The Broken Hearts' Society of Suite 17C

by LeighAnn Kopans

  There was no guessing anymore, not a single worry left as Lauren’s fingers tangled in her hair, then started to tug at Arielle’s shirt. Arielle thanked God and Jesus and the Buddha and any other gods that anyone had ever believed in that she’d checked that her black shelf bra was reasonably cute and matched her panties before she’d gotten dressed.

  Lauren pulled Arielle back up for another kiss, tugging her back to the bed by her belt loops as she went. Lauren sat back on it easily, but when she tried to bring Arielle along with her, her knees met the solid wooden frame with a thud and a flash of pain. She cried out, but realizing how much the sound of pain reminded her of the sound of pleasure made her want Lauren that much more.

  “Oh, Jesus!” Lauren sat up, pressing one arm against her chest and reaching for Arielle with the other.

  Arielle grimaced at the lingering pain, but then whispered, “I’m fine.” Gingerly, she climbed up on the bed, kneeling at the end of it, tightening her core and feeling strong and beautiful for the first time in a very long time as Lauren’s eyes raked over her. “Are you? I mean, are you sure this is okay?”

  “Not touching you is not okay,” Lauren murmured, running her fingers along Arielle’s jaw again. She leaned in, and lowered her voice to a whisper. “Not kissing you is worse.”

  Lauren’s sheets were so soft, and smelled exactly like her—coconut and slightly floral, absolutely feminine and delicious. Arielle breathed them in, letting her head tip back as Lauren kissed her there again, savored the feel of her teeth grazing just above her collarbone. She growled lightly, gripping at the belt loops of Lauren’s jeans. The thrust of Lauren’s hips into Arielle’s thigh spoke to just how much she meant what she’d said about wanting Arielle, tonight. The rounded tips of Lauren’s nails scraped gently at the small of Arielle’s back, and then lower, lower, until they were under Arielle’s waistband.

  Arielle couldn’t take it anymore. She pulled back, and in an instant, Lauren was looking into her eyes. “Are you okay? Is this okay? I don’t know what’s…too far.”

  “That’s kind of what I’m asking you,” Arielle laughed, burying her head into Lauren’s neck, then pulling it up again when the thought of sucking Lauren’s nipple again crowded out all coherent thoughts. Arielle moved her hands slowly down Lauren’s smooth stomach, feeling goosebumps pop up as she did. Lauren shivered when Arielle’s fingers hooked into the top of her jeans, her thumb pads playing at the button. “Can I?”

  Lauren pulled in a shuddering breath and nodded. Arielle smiled, pressing a kiss to Lauren’s breastbone, almost getting lost in the firm warmth under her lips and the soft gasps that made Lauren’s chest rise and fall so quickly. Arielle fluttered her lips in a straight line down to her navel. She pulled Lauren’s zipper down and started at the sight of her white cotton panties, a stark contrast to the gorgeously grown-up bra she’d had on. And…what was that little picture there on the front of them?

  The second it hit her, she grinned up at Lauren. “Wonder Woman? Seriously?”

  “Oh, God,” Lauren half-moaned, half-laughed, as she crossed her arm over her breasts in that maddeningly sexy way again. “I haven’t done laundry in weeks, and I didn’t think that you’d…I mean, that we’d be…Oh, God,” she repeated, but Arielle just laughed, brushing a light kiss against Lauren’s hip bone and feeling her shiver. “I love it,” she said as she slid up to kiss her on the lips again, this time biting the bottom one lightly as she pulled away. “They’re perfect. Definitely memorable,” she said, grinning into another kiss while sliding one finger, then two, under the band of the cartoon character panties.

  Lauren whimpered, and Arielle’s head spun. This was a big deal, a big decision, she knew that. If she made Lauren come undone in her arms, it would create something between them that neither could deny. Certainly not Lauren, without shattering Arielle’s heart into a thousand pieces for the second time in one semester.

