Chapter 16 #2
The dizziness I’m feeling, the tingling sensation in the wake of Lyra’s touch, that’s just because I haven’t been with anyone for a while. I haven’t wanted to be. No one has turned my head.
In any event, this wasn’t even second base, it was… nothing. No big deal.
But for the whole drive home, that nice girl, and the way that kiss didn’t feel nice at all, is all I can think about.
I don’t know if I’m energised by yesterday, completely wired, or emotionally depleted.
What I do know is, I’m not ready for sleep.
On reflection, that could simply be a sugar high.
In fact, I’m sure it is. No need to spiral over a sugar high.
Not unless it turns into ten hot chocolates a day. Quite possible for me.
It’s also quite possible that I’m becoming addicted to seeing Lyra and whatever feeling it is that she ignites in me when I do.
Urghhhhhh. Stop. Fucking. Overthinking.
Inside my apartment, I drop my keys onto the kitchen bench and stand by them, hands in the pockets of my trousers, the only light in the room coming from the wall light I must have forgotten to turn off yesterday on my small balcony overlooking the sea.
The space feels emptier than ever and no matter how much convincing I’ve tried in the car, I want to turn around and go back to Lyra, to finish what we shouldn’t have started.
I shouldn’t have gone there in the first place but as I sat in the residents’ bar in Earl’s Castle, listening to my friend tell jokes I’ve heard before, watching others laugh around him as they all enjoyed a drink, all I wanted was to go to Lyra.
Maybe I thought if I saw her, I could get to the bottom of why I can’t stop thinking about her, but it backfired, because all it did was make me want her in every possible way.
I rub my hands over my face, pausing on my lips. Jesus, that kiss.
But I’m so broken. Parts of me might never recover.
Then, why? I ask the air above me. Why send her my way?
Temptation I can’t explain.
Gravity.
I untie the laces of my polished shoes and slip them off, casting my socks on top of them, padding barefoot to my lounge wall and the six guitars that hang in stands, untouched since the day I put them there.
The furthest away is Scott’s Gibson. I go to it first and watch my hand move towards it, as if it’s someone else’s body I see. At the last moment, my fingers bend, curling away from the instrument, not daring to touch where my brother used to play.
The next guitar is my own Gibson. I do let my fingers skirt over the smooth body. Then my Fender. My softened skin skims the harsh strings of the electric guitar. Then my favourite, my Martin.
One by one, I pluck each string over the sound hole. Despite being out of tune, the noise from it, the feel of it, forces my eyes to close. Unwittingly, I unhook it for the first time in forever, remembering the weight of it, the way my hand bends around the neck.
I bring it to the sofa and tweak the tuning pegs until the sound of the open chords is flawless.
It’s been a while but Lyra’s words from her hideaway come back to me; picking up an instrument you know so well is like riding a bike. I’m thinking about her and I guess that’s why my fingers start to strum what she told me is her favourite song.
As I fall into the rhythm, lyrics start to spill out of me, not because I mean to sing but because my muscles have memory. I sit on my sofa and for the first time since my brother died, I play a song from The Hand Me Downs. I sing my own words.
I can ignore it as much as I want but every part of me knows that this is something to do with Lyra. She’s the reason I’m crossing an invisible barrier.
She’s under my skin, she’s in my head all the damn time, and she’s got me playing again. A version of myself I used to know.
* * *
There’s a hammering on the front door of the apartment and whatever dream I’m having shifts to a memory of a council flat in Jarrow.
Mam is still in bed, there’s shit all over the lounge floor – food wrappers, takeaway cartons, empty crushed cans of cheap lager.
My sister is a baby, screaming in her cot.
Scott is carrying a dinosaur, one he never went anywhere without, as he totters towards the door.
It’s his dad, my stepdad, at the door. ‘Open the fucking door, Tracy,’ he’s yelling.
I stir on my sofa, a grown man, still half in a daze as I shift my guitar from my lap onto the other side of the sofa. The banging on the door comes again and as I clumsily make my way in the direction of the sound, I realise I’m still wearing my shirt and braces from last night.
I fell asleep on the sofa.
‘Guy, lad, what’re ya deein’?’
Dave.
Yawning, I open the door. He’s wearing oversized gym gear, a cap covering his shaved and balding head.
In one hand, he’s holding a protein shake, which I’d laugh at if I wasn’t still coming round – it’s his first day of training with me; he doesn’t need a protein shake – and in the other, he’s holding up his phone, the screen facing me.
‘You’re viral, mate,’ he says.
Instinctively, my hands reach for my neck, checking for swollen glands. ‘I feel fine,’ I croak.
