Dreaming of Rhapsody

by Selena Laurence

  “Topher. Please touch my hair.”

  I reach out with one finger and give a whisper of a stroke to the strands that lie along her shoulder. And I was right, it feels softer than anything I’ve ever touched. I take the end of the lock between my forefinger and thumb, and I rub it. I want to bury my face in it, breathe it in, and it’s such a foreign sensation, so not like me, that I just sit there, holding the ends of her hair, trying to sort out all the pieces of things inside me. Just when I think I might be getting a handle on all of it, she leans forward, and before I know it, she’s pressed her pink lips to mine. Soft. Like a butterfly.

  She pulls away a touch, and all I can do is blink and blink, because her hair is like silk, but her lips are like clouds.

  “Goodnight, Topher,” she whispers before she stands and walks back into the house.

  That night I dream that I go to my mother’s house, but instead of it being empty, Rachel is there and she’s made me breakfast, and I take her hand and lead her to my old bedroom where we lie next to one another, and I touch her places that make her do beautiful things, and I feel something that I know is called joy. But when I wake, it dissolves into the mist, like all my feelings, tiny pieces into wind.

  Rachel

  “I just sat with him, we didn’t talk about anything.” We’re in the car on the way the recording studio where Margo has to work today, and she’s haranguing me about hanging out with Topher the other night. She already hassled me about it three days ago after the memorial, I’m not sure why we’re having the conversation a second time.

  “I told you he doesn’t like a lot of social interaction. I’m sure he went outside to be alone, and then you go out there and invade his space,” she chastises. “You have to understand the way his mind works, and the way he processes stuff. He’s not like other guys you know.”

  “I can see that,” I tell her. “And he didn’t mind, I swear. It just seems to me that everyone has gotten so used to him being the weird guy, the loner guy, that they don’t even notice anymore when he might actually need them.”

  Her gaze snaps to mine, and I can see the anger simmering in her glare.

  “You’ve known him what—three days? Four, tops? I’ve been his best friend for four years now. I’ve eaten meals with him, gone on road trips with him, worked with him, gotten drunk with him. What makes you think you could possibly know more about Topher than I do? Or than his brother does for that matter? You didn’t see Carson going outside to bother him, did you?”

  I sigh. Rationally, I know she’s right, but when I saw him sitting alone while everyone else acted like he wasn’t even there, I really felt like he needed someone to pay attention. Carson got all the attention, the sympathy, the understanding, but Topher’s mother died too, and no one seemed to remember that. Just because he doesn’t express his feelings like others do doesn’t mean he doesn’t have any feelings.

  And when he looked into my eyes for that brief moment, I saw I was right, he was feeling all kinds of things. But it’s like they’re trapped so deep inside him they can’t come out. I can’t imagine what it must be like to have that much buried inside with no way out.

  “Okay,” I say, mostly to get Margo off of my back, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to violate the code of conduct about Topher.”

  She snorts. “Look, I know you might not understand it, but the people who live with him all the time—the people who love him—we know how to deal with him, so just follow our lead and then you don’t have to worry about upsetting him unnecessarily.”

  I don’t point out the fact that anyone who views him as someone to be “dealt” with might not actually know the first thing about loving him, but I clamp my mouth shut instead.

  “Mom called this morning while you were in the shower. She’s wondering if you’ll have time to see them after you leave here at the end of the month.”

  My parents live in Arizona, so it’s sort of on the way between Los Angeles and the town north of Denver where my veterinary college is. It would be easy to visit them this summer, and I love my parents, but I know if I see them before I go back to start the fall semester all I’m going to hear about is where I should start my practice when I graduate, and what kind of house I can buy. See, my parents love me, but they love that I fit their definition of “success” more because Margo never has.

  And the thing they don’t seem able to understand is that I’m in vet school because I love animals not because veterinarians make a good living. I’m really no different than Margo. I’m doing something that I love, but to my parents we’re as different as night and day because Margo hangs out with guys who are tattooed and play loud guitars and she earns enough to afford a small apartment and a five-year-old Honda, whereas I’m with men in white lab coats all day and might earn twice what she does when I graduate.

