Becky Wicks - Before He Was A Secret (Starstruck #3)

by Becky Wicks

  I watch her twirl her straw in her glass. ‘So, that night at my place, you told me you’ve never been in love,’ I say after a moment. ‘Were you serious?’

  She looks up in surprise. ‘I think it was more like lust,’ she says, shrugging. ‘We were sixteen, we were young and dumb and grieving.’

  ‘Wait, what? What are we talking about here?’

  She scrunches up her face. ‘I met this guy Dean at this youth council group. Anyway, he moved to Connecticut, we didn’t keep in touch. Things were just crazy for both of us I think. He was my first and my last.’

  Her last? I try not to let my face show how shocked I am. ‘What about Brock?’ I say. ‘Didn’t he want to marry you?’

  ‘Yeah, he did. Maybe that’s why,’ she says. I feel the smile spread across my face.

  ‘So, only one person, huh?’

  She nods. ‘Lame, I know.’

  ‘Well, we’re lame together then,’ I say, cringing inwardly.

  Her eyebrows rise as she sips on her drink. ‘Only Grace?’

  Her name coming from Stephanie’s mouth twists my stomach suddenly. ‘I’m sure there’s more to life than sex,’ I say as a cowboy walks past me towards the restroom and looks at me strangely.

  ‘You’re a guy, you did not just say that,’ Stephanie laughs, putting a hand to her mouth and nudging my knee with hers. I watch her cheeks color.

  ‘Well, I’m a guy who’s always been more obsessed with music than anything else; maybe anyone else, for as long as I can remember.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s supposed to be that way.’

  ‘Maybe not. But that’s how it worked out.’

  ‘It was seven years of your life, Conor...’

  ‘I never planned on you, Stephanie,’ I interrupt. I reach for her fingers across the sticky, beer-stained table and she looks our hands entwined. ‘Your roommates think I’m leading you on.’

  Her cheeks blush crimson. ‘Why haven’t you told anyone you’ve broken up with Grace, except me?’ she says quickly. ‘Her father’s the Pastor, is that right?’

  My lungs fill with dread and the smell of stale booze. I breathe it out slowly, looking into her eyes. ‘Yes. But our fathers are slightly crazy. We didn’t want hers to cancel their family vacation before they left and trust me, news like that would’ve made him. They’ve all gone there expecting an engagement.’

  ‘Tal told me,’ she says and I try to keep the annoyance from my face.

  ‘She’s supposed to tell them we’ve broken up while they’re all in Jamaica,’ I say, ‘right before she leaves for New York. That way we’re both out of the way while they process it and no one at Hearts can get involved.’

  ‘OK.’ She pulls her hand back. ‘This church, Conor. From what I’ve gathered it’s not all that normal.’

  ‘You’re right,’ I say, gripping my glass. It seems so insane when I talk about it. ‘Stephanie, I don’t know what else Tal told you but Grace’s mom disappeared right after we got together. She ran off with some older dude. The community went crazy, this was the Pastor’s wife! Grace broke down. I mean, she lost it. She turned to drink, drugs. We slept together, we broke all the rules. All the church rules, anyway...’

  ‘Wait. How old was she?’

  ‘She’d just turned sixteen,’ I say. ‘She always said she wanted to wait for marriage and I respected that. It’s a Hearts Community thing, sexual abstinence till marriage. They’re deadly serious about it... about everything actually. Our futures were set. I thought we’d get married.’

  She bites on her lip, waiting for me to continue. My nerves are more shot right now than they were up on that stage but I carry on. ‘One night, not so long after her mom left, Grace got drunk... some old moonshine. She was a wreck, she showed up and begged me but she felt worse after we did it. She said God was punishing her already and that He was going to punish her even more. She turned sex into this sin that we should never be committing, but every time I refused to make love to her, when she was either drunk, or high, or just yelling at me, she’d go crazy at me for rejecting her. It was like I couldn’t win. And then she got pregnant.’

  Stephanie’s eyes widen even more as she reaches for my hand again.

