|
It was after one in the morning when I finally slipped into the apartment and slammed the door shut behind me.
"Hey,
you're home!"
I mumbled an unintelligible response and shrugged out of my jacket.
"How was the bar?"
Normally,
I would've given Taylor and AJ a short, optimistic response about the joys of tips, complimented perfectly by a funny story
involving a drunken customer. Taylor would laugh, and AJ would express incredulity that he'd ever acted in such an outrageous
manner--at which point a mischievous Taylor would remind him that he had, in fact, been drunk for quite some time before she
got to know the sane, sober AJ. I would've teased them about being such a stereotypical, overly analytical, self-involved
couple, and everyone would have a good laugh.
After the night from hell, though, I didn't have the energy for a sitcom-style
front.
"Do you two ever do anything but watch TV?" I grumbled in disgust, folding my jacket over one of our barstools.
AJ
glanced up from the television with an amused smile. "Sometimes, we mute the television so we can listen to you complain,"
he offered.
My backpack landed on the floor with a petulant thud. "I don't always complain." My insolent tone would've
made my bratty little niece proud.
"No, you don't," Taylor agreed. "In fact, you're usually happy when you get home
from the bar. What happened tonight?"
Somewhere inside my brain, a tendon snapped, and I groaned loudly.
"It
was the night from hell, Tails. I swear to God, every idiot and their mother decided to get drunk at my counter tonight. Literally--I
had this retarded guy and his seventy-three-year-old mother come up and order ten tequila slammers in an hour. Unfortunately,
that was the best part of the evening. This posh group of women from some dumbass beauty magazine came in and ordered a shitload
of bellinis--only to complain that the peach flavoring wasn't good enough to merit a tip for the bartender. Just as they were
about to leave, we got accosted by this indie rock band who'd been playing a gig down the street--so, naturally, they were
already plastered--and one of the band members hit one of the posh fashion women in the head with his guitar."
AJ's
eyes widened in shock. "Shit...isn't that a liability for the bar?"
I smiled sarcastically. "Not a clue, babe; I let
the manager deal with it. I had to tend to the rest of the roadies, who ordered frozen drinks until our blenders broke."
Taylor
winced. "The blenders broke?"
I nodded. "The blenders broke, and the idiot drummer thought it'd be fucking hilarious
to hold his lighter up to the fire alarm."
At this point, both members of my tiny audience were grimacing in pain.
"Everything
got wet," I grumbled. "Everything. Not to mention that the computer with which I'd been computing tabs shorted out, so I had
to write the remaining bills by hand. By the time I was done, people were too wet and too cold and too angry to give decent
tips."
"That sucks!" Taylor sympathized.
I leveled her with a nonplussed expression. "Tell me about it."
She
shook her head angrily, shaking AJ's arm off of her shoulder. "No, not just your stuff. I have to open tomorrow night!" She
rolled her eyes in annoyance. "Man...tell me Teddy's having someone clean the place up before tomorrow."
Teddy is our
beer-guzzling, pot-smoking manager. He's a bit overweight and extremely friendly. Most nights, I adore Teddy. Tonight, I hated
his guts.
"He doesn't need to. He had the closers mop things up this evening. Everything was wet and people were leaving,
so he kicked the remaining customers out and closed early."
Taylor's brow wrinkled sympathetically. "Well...at least
you got to close early."
"Yeah, freaking fantastic," I agreed sarcastically. "Check the clock, Tails. It's almost
two a.m. anyway, and I didn't get to make any extra money past midnight." I rolled my eyes and fell into our corduroy armchair,
fingering the loose bits of stuffing that were peeking out through the hole in the arm. "I'm exhausted, man. I just want to
go to bed."
AJ tentatively wrapped another arm around Taylor's shoulders and smiled when she didn't shrug him off.
"So go to bed, Lady Di."
"Can't," I informed him frankly. "I've got a lab report due by tomorrow at five, and I
have
to finish it."
Taylor dipped her chin pointedly in my direction. "A.M. or P.M.?"
I heaved an annoyed sigh. "P.M."
AJ
arched an eyebrow doubtfully. "Don't you think you'll have time to finish it
between tomorrow morning and five?"
"I
might," I admitted. "But I'm awake, and I'm annoyed, and..."
"And you'll feel ten times better in the morning," Taylor
pointed out. "Come on, Heads. We need to get to bed, too. I've got to get up at six to make it to the museum on time."
As
a recent art history graduate, Taylor was fortunate enough to score an "unpaid
internship" with the Metropolitan Museum
of Art. Translation? She's basically sold her soul for a chance to write pamphlets and maybe--maybe--score a job
as the curator's assistant. Luckily for Taylor, the Met makes one hell of an addition to her resume.
I managed a poor
excuse for one of my usual smirks. "What are you scheduled to do tomorrow morning?"
"Same thing I do every morning,"
Taylor grumbled. "Fetch coffee for the higher-ups."
