Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Boy bands are sent by God to aid women of all ages in their quest to avoid reality, but specifically to trick young women into believing that males think about topics other than sex.
When I listen to boy bands at a loud volume, I can almost forget about stress, sadness, life and death, and the unfairness of both. The innocence lures me into a superficial, cotton candy world, and it feels so good to be mindless, worriless, unburdened, new, and blissfully ignorant.
Bursting into the front door of my childhood home, my shoes came off first, then my dress.
I left both at the bottom of the stairs and rushed up the steps in my strapless bra and underwear.
Upon reaching my room on the third floor—which was actually the attic—I placed my phone on the docking station and simultaneously pressed play.
Opening bars of “You Don’t Know You’re Beautiful” by One Direction filled the expansive space.
I cranked up the volume until I couldn’t hear my own thoughts.
The contentment that accompanies the avoidance of worry eased my tense muscles, and I sighed, closing my eyes. Eventually I bebopped around the room—pulling on pajamas, brushing my teeth, using my hair brush as a make-believe microphone—until I was ready for bed.
But I didn’t go to sleep. Instead, I rested on the quilt and stared at the ceiling, listening to the music, trying to believe the words even though I knew they were all lies.
A shadow moved across the wall in my peripheral vision, and I bolted upright in bed, eyes wide and searching.
I spotted him immediately.
Freaking Nico.
His expression betrayed his thoughts about my music choice, and he hurried from the window to the speaker dock. He groaned with dread and couldn’t hit the pause button fast enough.
“I can’t believe you still listen to boy bands.”
My hands were white knuckled, gripping the sheets. I closed my eyes and shook my head, “Nico! What the hell? You scared me.”
I meant to breathe out a relieved sigh but I couldn’t—likely because I didn’t feel relieved. Instead, I just kept gulping in air, and had to force myself to stop before I ended up with the mother of all hiccup attacks.
“Sorry.” His steps sounded purposeful on the wood floor as he crossed to the bed. I felt the mattress depress under his weight. This small action made me scramble to my feet and launch out of the bed.
“What are you doing here?” I went to the docking station and claimed my phone, navigated to the clock alarm feature, and set the alert for nine o’clock.
“You have excellent taste in everything except music.”
“That’s why you’re here?”
“No, I’m just stating a fact. Your taste is excellent except for music.”
“How would you know that?”
“Because I know you.”
I didn’t turn, but I accepted the bait. “You don’t know me very well anymore. I could have terrible taste in a lot of things. For example, I like that shirt you’re wearing.” I gestured to his New York Yankees T-shirt then met his gaze. “See? I have terrible taste.”
His smile was crooked and sincere and adorable, and it annoyed the heck out of me.
He ignored my insult. “I think you listen to these bands—and I use the word band lightly, with a great deal of disrespect—because you’re trying to hold on to something that’s been gone for a long time.”
I lifted my chin. “You’re talking about Garrett.”
Surprise glinted in his gaze and flickered over his expression, giving him pause. His gypsy eyes searched mine. He stood and walked to me slowly, as though not wanting to frighten a skittish creature. “So…you can say his name now.”
I shrugged. “Yes. I can say his name now.”
Nico studied me for a moment then scratched his chin. “The last time we were together…”
I lifted my hands to my ears but didn’t exactly cover them. Instead, I waved them around my head and turned away. I crossed to the small white vanity where my baseball cards were neatly stacked. “I don’t want to talk about that. I don’t want to talk about what we…what happened.”
He was silent for a moment then I heard him release a small breath. When he spoke, the timbre of his voice was lower, and gruff with suppressed emotion. “I was just going to say, the last time you couldn’t say his name.”
“Well, I can now.” I picked up the baseball cards and started thumbing through them absentmindedly. “Garrett. Garrett Thompson. Garrett P. Thompson. Garrett Patrick Thompson.”
It was true; I could say his name. It was easily done. I could say it and with no residual ache, only a weird numbness where something else used to be.
Oftentimes I wished there were a corporeal mark to demarcate the before and after of Garrett Thompson in my life.
