APPARENTLY A SQUIRREL HAS TAKEN UP residence in my mouth. That thick, furry thing moving around in there can’t be my tongue. In my current state—stretched out under my piano with a bean bag for a pillow, sledgehammer going in my head, and my eyes blearily barely cracked open against the morning light—I can’t come up with a better explanation.
Something pointy nudges between my ribs. What the hell?
“Rhys, get up.” Jimmi, one of my best friends since high school and one of the few people who can get into my house, stands over me, hands on her hips and frown firmly on her face. Her boot connects with my stomach again, and I grab her foot.
“You got one more time to jab me with that knife-shoe thing you’re wearing.” The words scratch in my throat, and I drag myself into a sitting position, bumping my head against the piano.
“Careful,” Jimmi says, wincing on my behalf.
Now she tells me.
“What’s up, Jim?” I rub at the sore spot on my forehead. “Did you . . . wait, if this is about that song, I’m almost done. I promise it’ll be ready by Thursday.”
“And what do you think today is?”
“Tuesday?” I ask cautiously, looking around my music room for clues among the instruments shelved and displayed on the walls.
“Gah! Today is Thursday.” Jimmi cocks one hip, resting her hand there. “And I’ve been calling you to check on your progress with the song.”
She holds up my phone, her expression exasperated.
“This was upstairs on the kitchen counter. Dead.”
“I wondered where that was.” I run a hand through the hair hanging past my ears and around my neck. God, I need a haircut. And a shave. And a shower. A toothbrush wouldn’t hurt.
“Not doing you much good dead.” Jimmi tosses the phone to me.
“My charger’s here somewhere.” I sift through the blanket of music sheets beneath me until I find the small wire. “Here we go.”
I drag myself to my feet and plug the phone into the wall, leaving it to charge on top of the piano.
“What’s all this?” Jimmi bends, picking up several composition sheets, narrowing her eyes over the notes I barely remember chicken scratching out. “You wrote all these?”
Her eyes wander around the room, taking in the composition paper, napkins, and receipts littering every surface, all covered with music I vaguely remember writing over the last two weeks since I got off tour.
“This is some Beautiful Mind shit.” Jimmi holds up a napkin to the light to read the song I scrawled there. “Have you been in here drunk? High?”
“Something like that.” I squeeze a spot at the back of my neck tight from sleeping on the floor. “Great movie, by the way. Some of Russell Crowe’s finest work.”
It only took one stint in rehab for me to understand what an addictive personality I have. My gift comes at a price, near obsession. Unchecked, I’m nothing but a wave of extremes. I barely drink alcohol and I never do drugs, so music is my drug of choice. And I’ve been on a bender ever since I got off tour. Since I came home to this empty house and faced the fact that Kai isn’t coming back any time soon.
If ever.
“Is this symphony orchestra stuff?” Jimmi peels at the edges of the music sheet plastered to the wall, a frown puckering her brows. “It won’t come off.”
“Here, lemme see.” I lean forward to rub at the edges, finally barking out a harsh laugh. “Great. It won’t come off because I wrote it on the wall. Sarita’s gonna kill me.”
“I’m gonna kill you myself unless one of these songs is mine.” Jimmi leans against the piano.
“I got your song, Jim.” I kick a few music sheets out of the way, squinting at the floor to see where the hell her song could be. “It’s here somewhere.”
“Also,” Jimmi says, holding one finger under her nose. “You reek.”
“You’re saying I stink?” I lift my arm to take an investigative sniff. “Hmmm. So that’s where the smell is coming from.”
I take a step in her direction, thrusting a handful of my two-day-old t-shirt into her nose.
“Rhys, stop it!” Jimmi laughs, backing up, stumbling and slipping on the papers under our feet.
“Couldn’t resist.” I grin, feeling less like microwaved shit than when I woke up. Jimmi and I used to play pranks on each other in high school. She was always good for a laugh. I feared that misbegotten one-night stand on the road had ruined our friendship. I’m glad we still have this.
“Gimme ten.” I back out of the room, gesturing to a stack of papers on the piano. “I’m seventy-five percent sure your song is in that pile right there. Look while I take a shower, and then we can head to the studio.”
I’m actually more like forty-five percent sure, but that’ll keep her busy while I scrub the grunge away. I’m looking and feeling pretty nineties Seattle right now. I rush up the steps and to my bedroom, pausing when I cross the threshold.
That bed.
That cold, empty bed is the reason I’ve spent the last week of nights under my piano. The sheets, void of Kai’s warmth, of the small curvy shape of her body, hold no appeal. The loneliness of that bed chases me into my dreams, and not even in sleep can I escape the fact that she’s not here. Kai was in my house just a few weeks, but it only took one night for me to crave her beside me every morning when I wake up.