  ‘The meds she was on screwed with her contraception,’ I say, watching as she processes my words. ‘We had to tell her father – we had no money for an abortion and she said she couldn’t have done that anyway. After what her mom had put him through, the Pastor lost it. And when my dad found out…’ I trail off, remembering the screaming, the Bible verses preached at full volume in the black of night, the doors slamming. ‘He threatened to kick me out like he did my brother.’

  ‘He kicked your brother out?’

  I suck in a breath as the tears sting my eyes again. ‘He found out Micah was sleeping with his girlfriend and banished him,’ I tell her, ‘from the community and the house. He was eighteen, on target for college. He had no savings, he’d been working at Fret for next to nothing but my father stood by while the entire community applauded his decision to make him leave. I saw how it screwed Micah up. He had nothing…’

  ‘Of course he had nothing! Where did he go?’ Stephanie asks in horror.

  ‘Tallahassee, to start with. He took his girlfriend there, got some job as a mechanic for a friend; then he got into selling weed, then coke, then everything else. He stopped calling me. It was like my father completely disowned him, and then Micah disowned me. I was twelve.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Stephanie says, standing up and wrapping her arms around me suddenly. I struggle to hold it together as my arms move around her. I see tears in her eyes too when she pulls away and sits back down clutching her necklace. ‘You haven’t heard from him since you were twelve?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘This community is nuts, Conor, how the hell is all this real?’

  I almost want to laugh. It’s fucked up. Even more so when I speak it out loud. ‘They push anyone away they think is a disgrace – no second chances. God doesn’t give second chances, so they say.’

  ‘Of course God gives second chances!’

  ‘Not when you’ve had sex outside of marriage. After her mom caused such a drama and Micah disgraced himself, the only way Grace and me knew we’d ever stop shit hitting the fan over us was to tell them we’d get married,’ I continue. ‘We always assumed we would anyway, and so did everyone else. But after everything it was like we were just… broken.’

  Stephanie's shaking her head in disbelief and I can see tears glistening her eyes now. Her reaction makes my own tears well up.

  ‘Grace straightened herself out, you know, but she lost the baby,’ I say. ‘She was riding her horse and she fell off at a jump and… I told her she shouldn’t have been riding but she’d never listen. She had a miscarriage.’ I swig from my glass. My hands are shaking. ‘She was too scared to admit she’d fallen out of love with me after everything. She knew if we didn’t get married anyway her father would make her life a misery. He was all she had left – him and me. And my own father would’ve made it worse. They’re as bad as each other.’

  ‘Why didn’t you just leave?’ she asks. For a crazy second I feel like laughing. ‘Conor, why didn’t you just kick yourself out of that community? It sounds like purgatory to me.’

  ‘It is. I thought about it so many times,’ I say. ‘I thought about going to find Micah but my father made damn sure I had nothing to take with me. He told me if I didn’t do the right thing I would burn in hell with nothing and no one.’

  ‘What about your mom?’

  I shake my head. ‘She goes along with whatever my dad wants. Always has. She refuses to speak about Micah but I know she’s still heartbroken.’

  ‘That’s so sad. Conor, that’s your family!’

  ‘The community instils fear and shame and guilt in all of us,’ I tell her. ‘You can never give your partner a hundred per cent of yourself when you’ve given part away to another – that’s what was preached at us. That’s
what my father would always yell at Micah. Damaged goods, he called him. Every time me and Grace talked about breaking up, we both wound up feeling more terrified and more guilty about everything. So I stayed and we stayed together...’

  ‘And you’ve only just broken up. Conor,’ Stephanie says now, covering my hand. ‘You were both so young! You shouldn’t feel guilty for growing up, or growing apart… neither of you should. What kind of god would want that? What kind of god what want that for you? You fell in love, it didn’t work out, everyone's allowed a second chance.’

  ‘I know…’

  ‘We’re always re-writing our stories. Isn’t that what you said?’ She laces her fingers through mine.

  ‘I know. But unmarried sex is always a sin.’ My eyes drop to her lips as I say it and she flushes visibly. What kind of God would want that? I’ve asked myself a thousand times.

