Crush

by Celia Loren

  Brendan opens his mouth to speak, and it's then that Tara and RA Jeff reappear from the ether. In the few minutes they've been gone, it seems that these two have managed to knock back some inordinate number of cocktails—or else they've smoked a great deal more marijuana. Knowing them, even as little as I do—it's probably both. RA Jeff sways side to side as he attempts to doff his fedora to Brendan.

  Tara is less polite.

  “Bitch, Baby's Alright goes on in like three. Where did you scamper off to?” She tilts her gaze up, shrewd eyes roving over Brendan. Before it occurs to me to intervene, a devilish, knowing expression crosses her face. She elbows RA Jeff so hard that he goes spinning into the bar.

  “My bad. We'll leave you two alone,” Tara says, eyelashes fluttering. “Your costume is way better tonight, PS,” she tells Brendan, who looks appropriately confused.

  “Oh, Tara, no. This is actually–”

  “I don't need to know, sugar. Just wear a condom.” This remark so tickles RA Jeff that he fully rights himself, and seems to forget all about any probable spleen damage.

  It's like every pore in my body flushes. It's like I'm having a sixth grade attack of nerves. But I force myself to look back at Brendan, affecting an expression I hope seems self-effacing and cool. He doesn't look at me, but his body shifts just slightly away from our little nest of closeness. Our little corner in space.

  “Baby's Alright can't go on without their lead guitar,” he tells Tara, cool as a cucumber. But is it my imagination? Is he not looking at me now? Oh my God.

  Tara opens her mouth in the way of a confused, drunk person, and we all wait for her to put the pieces together. Driven by the same alien boldness that propelled me to call Chase 'handsome' on the quad earlier, I lean over and snatch the half-drunk cocktail from my roommate's clutch. She doesn't seem to mind that I knock the fruity concoction back like a person dying of thirst.

  “Oh. You're the TWIN!” she says at last, and thankfully, Brendan laughs a little. His eyes flick towards me once more, his right eyebrow cocked in that maddening, familiar way. Just the way it did in French class, or beneath the oak tree, or during any of our fervent discussions about rock n' roll. Except we're not kids anymore. We're supposed to know—and be—better.

  “So I see you reconnected with my better half,” Brendan murmurs, leaning in a little bit as he makes the exit gestures of someone about to leave. His greasy hair falls across his eyes.

  It's a shift imperceptible to anyone but me, but something suddenly feels lost or broken. His voice has turned wry, the intensity has gone out of it. Of course, this had to happen. The Kellys are brothers. They probably talk all the time about whoever they happen to be boinking-against-trees that week. Whatever I was thinking I could get away with now strikes me as impossible folly. I've already made a choice.

  “I hope to see you around, Brendan! We should hang,” I shout this, too, but the younger Kelly, already paces away, just smiles at me like he hasn't heard. Tara and RA Jeff are arguing about something, in less-than-low tones. When I look to them and then back up, Brendan has vanished fully into the haze of the Ruby Room. It's almost as if he was never really here.

  “He's way hotter than his brother,” Tara pronounces, oblivious. RA Jeff seems to snap back to life.

  “Hurry,” he says, shaking off what must have been a dull interaction on his part. “We'll miss the band.”

  Chapter Eight

  A smarter lady could have put the obvious facts together, but still: I manage to be surprised. When the lights dim in the back room. When the throng of beautiful blonde girls begin shrieking, their voices shrill and sincere. An unseen announcer plays hype man, as spotlights criss-cross the tiny stage: “Here for a very special set, boys and girls, ladies and gents of our beloved Whale's Vagina: it's Baby's Alright. You can say you knew them when!” RA Jeff has crouched to allow Tara to sit up on his shoulders, to the chagrin of all the people behind us. I don't much feel like listening to music after that bizarre scene at the bar, but I try to put on a game face anyway. I am, after all, still trying to say yes to life, in the way I never quite did in Savannah.

  And what did I do wrong back there, exactly? Sure, I was excited to see Brendan. I was looking forward to talking to him. But I got to flirt with his brother this morning, after years and years of openly craving to do just that. I haven't seen either of these nuts in years—so where is this guilt-storm coming from? I don't owe either Kelly anything. Not yet, anyway.

