Hendrix
Elle returns with a faraway expression, like she’s wrapped in her own thoughts. Probably how I look most of the time. She smiles in my direction. It’s a nice smile, but it’s not the one she’s given me before—the one that hits me straight in the chest.
“Ready for some lemonade?”
We walk down the hallway, and through the huge plush family room complete with big fluffy furniture, and a massive curved screen television that I’d bet is 3-D and can read my mind. We then pass through a sunroom before eventually reaching a kitchen that’s the size an industrial chef would wet his pants over.
Elle pours lemonade into two glasses, and her eyes sweep over me as she returns the glass pitcher to the fridge. I know she likes what she sees, I like what I see, too, and that’s a problem for both of us. I round the island, putting the large granite block between us, and Elle slides a glass in my direction.
I catch it and sweep my thumb over the condensation already developing. Conversation. I need to try conversation with Elle and attempt to neutralize what happened between us. “Your mom seemed nice.”
“No, she wasn’t. She was rude to you, and I’m sorry.”
Damn... “That was direct.”
“But it’s true. Have you seen what’s going on online and in the news?”
My gut twists like I drank poison. “No, what happened?” Part of me doesn’t want to know. Another terrorist attack, another shooting, another...
“Us. Me and you. What happened at the press conference?”
“We made the news?”
Elle focuses on her glass. “I’ve heard we’ve made the news. I’ve also heard we’re trending on social media, but I don’t personally know these things. I haven’t had the heart to see it all for myself yet.”
If I stick my head in that huge oven, will it kill me faster than using one of those fancy knives in the butcher block to slice open an artery? Trending. Screw me. Now everyone in the world will see me and think criminal. This is my penance for loving the attention of being a drummer in a band on the way to great things—I go from being close to a god to scum. Guess the higher you go, the tougher the fall.
“You really haven’t seen it?” she asks.
“I was up late, slept in and woke to that phone call bringing me here. And I don’t do online.”
She blinks. “Really?”
“I’ve been in juvenile detention for seven months, then in the woods for three. I didn’t have much of a need to update my status.”
“That could have been interesting, though. Selfie with a bear.”
I can’t help it. My mouth edges up just enough that it could be considered a smile.
“Were you online much before?” She leaves off before I was arrested.
“Why? You planning on Facebook stalking me?”
There’s laughter in those dangerous blue eyes. “Maybe. How else will I find out if the reason you didn’t ask for my number is because you have a girlfriend?”
“Turns out bears don’t like being hit on, so no girl for me.”
She giggles with the joke, and I like that she gets my sense of humor.
“I was online,” I say, “before. I used it to figure out what girls were in bad moods so I could avoid them at parties, and what girls would be easy for the hook up.”
Elle had started to drink and chokes. “And you called me direct.”
Telling her that didn’t make me feel good. In fact, it makes me feel like a dick. “You need to know who I am. At least who I was.”
“Why?”
Why? “Because I had to talk myself out of asking for your number. I did the right thing by walking away on the midway. Now I’m in your house, and I need to keep talking myself out of asking for your number.”
“Why?”
Is she not listening? “You think it’s smart for a guy like me to kiss the governor’s daughter? You need to know who I was before, so you’ll stay away from me, and before, I wasn’t a nice guy.”
Elle studies me too seriously and long enough it causes me to shift my footing. “You want to kiss me?”
Who wouldn’t want to kiss her? “That’s not a good thing.” At least not for her. “I’d only be using you for your body, but I’d try to convince you it was true love to land you in bed. Then I’d never call.”
“Wow. You really are terrible. Do you cross old ladies across streets in between returning stray sheep back to their herd?”
The girl any guy would happily have a lobotomy for, so he could spend one evening with her, walks into my life, has no problem giving me hell, and I can’t touch. The past year wasn’t my penance for my sins. This moment is. “Did you miss I’m a bad guy?”
“A bad guy encased in bubble wrap with warning labels included. Yes, I saw you in one of my prevention videos at school. Beware of boy warning you off of kissing—he’s the nightmare all parents shiver in their beds about at night.”
“I’m being up-front of who I am.”
“Please,” she says. “You’re a kitten.”
My eyes bug out of my head. “Kitten?”
“You know you want my number.”