  I haven’t heard from Grace since she left but I’ve heard nothing else but questions about her from my father, every time we work the same shift. How is Grace, how is Grace, how is Grace? It’s all anyone’s been asking me since the second her happiness became some kind of personal responsibility and expecting my own became futile. ‘Look. Stephanie, you deserve to know where you stand… where I stand,’ I say, pulling my thoughts together.

  ‘Where you stand, Conor, is in your own way,’ she replies suddenly. She puts her hands flat on the table. ‘You’re a free man, aren’t you? You’re not a child. With all due respect, your father sounds like a bully. That whole community sounds like… I don’t know, some kind of cult!’

  ‘He’ll cut me off from Fret,’ I say. ‘It’s mine once he’s gone, and I get access to a savings account when I turn twenty-five. He made sure I had another reason to stay.’

  ‘Would you rather have that or your freedom?’ she asks. ‘You can’t please everybody, no matter what you do. That’s what I learned on that stupid island, sitting there thinking about how all my life I’ve been looking out for my brothers… how I’ve done nothing to make myself happy, Conor. Moving here was the first thing I’ve ever done for me. Sure I’m doing my best to help them too, but by doing something that makes me happy for once.’

  ‘You make me happy for once,’ I say without even thinking.

  ‘I used to think doing anything for myself was selfish,’ she continues, blushing more now at my words. ‘Or that people would think badly of me in the end if I failed, but thinking like that is suffocating. It’s not why we’re here. Doing things for yourself sometimes is necessary. You need to remember that.’

  ‘You’re amazing, Jackson,’ I say, leaning forwards, tucking her hair behind her ear as the urge to kiss her riles up again. ‘Seriously. You’re kind of blowing me away right now.’

  ‘Because I can see how amazing you are, too,’ she says into my eyes, touching her ear where my fingers just were and then twisting her necklace. ‘The stuff you do with the store and with your foundation, you’re changing people’s lives all the time, you’re changing mine, right? I never would have played the piano again without you. I never would’ve gotten the publishing deal…’

  Her voice falters for a second, but she scrapes her chair round closer to mine, puts both hands on my knee. ‘I know it’s hard but you have to dance in that stupid rain. You have to put everything that’s happened in the past aside right now and ask yourself, what do you want? And then you have to go after it, no matter what. The universe will deliver.’

  I smile. ‘Law of attraction, right?’

  ‘Right. What do you want, Conor Judge?’

  You, I’m thinking as I look from her hands to her beautiful, blushing face, to her lips. You are all I want right now. But how can I possibly sit here and talk about Grace and the miscarriage and my brother and the Hearts Community and all my bullshit and expect Stephanie to think she isn’t some kind of rebound girl; or instant alternative to the misery I’ve been living for seven years? I’m not a kid anymore, she’s right. Things have to change. But although I’m fighting the urge like it’s a viper strangling my neck, kissing Stephanie here in this moment wouldn’t be right.

  ‘I want to write good music,’ I say, pulling my eyes away and downing the rest of my drink. ‘That’s what I want.’

  Confusion crosses her face for a moment and I clench a fist against my thigh as the liquor burns my throat.

  Asshole.

  Idiot.

  But she’s standing up now, tipping her drink back. ‘Then let’s do it,’ she says, slamming the empty glass back down.

  11.

  Stephanie

  ‘So, you’re writing songs for a living, you have a Friday night slot at the Bluebird, your roommate is seriously hot… is there anything that isn’t working out for you right now, Alabama?’ Indie Pete says over the bar as he pulls another beer.

  ‘You like Tal, huh?’ I say as he puts it onto my tray and he grins at me, raises his hand to his beard.

  ‘She’s awesome,’ he replies, stroking it softly, contemplatively. ‘Put in a good word? I feel like her harp should meet my guitar some time.’

  ‘Add her on Facebook,’ I tell him as he adds another beer to my tray.

  ‘Already done that,’ he sighs. ‘She hasn’t accepted.’

  ‘She’ll come around,’ I say distractedly. I asked Tal this morning if she knew about the baby all along. She said she had some idea but that it wasn’t her place to say. It’s why she was warning me not to get involved, I guess.

