Red Velvet Crush

by Christina Meredith

  “Maybe he’s in love with you,” Winston says, grabbing a Coke from the fridge while I dry my hands on the dish towel.

  “Maybe he misses his friends,” Dad says, still staring out the window at the garage.

  Maybe he’s right. Ginger is a senior, like me. I have to remind myself that with Jay off at college and Ty gone, his friends have disappeared, too.

  “I’m not convinced.” Winston coughs, the soda bubbles biting at his lips and bursting into a misty spray as he gets ready to sip. “I’m picturing redheaded babies.”

  I toss the dish towel at him. To Winston, everything is a horny love story.

  He laughs as I pull the kitchen door open and leave him grinning stupidly, catching the dish towel between his fingers without spilling a drop of soda.

  Ginger brought an acoustic bass in the case on his back. He is tuning it as I walk into the garage. He has my guitar set up next to the stool again and a cup of coffee poured from his thermos waiting for him on the nearest amp. The air smells like axle grease and coffee beans.

  This time I am ready. I slide onto the stool and set my guitar on my knee, the moon and stars strap swinging loose. I find my spot, the starting place my fingers call home. Ginger plays, leading me in. There is nothing else to do but close my eyes, feel the pop of each string, and focus. I am slow at first, but I lighten up.

  Ginger is just as good on the bass as Jay, even if he doesn’t jump around as much. Not that anyone could.

  He pushes me, getting technical. Trying out songs that were never on our set lists, seeing where I can go. I do my best, feeling a little lost in my own skin, struggling sometimes to keep up. But he is patient and kind, if demanding.

  Late in the day he sets his bass on the floor. He reaches for my guitar, lengthens the moon and stars strap, and then he plays for me, flat out, just him, and it is so good, so, God . . . orchestral, full of soaring notes and plummeting changes. He takes all kinds of melodies, historical and classic, and he turns and twists them, making them into a rock and roll song, showing me how it’s done. That is our conversation.

  When he leaves, an orange flash in the dark night, he leaves a book behind on Winston’s workbench. I pick it up.

  Music Theory, it says. It looks used but well loved. Two of the pages are marked with Post-Its and extremely sharp hand-drawn arrows. I grin, opening to the first one.

  I am folding laundry on the couch when Ginger shows up with an electric keyboard on Thursday. Then, a couple days later, while I am putting away the groceries, he rolls in with a snare, followed by a high hat.

  I half expect him to ride up the next Saturday morning fitted out as a one-man band, with a bass drum strapped to his back and a harmonica on a harp rack next to his mouth.

  We take back the garage, pushing all of Winston’s stuff to the side. Ginger rigs up a deal where he can play his guitar and the bass drum at the same time while sitting on the stool stolen from the auto parts store.

  Winston watches sometimes, shoulder against the peeling doorframe, a halo of smoke over his head. I think he harbors hopes and dreams of loading up the van and hitting the road again.

  What neither one of them knows is a few Mondays ago, the Monday after Ginger showed up for the first time, actually, I stood in line outside the band room with the misfits and their musical instruments and mixed orthodontia to meet my adviser for the first time.

  It was first thing in the morning, and I was packed in next to a tuba player and some tiny kid with a saxophone so huge it could double as a foghorn.

  I waited for my turn, resting against the cold brick wall, shifting and sliding my bag back up onto my shoulder. I spent my wait considering the cosmic irony that I had just now, after more than three years of high school, discovered that my adviser is also the music teacher. Maybe I should have visited sooner.

  The office door finally swung open, and I slipped past a large girl with a tiny flute, cutting the tuba guy off at the pass. He smiled anyway.

  “I want to change my schedule,” I said to the comb-over sitting behind the desk, holding the necessary pink paperwork out in front of me.

  “Why?” he asked without looking up.

  “I want to sign up for individual study.”

  He stuck his arm out for my form.

  “And what will you be giving up for such an honor”—he paused and read the first line—“Miss Carter?”