I leave a trail of dirty clothes on the bathroom floor on my way to the jets of life coming from the showerhead. Rivulets rush over my head and down my body, washing away all my defenses and all my distractions, leaving me nothing to keep my mind off how royally I fucked things up. Nothing to hide this deep, raw, self-inflicted wound that’s been bleeding out ever since Kai left LA without a word.
I rest my forehead against the water-slick tile and bang one fist into the wall. All I want is Kai. I miss the way we laughed together and talked so easily the hours felt like minutes. God, I miss her hot-honey voice and the sweet taste of her. Feeling her moving under me, our bodies in perfect synch. I miss being inside of her, feeling the desperate grip of her body around me.
Shit. Now I’m hard and my own hand’s the only thing gripping me. I tighten my fingers around my cock, ready to handle this the only way I know how until Kai comes back to me.
“Let me get that for you,” Jimmi says at my back, her hand reaching around to hold me tightly.
I jerk away, turning to face her. What the hell? She’s in my damn shower wearing nothing but lust and mischief.
“Jimmi, go.” I grit the words out, pointing to the opening leading out of the shower. “Now.”
“Come on, Rhys.”
She reaches for me again, this time stepping closer until our bodies are flush and her naked tits press into my chest. Celibacy isn’t exactly a habit for me, so of course my dick gets harder. It’s what it does. She feels me swelling in her hand and grins up at me.
“Somebody’s on my side. Maybe you don’t remember much about the night we had together, but your dick sure does.”
I don’t want her. I don’t want this. I’ve messed things up enough with Kai without adding this to the list of shit she might not forgive me for. I met Jimmi on my first day at the School of the Arts, and we’ve been through a lot, but she’s not worth losing Kai. Nothing is. I shove at her shoulder, maybe harder than I intended because she stumbles back against the wall, almost falling. I grab her arm to steady her, but she captures my hand and drags it to her breast, the nipple pressing into my palm.
“Nothing’s holding you back, Rhys,” she whispers so low I barely hear it over the water.
I jerk my hand away and step out of the shower. If she won’t go, I will. I grab a towel and tie it around my hips before turning to face her. She’s still standing under the spray of water darkening her hair. She runs her fingers over her breasts and slides them down her stomach to stroke between her legs.
“Rhyson, come on.” Jimmi drops her head back, heavily-lidded eyes snaring mine through the rising steam. “You want me to handle this myself?”
“That’s up to you.” I turn away from this scene before my body does something every other part of me will regret. “Be downstairs in five minutes ready to get outta here, or you get no song from me.”
I stalk off to my closet, quickly snagging briefs, jeans and a t-shirt. When I come back through to brush my teeth, Jimmi’s gone. A relieved breath pushes from my chest. This is beyond awkward. I feel sick, nauseated by the memory of her touching me, of her breast under my hand. I would never cheat on Kai, but do I tell her what just happened? Does it matter? Would she care? Is it cheating when she won’t even return my calls? I could even rationalize that technically Kai walked out on me and ended things, but there’s no rationalizing with my heart that insists she’s it, and no one else has the right to touch me. If she were in a shower naked with some other guy who touched her like that, I wouldn’t care if we’d been apart for two months or two years. I’d dice him into microscopic chunks, and fuck Kai blind until her body remembered nothing but me.
The closer I get to the music room, the slower my steps become. I don’t want to have this conversation with Jimmi. Actually, we’ve had this conversation before, but it didn’t take. I need it to take. I need for what just happened upstairs to never happen again, or I’ll have to cut her out of my life as ruthlessly as I cut out my parents.
Here’s the problem. And to say it aloud sounds dickish, so I’ll just say it to myself. Marlon’s Uncle Jamal put it best. I think he’s the one who got my best friend categorizing pussy in the first place. Uncle Jamal is the OG. Compton’s original arbiter of pussy. He said most girls think they have that magic pussy, but one day you meet that one girl who makes you realize just how basic everyone else has been. And that’s Kai. And it wasn’t even the pussy. It was a look. It was her laugh. It was the way she smells. The way she carries herself. The way she cares about people . . . about me. The way she works hard and expects only what she earns. It’s a dozen things about her that make her not basic. She was Taj Mahal before I even slept with her. I knew she wasn’t basic. I knew she would shatter my world and I’d never be the same. And that’s what happened. And maybe I fucked it up, but I’m gonna fix it.
And there’s no way I’m explaining that I slipped and fell into some basic pussy while she was on tour.
