Background Music

by J. R. Rogue

  I knew I put a bad taste in his mouth, nothing like the one he left in mine, and even if he knew the truth about me, it would never compare.

  I was no scapegoat for his actions. I never let myself believe that. My guilt was my own, and it was never for him.

  One by one, my bandmates packed their instruments and left or packed their vehicles and came back inside to enjoy the last few minutes of fun before last call, which was fast approaching. I slung my guitar case over my shoulder and reached for Kat’s hand after I said goodnight to Alec.

  “Where did you park?” Kat shouted over the crowd.

  “Next door at the church.” That was small towns for you, bars and churches. Hand in hand like she and I.

  I maneuvered myself by Kat’s side, shielding her from Chuck’s presence until we made it outside into the warm Ozark air. I dropped her hand as soon as I felt gravel under my feet and focused on my truck in the distance. Now what was I going to do? The image of her under my hands, moving as my mouth touched her skin flew to my mind. I shook my head and pursed my lips. No self-control at all, that’s me.

  From the corner of my eye, I saw Kat reach up and wrap her arms around herself as if she had caught a chill.

  I looked over at the side of her face and the straight line of her mouth. “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “I saw him in there. I know you were trying to prevent me from seeing him, but I did,” she said, her voice cracking just slightly on the last word.

  If I knew Charles would be at the bar Reese was playing at, I wouldn’t have gone. He didn’t scare me with Reese around. I just didn’t want the drama, really. I would see him from time to time in town from a distance. In gas stations or in the Wal-Mart parking lot. Sometimes my throat would seize and my eyes would sting, but I was never scared. I was sick. That’s the feeling his skin evoked.

  Now, he’s leaving roses at my doorstep. He’s making business next door. He’s sitting ominously on the edge of my life. And the only reason I could find for his return was walking next to me. Reese was back in my life so Charles was trying to insert himself into it all.

  Reese had hurt him; he didn’t know that I knew, but I did. I knew it the day after it happened. Reese nearly put him into the hospital, and Charles never pressed charges. He knew he couldn’t. He knew the reason for the violence, and he was afraid the truth would come out. There was so much more to the story, and due to the passage of time and so many unspoken words, I could barely keep track of who knew the whole truth and what each of us assumed the other knew. It was exhausting, and I wanted it all to be over. I just wanted to feel what I had been feeling lately, to leave all the complications of our past behind. To reach out and kiss Reese without his guilt and hesitation pulling us apart.

  His voice was beautiful background music as I swam in my thoughts. I didn’t know how long he was speaking but finally he broke me free with the touch of his hand on my elbow.

  “Kat, hey, are you okay?” he asked, concern woven in his brow.

  The moonlight reflected off his eyes and I was certain, in that moment, I had never known anyone more beautiful. He was so strange to me then. The part of him that knew the effect he had on women, I don’t know where he shed it, and if it would ever return.

  I turned to him and reached up to touch his hair. It was past his collarbone now. The ends were damp with sweat when my fingers found them.

  “Yeah, I’m okay,” I said. “I just wasn’t expecting to see him.”

  “I didn’t want you to.”

  “Oh, I know,” I confirmed, looking down at my ballet flats. The ends of each gold shoe were pressed against his red Vans. “I know you were trying to keep my attention on you. It was unnecessary though. I saw him as soon as I walked in. I think I felt him, too.”

  “How did that make you feel, seeing him with her?”

  “There’s no jealousy there,” I scoffed.

  “You know that’s not what I’m asking,” he said softly.

  I did know what he was asking. His fears ran in time with mine. It was easy to make up a fairytale in my mind. One where Charles never became involved with another woman again, where he never hurt anyone the way he hurt me. But what could I do? I wasn’t the law, and I never went forward to anyone at the police station after it happened. My husband raped me. I had spoken those words to only one person, and I was rewarded with the one reaction I feared.

