Red Velvet Crush

by Christina Meredith

  My fingers hadn’t tightened up yet, so it wasn’t hard to slip right back in and get lost in my own world. I was singing to myself when I realized that Ty was behind me, a towel wrapped around his waist, humming along.

  “You were so far away,” he said quietly.

  He sat down next to me and reached for my notebook, drawing five wobbly horizontal lines across the page, followed by a lot of notes.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  He didn’t look up.

  “Arranging,” he said.

  He grabbed his sticks and pounded out a rhythm on the corner of the mattress. It sounded good. I didn’t get how he did it; but I liked it anyway.

  “What comes next?” he asked, urging me on.

  I played, and he scribbled down notes, adding structure underneath my melody and smoothing it all out into a song.

  We backed up over a tricky part, and he sat down next to me.

  “Someday,” he said, “somebody else should hear this.”

  “You sure?” I asked because that was what I wanted. Someone who got me, who made me feel connected and cared for, but knew when I needed a nudge, even if that scared the crap out of me.

  “Absolutely,” he said, but his smile sold me.

  We have been working together every night since, superlate after a show or first thing in the morning, wrapped up in the sheets of some unknown hotel, setting my words to music.

  Ty finds an all-night diner or nonstop convenience store and stocks up on blue slurpees and chocolate cake, and then, covered in cake crumbs, we play into the wee hours, stopping occasionally to make out like blue-tongued zombies until the sun comes up.

  I strum one more time tonight and stop. I’ve gotten as far as I can go. I’m out of words.

  “How does it end?” Ty asks, playing a low, rambling bass line that I can feel through the seats.

  I look at him and shrug.

  We are together, surrounded by suds and hum. I am warm and safe, and it smells like soap. I don’t ever want this one to end.

  “Well, then,” Ty says, continuing to play, “let’s just tumble.”

  “Would you look at that?” Jay drops his duffel in front of the van, claps his hands above his head, and then vaults over the waist-high chain-link fence in front of the motel pool. It is tiny and covered in cracked blue tile, but definitely swimmable.

  The motel surrounds the pool on three sides, the parking lot on the other. Two wood-shingled floors with an Astroturf-covered balcony run the length of the motel’s second floor, cutting sharp corners to cap the ends of the pool with staircases.

  “Our first pool.” Billie smiles as Jay pulls the gate open for her from the inside. She heaves her backpack up against the fence, sits right down on the cement, and pulls off a boot.

  “Don’t anybody drown,” Winston says, heading off toward the office.

  I follow along behind him. Winston always drags me with him for administrative tasks such as checking in, ordering food, and paying for broken and/or missing items. Jay is officially hyperactive, Ty is too easily distracted, and Billie is, well, Billie, so Winston appointed me. Ginger Baker is probably more responsible than all of us put together, but it is hard to be certain since he never actually speaks.

  “Winston Carter?” The little round man behind the desk reads Winston’s name aloud and upside down, breaking each syllable into pieces as Winston fills in his info and the van’s plate number on the required form. The man is kind of red and meat colored, like a ham.

  Winston stops writing and nods.

  Hambone breathes heavily.

  “Well, Mr. Carter . . . that’ll be two hundred thirty-nine dollars and ninety-six cents, not including incidentals.” He rocks back on his heels as if he thinks we can’t cover it.

  I make a mental note to make sure that Billie steals nothing bigger than a bar of soap. Country ham looks like a stickler.

  Winston whips a wad of Randy’s cash out of his front pocket, and the guy’s eyes bulge. Winston flips through the bills and hands over five of them.

  “We’re old school,” he says to the clerk with a forced smile as he reaches into his other pocket to grab his chiming phone.

  He checks a text and hands his phone to me.

  It’s from Randy. We are canceled for tonight.

  Winston stuffs his phone back into his jacket and starts to light a cigarette.

  Hambone shakes his head and points dramatically at the no smoking sign posted on the paneled wall next to Winston’s head.

