Finding Goodbye Page 9

  “Three dollar cover charge if you’re here to see the band,” the man said gruffly and unsmiling. I couldn’t help but wonder if he was taking his job just a little too seriously.

  Luke pulled out his wallet, and handed the man six dollars. We waited while he counted the money, thumbing through one bill at a time before stepping aside to let us in. There was cloud of smoke drifting lazily above us, and I had to blink a couple of times to adjust my eyes to the low light setting.

  There were four pool tables off in the corner with people huddled around them; the familiar sounds of the game echoing in the air as we passed by. Up ahead, I spotted a semicircle of mismatched furniture close to the stage, and saw Beck sitting on top of one of the couches. She was wearing an off-the-shoulder white T-shirt that appeared to have a cartoon scene from Alice in Wonderland depicted across the front, and a pair of black shiny skinny jeans. Her eyes were rimmed in smoky shades, but her lips were painted a vibrant fire-engine red.

  “Hey!” she shouted once she spotted me. She jumped off the couch and practically knocked me over with a crushing hug. “You made it,” she sang before releasing me from her vice-grip. I was still getting used to her overly-friendly persona.

  “You remember Luke,” I said, thumbing over my shoulder for a halfhearted introduction.

  “I do.” She smiled. “Thanks for coming.”

  A tall guy with too-long bronze colored hair sauntered over, draping his arm around Beck and pulled her tightly to his side. She leaned into him, pressing a hand against his chest. “This is Rex, my boyfriend.” She beamed.

  Rex and Beck. Their names practically rhymed. I didn’t know if that was cute or nauseating. I decided on the latter.

  “Hey man,” Luke said, shaking his hand.

  “Hey guys what’s up?” Rex answered by way of introduction, and turned to smile at me. He had light brown eyes, almost the color of honey, and a silver loop through his left nostril. He was very lean, I noted, wondering how the tattoo artist had managed to get an entire scene over his skinny arms. Rex might have been attractive if you were into that type. He certainly looked the part of a rock star.

  “Rex plays lead guitar,” Beck informed Luke.

  “Do you play?” Rex asked Luke.

  “I had a drum set growing up but I wasn’t any good,” Luke offered. With that, the two guys launched themselves into a musical conversation that I didn’t quite understand. I found myself wishing that Gabriel were here to explain the context. I decided to step aside, and joined Beck on the couch.

  Beck introduced me to the rest of the guys in the band. Ryan, I learned, was the singer. Adam was on drums, and Nathan played the bass guitar. Adam’s girlfriend, Jane, was curled up beside him on the sofa. She was a tiny thing, and had plain features. Her brown hair was pinned behind her head, with shorter layers tucked loosely behind her ears. She spoke quietly, and seemed too soft for the band-scene, but that was just my first-impression observation. The other two members were single, though Nathan had a crush on one of the groupies that apparently had a crush on Ryan. Ryan, however, didn’t want a girlfriend. He claimed a relationship was too distracting, and he didn’t want anything to get in the way of his work.

  We chatted for a bit about the excitement of the show, and whether or not they were nervous to perform on stage. The general consensus, I realized, was that performing was their way of living. “We need to perform like we need air to breathe,” Ryan informed me. I could see he definitely had a flair for theatrics.

  A short time later, the guys headed back stage to get their instruments set up for the show, and more people began filling up the Pool Hall.

  “Do either of you ladies want anything to drink?” Luke asked, leaning over the top of the couch to get our attention.

  “Are you buying?” Beck grinned.

  “Sure.” Luke smiled back at her.

  “I’ll have a beer then. Thank you.”

  “Darcy?”

  “Just a Coke please.” I shifted in my seat, pulling a couple of bucks from my back pocket. Luke started to protest, but I shoved the money into his chest. “You bought my way in,” I said. “This is the least I can do.”

  “Fair enough,” he said, and turned to head for the bar.

