Tyler & Stella (Tattoo Thief)

by Tretheway, Heidi Joy

  Jayce is nearest Gavin and his eyes flick back to where we’re sitting, prompting more squeals from the girls near me. They must be with him. Dave and Tyler bring up the rear, controlling each song with careful syncopation, a driving rhythm I feel through my whole body.

  I follow Tyler through each transition, in awe of the power of his body and the way he moves. His instrument is a part of him, and as I watch, I imagine his fingers on me. He could be holding my neck the way he holds the neck of his bass, grasping my hair, pulling my face back for a kiss.

  ***

  I spring from my chair as soon as the performance ends, my body aching with need. Beryl senses my urge to escape and I follow her through the dim backstage corridor to a green room where the roar of the crowd finally recedes. I scan the room for drinks but all I see is an ice bucket with bottles of water and beer.

  No hard liquor. Damn.

  Beryl twists the top off a water bottle and offers it to me, but I grab a beer, slamming it on the side of a dressing table with my fist to pop the top. I tip it up and glug it down, feeling cold liquid rush down my throat.

  It’s not enough to get my buzz back, but it’s a start.

  “Wasn’t that amazing?” Beryl gushes, kicking off her flats (Flats! Where are the sexy shoes I helped her buy?) and tucking her feet beneath her on the couch.

  I leave my platform Mary Jane heels on and park my butt on the other end of the couch, offering a noncommittal nod. I’m afraid I’ll betray how deeply Tyler rocked me. “Uh, yeah, it was good.”

  “Seriously? That’s all you thought of it? They did an acoustic set and you’ve got the best seat in the house, and all you can say is good?” Beryl narrows her eyes at me. “Something’s up. Spill it, sister.”

  I so don’t want to have this conversation right now. The specter of being out on my ass tomorrow frightens me. “I’m just distracted. You know, other stuff.”

  “I don’t know. You won’t tell me, but I know something happened. I heard Tyler had to pull you out of a crowd.”

  My face burns hot at the memory of his strong arms hoisting me out of the chaos. I remember how he sandwiched my body between himself and the stage to protect me.

  And I remember the way his arms encircled me later that night, pulling me close for the kiss on the bridge.

  “Who told you? Tyler or Gavin?”

  “Gav. But there’s more, right? Gav says Tyler’s been weird about it, too. What’s got you all sideways?”

  Beryl’s sweet face is open and gentle, and I cringe at the memory of what I did to her. And yet here she is, worried about me. I don’t deserve this. The least I can give her is the truth, but I sidestep what’s really bothering me.

  “Tomorrow I have to move out of the room I’ve been staying in. Neil’s roommate is coming back from her trip and I haven’t found a new place yet.” I’m lucky my interim apartment lasted as long as it did.

  “Oh, Stella. I’m sorry.”

  I shrug, trying to force down my building panic because a crappy hotel will probably be my new address and I can’t afford to live that way for long. “I didn’t look that hard for a roommate at first because I thought July would shake new housing options loose with the end of the school year. I was wrong.”

  The band bursts into the green room, sweaty and laughing, high from applause at their first concert in more than two months. The girls trail them, tittering and fawning over Jayce.

  “We’ve got our mojo back!” Gavin shouts triumphantly and he pulls Beryl from the couch for a deep, lingering kiss.

  “Get a room!” Dave wolf-whistles to them and hands around drinks, pressing a cold beer to Gavin’s cheek to get them to knock it off. Gavin bounces on the couch beside Beryl and she snuggles into him, oblivious to his sweat-slicked arms and soaked shirt.

  Tyler crosses the room and whips his sweaty T-shirt over his head, drawing a gasp from one of the girls who instantly moves in his direction. He rummages in his backpack and my eyes are glued to his skin.

  When he pulls a green T-shirt from his backpack and puts it on, my face heats in recognition. It’s the same shirt I wore at his loft last week.

  Maybe Tyler feels my eyes on his body because he turns and skewers me with his gaze. I feel it piercing my chest, a direct hit that could easily take me down.

