Cherry Beats

by Vicki James

  It was usually moments like that, when I least expected it, that he turned up. Not in the flesh, but the sound of his heavy rhythm hitting those drums was a calling to me I’d not yet learned how to switch off.

  The whole bar erupted at once when they heard him hit those sticks four times.

  Then boom. The place was on fire.

  And all I could do was close my eyes and let the freezing cold-water spill over the rim of the glass when his band’s hit song dragged me under.

  God dances in time with the crime.

  God drifts with you, judging your fears, your tears, your clockwork gears.

  God ain’t the thief.

  She ain’t the liar.

  She ain’t the boom, ain’t the rat, ain’t the town, ain’t the crier.

  She’s whole.

  Your soul.

  Your goal.

  Your partner in crime.

  And if you ain’t see the signs of her life,

  Then your body’s gonna be on fire.

  Fire.

  Fire…

  And suddenly, I wasn’t in the bar anymore. I was with him—letting his hands roam over my waist while I locked up the bar on that fateful night three years ago.

  I hissed, bouncing on my toes as I tried to turn the heavy key in the lock. I’d been going for looking cool and slick, but with Presley’s chest pressed to my back and those sweet breaths of his against my neck, I was becoming heady and uncoordinated.

  “Need some help?” His lips brushed against the lobe of my ear.

  “Funny how you’re offering up help but only actually dishing out distractions.”

  “I can’t wait to get you home and fuck you.”

  Presley slid a hand between my legs, his palm rubbing over the heat I was trying to hide beneath leather trousers. I groaned, inhaling shaky breaths, ready to throw off my clothes in the middle of the street and let him screw me up against the glass doors. But he slowly began to pull his hand away, leaving me aching, wanting and on fire. One touch. One touch had my knees feeling weak.

  Tonight was going to break me forever.

  Curling his fingers around my hand, Presley lifted the heavy handle on the door and turned the key with me. Slowly. Precisely. With very little effort at all.

  “Are you good at everything?” I asked in a whisper.

  “Yes.”

  “Humble, too.”

  “I refuse to live in this self-deprecating age, Cherry. It’s creating addicts, depression, and suicide on every corner. Just because I know what I’m good at, it doesn’t mean I don’t know my faults, too.”

  “You have faults?” I scoffed, tucking the key away in the safety of my bag and turning to face him. His piercing eyes shot me straight in the vagina with a passion bullet.

  Presley raised a brow and smirked weakly. It was barely there, which made it sexier.

  “Care to tell me just one of them?” I wrapped my bag over my shoulder and tugged it down by my side. “You know, so when you leave me behind for the glitz, glamour, and the Victoria’s Secret models, I can reminisce about this one fault of yours and think to myself, ‘Fuck that loser. He was damaged goods. I’m glad he left town, dragging his fault in tow.’”

  His huff of laughter was sexy, too. Shocker. No surprise. Maybe I should just stop telling you he’s sexy, and you can assume that from every single moment from here on in that Presley Aron West was fucking sexy.

  “I’m selfish,” he said like it was the simplest thing to state.

  “How selfish are we talking?”

  “Level ten. Easy.”

  “Of how many levels?”

  “Not that many. Maybe five.”

  “Going off the scale? Gotcha.” I groaned.

  Presley stepped forward, closing the gap between us, and dragged the pad of his thumb over my pouting bottom lip.

  “Unless I’m in bed,” he whispered, his bright eyes staring down at me. “In bed, I’m all about charity.”

  I blew out a breath as I looked up at him.

  “You scared?” he asked softly.

  “Little bit.”

  Presley cupped my face and leaned in closer. “Don’t worry, Cherry. Your body will burn, but you sure as shit won’t be in Hell.”

  And with one slip of his tongue, I was his.

  “Hey, lady! You deaf or something?”

