by J. R. Rogue
I’ll be honest, I produced some random mediocre shit that night, but I wasn’t discouraged. I remembered the first time I picked up a guitar, or the first time I sang in front of a crowd. The beginnings, for most things, were messy and awkward. But they were necessary. And it felt right.
The next day, I googled “art supply shops” and found one to race to once my shift at work was over. I spent two hours inside filling a cart to the top with everything I thought I needed.
That was how I survived without music. I needed art in my life, in some form, to keep going. Over time, I produced pieces I was proud of. They littered my mother’s garage but she never complained. Unlike my father, she supported me in all I did. If I wasn’t such a masochist, I would have stayed up there.
Before I left, I held a little sale out in our driveway. I posted to some random online yard sale sites and told coworkers and school friends, anyone I thought might come to my weird little art show. I couldn’t take it all with me, and I didn’t know what would come of it.
I had created an anonymous Instagram account to remember it all. Time-lapse videos documented the creation of countless pieces. Using the appropriate hashtags had created a flood of likes and follows. I never showed my face. It was all about the art. I knew I could have set up an online shop but the thought of creating one and visiting the post office exhausted me. I didn’t want to create a business out of it.
I knew if I fell into this passion in my father’s house, he would have pushed me in that direction. Art didn’t concern him. Money did. Business did. I hated mixing the two. Maybe making a living creating art would never be in the cards for me because I didn’t know how to play the game. I didn’t know how to squeeze out every penny I could possibly get for the art I created. I just wanted to make enough to pay the bills, so I could focus on the content.
Some nights, like tonight, I found myself scrolling my feed, looking at the pieces that were gone, hanging on strangers’ walls from my tiny little sale. My mother even had a few hanging in her home.
I had only taken one piece with me. It was hanging across the room from me.
I looked up from my phone at the piece. The canvas should have pulled a smile from my lips, but it didn’t. It was my best work, no doubt. It was a simple piece. Vibrant rouge and sunset hues danced on it. A woman was in the center, curled in a halo of warmth. The piece screamed Kat.
It was every positive memory of her I held onto while I was gone. It was me ignoring everything that happened, all that I did. It was her smile and the way she wanted me, inexplicably. It was a foreshadowing to the way she wanted me now, which still made no sense to me.
I had been trying to ignore her since the roof incident, sometimes texting her back when she reached out, sometimes not. I never should have given her my number. I was close to cracking, and she knew it. I was too fucking easy.
The guys had been all over me after seeing her at our show. They were all nosey little bastards and the fact that an older, beautiful, established woman was continually showing interest in me baffled them.
Let’s not forget that they could not forget what had happened the last time she was in my life. A few of them playfully called her Yoko once. They all were rewarded with a punch in the arm. Dicks.
My mind was pulled from the thought and the art on my phone when the device buzzed in my hand. The little drop-down notification at the top of my screen told me it was Kat. Dammit. I clicked over the text message and pulled it up.
Kat: Hey you. Want to go for a walk?
Me: Better not.
I was so short in all my texts, and she was never fazed by it. I could be as surly as I wanted and she just brushed me off. I had slipped up on the roof, let my guard down, and now I was pretty much screwed.
Kat: This new you has got to go. No one likes him.
Me: Apparently you do, because you keep texting me.
Kat: No, I just put up with him. I’m looking for the guy inside, where is he?
Me: I ripped him out and buried him in the backyard.
Kat: Oh hey, there’s a joke! It was a little morbid but that’s a step in the right direction.
Me: Ok this has been fun but I’m about to hop in the shower. I’ll talk to you another day, Kat. Goodnight.
I was being an ass. That much was apparent. I threw my phone on the bed before I could text again. I heard it ding a couple of times with Kat’s text tone. Yes, she had her own. Of course she had her own. I started stripping in my bedroom and reached for the towel hanging on the open door that led into my bathroom. I stared forlornly at the phone chiming on my bed for a moment before walking into the bathroom. I was close to walking over to my bed and just telling Kat to come over. No, no, no. Bad idea.
