Chapter Four
Chapter Four
“Who’s the guy?”
Ren was wiping the counter by the espresso machine when Allie walked in. Besides two tables with patrons tucked behind laptops, the café was empty. Mindy was organizing a pile of saucers that had just come out of the dishwasher, placing them in neat piles on the open shelves behind the cash register.
“No one.” Allie moved past them and pressed the release button for the cash drawer with more force than necessary. She removed a stack of twenties and began counting them, smacking each one onto the countertop.
“Not no one.” Ren leaned on the counter in front of her. “He knew your name. He chased you up the block.”
“He chased you up the block?” Mindy echoed, abandoning the saucers and fixing Allie with an expectant look.
“He didn’t chase me up the block .” She looked down at her stack of cash, hoping they’d give up and stop staring at her. When she glanced back up, two pairs of eyes were still glued to her.
“His name is Ryan. He’s a customer.” She huffed. “He works at Solidarity. I met him the other day when I did that delivery. He’s really annoying. Southern. Thinks everyone is his friend. It’s not a big deal.”
“I think you’re protesting too much.” Mindy poked Allie’s shoulder and finally went back to the saucer stacking.
“He’s cute.” Ren tilted their head thoughtfully. “In a lives-at-the-top-of-a-beanstalk kind of way.”
Allie swallowed a smile.
“Yes, and he certainly seems to like you.” Mindy nodded. Indignance flared in Allie’s chest.
“I’m not interested in him. Besides, I have bigger problems right now.” She looked pointedly at her aunt, who took the hint and closed her mouth.
“Of course you’re not interested in him.” Ren shrugged. “You’re immune to romance.”
“What?” Allie shut the cash drawer and whirled around. That wasn’t true at all. “I’m fine with romance.”
Ren gave a disbelieving snort. “Allie, people come in here all the time checking you out and I have yet to see you go on one date. You hardly give them the time of day. Unless they’re in their eighties and demanding Earl Grey.”
“To be fair, you’ve only worked here for a few years. I can confirm that there was romance in the years before.”
“That’s true.” Mindy chose to reenter the conversation from the other side of the room, where she was now busily sweeping up muffin crumbs with the good broom. “There was Jack in 2012. Until, what? 2014?”
“Something like that.” Allie was now kicking herself for indulging this line of discussion.
“What was his deal?” Ren leaned on the counter.
“Alcoholic,” Mindy and Allie responded in unison. Ren nodded.
Allie shrugged. “Nice guy. Too much trauma. And he just kept getting grumpier.”
“Well, that’s no good.” Ren grinned. “You’re grumpy enough on your own.”
Allie rolled her eyes. “After him, there was Layla.”
“Layla was nice. I liked her.” Mindy nodded with enthusiasm.
“What happened with her?” Ren’s pointed curiosity was starting to wear on Allie’s nerves.
“We just weren’t compatible.”
Mindy laughed.
“What?”
“Don’t you mean she wanted to actually get to know you and have something serious and you freaked out and got all weird and she got tired of it and broke up with you?”
Allie felt a tightness constricting her shoulders. She couldn’t deny that what her aunt said was true. Layla kept saying that she wanted to really connect , and Allie could only dodge the emotional intimacy for so long. When they’d finally broken up on the platform at the Lexington Avenue station, amid a cloud of mysterious sewage stink and too-nosy onlookers, she’d decided that maybe she was better off staying single.
Ryan’s smiling face surfaced in her mind. Yes, he was handsome. And she could admit that it felt good to have someone concerned about her. But that didn’t have to mean anything.
“Anyway, Ryan isn’t single, so no amount of you two bothering me is going to lead to anything.”
“You never know.” Mindy shrugged.
Ren nodded. “Guys don’t chase girls down the street every day.”
“He didn’t—” Allie started to protest but gave up as Mindy and Ren dissolved into laughter.