  “Tara?” I call up to my roomie, unsure of what I'm about to ask her but certain her response will be soothing. She turns her eyes to me, but just then, the stage is swallowed by a furious power-chord. The spots stutter off, then on, and suddenly—he's here again. Only this time, with a bright red electric guitar in hand.

  “This one goes out to a blast from the past,” Brendan Kelly grumbles, his onstage voice a shade more gravelly than his tone at the bar. It's very, very sexy. Of course he's the lead man. Of course. “Avery Lynne, San Diego's glad to see you again.” He closes his eyes. He already seems shinier, more brilliant under the stage lights—a pearl of sweat hovers at his hairline. His eyes don't hunt for me in the crowds, which I kind of love. He just believes I'm there, watching.

  “Why didn't you fuck this guy again?!” Tara slurs down at me, while Baby's Alright rolls into an aggressive intro. As I'm straining to hear the song Brendan's taken the trouble to dedicate to me, I wave drunky away. She's clearly still confused about which twin is which.

  Brendan returns to the mic, but not before sliding a hand back and up through his glistening locks. His lush mouth falls open, and his eyes sink to the neck of the guitar. His expression is at once violent and tender. His passion is riveting to witness. Like a whinnying horse, he bucks his head and begins to sing, the tendons in his neck rippling with effort.

  “Runaway, runaway—though you told us all that you would stay/ I watch your future float away/ runaway—runaway.” When I lift my eyes from the stage, I see that the sea of women in the audience are singing along en masse to Brendan's words. His own gaze remains fixed on the neck of his guitar. His fingers run up and down the frets like busy insects.

  “He's good,” RA Jeff barks in my ear, nodding his approval. I furrow my brow. It's probably nothing, I tell myself. He dedicated his hit to me. That's all. It's sweet. Don't read into the lyrics, Lynne. Not everything is about you.

  Brendan's hair is all but obscuring his face when he staggers back to the mic for a second verse: “...too afraid to do the brave thing, bright eyes/ too afraid to take the chance. And it hurts to see you wasting time on a ghost of old romance...”

  When I glance up, Tara is mouthing along with the words it seems she couldn't possibly know—but then I remember. They're on the radio here, Baby's Alright. All of SDU could know this song.

  The lights shift onstage, so Brendan suddenly resides in a lonesome spotlight. The song slows down, the words repeat. The bearded rhythm guitarist begins a slow clap, over his head, indicating the crowd should join. But I can't move, for fear of missing something in Brendan's comportment. The spotlight suits him—his oiled blonde hair glints, dozens of droplets of sweat now dance from the ends of his strands. His peacock tattoo ripples and bends in a muscular dance with the instrument. But mostly, I watch his face. His eyes are screwed up with effort and passion, his full lips enunciate each word to the last: “Don't you know? The mirror can't talk back...”

  And I'm not imagining things when, after the final syllable of his hit song, Brendan Kelly lifts those penetrating green eyes. The same eyes I knew so well throughout our mutual childhood. He doesn't even scan the crowd, but rather, he finds me immediately, locking on me like a missile. He bores holes into my eyes, communicating something, and it's like he knows and sees everything—the pain I endured in Savannah. The way I've come back to San Diego. Everything is bare to him, down to this morning's illicit jog. It's then that I understand.

  This song is mine.

  Chapter Nine />
  I remember the last time I hung out one on one with Brendan Kelly, before our friendship completed its entropic disillusion. It was after school, on a hot day towards the beginning of junior year. I was just falling in with a new crowd of people—all girls, all snarky. Two days prior, Gary Pinter had asked me to be his homecoming date. I was taking my first studio art class, and excelling in watercolor.

  Typically, I’d badgered one of my driving friends for a ride home, unless I was staying after school to paint—but on this particular Thursday, I'd waited too long to make my pleas. The sky was dark, filled with low clouds promising a rainstorm. Dad was working a late shift at the college. Just as I was packing up my heavy canvases and paint-box in preparation for a miserable trek back home on the city bus, Brendan Kelly waltzed down the hallway. Steel-toed boots clacking. (This was during his short-lived punk phase.)