  “You came.” His voice is soft but it carries across the room. The girl edging toward Tyler slows and her eyes narrow, a possessive glance flicking to me.

  I can’t tell if Tyler thinks my presence is a good thing or a bad thing. Even though Beryl and I had backstage passes, we were hidden from the band’s sightline throughout the show. I should have gone home after the final number, but I wanted to see him again.

  I had to. His kiss lingers on me like a brand, and I touch my lips with my fingertips, remembering the electricity that passed between us.

  Tyler sees me do this and turns away. I curse myself for my unintended gesture.

  Gavin boosts himself off the couch and regroups with the guys, talking set lists and packing up instruments as they drain their beers. The girls cluster on another couch. My beer bottle sits empty in my lap and I pick at the label, desperate for a distraction.

  “So what are you going to do?” Beryl asks, taking up our conversation from where the boys interrupted us. “You can’t just go live in a hotel for more than a night or two. Have you tried Craigslist? Did you post something at NYU?”

  “Yes and yes. But everything was either out of my price range or pretty freaking scary. I’m not trying to be picky. I just need somewhere clean that isn’t too far from the music venues. I can’t blow fifty bucks a night on cab fare after a show.”

  “You need a place?” Jayce asks, his sharp eyes on me. “Tyler’s got room.”

  I don’t know whose head snaps up faster, Tyler’s or mine.

  “I lived with him for a while before I got my place.” Jayce turns to Tyler and grins. “You’re always taking in strays.”

  “I couldn’t impose,” I backpedal, firing off excuses as soon as they form in my brain. “I wouldn’t want to be in the way. There’s no privacy in that big loft. I—I’ll keep looking. Something will turn up.”

  Tyler tilts his head. “What do you need?” His voice is hoarse from the performance.

  “I’m just looking for shared housing. Somewhere in the city. I’ve been borrowing a room and the girl who lives there is coming back from her trip.”

  “Somewhere safe.” Tyler is nodding and it’s freaking me out. Why should he care? Especially after everything that happened between us on the Fourth of July, why should my stupid housing predicament matter to him?

  “It sounds like you had a crazy time while we were in Oregon,” Gavin says, shifting the conversation. “Tyler told me about how the fence collapsed on you at Indie Day. How he played doctor.”

  “Playing doctor?” Jayce chuckles at the innuendo. One of the girls rubs against him and I can tell she’s got plans for him tonight.

  “No. It was nothing like that.” Tyler holds up his hands. “It was strictly platonic.”

  His omission stings, discounting the kisses we shared on the bridge and at his loft.

  “Don’t worry about it, Beryl,” I say, but I mean it for Tyler. “I’m a big girl. I can find something.”

  Gavin reclaims his spot on the couch next to Beryl and she beckons me closer. “Do it, Stella. Let him help,” she whispers, and only Gavin and I hear her. “Don’t be too proud to accept.”

  I scrunch up my face, my back to Tyler so he can’t see my reaction. It’s too embarrassing to let him help me like this. Also: why is he helping me? I don’t want to be the person who asks for handouts.

  “You’re a friend of the band now. We stick together,” Gavin adds.

  “I—I can’t.”

  I feel my pocket vibrate and pull out my phone, surprised to see two voicemails and six new texts since I last checked before the concert started. I excuse myself to a corner of the green room to retrieve them. They�
��re all from Neil.

  The voicemails are fairly polite, but the texts get progressively more desperate:

  Neil [8:02 p.m.]: Have you found a place yet?

  Neil [8:27 p.m.]: I need to know for sure when you’re moving.

  Neil [8:44 p.m.]: Violet is coming home a day early. Where the hell are you?

  Neil [8:51 p.m.]: You’d better get here and get your shit out of Violet’s room NOW.

  Neil [9:23 p.m.]: You can’t just ignore me! I threw your crap back in your bags and I am not happy.

  Neil [10:05 p.m.]: Violet is back. I hope you’re planning to stay somewhere else tonight. You owe me lunch tomorrow.

  I curse, a filthy string of expletives that trumps anything I heard on the subway on my way to the concert. As I turn, I run into a tall, lean wall the size and shape of Tyler.