  Winston slides out the door in a puff of nicotine as the little man scowls. He straightens some papers on his desk, regaining his composure. He hands me our change, which I pocket, and then drops four metal room keys into my open hand.

  Each one has a flat green plastic diamond attached to it that is engraved with the room number. Talk about old school.

  “Office closes at ten,” he says to me in a clipped voice as he glares at the growing cloud of smoke swirling outside his office door.

  He rotates and then gulps for air before he walks away and disappears into a room no bigger than a glorified closet to plop down in front of a tiny TV, our business finished.

  Billie is sitting at the edge of the pool, feet submerged, leaning up against a metal ladder in her undies and a T-shirt when Winston and I get back. Her boots are dumped at the end of a woven plastic chaise lounge, and the bruises on her skinny legs look fresh and blue. She probably bumped into something onstage last night.

  Ginger Baker is stretched out on a lounge chair, arms over his head, apparently asleep, his body as limber as a wooden clothespin.

  “We’re canceled for tonight,” Winston says.

  Ty sneaks up from behind, wraps his arms around my waist, and says, softly over my shoulder, “An entire day off.”

  “An entire day without money,” Winston replies.

  “No problem,” Ty says like it is no big deal. And it isn’t for him. He can always get money from home.

  “At least there’s a pool,” Billie says.

  “Yeah, the last place didn’t even have a bathtub,” Jay remarks.

  “Sorry, Queen Victoria,” Winston says. He doesn’t look up; he is busy tapping another cigarette out of his pack.

  “I like to soak,” Jay says as he spins himself around, trapped inside a tiny, lime green inner tube with a dinosaur head on it. Some kid, somewhere, is driving away in a packed station wagon, missing that thing.

  “Are any of them poolside?” Jay asks.

  I look at the keys in my hand and the numbers on the doors.

  “One,” I say.

  We moved to a four-room system after that first night when Billie slept alone and Winston learned that he does not like to share. I’m willing to bet the money for the extra room doesn’t come out of his cut.

  Jay points to Ginger and yells, “My man!” like this is the Four Seasons in Maui and Ginger is in any way excitable.

  I smile. I like that about Jay. For a sorta rich boy, he can slum it up with the rest of us and somehow be psyched about it.

  “Was it us?” Ty asks Winston.

  Winston shrugs and inhales, “Headliner probably couldn’t sell out the club.”

  “Hell, we could sell out a club.”

  Jay twirls again, dragging a beer can in his wake.

  Winston smiles. “Someday.”

  He picks through the keys in my hand, pulls out the one marked 204, and makes his way to the open wooden stairs heading up to the second floor.

  Winston is not going to swim. I’m not sure I’ve ever even seen his legs.

  “You know what we need?” Ty asks out of the blue.

  He peels off his T-shirt and tosses it at a chair.

  “More time spent in daylight?” I ask.

  Everyone is so white. Except Ginger; he goes way past white into a world of translucent. Only his hair has color.

  Ty loses his shoes and socks in a pile and then backs up to the fence. He runs at the water, knowing we
all are waiting to hear what he is going to say. He lifts into a dive as soon as his toes hit the words NO DIVING painted in red letters on the deck.

  “Fried chicken?” Billie shouts right before his pointed hands split the water open. Her ankles glow white, rippling in his wash.

  Ty comes up shaking his head.

  “No, not chicken.” He pauses, breathing, shoulder deep.

  “New songs,” he says with a triumphant grin.

  My heart skips. This is not a nudge. This is a push right into the deep end. A dunk. And I’m not even holding my breath.

  “Awesome!” Jay says. “I was only thinking of floating beer cozies.”

  Ginger leans up on one elbow and looks at me.

  Ty’s words just sit there. Everyone heard him. Are they waiting for it to sink in?

  “New songs. Really?” Jay asks.

  “Yeah, don’t you think?”

  “To the songs, not the chicken?” Jay clarifies, his brain seemingly scrambled by excitement.

  Ty nods.

  “Shouldn’t Winston be here?” Jay asks.