  We were already getting awkward with one another, by then. The gossipy rumor mill at Giuliani had plenty to say about the less-anointed Kelly: namely, that he was a burnout, and frequently got it on with a number of burnout girls I made a habit of being afraid of. On this particular day, he had all the accoutrements of an alt kid: acoustic guitar slung over one shoulder, skateboard dangling from his then-chubby wrist.

  “As I live and breathe!” he'd yelled, friendly as ever, on seeing me struggle with my canvases. Brendan kicked his skateboard flat and glided along the ground in my direction. He'd shouldered my paint box with ease, even though he was already laden with crap.

  “Brendan¸ no chance you have your brother's car today, right?” It was well-known that Chase had gotten a beat-up Nissan (dubbed “The LoveMobile”) for the twins' last birthday, while Brendan had opted for a red Fender Strat.

  “I have a key to it, if that's what you mean.” He'd wiggled his eyebrows, I'd laughed. Moments later, we were racing under leaking rain clouds towards The LoveMobile, me struggling to protect my canvases from the imminent downpour.

  Once we'd reached the car and the locks clicked shut behind us, Brendan and I had both started laughing, as if we'd just escaped a certain death. Away from the austere school light and the possibility that someone might catch us (but doing what, exactly? I didn't know), I let myself relax. I let my wet hair loll against the head-rest, I stretched my legs long. I remember the car smelled like Chase—which is to say, of tennis shoes and Axe body wash.

  Brendan and I hadn't spoken. We hadn't needed to, really. I'd let my eyes flutter closed, while my old friend ministered to his then-favorite hobby of joint rolling. I'd felt the car battery thrum to life around us, and heard Brendan begin to fuss with the radio dial. I tilted my head to watch him, his shiny, wet face bent low with concentration. He didn't meet my gaze until securing an oldie, on the KISS FM station: “Wish You Were Here,” by Pink Floyd.

  “Oh, change it! This song is so sad!”

  “It's not sad. It's melancholic. There's a difference.”

  “Always so pretentious, Mr. Kelly.”

  In lieu of response, he'd smiled in the direction of his joint, which now lay fully prepped in his lap. But he didn't light it.

  Suddenly exhausted, I'd let my eyes slide shut again, letting peace surround me as the rain gained momentum outside. Brendan began to tap his fingers against the steering wheel. Curious, I'd opened one eye—just a sliver—expecting to catch him mid air guitar, or doing something else silly. But instead, what I saw surprised me. Brendan Kelly was gazing at me, his eyes soft, his mouth a demure crescent. In a face I knew so well in high-school for its constant lack of seriousness, such serenity was startling to see. He was looking at me in the way I sometimes saw people in art class look at paintings: with a kind of reverent satisfaction. His eyes drifted down my body in the same way, pausing to linger on my chest as it rose and fell, then finally, my hips, as they shifted below the seatbelt. And I'd just let him look at me. I'd felt no fear. The opposite, in fact: when I remember that afternoon, what I most recall is how safe I felt in the car, while a storm raged on outside.

  In fact, I can't remember what it was that made me finally say, “Wanna start the car, doofus? I've got shit to do.” But in any case, the spell was broken. I'd opened my eyes and pulled a face, then he'd pulled a face. We traded some jokes and some small talk. He'd dropped me off at my Dad's and, after waiting to see me inside my house, had pulled off without so much as a wave.

  I've officially abandoned unpacking. Let the chips fall where they may. Instead, unable to sleep, I've rescued the paint box from its corner, and rustled up a small, un-stretched canvas I've permitted to languish in the bottom of a duffel bag. I don't know what I'm painting. I'm mostly just mashing colors together, an attempt at making meaning from emotion. The room is my own, as Tara's spending the night down the hall, with RA Jeff. It's just me, my paints, and the window looking out over the quad. Oh, and the tattered copy of The Enlightened Orgasm, fanned face-down on my roomie's bed.

  Leaving the club, I'd been restless. The rest of Baby's Alright's set had passed in an odd blur, during which I was extra-aware of the people shifting around me. Everyone seemed to have noticed the way Brendan's lyrics had been aimed directly at me, like some kind of arrow. Other girls looked at me in my peasant dress with a look that was one part pity, one part envy. Finally, I'd insisted my trio return to the fusty black Bimmer, claiming a headache. RA Jeff had even seemed grateful to toss me the keys and collapse in the perilous backseat, while Tara slurred directions from the bucket seat.