  Conor’s story won’t stop playing on my mind. I’m not surprised he needs more time. Not surprised he’s been so weird about his family, or Grace. But for some reason it all makes me burn for him even more. I relate to the pain that I first heard in his songs, and then saw behind his eyes when he first talked about his missing brother. I want to be there for him, and with him and I can’t help it.

  ‘So what’s the latest with you and Conor? Ya'll almost burnt the Bluebird down when you sang up there! So many sparks!’ Pete wriggles his fingers when he says it, like he’s casting some kind of spell. I force myself to smile, trying not to let on that even the sound of his name right now sends a bolt of desire and dread straight through me. I say nothing, just walk away with my tray.

  Last night, once again I was driven away from his house without going inside. I watched Conor climb out and pay the driver, grab both guitars from the trunk. He opened the door on my side. ‘Coming?’ he said. There was something like need in his eyes.

  My feet almost climbed out of the cab of their own accord, but I stopped them. When I asked what he wanted in that bar I was opening a window and he closed it on me. I told him I was tired, took my guitar from his hands and told the cab to take me home. He needs more time and I need to do what I said I’d do – focus on the music and un-fall for Conor.

  I need to write that down.

  I also need to stop picturing his naked torso pressed up against mine, wondering what it might feel like to have him run his hands and fingers over me. I need to stop sleeping hugging my stupid pillow to my chest like some lovesick teenager in a movie and dreaming of his lips tracing their way up the side of my neck to my own. I don’t even have to sleep to dream about that.

  I can dream all night and not even sleep. I need to write that down, too.

  I carry the beers to table eight, serve the harassed looking police officer a coffee on table twelve, idly tell table three I’ll go grab more mustard. The door opens and the sound of heavy cowboy boots behind me makes me turn around. ‘Well hey there, pretty lady, I hear congratulations are in order,’ comes a familiar voice.

  ‘Travis,’ I say, walking over to him. ‘No guitar today?’

  ‘No ma’am,’ he says, tilting his hat and then folding his arms in front of me. He has a leather satchel slung over his shoulder and he’s wearing a tight maroon shirt that shows off his biceps, paired with those familiar tight blue jeans. I notice the buckle is an eagle today. He gets more cowboy every time I see him. ‘Sorry I missed your big night,’ he drawls, sliding
into a booth. I look around for Gretchen, then sit opposite him, shoving my pen behind my ear. ‘I hear you signed with Ace and you’re best buddies with Noah Lockton?’ He leans towards me over the table.

  ‘News travels fast,’ I say. ‘But I doubt Noah would remember me.’

  ‘I very much doubt he’d forget,’ he says, ‘face like yours. What was the advance like?’

  ‘None of your business.’

  In truth the advance wasn’t all that great, not that I’m complaining. I sent most of it to Sandi to pay the backlog of checks we’ve been deferring and to get the outside of the house painted. It’s starting to seem like we can’t afford it, which is true of course, but she says the neighbors are starting to give her looks. The money has taken some of the pressure off for now but we need to sell some songs, start getting royalties.

  Travis grins his Colgate grin when I’m silent. ‘So when are you guys hitting the studio?’

  ‘First session’s this afternoon,’ I say. ‘Why?’

  He leans back. ‘Just wondering. What did you talk to Denzel about?’

  Just as I’m about to reply the door opens again and Conor walks in. My heart skids straight away. I stand up quickly, maybe too fast as he sees me. ‘Hey,’ I say, instantly flustered by the butterflies crashing into each other in my stomach. ‘What are you doing in here?’

  I see a look of what I think is irritation cross his rugged face as he sees who I’m talking to. ‘Did you get the message from Mel?’ he asks, walking to the end of the booth. His stubble looks darker against his face today, he looks tired. He holds a hand out to Travis. ‘No guitar today?’ he asks and Travis looks between us in amusement.

  ‘Do you two always say the same things?’

  ‘Yes,’ Conor says simply, looking at me. For some reason I can’t meet his eyes, though I do notice he’s wearing the hell out of a cream button up shirt with the buttons undone and a faded green t-shirt underneath, blue jeans and his boots. His backpack is over one shoulder.

  ‘I didn’t get the message, my cell’s out back, what’s wrong?’ I say.