Chapter 6
L iam
It wasn’t every day that Tucker Benning acted like a decent human being, but every so often, he climbed out of his dickhead clothes and put down his bottle of Grey Goose. He might even take a walk with me away from prying ears and eyes to listen to me brood in a garden full of flowers and fountains and other pretty shit.
“So, what’s up?” He planted one foot on a stone bench and stretched his bass drum leg, then the other.
“There’s a girl…” I said.
His face swiveled toward me. “Please don’t say that. There can’t be a girl.”
“There might be a girl.”
“Liam, last time there was a girl, she pitted us all against each other.”
“She’s nothing like Giselle. At all.” I began pacing down the stone benches then back up again .
“So she’s short, fat, and ugly?” Tucker reasoned, doing his best to commiserate.
“Dude. That is so offensive. You need to stop doing that.”
Tucker twisted his body at the waist and cracked his back. Thirteen hours on a bus could make your body freeze up. “I’m just kidding, man. Okay, so who is it?”
“I can’t tell you. Yet. But I will say this—she’s so different, it’s refreshing. In fact, she’s so different…she probably hates me.”
“Refreshing? Different?” He mocked me. “From what? Women are all the same, bro.”
“They’re not, Tuck. Remember Katyna?”
“The one you used to salivate over every time she walked by in the hall?”
“No, there was nothing to salivate over. Okay, no, that’s not what I mean. What I mean is, she wasn’t just eye candy. Katyna was in my drama class. She was smart, funny, full of wit. She blew the other girls away with her pure self. Do you know what I mean?”
“Oh, you mean before…”
Yes, before I met Vanessa. I’d been too scared to chat up Katyna, so I went for Vanessa instead. I’d really cared about her. I think she loved me more than I loved her, even though she taught me loads about myself, and I would always appreciate her. Unfortunately, I’d ended up hurting her, and the memory still left a bitter taste in my mouth.
Tucker’s arms reached the sky, then his whole body swooped down to touch the ground. He looked like one of those old jazzercise exercise gurus my mom still liked to watch sometimes. “I think I’m feeling you. So what you’re saying is, she was all class, and because of it, she refused to give you the time of day.”
“Yeah.” That sounds about right. “Yeah, that’s what this girl is like.”
“So she’s not eye candy?” Tucker raised one eyebrow.
“She could be, but not in the typical way. She’s natural. And it drives me ape-shit bonkers that she won’t talk to me. Absolutely bat-shit crazy. Not because I can’t take it when a girl doesn’t give me the time of day. On one hand, part of me wants to show her that I can be a nice guy. On the other hand, part of me is like, Dude, you’re crazy. You’ve only talked to her twice, and she’s nothing like you. ”
“Your brain talks to you like that?” Tucker recoiled as if a snake had bitten him.
“You don’t get it. I want to talk to her, ask her questions and shit, but it’s like…like I feel like a fucking sewer rat. I don’t get that way about anybody, Tuck. You know this.”
“Hmm. I feel you. Maybe you could start by not saying fucking and shit when you’re around her. Just talk to her, Liam. Tell her you like her because she’s different. A little persistence never hurt anyone.”
“She’s already decided she doesn’t want to like me,” I said, but even as I said it, I knew she could change her mind. If only I could impress her with something—music, most likely, but even then…why would I want to?
I had more girls than I’d ever need.
“Well, then your reputation precedes you.” For a minute, we were quiet, and then he laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“I was just remembering…” Tucker actually looked off into the distance, as if seeing his memory there. “How bad you wanted girls to like you in high school. So bad, you took drama as your elective so that they’d have to talk to you in fake situations.”
“You have to admit that was pretty clever of me,” I said.
He reached into the fountain and stirred his hand around in the water. “Now you’re surrounded by women, and the one you want is the one you can’t have. Go fuckin’ figure.”
I watched him. Garrick was right. This was why I’d needed to talk to Tuck. He had a way of putting things in perspective. I cleared my throat and sang the opening notes of When I Get You Alone one more time. I was trying out a catchy new opening that would segue right into the recorded version.
“Don’t get too experimental with that opening, bro. You know how the minions get. They like their music like they like their dead bodies—recognizable.”
I stared at him from beneath knitted eyebrows. “What the fuck, Tuck?”
“I don’t know. I just like making shit up.”
I tried the opening again. Maybe it was last night’s cello solo and hearing Abby bring real music to the stage, but I wanted to try something a little more melodious, something that would sound like I took more than twenty minutes writing it.
“What was that noise?” Tucker straightened like a meerkat to scan the garden grounds. “Liam, we shouldn’t be out here so close to the fence.”
“Why, because the forest abounds with evil butterflies?” I did my best impression of a villainous garden insect.
“Dude, because you know as well as I do that once the fans know we’re out here so close to city sidewalks, they’ll come tromping over for pics and autographs. Let’s go. It’s getting late.”