  The realization that this one moment held so much potential for pain or pleasure crashed over Arielle like a wave. She knew she had a choice to make—let it drown her, or ride it as best she could. Her fingers moved farther down, and Lauren’s eyes tipped back while her eyes fluttered closed. Arielle nipped at her throat, then her collarbone, then the inside curve of her breast, until her fingers brushed soft curls, then the hot, wet seam below. Lauren’s hips raised up, and she gasped when Arielle pushed inside her.

  “More,” Lauren rasped out in the moment before Arielle’s tongue tangled with hers again, and she let the cool, blue room, and the soft, warm, delicious girl squirming under her touch crowd out every worry that had plagued her for far too long.

  Rion

  “I think I have a problem,” Rion said, burying her head in her hands at the next Society meeting.

  “Oh, really?” Amy asked. “Because I’d say you have a hot new boyfriend.”

  “Hello, Miss Outspoken,” Arielle said, grinning at Amy. “That’s new. But seriously, Rion. I know you like to be all emo and shit—”

  Rion raised her head halfway so she could glare at Arielle.

  “Sorry, but it’s true. He seems really decent. What’s the problem?”

  “He violates my rules.”

  “How? He works at a shop that sells bongs? Who cares? So do you,” Arielle pointed out, shooting a glance at Amy, who looked concerned. Amy got it. Even though Rion didn’t really even know what “it” was.

  “He also paints things. Illegally.” Rion pulled her knees to her chest and let her forehead rest against her arms. She’d spent a good hour determining that, yes, it was illegal to cover a brick wall with your painting in the middle of the night, even if you didn’t permanently damage anything and the painting was partly a love letter to a girl you’d just met. Rion sighed. Even she was finding it difficult to argue with this. She knew she was grasping

  “Okay. Do you have any indication that he is doing anything from your list from our very first meeting? Pot? Alcohol? Cigarettes?”

  “He smokes one a week,” Rion said. “One cigarette,” she qualified. “But he said he’d stop if it bothered me.”

  “Does it?”

  “No. I kind of want one, too. I think that’s maybe what kills me. He does one or two slightly non-perfect things, works in a head shop, and nobody bothers him. I hang out with a bunch of losers and I’m the one who loses.”

  “You’ve been kind of miserable lately,” Amy offered quietly.

  Rion glared.

  “I mean, not like Rion-miserable,” she rushed to explain. “Like, melancholy. Emo. Whatever. Like you’re mooning over this guy. Why don’t you just go for it? Seal the deal with him?”

  “I’ll tell you why,” Arielle said. “Because even if he’s not doing any shit, he looks like the kind of kid who would, just like she does. And she knows that’s the kind of kid who gets in trouble, eventually.”

  “No, dammit!” Rion yelled, pulling her head up and looking at both of her roommates, endlessly patient like always but looking a little concerned now, “It’s because I think I really like him, but…when I got together with Tate, he wasn’t really into anything heavy. Nothing that could get him into any trouble. And by the time it got worse, I was already in so deep…I let that overshadow everything. I don’t want falling for a guy to make me blind. Not again. Not ever again.”

  “Aww!” Amy said, pressing her palms together and touching her lips with her fingertips. “You really are falling for him! I like him, if that helps.”

  “Because Miss Turbo Christian’s judgment is better than anyone else’s,” Rion snapped.

  “Hey. Uncool,” Arielle said softly, but loud enough for Amy to hear. “She’s just saying it’s our job to look out for you. Same thing you said to me last week,” Ari said. “Your heart gets broken, it’s my fault. And I think he’s great, too.”

  Rion bristled at the feeling of actually wanting Amy and Arielle to approve of Crash, and then at the realization that their approval made him even more irresistible. “So what
are you saying?”

  “I’m going to give you an assignment just like I gave Arielle,” Amy said, pushing for a smile. “Give a little more. I know you two made out and you were, like, in bed naked with him,” she said, pink streaks rising to tinge her cheekbones. “But that’s just your body. How much does he know about you? Like, how much have you really shared with him?”

  That sent Rion’s hackles up. She didn’t deal very well with being judged.

