String Theory

by Ashlyn Kane

  Ari startled into a laugh. Maybe he didn’t have to explain anything to Jax.

  But he still couldn’t keep him to himself all night. “I really do need to go cram a few more chord progressions into my brain.” Jax tapped on the table as he stood. “But I’ll see you?”

  He didn’t wait for Ari to give an answer.

  Ari knew he should go home. He already had the idea for another song, or at least a good chunk of one. Yet it felt rude to leave so soon after Jax had brought him this drink and when Jax was clearly hoping he’d stick around… even if it was only for his conversation.

  Besides, he’d hardly gotten to hear Jax play.

  He stayed where he was.

  After the break, the live show started up again without Jax, with one bubble-gum pop standard, an alt-rock classic from the ’90s, and “Friends in Low Places.” Eventually Jax returned to the stage and nudged Rosa off to the bass guitar. He flexed his hands a few times, cracked his knuckles, then flashed the audience a smile. “Bear with me on this one. I’ve never gotten this request before, but I like it too much not to give it a shot.”

  He nodded at Naomi, then at Kayla, who rapped out a quick, almost militaristic beat on the snare. Jax matched it with staccato chords, picking out a familiar tune Ari couldn’t quite place. He sat forward anyway, enraptured, and when Naomi played the guitar riff on violin instead, he shivered.

  He did know this song.

  Up until now, he’d only seen Jax perform silly, irreverent things—enjoyable songs, but not particularly challenging ones, lyrically or musically. This, though—“White Rabbit”—was challenging even for Grace Slick to sing live, and Jax was giving it everything he had. It was far from perfect, but when he sang about the men on the chessboard getting up, the hair on Ari’s arms rose. He couldn’t have torn his eyes away for anything.

  The song was short, but for two or three minutes, Ari was enraptured. As the last notes faded away and the crowd cheered, another set of notes filled Ari’s mind and some lyrics danced tantalizingly out of reach.

  Ari had a complex relationship with lyrics. Usually he figured the music could stand on its own, carry the emotion without an artist having to explain it. Additionally, he didn’t think much of his own singing voice, so he had to bring in someone else on tours to sing for him. But sometimes he wanted to fill pages with poetry. It would be another late night tonight.

  At least Noella would be happy. Pop stations were happy enough to pick up his work if it had lyrics, but otherwise he was relegated to XM and AM radio.

  On the stage, Naomi and Jax bantered, and then Naomi belted out a goose-bump-inducing version of “Feeling Good” that had the whole crowd swooning. After the applause died, she reached into the request jar, read the slip, snorted, crumpled it, and tossed it at Jax’s head.

  “This one’s all you,” she said, leaning into the mic.

  “Oh?” Jax uncrumpled the paper and laughed. “But it doesn’t have any piano in it,” he said, mock innocent.

  Naomi snorted again. “As if you’ll be sitting still.”

  “Touché,” Jax said with a flirty grin. He stood and passed the paper to Kayla and pulled the microphone out of the stand.

  The ladies began to play. The crowd cheered as they recognized the song, and Jax all but glowed under the approval. He swished his hips and winked.

  Of course Jax knew all the dance moves to “Single Ladies.” He moved with an ease and grace of long practice. Ari was assailed by a sudden mental image of a gangly young Jax hiding in a bedroom and watching the video on repeat on YouTube for the purpose of mastering the moves. The thought was unbearably charming.

  After the song, Naomi called for a break, claiming Jax needed a cool-down from that, and Jax didn’t argue.

  A moment later, water bottle in hand, Jax slid into the seat opposite Ari and leaned on the table. “Enjoying the show?”

  Ari hummed. “I’m wondering just how many hours of practice went into that routine.”

  Jax laughed his no-holds-barred laugh. “More than you’re guessing, I’m sure. I was obsessed with the song at sixteen.”

  “Of course. Beyoncé is a cultural icon.”

  “Definitely. And my idol. Part of me will always want to be her when I grow up.” His teasing smile made his eyes crinkle, and Ari’s lips twitched with an answering smile.

