Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
ONYX
The wood under my forehead as I lean against Cash’s locked door is cold. Unwieldy. It feels like a thicker barrier than it really is. I try the handle again, just to see if it magically unlocked. It hasn’t.
My other hand rests against the door and I curl it to knock once more. It’s quiet so I don’t wake anyone in the house. Loud enough for Cash to hear if he’s not listening to his headphones—which he likely is.
Then again, it doesn’t appear as if the light is on. There’s no glow coming from under his door. Not even the faint glow of his dim lamp.
“Cash,” I whisper and tap one more time. “Please open the door.”
I haven’t spoken to Cash since that morning in his driveway. He rejects all my calls and doesn’t open my texts. I haven’t even seen him since then. He’s like a phantom in the night.
With a heavy sigh, I back away from his door and step into the open area of his house. The wide-open space is neat. Everywhere I look, I see a memory from my childhood. The arrangement of furniture used to be different.
Where the table is now used to be where the TV was.
At the far end of the room was the large couch that we used to pull the cushions from to make blanket forts with.
In that very spot is where I think I first became enamored with Cash.
Watching him stare at the singer on the television, completely and utterly mesmerized.
Maybe I wanted him to look at me like that. Maybe that’s why Cash became my muse. He was so absorbed in the music, as if it were a spell. He became part of it.
Even though he never learned an instrument with Benson and me, he somehow became part of the experience.
His love for music matched mine. He was part of the symphony.
He danced with the music notes in my head, jumping over them, ducking under them, twirling around them.
Laughing as he sang and moved with the lyrics.
I close my eyes as I turn my back on the living room.
Until he shut me out, I hadn’t realized just how deeply I felt for Cash. I always pined after him to some extent, but I was blissfully unaware of what that meant. I was ignorant in thinking that he was simply the inspiration my muse loved the most.
It’s my fault we crossed a line. It’s my stupidity that made me draw it again. I deserve his silence for playing with him like that.
It doesn’t make it hurt any less. I play at writing about a broken heart, but that’s exactly how I feel. Something in my chest is cracked wide open, and my breathing feels labored.
With a heavy sigh to try to clear the dense emotion, I pull the stool away from the counter and take a seat. With my head in my hands, I try to think of literally anything to fix this. It won’t be as easy as an apology. I don’t think I’m far off in thinking that I probably hurt him.
There’s a fine line to walk, though. Benson has already crossed into physical violence. I can only imagine how much more volatile he’ll become if he knows I’m involved with his brother—the object of his hatred for whatever fucking reason.
I must have fallen asleep because I’m startled awake with a hand on my back. Jerking away, I sit up and then wince at the weird angle I slept in. Troy stands over me, concern written all over his face.
“What happened, honey?” he asks.
Foolishly, I look around as if this is my first time here and not my three-thousandth. I shake my head and then rub my eyes. “Guess I fell asleep. Sorry.”
“No need to be sorry, but the couch is far more comfortable than the kitchen counter.”
I give him a smile, though it’s empty. I can’t even muster the effort to make it genuine.
“Aw, Onyx,” Troy says, and I laugh as he gives me a hug. My smile must have looked more miserable than I meant it to be. “What’s wrong, hun? You and Ben fighting?”
“Ben is fighting everyone. Probably himself, most of all.”
Troy sighs. “Yeah. I know,” he says sadly.
“I, uh… I think Cash is angry with me,” I admit. I’m not sure angry is the right word, but it’s the one I’m willing to use with his father.
“An apology goes a long way.”
I nod, but I’m not sure it’s enough to do anything at all. If anything, I think it’ll make it worse. “Can’t apologize when he refuses to talk to me.”
I don’t mean to say the words out loud and only realize that I do when Troy chuckles. Oops. I wince.
“I’ll tell you what. As long as you don’t implicate me, I’m inviting you for dinner this weekend. Saturday. We’ll cook, play games, and hang out.”
“He’s not going to forgive you when he figures it out.”
Troy laughs. He rubs my back again for a minute and then rounds the counter into the kitchen. “You want some breakfast?”
“No thanks. I didn’t mean to fall asleep. I’m going to head home, which might take me an hour as my body screams at me for sleeping like that.” At least I don’t think I slept for more than a few hours. It was three or four when I last tried Cash’s door.
Like a creep. God, he should punch me in the balls. It is creepy the number of times I tried to get into his room last night. I hate being locked out. I hate that I did this.
I miss him.
“Boy, you’re twenty-two,” Troy says and laughs again. “Just wait until you get to be my age. You can twist your ankle in your sleep.”
“Don’t try to convince him that’s how you twisted your ankle,” Leon says as he comes around the corner. He grips my shoulder on the way by and then pinches Troy’s ass while making a beeline for the espresso machine.
“He’s as well as our kid. I was asleep,” Troy says, emphasizing asleep.
Laughing, I get to my feet and stretch. My muscles protest, and I wince at the twinge in my back. “Nice to know the spark is still alive,” I say as I head for the back door.
“Alive and burning brightly,” Leon says, winking at me.
Troy shoves him playfully. “I was asleep.”
Their playful banter follows me outside, and I relish the smile it brings me for a minute.
It’s been a while since I think I genuinely smiled.
As I walk home, I try to think about the last time I felt like I truly smiled, and the memory makes it fade.
With Cash, of course. How can you not smile when you feel his energy?
Fuck.
My mom isn’t home when I get home. Which isn’t surprising. My dad died when I was a kid, so it’s always just been the two of us. She’s been working two jobs for as long as I can remember. Even now that I’m an adult, she continues to work two jobs.
Mom won’t let me pay her rent or anything. Even though I’ve taken over two rooms—my bedroom and the den so I have a place to take my students. I try to keep the house clean, the laundry done, and the food stocked so she doesn’t have to worry about any of that.