  And damn, this wall smells fantastic—cedar and spice and sweat.

  Tyler’s chocolate eyes twinkle as he looks down at me. “Potty mouth.”

  “Sometimes, there are just no other words.” I try to move past him but he slides to his right and blocks my way.

  “There are always other words, Stella.”

  “OK, then, I just want to use that word. Because with the week I’ve had, I want to drop an F-bomb in every fucking sentence.”

  I drain my beer and put it down on a table harder than I intend. It hits with a clang. “Shit.”

  “Stella. What’s really going on?”

  I feel my face heating, as if I could be any more mortified than I already am. I do not want to be rescued. I can handle myself, and I have for four years. But Tyler anchors his arm against the wall on one side of me and his body is close enough that I’m trapped.

  “You can stay at the loft. I still have the blow-up mattress Jayce used, and some blankets and stuff. You can stay if you promise not to write anything scandalous without asking me first.”

  Tyler’s condition stings. He still doesn’t trust me. I drag my gaze from the center of his chest up to his eyes. I swear sparks fly from them, but they’re lit with amusement, not desire.

  He’s laughing at me.

  This can’t get any more demeaning.

  “Stella? Are you OK?” Beryl sees the distress on my face and rescues me from Tyler’s taunting gaze, pulling me out from under his arm. As I brush past him, I feel our skin connect for a split-second, and an electric current hums in my veins.

  Beryl squeezes my hand and pulls me several yards away, then turns to face me. “You look like you just swallowed a bug or something. Did Tyler say something rude to you?”

  I frown. “No. It wasn’t that. He was just, uh, correcting my colorful language.” I force a laugh. “When it rains, it pours. Violet came back from her trip a day early, so Neil packed up my shit and told me I have to get out immediately.”

  “So what’s the problem? You can just go to Tyler’s tonight. It’ll be fine. Come on.” Again, Beryl grabs my hand—it still smarts a bit from the fence disaster—and she tows me in her wake to Gavin, where she explains that they’ll be taking me to Neil’s, grabbing my stuff and then moving it to Tyler’s. Immediately.

  I haven’t said yes to staying with Tyler. I don’t want to admit how fragile my life is, or how much I need this help.

  I’m stunned by Beryl’s efficiency and how much she’s changed since she moved to New York. Gone is the shy, careful girl who overthinks everything. In a heartbeat, she made this decision for me, and tonight I don’t have the spirit to say no.

  ***

  Beryl and Gavin let me stop at a liquor store before we go to Neil’s and I buy a bottle of vodka for Tyler’s freezer and twin bottles of wine for Neil and Violet.

  We climb three flights of stairs to the apartment and a tall, gaunt woman about my age answers the door. This must be Violet. Her red hair is greasy and she has dark circles under her eyes.

  “Hi! I’m Stella. I brought you this,” I say with forced cheerfulness, pushing a wine bottle at her. I hope it will ease any awkwardness about me not getting out of her room in time. Neil said he asked for her permission before I moved in, but I still feel weird about intruding.

  “Thank you?” Her words end on a high note and it feels like a question. She steps back and opens the door wider, our signal to go inside.

  My stuff is in a heap in the living room: a suitcase, two duffel bags, two boxes and a trash bag full of laundry. It’s the same way Blayde threw my stuff together and pushed me out, and it kills my mood.

  “Is Neil here?”

  “He went out for a drink with some friends.” Violet looks at Gavin more closely and knits her eyebrows. “Wait. Are you an actor?”

  “Uh, no.” Gavin plays dumb and I suppress a snort.

  “I recognize you. Are you one of Neil’s friends?”

  “Never met the guy. Sorry.”

  “Huh. You just look really familiar.” Violet sways and it looks like she’s drunk or suffering from severe sleep deprivation from her trip.

  “Hey, you’re probably tired. We’ll just grab this stuff and get out of your way, OK?” I cross the room and pick up the heaviest suitcase, but Gavin pulls it out of my hands and points to the lighter duffel bags for me and Beryl to lift.