  I felt a hand slip around mine—the one that was now numbed by cold water, unable to do anything as the glass slipped from my fingers and bounced on the bottom of the sink. I snapped my eyes open and stared at it, expecting it to be shattered to pieces, but all I could see was one long, single crack that ran from the base to the rim, like a scar that had been slashed in place, making it weak and unusable for anyone else ever again.

  Just like me.

  “Tess,” Bourbon whispered. He was close—right by my ear. “You did it again. You zoned out.”

  I quickly schooled my face and turned to him, my hand hanging out like I wasn’t in control of it. Bourbon grabbed a towel and wrapped it up, rubbing to generate some heat. “Sorry, love,” he said, turning to the waiting customer at the bar who was swaying on her too-high heels. “She cut herself. I need to get her in the back and administer first aid.”

  I hadn’t cut myself anywhere.

  “But I want another drink.”

  “Then you’ll have to go to the bar down the road. We’re done for the night.”

  “Hey! You haven’t rung the bell for last orders yet.”

  Bourbon reached behind him without hesitation and grabbed the rope that hung from the bell, tugging it three times before he called out, “Bar closed! Manager emergency. Sorry, folks.”

  The woman huffed and turned away.

  “You didn’t have to do that. You should have served her.”

  “This is the third time this month, Tess.”

  “Third time?”

  “The third time you’ve heard that damn song and gone somewhere else in your mind.” He looked up through worried eyes, and I couldn’t help but let my body sag as I stared at him. My sweet boss, who already had one daughter and didn’t need another one, with his innocent, dark grey eyes, his too-long brown hair, and his boss-next-door smile. “What’s going on?”

  “It’s a trigger,” I admitted. “That song. All of them.”

  “For the rock star?”

  “Fucking stupid, isn’t it?”

  “Not really. I was the same with Fliss’s mum. She stole my heart, rode on it for a while, then tossed it away when she decided I wasn’t worth riding for life.” He rubbed my fingers one by one before he threw the towel on the side and put his hands on his hips. “I’ve never been the same since, so I can’t stand here like a thirty-seven-year-old hypocrite and tell you to get over it because I never did.”

  “You’re thirty-seven?” I faked a gasp of surprise, rubbing my fingers back to life with my good hand. “Shit, I thought you were at least forty-five.”

  “Don’t make me fire your arse, dolly.”

  “Like you could cope without me.”

  “Like I’d want to.” He winked and leaned against the back shelf. “Get out of here.” He jerked his chin up and glanced towards the back rooms. “I’m locking up tonight, no arguing.”

  “But—”

  “Redundancies happen, Tess.”

  “Fine.” I huffed. “But I am saying one thing before I leave.”

  “Of course, you are.” He rolled his eyes.

  “I think we should turn this bar into an ’80s themed one. No Youth Gone Wild music around. That way, me zoning out won’t be a problem anymore. We don’t play his songs, and I don’t have to have an out of body experience every time Satan dressed in leather appears via the medium of a music video in every corner of this bloody place.”

  “That Satan dressed in leather is making me rich.”

  “Yeah,” I sighed, turning to leave. “And he’s making me miserable.”

  Chapter Six

  Presley’s face was on every b
illboard, magazine article, news feed, and Internet search—you name it, he stared back at me from it. There hadn’t been anything that had stalled him in his rise to success.

  Some people were made to be great. He was one of them.

  He was meant to be out there, a shining beacon for everyone to stare up at in awe.

  Sometimes the weeks would go by and I’d feel like I was coping just fine. In between track releases, a world tour, and his two albums being promoted, the universe had allowed me to settle into some kind of false security blanket, all cosy and warm, far away from any pain. Then a new shot of him would appear out of nowhere, being brooding and sincere like he was staring through the pages of a magazine into your darkest, most private thoughts. One look at him would strike me in the heart like a toxic arrow, and all the words we’d whispered, the places he’d touched, the moans he’d made me moan, and the cries he’d turned into screams… they haunted me.

  His eyes haunted me.

  His smirk haunted me.

  That damn, irreplaceable leather jacket haunted me. Every time I saw him wearing it in the magazines, I hitched in a breath, wondering if my name was still scrawled on the inside.