  “While you may not be able to be her, I’m sure she would be honored by the… tribute your performance paid this evening.”

  “Aw, Ari, is that your way of telling me you like the way I swing my hips?” He licked his lips, and Ari followed the movement with his gaze and then lifted it to catch Jax’s eyes.

  “Perhaps,” he conceded, and Jax’s eyes sparkled with clear delight.

  Ari was definitely in trouble.

  Chapter Five

  NOT LONG after Jax’s break, someone he didn’t recognize filled Ari’s seat, and Ari didn’t come back. He suspected crowded bars weren’t really Ari’s scene, and the fact that he came and stuck around just to talk to Jax—well, that said a lot.

  Jax sighed as he remembered the look of approval and appreciation in Ari’s eyes when Jax explained about the drink. He was reasonably sure that if he played his cards right, he could get more than one date out of Ari. Hopefully more than a few orgasms as well.

  “Stop mooning and help me with these chairs,” Kayla said. They were the last two left in the bar, except for Murph in the back room.

  “I,” Jax said with overacted dignity, “am not mooning.”

  She scoffed. “No? What else do you call staring into space and sighing at regular intervals?”

  “Reflecting.” Jax flipped another chair upside down onto a table.

  “Reflecting? Interesting euphemism for contemplations about the beauty of a man’s ass.”

  Jax fluttered a hand over his heart. “Kayla, you wound me! I would never.” She rolled her eyes. With a rueful shrug, Jax admitted, “I’m much more intrigued by the dexterity of his fingers and the practical applications thereof.”

  That made Kayla pause. “Oh, damn you. Wow, I’m gonna be thinking about—Jax, why have I never slept with a violinist?”

  “You live with Naomi.” Kayla made a contemplative face, but Jax didn’t mention how poorly that could end. “So I honestly have no idea. But I call dibs on this one.” He moved on to a new table.

  Kayla cocked her head. “One, don’t say dibs, that’s gross. Two, everyone is aware. Three, even discounting that Naomi would probably kill me for trying, I’m pretty sure nothing about this”—she waved a hand to encompass her five-feet-six-inches of curves and red hair—“is his type.”

  Considering that Ari appeared to be both gay and not into one-night stands, Jax suspected that was true.

  “My darling, how could anyone say no to you?” He stepped closer and took her into his arms for a quick spin about the floor. Since the tables hadn’t been placed to accommodate dancing beyond gyrating in place, it did not go smoothly.

  Laughing, she pulled herself from his arms. “Idiot. Tell me you’re coming to the party. Naomi and I are putting together a backyard shindig.”

  “What’s the celebration?”

  “It’s a ‘Big Fucking Party Because We Can’ party.” She glowed. “And we want all our favorite people there, which includes you. So you better come over and eat barbecue, mister.”

  Touched that she considered him a favorite person, Jax grinned. “I wouldn’t miss it.”

  “Good.”

  “Besides, I love a barbecue—so many sausage-and-bun jokes just waiting to be made.”

  “You better make those in front of Murph and Hobbes—otherwise it’s all wasted potential.”

  “Done.”

  ARI CAME back the next night, missed the one after, but came on the third.

  Jax stopped telling himself that he wasn’t looking for him whenever he walked into the bar or took the stage.

  Every time Ari came in, he ordered a Sparkling Conversation from Jax
and stayed long enough to get the other kind.

  And did their conversation ever sparkle—it sizzled and popped and left Jax high on adrenaline.

  Someday soon, Jax would kiss that smirking, sassy mouth.

  Between sets and serving drinks, Jax slowly learned all about Ari. The “oops” baby of immigrant doctors from Iran, Ari had an older sister who acted as his manager and a difficult time keeping his supportive and well-meaning parents out of his personal life. Jax hadn’t had much to offer to that—his own mother stayed out of his, not because she wasn’t interested or didn’t care, but because, he thought, it didn’t really occur to her to ask. Instead he talked about Sam and George and Alice, named for his and Sam’s favorite storybook character growing up.

