Jenson

 

Although the holidays are around the corner, things haven’t stopped moving along with the band. A new record is coming together, and we’ve been busy rehearsing for a charity show Brad secured us a last-minute slot in. We were looking for an intimate venue for our comeback, but this show seemed right. It’s for a good cause, anyway. As expected, word has spread and photos have been leaked of us coming and going outside the studio—cue the rumors and predictions. This is my least favorite part, feeling that everything balances on a precarious edge. That we’ve set into motion something that can’t be stopped. But it’s all part of the business.

I’m dragging my toes down the hall of my building when I return home after our latest rehearsal. By the end of our session, we still hadn’t gotten the bridge of one of our songs right. I push gracelessly through my door and blow out a sigh, before registering I’m not alone. A familiar messenger bag covered in buttons is resting in a heap on the floor.

Lindsey’s been coming over semi-regularly since that first time, so her being here is no longer a surprise. Already, I’ve noticed an improvement around here; she’s been hounding me to unpack, make something of my place, so I set the goal to unpack one box each time she comes over. It’s not much, but it’s something.

The smile I already had prepared fades when I round the corner and see her seated on my kitchen counter, head back against the cabinets, a half-empty bottle of red beside her. I stop short and prop myself against the refrigerator with a forearm, waiting until she looks at me. “Hello, lovely,” I greet, my voice just as weary and ragged as I feel.

“I invited myself over,” she says. She’s in another one of her thrift-store finds, wearing a faded black sweater with sleeves that go past her hands as a dress, and she’s clutching it to her like she’s freezing.  

“I can see that. What’s on your mind?” It’s clearly something heavy, or her eyes wouldn’t be rimmed in red. I haven’t seen her this sad in all the time I’ve known her.

“My father’s marrying someone—a woman he knew while he and my mom were together.”

I watch her carefully, gauging just how she feels about this. Some families are more screwed up than others, and I can’t tell if she’s more disappointed that she expected the news or that she didn’t. “And you feel very negatively about it,” I finish. I want to console her, but at the same time I don’t want to smother.

“My mom has MS, and my dad left her shortly after she was diagnosed. Or so I thought. I hated him for it, and then I found out they’d been considering it for years, waiting until I was out of the house to tell me. Said they wanted to provide a solid home life and make sure I was okay on my own before they did anything drastic. Now I hear from my dad for the first time in years, and he wants me to spend half of my time with him and his new fiancé at Thanksgiving.” The words seem to hit me at once, like they’ve been dumped from an overturned bucket. I’d have never guessed any of this, not about her mom or her parents’ divorce.

Lindsey lets out a great, shuddering sigh. “I thought I was bigger than this. I thought I could be mature and accept that everyone deserves their own happiness, you know?” she voices to the ceiling.

“What did you tell him?”

“I didn’t. I hung up on him. I can’t handle that right now.” She takes a swig of wine straight from the bottle. “Sorry I brought this. I’ll finish it.”

I shrug as if it’s not a big deal, like the smell of it isn’t mouth-watering. Instead, I stick with my new theme of giving her space, trudging over to the coffee maker and brewing a mug, then wordlessly handing it over to her. In the same fashion, she accepts it, and I slide the bottle farther down the counter, away from her. Hypocritical or not, I know filling your belly with alcohol is probably the worst thing you can do when dealing with hurt and emotion. And every strained feature on Lindsey’s face tells me she’s waging a war against hers.

“I’m sorry.” I hunch over the counter beside her and rub my face. There’s nothing else I can say. I don’t know her father or their situation, and I’m hardly the picture of marital success.

Lindsey just sips her coffee and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. “I’m not gonna go.”

“To your dad’s?”

“Home. I have to work, anyway. I can’t get off long enough to fly back.”

“You should see your family.”

“I can’t.” She shrugs, but she looks regretful. “Anyway, I’ll be over it by Christmas. Maybe enough to go see my dad again.”

Something in her tone clues me in. “You haven’t seen your dad? Since when?”

“Since he left. Five years ago.”

My chest tightens. Yeah, my dad left, and yeah, I’ve had countless moments where I’ve thought of him as nothing more than a piece of shit, but her situation is different. Her dad didn’t abandon her when she was a baby, he raised her and gave her the childhood he thought she deserved. He wanted to preserve some of that naïve youth. I can’t fault him for that. But her feelings aren’t mine to judge, so instead of voicing my thoughts, I drop my hand to her thigh and squeeze it reassuringly. “What can I do?”

