The Star We Share

Chapter 1 - Star

Idream of the earworm wriggling its way through my head. I can hear the music and even some of the lyrics, but none of it makes sense. It’s like I’m underwater or listening through a wall.

The words are there—like right there. But I can’t make them out.

So I invent lyrics to the melody in my head.

Make your bed and tip the sky?

The way you live is the way you die?

Except, that’s not it. That’s definitely not it.

Tie your shoe and skip the rope?

Beans are good and corn is dope?

The more I try to figure it out, the more ridiculous my attempts to decipher the muffled words become.

Dig your way into the sun?

Oh, forget it.

Anyway, it’s morning, I guess. My back hurts and why is it so loud in my apartment? I bring a hand up to my head, pressing it against my temple, because I have a raging headache.

This is when I hear a man’s voice and I sit straight up in bed, holding the covers close to my chest just to be extra special sure that no one’s getting a peek at me.

Which is when I realize I’m not in bed. I’m not even at home. In fact, I don’t know where I am. A small room made of cinderblocks with a toilet in the corner.

“Holy shit.” These words come out as a croaked whisper as I spastically brush hair out of my eyes. “I’m in jail.”

“You’re in jail, baby!” These words, and the accompanying laugh, overpower all the other noises. I look in the direction of the voice and find a man leaning into the bars of the cell across the corridor. “Welcome back, Sleeping Beauty! Did you have a good rest?”

“Who the hell are you?”

“Star, I’m going to have to advise you not to talk to this man.” This other voice comes from a second man, who slides into my view and pushes the other guy out of the way. “We don’t know who he’s working for and—”

“What’s this ‘we’ shit,” the first guy says. “You two are not a ‘we’. We’re a ‘we’, right Star?”

I brush more hair out of my eyes, as if this might clarify things for me, but, of course, it doesn’t. So I just mumble, “What the fuck is happening?”

Now both of them squint at me.

“You don’t remember?” the second one says.

“Are you sure?” the first one asks.

“Because,” the second one says, “we had a deal and I’m fully expecting you to honor it.”

“Bro,” the first one says, pushing him away. “Shut the fuck up. There was no deal.” He turns his attention to me. “Star, I know I came on a little strong last night, but we had a good thing going, remember? We were gonna go back to my place and—”

I’m shaking my head at him while he continues to talk because while I might’ve gotten drunk enough to get arrested and blackout, I am not a one-night-stand kind of girl. Not at all.

However… as he continues to explain how he and I are a team, I actually process his allure for the first time and start to doubt my certainty. Because holy fuck, this man is hot. Like something out of a myth.

Maybe a little lanky for my tastes, but lanky in a muscular way too.

Like a swimmer, everything about him is long.

And his shirt is ripped straight down the middle, affording me a perfect view of his equally ripped abs.

The whole moment is like a spell. A little magic that lures my eye down to a teasing bit of blond happy-trail just above the waistband of his jeans.

My eyes pause there for a moment as my mind catches up.

He laughs. It’s a nice laugh and it comes with an equally charming smile.

“See. You remember now, right?” Then he cups his hand over his mouth and whisper yells, “We wrote a little song about it.” He does a weird jerky point to his happy-trail and then breaks into song.

The exact melody I was humming in my head just before I woke up.

The exact tune that’s been haunting me since I was twelve years old.

Except, like mine, his words are all wrong.

“Take a step—one, two, three. Down the trail, you’ll find my beast!” Then he beams at me. Like he’s Mozart or something.

“For fuck’s sake,” the other guy says, pushing the first one out of the way.

This guy couldn’t be more different from Happy Trail.

He’s tall too, but he’s not sporting a ripped body—at the very least, he’s not showing it off with a ripped shirt.

Because he’s wearing a black suit. I’m talking tie, coat, button-down, and shiny black shoes. The whole shebang.

His hair is short and dark and so is the perfectly groomed stubble on his square, clenched jaw.

But the darkest thing about him are the sunglasses over his eyes.

They’re the kind of dark sunglasses only blind people wear, but even though I’ve only been looking at him for a few moments, he’s definitely not blind. It’s very clear that he can see.

“Star,” he says, his voice low and commanding. “I’m so sorry you’re here. But don’t worry. It’ll all be over as soon as…” His eyes shift left and right and he lowers his voice. “Just as soon as you and I have a little chat. Don’t listen to this guy’s lies.”

Who the hell wears sunglasses that dark inside?

A spark goes off in my brain and suddenly, I have a sputter of creativity and words fall into my head, fitting with the melody of the earworm tune. “Da, da, dahhh, da, da, da, lies. Yes! Lies! Yeeeeees!”

But that’s just the first clue. Because as soon as that comes out of my mouth, part of the other line also pops into place. “Something… something… something… eyes! Lies and eyes! Yes! YES!”

“What the hell is she talking about? And why is she looking at us like that?”

I blink and find myself still staring at Sunglasses.

Happy Trail shuffles his way in front of him. “Because it’s part of the song, you idiot.” Then he looks at me. “You remember then? We were working on the song. So we could get the hell out of here?” He side-eyes Sunglasses, then growls, “Just the two of us.”

I point to myself. “I was working on the song with you?” Then I scoff. “I don’t even know you. I would never tell a stranger about my song.”

He kinda grits his teeth here, then spits some low, whispered words through them. “That’s because we’re not strangers, Star. I came here to get you and you agreed to come with me because we were making progress.”

“I can hear you, ya know.” Sunglasses straightens his sunglasses and then lets out a breath and looks directly back at me. His words all very calm and rational. “Star, you’re not going anywhere with him. You’re coming with me. We had an agreement.”

“How do I have an agreement with both of you? And can someone please tell me why I’m in jail!”

Happy Trail points to my left. “Ask him.”

Sunglasses agrees. “Yeah. Ask him. He’s the reason we’re all in jail.”

My eyes slide over to the left where Happy Trail is pointing, but I have to get up and press my face against the bars of the cell to actually see anything because he’s pointing to the cell to the left of mine.

And what I see when I do that is… well… a very, very scary looking criminal.

Another man, but this one looks nothing like either of the other two.

He’s leaning against the cinderblock wall with his arms crossed.

And even though he’s wearing a leather jacket with patches all over it, I can tell that he’s very muscular.

Under the jacket is a black concert t-shirt that looks like it’s four decades old with a cracked and faded logo.

And when my eyes travel down to where his happy trail would be, I find a thick leather belt and faded denim jeans.

His head is shaved, and there’s a cut across the side of his skull with dried blood all over it.

His beard is dark and full, but neatly trimmed, and his piercing green eyes are looking at me like I’m naked.

My entire body shivers with desire as a feeling of absolute lust nearly knocks me over.

And if there weren’t steel bars blocking me, I would attack this man and start ripping his clothes off right here and now.

I would grab him and tease him until he couldn’t stand it anymore and had his way with me and—

I take a breath, actually startled at the salacious thoughts running through my head.

What the hell happened to me last night?