  He learned Ari had attended the New England Conservatory of Music, where he double-majored in strings and composition, and that he still had friends in Boston. Jax wondered briefly what it would have been like if they’d ever run into each other in the city, but Ari would have graduated long before Jax started at MIT.

  “Did you always know you wanted to be a musician?” he asked between sets one night, chasing droplets of condensation down the sides of his water glass.

  Ari raised an eyebrow, and Jax realized they’d had a version of this conversation before. “Did you always know you wanted to be a bartender?”

  Jax did his best to maintain a smile, but the words stung. He wasn’t ashamed of his job; it was the unfinished PhD he was ashamed of. But he couldn’t put it into words. Telling people about his degree opened him up to questions he’d rather not answer. On the other hand, keeping his mouth shut made it impossible for people to actually know him—the whole of him—and sometimes led to him feeling like he’d been reduced to a stereotype. Ari wasn’t doing that—he didn’t seem to care as long as Jax was happy—but Jax still couldn’t make himself fess up.

  But before he could say anything, Ari shook his head and the eyebrow went back down again. “I didn’t always know, no.” He lifted a shoulder, then his drink. “But when I was younger, I sometimes had a difficult time expressing myself. A teacher suggested to my parents that I might find an outlet in music. And I did. It helped me process my emotions and think about what I was feeling.”

  That was a gift, Jax knew—a real, honest, vulnerable answer—not something he should use to build a cheap line. With a gentle tease in his tone, hoping that the thank-you would come across, he said, “And of course, you were a prodigy.”

  Ari inclined his head. “And I was a prodigy,” he agreed.

  Silence fell for a moment, waiting for something to fill it, and for the first time in what felt like years, Jax found it within himself to be brave. “I won a province-wide math competition when I was fifteen.”

  He watched the words land. Ari barely blinked, only tilted his drink and gestured for Jax to go on.

  Somehow the silence seemed to pull even more words from his lips. “My mom’s a professor of applied mathematics at Queen’s,” Jax explained. “I used to want to be just like her.”

  Of course it was the used to Ari found interesting. “But now?”

  What a loaded question. Jax shrugged awkwardly and swallowed half the truth. “Ah, I realized academia’s just not for me.”

  Ari didn’t probe any deeper, but Jax didn’t think he’d totally bought the line either. Shortly after that he had to go back up on stage.

  When the song was over, Ari was gone.

  ARI HAD two songs sketched out now—whatever the elusive Alice piece turned out to be and the one he thought of as Jax’s theme song, with the remixed notes of “Strangers in the Night.” That was two songs more than he’d managed to write on the entirety of his tour, and though he knew they weren’t perfect—not ready, not polished—he did actually need to prove to the label that he had something to show. So he spent the week recording a no-frills version in his simple home studio, just piano and violin with no vocals for “Alice,” because Ari was a lot of things, but a gifted singer was not one of them. Then, with great trepidation, he sent them off to Noella.

  The trouble was, after that, he still had to do things. He had dinner with his parents again, and this time they invited not only Afra and Ben but Theo too, saying that home-cooked meals were important for students away from their families. He went grocery shopping and cleaned his apartment. He found a tai chi class taught by the same instructor he’d had fifteen years ago, when he’d needed a physical outlet so he could focus on things beyond teen angst and his own ever-present erection.

  These days Ari would have preferred sex as a means to focus his mind, but he liked the way tai chi kept him limber. He needed a full range of movement to perform up to his own standards.

  But as Monday edged over into Tuesday and Wednesday and finally Thursday, he had to admit that the one thing he was not doing was being inspired to write anything else.

  On Thursday afternoon Noella called.

  “Ari,” she said without preamble. “I got the tracks you sent.”

  Music executives, Ari thought, should know better than to open without giving artists some inkling of what they thought. “And?”

  “I like it. The first one’s a little technical, but that’s typical for you. Your audience expects that. The one with vocals—are we calling it ‘Alice’ for short? I like the metaphor. I can see the devices you’re using in the song.”

  Ah. “But,” Ari prompted, hearing everything she had not said.

  “But,” Noella said, proving him correct, damn her, “they’re very… cerebral.”

