A Cruel Kind of Beautiful (Sex, Love, and Rock & Roll Series Book 1)

by Michelle Hazen

  I won’t put myself through that again.

  I glance away and he says, achingly, “Jera...”

  “It’s nothing you did.” I duck out from under his arm. It puts me farther from the door but it also puts me far enough away from Jacob so I can pretend to forget the way he smells like trees and open air and everything clean and beautiful. “I told you, I’m not looking for anything but a friend right now. That’s all I want, all I can give you.”

  His eyes darken with hurt. “I’m not an idiot, Jera. I see the way you look at me. You don’t want to be just friends any more than I do. I know you’re not dating anyone and you—” He spreads his hands. “I thought you liked me.”

  I suck in a hard breath, guilt sucker-punching me straight in the chest. “I like you just fine, okay? As a—”

  “Don’t even say it. Look, I’m not in the greatest place to be dating either but that doesn’t change how I feel. So give it to me straight, because I actually want to know. Why can’t we?”

  I’ve got no room to deflect, or even to misinterpret. He’s asking for everything, and if I’m a mess about relationships, I’m a disaster wrapped in a plane crash when it comes to sex. How can I tell this nude model I’m such an ice cube in bed that my partners go cold right along with me? I’d rather tell him I have freaking AIDS. I glance at the door. Herpes, maybe? Would that be a less embarrassing lie?

  He shoves his hands into his pockets, muscles flexing all down his arms. “I know you have a lot going on, with your music and school and everything, but why can’t we at least try? I think we might be a freakishly good match. Like how you like the blue M&Ms best but I like yellow ones, and you said you thrash really bad in your sleep, but I could sleep through a tsunami.”

  If I thought my hands were trembling before, it’s nothing compared to now. He’s so damn sweet and I can’t stand the thought that someday he might start to hate me, the way Andy did.

  “Everybody’s life is complicated. I—” He hesitates and changes tack. “We could make it work. We could.”

  I don’t realize I’m shaking my head until his face falls. He pulls his hands out of his pockets, takes another step closer, and I nearly break for the back exit. Somewhere behind us, someone coughs.

  “Did someone hurt you?” he says hoarsely. “Please tell me no one hurt you, Jera.”

  It’s the gentleness that does it, because now I know what pain looks like in his eyes, and I never want to see it again. I’m quivering like my sins are crying out of my body all at once and then between one breath and the next, I just...snap.

  “No one hurt me!” I explode. “I hurt people, Jacob, I do. You want to know why we can’t date? Because yeah, it’d be great for a while. We’d laugh and fool around and you’d go to my shows but in the end it would just hurt more. It can’t go anywhere after that, because I’m fucking frigid, okay? Do you really want a girlfriend who’s bad in bed? Maybe you like me now but I promise it wouldn’t last long after that.”

  And it’s a mercy, really, because I don’t have to watch Jacob’s reaction after all. I’m crying too hard to see it. He only takes the briefest of instants to process all that before he speaks, ducking his head so his words are just between us.

  “Is that what you’ve been worrying about? Jera, there’s no way you could disappoint me in bed.” He takes a breath but instead of explaining what he meant, he just shakes his head gently. “We’re not even there yet, okay? We’ll take it slow and I can tell you right now that wherever our relationship goes, we’re never going to do anything you don’t want to do.”

  He sounds so much like Andy did in the beginning that the tears blind my eyes all over again. And I know, I fucking know sex isn’t the only thing I screw up with guys. But it’s the red, beating heart at the center of everything I’ve got no clue how to solve.

  “Yeah, maybe that’s how it would start.” I pull my phone out of my pocket, ripping out the earbuds and punching the buttons that pull up my voicemail. If I’m going to disappoint him anyway, I’m going to do it right now, while we’re both still clothed. “But you want to hear how it ends?” I slap my phone against his chest. “That’s how it ends.”

  I leave my phone behind and walk out of the bar without keys or a wallet or even a coat, escaping toward the parking lot while Jacob listens to Andy’s recorded voice saying he can’t perform with any girl now, not just me. Telling me he doesn’t even feel like a man anymore, and he doesn’t know how he’s supposed to live out the rest of his life like this.