‘Not that kind of viral, ya numpty. You’re gannin’ viral on social media.’
My head aches from lack of sleep. ‘What?’ I ask, walking away, assuming he’ll let himself into my apartment whilst I move in the direction of, ‘Coffee?’
‘I thought we were gannin’ to the gym? Don’t have too much to drink, ya said. Be at my place bright and early, ya said.’
I grunt, moving around my small kitchen, as he finally accepts that we’ll have a coffee first. By my reckoning, I’ve had four hours’ sleep, at best. Christ, playing my Martin into the early hours, no sleep, it’s like I’ve regressed to the good old days.
Except, I wouldn’t have been drinking hot chocolate and coffee back then.
‘Are you still in yesterday’s clothes?’ Dave asks.
I turn to him, milk carton in hand. ‘No, mate, I wear braces to bed.’
Then I follow his gaze to my sofa. He double-takes at the sight of my guitar and I don’t know why but I feel as if I’ve been caught in the act. Of what, I don’t know. It just feels like I’ve been doing something… taboo.
‘Big night with the old girl, was it?’
I lean back against the worktop and stare at my Martin, not giving Dave a response, because, yeah, as ridiculous as it sounds, it was a big night.
I’m not sure what any of last night means but today, I feel like something happened, or shifted.
I’m thrust back to that kiss in Lyra’s parents’ place.
Holding her thighs around me, our bodies colliding, her fingers clawing at my back.
Jesus. I turn to face the cupboards, trying to clear my mind and hide the part of my anatomy that just woke up.
‘I thought ya were gannin’ to see Lyra,’ Dave says.
‘What gave you that impression?’ I ask, feigning nonchalance and focusing on my task in hand, because I’m not ready for questions I can’t answer.
We fall into silence whilst I finish making our drinks, then slide a full mug across the worktop to Dave, holding mine in my hands as I stand facing him where he’s perched on a stool.
He inclines his head in the direction of my sofa. ‘Are ya playing again? Is it time for me to call the lads?’
‘Stop pushing, Dave. I’ve told you, I’m done with all that. Playing a few chords on my old guitar means nothing, except that I couldn’t sleep.’
He slides his phone in my direction. It takes me a moment to recognise what I’m seeing play out on his screen. Me. Singing ‘Step on My Old Size Nines’ by the Stereophonics. A warm, slightly drunk Nanna Winnie moving around the dance floor on my feet.
‘Four hundred thousand people and counting are begging for ya to play again, matey,’ Dave says.
I’m not stupid. I’m not on social media myself but I know what going viral means. I hate that it’s given me even the smallest buzz to know people are listening to me sing.
I nudge the phone back to Dave. ‘Did anyone ask that woman whether she wanted to have her face splashed all over the internet?’
‘Correction,’ Dave says, ignoring my question. ‘Four hundred and fifty thousand now.’
I need to get out of here and burn off whatever kinetic energy is bouncing around in my system. I’ve taken one mouthful of coffee and my body feels like I’ve sunk ten espressos.
‘I’ll get changed; let’s go.’
Outside, Dave tells me to get in his van because, in his words, he’s ‘not being embarrassed by the hairdresser car’.
‘You loaned it to me,’ I tell him, conceding and climbing into the passenger side of the van, gym bag and coffee in hand.
‘Aye, and it’s good for you, but I’m butch.’
‘Butch?’ I chuckle. ‘Does Kylie tell you that when she’s cracking the whip?’
When he tells me to shut up, I only laugh harder.
‘If ya want a better car, ya know what ya could do? Get off yer arse, write some new music, and sell out an arena.’
‘Just like that?’
We drive the rest of the way to the gym in silence, each having the hump with the other.
The gym is owned by an old school friend of mine.
Ex-army. Rough around the edges. Covered in tattoos.
Shaved head. The type of burly bloke you’d expect to run this kind of establishment.
The aircon is hit and miss, so usually it’s hot and stuffy inside what looks like a large garage.
There’s zero finesse about the gym or Gaz but the building has all the equipment I need.
The lads who lift in here are canny enough, and Gaz is like a marshmallow when you get past the aesthetics.
I like that there’s no pretence and there’s nobody in here who gives a damn about who I am, or was. I’m just another man in a sweaty gym, working out.
‘Alreet, Guy, lad?’ Gaz asks when I walk through the front door that’s been propped open by a red brick. I guess the aircon is on the blink, again.
‘Hiya, mate. You remember Dave?’ I gesture behind me, where Dave is bringing up the rear, still grumpy.