  “He seems really nice,” Beck said as she watched him walk away.

  “He is.”

  “You’re lucky you have someone like that in your life,” Beck said. “Most of us don’t always get that lucky.”

  I nodded, unsure of what to say. I knew I was lucky to have Luke in my life, but that still didn’t mean I wanted to turn our friendship into something more than it was. “Rex seems nice,” I said finally. I hadn’t had more than a few-minutes-worth of conversation with the guy, but what else were you supposed to say about someone you had just met?

  “He’s a character,” Beck said. “I’ve been with Rex for almost a year. Sometimes I think I don’t know what I’d do without him. Who would I even be, ya’ know?”

  “Yeah, I do.” I knew our circumstances were extremely different, but I could relate to the feeling more than she could imagine.

  “Ladies.” Luke plopped down between us, holding out a cup for each of us while he held the rim of a third between his teeth. After we had freed his hands, he was able to hold his own drink, taking a long pull from the cup.

  Behind us, the crowd was shuffling in, filling up the emptiness. The DJ finally cut the music on the loudspeakers and announced that Sinking Tempest would be taking the stage in five minutes.

  I wasn’t sure what I had been expecting, but I was pleasantly surprised by their performance when they took the stage. Ryan, the lead-singer, had a strong voice that was audibly clear as he belted out the lyrics with passion. They were so alive, so full of energy that seemed to sweep through the entire room. We were all on our feet, nodding our heads with the beat of the music, swaying to the rhythm. This, I realized, could be a new sort of in-between. The music was so loud, and it vibrated through my core and I could feel myself letting go, just being in the moment. With my friends beside me, I was discovering what it was like to have fun again. I couldn’t help but smile as the band ended their set and the crowd cheered with enthusiasm around me.

  The room had grown hot with so much body heat, and I could feel my clothes start to stick against my skin. I took off my jacket, and pushed the sleeves of my thermal up my forearms. The air was stale from sweat and smoke.

  “They were amazing, right?” Beck squealed in excitement.

  I nodded enthusiastically, reaching up to smooth my wild hair.

  Luke leaned down, his mouth against my ear so I could hear above the noise of the still cheering crowd. “I’m going to get another beer, do you want one?” His breath was hot against my neck.

  I shook my head.

  He nodded, and started for the bar. Beck grabbed my wrist and pulled me through the crowd, leading me to a side door that opened up on the side of the building. We were greeted by a gust of cool air and the sound of silence aside from the buzzing in my ear from the loudspeakers.

  “God, it was so hot in there,” she said, digging in her back pocket for a carton of Marlboro Red’s. She cupped her hand over the cigarette, and a white spark ignited from the lighter. She took a long drag, exhaling a stream of gray smoke into the night air. I watched until it disappeared into nothing. “So, what did you think?”

  “They were pretty incredible,” I said.

  “Rex thinks they’ll be signed before summer.”

  “What will that mean, exactly?” I asked.

  Beck shrugged, taking another pull of her cigarette, the orange embers casting a light glow over her features. “It means they’ll probabl
y be going on tour and he’ll be gone a lot. It’ll suck, but such is the life of a musician’s girlfriend.”

  “You won’t go with him?” I asked.

  “I’ll go when I can,” she said, “but I can’t exactly quit my life here just to follow him around. I’m working toward my own future goals.”

  “That’s smart of you,” I said.

  “Yeah. For I am woman, hear me roar.” Beck snorted. “Hey, you want one of these things?” She gestured to the carton she was holding in her left hand.

  “No thanks,” I said, wrinkling up my nose.

  “Good. I hear they kill you.”

  “So why are you doing it?” I asked.