  “Yeah, I don’t think I’ll have time to stop off in Phoenix,” I tell Margo. “I’ll call and let them know.”

  She doesn’t respond. She knows as well as I do what our parents think of her life choices, and it’s a subject we don’t broach much. I get it. She understands it’s not my fault how they view us, but it’s hard not to resent me because of it. It has the potential to put a wedge between us, and neither of us wants that.

  * * *

  When we arrive at the recording studio Margo gets to work setting everything up. Shannon, the band’s manager, comes in with Dez and two of the big Starbucks catering containers of coffee, along with pastries. My parents wouldn’t be so critical of Margo’s job if they saw some of the perks.

  Dez and Shannon are hot as hell, both of them exceptionally beautiful, and so obviously crazy about each other I want to pin hashtag relationship goals to their shirts.

  “Dude,” Blaze says as he walks in, taking up most of the space in the room. “Where are Topher and Carson?”

  “They’re on the way,” Shannon answers. “Got caught on the 405.”

  “How are they doing?” Blaze asks.

  “Carson’s hanging in there. He’s had a lot of time to get used to the idea, she was sick so long, he feels like this is a relief really,” Dez says.

  Blaze shoves a bite of Danish in his mouth and chews before speaking again. “And Topher?”

  Everyone in the room looks slightly uncomfortable. Dez scratches his head and Shannon busies herself with rearranging the pastries.

  “You can’t expect him to have typical reactions,” Margo says from her workstation.

  “So, he’s not talking about it?” Blaze continues.

  “Not so far,” Dez answers. “And you know maybe it’ll just take him awhile longer. We all do these things in our own way.”

  “Yeah.” But I can see in Blaze’s eyes that he doesn’t think Topher will ever get it. He doesn’t believe Topher has the ability to mourn his mother. And by the tight press of my sister’s lips, I can tell she might believe that too.

  “Did you bring the extra strings?” Blaze asks, shifting the conversation back to work.

  Dez leans over to his open guitar case and takes out some coils of steel strings and hands them to Blaze who grins at Shannon as he takes the coffee out of her hand instead of pouring himself a new one. She rolls her eyes at him, and he heads on into the recording room where Garrett is already waiting, doing some sort of strange vocal warm ups.

  “Rachel, make sure to let us know if you need anything,” Dez says smiling at me as Shannon hands him some sort of green smoothie thing instead of coffee.

  “Thank you. The coffee is great, it’ll hold me for a long time.”

  He tips his smoothie to me and then gives Shannon a sweet kiss on the cheek before he goes in with Blaze and Garrett.

  “Take whatever you want,” Shannon says before she goes over to the control desk where Margo is working, all kinds of monitors and things lit up around her. They get into an animated discussion about technical things, and seem to forget about me quickly.

  I grab a doughnut to go with my coffee and go sit on the
sofa in the corner of the room, setting my messenger bag on the floor next to me and pulling out one of my enormous textbooks. It’s summer break but I have my qualifying exams as soon as I get back to school in the fall, so I’ll have to spend most of the summer studying for them.

  I’ve demolished the doughnut and I’m settling into all the details about bovine anatomy when the door swings open and Carson walks in followed by Topher. Topher has a big bass case in his hand, and a rolled up newspaper sticking out of the back pocket of his jeans. And mercy do those jeans fit him well. They’re faded, and soft, and sit nice and low on his hip bones. The t-shirt he has on is a Rhapsody concert shirt, and the sleeves are tight around the smooth muscles of his upper arms. My poor heart does a little flip when his green eyes land on me. Oh. My.

  “Hey,” Carson says, to the room in general.

  “Grab something to eat and get in there,” Shannon instructs. “We’ll be ready in about five minutes.”

  Carson salutes her and goes into the other room.