  And it is all my fault.

  SHIT, IT’S FREEZING out here. Portland in October usually isn’t bad, but my sweat-dampened tank top offers no protection from the cold wind whipping past the tall lampposts that light the parking lot. Where did my parents park, Canada?

  A hand touches my goosebumpy arm, and a sob sticks in my throat. No, no, no. I can’t face Jacob right after he heard Andy’s humiliating voicemail. I rip my arm free and keep going.

  “I’m sorry. Miss?” The voice is deeply uncomfortable. And it does not belong to Jacob.

  I shove tears off my face and allow myself one quick sniffle before I turn around.

  It’s a man wearing a sharp-collared dress shirt, looking both calmer and older than the rest of tonight’s crowd. To his credit, his hairline is only receding a little. “That was an incredible show you played tonight.”

  At any other time, that compliment would have made my whole week. “Thanks.” I manage something in the neighborhood of a smile and turn back around, scanning past Priuses and a metric shit-ton of identical Subaru Outbacks. With my luck tonight, I’ll steal the wrong white Subaru with its keys hidden oh-so-sneakily under the bumper and it’ll end up belonging to someone who isn’t genetically required to forgive me.

  The man steps into my field of vision again. “Hold on a second. Could I buy you a drink, so we can talk?”

  Seriously, Grandpa? You’re gonna hit on me right now? I only turn back halfway, my eyes still scanning the rows of cars. “Sorry, I have to get going.”

  He grimaces. “This is obviously a bad time, and I hate to bother you, but I can’t find either of your bandmates.”

  Of course he can’t. Jax always vanishes for a while after shows, and Danny’s almost as bad. I know exactly where they disappear to. Even if I don’t always know who they disappear with.

  “I didn’t want to leave without talking to someone from the band, but you seemed, um, busy.” He clears his throat.

  Was this guy standing there, waiting to talk to me when Jacob and I had our blowup? I remember that awkward cough in the foyer. My face burns. Great. I finally get a fan eager enough to follow me outside and I shout out that I’m frigid. A fact he will probably plaster all over the internet tomorrow. Could this night possibly suck any worse?

  He takes a card out of his pocket and offers it to me. “We can talk later, if another time would be better. I’m Rob Righetti, with Amp Records.”

  Oh shit, oh God, I just gave the brush-off to a freaking label scout. Jax is going to dismember me.

  “Now.” I gulp. “Now is great.”

  “I liked your set.” Rob smiles, holding up the two CDs we had for sale at the bar tonight as evidence. The top one is our latest self-release, the cover featuring an artsy black and white picture of Danny’s right hand on his frets, the focus on the bass clef tattoo on his index finger. “We’d like to hear more from you.”

  I nod. Yes. I will play him all of the music. Right now.

  “Do you have a demo of anything you haven’t released yet?”

  “Yes, yup. Three songs.” They’re not exactly recorded yet but I will do that immediately, in this parking lot, if it means getting them in front of a real record label. The wind gusts and I shiver and hug my arms over my chest, cupping his business card in my hand so I won’t crease it.

  “Is that bass and voice duet included in the three? I would very much like to hear that one with some studio balance added.” He glances at his watch. “I�
��m so sorry to gab and run, but I’ve got a plane to catch. Send me those three songs and the duet as soon as you can, and we’ll talk more after I give them a listen.”

  “Yes, I will absolutely do that. Thank you so much. I’m uh—sorry I was busy earlier.” I wince.

  “No big deal.” He winks at me. “Emotions always run hot in the music industry. Send me that demo, okay?” He walks away, shoes quiet on the asphalt.

  I gulp in a deep breath. A chance at a record deal. My wildest dream dressed in a pin-striped collar with no tie, right after I just put my heart through the wringer for another guy.

  This is a sign. The timing is so perfect it can’t be anything else. I’m never going to be able to have a relationship. But I can have a band, and maybe I can fill myself up with music until I hardly notice all the other empty spaces anymore.