  “It’s kind of a lame story actually.” She raised her eyebrows and blew out another cloud of smoke. “I started because of Rex. The first time I saw him, he was leaning up against the cafeteria wall outside of Bryce Hall, smoking a cigarette. There’s just something about a man with a chain wallet wearing black leather that just gets me every time.” She shook her head at the memory. “I kind of have a thing for the bad boy ‘Sons of Anarchy type.’ Anyway, I thought to myself, ‘it’s now or never,’ so I marched right up to him, and asked him to bum a smoke. It was an excuse to talk to him, but, I guess it just sort of stuck.”

  “Was that was your first time smoking?” I lifted a brow. Love at first cigarette? It didn’t seem all that romantic or glamorous to me.

  “Well no, of course not.” She chuckled. “I experimented in high school like everyone else.”

  “I didn’t,” I said, “with smoking, anyway. I was a runner, and we sort of depend on our lungs to be healthy.” Also, there was something extremely off-putting about the lingering stench that cigarette smoke left on your clothes and skin.

  “No kidding,” she said. “I’ll quit one of these days.”

  I decided to let that one go for now, and leaned back into the cool brick wall behind me. My body was starting to cool, and I felt a shiver run down the length of my spine. Beck tossed her cigarette on the sidewalk and stamped out the flame with the toe of her shoe. I followed her back inside, and spotted Luke talking to a pretty girl with light brown hair over by the bar.

  “Uh-oh,” Beck pointed, “looks like someone is gunning for your guy.”

  “It’s not like that, I told you.”

  “I’m just saying.” She shrugged.

  I glanced back at the bar and caught Luke’s eye. He saw me, nodded a quick goodbye to the girl, and started making his way through the crowd, over to us.

  “And never mind.” Beck giggled. “Hey, I’m going to get another beer before we catch up with Rex. They should be packing up their equipment now. I’ll be back in a few, maybe we can all go out for a bite to eat?”

  “Okay,” I said, watching her go. Luke made his way over to me, smiling his infectious boyish smile.

  “Where did you run off to?” he asked.

  “Just outside with Beck to get some air,” I explained. Or rather, I got some air while she polluted her lungs. “Who was the girl you were talking to?”

  “Why, are you jealous?” He winked.

  “No, of course not,” I said, feeling my face start to flame in spite of my protest. “God, it’s hot in here.” I borrowed Beck’s line, and began fanning myself with my hand.

  Luke laughed, taking a sip of his beer. “She’s just a girl from my Lit class.”

  I nodded. “She’s pretty.”

  “The band was pretty good,” he said, ignoring my comment.

  “Yeah, they were,” I agreed. “I’m really glad you decided to come with me tonight. I actually wanted to apologize about last week at the coffee shop.”

  “You don’t need to–” he began, but I cut him off.

  “I do, actually.” I reached up, taking hold of the chain of my necklace, and rubbed my thumb over the stone in Gabriel’s class ring. “The way I reacted when you brought up the beach house, it wasn’t fair to you… I’m still trying to figure out where I go from here, and sometimes I get a little too caught up in myself.”

  Now it was Luke’s turn to cut me off. “Listen,” he started, “you can’t put a time frame on the healing process or when and how it happens. It’s different for everyone. So, you don’t have anything to apologize for.”

  I smiled. Luke always got me. Aside from Gabriel, he understood me in a way I was sure that no one else on earth ever would. I cherished that.

  “You guys ready?” Beck asked. She’d appeared with perfect timing.

  “Where to, lovely lady?” Luke asked her.

  “Backstage, to see what’s taking the guys so long. I was thinking we could head over to Seaside Grille after, I’m craving a double-burger and fries.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Luke said, patting his stomach. Typical guy, I thought, always ready to eat.

  Beck led the way through the dense crowd. As we approached the side of the stage, the blue lights from up ahead cast cool colored shadows down below. We stepped behind a thick velvet curtain, and behind it stood a black door with various rock n’ roll posters taped to its surface.

  “Right this way,” Beck said, reaching for the door handle. “One of the many perks of being a band member’s girlfriend is that you have unlimited VIP access.”