  Arielle noticed, and shot her a nervous glance. “Maybe that’s all she wants from him, Ames,” Arielle said. “Although…he did paint a picture of you in the alley mural he’s never shown anyone else.” Arielle hazarded a half-smile at Rion, and it took everything Rion had not to growl in response.

  “See?” Amy continued. “And that was a big thing, on his part. Just try letting him in a little bit. He gave you something. Maybe you should give him something. See how it feels to trust someone, just a little bit.”

  “I don’t know what you’re smoking, Amy, but most guys are not attracted to girls who got arrested for possession. And who get calls from their moms in jail.”

  “I don’t think that’s what she meant. It’s not all or nothing,” Arielle said softly. “I know you don’t want him to watch you mix your music, but maybe record something for him.”

  Oh. Music, she could do. She might be able to give him the music without giving him the memories and emotions that went along with it. Nobody had to share her memories of learning about rhythms and styles and how they mixed together, how they could elicit so many emotions, so many memories of all those lazy weekends in Dad’s studio.

  “So you’re saying you want me to make him a mix tape.”

  Amy grinned and nodded wildly. “Yes! Oh, that would be so cute.”

  “I don’t do cute,” Rion grumbled. “Absolutely fucking not. No. Never gonna happen.”

  “Okay, why not? I would love to hear you tell me why you can’t sit your pretty blond little ass down at your computer for twenty minutes to make an awesome mix for him.”

  “Because it’s more than that,” Rion said, half-rolling her eyes at Arielle’s comment about her hair. The more she thought about mixing something for Crash, the more stupid it seemed. “The music is…it’s more than that. Nobody even knows about it except…”

  “Except the people you care about. Share it with him. Then you’ll figure it out.”

  “Figure what out?”

  “If he can take it. If he can take you, with all your baggage or whatever you’re so afraid of sharing with him. And if you’re ready to trust him with more than your vag.”

  “Seriously, Arielle,” Amy said, pressing the back of her hand to her freshly-pinkened cheek.

  “Well, you know what I’m saying,” Arielle finished lamely.

  Yeah, she did know what Arielle was talking about. So much so that her chest started feeling tight, twisting and fucking killing her with each breath. She raised her head, a single tear already starting to spill from her lower lid.

  “No, no. No,” Arielle said, hoisting up and collapsing back on the floor right next to Rion. Her chest got even tighter, and when Arielle touched her she involuntarily flinched away. “Sorry,” Arielle said quietly.

  “No, it’s just…I really thought Tate would be there for me. After everything else that had happened…Dad, then Mom…I didn’t think he was my soul mate or anything, but we met in the group home. He’d dealt with shit in his life, too. And I think he knew that, knew that I trusted him, that I needed to be able to trust one person. I expected him to have my back, even though I don’t think I really loved him, and I’m pretty damn sure he didn’t love me, either. So I guess it’s hard to trust a guy again. With anything. I mean, I just started to trust you two. Even though you haven’t really left me a choice.” Rion smiled.

  “Especially because you like him so much.”

  “Especially because I know he’s not lying. He passed the one condition I put down for him. The only excuse I have left is being fucking terrified.”

  Now, here were the tears. She’d promised herself she wouldn’t be a fucking pussy about her feelings, and here they were. Damn it. Damn her, damn everything.

  “Okay, come on. You’re doing it. Right now.” Arielle stood up and reached a hand down to Rion.

  Rion looked up at Arielle like she was on crack, then looked at Amy, who shrugged. “You said it last week. If your heart gets broken, it’s our fault. Everyone and their mom knows you like this guy. Everyone knows he’s clean.”

  She looked up at Arielle again. “Either call him and tell him you want to see him again, or make a gesture. But you have to do something. I’m not going to be responsible for your emo heartache.” Then she winked.

  Goddamn this annoying girly kindhearted teasing. Goddamn her annoying roommates. Most of all, goddamn them being right.

  She took Arielle’s hand and let Ari hoist her up.

  “Do I need to supervise you?”

