“Do you sing?” I ask.
“Yeah. Not as much as I’d like, but that’s life, right?”
My voice is soft, but my words come out sharp, like I have knives attached to each and every syllable. “Problems in paradise?” A guy like him, he has to have everything he could ever want—designer clothes, impeccable style, and the truck he drives is nicer than anything I’ve ever owned—and suddenly I feel like a peasant looking up at a royal or a god or something.
He shrugs it off. “Parents don’t approve of my ‘musician lifestyle’, so law school it is.” He pauses and reaches into his pocket, pulling out his leather wallet and upon seeing the cash, I slip back into cashier-mode and ring him up. “Thanks. For the cake, I mean. It turned out nice.”
Feeling like a bitch and an idiot rolled up into one messed up package, I look away. “I didn’t make it,” I tell him and he doesn’t seem to know what to say, so he just thanks me again and grabs his cake, lyrics and all, and goes to walk away, but something makes him turn back around to look at me.
“I’ll see you around?” he calls, kind of hopeful.
“Yeah, I think you will,” I say, real soft, and he smiles. I watch him walk away, bump his hip into the door to swing it open, watch him stride off into the parking lot. Feeling all sorts of strange, I pull my barista apron off from around my neck. “I need a break,” I tell Mary, who nods with this smug I-told-you-so smile on her face, and I want to punch her but I don’t have the energy.
Retreating to the break room, I sag against the wall and listen to the sound of my breathing and try to sort through all these fickle emotions.
Damn and double damn.
Five
Elias
As soon as my back is turned to Teagan, my smile slips away into the nothingness of disappointment. She’s so hot and cold—one minute I can see the genuine goodness in her eyes and the next, she’s backing away and pulling on a cloak of ice, shielding herself from anyone that gets close. I blow out a breath. Hell, maybe she’s just having a bad day.
Still, it sets my mind alight with worries. I worry that I’m annoying her, showing up day after day the way I do. Does it freak her out? I don’t want to freak her out or scare her, God, I just want to get to know her. Chill dude, you’re getting more obsessive than Mr. Beefy with his rawhide bone. I suck in a deep breath, hold it and count to five, and then let it whistle out slowly between my lips. I feel a little better, but not much.
Would giving her my number be too forward? Maybe I’m reading her completely wrong. That’s the problem. I don’t know and it’s driving me batshit insane. Shuffling through the doors of Infiniti’s, I balance the cake in one hand and drag the keys from my pocket with the other. I stride across the parking lot and when I’m close enough, press the button to unlock the truck. Securing the cake in all its sugary glory in the passenger seat, I head home to my empty house, feeling as distant as Teagan had seemed.
Mr. Beefy greets me briefly with wags and slobber, then returns to the couch to snooze, so I go downstairs and pick up my guitar. I try to play, try to get into the groove, but it all sounds off, wrong somehow. I bang on the drums, a mindless, erratic beat just to burn off the edge, then sit down at my electric keyboard and press the power button. It bursts to life and I play a couple dumb diddies to get my fingers in the right places, then start fucking around by making up tunes as I go.
And then suddenly, it clicks—the beginning of Baker’s Dozen, Teagan’s song—and I shove my troubles to the side and just lose myself in the music. My eyes flutter shut, fingers splaying across the ebony and ivory keys, gentle touches that bring out note after note and then I’m grinning and singing along, solidifying the lyrics as I go and damn, it’s beautiful.
I don’t realize my phone went off until I break for some eats—a couple of microwaved corndogs and half a bag of barbeque chips. I grab a butter knife out of the silverware drawer and lift the lid off the cake, preparing to cut myself a slice when my phone dings again.
Jake. I reach for it to text him back an apology when there’s a hard knock on the door and I grin. Also Jake, since nobody else I know has such a heavy hand. “It’s unlocked!” I shout and two seconds later, the door swings in. “Hey. Sup, bro?” I ask, in a cheerful mood once more.
Jake shuffles in, looking moody.