  It’s just that every time we finish a set, it leaves sensuality pumping through the room, like rock music is the air that sex needs to breathe. For the last couple years, it’s been a taunt, a Catch-22. I can perform the music I love, thrive on doing what I’m better at than any other thing in the world. And yet the aftermath always reminds me of the thing I’m worst at, the most intrinsic way I’m defective.

  I stare down at the business card in my shaking hand with tears still drying on my cheeks. There’s no doubt it’s a brilliant, crazy world we live in.

  It’s just a cruel kind of beautiful.

  Chapter 14: Raccoon-gnawed Romance

  What do you do after the best and worst day of your life?

  Apparently, you listen to everyone in your life nag you with eighteen different iterations of “What did the label scout say again?” and then you go to work.

  One single shift and a double. Sixteen hours straight in the studio to nail four songs. Two skipped classes you don’t mention to your mother. Several hundred ignominiously borrowed dollars from your father to pay for said studio time. Add all that to putting up with a lifetime’s worth of muttering about how the only song specifically requested was the only one that didn’t include his voice, and maybe it’s understandable if you end the weekend by attempting to strangle your lead singer with a dish towel.

  When the record label calls to set a meeting after only two days, it’s worth it. Everything is worth it, and I hate that even in the midst of the best news I’ve ever had, I can’t stop thinking about Jacob. Most nights, I stay up writing songs with Danny just so I won’t have to go home and face the darkness of my own windows.

  By Friday, I’m so exhausted I don’t even remember going to sleep. One minute, I’m going cross-eyed trying to concentrate on my homework while I count down the seconds until our meeting with Amp Records, and the next I wake up with freezing legs and pain bulleting through my back. An abandoned textbook and an afghan cover my chest, the bottom of the blanket kicked onto the floor.

  I stretch my neck, wincing at the kink it always gets from sleeping on the tiny couch, with its armrest that's just a couple of inches too tall for comfort. Afternoon light streams through the shades on my brand-new window, but if a sound woke me up, I hear no trace of it now.

  I lift my textbook and peek at the page number to check how far I got. Not far enough. Groaning, I drop the book back down and rub my eyes. I have a deathly feeling there will be a quiz on these chapters tomorrow. I'll just lie here for another minute and then I'll take a shower and get ready for the meeting. I pull the blanket back up over my legs. Granna’s old afghan has a comforting weight to it, all the yards of yarn cuddled around my body. I don't even realize I've started to doze again until a shuffling sound outside the door rouses me.

  Who would be out there so close to the door without ringing the bell?

  My heart lurches and I’m suddenly fully awake. Every day since the concert, Jacob has left something on my porch. The first morning, he returned my phone, hiding it under my newspaper so no one would steal it. He erased Andy’s ancient voicemail and left a new one in its place. I stared at Jacob’s name gleaming on my screen, every letter curved, gentle with no sharp edges, and I knew without a shadow of a doubt that if I listened to his voice, I’d crumble. I’d go chasing after him and pretty soon, I’d be ditching band practice to work on cars, spending Friday nights with his old baseball teammates instead of Jax and Danny.

  The best way to keep from losing myself again is to keep from trying altogether.

  I just wish he’d stop tempting me. The second day after the concert, he left me another voicemail, two text messages, and knee socks with drums all over them. The third day, soup.

  Gluten-free lentil soup.

  It was the only item in Jacob’s grocery cart when he was pretending to shop so he’d have an excuse to run into me. I tried not to read too much into that but really, what else could it have meant? It’s not like he’s concerned about me needing a low-carb, high-protein diet.

  Except what kind of guy would realize the symbolism of something like that, and even if he did, how could he have known I took note of what was in his basket before he put it back?

  Something scratches from outside, then something almost...crunchy. What the hell is Jacob doing? Is he waiting out there?

  I rub my eyes, grimacing. “Yeah right, Jera. One kiss and he’s camping on your doorstep, for sure.”

  Obviously, I need some caffeine to help rein in my fantasies. Still, I'm not imagining the sounds from outside. They are distinct, and distinctly bizarre.