"Aw, baby..." AJ murmured, rubbing her back consolingly.
I
rolled my eyes. "I vote we go on strike. I'm tired of being a poor workaholic."
AJ bit his lip to keep from laughing
at me. Bastard. "Are you sure you aren't just
tired of being a bartender?"
"I'm tired of a lot of things," I grumbled.
"Mostly, I'm just tired of today. I'm ready
for it to be over."
Before I could continue my bitter tirade,
my bloody cell phone started ringing, and I glared at it in disbelief.
"Are you kidding me?" I cried at the ceiling.
"Can't I get a break? Come on, man! I'm not a bad person!"
"You're going to be a dead person if you don't answer that
phone," Taylor scowled. "That song is seriously fucking annoying."
With a sigh of resignation and a longing glance
at my bedroom door, I groaned and grabbed the vibrating device. To my surprise, "unknown" was flashing across the screen.
No way. Not a chance in hell.
"Diana Casseres," I mumbled exhaustedly.
"You know, I'm used to a much
more enthusiastic greeting. I'm kind of disappointed, Bills girl. Do you not like me anymore?"
My eyes widened in something
between horror and incredulity. Uh-huh. Yeah. That's the problem with this picture...
"Hardly," I responded
quickly. "It's two in the morning here, so...I'm a little tired."
Which would have been the truth, really--if
"a little tired" meant "fucking exhausted."
I silently wondered when I became the kind of girl to censor myself for
some pretty boy's benefit. Then my brain presented me with a mental picture of Nick, and I stopped wondering.
"I'm
sorry, babe. I figured you'd be up. I mean, your shift is just ending, right? Doesn't the bar close around now?"
Butterflies.
I had fucking butterflies because the Backstreet Boy had remembered my schedule.
Pathetic.
"Yeah, we close at
two."
I could hear his smile through the phone. "Dude! Go me! So...how was work?"
By a somewhat misguided act
of God, I smiled. I couldn't help it. Hell, I grinned.
"Work was...okay."
Across the room, AJ's jaw dropped incredulously,
and Taylor let out a derisive snort.
"Just okay?" he continued teasingly. "No hilarious stories about drunken customers?"
"Every
night results in hilarious stories about drunken customers," I replied with a
laugh. "Are you telling me you actually want
to hear them all?"
He chuckled lightly, that cute, scratchy little boyish giggle of which I was already far too fond.
"If I say yes, will you oblige by telling some?"
"I might."
Flirting. Two o'clock in the morning after the night
from hell, and I was flirting.
Ladies and gentlemen, Nick Carter is not just a Backstreet Boy; he's a miracle worker.
He
heaved a sigh of mock petulance. "Bills girl...don't make me beg..."
It was becoming very hard to ignore exactly how
much I wanted to make him beg.
In a rather impressive display of devotion to his "friendship" proposition, he'd been calling
me every night and making easy conversation for the better part of an hour. To say that I enjoyed his calls would be an understatement.
He appreciated my eccentric stories about customers at the bar, and he responded with equally hilarious stories about life
in the studio and on the road. Over the last week, I'd learned that we shared not only a love of football, but also a dry
sense of humor and a strange penchant for Chuck Palahniuk novels.
I was almost afraid to discover anything else we
had in common. I already liked him far too much for my own good, and I'd be damned if I was going to prove Taylor right.
"I'm
not making you do anything," I teased finally. "Don't you want to tell me about your day in the studio?" Aren't you impressed
that I remembered the fact that you spent your day in the studio? 'Cause I'm not. In fact, I kind of hate it.
"We
worked on the same song we've been working on for the past three days. It was...well, it wasn't boring, but it wasn't anything
new either. Tell me drunken stories!"
The slightly petulant tone with which he persisted was enough to make my surprised
grin a permanent fixture. "Well...if you insist..."
"I do," he interrupted in a charmingly arrogant voice.
I
giggled. I actually fucking giggled. The sound shocked me, and I was the one who had initiated it. I didn't stick around to
see my roommates' reactions. Instead, I lifted my exhausted pile of limbs off the couch and trudged to my room as I
began relaying the evening's events in the wittiest way possible.
Soon, I wasn't the only one giggling.
* * * *
*
I was in a Zen-like trance, floating somewhere in the midst of Messaeian's Quartet
for the End of Time, letting
the long, deep notes flow through me. Everything was oscillating gently with the vibrato of each note, but it didn't matter;
I'd stopped looking at the music a long time ago. I knew where I was. In fact, I was just beginning to close my eyes when
a loud knock interrupted my reverie.
Normally, I'd be annoyed. For some reason, though, the Messaeian had left me feeling
uncharacteristically peaceful, and I leaned back into my beat-up desk chair with a deep, contented sigh.
"Come in."
Taylor
poked her head in tentatively. As soon as she caught sight of the cello nestled between my knees, she lifted an eyebrow expectantly.