So how do you tell one of your best friends she’s just basic?
Jimmi looks up from the piano, elbows resting on the closed top, and holds a sheet of music up in the air.
“Found my song.” She glances away, chewing at her bottom lip, wet hair hanging around her shoulders and dampening her t-shirt. “Look about what happened up there, I—”
“Let’s just forget it, okay?” I grab the paper from her hands, giving it a quick once over. “Yeah, this is it. Let’s go.”
“I don’t want to forget it.” Jimmi plants her hands on the piano, meeting my eyes boldly. “I’ve told you that before. That night happened, and we can’t pretend it didn’t.”
“I didn’t say pretend.” I sit down on the piano bench, bracing myself for the conversation I was hoping to get out of one more time. “I said forget. There’s nothing there, Jimmi.”
“Your dick was hard.” Her smile holds some satisfaction. “I know when a guy wants me.”
“That’s right, I’m a guy.” I nod, a self-deprecating laugh escaping. “A swift wind gets me hard. It doesn’t mean anything. My heart’s nowhere near it.”
“Oh, and where is your heart?” She reaches in her jeans pocket and pulls out a small harmonica that she’s got no right touching. “Here?”
I stand, snatching the harmonica out of her hands, gripping it between my fingers.
“Keep your hands off my shit, Jim.”
“I read the inscription. I know it’s from Kai.”
“Oh, and she reads, too. Gold star for you.”
I glance at the harmonica Kai gave me for Christmas, just a few months ago. It feels like an eternity. I’d never even made love to her when she gave me this, but I was certain we’d be connected deeply and forever.
“She’s moved on, you know.” Jimmi takes my spot on the piano bench.
“You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.” I slip the harmonica into my back pocket and start walking toward the door. “If you want that studio time, come on.”
“I take it you haven’t been on Kai’s Instagram lately, huh?” Jimmi asks from her spot behind my favorite piano.
“Did I look like I’ve been on Instagram?” I turn back to face her. “Kai doesn’t even have it.”
“Tell that to the quarter million people following her.”
“A quarter million . . . a quarter million followers?” I frown and freeze in my tracks. “In two months?”
“The world’s a big place with a lot of people. Doesn’t take long.” Jimmi rolls her eyes. “And I’m sure most of them are following her hoping she’ll post about you. Hoping she’ll post something about that disaster of a relationship you guys had.”
She unplugs my phone and walks it over to me.
“Check for yourself.”
“I don’t even have it on my phone.” I shake my head. “And I really don’t care what social media has to say about Kai and me.”
“Oh, so you don’t care that Dub is all over Kai’s Instagram?” Jimmi pulls out her phone, pressing a few keys and pulling up the app. “I guess you don’t want to see?”
I hate myself for this weakness I can’t hide from Jimmi. I hold my hand out for her phone, bracing my inner idiot not to flip about what I’m about to see.
Shit. It’s not working. That metronome of fury ticks in my head. Blood pounds in my ears and sweat sprouts out all over my freshly-showered body.
Dub and Kai at some carnival. A cream-colored beanie stark against her dark hair, tilted eyes bright and a red-tinted smile on her face.
Dub and Kai at a 7-Eleven drinking Slurpees with their crew of dancers, hamming it up and making faces.
A video of Dub and Kai at rehearsals, his hands at her waist, adjusting her execution of a move.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
I can’t fake nonchalance. Rage pebbles under my skin, buckling my straight face. Jimmi watches me too closely not to see, but I can’t look away from this screen. I can’t give the phone back to her. This is the closest I’ve come to Kai in two months, and she’s with this motherfucker in every post.
“Like I said, moved on.” Jimmi takes her phone from my clenched hand, pushing her fingers up into my hair. “So there’s nothing holding us back, Rhys.”
I step back, jerking away from her touch.
“This not happening,” I gesture between her and me, “has nothing to do with Kai.”
Jimmi gives me a look that calls BS.
“I mean, yeah. There’s Kai.” I sit down on the bench, preferring to look at the phone flipping back and forth in my hands to looking at Jimmi. “But even if she weren’t in the picture, what happened between you and me was a mistake. I knew that the morning after. Hell, I knew it before it happened. But me plus Ketel One equals bad decisions.”
“It hurts that what was so special to me was a mistake to you.” Jimmi blinks at tears. “It wasn’t the first time I’d thought about it. I’ve been crushing on you since high school, Rhys.”
I blow out a weary breath.
“Jimmi, you’re great.” I look her straight in the eye. She deserves my frankness. “You know that. You know I think that, but I’m not the one for you.”