Suddenly, the crunch of gravel beneath rubber soles sounded nearby. I stopped, pointing to my ear. Tucker nodded. We listened. There was no more crunching, but the moment we took another couple of steps, more crunching. Someone was hiding nearby and trying to mask their footsteps by mirroring ours.
“Hey, who’s there?” I asked.
It was silly, the way someone hovered there, breathing quietly, just out of view. I hoped it wasn’t a paparazzo. Next thing you knew, Tuck and I would be on the cover of Rumor Magazine with the headline, Liam Collier Trysts with Tuck in Garden.
“It’s just me,” said a familiar voice. “I swear I wasn’t eavesdropping. I was just walking…and I saw you here. So I tried to be quiet and waited.” Abby came around the fountain looking lovelier than a summery Seattle day .
The first thing that happened was, my heartbeat picked up speed. There she was—the very girl I’d been talking about, the object of my strange obsession. The second thing that happened was, I gave her a smile. Not a Liam Collier heart-zinger, but a real, genuine so glad to see you smile. She made me feel like I was middle-school Liam again.
Tucker made a show of buttoning up his shirt. “Oh, hey, Asian Persuasion. No drinks today, I hope?” He took a few dramatic steps away from her.
“You have a death wish, don’t you, man?” I mumbled to him.
“No,” she said, “but if I did have a drink to spill on you again, you’d deserve it.” Abby padded out of the shadows in her cute long skirt, tank top clinging to her adorable, tight body, and a pair of flip-flops.
“Abby,” I said. “Rule number one…don’t ever, ever listen to any crap this guy has to say. Ever.” I pointed to Tucker, who smiled with his mouth open, a cat panting in the summer heat. “He is only trying to push your buttons, okay?”
“That is so true, Abby.” Tucker nodded somberly. “I can admit that now, because I’m sober.”
She glanced down sheepishly and tucked her dark hair behind her ears. “What about you?” She looked up, straight at me, eyes connected with mine a moment too long. “Should I take offense when you say some girls are not eye candy? Some are just natural?”
Ouch. Um… “I didn’t say being eye candy was all good. And I did say you could be eye candy if you wanted. But why would you? You are a goddess from heaven, a veritable Venus on the half shell, a cello-playing enigma!” I gave that last word a little flair of hand. Shit, I was overdoing it.
Thank God, Abby laughed quietly at that. “Yeah, okay…sounds like complete and utter horseshit to me.” She laughed again.
“Ssszzzz…scorch!” Tucker cried. Then he looked at me, then at Abby, then at me again, and his mouth fell open. Suddenly, he understood. For once in his life, nothing came out. His pointer finger did a little dance between me and Abby, then he shoved his hands into his pockets and turned back the way we’d come. “I’m just gonna get going. I’ll leave you two… alone ,” he sang the last word in a Barry White way. “Oh, but before I go…can you tell me what time it is?” he asked Abby.
I almost laughed while she pulled out her phone. “One thirty.”
“Thanks.” He smiled like the fucktard idiot he was.
We watched Tucker leave, and it gave us a few moments to absorb the inevitable—we were going to talk now. “Why was that so funny?” She turned back to me.
“What? Oh, the time thing? He just got you to give him the time of day.” I laughed to myself. “Don’t worry about it. Insider joke.”
“No, I get it.” She shook her head in embarrassment.
“Tucker’s a good guy,” I said. I laid down on the stone bench and stretched out. It wasn’t until then that I realized I was still wearing pajama pants with my tank. I sat back up so I wouldn’t so obviously display myself. “What are the chances that you’d go walking in the garden at the same time I did? Unless...”
“Unless?” she asked.
“Unless it was no accident. You followed me here.” I made spooky, crazy eyebrows that made her giggle. “Abby Chan, you’re not stalking me, are you?”
I was relieved to find that her sense of humor was a little more intact today. “No.”
“Good. Because this just might be a sign.”
“This?”
“This…us meeting here. Kismet, grokking.”
“I have no clue what you’re talking about.” She laughed, shaking her head. I hoped she was finding me silly in a cute way, not stupid.
“It’s the utter horseshit again, remember?” I laughed. “What I mean is, my parents have always believed in signs. And they’ve been married thirty years. Thirty years. Complete and total opposites, my parents are. Fell in love at a U2 concert at eighteen, and they’ve been together ever since.”
“Wow, that’s amazing.”
I nodded. “It really is. They’re very inspiring to me, you know. In this world where everyone gets divorced at the drop of a hat, my mom and dad are still there, still having fun, still proving everybody wrong.”
“Why do you think that is?” she asked.
“Because they have fun,” I said. That was the truth. My parents didn’t take stuff so seriously. They always knew when to say fuck it and go have a beer outside, or fuck it and go make love upstairs, or fuck it, let’s take the kids on a vacation . We don’t have the money, but who cares? Let’s do it anyway.