  “He’s not in the band,” Billie says. She pulls her dripping ankles from the water. “Technically.”

  “If we’re discussing this, I mean,” Jay says.

  He tries to spin in his tube, but it turns into a splash.

  Ty holds on to the edge of the pool, leans his head back, and yells toward the balcony overlooking the pool. “Winston!”

  “Is this a meeting then?” Jay asks, paddling his way toward the deep end.

  “No, no. Not really,” Ty says, glancing up at me.

  I stand silently. A dark cloud blocking out the sun.

  “Feels like one,” Billie says, leaning back, the palms of her hands flat on the cement.

  Ty pulls himself from the water on the far side of the pool. His back muscles flex once, strong, and then he is out.

  “It’s just . . . . up for discussion,” he turns and says.

  I watch him drip.

  “I don’t want to discuss this at all,” I say to him.

  The songs are mine. And I thought they were just between the two of us, at least until I was ready. Looks like I am wrong.

  I step over to the nearest table. It has a crooked umbrella and a white rubber ring around the edge, the acrylic surface covered in cigarette burns and scratch marks. I drop two room keys on it.

  “What’s with TL?” Jay asks as I walk away.

  Ty doesn’t answer.

  The remaining room key digs into my hand as I hit each wooden step, hard, and pray I didn’t manage to walk away with the one poolside key. I didn’t think to check the room number, and there is no way I am going back down there. Not now.

  “Wait,” Billie asks from below. “She’s TL now?”

  “Don’t worry about it, Billie,” Ty says; then he yells up again from the pool. “Winston!”

  The door to room 204 swings open next to me. Winston stands there: no shirt, just jeans, white feet, and a can of beer.

  “Are we on fire?” he asks.

  “No. Ty is just being stupid.”

  “Well, drummers are strange people,” Winston says.

  He grabs his T-shirt from the dresser top just inside the door and pulls it on over his head.

  “Get down here, man!” Jay is yelling this time.

  Winston shrugs at me like “Well, what you gonna do?” and pulls his door shut to brush past me.

  I finally look down at the key in my hand. 208. Billie will be between us.

  I stick the key in the door and wiggle it, glancing down at the pool. Ginger is watching me.

  Jay paddles over to the edge of pool as Winston walks toward it.

  “I need your lighter,” Jay says.

  Winston tosses it to him casually, the way boys do, not even worrying that it might get wet, and sits down under the crooked umbrella. Ty thumps back into the pool, doing a cannonball that drenches Billie and the surrounding cement.

  I step inside my room and stop, leaving the door open a crack, waiting, the conversation from the pool drifting in with the breeze, wiping out the tired smell of carpet freshener and long-haul truckers.

  But there is no more talk about new songs, just the click of the lighter, the splash of the pool, and Billie’s giggles. My songs are forgotten.

  That kind of bothers me, but kind of not. When Ginger finally stretches back out and closes his eyes, I shut the door.

  My last note is settling in over our hotel room that night when Ty walks in. I have the blackout curtains drawn, the lamps glowing, the plastic ice bucket filled with melting ice that I have no use for.

  Ty crawls in behind me and lies flat on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. I set my guitar next to him.

  “Beautiful,” he says. “All your songs, they’re beautiful, you know.”

  My breath catches in my throat, and I turn toward him.

  “I don’t disbelieve that,” I say.

  “But?”

  But I thought he would be more careful. I thought he would know how much my songs mean to me, without my ever having to say it.

  “But I can’t let Billie have everything,” I say.

  “But it’s not just for Billie. It’s for the band.”

  “I will not be demoted to singing harmony,” I say. “Not for these.”

  Ty rolls onto his side, props his head on his hand, and looks at me.

  “What?” I ask. “I should just stand there, ooohing and aaahing to songs I have written?”

  I cross my arms and look down at him. He doesn’t understand. Ty is an only child. He doesn’t know the hate and love and entanglement that come along with a sister like Billie. He doesn’t see the burden and promise of it, the weight of being connected to someone in a way that can never be cut.