I spent my entire shower doing exactly what I did every time she texted me. I dissected every little word I sent and tried to figure out if it was the right thing to say, if it was too rude, if I had given her some sort of hope. You said you were hopping in the shower. Did you do that so she would think about you naked? I was going a little insane, I had to admit that. No woman had ever made me this crazy. I needed a release. I needed her. I needed a time machine.
Reese was making me crazy. I knew I should stay away, leave him unforgiven, but I couldn’t. He was pushing me away, but still, I was pressing. I couldn’t get over the way he made me feel. When I looked back on our time together now, I focused on that. Reese brought something out of me that no one ever had. I was a little reckless, I was spontaneous, I was as close to wild as I would ever get. I kept thinking about the beginning, the middle, the way his lips felt on my body. I pushed the end away. If I thought about that, I would surely punch him square in his perfect jaw. Secrets were a disease. I would be the one in control of it all now. I had made him lose control, for a moment, the last time I saw him, but he eventually went back to closed down Reese and pushed me away. Leaving me panting and disheveled on a rooftop as he ran home.
There was no logic to my actions. No reason that I could justify with a long detailed list. I was a grown ass woman and grown ass women didn’t do shit like this. What had gotten into me? How did I end up here?
I looked down at my trembling hand and willed it to move. I unlatched the front gate to Reese’s yard and snuck in. I turned and slowly pulled the gate shut, remembering that it had a tendency to clatter loudly if left to fall on its own. I turned and scanned the front porch, finding no one. It was about eleven p.m., and the downstairs floor of the large Victorian house was as black as the night surrounding me. I pulled my phone out and used the low glow of the home screen to light my way, hoping to avoid rocks or tree limbs.
When I made it to the back of the house, I found Reese’s window immediately. It was lit up, and soft music tumbled from the opening. I remembered him telling me about the large tree next to this side of the house. When he was a kid he would scale it down to the bottom, sneaking off to keg parties and road cruises with friends and any of the many girls in love with him.
I reached for the lowest branch and tested the strength of it. This was dumb. This was the dumbest idea I’d ever had. I looked down at my flip-flops and imagined taking one off and beating myself over the head with it. In my haste and excitement, I didn’t pay much mind to my footwear. I debated walking back home and changing them but thought better of it, knowing my nerves would keep me chained to my couch. A sound from the window pulled me from my thoughts. Reese was singing the Sam Hunt song I had been obsessing over for six months. I flicked my flip-flops off and reached for the branch, hoisting myself up.
The climb up was less than thrilling. I broke two nails and nearly lost my life four times. When I finally reached the roof, I lay face down on the shingles for a good minute, catching my breath and listening to Reese’s euphonious voice. The sound of his window shutting pulled me from my prone position. I scrambled quickly for the sill and saw him walking away to his dresser. He was so fucking beautiful it killed me. I had been in a constant state of ache the past week without h
is presence, ever since he literally ran from me.
He was wearing nothing but a towel and his long hair was wet, stuck to the lines of his back, drawing me in. I decided a light tap on the window would work out better for me than a creepy “Hello” shouted into his room while he was half naked. A hysterical laugh escaped my throat at the thought, alerting Reese to my presence. I was startled at his sudden turn in my direction and rolled backward, toward the edge of the roof. I let out a shrill scream into the black night and reached for anything to stop my descent. I straightened one of my legs in front of me and somehow stopped rolling. I barely heard his harsh whisper behind me over my beating heart.
“Kat, what the hell!” he admonished. “Are you okay?”
“Yes,” I croaked, my heart thumping in my chest. I leaned back again onto the shingles, a tear rolling down my cheek.
“Don’t move. I’m coming out to get you. Do not move,” he said sternly.