There’s a tease in her voice that goes straight to parts south, and my blood courses with desire. That’s the problem. I do want her number, and I do want to kiss her.
“How about you let me continue to be the good guy. You keep pushing, and I’m going to give in and be the guy that says pretty things to get close to your body.”
“Why can’t you be both?” she asks. “The guy who wants to kiss me and the good guy?”
Because I don’t know if those things exist in the same universe. Because a girl like her never gave the time of day to a guy like me. “I’m beginning to think you want to be kissed.”
Her cheeks blare bright red, and that causes me to stop breathing. She really does want to be kissed, but then she winks. “You’re fun to mess with.”
An unexpected chuckle on my part, and I drink from my lemonade. Fire. Cracker.
What would life have been like if I had met her before the past year? Would I have used her or would I have seen the gorgeous girl in front of me as someone worth getting to know? I’d like to think I would have seen her worth, but I was a jerk before who was more concerned with what made me happy in the moment, not the future, and I would have talked her into bed.
“Well, if you’re determined to not use me for my body,” she says, “use me for my mind. Ask me something.”
I can do that. “If Star Wars isn’t your thing, what is?”
She surveys me like I’m a textbook. “Computers.”
Wasn’t expecting that. “Computers?”
“Don’t sound so shocked. That thing between my ears? That space within my skull? It’s filled with more than blond hair and air.”
Point awarded to Elle. “Fair enough.”
“What about you?” She plows forward in a way that tells me that question-and-answer session is done. “What’s your thing?”
That’s the million-dollar question. “For the past couple of months, my thing has been walking around outside with a pack on my back.”
Elle bobs her head back and forth as if that was a given. “Besides that.”
“There’s not much else. I love my friends, my family.”
Elle taps a finger against the counter. She’s on the hunt, and I don’t care for being the prey. “That’s it? Really?”
“Yeah.”
“I think there’s more.”
“You’d be wrong.”
“Do you like books?”
“I read.” But it doesn’t move me.
“Obsessed with any movies? Wait in line overnight for tickets? Have a secret website devoted to a character?”
“Like them like anybody else.”
“What about music? Do you like music?”
I scratch the back of my head and move the glass on the counter for something to do. Yeah, I love music.
“You like music,” she states.
“Yeah.”
“Do you listen or do you play?”
“Both.” Not sure how you can play without loving to listen.
“What do you play?”
I should tell her the guitar, my new instrument of choice. “The drums.”
Elle leans her elbows on the counter and laces her fingers together. “Should I be scared of you?”
My eyes snap to hers. Demanding an answer, she doesn’t look away. Intimidating blue eyes behind kick-ass glasses.
“You keep trying to prove you’re this big, bad boy. Should I believe what you say or should I judge you by your actions?”
I don’t want her to be scared of me, but according to what I was convicted of, I should say yes. Play the part. A sickness shreds my insides. “I am bad.”
“Yes, because bad boys do what you’ve done for me.”
She has it all wrong. “I used girls for their bodies and did it without an ounce of guilt. I did drugs, I drank and I used to beat the hell out of guys because the fight felt good. I wasn’t someone you would have liked.”
“When you finished that statement, you left it hanging as if there was an unsaid ‘but.’”
“I wasn’t a good guy.”
“Fine. You weren’t a good guy. But according to your speech at the press conference you had a year to figure yourself out. Did Dad’s program work?”
It did. I don’t know how, and I won’t know how until I’m faced with making some of the same choices. I’m hoping I’m strong enough to go down different paths, but I doubt myself. “I won’t hurt you if that’s what you’re asking.”
It’s not a great answer, but it’s the best I’ve got. One second of her eyes boring into mine. Two seconds. Three. My pulse pounds in my ears.
“I think you’ve changed.”
I pray she’s right.
Elle sips her lemonade, then holds her glass between her hands on the counter. “You didn’t have to tell everyone what you did. I overheard Sean and Cynthia talking about it. She said it was part of the agreement for what you did to stay sealed and that the only reason you told everyone is because my dad asked you to share.”
My skin shrinks on my bones as I’m backed into a corner. “Does anyone in this house realize how much you hear?”