Once or twice, I’d gone to a tattoo parlor looking for a design to brand my skin, to prove what his prematurely extinguished existence did to me.
At least a physical wound would provide proof of the hurt.
“He’s been gone for eleven years.” Nico’s voice—sabulous, strained—was closer than I expected. He’d crossed the room while I was pretending to look at my baseball cards.
I attempted an unhurried saunter to the window; my objective was distance.
It was unseasonably mild for April, and the sky was clear and moonless.
I affixed my attention upward. Every star felt within reach, hovering just inches above my window.
The soft and relatively moderate spring breeze teased the white eyelet curtains.
If it were summer, the wind would be rustling the corn.
At times, a strong gust mimicked the sound of the ocean breaking against the shore.
Again, Nico’s voice was closer than I’d anticipated, and this time it was quieter and softer. “I don’t know if you—eleven years is a long time.”
I glanced over my shoulder, startled by his gentle tone. Inexplicably, I couldn’t quite draw a full breath, so I whispered, “I know that.”
“I miss him too.”
“I know you do.” I nodded.
“Elizabeth....” In my peripheral vision, I saw his hands lift; he hesitated then placed them gently on my shoulders and turned me to face him. “Do you…?”
“I’m not in love with him anymore, ok?” I clenched my teeth, “I’m not. I was just a kid—we were kids.”
What I didn’t say was that whether or not I was still in love with Garrett was completely irrelevant. I wasn’t capable of loving anyone—nor did I want to. That part of me was forever broken because I would never take the risk again. Loving was a kamikaze mission that only ended in misery.
His handsome mouth lifted, a rueful tilt that ended with his lips, and he pinned me with a searching gaze. “What’s with the boy-toy bands?”
“Well, Judgey McJudgerton, maybe I just like boy bands. Maybe I feel they are misunderstood and their collective artistic contribution to society is undervalued. Where would modern hip-hop be without ’N Sync and the emergence of Justin Timberlake as a solo artist?”
“But you don’t listen to Justin Timberlake, you listen to ’N Sync.”
I tried (and failed) not to grumble. “It’s all the same.”
He shook his head. “No. You’re a purist; you always have been. Boy bands are the high fructose corn syrup of music. It’s the only thing about you that isn’t real. It doesn’t make any sense.”
I narrowed my eyes, and ignored the way his thumbs were brushing over the bare skin of my shoulders because it was confusing. Every time he did it, I thought of his expression at the reunion after he said, “and I will always love you.”
I didn’t want to think about that. “It’s not the only thing about me that doesn’t make sense.”
“Oh yeah? What else?” He surveyed me openly through thick lashes and shifted a half step closer into my personal space.
I shrugged out of his hold and leaned against the windowsill, trying to gain distance.
Nico’s omnipresent restless energy, charisma, and handsome face were proving to be more than I could resist. That hole in my armor was stretching to accommodate him.
I didn’t want to accommodate him. I wanted him to leave my armor intact.
Therefore, I decided to ignore his question. “I think you’re biased.”
“About what?”
“About everything.”
“Explain.”
I remembered this, the one word command: Explain.
Growing up I was used to his mother saying this to her children, and because Nico heard it all the time, he said it to Garrett and me. It was how his family communicated. Some people found it off-putting. I just knew it was part of who he was.
“Of course you think I’m trying to hold on to something.
The truth is you’re jealous of my excellent taste in music.
Have you even heard of One Direction? Have you listened to their songs?
You can’t say you don’t like something if you’ve never tried it—because that makes a lot of sense.
” My attempt at deflection, to use his own words against him from earlier that evening, only served to increase my blood pressure and his skepticism.
“I don’t need to eat cotton candy to know that it will rot my teeth….”
“Shut it, Nico.” His patronizing retort sent a jarring wave of anger down my spine. I pushed away from the sill and stalked around him, further annoyed by my sudden juvenile outburst.
I couldn’t figure out why I was so angry. An irritating and spectral voice told me it was because he knew me so well. I didn’t want him to know me.
I shoved the spectral voice over the side of a cliff, rationalizing my violence by internally asserting that spectral voices were shrewish and should be ignored or murdered.