  Rion rolled her eyes. “No. I can do it.” Now that she was done feeling sorry for herself, Rion had to admit that it was a damn good idea. She could put something together, something that really made her happy, that she loved, and give it to Crash. Just like he’d done with her, except she wouldn’t have to be there for it.

  Amy was grinning, standing next to them now and practically bouncing in her good-girl flats. “How are you going to do it? Email? Send him a playlist?”

  “The files are too big,” Rion grumbled, “And playlists are so platform-specific, and I’d want to mix it into one long track anyway, because you can’t really communicate anything with one song all on its own…whatever. It’s going to have to be a flash drive or CD. I have a shift tonight anyway, I’ll just give it to him then.”

  Putting together a playlist sounded so simple to Rion’s roommates, but to her it was nothing short of a therapy session wrapped in memoir-writing and sprinkled with a thousand tiny tugs and pinpricks at her most fragile emotions. Music had been so woven into Dad’s life, and at moments like these, Rion had wished that he hadn’t made it the same way for her. If he hadn’t sat in their basement letting her sit and think and feel through every album he’d ever loved, he wouldn’t have left anything behind, and there would be nothing left to make her hurt quite this much.

  She’d also probably be in a catatonic state, since she would have felt completely and totally abandoned after Mom went to jail. At least now she had Jim Morrison, Joni Mitchell, Chris Martin, and a thousand other tortured artists to help her feel less like a fucking freak, drowning in a swamp of anger and resentment and fear.

  In the last few weeks, Rion had taken cooler sound engineering classes than she even had thought were possible. She’d thought she’d known everything about equalizing, dynamics, compression—she’d known enough to mash songs together, but it was like every piece of homework sent her down a rabbit hole of mixing way more songs than she actually was required to. In fact, it had been the number one way she had distracted herself from thinking of Crash—both at home and at work.

  She plopped into her desk chair, slamming the door behind her and listening to the vague chatter of her roommates behind the door. Damn them, it was like they knew her better than they possibly could with that suggestion. Even though Rion hadn’t mentioned the alley art thing since the day after it happened, the girls must have seen how much it meant to her, how it let Crash wriggle under her skin in a way that pretty much nothing and no one else had managed to do. Damn him.

  Her mixing program sat open on her desk, from where she’d left it that morning. In her coffee-fueling haze, she’d pulled up two songs that she would never have thought of putting together, one country-pop and another R&B. The genre of a song hardly mattered—if you had real talent, you could find connections between two songs regardless of their exact key, tempo, and lyrics. Slow one down, speed another up, and suddenly you had a cohesive unit that was better than the original. But these two songs, when she meshed them together—it was like
they found the tiniest blood vessel in her nearly-dead, hardened heart, and tugged on it until it pulsed with hot blood, and she couldn’t ignore it. Something in the songs sounded like heartache and joy all at once, something that she had to share with someone or she would burst.

  Now that her roommates had forced her to think about it, there was only one other person she’d ever met who was willing to take the art that was inside him and take a huge risk showing it to someone who he really liked, but may or may not get it. Crash. And if she was going to figure out whether or not she could trust him with all of her, not just the physical that he loved or the snark that seemed to turn him on, she had to pull every blood-thumping feeling out of those songs and send it his way. And then see what he did with it.

  In the lyrics, there were words floating around that scared her, but that, strangely, she hoped wouldn’t scare him, too. “Dreams” and “perfect” and “take me.” It didn’t matter—they took a back seat to how the two songs blended together—so different from one another, but with a little work, blending seamlessly.

  Rion put herself in a trance, ignoring everything but the chords, beats, and melodies, hoping that by focusing on the maybe-but-not-definitely hopefulness she felt about Crash maybe actually being right for her, she could magically make the music sound how she felt.

  How was that, exactly? Scared shitless, but desperately wanting more of the thing that scared her.

  Inside, it felt like her organs were slowly but steadily shaking down to nothing, her stomach growing queasier and her heart pounding a little more with each change she made to the file. When she had made every edit that she wanted, she closed her eyes, forced her hands to steady, and cupped her headphones tight over her ears, so she could drown out everything else but the music she had created.