  No, I wouldn’t think about that. I choked down the little anger I had held onto over the years and started walking forward to Reese’s truck.

  Reese scurried to catch up with me and accepted my silence as an answer. I heard the door unlock just as I reached for the passenger side handle. After he secured his guitar in the back, he joined me in the cab. He didn’t stick the key in the ignition, he just settled into the silence. From across the parking lot, we could hear people leaving the bar. Every time the door opened, the sound of drunken laughter filled the night.

  My hands sat clasped in my lap, absently I had been running the thumb of one over the top of the other. I noticed it only when Reese reached out and stilled my movement.

  “What can I do?” he asked.

  “Everything I want you to do, everything I need from you, I have to convince you to do.”

  “That’s not true,” he said, his tone telling me even he didn’t believe his words.

  “It is.”

  “What can I do?” he repeated.

  “Take me home and take me without hesitation. Like I’m the only thing you need. Like I’m air and you’ve been gasping all day. Like I’m a song. Like I’ve never been a regret.”

  He didn’t respond with words. He pushed his center console up and reached across the space, gripping my hip in his hand and pulling me across the seat. I pushed off with my feet and climbed up, twisting around, settling my knees against leather, pressing into him.

  His body said everything I wanted it to say when I pressed into him. He reached up and threaded his hands in my hair. I tried to bring my lips to his but he held me back and spoke softly. His words betrayed him, letting me down again.

  “Kat, fuck. I’ll take you home and I’ll make sure you’re safe and I’ll stay. But I can’t be all that you’re wanting me to be.”

  “Okay,” I said, unhappy with his response, but also hearing a little bit more of his resistance falling away.

  I just wanted him to make me feel good again. I bit his jaw playfully and untangled myself from around him, allowing him the ability to turn the truck on so that he could drive me home, but he didn’t right away. He turned his head to the side and held my gaze for a moment so long, I was fearful that it would stretch until morning without me knowing. His blue eyes held me so still, and for a second there, I thought some sort of confession was going to fall from his mouth. And just as quickly, as he had turned my way and held me there, he let go. He stuck his keys into the ignition and started his truck.

  The drive was short, our town was small, and suddenly that was more of a burden than it had been any other day. Reese was going to stay with me and everything I had been begging of him, physically at least, was going to be mine. And I was being a cliché, hoping that sex would make him change his mind about us. That surely after we slept together he would realize he never should have resisted his affections for me. The entire ride home was filled with an agonizing inner monologue bouncing back and forth in my mind like a kid’s wind-up toy.

  I had played my hand with honesty, not an ounce of manipulation, and now I was afraid I would be caught a fraud. I barely registered the parking of his truck, or the moment he opened my door, or the slow ascent up my stairs, or the shaky turn of my hand as I twisted the key in my lock.

  It was when Reese’s fingertips grazed my neck as I put my keys on the counter that I rose from my stupor.

  “Where did you go?” he asked, so quiet, so true with his new voice.

  “I don’t know,” I lied.

  “I want to make sure you know something right now. Right t
his moment, I want there to be one truth.”

  I took in his words as I felt his finger press into the palm of my right hand, and I felt his other hand slowly making its way up my bare arm. I fixed my eyes on the black hair tie he always wore around his wrist now until I couldn’t anymore, as his palm wrapped around the back of my neck. I looked up into his eyes then, and he spoke again right as my lips parted.

  “You are in control, Kat, of everything that happens here tonight.”

  “God, Reese, wait,” I panted.

  “What?” he asked, his mouth close to my ear. One minute he was saying exactly what I needed to hear, the next his lip was grazing the sensitive skin of my earlobe.

  “I need some air!” I blurted. I had been begging for this and now I was stalling.

  Reese laughed a little, I only knew because I saw his shoulders bouncing. It was soundless and I just wanted to put my mouth to his neck, to taste his laugh. If I couldn’t hear it, I wanted to devour it.