  “Study hall.”

  “Concentration?” he asked.

  “Music.”

  He finally looked up at me, his pen poised over the signature line of the form. Now I had his attention.

  While everybody else is getting ready to go to college, I am going to get ready to go somewhere. It might not be college. It might just be the next town big enough to have a good music scene. And I will strum my fingers off to get there if I have to. I promised my dad at the beginning of summer that I would come back. I never said I would stay.

  My long-lost adviser signed my form but never took his eyes off my mouth. “You look like you would have good embouchure.”

  Great, my adviser is a total perv. If there were any other way to get some time in the private music rooms without him, I would have walked out right then and there.

  I snatched the paper away from him and turned to let the tuba player in, hoping that at the very least, he had a leaky spit valve that needed to be fixed.

  Now during third period of each and every school day, I sign in with the perv at his desk and listen to his instructions. Then I lock myself away in a tiny practice room with a fingerprinted black upright and a window the size of a business envelope, strumming and learning, skipping the assignment I have been given and making my way through Ginger’s annotated book, one step at a time.

  The solitude of the carpeted walls and the measured tick of the metronome loosen me up. It is a place that reminds me of nothing and nobody. The sun doesn’t shine in, haunting me with spirits and specters and the whispers of soft kisses.

  I unwind, testing my strength. There are no crowds, no encores, and no cover charges. Nobody twirls off the edge of the stage to barf or break a bone. It is completely mine.

  And every day, without fail, Ginger rolls through my yard. I imagine him flying, long legs tripping toward my house, his head filled with strings and horns and odd three-quarter tempos.

  He is technical and tight. He eats the cheeseburgers that Winston delivers to us in concentric circles, chomping smaller and smaller, spiraling until all that is left is the bite in the middle, the one with the pickle hidden under the bun.

  He gets lost inside himself when the music goes dark and moody, his eyes shifting to the floor, his shoulders leaning in toward each other, sinking his button-down shirts deep between his collarbones.

  I always leave the book for him on the workbench as soon as I get home, open to the page that I got to or the step I got stuck on, and he will start with something from that page, a tricky tempo or time signature when I walk in, my hair still wet from the shower or my mouth dusted with cookie crumbs straight after school.

  He tilts his head, listening to what I have been working on. Then he leads me in, backing me up, filling in the rough spots and dropped notes so that we can get past the theory and move on to my music.

  We have little disagreements, moments when we try to outplay each other, but I find out fast that it is hard to argue with a boy who doesn’t talk. His silence and his skill win out every time.

  He always marks a new page or a new passage in his music theory book before he lights out the door.

  We play for days and hours and evenings, sometimes until it is dark and in the morning sometimes, too, but mostly after school, while the ginkgo leaves turn and drop, leaving a yellow trail for Ginger’s bike tires to follow as they tick, tick, tick down the wet drive on his way home.

  We play while the sun sets with an orange sizzle behind the house, over and over and over, while the cold starts creeping in through the cracks of the garage in a major way and
the air around our fingertips grows bitter and sharp.

  We keep it loose and raw and a little unrefined until everything doesn’t hurt as much. We play until I can hear the words and sing the songs and see myself in them again.

  20

  A quiet, pattery rain falls outside. The sky is soft, and the clouds are low and smoky gray. Winston is still snoring down the hall, and I am smearing raspberry jam onto a piece of toast.

  Dad shoulders in through the front door, drops a pile of mail onto the corner of the table, and stands there, studying a letter. He holds it out to me, the weight of it sagging the far corner.

  The return address says “Ty.”

  Nothing else. No city, no street—just a long tail on the y that pulls me in and leaves me hanging.

  I hate it. Love it. I want to tear it apart and drink it in and ignore it all at the same time.

  I sigh. What’s next, a dancing telegram from Billie? A giant gorilla that would dance around on the doorstep and accidentally mash my toes?

  I pin the unopened letter to the tabletop with my fingertips and look up at Dad.

