Chapter 3.
Timothy
Screams and whistles and cheers.
Millions of feet roaring on the ground.
A rhythm catching hold in the discord of endless stomping.
Then a rich, soulful voice cutting through.
I see the passion in you …
My eyes snap open. I sit up with a start. It’s dark. Bed sheets kicked off. Pillow on the floor. Sweated through my shirt. Large window next to me with gentle rain tapping on it.
As if the storm from that crazy night followed me home.
Yeah. I’m home.
Where I was destined to be anyway.
Not in a car ripping across the Nevada desert with AJ. Not in Las Vegas laughing at the M the slower I unpacked, the further away I was from that spot in the office that already has my name on it.
Even as the familiar, clean, buttery aroma of the house already began to sink into my bones.
How my room, unoccupied all these months, was still dusted and in order.
How when you stand in place for a moment, you hear the town’s whisper all around you in the trees, in the birdsong, in the hum of a distant vehicle coughing on the road.
I wonder if I should go suit shopping yet.
Buy some tie clips. Get a bobble-head I can boink every time I have an ill thought.
Hopefully I don’t break its neck on the first day.
My lunch was soon joined in by my dad, who gave me a warm hug and welcomed me home, and I got to enjoy about two and half minutes of sharing fun stuff that went on this past semester before all conversation rerouted completely to tractors, loans, and business.
When my dad excused himself for seconds, I got a text from AJ asking how I was surviving Spruce.
I left him on read.
Not in a petty way. I just didn’t know what to say. How honest to be. He probably knows the answer. He feels bad. He isn’t a bad person. This isn’t his fault, and I don’t blame him.
This is just my life and the way it always plays out.
Now it’s three in the morning. And the rain from the night I nearly puked my life into a trash bin and instead ended up puking words and emotions all over a total stranger who didn’t ask for it is tapping on my window in a greeting.
I move to my desk, pull out my notebook and a pencil, and prepare to draw something.
Ten minutes later, I’m still staring at the blank page.
Then I’m back in bed, pillow covering my face, drowning out the sweet tickling fingers of rain on the glass.
Something about the sound of that rain, and I’m back in that filthy side lot outside the Horseshoe next to a dumpster. I’m trying to feel that voice again, how it reached out and took hold of me in such a painful moment and made me smile.
My fingers are on my phone before I know it. I tap through an app, find him (his face is a swirling flame with a cowboy boot—gag), and tap the first song I see. Then I stuff my earbuds in, rest my phone on my lap, and lay my head back on the bed.
Chase Holt’s voice.
Not through a ton of brick walls and plaster and nonsense.
Not while sitting wet and miserable outside by a dumpster.
Chase Holt, right into my ear.
And beyond. To my bones. To something even deeper than my bones, to the very essence that makes me aware of my existence as a human being among billions on this lonely planet.
His voice plays through a melody like a car on a winding road.
Finds my address without any words exchanged.
Shows up right there in front of me.
Joins me in bed, slipping in like a lover.
Arms wrapped around me so tightly, I belong to him, from the second the song starts and forever after.
I feel his breath in my ear every time he takes one.
God, how it crushes me, the way he takes breaths.
My hand slips under the sheets, and at first I’m sure it’s just to touch my heart.
It’s racing. I hear even the tender parting of his lips between lyrics, knowing at once that he makes love to every microphone lucky enough to bear his kisses.
My hand slips deeper under the sheets and finds something far more reactive than my chest. I enclose myself with my fingers, a big handful of myself.
A soft pop of his lips at the end of a word, and I wince as I squeeze.
I’m throbbing.
He knows me. Listen to those lyrics. Don’t you hear them?
The way he describes a tree, how it’s the only friend he’s known, how it’s watched him grow from the clueless boy chasing frogs to the man who wonders where it all went.
I used to chase frogs, too. He gets me. Chase Holt gets me.
And I listen to him sing sweet sadness and joyful longing, every lilt in his voice pulling me further in.
And my hand slips under my shorts.
Takes hold of me bare.