"I
came in to see if you're working tonight," she explained, sounding almost guilty.
"I'm about to leave."
I set my
bow on the bed and reached up, trying to work out the kinks in my shoulders. "I work tonight, but not at the bar."
Taylor
nodded. Having been my roommate for the entirety of our undergraduate experience, Taylor was no stranger to my second job.
She understood that I deemed it necessary, and she didn't ask an abundance of questions. However, despite the degree to which
she was familiar with my financial and occupational situations, she still didn't always feel comfortable with the candid,
sarcastic, flippant way in which I chose to discuss them.
The death of Taylor's parents meant that she had a hard life
growing up. However, she took her hard knocks in suburbia. She's a tough chick, but her skin is still a lot softer than
mine.
Times like these, when the music is still shimmering around me, I kind of love her for it.
She cleared
her throat awkwardly and leaned her hea against the doorframe, her brow furrowing in concern.
"You're playing?" she
asked finally.
I knew that wasn't her real question, but I responded anyway. "I'm playing."
She nodded again,
a slow bob that looked almost sedated. "I don't think I've ever really heard you play," she said finally.
The tranquil
feeling of the music began to dissipate, and my tact faded with it. Taylor is soft under the skin, but outwardly, she's a
hard ass who knows better than to treat me with kid gloves.
"I don't have a lot of free time these days," I leveled.
"Besides, cello hasn't exactly
been the first thing on my mind."
"I'm not faulting you for it," Taylor sighed. "I
just...it sounds sad. The cello sounds
sad. And it's really, really pretty, but it's also really fucking depressing, and...are
you okay?"
The corners of my mouth curled ever so slightly as I watched Art Major Taylor mentally wading through the
musical water.
"It's Olivier Messaeian's Quartet for the End of Time," I explained pointedly. "He wrote it in the walls
of a concentration camp during the Holocaust. I'm guessing it wasn't exactly the happiest place on earth."
"Music definitely
reflects that," Taylor volleyed. "It's just an interesting choice, I
guess."
I shrugged. "I'm damaged and cynical.
I like beautiful, depressing music in long,
orgasmic minor tones."
Taylor nodded again, and I rolled my eyes surreptitiously.
For a moment, silence hung limply in the air.
"It's pretty," Taylor admitted. "It's pretty, and you're talented, and
it fucking bleeds through these walls, and it's kind of nice to see you doing something that has nothing to do with sex, drugs,
and neuroscience."
I expelled a small sigh of relief at the harsh yet humorous wording. Hesitant, reflective Taylor
freaks me out. Brutal, tactless Taylor and I get along much better.
"I know this has something to do with Nick," Taylor
deadpanned, "and I don't know how, but I don't like it."
All that was left of Messaeian's tranquility shattered as
her words registered.
"How do you know it has something to do with Nick?" I snapped. "How do you know I didn't just
feel the urge to play? I mean, shit, Taylor, I spent all day busting my ass to finish this lab report, and I did it all knowing
I'd have to play fucking Julia Roberts tonight. Maybe this is how I chose to unwind! Maybe this has nothing to do with Nick
and everything to do with me trying--for ONCE in my life--to alleviate some stress."
My chest was heaving, her eyes
were wide, and I knew immediately that I'd blown up for no good reason.
Attention all staffers. Overreaction on
aisle 5. Defensive, party of one--your table is ready.
Inwardly, I groaned.
"I'm sorry, Tails. It's just..."
She
shook her head. "No, don't apologize," she interrupted, taking a seat on the bed. "You're right. I'm making snap judgments.
You take one step towards being a human instead of an academically obsessed robot, and I freak out."
She shot me a
smirk that I returned in full.
"It's just weird, Heads. I know we don't do heartfelt and shit because we're supposed
to be damaged and cynical, but I'm worried about you. I saw how quickly your mood changed last night when he called, and all
of my stupid, protective roommate bells went off. And then I get home, and you're playing cello for the first time in, like,
three years, and it sounds all sad and moping and longing and all that sappy stuff that you hate--or pretend to hate, anyway--and...what
am I supposed to think? He's hot as hell and very intelligent, and he's a good guy most of the time, but he's broken, and
I'm worried that he's going to break you in the process of putting himself back together again, and...I'm sorry. I shouldn't
be worried." She laughed bitterly. "You're stronger than that. I know you're stronger than that. As your friend, though, I
feel the need to be protective and shit, so I forget sometimes just how strong you are."
She stood up and brushed herself
off, shooting me a mischievous smile as she did so.
"Forget what I said about Nick. Keep playing. Hell, play more.
You looked almost
relaxed when I came in here. For all I know, it's a miracle cello."
I laughed. I laughed, but
I didn't have the heart to say anything as she closed the door. I'd been defensive and ornery and apparently convincing, but
I wasn't stupid.
I didn't say anything because Taylor was right. The cello had everything to do with
Nick, and that
terrified me.
|