  We make a trip downstairs to load my junk in the car and then come back for the rest. Violet hangs back in the corner of the room.

  Before I pick up the last box, I pull my phone out of my back pocket. “What’s your number?” I ask.

  “For what?”

  “For your phone? I’m going to text you my phone number in case you find something in your room that Neil forgot to pack for me. Can you text me and I’ll come get it?” I don’t want to annoy this girl any further by going through her room to find the last of my stuff.

  “Oh. Sure.” She rattles off a number and I type it into my phone. Her phone pings when I shoot her a quick message.

  “Thanks. And welcome back.” I grab my last box and follow Beryl and Gavin down the stairs to the next place I can’t call home.

  FOURTEEN

  I’m more than a little self-conscious about the fact that one of America’s most popular rock bands is helping me move. Tyler, Jayce and Dave are waiting for us outside when the car pulls up to Tyler’s building.

  Jayce must have dismissed his harem for the evening.

  Beryl and I don’t get to carry much as the guys grab my bags and boxes and trudge to the freight elevator tucked behind the first-floor stairs.

  Tyler slams the metal grate closed and pushes a button with the number five nearly worn off of it. With all six of us and my stuff inside, the elevator groans and creaks and takes five full minutes to reach the top floor.

  No wonder Tyler prefers the stairs.

  Tyler directs them to set my stuff in the storage area under his bed loft, now empty of the junk I saw there earlier. Instead, an air mattress has a stack of sheets on it and a small shelf stands empty in the corner, presumably for my things.

  “See you tomorrow night,” Jayce calls to Tyler. “Welcome home, Stella,” he adds. He comes close to me, so only I can hear his voice, and I catch a strange look of apprehension on his face. “Be good to Tyler, OK? He’s good to everyone else. He’d give you the shirt off his back. He deserves to have more good come back his way.”

  I feel like he’s telling me part of a riddle and I need more clues. I open my mouth to ask, but Jayce cuts off my question.

  “I can’t say more. Just—look out for him, OK? He loves to protect others, but he needs us to watch out for him.”

  ***

  After Beryl and the rest of the band leave Tyler’s loft, I feel the silence they’ve left behind in the tiny noises remaining.

  Tyler’s bare feet padding across the wood floor. The bathroom faucet running. The soft bumps of instruments removed from cases and placed in their stands. The hum of electricity from the refrigerator and the clack of the ice cube maker.

  I make my new bed and unpack, spreading my things across the old quilt and sorting cl
othes onto the shelves. Things could be worse—they could be so much worse—but I’m sad that this is my New York life more than a year into trying to make it here.

  A borrowed space, not even a room.

  A roommate who doesn’t trust me and might even be repulsed by me.

  A life that can be packed into a few bags and boxes.

  And a past that still haunts me.

  When I was a teenager, I imagined moving to New York to live a glamorous life beneath the lights of Broadway. I’m small, but Kristin Chenoweth is tiny. I knew every show’s music by heart and I was pretty confident I’d be a decent understudy to a Broadway star.

  Lie. I was totally fucking full of myself.

  It’s that kind of confidence that will make you believe lies. Have you ever seen the talent search agencies that come to the mall? They put up glitzy posters and promise pretty girls they can make it as actresses in Hollywood or models in New York—all it takes is one big break.

  And a three-hundred-dollar photo session. And some consulting fees, acting classes, and a percentage to the talent scout. They say they’ll help you make it big, and the pretty girls believe them and plunk down their parents’ money and do the headshots and classes.

  But nothing ever happens for them, and the talent scout moves on to the next mall. They’re not scouting for models. They’re scouting for suckers who will pay for their flattery.

  I never fell for that bullshit.

  I knew being pretty was just the ante to get in the game, which is why I spent hours before and after school at voice and dance lessons. I knew I couldn’t just be the best in my school—that was easy—I had to be the best by far.

  It was no surprise that I got into Manser Academy, the Bay Area’s answer to Juilliard. I felt like it was preordained. And fate brought a hot New York theater director to be our artist-in-residence my freshman year.