by Vivian Lux
He fell back onto his back and closed his eyes, then blinked them back open again, refocusing like the ceiling surprised him. The deep breath he took seemed to contain much more than just the need to gather his thoughts.
"I've been playing songs in front of crowds since I was ten years old," he said.
I nodded because it seemed like he needed silence, and went over to sit by him. He tucked himself back into his jeans and then sat up and reached for the bottle but I gently pushed his hand away.
He looked at me, a sudden burst of anger in his eyes that died away as quickly as it flared up and he sighed and nodded. "The songs I play? The ones I write? They don't mean anything." He shook his head when he saw me try to protest. "I can pull a hit song out of my ass right now, you want to see it? Yeah, I've had a bit of writer's block, but usually I can write a song in ten fucking minutes and have it go to number one because I'm writing for my audience. I know what they want." He let out a huge exhale. "I've never written a song just for me."
This felt like something greater than just frustration. It was anguish I was seeing there in his face and in the set of his jaw. "What does that mean to you?" I ventured to ask, because it clearly meant something.
"That I've wasted my fucking life."
"Jonah."
"No it's true." He reached for the bottle again and this time I let him have the drink. "I've been so worried about making sure everyone was watching me but I never wondered what it was I was saying once I had their attention." He shook his head ruefully. "Just make sure the spotlight is on me, and what I'm doing there is totally irrelevant."
"Is that why you're trying to get drunk?" I asked pointedly.
He wrinkled his nose at me. "I'm trying to get drunk because this means something. For the first time I'm about to play, in front of the tiniest crowd I've ever played in front of, and the music I'm playing is fucking important. And Ruby, I don't know if I can do it."
"Are you worried you're going to screw it up?"
"I'm worried I'm not good enough. For the music." His voice caught. "For you."
"The spotlight isn't on you right now, is it?"
He turned and his eyes glittered bright and soft. "I mean, you're here, so yeah."
I squeezed his hand, smiling. "And you certainly have my full attention."
He nodded.
"Are you good enough right now?"
His eyes glittered harder.
I took a deep breath. "Sometimes the most important things you can do are in private. And I really think that the things you do and the thoughts you think when you know no one is watching is what shows you who you really are." I tilted his chin up so he was looking at me when I told him, "You took those songs and you polished them until you made them sparkle like diamonds. You took Gid's hopes and dreams and made them a reality and no one was watching to tell you this was something you should be doing. You did it because you wanted to pay tribute to your uncle. I think that tells me everything I need to know about how good you are."
He looked young. A school kid. The Jonah I first met a million years ago, before he learned how to fake it and bluster his way through life. "I don't know, Ruby."
I stood up and reached for him. I didn't know why I was encouraging him, when I knew all too well that tonight was the first step towards him leaving. I had no idea why I was pushing him except that I loved him.
I loved him and he was going to leave me soon.
I swallowed. "Come on," I encouraged. "Do it for Gid."
That did it. He rose to his feet. He was looking at me abashed, and I felt myself swinging instinctually over into teacher-mode. "Let's go. Put your coat on, that's it. Hang on, I want to put some tights on it's freezing. Okay, let's get your phone right there, oh jeez mister, you let your battery get this low? Oh whoops. Okay, give me your keys, you're a little drunk"
"Drunk on you," he slurred, but followed me out onto my small porch.
The snow had started up again, a fluffy inch covering the driveway and more falling fast. His footprints were just vague hollows in the snow now and everything had that quiet, muffled hush. Like everything was holding its breath and waiting to hear Gid's songs. I looked up at the snow swirling down in spirals from the heavens. "Think Gid'll be listening tonight?" I wondered.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Jonah
The idea of Gid, sitting up in heaven as an angel with his harp out of tune made me pause. "I hope he likes it," I fretted. The whiskey had softened my reflexes and the sex had made me even blurrier. I was happy that Ruby was driving Ethel for me, but a faint drumbeat of worry was thudding in my head.
Most nights before I show I felt a calm come over me. Centeredness, the only thing in the world the music I was going to play, the job I was going to do.
But tonight I had none of that focus. I was scattered and anxious, every desperate fear of imposter syndrome I'd been fighting for more than twelve years was coming out to fuck with my head. I knew without a doubt that if Ruby wasn't here, I would have done something I've never done before. In my life.
I would have bailed.
"You make me a better person," I told her.
She gave me a fond smile. Probably thought it was the whiskey talking. But it wasn't. In a short time, Ruby had gone from a thorn in my side to my reason for getting up in the morning. She was my moral compass, turning me in a direction I never thought I would be headed, but now I could see the path led me somewhere beautiful, somewhere breathtaking. Somewhere I couldn't imagine leaving now.
It led me to love.
I blinked as my body went stiff with the realization and then immediately settled into the rightness of it. Yes. I loved her. That was clear to me. Clearer than anything in my life thus far.
I looked over at her, ready to say it, then clapped my mouth shut. Her whole body was tense, drawn and leaning forward, a worried tic at her temple. "What's - ?" I started to say then looked out the window to what she was staring at.