  He started to walk back to my door, and I scurried to catch up. “Where are we going?” I screeched, a little hysterical on my own pheromones.

  “To get you some air,” he said, but there was a secret in his voice.

  When we stepped outside, Reese grabbed my hand and started down my stairs at a brisk pace. I kept up and felt a thrill. His demeanor was changed. There was an excitement surrounding him now. I thought maybe that last wall had dropped, finally.

  We walked past a few buildings before I figured out where we were headed, Reese pulled his phone out to illuminate our path, and I was thankful to be trailing behind him like a puppy. My mind was in the clouds and if I was in charge of my own walking I would have stumbled and fallen already. The parking lots behind the stores circling Commercial Street were often dark.

  When we reached the back of the building he was taking me to, I breathed out a dramatic sigh. Reese turned, let my hand drop, and placed both of his palms on my shoulders. I looked up into his eyes.

  “I know you aren’t dressed for this. Do you want to go back to your place? I didn’t think this through.”

  “No,” I said. I would dirty my dress, I didn’t care. I wanted to get up there, to see what changed.

  He let me go first, despite my protest. I was ready to strip naked with him but for some reason the thought of him climbing below me while I was wearing a dress seemed weird. We were taught from a young age that boys should not look up girls’ skirts, right? When I reached the top, all of the air in my lungs escaped.

  There was no color here, not like this. I was so absorbed in the rich hues in front of me that I hadn’t even thought to turn around to help Reese over the top. I sensed him walking past me, but I didn’t turn his way. I was a statue, so still. I pulled my bottom lip into my mouth and bit down hard, to wake myself up.

  Once I had my bearings again, I reached in the dark for Reese. I found him on the other side of the roof, leaning against the brick, staring at me, waiting for me to speak.

  Past the driveway of my sister’s home was an access road. Down it, through the woods, was a creek bed. I had seen this spot many times as a kid when my stepmother would bring my best friend Chace and I along as she worked on the property that she grew up on.

  Chace and I would run in the woods, pretending dinosaurs were chasing us, pretending we were both a young Indiana Jones, just doing kid stuff. The places that shaped your childhood always looked so different through adult eyes, transformed. This small town was wearing on me and I hadn’t even been home that long. There was a desire to flee living in my skin again.

  I looked over to the woman in my passenger seat and smiled. Kat was singing softly to the open window of my truck. Her red hair was whipping in the cool spring air.

  I was never very good at keeping secrets in my life. What was the point of them? I was an open book, and if you couldn’t show someone the whole truth of who you were, then why bother dancing with them?

  With Kat, I was keeping a secret, the most damning of my life. I knew she was the mystery phone number, the one person in my life who probably knew me better than everyone else, and I was keeping that fact from her. I was too sure that she would drop me if she knew the truth.

  What we were doing now was fun, exciting, new to her. I could tell when she looked at me, when I touched her, that the way I made her feel was foreign to her. I wasn’t trying to be cocky, yeah I knew I was a good lay, but that wasn’t it. I made her laugh while I was sending her over the edge.

  Her green eyes would crinkle up and the laugh that would come from her throat was like music. It wasn’t just the evidence in front of me that told me I was writing a chapter into her life that hadn’t been written before, it was the knowledge I possessed from our months of shared text messages leading up to this that confirmed it. I had all the information and she had half. It wasn’t fair, I knew that, but I couldn’t bring myself to let her know the full truth. I was a fucking piece of shit, no new news here.

  I reached across the console between us and grabbed Kat’s hand, startling her. She jumped a little and laughed. I mumbled an apology, and she squeezed my hand.

  “Sorry,” she said, chuckling. “I’m just nervous being this close to Sera’s house. I feel like I’m lying to her, hanging out with you and not telling her. It just makes me nervous, and being this close feels like I am tempting fate.”

  “She isn’t going to care, Kat,” I assured. “I promise. You know her just as well as I do, better even. She’s cool and she is not one bit judgmental.”