She looks down at me and gives me a small smile. “I think you know.

“Jesus, woman. It’s like I’m not good for anything else around here.”

“I know a few things you’re very, very good at. But I was thinking. . .”

I straighten, taking her mug and setting it in the sink, busying myself so she can say what’s on her mind. “What?”

“Your apartment is sad. Maybe even sadder than the situation with my dad. You haven’t fully unpacked and you’ve been here for months.”

“Interior decorating is not one of those things I’m good at,” I say. I’m also not good with adjustments. Once I’d finally grown accustomed to living with Carter, I moved out. Now I’m here and I can’t bring myself to try futilely to make it home. It won’t ever be home.

“Come on. I know you have some platinum albums in there somewhere,” she says, waving toward the cardboard graveyard. “Maybe a photo of you and your mom? Some porn mags for the coffee table? Literally anything to cheer this place up?”

“Cheer? That’s what you want?” She nods, her eyes glimmering with mirth. “Well, cheer is what you will get, dream catcher. Wait here.”

I stride into the living room, pausing only to whip my shirt over my head and change into sweatpants. Then I peek beneath the flaps of the boxes in the corner until I find what I’m looking for. Money.

Bare feet pad up behind me as I’m wrestling with the disassembled pieces. “How could I have guessed you wouldn’t follow instructions?”

“I’m curious,” she whines, trying to lean around me.

“Behold,” I declare, pulling out a third of a Christmas tree. “In a moment of pettiness, I took this from Carter’s house when I moved out.”

“You took his Christmas tree?” She fake gasps. “Scrooge strikes again.”

“I’m pretty sure I bought it. And I think you mean the Grinch.” I hand her the section and dig through false branches to find the next.

She frowns. “Never saw it.”

I freeze, appalled. “You’ve gotta be shitting me. Like, you haven’t seen the remake?”

“I’m not shitting you. I haven’t watched either.”

“The hell? That changes tonight. But first, we have a job to do.” I locate the base and Lindsey points me toward the windows along the wall opposite my front door.

“All the way over here?” I question.

“Yes. In the window. Christmas trees aren’t just for you to enjoy, they’re for everyone.”

“You must’ve lived in a different kind of neighborhood than me. Put your tree in the window and you’d probably get robbed.” I plug the widest section of the tree into the base, fluffing the branches.

“Or maybe I’m just good at Christmas.” She passes me the middle portion of the tree, and I plug that one into the bottom. Leaving her to arrange the branches, I reach over her head and slide the last piece into place. It’s not the largest tree, maybe six feet tall or so, but it’s a tree nonetheless; it does the job.

I plug in the pre-strung lights and step back, dusting off my hands. “Voila. Christmas tree.”

Lindsey gives the tree a long look from bottom to top. “That’s it? You don’t have any ornaments?”

“Damn. I knew I was forgetting something important when I left Carter’s place pissed off after he betrayed me. Ornaments.” I feign a perplexed look and she swats me on the arm.

“I have an idea.” She goes to rifle through her messenger bag, and I fetch my phone from the kitchen. A few taps later and the apartment is filled with notes of Andy Williams’ “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.” Lindsey returns a moment later and produces a handful of Polaroids. Taking a closer look, I see they’re photos of us. Me, or her, or both of us. This whole time, while I was writing or drinking or loving on her, and she was clicking away with her camera, she was taking these. I watch while she divvies them between us, then starts placing hers on the branches, nestling them in the greenery so they’re standing up.

I join her without question, and once the stacks are depleted, the tree is bedecked in askance, rectangular photos. Aglow with light, they’re transformed into something more than just low-quality snapshots of time. Some of the photos are probably too inappropriate for traditional holiday décor, but all of them together offer an accurate depiction of us.

“Probably the most dysfunctional tree of all time,” I say, nudging her with my shoulder. She smirks, pleased.

“The tree of Lindsey and Jenson. Jendsey. Linson.”

I stifle my snort. Typical girl, shortening normal words. Just then, saxophone notes drift from the speakers and Etta James begins her “Merry Christmas, Baby” serenade. The atmosphere seems to shift, darkening.

“Dance with me.” I toss the phone onto the window seat and offer Lindsey my hand. She accepts it with a sultry shake of her shoulders and does a little spin into my chest.

“I’ve never danced so much.”

“Somehow I doubt that. You’re a music junkie.”