  The door opened, and as my eyes adjusted to the florescent lighting above, I felt my breath catching in my lungs. The words “oh no” were forming on my lips in a panic, but Beck had already seen what I hoped could only be a mirage.

  Rex was caught in an intensive lip-locked performance with another girl. They were pressed up against one of the amplifiers, entirely oblivious to the fact that they’d acquired an audience. And this, rest assured, was not the applauding kind…

  “Who the hell is this bitch?” Beck spat angrily, reaching between the pair to wrench them apart.

  “This isn’t what it looks like,” Rex stated, holding out his hands as if he could somehow find an excuse that was plausible.

  The girl he had been making out with wiped the back of her hand across her mouth, smearing her lipstick even more. “I didn’t know he was with anyone,” she said, and began backing away in a hurry.

  “Yeah you better run, you mediocre excuse of a human being–is that blonde even your real hair color?” Beck called after her.

  “Beck, let me explain.” Rex was reaching for her now, but she yanked her arm free of his grip and backed away. “She just attacked me, I didn’t –”

  “Don’t touch me,” she cried, “don’t you dare touch me!” Swiftly, she moved through the maze of musical equipment, heading straight for the back door. I hobbled after her as quickly as I could, briefly glancing over my shoulder as Luke grabbed a hold of Rex’s arm to stop him from chasing after Beck.

  “Let go of me man,” Rex retorted, thrusting his elbow backward and hitting Luke right in the nose. I stopped in my tracks, turning back toward Luke as he reeled back and sank his fist into the corner of Rex’s jawbone. There was a sickening crunch, and Rex leaned over, looking as though he might vomit on the utility carpet.

  “Are you all right?” I asked Luke. Blood was pouring down his chin from the elbow he’d received to the nose.

  “Fine,” he stated, grabbing me around the shoulders, and guiding me out of the building. Beck was standing on the sidewalk, her arms crossed over her shoulders as she stood beneath the light of the lamppost.

  “Hey,” I said gently, reaching for her shoulder. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” she said bitterly. She wiped beneath her eyes with the pad of her thumb before turning to face us. “What the hell happened to you?” she asked Luke.

 
“Rex elbowed him,” I said.

  “Dammit,” she said, reaching up to massage her left temple. “I’m sorry.”

  “Do you need to see a doctor?” I asked, reaching out to touch the bridge of his nose. He winced. “I mean, it could be broken.”

  “Don’t make it a big deal,” he said, swatting at my hand.

  “Let me see.” Beck stepped in, gripping his chin firmly in her hands. She looked this way and that, examining his battle wound before coming up with a diagnosis. “It’s not broken.”

  “How do you know?” Luke asked incredulously.

  “My parents are in the medical field. They used to drag me around on military mission trips when I was a kid; I’ve seen a lot of broken things. Just trust me, okay?”

  He wiped at his nose, and I handed him my jacket to staunch the bleeding. “I can wash it later,” I said, letting him know I didn’t mind it getting dirty.

  “Thanks,” he said, taking it.

  “That asshole!” Beck proclaimed, her voice ringing out into the night. She was staring out across the street, listening as her words faded into the background.

  “Are you okay?” I asked her again.

  Beck didn’t answer; instead, she started marching across the parking lot to a purple Honda Civic. We followed after her, catching up as she was popping the trunk. She leaned forward, and half of her body disappeared into the vast darkness of the trunk before returning with a bottle of vodka.

  “I will be,” she said, unscrewing the lid.

  ***

  An hour later, the three of us were sitting on the beach watching the waves crash against the shoreline in the moonlight. Beck and Luke had shared the majority of the bottle, leaving me to be the sober guardian as she drowned her sorrows. It was an odd role-reversal that I wasn’t used to.

  “I don’t need him,” Beck was saying, slurring her words. “He really was an asshole. I don’t know what I ever saw in him… and what kind of name is Rex, anyway? His real name is Alex.”