“No. Most people in this house don’t think much of me, at least with anything that matters. Sometimes, I’m convinced they think I’m as useful as paint. Will you tell me why you told everyone what you did?”
She’s quiet for a few beats as if giving me a chance to collect my thoughts and jump into the conversation. There’s no jumping as I don’t know what to say.
“You can say no,” she says. “You don’t have to do everything they tell you.”
That’s where she’s wrong. “Yeah, I do. It’s part of my plea deal.”
Her forehead wrinkles, and I don’t like it. She shouldn’t wear worry. “I know you don’t know my dad, but he’s not a politician because of power or because he likes bossing people around. He’s a politician because he wants to help people. My dad wants to make the world a better place. If you didn’t want to tell the world what you did, he would have been okay with it.”
“You spoke up,” I say.
“That reporter was crucifying you, and you were good to me. You deserved better.”
Deserved better. People don’t get what they deserve. At least not people like me.
“Let me guess. You’re going to save the world like your dad, too.” There’s more bite to my comment than I intended, and I hate how she flinches. Asshole. I’m an asshole. That’s a part of me that could have stayed behind in the woods, but nope, I had to bring that back with me.
I open my mouth to apologize, but the steady staccato rhythm of her fingernails tapping in rapid succession causes me to pause. I don’t know much about life, but I do know a pissed female when I see one. That wildfire raging inside her, if it’s anything like Holiday’s...it’d be smart to find the nearest exit.
“Do you think I’m not capable of saving the world?”
Mouth open again, but her glare cuts me off. Speaking now would be bad, and as she tilts her head in a cutting way, not speaking is bad, too. I. Am. Screwed.
“I’m capable of saving the world.”
Both hands in the air. “I believe you.”
“Sure you do. That’s what people say, but then I’m only asked to pose for the picture.”
The world halts. Elle’s cheeks are red, remnants of the anger that just boiled over, but there’s hurt raging in those blue eyes, and the urge is to make her better. But I don’t know how to make her better. I’ve never been the guy to make anyone better. I’m just the guy who knows how to make himself feel good.
I scan the room, half hoping the answer genie will appear out of thin air, but besides the buzzing of the fridge, like always, I’ve got nothing. That’s wrong. I got the truth.
“Look...” Who knew telling the truth could be so hard? The truth is stripping and raw and creates a tightness in my chest. “My family was at the press conference, and all I could think was how I didn’t want my sister to see me as...”
...a criminal.
A thing to be hated and judged. “I didn’t want anyone to know what I was convicted of. When that reporter started shooting off his mouth, if I talked then, people wouldn’t have cared who I want to be and they wouldn’t care about your dad’s program. All they would have cared about is that I did something wrong, I didn’t serve the time they wanted and that your dad was stupid to give me a second chance.”
Because that’s how people work. Somebody does something wrong and people are salivating to point it out. There’s no forgiveness, just vengeance. Hang the person by the rope in the center of town and have a picnic around them with the family. It’s what they did in the Wild, Wild West. We do it now, just a more technologically advanced version.
“Then you spoke up and people saw me differently. If you had the courage to come forward, I could, too.” If Elle saw me differently, maybe Holiday would see me as redeemable, too.
A rush of regrets saturates every cell in my body, and I try to shake it off. To survive the past year, I had to be numb. Even now, to do what needs to be done, I’ve got to keep from feeling too much for too long. Emotions—feeling—needing to feel, it’s what got me into trouble.
“You say I don’t have to do everything they ask of me—” I lay it out for Elle “—but your dad saved my life. I say listening, paying attention, doing what he says...it’s got to be better than when I made decisions for myself.”
“That’s why we chose Hendrix for the program, and why we chose him to represent it for the next year.” Sean Johnson enters the room. “He’s smart and learns quickly.”
Sean’s in a polo shirt, khaki pants and is put together like I’d expect a rich politician to be. Hair in place, a smile that’s chemically white and straight teeth. I met him a few times before I went to juvenile detention, but my thoughts were so warped then that he felt more like a nightmare than real.
“Listen to Hendrix, Elle. You can learn a few things from him.” Sean stops at the edge of the counter and levels Elle with his eyes. “The advice your parents give isn’t to punish you. It’s to help. If you don’t want to take it from me, then take it from him. You need to start listening.”