  That was one of the words critics used to describe his music, it was true. And it was cerebral. Ari liked his music to make people think. But making people think didn’t sell records. Making them feel did. “They’re still in early stages,” he hedged.

  “Mm-hmm. Afra tells me you’ve hit some kind of well of inspiration?”

  Damn it. “Something like that,” he agreed.

  “Well, dig deeper,” Noella ordered. “I like where this is going, don’t get me wrong. The bones are there. The flesh is there. Just… it needs some heart. You know? So whatever you’re doing that’s bringing this into your work? Do that, but more.”

  More spending time with Jax and being inspired by whatever was building between them? Ari didn’t have to be told twice.

  He went back to the Rock.

  It turned out to be a wise decision because that evening Naomi cornered him during his visit and insisted he attend her barbecue. “Everyone on staff will be there,” she said with a twitch of her lips. Ari didn’t acknowledge the hint but promised he would see her on the weekend.

  Naomi and Kayla lived just outside the city proper, in a house on Dundas Street that Naomi’s grandparents had left her when they passed away.

  On Sunday Ari arrived at the barbecue with a couple of bottles of wine in hand. At Naomi’s insistence on the more, the merrier, he also brought Afra, who brought Ben and Theo, an enormous stack of homemade flatbread, and a vat of hummus.

  Ari arched an eyebrow at his sister when he saw her intern, and she shrugged in response. “I’ve grown fond of him. Besides, he needs more food in him.”

  Theo cast large, adoring eyes at Afra and didn’t dispute the need to be fed. Ari remembered those undergrad days well, constantly hungry and always happy for free food.

  They walked around the house and into the backyard, where the party was in full swing.

  Ari spotted Naomi standing near the food table and headed in her direction, confident the entourage would follow.

  “Naomi,” he said by way of greeting, handing over the bottles of wine and accepting her hug gracefully.

  “Thanks for coming,” she said with her face pressed to his shoulder. “Good. You brought Afra. How are you?”

  The women greeted each other with hugs and exclamations of how long it had been.

  “Have you met my husband?”

  Ari surreptitiously scanned the crowd, telling himself he was not looking for a particular bl
ond head as Afra made the introductions for Ben and Theo.

  “You’re adorable,” Naomi said after she got a good look at Theo’s wide dark eyes and curly hair. He was in fact adorable, and people tended to greet him with motherly affection. “And I can’t think of any higher recommendation than being coopted into this family.”

  Ari didn’t inhale sharply, but only because he’d spent years controlling and monitoring his every reaction for the stage. Theo had no such training and couldn’t suppress his flinch. At least Naomi had turned away and missed the unhappy look on his face.

  Theo didn’t often talk about being adopted or how he felt about it, but he’d dropped enough hints for Ari to know he had complicated feelings born out of being visibly brown and raised by white parents. Ari had often suspected that Theo was so drawn to him and Afra because they understood what it meant to live in brown skin. Though he also suspected spending so much time with no-nonsense Afra and child-psychologist even-keel Ben would be restorative and calming for any twenty-year-old.

  “Ari!”

  Ari turned to see Jax loping across the lawn, looking like something out of a summer catalog or a Hollywood teen drama. He wore a fuchsia Sun’s Out, Guns Out tank top with a pair of board shorts and flip-flops. His blond hair shone in the sun, and as he stepped into the shade, he slipped his aviators onto the top of his head.

  “Jax,” he said, suddenly acutely aware of Afra, Ben, and Theo behind him. Why had he ever thought it was a good idea to put Afra in the same backyard as Jax?

  “It’s good to see you in the sunlight,” Jax said with a cheeky grin and some elevator eyes. “It suits you.” Afra was no doubt laughing it up.

  “I couldn’t turn Naomi down,” Ari said diplomatically instead of one of the many observations he wished to make about Jax being much more suited to the sun.

  Jax laughed. “Definitely not. Though I’m more worried about Kayla’s wrath. She knows my weaknesses.” Something about the way his lips twitched at the last word threw Ari. What exactly did Kayla know, and more importantly, how did she know it?