  The name I’d placed there with his permission.

  “Do you ever take that thing off?” I asked as the taxi bobbed along with the two of us twisted towards each other in the back seat.

  He glanced up at me and raised a brow. “I can keep it on when I put your legs over my shoulders if you’d like? Just give me the dream and I’ll use it against you.”

  “How do you do that?”

  “Fuck you with my jacket still on?”

  “No.” I smiled. “How do you reference sex so… casually?”

  Presley reached over and pinched my chin between his finger and thumb. “It’s what our bodies were created for. I don’t get why people make such a big deal about it.”

  “There’re no feelings involved for you… ever?”

  “Do you want me to lie to you? Would that make you feel better if I told you I’d loved the women I’d screwed?”

  “When you put it like that, no. I guess not.”

  “Listen—” He slid closer, avoiding all the laws and regulations about wearing a seatbelt in a moving car. He was a rock star. I guess a near-death experience would make for one hell of a song for him, anyway. Presley’s thighs pressed against mine, and he leaned in to whisper in my ear. “Just because I haven’t felt the need to give a tiny piece of my heart to a woman before, that doesn’t mean I never will. There’s no mask on me, Cherry. I’m open to anything. Everything. To living. To breathing. To being proven wrong. If you think you’re up for the challenge of proving me wrong… if you think you’re up for the challenge of making one night with you count more than it’s ever counted with any of those before you…” He reached up and pushed a lock of hair behind my ear. “Go for it.”

  “And if I win?” I asked, turning my head his way so our lips were only a whisper apart.

  “I’ll let you keep the damn jacket on my back.”

  “I could never take that from you.”

  “That’s up to you.”

  “Maybe I’ll just write my name in Sharpie on the inside as a reminder of that one time a cherry-haired, smart-mouthed bartender took on the big bad rocker with the too-cool-for-school heart, and she won.”

  “You have to do that first, though. Win.”

  “Those with nothing to lose have everything to gain.”

  “Damn, you make me hard.” He grinned devilishly, running a hand up my thigh before he slipped his palm between my legs and pressed down on my heat. “Peeling you out of these trousers is going to be a moment I’ll treasure forever. I just know it.”

  I rolled over in bed, dragging my pristine white bedsheets with me as I turned towards the sun that was streaming through the window of my shoebox apartment. It was a mild day in September. My favourite time of year. My usually pale skin had some colour from the summer sun, giving me a small spattering of fading freckles across the bridge of my nose. The weather was still warm enough to allow me to wear T-shirts all day, every day, sans jacket.

  The one good thing about working mostly evenings was that it allowed me to enjoy my days. It allowed me to never miss a warm afternoon or the opportunity to hit the streets, even if just for a small walk. Today, however, I wanted nothing more than to enjoy the quiet of my apartment. I wanted to sit, lay down, stay in my short-short pyjama set, not wear a bra, not brush my hair, and let last night’s mascara linger under the bags of my eyes. That’s exactly what I planned to do. I was going to take a selfish day, just like Presley took a selfish day every day of his life, right? If it was good enough for him, it was good enough for me.

  The eye roll I reprimanded myself with was instant. That was the problem with having hit the jackpot just once. Everything reminded you of it. Every. Little. Damn. Annoying. Thing.

  The ache between my legs when I lay in bed and thought of him was brutal.

  The constant hum and throb physically hurt like he’d left some kind of calling card there that let him know whenever I was thinking about him, and the ghost of pre-famous Presley would come back to taunt me with his absence, pressing his gentle yet firm fingers right where he wanted them.

  If I bite you here, you’ll feel it for life.