It could be him doing this. He’s right next to me, holding me in his arms—“So many paths to my heart,” he sings in my ear, draws an artful breath. “So many paths, why can’t you find a single one?”
God, and the way he strums that guitar, making it sing along with him, cry along with him, laugh along with him. “So many paths to my heart, but you took the one to my head …”
My hand moves, stroking, but not too fast. Chase Holt isn’t fast. He’s as smooth as a river you’ve known your whole life, water that’s carried you from childhood to adulthood, patient and wise.
He’s the water that keeps you afloat, laughing and joyful, even as it rains. He’s the water you drink to stay alive.
“I could take your hand if that path ain’t clear enough … Guide you through my maze … Even if it’s just over a bridge … Or down a hall …”
“Or through my bedroom door …”
“See how easy that was?”
He grips me tighter, caressing my ear, stroking me.
“You’re in my head, oh, you’re in my head …”
“Playing with it to whatever end that path leads …”
“I think I could be okay with that, yeah, I could be okay with that …”
I’m stroking so fast. His voice is right there, kissing my ear. No walls, no rain, nothing in the way, just me and Chase Holt.
“At least some part of me belongs to you … my head or my heart …”
“And ain’t that just as satisfyin’?”
I’m close.
“Maybe even somethin’ like love …”
I pry the earbuds out and stop stroking, out of breath, staring up at my ceiling. The song is gone. His voice is gone. Only soft rain on the window as Spruce closes back in on me, bringing me back to my bedroom, to my bed, to the sounds of my catching breath.
I push my phone aside, turn over, and shut my eyes.
The world’s dry as a bone by morning. I eat breakfast at the counter by myself—just toast and a pair of eggs I scrambled up and tossed some hot sauce into.
I watch our gardener Bella through the back window working her miracles, admiring how she makes digging through dirt and caressing flowers look like an art form, even when a stray thorn or prickly stem catches her.
I wonder if all passions in life look like that, treated with such love that the whole rest of the world just vanishes.
Like spilling breathtaking fantasies from your fingertips to a sheet of clean blank paper with just a pencil in hand.
Or casting a beautiful melody through the rain and touching the soul of some loser sobbing his eyes out by a dumpster.
After I shower and change for the day, my mom catches me at the foot of the stairs. “Headed out?” she asks, sounding surprised. “Thought you might have some time to shadow your father today. I told him he could be expecting you. Did you see the office?”
She doesn’t mean to make choices for my life all the time. By now, it’s just sort of a habit, and I usually never resist. “Not yet,” I tell her, “but I did pass by a ledger in the upstairs study. Does Dad know something’s off in his March and April totals?”
She blinks. “They are? How’d you—”
“Just popped out. Totals don’t track with the columns beside them. Might want to double-check May, too. Anyway, I figured I’d go into town, say hi to some friends, maybe drop by T&S’s and see if they need help. Y’know, since I’m back early and all.”
It appears my mom already made plans with my earliness. “I see. Okay.” She masks the pinch of disappointment in her eyes with a tightened smile. “Alright, of course, your friends,” she then concedes, as if granting me permission. “They always miss you.”
“I’ll be back this afternoon,” I assure her, leaving. “Love you.”
She isn’t quite done. “Haven’t you … outgrown T&S’s?
” I stop. “It’s just that I didn’t know you were planning to dabble there still.
Billy’s certainly never short on help these days, always dozens of new kids from the high school putting in their applications every summer.
And besides, a job is already here for you when you finish your …
” She wags a hand in the air, as if collecting all of my university pleasures, relationships, friends, laughter, courses, professors, grades, independence, and Cheeto-snatching squirrels into one little dismissive gesture. “… schooling.”
I gotta be careful here. My mom loves me, but when it comes to the business, nothing gets in the way of her getting what she wants—even while wearing a smile.
“I know.” I play it cool. “Pretty sure Billy’s drowning in applicants.
But sometimes he stresses out because no one knows his customers like I do—and I have got mad scooping skills he’ll want me to impart on his new employees … ”
“Scooping skills,” she says, finding that adorable.