  “I know, I know,” she said, half to herself, half to me. “I’m just a spazz.”

  “I like spazzy Kat,” I said, pulling her hand to my mouth, biting her thumb. “She tastes nice.”

  She pulled her hand from the grip of my teeth and rolled her eyes at me. It was something she did constantly, but I knew by now that she enjoyed my immaturity. I focused back on the road in front of me, knowing our destination would soon be illuminated by my headlights.

  A creek ran through the property and it was home to its own gravel bar. It was far enough into the woods that late night use wouldn’t alert anyone living in the house on the property. I visited this spot a lot in high school and over the years since graduation. Hell, I had lost my virginity here in the back of my first pickup. I felt like less of a shitty dude for bringing Kat here, knowing I hadn’t had sex in the back of this truck yet.

  As soon as I parked, Kat hopped out of the truck and walked down to the water, my headlights leaving a lit path for her. I left the truck running and exited the cab after finding a station playing some Garth Brooks. I turned the song up as loud as I could, the music flowing out of the open windows.

  I grabbed some blankets off the seat in the back that I packed and brought them to the cab. The sky looked like someone had thrown glitter up into it and it stuck. The stars were always so magnificent out here in the country, far away from city lights. It was one of my favorite things about the place that raised me. I still had no clue what kind of man it raised me into, and to be quite honest I was afraid of the truth. You’re not a man, you’re a boy.

  After ten minutes or so, Kat came back up to the truck to me. I had left her alone to throw rocks into the water while I searched for a place to stash my phone—the one she didn’t know I had and the one I had forgotten to take out of my pocket. The last thing I needed was for it to start ringing in my pocket while I was kissing her. I mean, honestly, it was what I deserved but I wasn’t going to give karma any more ammunition than she already had saved for me.

  When Kat found me, I was lying in my truck bed, swinging my long legs to the tune of another 90’s country song. I grinned when I felt her walk in between them, when she placed her palms on my thighs. I wrapped them around her and locked her in, then pushed myself up and snaked my arms around her back. I mumbled into her hair and felt her warm at the dirty joke I had planted there. Anything for that smile, that laugh, those sighs.

  I pulled away just enough to see her, so I could
find my bullseye, those lips of hers. She stopped me just as I was leaning forward to kiss her. She pushed on my chest and leaned back a little, unable to get far with my legs around her.

  “How many girls have you brought out here?” she accused.

  There was still a playful tone to her voice so I didn’t stiffen at her question. “None as pretty as you,” I answered, trying to kiss her again, failing. It was a line but it was the truth. It wasn’t the truth she needed from me, but maybe I would get there.

  “You’re like a little boy with a toy,” I teased, pulling away from the grip his legs had around me. He smiled in return and let me step away from him. My legs felt like Jell-o. His face was too beautiful. I swallowed, willing myself to be brave, then continued, walking away as I spoke, “You wouldn’t know what to do with a woman in love with you.”

  “Are you in love with me, dear sweet Kat?” he joked, hopping down, making his way around the bed of his truck.

  “Hardly,” I scoffed, walking backward, staying just out of reach. “I am speaking metaphorically. You like to play with things, to press and pull, to see how they tick. I am not a clock to dismantle.”

  “Does time speed up or slow down when I touch you? Answer me that, lovely,” he said with a smirk. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down.

  He was ever the joker, but his body betrayed him sometimes. Sometimes I could find myself with the upper hand. I had it now. “You and your nicknames.” I avoided the question, but it did both. He’d put his hot mouth on me and everything would still. I would come undone and fall apart and then I wasn’t even sure what day it was. It did both, but I wouldn’t tell him that. I couldn’t

  “You love my nicknames, doll,” he teased.

  “I’d love them more if you would settle on one. Doll, babe, toots, boo, Red. It sounds like the go-to for a guy who can barely remember the name of the girl he is with. And he goes with little nicknames, so he’ll never get tripped up that way.”