He’s been my best friend for god-knows-how-long. Since we were little kids. He hasn’t always been such a douche. His lowbrow of a dad started it. It began with verbal abuse, spawned from the bottom of a whiskey bottle. It wasn’t until after that asshole hospitalized both his wife and his ten-year-old son that Jake really changed. Carl Hammond was slapped behind bars as soon as the cops found his ass hiding out the next state over, but the damage had been done.
Jake had been irrevocably changed. The goofy little kid who once collected Pokemon cards became quiet, distant, angry. He lashed out. His mom got him into therapy, but how could you not be messed up after your own father beat the ever-living shit out of you and left you for dead. It wasn’t like therapy didn’t help, because it did.
But then with the bitch move his fiancé pulled? A double betrayal and yeah, there’s kind of a reason Jake’s a dickhat, but I’ve been with him through it all and I’ll stick with him till the end. He’s my best friend and I don’t leave friends behind. Besides, when we’re together alone, just the two of us, making music and rocking out, shades of the old Jake peek back out and it’s worth it, just for those little moments.
“Not a whole hell of a lot,” Jake replies, pulling out a chair, spinning it around, and straddling it. His arms lay lazily across the wooden back, fingers tapping out a beat. That’s when he sees the cake. He lifts an eyebrow, incredulous, but I can tell he’s amused. “Well this is bizarre. What’s the occasion?”
I grin at him, shrugging as I dig through the junk drawer until I find what I’m looking for—an over-the-hill candle from my father’s fortieth birthday. I figure the grim reaper suits the mood. I pop it into the center of the cake, light it with a click of my lighter, and as the flame flickers gold, I look right at Jake. “Happy birthday, man.”
He snorts. “Are you high? It’s April-fucking-fourteenth.”
“I know.”
“My birthday’s in August.”
“Yep, but what if August never comes? What if the world is overrun by mindless zombies in the next few months? All the bakeries will be closed and then I’ll feel guilty for not buying you a birthday cake. Besides, it’s chocolate—you love chocolate.”
“A baker’s dozen of my sweet…love?” He looks at me and smirks. “Something you’re not telling me, Eli?”
I snicker and clap him on the back. “Straight as a board, buddy. Make a damned wish already.”
He seems to think for a moment, then rolls his eyes and blows the candle out. The smell of melting wax fills the air, reminiscent of every birthday we’ve ever celebrated, and as the smoke rises towards the ceiling in tendrils, I cut the cake. “They’re lyrics. To a new song I’m working on.”
“For that coffeeshop girl?” He groans. “Man, you’re still on that?”
“Yeah. I can’t help it, she’s just… There’s something about her.”
His voice is sharper, harder as he says, “She’s an ice queen, don’t waste your breath,” and I know that he’s thinking of his ex. He always gets pointy when he thinks about the waste of space that was and probably still is Bella Strong.
Still I frown. “Why?”
“She’s cold as ice. She’ll never thaw out—believe me, I know that type.”
I just sigh, shake my head, and take a bite of cake. Chew. Swallow. Then I point my fork at him. “I think you’re wrong. Teagan’s nice, the kind of girl I want to get to know better. I don’t know why, but I do.”
It’s his turn to shrug, dismissive, his way of saying the conversation is over, end of story. “Your funeral.” He stuffs his mouth full of cake so he doesn’t have to talk, but that’s okay. I don’t mind the quiet and a lit
tle while later, his cake demolished and his fork landing to clink against the china, he leans back and huffs. “So. Wanna show me that song?”
“Not ready yet, and besides, it’s for the ice queen. If anyone gets to hear it, it’s her.”
“You’re hopeless, you know that?”
“Probably,” I say with a grin. “But oh well. I just think there’s so much more than what meets the eye.”
“If you say so. Mind if I go downstairs and beat on my set? That’s the reason I came, but you distracted me with cake.” I wave him off and he disappears down the hall. I stand and clean up our mess, wiping down the table and stacking the plates in the dishwasher. When I get back to the table, I reach for the cake container’s lid and pause, looking down at the scrawled blue lyrics, at the beautiful icing rose. It’s too pretty to eat. But maybe…
I carefully cut a large piece from the center of the cake, the yellow rose and its green icing leaves sitting proudly on top, untouched. I smile and nod, pleased with myself, and carefully cover it.