I’m not sure why she still works all the time. Maybe it’s the same reason that Troy and Leon started working a lot once Benson and Cash grew up. Whatever that reason is. I’m not sure.
I take a shower and then crash on my bed for a while. I’m so tired that I end up napping for several hours. I wake up to my doorbell ringing.
My several-hour-long nap turned into all morning and well into the afternoon. It’s three, and my first student, Carl, is at the front door with his drumsticks in hand.
“You look like someone kicked you in the balls, Onyx,” he says in typical teenage fashion when I let him in.
“You need to work on your compliments,” I counter.
He snorts.
Carl is fun to watch play. He’s not afraid to experiment and create his own rhythms. Sometimes I ask him what song he’s trying to emulate or what he hears in his head, and Carl shrugs. “No idea. Just following the beat.”
Since I’m feeling like I was run over by a boat, I mostly just listen to Carl mess around for an hour. I have him play a couple sets that he struggles with. Practice makes perfect and all that. I’m not sure why he struggles with them. I think he simply doesn’t like the rhythm either song has.
Directly following Carl’s hour is Myron.
Myron is the exact opposite of Carl. Carl is all kinds of confident and daring to do his own thing while he experiments with different cadences.
Myron does not follow the same freedoms. He’ll focus on one line of music obsessively until he can play it correctly, and any deviation makes him uncomfortable.
I enjoy teaching drums far more than I thought I would.
All six of my current students have vastly different personalities, and I enjoy watching them learn and grow as musicians.
I’ve been giving lessons since I was a teenager.
I think I started when I was seventeen and Lacey—then seven—watched our band play in the park one spring.
She begged me to teach her, and her parents offered to pay me to do so.
So I did. And that’s the beginning of my business.
When my students are gone for the day, I drop back onto my bed and scroll through my phone. My email icon has an obnoxious number in the red box indicating that there are a shit ton of unread messages. So I open the app and grin when the first email I see is from Deryke Schneider.
Thank fuck I have something to do this afternoon instead of sitting in my room and wallowing. I push myself up and leave the house, heading down to the docks to secure my phone. I follow the beach along the east shore behind the cabanas that are rented out to guests of the resort.
That’s where I find Deryke. Sitting out back of his cabana on a lounge chair, reading a book.
He looks up and smiles as I approach. “Hello, Onyx,” he greets, getting to his feet to meet me.
We hug briefly, and I join him.
I met Deryke a couple years ago. He took a liking to Whiskey Horizons and was in the crowd for several nights as he listened to us play.
Of course, when Benson realized he was there frequently, he was his typical douchey self and made sure that Deryke knew we were all straight and not interested, so get his rocks off someone else.
That might have been the first time I actually, genuinely wanted to punch him in the face. Laiken kicked him out that night. I apologized to Deryke. A lot.
In doing so, I ended up spending a couple hours with him at the bar with a couple drinks, and listening to Bryce play the bass alone on the stage.
One of the most ironic things I took from that evening was learning that Deryke isn’t even gay.
He comes to Kala for a month every summer because he’s a professional hockey player—someone who’s always in the spotlight and watched like he’s expected to grow a second head.
He comes here to get away and simply relax.
On Kala, he’s not just unplugged, but he’s no longer Deryke Schneider, goalie for… Seattle? Is that what he told me last? Anyway. He’s not that person. Here, he’s simply Deryke. Just Deryke.
“Hey,” I greet in return. We get comfortable on the lounge chairs, and I close my eyes for a minute. It’s easy to forget that I live in paradise when I’m so caught up with the drama of Benson. The only time I ever remember to sit and just look around is when Deryke is here.
“How’s it going?” he asks, and I grin.
While I don’t interact with guests on the island often, I love all the different accents I hear. Deryke’s is distinct, though even in the few years I’ve known him, his English has gotten better. He’s German, and I really like the German accent.
“Alright.”
“Whiskey Horizons will play tomorrow?”
I nod. “Yep. You coming to listen?”
“Am I allowed?” He raises a brow in question, and I laugh. He’s referring to Benson, of course.
“Yes. Although I think you should tell him he’s gotten hotter since you were here last summer. Just to see his head blow up.”
Deryke snorts. “Even if I thought men are hot, not possible to think Benson is hot. His asshole personality is ugly.”
I nod, huffing in amusement. “Tell me about it.”
“Other than Benson—how are things?”
Immediately, I think about Cash, and the heaviness on my chest returns.
Deryke knows Cash in a more abstract sense than anything.
He’s seen Benson bully Cash at the bar before.
I’ve talked about their relationship. I’ve told him all about our childhood and Benson’s abrupt change.
More than once, we’ve thrown ideas back and forth as to what could have happened.
I’m not sure I’ve ever admitted that Cash has inspired all my love songs. Not just my love songs, but my music in general.
If I can talk to anyone about it, Deryke would be that person. He’s detached enough from the island that my business will not spread like a disease. He’s a friend and will listen, maybe offer advice if I want it.
I close my eyes and say, “I might have crossed a line with Cash and started something with him. Then… ended it kind of abruptly because of Benson. Not because he knew, but because if he found out, that’s a next level of hostility that I was trying to avoid. But… I think I made a mistake.”
When I open my eyes, Deryke is nodding slowly as he watches me. “Have you told him of your regret?”
“He won’t talk to me,” I say, feeling my shoulders sag. My lungs suddenly feel stiff, like they can’t take in the proper amount of oxygen. “He won’t acknowledge me. I haven’t actually seen him in over a week.”
“I am sorry to hear this,” Deryke says.
“Yeah. I’m… not sure what to do.”
“What do you want?”
The answer is immediate. I want Cash. “I think it’s too late for what I want. I messed up. I’m not sure he’s willing to forgive me.”