“You know what I mean. Like this.” Her smile fades into one that’s more melancholic, and she rests her head on my chest. I feel her mouth the words to the music against my skin. She’s never sung in front of me. When I tell her so, she giggles. “I guess I’m a Jenson junkie, too. I’m high on you.” I fight the urge to drop my head back and sigh. Rarely is she this transparent. I want to soak it in as long as possible before she slaps her armor back into place.

Then she shifts, fitting her head beneath my chin and pressing slow, sweet kisses across my neck. My nerves snap and fire in response to her lips and breath on my skin. I’m ticklish as hell and my neck is a spot that’s guaranteed to bring me to my knees. I inhale, my muscles tightening, hardening.

At the end of the instrumental solo, I take advantage of the moment and dip her low, exposing her neck to me instead. She giggles again, a different kind of music. The sound stirs up my insides. God, this woman. I right us both and pull her flush against me, meeting her lips. She kisses with hunger, desperation. I’ll never tire of it. Using my shoulders as leverage, she manages to lift herself enough to where she can wrap her legs around my hips. I don’t need any more persuasion. I back up to the couch and sink down onto it, the movement jolting her against me. She smiles against my lips.

Then she detaches from me and holds up a finger, pushing herself to standing. I watch her hands disappear beneath the hem of her sweater, and she peels her leggings off. Then she’s back in my lap, gripping my hair and having her way with my mouth. I skim my hands up her thighs, beneath her sweater, and find her completely bare. She moves against my fingers, pulling my head back roughly. Short hums of approval vibrate against my skin as she sucks beneath my ear. Control is waning, and I feel blood pooling beneath the surface, but I can’t find any fucks to give. I don’t care if I’m walking around tomorrow like a high school kid with his first hickey, I’m not stopping her. I have my vices and this one is my favorite.

The song switches, and Otis Redding croons to us about a white Christmas. It’s idyllic, his dream, and right now I feel like I’m walking through one of my own. Except Lindsey is real and she’s in my arms, on my fingers, losing herself in me just as I’m losing myself in her.  

When her head falls back and she clenches around me, I put my hand in her hair and bring my mouth to her ear. There are countless filthy things I could say in this moment. Words that would barely pervade her euphoria but would drive her wild anyway. Instead, I let the moment carry me away, and the statement that’s grown inside me for the past few weeks becomes too large to contain.

“God, I’m falling in love with you.” It comes out as a sigh, the statement both soft and powerful at the same time. It shocks me as much as it shocks her. At least I think it’s shock. Maybe more confusion.

Lindsey is frozen in my lap, her lips slightly parted. Confusion is better than fear, right? Anything’s better than fear.

Wrong.

I watch as color leaches from her cheeks and her features sag. I thought nothing was worse than fear, but I was so wrong. Dread trumps fear every time. And right now, she’s filled with it. She’s not so much surprised as she is disappointed, like an expectation was met despite all her efforts to prevent it. She lays her palms on my chest, using the hands I love, the ones that create magic, to push herself away. Push me away. And I don’t even stop her. I know that look, and I know from experience you can’t cage a storm.

All I can do is repeat myself, as if clarification might somehow force her to see sense. “I’m—”

“I heard you,” she says quietly but forcefully, avoiding my eyes while she smooths down her sweater.

My trepidation gives way to offense. Those words—words cities have fought wars over and people have died for—aren’t meant to invoke the kind of negative feelings now rolling off her in waves. But I’ve said my piece. I can’t shove it down my throat and pretend it never happened.

I’m struck by the need to defend myself; I can talk my way out of anything. Until I remember how much trouble my “talking in circles” has brought me. How the most important things are shown.

So I watch her.

And watch her.

And wait.

She flattens a hand against her forehead, and her breath rattles through her teeth. “This wasn’t supposed to happen.”

I narrow my eyes, and behind them, sorrow and anger fight a battle in my mind. But there’s nothing to be won, and I always come out on the losing side in the end.

“It’s not like I did it on purpose,” I manage to say. I rise to my feet and adjust myself in my pants, feeling more vulnerable than ever. Sinatra mocks me from the speakers, and I force myself to mute the volume instead of pitching my phone across the room. I track Lindsey’s movements as she stuffs her legs into her tights and yanks them up, avoiding my eyes. She is everywhere all at once, picking up her things, disheveled, leaving.

“Talk to me, Lindsey. You have to be feeling something.”

“Oh, I felt a lot of things, Jenson. I felt everything I could within the constraints of what this is.”

She’s launching her statements like weapons, but I’ve faced too much to be afraid of the things fear makes people say. I take a step in her direction, and her hands fly up in front of her.

