Hendrix
Every eye in the room is on Elle, and I’ll admit, I’m one of the many who can’t stop staring. She’s in a long fitted emerald green dress, her hair is pinned up, and there are perfect spiraled tendrils that flow around her bare shoulders. She’s the most beautiful creature in the room, and there is an easy and fluid grace with the way she moves as she greets one person to the next. She’s busy, yet she takes the time to find me as she works the room. Each and every time she briefly looks in my direction my heart stops.
Her eyes will glitter like fireworks, that smile shines like the sun, and then because she and I aren’t supposed to be near each other, she’ll turn her head, granting her attention to some other lucky bastard.
But she doesn’t smile at them like she smiles at me. Her eyes don’t dance with them like they dance with me. I feel like a fraud in a suit I could never afford after working for a year straight, but each and every time Elle gives me that one second, a rush of energy keeps me here. I’m willingly enduring hell for the chance that her eyes will meet mine one more time.
The muscles in the middle of my back tighten. I’m playing with fire, and I’m going to get burned. I’ve got to be smarter than this, but when I look at the doorway, I only want to stay.
Today, I held Elle as she cried. In years past, when girls cried, I ran in the opposite direction. But Elle—she’s different. She makes me different, and that makes me want to stay, if only to keep seeing her, even at a distance.
I shake another hand as Cynthia says a name I won’t remember. She’s been by my side the entire time, beaming because I’ve remained longer than the half hour they demanded.
To be honest, it’s been tough to concentrate on the people Cynthia introduces me to. My attention is split between Elle and the jazz band on the stage. The band is good, but they aren’t great. Hearing that steady beat has created an itch under the first layer of my skin I can’t reach. Since being home, besides playing guitar with Axle or Marcus, I’ve avoided music, preferring silence, but I can’t avoid it here, and listening to it is like being a heroin addict who is taunted with a needle full of the high.
“How are you handling the transition from the program to your life at home?” the man asks. I think Cynthia said he had something to do with finance in some part of government.
“It’s going well. My family encouraged me to enter the program, and they have been very supportive of the changes I’ve made since returning home.” The rehearsed answer slides more easily now that I’ve said it a hundred times tonight.
“What are your plans for your future?” the woman on his arm asks.
“College,” I say, but I have no idea if that’s true. Before the arrest, I never thought of going to college, but it’s the answer Cynthia said will make people happy. That’s what I’m learning that this year will be about—making everyone else happy.
“I have one more year of high school,” I continue. “For now, I’m searching for a part-time job, and I’m helping my older brother raise my younger sister.”
The woman touches a hand to her chest as if that’s the most heart-wrenching thing she’s heard, and the man tips a glass full of golden liquor in my direction. “Keep up the good work, Mr. Pierce. We’ll be watching, and we look forward to you doing great things.”
No pressure there. They leave, and Cynthia mumbles we should take a breather, which means something important or unimportant has popped up on her cell.
From across the room, another man walks up to Elle, thirties maybe, and she greets him with the same polite smile as she has with everyone else. Like the other times, he talks, she nods, he talks some more, and she chats along with the conversation, but there’s a strain that hasn’t been there before. Her eyes more narrowed, her smile stretched.
He moves. A centimeter at a time until he crowds her space. Elle subtly steps back until she hits a chair. That dark shadow that lives inside me growls as Elle’s polite smile dissolves and her body goes rigid. Her shoulders roll back like she’s considering taking a swing, and fire sparks from her eyes. I’ve been in more than a few fights in my life. Most of them because I was a bastard, so I’m well versed in that stance.
Elle glances around, the same way she did when she was on the midway when those guys were stalking her. I step forward, but Cynthia angles in front of me, blocking my view of Elle. “Where are you going?”
I roll my arms to keep myself in check. “Elle’s uncomfortable.”
Cynthia glances over her shoulder, and spits out a word she’d give me hell for saying aloud. She’s texting again on the cell I’m convinced is physically attached to her hand. “Elle isn’t your concern tonight. In fact, Elle isn’t your concern at all. I thought we had this conversation. If you and Elle are seen together, even as friends, it will appear like there is something more, and that will be the headlining story, not the governor’s program. We need the press to focus on the important issues, and today I’ve been entirely too busy turning that picture of you with a puppy at a historic hotel as another headline of you saving the day.”
The man extends his hand to Elle, and after another scan of the room, she accepts. Sludge oozes into my veins as it’s like watching a naïve calf being led to the slaughterhouse. Several other couples dance to the bad beat, and they make room for Elle and this bastard.
Elle’s jaw juts, and rage radiates from the proud way she holds herself as he takes her into his arms. He crushes her to him as if she’s a rag doll. His hand slides along her side, breezes past parts high he shouldn’t be near, then rests his hand too close to parts south on her back.
My ears ring, and as if hearing the warning bells herself, Cynthia’s arm shoots out to block me as she puts her phone to her ear.
“Where the hell is Andrew?” she spits. “He’s supposed to be watching over Elle.”
The girl on the midway would have nailed this man in the nuts, and I find myself wishing she would because otherwise I’m going to have to get involved.
“Andrew,” she says the name again. “Where is he?”
Andrew—the jerk she dumped on the midway, the jerk who is supposed to be attached to her side at public events. Yeah, Elle’s given me an earful on him, and I’ve seen him around. He’s more interested in what’s at the bottom of a liquor bottle than helping Elle. He’s currently failing at his job, and I’m more than happy to meet him in a dark alley and teach him with my fists how to care for Elle.
The anger that controlled me for so long before the program rears its ugly head. “You’ve got ten seconds, Cynthia.”
She holds the phone away from her mouth. “You can’t intervene.”
“Five.”
“Andrew is on his way.”
“Three.”
“You go over there, and any progress we made on this program will be ruined.”
“One.”
“You do this, and it will ruin you. The governor overlooked the puppy, but he will not overlook you insulting one of the most influential people in politics. You are still on probation, and if you cause a scene tonight, it will negatively affect your future. Do you understand?”
As I take my first step forward, Andrew approaches Elle. Giving a light bow to her as if it’s a couple hundred years ago in a castle, he cuts into the dance with a laugh and a smile. Jealousy becomes a new monster as she offers him a relieved lift of her lips.
I’m her hero, not this jerk.
She accepts his offer to dance, and the only solace I find is that his hand is in a respectful place, his body isn’t pressed to hers, and he doesn’t focus on Elle, but on the rest of the room as they talk and dance.
Every muscle in my body is still poised, ready to rip apart, ready to kill, and that reaction belongs to a part of me I tried to leave behind in the forest. I pinch the bridge of my nose and breathe. I need out of this suit, I need air, I need freedom.
“You’ve done enough tonight, Hendrix,” Cynthia says. “Why don’t you go back to your room?”
The criminal is no longer needed and has been ordered to return to his cage. Like the chained animal I’ve become, I obey.