often without enduring the banality of picking out furniture or decorating to satisfy both their tastes, which really, was code for hating it equally.

  They could say “good morning” and enjoy their ritual of reading the paper—hers the Herald Tribune, a habit picked up in Europe, his The New York Times—without the hassle of morning breath.

  They read through the local paper once a week, which was all they could handle of small town gossip masquerading as news, discussed their plans for the day and met up for lunch, whenever possible. On weekends however, he was out early. He was what the locals called a “weekend warrior” working a couple days a week as a volunteer ski patrol at the local mountain. His job description primarily consisted of skiing all day, occasionally handing out Band-Aids and ice compresses.

  Noelle, on the other hand, had no intention of retiring. She still booked shoots in Europe, taking half a dozen trips a year. She traveled for location work to see places at just the right time of year: Alaska in mid-April to shoot the Northern Lights, November in Koh Chang to shoot the synchronized mating of the fireflies, December in Puerto Rico to shoot the bioluminescent show of greens and blues in the aquamarine waters. If she’d been born a generation before, she’d have been an adventuress, relegated to spinsterhood. In the here and now, she was happy, and more than happy, she was content.

  So she sat, contented, sipping her morning coffee at a leisurely hour, as was her Sunday habit, George, already up at the mountain, patrolling. She skimmed through a recent fashion magazine and looked up when she saw Jenna walking up her driveway.

  “Up here!” Noelle called, leaning over the railing to wave at Jenna, who was ringing the doorbell. “Come on up.” By the time Jenna made it up the stairs, Noelle already had a fresh mug of coffee sitting in the place across from her at the little table. There was still snow on the ground, but the dry air and sunshine made it feel warmer than just above freezing. The gas heater in the corner helped too.

  “Thanks,” Jenna said, sitting down, not taking her coat off. Her core temperature still belonged to the warmth of Southern California.

  “Sorry to barge in on you like this. I should have called first.”

  “Not at all. Biscuit?” Noelle held up an American biscuit halved, yellow butter melting down the sides. Jenna shook her head.

  Noelle shrugged and took a bite.

  “Is it okay that I’m here? I mean, I can come back another time,” Jenna said, backpedaling now that she was here.

  “It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?” Noelle said.

  “Y-yes, it is.”

  “I thought I’d do a little snowshoeing. Care to join?”

  Jenna’s eyes widened. She’d never snowshoed before. “I don’t know how.”

  “If you can walk, you can snowshoe. Come on, I have an extra pair in the garage.”

  Jenna followed Noelle down the spiraling stairs to the garage. The four-car garage was mostly covered in bamboo flooring, except one concrete spot for a car to park. The rest of the room seemed broken down into sections: one for sewing, complete with dress form, shelves of fabric, buckets of buttons, and more scissors and accessories than Jenna would ever know what to do with. Next to the sewing section was a jewelry-making center, with hundreds of pegs full of stranded beads, a table of bead boards, tiny tools, and a miniature kiln. The other two walls were covered in pegboard familiar to many garages, organized with tools, sports equipment by season, and accessories, and finally, a closet just for outdoor clothing.

  Noelle went straight to the closet, pulling out lightweight waterproof clothes for Jenna, a pair of low Gore-tex boots, and a pair of snowshoes and poles. “Try them on in there.” She motioned to a bathroom built into what would have been, in most garages, a utility closet.

  Half an hour later, they were sweating, snowshoeing across a field of gleaming white. Jenna had already stripped down to her t-shirt, and started to take the idea of wicking undergarments more seriously. She never thought it possible to sweat so much in forty-degree weather.

  Noelle set a grueling pace and Jenna, who thought she was in good shape, struggled to keep up in the altitude. Finally, they reached a low peak overlooking a valley below of soft brown mountains blanketed in fresh snow, sparkling in the sunlight.

  “It’s beautiful.” Jenna said, panting.

  “Mmm,” Noelle agreed, the corners of her mouth turning up in a smile. “So, you ready to talk yet?” She looked over at Jenna.

  Jenna fought her instinct to deny it. She leaned forward, transferring the weight onto her poles, looking into the distance, wondering how to begin.

  “Do you have a best friend?” Jenna asked.

  “You mean besides George?”

  “Yeah, a female best friend.”

  “No.”

  “Oh.” Jenna couldn’t hide her disappointment.

  “I did have one, a long time ago.” Noelle said in a quiet voice.

  “What happened?”

  “A boy came between us.” Noelle’s jaw tensed as she said it. “The usual cliché.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It was a long time ago. I haven’t thought about her in years.”

  “Really?” Jenna said, hopeful. “How did you get over it?”

  “You make it sound like a break-up.”

  “Well, yeah. It kinda is, don’t you think?”

  “I suppose you’re right. Different though. You can’t go crying to your boyfriend about your best friend dumping you for another guy.” Noelle said. They stood there, silent together.