  “Toph, I don’t want bass until we lay down the other instrumentals, so you can hang out for a bit,” Margo says without peeling her eyes from the monitors and keyboards she’s working with.

  Topher nods, sets his bass case on the floor, and takes a scone off the tray along with a bottle of water before turning to where I sit in the corner.

  I smile at him and he smiles back at me shyly.

  “There’s plenty of room over here,” I tell him quietly as I scoot to one end of the sofa.

  He walks over and sits down on the opposite end from me, setting his scone carefully on a napkin on the coffee table then putting his water bottle next to it and cracking open the top.

  I watch him quietly for a few moments, noticing the precision of his movements, the orderly way he arranges things. He’s conscious and cautious, but there’s a beauty to it, especially in a world where so many people are careless, sloppy, chaotic.

  When he’s eaten the last of his scone and sits back, I turn to face him, tucking my feet up under me and leaning against the arm of the sofa.

  “Hi, Topher,” I say when he finally turns to look at me.

  “Hey.” He gives me another one of those sweet smiles and I’m done—to hell with vet school, I think I should follow Rhapsody around like people used to with the Grateful Dead. I could go to every city they play in, live out of a tent, spend all of my money on tickets to their shows. All so I could watch Topher Leigh for hours on end.

  “How are you?” I ask. I haven’t seen him since his mom’s service. It’s not even been a full week since she died, but Carson said they both wanted to get back to work. I can understand. Sometimes distraction is easier.

  “I know I’m supposed to say that I’m fine,” he says.

  I nod, and there’s a lengthy pause before he resumes. “But you don’t mind if I say the things that are really in my head.”

  I put one of my feet on the floor and scoot closer to him. His lifts one hand from his lap and reaches up to touch my hair like he’s been waiting since the last time I saw him to do this very thing.

  “What’s really in your head?” I ask.

  He sighs, dropping his gaze to the strands of my hair that he sifts through his fingers. “I dreamed about my mom, and in the dream she was sad because she missed me, which made me sad. I even cried. I cry sometimes in my dreams.”

  My heart aches because as quiet and matter of fact as he is, I can sense the sorrow, hear the pain, and I don’t understand how the rest of them can’t. It makes me angry that they sell him short because he’s different.

  “But you don’t cry when you’re awake?” I ask.

  “No,” he answers, shaking his head.

  “Do you wish you would?”

  “I have all kinds of feelings in my dreams, and I always try to remember them when I wake up, but I never can.”

  I reach out and lace my fingers through his and he lets me. “You know what I think?”

  “What?”

  “I think that all of us have certain feelings certain places. If I’m sad I don’t cry everywhere I am all the time. I wait until I’m alone in my room at home and then I cry.”

  He looks down at our hands and rubs his thumb along mine. “I don’t think I’d like to see you cry.”

  “But we all do it sometimes, and we choose where we do it. You’re no different. Instead of crying in your room at home, you cry in your dreams. It’s just a room in your head.”

  He squeezes my hand and then looks up and straight into my eyes. “I like you, Rachel.”

  “I like you too.”

  Topher

  I haven’t talked to anyone but Carson in a few days. Even him, we just say the things we have to, like, “I’m doing laundry, got anything to go in the load?” Carson and I are roommates. I think he feels he needs to look out for me, but I manage my own life fine. He doesn’t realize that I can be alone. I like having him around, but if he were across town instead of in the other bedroom it wouldn’t change anything for me all that much.

  So, we’ve spent the days since Mom died sort of doing our own thing. Carson watched every Die Hard movie there is, and I played my bass in the practice room we have set up at our house.

  I didn’t think I wanted to talk to anyone—about my mom, I mean—but as soon as I saw Rachel, I wanted to. I like the way she feels when I touch her. I like the sound of her voice. I like being close to her.