Ha! As if I could. After a moment, I heard him climbing out to get me. His hand reached my shoulder, and I jumped a little.
“Give me your hand,” he commanded.
I snaked my hand against the roof up to his large palm. He reached further and locked his long fingers around my forearm. I twisted around and turned belly down to the roof, bending a knee and scaling upward. He continued to back up, guiding me with him, until I was crawling into his room. I fell to my hands and knees and wrapped my hands around the back of my neck, my forehead cemented to his hardwood floor.
He let me stay there until my breathing steadied. Finally, I pushed off the floor with my arms and pushed myself backward so that I was lying on my back. I could see Reese from the peripheries of my vision, arms crossed, smirking. I pulled my hands up to my face and covered my eyes. “What are you thinking?” I asked, a hysterical laugh threatening to snap out of my throat, again. I reached down and clamped my hand over my mouth, trapping it inside.
He chuckled lowly in response and shook his head. He walked over to his desk and after spinning it around to face me, sat in his chair, smirking. “What the hell were you doing on my roof, Kat?”
I moved my hands back over my eyes. “You’re ignoring me,” I accused.
“No, I’m not,” he said, an exasperated tone to his voice, though we both knew he was lying.
“Yes, you are. Ever since the thing on the roof. On my roof.” A silence filled the room. I could hear him breathing in and out slowly. “Am I just one of the many girls that have done this? Thrown themselves at you?”
“It’s been a long time since a girl has thrown herself at me, and I’d hardly say that is what you’re doing. What you are doing is nearly throwing yourself off a roof though. Let’s make that a one-time thing, please.”
I pulled my hands from my eyes and sat up, looking at him, locking into his eyes. “What am I doing, Reese?” I shook my head and stared down at my bare legs and feet, rough from the bark and roof I had scaled. The reality of what had just happened hit me. “You make me crazy. I don’t act like this. This isn’t me.”
“You don’t know who you are, Kat.”
“What’s that mean?” I snapped, “And do you know who you are?”
“I’m getting there.”
His tone was as even as mine was ridiculous. I made a mental note to keep it down so that my dramatics couldn’t be heard in the rest of the house. “What am I doing then?” I asked, more quietly.
He smiled and looked down at his hands, crossed at the wrist in front of him. He was leaning over onto his knees with his elbows, almost predatory, but not in a way that frightened me. Not in a way that pulled the sick feeling in my belly I had been ignoring for over two years. I came here to try to seduce him, again, but I felt flipped. I wasn’t in control, and honestly, I rarely was with him. It didn’t scare me. He never scared me.
He looked back up into my eyes. “You’re getting there, too,” he said.
I suddenly became very aware of what Reese was wearing. Nothing but boxer briefs, black and snug. I swallowed. He noticed.
“So what did you plan on doing when you got up here, Katarina?”
His use of my full name sent a shiver up my spine. “I don’t know,” I stuttered and sputtered. Sexy, nice.
“Have you been drinking? Did you drink before you came over here and climbed a tree and a roof and almost died?”
“No, I accomplished all of that completely sober, thank you,” I shot back.
His deep laugh filled the room, and he stood up from his chair and walked slowly to me, then fell to his knees directly in front of me. “Lie down,” he said.
I fell back immediately, like a prim little puppet. He reached forward and pressed the back of his fingers to the inside of my knees, applying light pressure to make me spread them. I stared at the ceiling and tried to control my breathing.
“Is this what you want, Katarina?”
“Yes,” I exhaled. I felt his breath on my inner thigh. His full lips grazed the soft, sensitive skin there and I arched off the floor involuntarily, causing him to moan lightly.
“You’re killing me, Kat. Why do you keep coming around, putting these thoughts in my head, making it harder and harder to tell you no?”
“Stop. Stop saying no,” I whimpered.
He started moving farther along my body, hovering just above, never letting his weight come down on me the way I desired. He pushed my shirt up to my bra and let his mouth hover over my ribs, over my bellybutton, over the button to my denim shorts. I reached down to touch him only to have his hand push mine away, securing them above my head.