  “I’m so lost.” Jenna admitted. Noelle didn’t respond. Jenna plowed on, hoping she wouldn’t cry. “For so long I thought I had it all figured out. I thought my job was to be a good wife, friend, mother, and daughter. I was good at it. I made sure everyone had all the love and support they needed. I gave them everything I had. And now I have nothing to show for it and no one to turn to. It’s not fair.”

  “It’s not about life being fair.” Noelle said, without a hint of cruelty. Whatever Jenna had hoped to hear, that wasn’t it. Noelle saw her stricken face.

  “It’s about what you do with the life you’re given. It’s about you being the best version of you,” she said. Jenna didn’t reply, she felt stung. Noelle tipped her head in a gesture that said “take it or it leave it” and started the trek back to the car. The weather hadn’t changed, but the sweat on Jenna’s body turned cold and she sped up to get her circulation pumping again.

  The bitterness she’d felt quickly evaporated through the exertion of stepping and pulling the bulky snowshoes in and out of the slushy afternoon snow. By the time they reached the car, they were both exhausted and sweating.

  They stripped off their layers, throwing their equipment in the back of Noelle’s hybrid S.U.V. Noelle pulled out two thermoses and handed one to Jenna.

  “Hot toddy?”

  “Yes, please.
”

  They sat on the back bumper, sipping their thermoses, looking out at the lake.

  “How do I know if my marriage is over?” Jenna asked.

  Chapter 37

  Alex Anders sat alone, in another anonymous lobby of a five star hotel somewhere in America. The marble floor was cold. A chandelier hung in contrived grandeur. He faced the front desk, sitting on the only couch not looking out through the wall of windows. He wasn’t there for the view.

  He tapped the keys of his laptop furiously, face obscured between a baseball cap and the top of the screen. He wrote a daily travel blog for his social networking fans full of all the crap they wanted to hear; regaling them with anecdotes about the terrible food on the road, the more interesting banter between he and his band mates, their mustache growing competitions and bizarre superstitions, leaving out the unpalatable things like the bet between Joe and Pete to see who could sleep with the most skanks per zip code.

  Alex did as he was told. He went through the motions, but to what end? He didn’t know anymore. That was the worst part. He created for the sake of creating, because he had no choice. Not because some rich puppeteer got off on it, but because making music was how he knew he was alive. Well then why not just make music in your garage and call it a day? His father’s voice sounded in his head.

  What else could I do? Could I be happy without music? He knew the answer to that. No. He didn’t want to face what that meant, though. Could he choose between music and his family?

  “Is that him?” whispered a teenage girl from a nearby couch.

  “Ask him!” said the girl sitting next to her. They giggled, unaware that Alex could hear everything they said.

  It was just like being on stage. As soon as he was on stage people acted as though he was in a bubble, impervious to sound. Like he was a hologram, visible yet somehow oblivious to their whispering or throwing things or taking flash photos right up in his face, making him feel like a caged animal at the zoo.

  The first girl chickened out of talking to him, and though she kept stealing long glances, he knew it was the second one that approached him, even before he looked up from his laptop.

  She looked like one of Felicity’s classmates, dark brown hair with unnaturally yellow highlights, styled to look much older, wearing shorts too short to suggest anything she should mean to, and a pair of tall shearling boots made popular by surfers. The look was more Lolita than fashionable, he thought.

  Unlike her shy friend who squirmed on the opposite couch covering her mouth in delighted horror, Lolita strut right up to him, forcing him to look up from his screen. She tilted her head up in a “what’s up” gesture, without speaking. Alex raised his eyebrows, amused by her audacity.

  “You’re Alex Anders.” It was a statement, not a question, and he kept his face neutral. She took his silence as confirmation and plopped down next to him, not-so-subtly glancing at his open screen. He snapped it shut. She shrugged, inching toward him.

  “Could you please respect my space?” he said, moving as far over on the couch as the loveseat would allow. He was aware of the hotel clerk watching them, probably with a camera phone at the ready. He set the closed laptop between them as a buffer.

  She turned to face him. “I don’t even use Myspace,” she said, pulling a rolled up magazine from her impossibly small back pocket. “Can you sign this for me?”

  “Sure,” he said, keeping his eyes up.

  This girl made him grateful they were in broad daylight in a populated space. He took the magazine from her, flattening it on the table. He recognized the photo on the opposite page as being one of the shots taken for the Rolling Stone article, which he assumed is what he must be holding.

  “Do you have a pen?” he asked.

  “Sure do,” she said, standing inches away from him, her crotch at eye level. He looked down at the magazine. She set the pen in front of him, brushing his hand as she pulled hers away. He scribbled quickly, not asking to whom he should make it out. He shoved it out towards her, mumbling, “Here,” under his breath.

  She took it, but stayed where she was until he chanced a glance up at her.

  “So … is it true?” she asked.

  “Is what true?”

  “Are you screwing your wife’s best friend?”

  He didn’t know if he felt more uncomfortable because of her language or the accusation. He narrowed his eyes, mentally giving her a lesson in where her behavior was leading and encouraging her to find some self-esteem. “Do you believe everything you hear?”

  “That’s not an answer,” she said, shrugging.