  “I wish…” I pause, because I’m not sure if what I’m going to say makes sense, and also I’m afraid of saying something wrong since I do so often. “I wish I could have made my mom feel better last night. I mean, I know it was just a dream—not really her—but I don’t want her to look so sad. I want her to look like she did before she got sick. I want her to be…happy.”

  Rachel’s hand slides up and down my forearm, and a rhythm appears—long, short, short, long. A, BB, A. I see the pattern in my head, and sink into it, the comforting repetition of it, the way the pattern gains colors and glides through my field of vision.

  “You can make her happy,” she tells me. “In your dreams you can make your mom happy.”

  “How?” I ask.

  “Decide before you go to sleep that you’re going to see her in your dreams and that your dream mom is going to be happy. Picture her happy. It’s your world, you can make it whatever you want.”

  I nod. It makes sense, and I wonder why none of my doctors have ever told me this. It’s like everything else about Rachel. Kind of magic. Kind of special.

  “Topher!” Margo’s pissed off voice jolts me away from Rachel’s gaze. Margo stands above us, her eyes on where our hands are touching, and suddenly I’m afraid I’ve done something wrong. Maybe I’m not supposed to touch Rachel? Shit.

  “What the hell?” Margo asks. “Did all the loud music finally make you deaf? I told you four times that you need to go into the studio now. We’re ready for you to lay down your part.”

  I stand quickly, not looking at Rachel. I feel like I did when I was in school and I would do something wrong to another kid. The teacher would be mad at me and the kid would be mad at me, and there was no way for me to escape without someone being angry with me.

  I mutter, “Ok,” and go into the studio. But as I take my place behind Dez, my bass hanging low in front of me, my eyes travel to Rachel watching through the thick glass between the two rooms. She smiles, and dammit if I don’t smile back without thinking about it.

  * * *

  I love recording studios. The walls are soundproofed and when I walk in there’s a pressure that closes around me. It’s the pressure of the air that’s trapped by the soundproofing tiles, and it feels perfect on my skin. Also, all of the normal reverberations and echoes that bounce off of things all day in the regular world don’t exist here. The sounds are dampened, and they have an end instead of trailing off into space endlessly.

  A recording studio combined with playing my bass makes it, as Carson says, “my happy place.” And toda
y, I’m even happier than usual, because whenever I look up, I see Rachel. Sometimes she’s watching me and sometimes she isn’t, but I like it either way. Looking at her makes me happy. It also gives me a hard-on, but that’s the great thing about a bass guitar, that part of your body is hidden.

  “All right, Topher,” Blaze says as he stretches and yawns. You ready to do some strumming?” Of all the guys in the band, Blaze is probably the one I like the least. He’s loud a lot, and angry, but he’s been better since he met Tully. Dez and Carson are the easiest to be around. Garrett can make me laugh—or at least he used to. Since he got back from rehab he’s different, and I’m not sure he feels so funny anymore.

  “I’m ready,” I say.

  “Okay, we’re going to start with Reaching For You, then move on to Sensible, and Turkish Delight,” Margo tells us through the sound system from the booth. “I’d like to get those three down before lunch, but if we only get two of them done that’s okay.”

  We all nod, and Blaze and Dez get their guitars adjusted. I look through the window at Rachel one more time. She gives me a thumbs up and I smile.

  “Shit,” I hear Garrett murmur. “Topher, you have a crush?”

  I look over at him and raise an eyebrow. I don’t really know what he’s talking about.

  “What?” Carson and I say it at the same time.

  “Margo’s sister.” Garrett tips his head toward the window. “I’ve never seen you smile at someone like that.”

  Carson’s head swivels and he stares at me. “Toph?”

  Everyone is looking at me now, and I hate it. I like that Rachel helps me smile, but it was sort of our secret thing. I don’t think I want other people knowing about it.

  “I want to play. Let’s go,” I say, not looking at any of them.

  It’s quiet for a moment, and then Carson says, “You heard the man, let’s go.”

  Blaze gives his guitar one strum, then pushes the button to talk to Margo. “Okay, we’re ready.”