“Oh, fuck this. I’m out of here. I’ll be upstairs if you need anything.” Allie had reached her limit with their irritating antics.
Her apartment was too hot after hours of the sun streaming through the closed windows, but at least it was empty of other humans. She opened both windows to let in the cool evening air, then collapsed backward onto her bed.
The day had overloaded her senses. She felt like a cartoon character who had always been black and white but was now suddenly colored in with bright-yellow highlighter. She had been so good at not thinking or talking about her past for so many years, especially after Mindy’s Café became her whole life. But now memories were filling her head, and she couldn’t get them to leave.
Rolling onto her stomach, she scootched her body forward so she was hanging over the side of the bed. From underneath, she pulled a scrapbook, heavy and full.
She opened it to the first page. A note from Jessi, written in her achingly familiar scrawl, on a piece of notebook paper, fold lines still clearly visible. It had been shoved through the vents in Allie’s locker one afternoon in the fall of their senior year.
Hey! Did you study for that stupid calculus test? I did NOT. Also, when are we going to start this band you’ve been talking about? My cousin knows a girl who drums. Meet me after the test and we can talk about it. My grandma said we could use the garage to practice. XO
That was the start of it all. The first piece of history in this sloppy scrapbook that she couldn’t bring herself to throw away.
She flipped the page. Glued there was a photo of their first ever show, in Jessi’s grandma’s garage, with their setlist on the next page. They’d played three cover songs and one terrible original. Allie smiled. She couldn’t remember much of that first song they’d written—they’d scrapped it quickly—but she did remember falling in love with the writing process. The four of them sitting on folding chairs in the garage, instruments plugged into the cheapest amps they could find, piecing together Allie’s tentative lyrics and Jessi’s lead guitar riffs, while Ayla and Mimi filled in the bass and drum parts.
Why does your grandma have a Jet Ski?
They always poked around the garage while they were taking breaks between practice sets. They never did find out why Jessi’s grandma had a Jet Ski in her garage. But that mystery provided them with their band name (after a bitter fight when Ayla insisted that they should definitely be called the Esther Greenwoods after the lead character in a book she was obsessed with), and that same Jet Ski was on the cover of their first record. Allie flipped through another few pages of show posters and tour photos. She stopped on a review clipped from Flipside magazine, running her fingers over the tiny black-and-white album cover beside it.
What the Jetskis lack in technical expertise they make up for in charming enthusiasm and clever songwriting. The poetic, political lyrics reminiscent of the Clash are skillfully shout-sung by lead vocalist Jessi Jetski and echoed in the soothing backing vocals of her complementary opposite, Allie Jetski. The band is poised to become a major player on the indie punk scene, with a fall tour already booked and interest from several reputable indie labels. Not bad for a bunch of teenage girls.
Not bad for a bunch of teenage girls, indeed. Allie closed the scrapbook quickly. At that time in their lives, everything felt possible. They had nothing to lose.
And then four years later, it all ended. She hadn’t been ready.
She jammed the scrapbook back under her bed and pushed herself off in the direction of her guitar. She strummed a few exploratory chords before she clicked the spacebar to wake up her laptop. She could finish her recording of “We Belong” tonight if she just got the lead guitar parts right and then added the vocals. It wasn’t as if she had anything else to do. And it would take her mind out of that scrapbook, drown out the whispers of her past. She clicked Record.
What did it mean, she wondered, to belong to the light and the thunder ? Did Pat Benatar just mean that being with the right person made you feel as if you belonged to the whole universe? As if there was something larger than yourself keeping you safe? Allie had never had a relationship like that. Except for the one she’d had with Jessi, and that was a creative relationship, never romantic. She doubted she’d ever find anyone, friend or lover, who could compete with the sense of excitement and belonging that she’d had whenever she was with Jessi.
By midnight, the cover of “We Belong” was finished and burned to a CD for George. Allie was proud of this one. A perfect version of a song about belonging, recorded by someone who was suddenly unsure of where she belonged.