I’m going to give it to Teagan tomorrow.
I consider, for a moment, putting a note in with it, maybe my number, but I decide against it in the end. She seems like the kind of girl who doesn’t like to be pressured. Besides, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I’m a patient guy. I can wait.
Wait and hope.
Six
Teagan
I’m woken up before the ass crack of dawn by my phone, which shrills out an annoying Lil Wayne song—perfect for jarring one awake at this exact time of non-day. I reach over and swipe the phone off the bedside table and cradle it between my ear and my shoulder, fumbling with the lamp as I mumble, “Hello?” just in time to be assaulted with a stream of angry curse words.
Dakota Wells is my one and only friend in this bleak existence we call life. We met on a new RPG site called EdenOnline that I browse sometimes when I’m bored (don’t judge me) and we just started talking, at first about stupid things but soon the conversations went deeper. She’s a year older than my nineteen and lives in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere, also known as Ohio, surrounded by a shittastic family who relies on her way too much. Needless to say, we hit it off and we’ve been friends, albeit virtually, for the past year.
She’s the one and only person in my life who knows what I’ve been through, the only person I’ve let in long enough to see the real me and sometimes it scares the shit out of me, more than it should, but Dakota has been the one constant, the one person I can depend on when I need to. She’s my rock in rough waters, my voice of reason.
But now things are getting rougher on her end. Her mother is abusive and every word she spews is cutting and harsh, her little sister is an ungrateful bitch, and Dakota barely makes enough on her overtime gas station wages to make ends meet. She’s been the man of the house since her father died when she was fourteen and even though she tries not to let it show, it’s taken a toll. She tries her best to be strong, but everyone has a breaking point.
And I think she’s damn close, listening to the way her voice wavers and cracks on the other end of the line. In the distance I hear a car alarm go off, followed by the barking of a dog and I know she’s out walking. “I just can’t sit still,” she snaps into the phone. “I can’t believe she’d be so fucking stupid, so blind—she’s sixteen years old, Teag. She’s still a kid. She has no business being a little whore. She has no idea how hard taking care of a family is, let alone the fact that she doesn’t know which ‘flavor of the week’ knocked her up. God damn it.”
Her voice catches on a sob that she quickly extinguishes, and I hear the click of a lighter, followed by a long breath as she takes a puff of her Marlboro menthols. She lets it out again on a sigh, her voice softer. “I’ve tried so hard, so fucking hard to raise her the way Dad would’ve. He’d be so disappointed…” A pause and I know she’s close to tears. “Does that mean I’m a failure? That I’ve failed her?”
My heart aches at that word—failure—because I know the feeling, that gut-ripping pain of failing someone close to me. I close my eyes and force back the tidal wave of emotion that threatens to rise up. “No,” I reply firmly, half to her and half to myself. “You did the best you could. You can’t control her, just like you can’t control your mom. It’s not your fault Cameron is a little skank. That was her choice. She made her bed, now she has to lay in it. You know?”
It makes her laugh, a harsh hiss, but a laugh nonetheless. “Fuck, you’re right. I just… God, Teagan, I wish I could just escape. Run away from this hellhole and never look back. Start a new life somewhere awesome and just leave it all behind.”
I don’t hesitate. I left everything behind once and I’d do it again in a heartbeat. Sometimes I think escape would be the best possible answer to Dakota’s problems. “Why can’t you?”
Dakota sighs. “Because. It’s just a dream, it’s not reality. My family needs me, whether I like it or not, and no matter how much shit they put me through, they’re still my family. My mom and my little sister.” A break and I can almost feel her sadness through the phone line. “And in nine months, my newborn niece or nephew.”
“You okay?”
“I’m okay,” she says. “Hey, thanks. You always know what to say, even when I wake you up at 5:12 in the morning.”
I smile though I know she can’t see it, though it feels sad. “Anytime, anywhere.”
“You’re my best friend, Teag, and I don’t know what I’d do without you. Really, I mean that.” She says it in such a way that I can’t not believe her and somehow, knowing that I’m wanted, knowing that I’m needed so much by someone…it chokes me with feelings I’d rather not face, so I change the subject to something lighter. We talk for a little longer, long enough for Dakota to walk home safely, and then say our goodbyes.