  “What do you think?” I ask, suddenly feeling that my house may be built of straw.

  He turns and reaches for a coffee cup.

  “I think he’s a boy,” he says, slowly filling his cup from the pot before he turns back to me, “and boys fuck up.”

  He crosses the room with steam swirling between his hands.

  “And Billie?”

  “Well . . .” He drags out the chair across from me and sits down. “Billie was always going to be Billie.”

  The clock on the wall over his head ticks quietly. It has a picture of a cup of coffee on it at twelve o’clock. I’ve heard the phone ringing in the kitchen every night since we got back, well after the house is still and silent, picked up before I can accept the sound as real and untangle myself from my sheets.

  “Anytime you want,” I’ve heard him say in the quiet darkness. “Always.”

  He probably sends her money, listens to her stories, rubbing his tired hands together in the dark, trusting that someday she will find her way home.

  “I just thought he was someone else,” I say, and I don’t even try to hide the pain from my face. But I can’t say the rest, so I think it: someone stronger, braver, truer.

  Dad crosses his arms. His eyes grow distant.

  “You should always try to see someone for who they are, Teddy Lee,” he says, “not who you want them to be.”

  I watch him sip his coffee. My mom is here with him, leaning over his shoulder, refilling a cup that is pretty much already full.

  Would he let her back in? If he were the one sitting here holding a letter, would he want to hear what she had to say? I want to hope so.

  “Are all the memories bad?” I ask.

  He waits. “That would make it so much easier, wouldn’t it?”

  I reach for the letter and nod. Yes. Yes, it would.

  I am in the garage that night, stumbling and searching for my gear before it gets too late. My hands are slow and stupid in the cold. I grab the old acoustic guitar with the moon and stars on the strap and set it on the floor while I look for the case.

  I only turned one light on when I came in, slowly sliding the dimmer that Jay installed to low, leaving big shadows all around me that are shaped like boxes and tires and teenage boys.

  I find the case under some sawhorses marked PUBLIC WORKS DEPARTMENT because Winston is such a klepto. I lower my chin down into my scarf, feeling my own breath warm against my lips as I carefully set the guitar into its cracked leather case and click the latches shut.

  My shoulders sag when I pull the guitar case off the sawhorse in front of me. It crunches across the pot stems and seeds sprinkled there.

  One of Ginger’s bright pink Post-It notes catches my eye as I pass by the workbench on my way to the door. I slide my finger down the marked page. I haven’t finished today’s theory yet.

  I push the door open with my toe. The sky outside is dark and gray and swirling, brewing up a storm. A streak of lightning zaps the sky, hurrying me across the grass toward my car at the edge of the street.

  Winston is watching me from the kitchen window, peeking through the curtain, the tip of his cigarette burning orange and bright in a long slat of light.

  When the clouds break open, he looks skyward, and I start to run.

  It’s time to break some hearts.

  I do not drive by his house; I don’t even think about it. Yet I find myself in a neighborhood that looks a lot like Ty’s, where normal people live normal lives and porch lights shine out into the night, leading everybody safely back home.

  Stopped at a corner of a tree-lined street in front of a big brick house, I lean forward until I can pull Ty’s letter out of my back pocket.

  I balance it in my hand, feeling its weight. The sight of his handwriting makes my heart beat faster.

  Would it be easier if he had just disappeared? If he had been a person who existed once, had been everything to me once, and then just wasn’t?

  My light is just beginning to flicker again. It dodges and dashes, fighting against all winds, and I am afraid that one look, one touch, even just one word from Ty will snuff me out.

  I let the letter drop on to the seat next to me, and I drive away.

  The rain is disappearing into a mist that clings to the road and the tires on the trucks in front of me. I open my window on my way out of town and breathe in deeply.

  After exiting on the first ramp that leads toward downtown, I take a right. I follow streets named after presidents and states. I make an entire constitution full of turns and one more right to a street lined with shops and galleries and parking meters planted next to small green trees at the curb.

