What If
New York City had once made music. But on this day, awful noise streamed through my helpless ears and into my head. It was a violation, a rape. At this point, I’d rather hear nothing.
Despite the noise, the air was fresh, and SoHo was alive.
Gemma pulled me out of my daze, and I was right back to where I’d been all along: sitting in front of her, trapped in a relationship, with the sultry sun crawling higher between a crack in the cast-iron buildings. Its rays against my face.
Gemma lounged in the shade under a black and white striped umbrella, oversized black sunglasses hiding the top half of her face.
Car horns and the soft music playing from the outdoor speakers muffled her words—or muddled my ears.
I couldn’t be sure. I was hungover, brain damaged, still in sweats, and hadn’t slept in over twenty-four hours.
I popped another pill into my mouth to keep myself from standing, from pacing. To keep my thoughts from racing. I tried focusing on Gemma’s lips to make out the words she was saying.
All I could see was the gash of nude lipstick spearing across her bleached teeth, but I couldn’t tell her this. I could hardly get a word out. I blinked, wishing her away.
Gemma’s voice raised an octave from across the bistro table when she said, “And Kendall, of all people.” A manicured claw came down on the table, shaking her pomegranate mimosa.
“It took me a week to get out of bed after what that pute called me. Do you remember?” An ugly Chinese Crested pup lapping Voss from a marble bowl next to Gemma skittered away, a scrawny bent tail wagging from between its owner’s legs beside us. “How could you do this to me?”
“I—”
“No, Ty. I don’t want to hear it.”
Just don’t give a fuck trapped in my brain.
Repeating. There was no point. I didn’t have an excuse for what happened between Kendall and me.
I had been drunk and out of my mind, one thing leading to another.
It was how the story always went. My fuck this mindset evolved as the world turned. And the world would always turn.
Between the long intervals of surrendering to chemical demons and blacking out, the music industry had been screaming in my ear.
They wanted me locked in a room with a mic to produce music that sounded like the next, lyrics that didn’t stand out from the rest, my pen’s damage folded and tucked in my pocket to never see the light of day.
I’d heard the shit going viral. If what I produced didn’t sound like what was buzzing, it would be trash to them, anyway.
I’d flipped the switch on rap just before I missed the days when everyone wasn’t tone-deaf. A time when being different meant something. Hip Hop was fucked, so I gave it the middle finger.
Producers wanted a carbon copy. Not an original.
The real Ty Hendrix could no longer exist here.
I was okay with that because if I did, so did everything else.
For three months, Gemma was my only constant.
I needed challenge and passion in all aspects of my awoken life, so I spent most of our relationship getting a rise out of her, pissing her off to see if she cared about me at all or only the contract.
Three more months and our contract would end.
I could escape this shit-show of a showmance, but my guilty conscience would never escape me.
I swung my head to the side.
I tuned her out and peered down Lower Manhattan.
Gemma carried on.
The neighborhood was a picturesque backdrop for high-end crowds with boutiques, art galleries, and elegant restaurants—a living, breathing urban vein in the heart of New York.
Girls grouped together on street corners, phones out and snapping pictures of us from behind designer shopping bags as big as their daddy’s credit card limits.
Gemma snapped her finger in front of my face with a groan, stealing my attention from on-lookers. “Are you seriously checking girls out?” A sigh. “You just can’t help yourself, can you?”
“Gemma, give me a break.” It was the first time I could get anything out between bits and pieces she fired at me. I’d only caught keywords and dodged the rest.
The pup looked at me from between its owner’s legs. Its tongue hung like a limp pink dick from the side of its mouth. Thirteen wiry hairs stood straight on a balding head, almost like it was embarrassed to be here, too.
“You want to go back to L.A., is that what this is?”
“Fuck, that would be amazing, but we both know that can’t happen.
The only thing I need right now is for you to get off my back and a pillow to shove my face into.
” I sat back in the chair and stretched my long legs out under the table.
“This screams attention.” I waved my hand toward the on-lookers.
“But this is what you wanted, isn’t it? It’s very Gemma of you.
A fight on public display. Make me out to be the bad guy in this. ”
A tear slipped from under her glasses.
I rolled my head back. “Oh, here come the waterworks.”
“I don’t want to fight with you,” she mumbled through a sniffle, patting her bronzed cheekbone with a cloth napkin. “I just don’t want my boyfriend fucking my enemy.”
“Should I have taken home your other fake friend instead?”
“Who? Lyla? I could have been okay with that.”
As much as that thought didn’t surprise me, and something I should have expected her to say, I was still stunned to hear her admit it out loud. I slumped in the chair with no fight in me. Just dust. “You’re a real piece of work.”
“You just don’t understand ...” her voice trailed when the paparazzi popped up from behind a Tesla. If there was a time and place I wanted the paps to come and rescue me from a situation, it was now. But they didn’t. All the expensive cameras kept their distance so Gemma could yell at me in peace.
They shot over a hundred stills within the last twenty-five seconds.
I imagined what they were thinking: rapper, Ty Hendrix, was making his darling model-actress girlfriend cry.
The ratings for her debut movie would sky-rocket, and I’d get flooded with more hate mail.
Direct messages. It didn’t take much effort to select all, delete.
If people wanted to say insane things about me, form opinions, that was their right. None of it could touch me anymore.
“Girls are vindictive. The only reason Kendall even had sex with you was to get to me,” Gemma said, her voice background noise.
The corner of my head throbbed. A scar sliced through my right brow, and I pressed my thumb into it to make the ache go away. The scar was from when my brother, Linc, split the skin with his knuckles. A constant reminder of how much he hated me.
I shoved a hand into my pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes.
“Do you have to do that here? It’s so rude,” Gemma barked.
I glanced up, my hair falling into my eyes. A bright light bounced off my glasses and blinded me. Without them, I couldn’t see, but I still pulled them off, raked my fingers through my hair, and looked back to see where it had come from.
Across the cobblestone street, a waitress balanced a tray of dirty dishes and wiped down a table.
She was as clear as a daydream, with her blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail and white strands framing her face.
A crisp white apron hugged her waist below a sea-colored blouse.
A single thump, like a pulse, vibrated in my head.
California, I thought. The waitress reminded me of California.
A city bike zoomed down the street, and paparazzi jumped out of the way, knocking the waitress against the side of the building. The tray piled with dishes crashed to the floor. The sun blared. Click, click, click.
“Tyler!” Gemma growled. My phone buzzed in my pocket. Chaos everywhere. I stood and pushed the chair out from under me. “Tyler, what are you doing?”
Then I was walking, chasing the beat, the cobblestone street beneath my Nikes and Gemma’s voice behind me.
The rhythmic thumping grew louder and with each step.
My sights were set on the waitress, and I didn’t stop until the paparazzi surrounded me and she was in front of me.
Their click, click, clicks were like cotton swabs in my ears.
The waitress had her back to me, about to bend down to pick up the broken glass. She flipped her ponytail to one side, and the blonde ends rolled off her shoulder and grazed her collarbone. Thump, thump, thump, like a bass in my ears. The morning air carried the sound and everything she did.
There it was, in my head, my low and steady beat.
I was right where I was supposed to be.
Glass crunched under my feet. I reached for her arm to spin her around before she had a chance to bend down. Large blue eyes looked up at me, bouncing with confusion.
I touched her face lightly with the tips of my fingers.
And then I kissed her.