  “No,” he said, his tone harsh.

  “Geez, okay. Don’t get all defensive. You could do better anyway.” She said, turning around to leave slowly enough to give him the reverse view while he picked his jaw up off the floor. He made a promise not to let Felicity ever hang out with a girl like that.

  The encounter shook him up so much that it wasn’t until he got home from that night’s concert that he realized he hadn’t heard about the Rolling Stone article coming out. He checked online. No emails. It wasn’t on their website. He didn’t want to talk to Simon if he didn’t have to so he called his publicist, Mindy.

  “Hey Min, sorry to bother you.” He never knew what time zone he was calling from so erred on the side of caution that he’d just woken someone.

  “Not at all. What’s up?” a perky voice answered.

  “Just wondering if I could get a copy of that Rolling Stone interview.”

  “It’s not out yet. It comes out next week. I can ask though.”

  “No, that can’t be right. I signed a fan’s copy today,” he said.

  “I just spoke to Kelly and we’re supposed to get a proof tomorrow. It’s not out. Maybe it was an old edition?” She asked, not at all perturbed.

  “Maybe.” A knot wound itself up in his gut. “Thanks, Min. Talk to you later.”

  He hung up, the knot tightening. He couldn’t articulate why, but he had a sinking feeling he was right about Rose McKenna.

  Chapter 38

  “Are you going to the game tonight?” Trey asked Felicity as they walked down the long hallway, lined with lockers on both sides. She spun the dial on hers, clanking it open and draping her backpack over the bottom hook.

  “Yeah, I thought we were going together?” She said.

  “Just checking.” He grinned.

  “How’d you do on the Chem quiz?” She asked.

  “Meh,” he said, leaning back against the closed locker bank. He smiled. “Let me guess, you’re pissed because you got an A minus.”

  “No! Okay, yeah, but it’s only because that last question was total BS!” She hated when he made fun of her perfectionism. It was pointless to stay mad at him when he was so cute and playful, though. “Meet you here after last period?”

  He nodded, pushing his lean frame off the metal lockers. His broad shoulders acted like a hanger for his worn t-shirt, his scruffy caramel colored hair brushed a pale strip on his tanned neck where, Felicity noticed, he’d recently had a haircut.

  A driver’s ed class and a history test later, they sat, cross-legged on Trey’s living room floor. Felicity loved how homely his house was—unlike her own. With all her mom’s design obsessions, everything was always shiny and new, unsullied by the normal messes incurred by living in a home. Trey lived in a small two-bedroom house in urban-suburban Silverlake.

  His mom, a nurse who worked nights, got the house in the divorce long before it became a trendy neighborhood, and she’d furnished it piecemeal over the years. Nothing matched but it was comfortable and Felicity felt at home there.

  They began their pre-game ritual of ordering a pizza and watching B-grade horror flicks on mute. The tradition started in junior high when Trey invited Felicity to watch a zombie movie and, when she caught her first glimpse of the gauze-wrapped-fake-blood-soaked zombie, she screamed and ran out of the house, terrified by nightmares for months. She didn’t speak to him for two weeks.r />
  The next time they hung out he challenged her to be scared while watching a horror film on mute. She hated the idea but didn’t want him to think she was chicken so she took the bait. When they got to the part where the actress’ head got chopped off and ketchup launched itself from her decapitated body, Felicity got the giggles so bad that milk shot out her nose and Trey doubled over laughing at her laughing at the movie. And just like that, no more nightmares.

  If Trey hadn’t suggested watching on mute, she would never have seen another horror flick. That’s what she loved about Trey—he wasn’t like everyone else. She grinned up at him and he gave her a suspicious look in return as he handed her a slice of artichoke/pineapple/Canadian bacon pizza (her favorite) and popped in the film du jour.

  “I don’t know how you eat this stuff,” he said, shoving half a slice down his throat. She smiled. He always complained about it, yet ordered it every time without asking.

  “You know you love it,” she teased, pulling out a slice with cheese stretching between the box and her plate.

  “Mmmm!” he exaggerated a look of ecstasy like an actor in a food commercial. She mock laughed back.

  “Have you made any plans for prom yet?” he asked, his voice much quieter than before.

  “No, I hadn’t thought about it yet.”

  “Oh.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, I thought if you wanted to go, maybe we could go together?” he said, the words strung together as one. His aquamarine eyes shone in his tan face. She cocked her head like a puppy, confused.

  “Yeah, sure. Let’s go,” she said, amused by his awkwardness. It occurred to her she’d never noticed how attractive he was, objectively speaking, of course.

  “Cool.”

  “Cool,” she mimicked, poking fun at his sudden seriousness.

  Later that night, under the fluorescent lights of the high school gymnasium, they sat together on the bleachers, legs nearly touching, paying little attention to the basketball jumping across the court in a flurry of limbs vying for possession. They didn’t say much. After the final buzzer, their side of the gym cheered the win and people swarmed all around, making plans, giving high-fives, cracking jokes. Trey and Felicity stood up, arms at their sides, close enough to but not quite touching.