“And she’s the one for you?” Jimmi turns her phone to me, the screen still splattered with tiles of Kai and Dub. “Maybe she missed that memo.”
I clamp my lips over an expletive. I know Kai. She wouldn’t do that to me. Even with things the way they are between us, I refuse to believe someone else has been inside of her. I refuse to believe someone else has her heart. But I also know she’s oblivious sometimes when it comes to guys. What they want and how they go about getting it.
Before I can respond to Jimmi’s provocation, Bristol walks in. She flicks a look between Jimmi and me, and a frown dents her forehead.
“Hey, guys.” She sits on the couch and crosses her long legs. “You working on the song?”
“Don’t you have a life of your own to tend to?” I cross over to flop beside her on the couch, tugging at the dark hair she has pulled into a sleek ponytail. “Or do you basically just obsess over every detail of mine?”
“It’s what you pay me the big bucks for, brother.” She grins at Jimmi. “And now I can obsess over Jimmi’s, too.”
“For real?” I stretch my eyebrows up, glad to have something to talk to Jimmi about other than her misplaced and ill-fated desire for me. “You crossing over to the dark side, Jim?”
Jimmi smiles, but it barely takes.
“On my way to world domination. Got things in the works for her already,” Bristol says, a quick grin spreading over her face. “Speaking of which, did you look at those offers I sent over, Rhys? Those artists who want to work with you?”
“Dammit.” I snap my fingers. “I keep forgetting to give a fuck.”
“Rhys.” Bristol laughs and shakes her head. “One of them could be the next big thing.”
“I’d rather have a great thing than a big thing. I want to be interested. Give me something interesting.”
“Do the Boston Pops interest you?”
Hmmmm . . . She knows they do.
“Whatchya got?” I give her the satisfaction of asking.
“The Boston Pops called.”
“Let me guess.” My interest starts waning. “They want me and Petra to bring our dancing bear act to Boston.”
“Actually they just want you. As a guest pianist next season.” She pauses for effect, one brow lifted to provoke me. “Think you still got it, brother?”
Something flickers inside of me that has lain dormant for a long time. I glance at the symphony orchestra piece I sketched onto the wall. That might be fun. That might interest me.
“Let me think about it.”
“Of course. I told them you’d need some time to consider.” Bristol pulls the hair hanging around my ears and scrapes at the scruff on my jaw. “Btdubs, you look like Grizzly Adams.”
“You should have smelled him.” Jimmi offers her first natural smile since Showergate.
“That’s what you get for sniffing under my piano.” I laugh a little, hoping the air will keep loosening between us.
“True that.” Jimmi leans back and watches me for a minute before giving me a short nod. “It won’t happen again.”
I guess that’s the closest she’ll come to conceding the point for now. Hopefully she won’t be naked and groping me in my shower any time soon.
“So what’s the deal with you guys?” Bristol asks, predictably nosy. “You both have wet hair, and the vibe was all weird when I came in. So are my two megastar clients fighting, fucking, or both?”
Jimmi and I exchange a quick look. Bristol is mulish. She won’t let up until we give her something.
“Just a difference of opinion,” I say with a shrug.
“About?” Bristol persists.
See? Mule.
“If you must know.” A speck of defiance returns to Jimmi’s eyes. “I was trying to convince Rhys that Kai has moved on.”
“But you don’t believe it?” Bristol shifts enough to see my face clearly.
“No, I don’t.” I shake my head. “Definitely not with Dub.”
“Well, she said as much yesterday when she and Luke were on Morning Hype.”
Calm the hell down, Gray.
“Kai said she and Dub are together?” My voice somehow sounds strong, but it feels like little more than a breeze in my throat.
Bristol just stares at me for a few elongated seconds like a beast toying with its food before taking the first bite.
“Don’t lose a lung. She said the opposite, actually.” Bristol’s eyes never leave my face. “She said she and Dub are just friends. Who knows the truth?”
I do. She’s not with that dude. She can’t be. It would break me in half to see her with someone else, especially knowing I’m the one who pushed her there.
“They asked her about you, too.” Bristol says.
We’re not your typical twins, all telepathically connected and shit, but Bristol knows me well enough to figure I’m not sure I want to hear Kai’s response. I nod for her to go ahead and tell it.
“They asked if she’d spoken to you, and she said no.” Bristol laughs a little, something as close as she’ll come to admiration on her face. “They pressed her for more intel, but she didn’t budge. When they asked for a big secret of yours, she told them you like hummus.”
I can’t help but chuckle. God, I miss my girl. I’d eat a bowlful of her hummus that tastes like butt if I could see her. Maybe she lied to the radio host and she is seeing Dub. I don’t know. Doesn’t matter. If she is seeing him, that shit ends as soon as she gets home. She’ll forgive me and we’ll go back to normal. We have to. That’s the only option.