“Just . . . don’t. Please. I can’t.”

“Can’t what? Admit you feel the same way? Admit you’re scared to? Which one is it?”

“I don’t. . . I’m not scared, Jenson,” she seethes, heading for the door.

Abandoning caution, I hurdle the couch and close the distance between us in a few strides. I can’t stand idly by as she’s leaving. Not like this. I’ve done everything I can to play by her rules, make sure not to move too fast, not to do anything that would scare her off. But everything she’s done so far has told me what her mouth hasn’t. She speaks all the time, even when she’s not talking. I’ve just learned to listen.

“Then say what you mean.” My voice hitches with passion, and I draw to a stop as she opens the door. The threshold is the line in the sand. Once she crosses that, I’m not chasing her down. Nothing I say can compete with the narrative in her head.

“What I mean?” she says weakly, stabilizing herself against the door.

“You speak to me without words all the time. Just, for once, say what you mean.”

She swallows, fists a hand in her hair, and says, “Good bye.” Then she’s gone. She’s over the line and out of my life.

And I guess good bye is all she means.

 

 

Lindsey

 

I’m falling in love with you.

My throat constricts, and I choke on a sob as I unlock the door to Isaac’s car. When he saw the look on my face after my dad’s phone call, he didn’t even put up a fight when I asked for his keys. I didn’t think twice about coming over to Jenson’s. I just did. His apartment became a haven to me before I even realized it was happening.

It takes me three tries to get the key into the ignition, then I’m squealing out of the garage. I’m half afraid to see him in the rear-view mirror while at the same time mourning the fact that I don’t. I’ve never felt more torn. I’ve never felt more.

The roads and city lights are chaos to my strained emotions. So I drive, and drive, and drive. Mostly around the outskirts of the city, until eventually I make a beeline for the one place in Nashville I don’t associate with memories of Jenson.

I leave the car parked on a side street, then hike the rest of the way up the curving avenue that is Love Circle. Fitting. It’s supposed to be “closed” to the public after a certain time, but who’s going to notice a lonely girl in a dark sweater? It’s a place for lovers, anyway. And dreamers, I like to think. Near the top of the curve, the infamous site comes into view. The panoramic view of the city is enough to quell the burn in my legs and the ache in my heart, but only temporarily.

I sit in the grass and light up a cigarette from the emergency pack in my bag. Aside from a car parked farther along the way, I’m totally alone. The infinite night sky unfolds above me, and stars wink just beyond the glow of civilization. Seclusion, the subdued ambience, is exactly what I need. I smoke my way through one stick and the next. The nicotine works its magic and somehow slows the wheels in my head. Individual strands of thought are easier to pick out and process, and the momentum carrying me from Jenson’s place to here seems to switch into slow motion.

Why do I feel the need to make it obvious to everyone else that I’m the person who cares less? The one who won’t make compromises or exceptions, who can’t be affected by something so “minor” as another human being? Because I feel everything. I care so much that my heart is a hazard to itself. I know deep down that I don’t do anything halfway, so I won’t allow myself the time of day to look twice at something that might steal my focus. I looked more than twice at Jenson, and look what happened to him. And to me. I’m conflicted over something that shouldn’t have been allowed in the cards in the first place.

My head and my heart are at war with each other, neither willing to surrender.

But I couldn’t have prepared any better for this. I’d discounted Jenson as a stereotypical troubled musician. I didn’t know the seemingly insignificant moments spent with him would amount to me discovering the man behind the gossip articles, the hollow-eyed red-carpet photos, the haunting lyrics that seemed to run their fingertips down my soul.

I didn’t account for my heart to recognize his.

If I’m a slave to anything, it’s to my imagination, my passions, following them wherever they lead. I was determined not to let those passions wrap around a man, someone who could string my wayward heart along. So, I did something worse. I abandoned a man who’s been abandoned all his life.

Guilt rises, all my feelings jockeying for position once again. How was it so easy for him to make sense of this and tell me those things so fearlessly? I’ve never felt so uncomfortable in the face of such brutal honesty. He trusted me with his bared soul, and I just had to run. Give him a chance to rethink things, decide this isn’t the path he wants to take. Maybe tomorrow he’ll realize he was only under the enchantment of feelings sparked by Christmas lights, and photos of us, and Etta James’s soulful voice. If anyone’s to blame, it’s her. And hormones.

We were both under a spell for a time, and reality’s kiss was just enough to break it.