  He doesn’t feel the strength that it takes to keep her even at arm’s length when it would be so much easier to give in and give her everything, to light the way for her and lose myself completely, until I am nothing but Billie’s heavy conscience, Billie’s bad habits, Billie’s broken heart.

  He reaches up and pulls me down next to him. Smooths my hair across my forehead and tucks it behind my ear.

  “Trust me?” he asks.

  I roll onto my back and let my arms fall flat.

  When does a crush turn to love? Officially? When you’ve slept together a couple of times? Eaten breakfast, lunch, and dinner together all in the same day? Seen each other pee? How do you let go of the fear of falling and just fall? Not fearing the bottom or the inevitable crash? I am there, dangling.

  I nod. Maybe this is what faith is supposed to feel like.

  Ty breathes out. He smiles down at me as I turn over and slip under him, angled in and protected, tucked into a warm cove of muscles and the spicy smell of Speed Stick.

  14

  Led Zeppelin wakes me up. I open my eyes wide and look out the van window. The sky above us is thin and blue with clouds that crack like desert sand. Where exactly are we?

  The highway rolls by, flat and black. Scrubby little bushes dot its edge. There are hills in the distance, probably covered in scrubby little bushes, too.

  Billie is curled up next to me. Her chin rests on her arm along the back of the bench as she stares out the side window. Her eyes move as we pass mile marker 252.

  Ginger is driving, and Jay is manning the passenger seat up front. Jay has all of his gadgets—his phone, his extra GPS, and his laptop—spread out on the dash in front of him, at the ready for any detour or wrong turn or a possible career in espionage.

  Ty is out cold in the backseat, sitting up with his arms crossed over his chest and his legs stretched out in front of him so far that they almost look as long as Winston’s, who has been demoted to the backseat for once.

  When I pictured us on the road, I thought only about the good stuff. I thought about the jokes, the time spent together, the fun and adventure and new sights and places. I thought it was going to be a never-ending joyride on carpeted seats. />
  I didn’t think about the absolute boredom, the oh my God, if I have to sit next to you and listen to you breathe for even just one more hour, I might have to kill you moments.

  I didn’t think about the in-between places like this, where there are no radio stations at all, unless you love country or have religious fervor. I grew tired of everything every one of us had brought along days ago—especially Winston’s classic rock collection. It took only about four weeks on the road for those songs to wear thin.

  I didn’t think all the new sights and places would be parking lots and gas stations and holding your breath in rest stop bathrooms—or holding it until the next stop altogether. Which is always just another gas station, because boys never have to go. Even after a jumbo soda and a cup of coffee.

  “Do we need to stop?” Ty asked hours ago as we blew by another way station at sixty-five miles per hour.

  “I’m fine,” Winston said. “You?”

  “Fine,” Jay said over his shoulder. “You?”

  Ginger gave the thumbs-up. He was fine.

  Jay checked the GPS, and Ginger took the van to a shaky seventy miles per hour, and I fell asleep with my legs crossed.

  I didn’t think about how Billie would spit a wad of gum out of the window one day, and it would be so hot and windy outside that it would blow back in and land next to me, a sticky bright pink wad stuck to the carpeted seats.

  Staring at it now makes me hungry.

  “Where are the snacks?” I ask, digging for the wrinkled paper bag that usually holds our stash of chips and soda.

  “This is all we have left,” Winston says, tossing two packs of cheese and peanut butter crackers at me.

  “Don’t they set rat traps with these?” I ask.

  They are fluorescent orange with an industrial sealant brown filling.

  “It’s possible,” he says, tearing his pack open with his teeth.

  Like a rat, I think.

  I didn’t think that sometimes it would feel like this is just mile after mile and gig after gig, piling one on top of another, layering up like a soft mountain of ash.

  “I’m not so sure a night off was a good thing,” Winston says, chewing his crackers and watching me rub the second set of carpet wrinkles of the day from the side of my face.