“You look happy about that,” she said, snapping me out of my daydream.
I was staring at her, her skin so perfectly smooth, shiny, and flawless. I loved her eyes, too, and more than anything, her full, sensual mouth. I imagined it doing sinful things to me. “I am. My parents are the best. I have pretty awesome brothers, too.”
“That’s wonderful.” She fidgeted and started to pick at her cuticles. “Now that I’ve run into you, I just wanted to say something. I’m sorry for what I said yesterday.”
I honestly had no clue what she was talking about. I felt dizzy, as if I wasn’t fully awake from a dream.
She went on, “I was completely out of line to tell you that I’m not like one of your groupies. First of all, it was presumptuous of me to even assume that you would have any…” She glanced at me for a nanosecond. I wasn’t going to agree with her. “And secondly, you were just being sweet.” She pressed her lips into a sad smirk. “What I should have said was thank you.”
“Oh. You’re welcome.”
Wow. That was a one-eighty. A woman who could admit she was wrong? Impressive. Sweet. I admired her even more now. This was looking better by the second. Maybe this was my chance to talk to her some more, get a sense of whether she’d want to board my crazy train of a life for even a short time.
I invited her to sit next to me on the stone bench. “So maybe I’m right.”
“About what?” she asked.
“About us meeting here. Maybe it’s a sign. We should talk more often.” I smiled. Luckily, she smiled back. “Both of us coming here, in this little corner of…” I scanned the familiar grounds. “Where are we today?”
“Seattle Center,” she said.
She didn’t argue about us getting to know each other more. That was definitely promising. “See? You have all the answers. I like that about you.”
“I don’t have all the answers. Just that one.” Abby chuckled.
“I bet you have more. I bet you probably know every city we’re going to, how many hours it’ll take to drive between each town, and exactly what time every show starts.”
She frowned. “Are you mocking me, Liam? You assume that because I play cello, I’m straitlaced, and nerdy, that I probably got straight A’s in school and a full scholarship to college?”
She may be frowning, but she could not get me that easily. “Because I’d be right, right?”
Abby laughed out loud, the most angelic sound I had ever heard in my life. Even her voice matched her music. “You got me there. God, I would suck as an actress.”
Let it be known that I was not oblivious to the huge smile on my face at this very moment. Taking a huge risk, I reached out to take her fingers, keeping my eyes on them. This was a deciding moment. Maybe I could go slow and see where things led. If I felt things weren’t going well, I would let her know. I would give her full disclosure on my feelings.
Do it, Liam, I heard Garrick say in my mind .
“Seriously, you’re smart. You pay attention to details… You’re pretty amazing,” I said. Abby didn’t pull her fingers away, and I flipped her hand over gently to touch each fingertip. “The mark of a cellist, huh?”
Abby was breathless. Her words came out on a string of airiness. “After a while, you develop thick skin, I guess.”
I pulled her hand a little closer to me, but that was it. I couldn’t scare her away. With Abby, I would need to take my time. She was not a groupie. She’d already let me know that in no uncertain terms. Besides, you couldn’t rush perfection. “Trust me, I know all about that.”
“You do?”
“Oh, yeah. Not everyone loves me. I have my critics.”
“What do they say?” she asked.
I shrugged. “Some think I’m talentless. Some think I’m a Bono copycat…no originality…looks like Bon Jovi’s ugly cousin… You name it.”
She giggled then covered her mouth. “Sorry. When I first saw you, I thought you looked like a punk cowboy.”
“Punk cowboy, huh? I kind of like that.” I brushed her hair away from her eyes. She didn’t fight me, but she didn’t exactly jump on me either. Which was refreshing. And classy. And the reason I was keenly aware that I needed to get to know her better.
“I don’t think you’re talentless,” she said. “I heard you a cappella just now. You have a beautiful voice.”
Wow, coming from her, I was truly honored. Seriously. “Really? I gotta tell you I thought for sure you’d think I was a fake, too.”
“You care what I think?”
“Of course! I care a lot. Girl, you were a cello pirate in there last night, pillaging and plundering and taking no prisoners. You put everyone to shame! I would take your opinion over anybody else’s any day. ”
A soft smile filtered onto Abby’s face, like nobody had ever talked like that to her before. But it was the truth, and I was simply letting her know it.
“In fact,” I added, “I was trying out a new lead-in to the song right before I heard you here.”
“I heard it,” she said, refocusing on pressing back her cuticles. “I like it for the live show. Gives it a little uniqueness for the concert experience while keeping the integrity of the recording for fans who like getting what they expect.”
I stared at her so hard, my eyeballs almost fell out. I wanted to hug her tight. “See? You get it. You just get it, Abby Chan.” A yellow and black butterfly flew between us just then.
She grinned. And leaned forward. And kissed me.