  Driving slowly, I pace a guy in a saggy knit cap and a girl in a flowered skirt and Wellington boots. They rush along the sidewalk, holding hands and bouncing off each other like they are in love.

  They disappear behind me as I pull up and park in front of a coffee shop. The sign above my wet windshield says: OPEN MIC TONIGHT! DOORS AT 9! I sit back and watch a small crowd trickle in and out: boys with goatees and girls in socks and sandals.

  It’s almost eleven when I finally grab for my door handle. I hop across the flooded cracks in the sidewalk and, holding on tight to my guitar case, stop under the awning to wipe the rain from my face.

  The place is packed, a jumble of round tables and mismatched chairs on a stained wooden floor. The coffee cups are thick and white, every one resting on a white saucer. The air is heavy, weighted down with talk and the sogginess of the passing rainstorm and the smell of cinnamon.

  It is only a small coffee bar in a nearby college town, but still, I have to sign up and wait through two other performers before I get a turn. I follow a girl in a holey sweater who reads some angry poetry.

  I climb up onto the stage by myself. It is so tiny I’m not sure you can officially call it a stage. It is more of an apple box with a riser attached to the back. And the crowd is right there, hanging at the tip of my toe when I cross my leg and adjust my guitar.

  The sounds of breathing and the scuff of chairs and the whoosh of the espresso machine surround me. The angry poet stands, lips drawn tight, like a fuzzy stalagmite in the back row. Someone close by clears his throat, impatient. I am stalling.

  Even if I don’t like to admit it to myself, I keep thinking that Billie is going to show up, pull out a chair, and sit down next to me. She’ll prop her sparkly guitar between her legs and pretend to play, shining me on, along with everybody else.

  Looking up into the single spotlight strung overhead, I gather myself together and start to play. My heart aches for the beat of a drum.

  But my guitar fills the room. I sing, softly at first, focusing on the new fingerings that Ginger taught me, leaning hard on one word, drawing out another, moving forward step by step, my voice building as I feel the small space around me expanding, getting bigger and bigger until we are flo
ating, the book-smart girls and the boys who like them, the band geeks with the good haircuts and the knitters and the studiers and the poets and the part-time rappers, we all are swirling together in a twirl of music and magic and steamed milk.

  I finish, and the applause drowns out the café noise along with the pounding of my heart. I slide my guitar off my lap and start to rise, aware of a hot rush rising on my cheeks.

  “Awww, come on!” somebody yells from a table in the back, sounding exactly like Jay, and my stomach trips over itself. “One more!”

  The grad student manning the sign-up sheet nods when I look over. A girl with a fat, wrinkled journal tugs at her cardigan and sits back down, bumped.

  I slide back onto the stool and put my fingers over the frets, thinking.

  What song can I pull from the memories and moments that are mashed together in my head? I wasn’t expecting an encore. Then it comes to me: an arrangement that Ginger and I have been working on in the garage. It is supercheesy and completely unexpected and totally perfect. It is “Faith.”

  I start, close and low at first, then louder and louder, until my voice is clear and strong and steady, and I am so excited that I desperately need to swallow, but I don’t.

  I strum and I sing and I feel the tiny gusts of air from hands clapping to the beat around me. A blonde on my right is singing along. A silver bracelet twinkles on her wrist.

  There are times in your life that you know are good. They sparkle and glow. This is one of them. Everything is rich and saturated and absorbing, yet somehow I feel separate, as if I were watching every moment from above, with the color turned up. Every single second is sharp, with slanting light like an autumn day and a crisp, sweet breeze. Life crackles under my feet.

  When the applause starts to thunder, I can breathe. I set my guitar at my side and smile out at the crowd.

  I uncross my legs and rise out of my chair to cheers and glowing phones and one of those wolf whistles that streaks over the top of the crowd. The poet in the back looks like she might be on the verge of happy; her mouth is starting to curve up at the corners.