“Keep them there,” he said firmly.
I gripped the waterfall of red hair above my head and closed my eyes tighter as he moved down again, below my mouth, where he spoke.
“I’m going to give you what you want.”
Let me just be honest with you right now, I get crushes all the time. I fucking love women. And I do not have a type. Why limit yourself? Not my style.
There was something different about my crush on Kat. I know, I know, you probably think I always say that in the beginning. But I don’t. If I were in the mood to lie to myself, I would say that it was the fact that she was seven years older than me, she was my sister’s best friend, and she was completely flustered by all of these points. All of those facts added up nicely. It was hot. But it was not why I was so taken with her.
I could not get her out of my mind because I knew more about her than anyone in her life, she just didn’t know that I knew. I want to say that I have a nice little plan up my sleeve of where and when I will come clean to her about our fucked up situation, but that would be a lie. The more I worked it over and over in my mind the more terrified I was of her knowing the truth. So I bit down the little bit of honesty I had on my tongue when I saw her and instead let my charm and humor talk. When I saw her laugh, I convinced myself she was better off, and I would figure it all out the next day, the way to tell her. I was becoming just as skilled at lying to myself as I was at lying to her.
To drown out the sound of my minuscule conscience in my mind, I had spent as much time with Kat as I could manage since that night at the bar. It was easy for me to find the time, less so for her. She had a business to run. I had nothing but band practice and shows competing for her time.
We didn’t go out to eat, we didn’t go to the movies, we didn’t really go out in public, save for one show she came to with my sister and Chace the night before. A show where I had to run to the back and text her from my other identity, then run back to the stage and be another person in her life. That night had nearly caused me to call everything off. But the way she looked at me up on the stage as I sang convinced me not to.
Now I was a man with an obsession. I would wait for her to get off work and then I would go over. We would make-out on the couch, on her roof, in my truck. To be honest, every moment we spent together was about fooling around. I had never been a part of foreplay that lasted this long. She was worth the wait, and there was no on
e that could get my attention now. It was aimed solely at her.
When I looked at her, I saw every little secret she had shared through text messages. I saw every night she was breaking apart over her crumbling marriage. I saw the friendship we had shared, that she was blind to, and I was falling down a rabbit hole I wasn’t sure I could crawl out of. The fact that I was still texting her as her mystery guy just made it all that much worse. I was going to hell. That much I knew.
When Kat opened the door in front of me that I had just been rapping my knuckles on, in nothing but a robe with red hair damp on her shoulders, I decided I didn’t fucking care.
I pushed myself into her apartment, slammed the door shut with my foot, and pulled her to me, snaking my hands into her robe, opening it up so that her skin, covered in nothing but lace, pressed up against me. No, I did not fucking care.
She was going to keep me waiting, and she was going to make me play by her rules and I had never been more fine with the chase. I was in dangerous territory, and I was glad for it.
After a few minutes of raw lips and heavy breathing pressed up against the wall in her entryway, Kat finally pulled her mouth from mine.
“Well, hello you,” she chuckled.
Have you ever watched one of those videos of a caterpillar cocoon turning into a butterfly? That was Kat. To think that I had some small part in it, the thought, it thrilled me.
I didn’t get to say hi back before she grabbed my hand and led me into the living room. She left her robe open as she combed over stacks of folded laundry sitting on the back of her couch. She was so comfortable in my presence now, and we had barely begun.
“Do you have band practice today?” she asked, pulling a skirt from one pile, lowering it down, and then stepping into it with her pale legs, one at a time.
I shook my head and focused on her face. “No.” I smiled. I didn’t want to talk about my stupid band, and I did have practice today but I canceled it. I wanted time with Kat. I wanted to talk about what was happening between us. I wanted to avoid what was unsaid between us. I wanted Kat.