“You should listen to the whole thing online. Fascinating interview. She held her own.” Bristol’s smug smile gives me pause. “She also directed Qwest to reach out to me about working with Grip.”
“But you’re not Marlon’s manager.” I lift one brow. “I wasn’t under the piano that long. You’re not repping him yet, are you?”
“Ah, the operative word being ‘yet.’” Bristol leans back and links her hands behind her head. “He loves Qwest. If I bring her to the table, maybe he’ll reconsider.”
It’s not gonna happen, but I just nod. The only thing Marlon wants from Bristol is a date, and it’s the one thing she won’t give him. So . . . impasse. I’ll let them work it out. I’m trying to salvage my own relationship. I can’t be bothered with theirs.
“So you guys are cool?” Bristol bounces a look from me to Jimmi, her sharp eyes not missing a thing.
“Cool as three Fonzies,” I say.
Both girls give me blank faces.
“Come on.” I look between them. “You know. Cool like three little Fonzies.”
“Saying it again doesn’t make it less obscure,” Bristol says. “We still have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Pulp Fiction.” I check both their expressions for some recognition. Nada. “It’s near the end. They’re in the diner during the stick up, and the girlfriend comes out of the bathroom and pulls a gun. Samuel Jackson says we’re gonna be cool like three little Fonzies.”
“I’ve never actually watched Pulp Fiction all the way through,” Jimmi admits.
“You’ve never . . .” I re-order my world to accommodate having friends who haven’t seen Pulp Fiction. “Never?”
“Never, Tarantino.” Bristol stands. “Come on. You both need to get to the studio.”
I let the girls walk up the steps ahead of me, slowing until I’m standing still, holding my newly charged phone. There’s dozens of missed calls and text messages from everyone except the one person I’d give anything to hear from. Supposedly the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Even knowing this, I do what I’ve done almost every day for the last fifty-seven days. Send a text to Kai that will probably get deleted or ignored, but I have to try. To keep trying until she’s back in that bed, warming my sheets again.
Me: “That’s when you know you’ve found somebody really special. When you can just shut the fuck up for a minute and comfortably share silence.”
I send the movie quote and stare at the screen, but it remains stubbornly
mute. No beeping alert. No trail of bubbles telling me she’s responding. I hold the phone for a few more seconds, fooling myself that we’re sharing one of those silences between people who are special to each other, instead of the frigid wall of nothingness she’s used to freeze me out for the last two months. It doesn’t really matter. Even if she deletes every message, she’ll know I never stop trying. This is just a pause, a comma, but our relationship runs on.
I’m digging around in my pocket for the keys to the Cayenne when the phone beeps. I know it’s probably just weird timing. Probably Marlon texting me a picture of him riding his new Segway or some shit, but my heart still grinds to a halt in my chest at the possibility . . .
Pepper: “Pulp Fiction.” Come harder, Gray.
Fuck me sideways. It’s Kai.
Is there a guidebook for this conversation? I’ve proven that I’m really good at screwing things up badly. I medaled in it. After two months of text messages, voice mails, and mistletoe, I have no idea why it’s Quentin Tarrantino that convinced her to finally respond. The phone rests in my hand like a bomb with a convolution of rainbow wires. Blue? Yellow? Red? Which wire to cut? What do I say? I should probably not come on too strong. Shouldn’t ask her about Dub, even though the pictures on that Instagram account splatter in my head like brains blown onto the wall. I for sure shouldn’t demand that she come home to me as soon as she steps off that damn tour bus. Just play it cool like this isn’t twisting my stomach into roller coaster loops.
Do something, Gray. Say something, you pussy.
Me: I want to hear your voice. Call me.
Dammit, did that sound like an order? That’d be the last thing I’m in a position to give after I went all Captain Control Freak with her career. That was the wrong thing to say, obviously, since I stand at the door for a full minute holding a quiet phone.
“You coming, or what?” Bristol yells from behind the wheel of her Audi convertible in the circular driveway. “Jimmi’s already on her way.”
May as well lose myself in music again. It’s the only thing that’s gotten me through the last two months. I may not know what day it is, but I know I made it through one more day without her. Music is all I have right now. It’s not all I want, but it’s all I have. I lock up, climbing into the truck as Bristol pulls away.
Disappointment cements into the resolve I somehow find every day to send another message, knowing I’ll get the same response.
Nothing.
I’m adjusting my mirror ready to pull out of the driveway, when I’ll be damned if the phone doesn’t ring.