Hendrix
There’s a knock on the door, and Elle pulls away from me and slips off the piano bench. But she doesn’t watch the door. She looks at me instead. Her gorgeous blue eyes shine. I rise to my feet, stretch out my arm, and hold out my hand to her. I should say something. Explain how I want her standing beside me when my family plows in, but this action feels stronger than a declaration. “If you want to keep us a secret from them, we can, but they won’t say a word to anyone about us. My secrets are their secrets. It’s how it works.”
“Your brother doesn’t like me.”
Another knock on the door, and I call out, “You can wait,” while keeping my hand outstretched. “My brother doesn’t like anything that’s going to hurt me. You make me happy. Give him a few minutes and he’ll see that.”
“He won’t tell Cynthia?”
“If I tell him to keep quiet, he will. That’s how we work. This family, we protect each other. I’m the one that messed up and walked from them when I was fifteen. But as I said, you want to keep us a secret, I’m fine with your call.”
The right side of her mouth quirks up, and she gives me this blinding grin. “Is that your way of asking me to be your girlfriend?”
“I guess it is.” I can’t help smiling along with her.
“You know when I first met you,” she says. “You told me you don’t smile very often.”
I did say that, and for the year leading up to meeting Elle, I couldn’t remember smiling. For six months before that, my smile wasn’t from joy, but from a fake and deluded sense of happy. “What can I say? You’re magical.”
She winks, and that confidence that belongs only to Elle returns as she places her hand in mine. “I am.”
Another bang on the door to the garage, and my sister shouts, “I’m coming in now!”
The knob turns, and sunlight and my sister’s head poke in. “You played the drums. I heard you. I mean, I heard something. You might be rusty, but you played.”
I squeeze Elle’s hand. “Elle played.”
Holiday’s eyes widen so big she looks close to a cartoon character. “You let someone else play your drums?”
“Is that a big deal?” Elle asks.
I lift one shoulder, but Holiday answers, “It’s a huge deal. A massive deal.” Her hand splays over her heart. “I’ve never played his drums, and he, in theory, loves me.” Holiday’s head jerks to the side. “Shut up. Shut the freak up. You’re holding her hand. You’re holding Ellison Monroe’s hand. He’s holding your hand. Are you two together? Like a couple? For real? You are. You’re together and I did this. I’m the one who sent the text and the reason Ellison came here. It was me. I did this!”
“It’s a secret,” I say, and she rolls her eyes in a “duh.”
“Of course, but still, you owe me because I did this. But anyhow, you’re together and Drix played and I want him to play again.”
“Yeah.” Dominic walks in behind Holiday. “But this time with a steady beat.”
No way. Elle playing was one thing, but me playing is something else. “I was going to show Elle the house and get her something to eat.”
Dominic approaches Elle and holds out his hand. “I’m Dominic. His best friend. Nice to meet you. The house is a dump, but it’s better than mine. Honestly, you ain’t missing much, and pizza’s on the way. Do you like chicken wings?”
Elle blinks several times because that’s how someone reacts to a train wreck that is my family, but she releases me and shakes his hand. “I’m Elle, and I’ve never had a chicken wing.”
Dominic recoils. “What are you? Amish?”
“I bet Amish eat chicken wings,” says Holiday. “They shun electricity. Not food.”
“Po-tay-to. Po-tah-to. Same thing.”
“It’s not.”
Dominic picks up his electric guitar and says, “I’m always right, Holiday. Get used to it. Now, let’s do this.”
Axle and Marcus walk in together, laughing. Half of Marcus’s black shirt is stained with cake mix, and when Holiday points it out, he takes her hand and twirls her like they had been in mid-dance. Holiday giggles, then playfully shoves him away. Marcus winks, and I nod my head when he looks over at me. His family is toxic, but mine isn’t and I’m not afraid of sharing.
Axle rolls up the main garage door and a light breeze sweeps into the building along with a ball of fur. “Your dog whines when you leave. Figure out how to make it stop.”
Thor races toward me, his paws clicking against the concrete. Elle explodes into a supernova as she crouches down and holds her arms wide-open as if the dog could hug her back. Thor goes straight to her, and she loves on the ball of black-and-white fur as he licks her face. “He’s so big.”
True. I doubt she could even pick him up, and Thor’s impatient not understanding why he’s not in the air. With a tongue hanging out, he looks over at me, and I crouch and scratch him behind the ears. The sense of pride when I see him confuses me, but I go with it. I put my arm around Elle and kiss her temple, causing Thor to break into another round of licks for Elle.
My family suit up with their instruments with the seriousness of a soldier going to war. Dominic pats Kellen’s back as she picks up her bass guitar. He gives her some instructions of how to switch fingers on chords and encourages her to keep going, even when she gets behind. He then turns on his amp. She rolls her eyes behind his back because she’s a seasoned player, and he’s an idiot.
Holiday settles behind the piano, and my older brother stands in the doorway, his hip cocked against the frame.
From the start, my life with music has belonged to Axle. When I was six, Dad was in town; he picked me up from Mom’s, bought me a Happy Meal, and when he dumped me at his house, he promised he would teach me how to play guitar when he came back later that night.
Dad left me alone. I sat in the hallway, knees drawn up, arms wrapped around them, and watched as the rays of afternoon light slanted into rays of evening light. The house was hauntingly quiet except for the sound of the refrigerator humming, and I thought about calling Mom. She might have been drunk and passed out, but she was there. Always there.
Then there were clouds. Dark clouds, black clouds and thunder rumbled in the distance. Lightning flashed across the sky, and each strike felt like a shot through my stomach. Tornado sirens rang out, wind hit the house, and something banged against the side. I shook, head to toe, and the lights flickered, then blackness.
Tears burned my eyes, and I rolled into a ball. I didn’t want to be alone, I didn’t want to die, and I didn’t want to be in the dark. The wind howled, a screeching of a freight train, the ground trembling beneath me and a scream. The wind screaming, me screaming, the glass exploding and shattering throughout the house.
“Drix! Drix, where are you?” Arms around me and my screams were muffled into a shoulder covered by flannel. A hand behind my head, I was in the air, then dropped into the bathtub. The cold porcelain biting into my back and then a hard body on top of me.
“It’s okay,” Axle shouted over the wind. “It’s okay.”
And we lay there until the storm passed. Him over me. Me clinging to him. The wind died down. The rain slowed to a pattering on the tin roof, then stopped. Axle eventually pushed off me, helped me up, and the two of us slowly crept through our small house. Taking in the shards of glass in the living room, in the kitchen, but the walls were still standing.
Axle cleaned the glass off the counter, set me on it and looked me over for blood. “I told you after Dad bought you dinner to have him take you back to your mom’s.”
I rubbed my nose as Axle used a kitchen towel to clean up a cut on my knee. “He said he’d teach me how to play guitar.”
Axle’s head snapped up, his dark eyes meeting mine, and I saw something then I’ve seen too many times since. My hurt mirrored in him. “You don’t need him, Drix. If you want to play guitar, I’ll teach you. Whatever it is you need, I’ll give it to you. Neither of us need him.”
My older brother takes in my arm around Elle. He nods. I nod. Elle is my choice, she’s choosing me, and now Axle will defend her like he defends me. I slide my hand from around her shoulder and caress her back. “How do you feel about listening to some music?”
Her answering smile owns me entirely. “I would love that.” Good. All of this is good.