  When the thoughts of him became too much, and my mind wouldn’t cooperate with my happiness, I would try to keep my hands busy. In bed, that meant masturbation. But masturbation always led to the very thoughts of him I wanted to avoid. So that morning, I avoided slipping my fingers between my thighs and I decided to reach for my Kindle to read instead. The first page I turned to on the latest novel I was reading mentioned the rock drumming legend from Led Zeppelin, and that reminded me of a conversation I’d had with Presley that had set my soul on fire. Led Zeppelin were his thing. The gods the god himself worshipped. A small smile tried to break free before I bit that traitorous bastard back. Without realising it, I’d launched my Kindle across my bed, and then I was holding my breath as it bounced one too many times and landed on the rug with a thud.

  I threw my head back on my pillow in exasperation, pushing the heels of my hands into my already battered eyes, trying to rid him from my brain with force.

  These days were the worst—the ones where I wanted peace, to stop the heavy twisting and gnawing of my gut, and to at least imagine what it must feel like to have a future that wasn’t based around a rock god and his magic hands.

  “Fine!” I cried out to no one in particular as I threw the duvet back, slammed my feet on the floor and stood up. “You win! I’m up. I’m up. I’m up. God forbid I should actually stop for a minute. Or, you know, move the fuck on with my life.”

  Readjusting the shoulders of my twisted Black Sabbath T-shirt, I made my way into the small kitchenette where I filled the kettle, flicking the switch on like I was angry. I was angry, frustrated, and horny as hell.

  My phone rang—my best friend’s name lighting up the screen.

  “Hey, Molly.”

  “Morning, sunshine,” she cooed, clearly in a state of euphoria that could only mean one thing.

  “Someone sounds like they had a head between their legs last night.”

  The kettle clicked off, and I trapped the phone between my shoulder and cheek to free up both hands, scooping two teaspoons of coffee into my cup. I needed that extra hit.

  “Try two heads.”

  “Two?” I almost choked.

  “Yep.” Molly laughed. “Taylor and Evan. Twins. Hot, hot twins, Tess.”

  “Where the hell did you find two brothers willing to fuck each other?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” Her laugh was hearty and made me feel like a damn juvenile speaking to the goddess of sex. “They didn’t touch each other. Well… not really. But they touched me. A lot. Oh, hell. I think I’m going to be tingling for days, Tess. Things like this don’t happen to girls like me.”

  “Christ, are you kidding me? Things like th
is always happen to you! It’s me they never happen to.” I chuckled lightly.

  “Says the girl who fucked the hottest rock star on the planet.” Just like that, my smile was stolen. “I still don’t get why you mope over him. I’d be taking an advert out in the local newspaper, telling everyone about that one night I discovered Nirvana.”

  “Well, he sure banged like Dave Grohl.” I sighed as I stirred my milk in my coffee.

  “You know what I meant. He was your paradise. Own it.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “And don’t roll your eyes at me.”

  “You’re bossy this morning.”

  “I’m always bossy,” she cried out, her energy infectious. “I’m a bossy diva who got to screw a set of hot twins last night. You’re a quirky back chatter who will never screw anyone ever again if she doesn’t let go of Mr Leather and Drumsticks.”

  “I’m so glad you called,” I said through a sarcastic smile. “I love you, and goodbye now.”

  “No, no, no!” Molly called out. “Don’t hang up. I’m sorry. There’s another reason I called, I promise.”

  I sighed. “This better be good.”

  “Have you seen any of the news this morning?” Her voice changed instantly, now injected with caution.

  “No.” I paused. “Why?”

  “You might want to turn on your TV and take a look.”

  I slipped the phone back into my free hand and pressed it firmly against my ear, picked up my mug of coffee, and turned around to face my switched-off television screen.

  “What’s this about, Molly?” I dared myself to ask.

  “It’s Presley.”

  “What about him?”

  “Don’t freak out, but—”

  “Molly…”

  “He’s been arrested, Tess. His face is all over the news. He’s everywhere, and it doesn’t look good.”

  Chapter Seven

  His face was everywhere, angry and twisted when the news channels showed the clip of him throwing the punch that landed him in trouble. Presley’s jaw was tight, his eyes wild as he swung his fist straight into the face of a guy in the crowd.