The whole world was suddenly white. A snow squall had blown up in a sudden, gusting fury, whipping the snow into a tornado of white blankness. The headlights only showed a path about five feet in front of us, then disappeared against an impenetrable wall of swirling snow. Everything was uniformly white. I had no idea if we were driving down the road or through a field.
Ruby was tense and silent, leaned all the way forward. She had slowed to a crawl, leaning as if hanging over the steering wheel would let her peer more closely into the storm. I could feel the fear rising off of her in waves, the tight lines of her body stretched so taut she shook a little.
Seeing her frightened shook something loose in my head and I instantly sobered. "You're doing just fine," I murmured, not wanting to startle her. "Want me to drive?"
She shook her head without taking her eyes from the road. "You had a bunch to drink," she reminded me.
I was as sober as a judge. "I'm okay," I told her. "I could do it if you're nervous."
"I'm afraid to stop," she said tightly. The car was shuddering underneath us, slipping on the slickness hidden under the snow. It must have been right around freezing now, the melted snow from earlier now refreezing into a solid sheet of ice under our wheels. Ruby hissed and the car went a little faster. I could see the RPMs on the dash pinning, but we were going no more than ten miles an hour. "Jonah," she moaned, fear stretching my name out into nearly a wail.
"Look, there's the farmhouse with the blown down tree, right?" I pointed, trying to assuage some of her fears. "So you're on the road. You're doing beautifully, Ruby. You can do it."
She whimpered a little, but said nothing, giving all her attention to the whiteness swirling around us. "What's that?" she asked.
Lights were appearing out of the gloom. "Plow!" I shouted, right at the moment we both realized she was in the wrong lane.
"Jesus!" she cried, yanking the wheel to the right. We spun out, then caught the groove made by the cars before us, and the plow slid by, its bright lights like some kind o
f alien mothership in the gloom.
"Everything's gone," she whispered. "I have no idea where we are."
"Somewhere on Whalen Station Road because we haven't crossed the main road yet." I pressed my lips together, unwilling to think about how this was the road Gid had died on.
"Are you sure?"
"No," I had to admit. "That might have been it right back there, when the plow went by."
"That means - " she trailed off, not wanting to say it. Once you crossed the highway, Whalen Station changed over into highway 12, which hugged the creek, following it out of town. Highway 12 was nicknamed Snake Road around here for all the twists and turns. It was fun as hell to ride in the summer time.
In a whiteout it could mean death.
"No," I reassured her. "That wasn't it. We just passed the farmhouse, right?"
"I don't know," she moaned. "And we're climbing a hill now." The whine of the wheels was almost drowning her out, making her shout. "Is there a hill on Whalen Station, Jonah?"
I wracked my brain. "I don't know."
"Course you don't, because you haven't been here long enough to know."
"Ruby, let's not - "
"What? Talk about how you flit in and out?" she yelled hysterically. "Talk about how you're going to be leaving Crown Creek as soon as you find another manager? Talk about how this was just a nice distraction while you got back on your feet?"
"Ruby! Stop!" I shouted.
"For fuck's sake Jonah, where are we?!"
"I don't know!" I bellowed. "But I love you!"
"Fuck!" she yelped as the spinning tires suddenly caught dry pavement and we shot forward. She yanked the wheel over at the last second, saving us from nosediving into the ditch, but the correction sent the back end fishtailing. She steered into the spin like a pro, but the pavement was too slick and with a slow, sickening slide we pitched over into the blinding white.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Ruby
When things like this happen, it's supposed to be like it's in slow motion.
But for me it was more like a dream. In dreams you have this calm acceptance. "Oh yes, of course I should be surfing a wave made out of maple syrup and yes it isn't odd at all that my fourth grade teacher is suddenly my surfboard." These things just happen and you watch them with a sense of complete detachment.
This was a dream and I calmly accepted that were suddenly be flying through the air. If course it made perfect sense that the air should be filled with the dust from the airbag. It was absolutely fine that a loud ringing noise should pierce the darkness.
Then Jonah shook me and I realized the ringing noise was my own scream.
"Ruby? Ruby?" He was shaking me but I couldn't stop screaming. It seemed like that would be what I would do forever more. This was my new reality. I screamed.
He unbuckled my seat belt and pulled me to him, crushing me in his arms until my screams fell away and the only sound was the ticking of the engine and the hiss of the deflating airbag. Everything else was silent and dark, muffled by the swirling white storm.
"Oh my god," I moaned, leaning back. There was a hot, burning feeling on my cheek and I touched int gingerly.
"The airbag," Jonah explained. I could barely see him. He was just a voice coming from a darker shade of the blackness. "Abraded your cheek. It got me too."
"Jonah?" My screams had subsided and now the shaking was setting in. "Jonah are we in the water? Oh fuck, did we land in the creek?"
"No, no, hush baby. We're off the road on the other side. You went to the left when we hit that skid, not the right."
"How do you know?"
I reached out blindly to touch his face and felt his cheek lift in a smile. "I know my own town," he said.
I pressed my lips together. "Are we stuck?"
He unbuckled his seatbelt and tried his door. "Well, something's blocking that," he said after a moment. He seemed totally calm, unruffled even, all of the traces of drunkenness that had clung to him gone now and I realized that this was the first time I was seeing Jonah King in his natural element. He had a problem that needed to be solved and he was going to find a solution.