  The whole drive back, though, I'd fought the impulse to hang a U-turn and speed back to the Ruby Room. In an ideal world, I'd go up to the dressing room door and demand that Brendan explain himself. What did all that “too afraid to do the brave thing” shit even mean? And if “Runaway,” was actually a hit on local radio—well, what could it have to do with me? When did he even write it? Those lyrics described a woman who didn't know what she wanted, a lost little baby. This was an assessment I resented. Brendan Kelly didn't even know me anymore, what right had he? Yet this whole malformed speech seemed at odds with the way he'd looked at me, shot me that gaze that said, “I know everything.”

  “You're awful quiet,” Tara had said, after redirecting us out of a third wrong turn. “Is everything okay?”

  “Dandy,” I'd said, eluding some facts. I've been at school for all of two days, and I already feel like I'm playing Monkey in the Middle with a set of twins. Yup. Everything's perfect.

  Ever the social-cue reader, Tara had clammed up after that, though I thought I could tell from the way she pursed her lips that she had opinions to share about my predicament.

  If it's even a predicament. Fuck.

  I debate calling Zooey, or even my Dad—but it's too late for both. Besides, I should give my best friend some space to cool down after today's little skirmish. Yet I don't quite want to be alone. I drop my brush, and let my eyes swivel towards the book on the bed, its opaque words of wisdom: You recognize love when you've never seen it before. I still don't quite get it, but I'm intrigued.

  Leaning back in my narrow bed with the book propped against my chest, I begin to read. The very title of chapter one (“Your Clitoris is a Singing Bowl”) nearly makes me laugh out loud, but I recall Tara's intensity. She'd basically sworn by this book. It could very possibly have something to teach me, especially given the current...state of affairs.

  “A good partner knows how to press all the right buttons,” I read aloud to myself. My imagination drifts in, arranging a specific image: strong, taut arms, surrounding me. A tan, tapered chest rising and falling, inches from my own. The puckered pads of callused fingertips, drawing a line from my clavicle to the pulsing place just below my belly button. Green eyes.

  I read on.

  “He should know your body, inside and out. He should be able to speak its language.” Full lips, pressed against my ear, rasping words so low I can only discern their intent. Damp, shaggy, blonde hair, tickling my nose and chin like gadflies. I know this body. I've known this body for a long time.


  I let the book collapse onto my chest as I slide a single exploratory finger below the elastic rim of my panties. My eyelids flutter shut as I press against myself. In my mind, he grows assertive. His hands press my arms up and over my head, as he clenches his thighs around me in a straddle. His manhood strains toward me from beneath snug boxer briefs, and I push against his grip to rise and bear witness to his erection. He's taut and thick and I yearn to hold him in my palm, but he won't let me. Not just yet.

  Instead, he begins to kiss my neck. His lips fall lightly at first, like footsteps in snow. He moves from the hollow below my ear to the rounded curve of my shoulder. I'm aware of my softness in his arms, the smoothness of my own skin. I want to be the water he can swim through.

  His hungry eyes swivel to my naked breasts, which quiver as if frightened in the spell of his glance. He moves slowly, his full lips falling on one hardened nipple, then the next. The first time, I feel his stubble scratch my flesh. But the next kiss is a union of two smooth surfaces. The next kiss, he latches onto me, and begins to suck.

  Though I'm tamped below his considerable weight, I still feel the heat building between my thighs. I'm aware of the blood swirling and boiling inside both of our skins—the two separate, craving mammals we consist of. We are animals. Accordingly, I open my mouth wide and release a guttural sound into the thicket of his blonde hair.

  “Avery,” he murmurs into my flesh, mouth now drifting down my naked expanse. He kisses a rib. He kisses the patch of muscle where I believe my diaphragm to be. Each time his mouth finds me, I shudder afresh, like I'm being touched for the first time. On the bed, I begin to buck against myself, finding my finger sticky with want. My forehead is damp with sweat. The urge to moan is strong, but I repress it. I restrict this little drama—enlightened or no—to my imagination.