  I toss away the one corner of the afghan that still covers me and retrieve the textbook that dropped between the cushions, marking my place before I lay it on the floor. Combing my fingers through the tangles in my hair, I pad over to the door and squint through the peephole.

  Nothing.

  I lean my forehead against the cool wood of the front door. There’s no way it’s anyone but Jacob, even though it’s way past newspaper-delivering time. I texted him once, to say thanks for bringing back my phone, and sorry, for everything. I don’t dare do more, because I don’t want to lead him on and I already proved I’m not capable of being just friends. But it’s only been a week, and every part of my body is sore from the effort of not responding. From pretending it will stop hurting as soon as he stops trying. As far as he knows, he’s making no progress. But when I’m up late, my willpower melts with the stroke of midnight and I end up typing his name into Google.

  He is, possibly, the only student enrolled at Portland University who doesn’t have a Facebook page or Twitter account, and I still haven’t located the pictures of him drunkenly playing soccer on top of the Earth Sciences building. Mostly, the world has taken notice of him through the sports section. I’ve read the articles about different baseball games so many times that I know his stats by heart, even though I still haven’t worked up the motivation to Wiki my way into decoding them. I know enough to understand he could have had a career in the major leagues without even a passing glance into a college classroom. There are articles about his parents’ car accident but that feels too morbid, so I haven’t opened those.

  A scrabbling noise from outside yanks my head up. That sounded like claws.

  I undo the lock and open the door. Something disappears into the bushes with a flash of movement but I don’t catch what it is, because my attention is too focused on the...thing...on the porch.

  Next to my newspaper is something white and chunky, with smears of darker liquid clumped into the wreckage. I edge a little closer, squinting at the white stuff. Some of it is melting and yes...okay, that's ice, but what is the rest of this junk? Against my better judgment, I pinch a little between my fingers and it crumples easily. Styrofoam.

  I drop my hand, mystified as I stare at the wash of destroyed Styrofoam and ice stretching across my concrete stoop and down both steps.

  Then I notice a slice of chocolate-covered almond in the midst of the melting goo. The pieces start to make sense all at once, and a smile breaks across my face.

  Jacob told me he was going to make it up to me about the ice
cream that liquefied in my trunk while we were in that coffee shop. I refroze it and we tried to eat it when he brought his record collection over but it was pretty gross and we made do with M&Ms instead. He must have decided to follow through on his promise. He bought a foam cooler, filled it with ice, and nestled a half gallon of mocha almond fudge in the center.

  I start to laugh. Somebody forgot to tell dear Jacob that in this neighborhood, we have raccoons. And they happen to be quite fond of grand gestures that involve mocha, almond, or fudge.

  Still grinning, I go to get the trash can from the kitchen. When I get back, I find most of the carton in the bushes with the edges nibbled and a lot of ice cream still left inside. I pick it up gingerly, wondering if you can get any diseases from touching raccoon-licked cardboard.

  A glimpse of pale yellow catches my eye as I go to drop the ice cream into the trash. I pause, setting down the trash can so I can turn the carton in my hands. The yellow is a miraculously undamaged Post-It note, stained with flowerbed dirt and drips of melted ice cream. In cramped boy-handwriting and blue ink it says: Ice cream for your thoughts? There’s more where this came from if you’re willing to make the trade.

  I stand there with the gnawed carton of ice cream, my slept-on hair standing up in at least three of the cardinal directions, and yesterday’s poorly-fitted shirt starting to slip sideways on my shoulder. And I have never felt more wanted in all my life.

  He came to my concert. Not only that, he understood my music. My thumb traces his note, as if I can feel him through the lines of his handwriting. I lean against the doorframe and exhale.

  God, what am I supposed to do? I’d be a thousand times safer with some tattooed bad boy than I am with a sweet, thoughtful guy like Jacob, because he makes me want to try again, and I don’t think I can survive any more failures when it comes to men.

  Swallowing against the lump in my throat, I take the garbage with me when I retreat inside. I need to take a shower and get to this record label meeting, because I think music might be the last safe thing left for me to care about.