A little tug at my heart made me remember what he had shouted at me just before the crash.
"Try your side," he encouraged me.
I nodded and tried my door handle. My door swung open about a half a foot and then stopped, I swung it back and forth and managed to clear another four or five inches before the dirt of whatever ditch we were in compacted to the point of blocking me entirely. "I can get it to there."
"Good," I could feel, rather than see him nodding. "Then we won't die of carbon monoxide poisoning."
"Oh god," I squeaked.
His hand quickly found mine. "We'll call for help," he said, fumbling in his coat pocket. He pulled out his phone and turned it on. It immediately turned back off again. "Well fuck," he said matter-of-factly. "Do you have yours?"
I reached behind me and fumbled for my purse. "I don't feel it, did it fall behind you?"
He twisted and felt around. "I'm not feeling it."
"It must have tipped over." I grunted and felt blindly. "Goddamn, where's the?" I stabbed blindly at the buttons on the dash, but no light flooded the interior. "We must have smashed whatever controlled that. Fuck."
"I found your lipstick?'
"Oh good, we can call for help using that."
"Ruby."
"Sorry, I don't mean to be mean, it's just..."
"You're scared."
"How come you're not?"
"Because this storm is gonna blow past as fast as it came up," he said briskly. "Because people will be looking for us, waiting for us to show up at the Crown. Because someone is bound to drive by any moment now and see the car off the road and call the police. We just gotta sit tight."
"It's so fucking cold though."
"Come closer. I'm warm."
I slid over, draping myself across the center console. "Yes, you actually really are."
"I have a confession to make."
"What?"
"I engineered this crash to I wouldn't have to play and could spend the night snuggling with you instead."
"You could have just asked," I whisper screamed, but let my head fall back against his shoulder anyway. Now that the accident was over, the adrenaline dump had left me feeling shaky and sleepy. I closed my eyes, burrowing my face up into the place at Jonah's neck where he smelled most like himself. "I wouldn't have minded spending the night snuggling you."
He was quiet for a moment. In the absolute silence and blackness, we could have been the only two people in the universe, floating in space. I closed my eyes and opened them and couldn't tell the difference. The absolute darkness was surreal. "You heard me?" he murmured.
I blinked against his skin. Of course I knew what he was referring to, he didn't have to say it, except... "Say it again," I whispered. My nose was getting colder by degrees and I nuzzled him with it. "Again."
I heard his chuckle, felt his belly rise and fall with it, but I couldn't see him at all. I could picture his face though, the way his dark eyes would go darker when he said, "I love you, Ruby. I just sort of realized it as I got in the car."
"Sort of realized it?"
"It hit me like, of course. Of course I love her. That's the only reason the way I feel makes sense."
"How do you feel?" I breathed.
"Like my life is just starting," he said into the darkness. "Like coming back to Crown Creek was the first day of it, seeing you there in the parking lot all pissed off and ready to skin me alive. That was the first day of my life and each day since I've realized more and more than the only life I want is one where you are the most important thing in it."
I wasn't even breathing any more. The dead silence and suffocating black of the car interior made it seem like this all might be a dream. "Jonah, my life is here. I have a job and a house and, and a fucking cat and..."
"And friends and family, yeah me too."
&n
bsp; I grabbed his shirt and clenched a fistful of the fabric. "Don't you fuck with me, Jonah King."
He chuckled. "I'm still figuring out a lot of things, but I'm not figuring out how I feel about you any more. That's for fucking sure. How I feel is love." He gripped my hand and lifted my fingers to his lips. "I love you," he said as he kissed them. "And you don't have to say it back because I know I'm blindsiding you and we were just in a fucking car accident so my timing is shitty as anything but I wanted to tell you right now because nothing else seemed as important. "
"Not even getting help?"
"I told you, this was all an elaborate ploy to spend the night with the girl I love."
"Oh my god, Jonah. I love you too."
I couldn't see him but I could feel his body heat with pleasure, his cheeks getting warmer against mine. "You serious? You love me?"
"I love you."
He breathed out.
"I really wish I could see your face right now."
"I don't need to see you," he said. "I've memorized you."
"Have you really?"
"You have a little freckle in the corner of your eye. There are three little eyelashes on your right eye that point straight out instead of curling up like the rest of them do. Your eyebrows grow up first and then down. Should I go on?"
"Okay okay I believe you," I said, laughing. "I know you by heart too. There is a little swirl of stubble on your cheek that looks like a spiral..."
"Oh I am aware. It's a real bitch to shave, let me tell you."
"Your eyes have more yellow in them close to your pupil, like your iris is an eclipse of the sun."
"You should be the songwriter not me. I'm totally stealing that, baby. I'll give you credit though."
I sighed into his arms. My legs were getting cold and I tugged at my dress. We both sighed again. "How long do you think until someone sees us?" I asked Jonah.
"Not long now. Look, the snow is letting up."
I tried to see what he could see but all I could make out was shades of black in the blackness. Maybe that was an improvement? Maybe not. I closed my eyes again, and shivered a little.