“Lylas,” she says, which is one of Dakota’s favorite words, meaning “love you like a sister” and I say it back, our own little secret language. When the phone line goes dead, I listen to the buzz of empty air for a moment. Then, knowing it’s too late to go back to sleep because if I do, I’ll never hear my alarm, I go through my morning rituals at a snail’s pace and it’s nice not to rush around for once.
By the time I get to work, I’m in a pretty good mood—it all depends on the day for me, it seems—and when my coffeeshop songwriter waltzes through the front doors of Infiniti’s, my heart does this crazy flutter in my chest like it’s grown a pair of monarch wings, destined to float away. He keeps coming here, so it can’t be a coincidence or because the coffee is exceptionally amazing, because I know better. But I don’t want to fool myself or get my hopes up.
“Hey you,” I say as he reaches the counter, his knee-melting smile in place, and let me tell you, it’s doing its job. I glance sidelong to see he’s brought Beartrap along, but the taller boy stands off to the side, idly flipping through the laminated pages of cake decorating options we have on display. Somehow I highly doubt he’s going to buy a cake. Just an educated guess.
“Hey,” he says, drawing my attention back to him, and then, “I’ve got a present for you.”
I freeze, my heart skidding like a car beginning to hydroplane, the tires of my mind vying for any sort of purchase on this new terrain. What? What does he mean? All I can do is gape at him; yes, I actually gape like a bottle-blonde idiot, my jaw hanging slack for one long moment before I manage to recover. “For me?”
“Yes, for you.” His grin has gone all goofy as he places a paper plate with a large slab of chocolate cake on the counter, then slides it over to me.
The yellow icing rose stares up at me and when my mind is finally able to process thoughts again—because this boy has a habit of striking me senseless—all I can think is: This is the most unique way a guy’s ever given me flowers before, and I can’t help but smile. I’m trying for confident and cool, but then I’m blushing. Damn it. “Thank you. It looks delicious.”
He looks delighted, like he’s waited all morning for this very m
oment, just to give a barista a slice of cake with a rich buttercream rose decorating the top, and damn. He grins. “You should know, but yeah, it’s great. Compliments to the chef.”
He continues to talk, but all I can focus on is the soft yellow of the rose, so intricately crafted, the way the little leaves curl around the base, and it looks so cavity-inducingly sweet. I finally glance back up at him, at the beautiful angel boy with his perfect hands who’s suddenly looking at me with such yearning in his brown eyes.
Yearning? For me?
An awkward silence stretches between us, neither of us knowing what to say. He backs up a step, letting out a soft chuckle, and it dawns on me that it’s a nervous sound. I make him nervous and it hits me that he definitely does not have a girlfriend.
“Well, we’d better get to class,” he says, scuffing the tip of his shoe across the carpet. My heart leaps at the same time my mind goes blank, and I start to say something but it dies on my lips as he gives a little wave, purses his lips in a smile, and says, “Bye, Teagan.”
He’s no more than turned around when Beartrap lets out a sound halfway between a grunt and a growl. “Damn it, Eli,” he says, striding towards us with both hands clenched at his sides, the muscles in his upper arms flexing. He grabs hold of his friend’s arm, spinning him back around, and Beartrap looks right at me.
His blue eyes are fierce and sharp like razors, but there’s pain below the surface, unspoken words still yet to be born. “Hey there,” he says, his voice low. “Would you go out with my love-struck buddy here? He’s kind of enamored, if you hadn’t noticed.” Gruff and straight to the point and…I like it.
But Eli doesn’t. He presses his eyes shut, his face flushed and he looks so beyond flustered. He punches Beartrap in the arm, but the other guy’s built like a tank and it doesn’t seem to faze him. “I’m sorry,” Eli mutters, looking at me for a moment before his gaze flits away. “He has no tact. Come on.” He turns on his heel and walks away, probably trying to save what’s left of his pride, and I almost let him go.
Neverlost (Melodies and Memories) Page 3
