Chapter Fifteen
Jennie
Me: What's taking you so long? Are you writing a damn book?
I don't know if my rubbing her shoulders is putting her to sleep, but she's been staring at her phone for five solid minutes.
Lisa: Sorry. Lost in thought.
Me: I can see that. So, Sounds of Cedar?
Lisa: It's kind of a long story. Let me grab my laptop.
I open up our Facebook messages on my phone. When she returns, she leans against a counter several feet away from me. I'm aware of the fact that she's put space between us, and it makes me feel somewhat uncomfortable, because I know I shouldn't have been rubbing her shoulders. It's too much, considering what's happened between us in the past, but I feel as if it's my fault her shoulders hurt in the first place.
She doesn't really complain about what playing on the floor is doing to her, but I can tell it hurts sometimes. Especially after nights like last night, when we wrote for three hours straight. I asked her to start playing on the floor to help with the fact that things seem to be more difficult when she's on the bed. If I didn't still have such a huge crush on her guitar playing, it might not be as big a problem.
But I do still have a definite crush on her guitar playing. And I would say I have a definite crush on her, but crush doesn't even begin to define it. I'm not even going to try to define how I feel about her, because I refuse to let my thoughts go there. Not now and not ever.
Lisa: We had all been playing together for fun for about six months before we got our first real gig at a local restaurant. They needed us to give them the name of our band so they could put us on the schedule. We had never really considered ourselves an actual band before that, since it was all in fun, but that night, we agreed that maybe for local things like the restaurant, it would be good to have a name. We all took turns throwing out suggestions, but we couldn't seem to agree on anything. At one point, Bambam suggested we call ourselves Freak Frogs. I laughed. I told him it sounded like a punk band, that we needed a title with more of an acoustic sound. He got upset and said I shouldn't really be allowed to comment on how music or titles sound, since, well, yay for lame deaf jokes from sixteen-year-old little brother.
Anyway, Bobby didn't like how cocky Bambam was back then, so he said I should choose the name and everyone had to agree on it. Bambam got pissed and walked off, said he didn't want to be in the band anyway. I knew he was just having a Bambam tantrum. He didn't have them often, but when he did have them, I understood. I mean, the kid had virtually no parents, and he was raising himself, so I thought he was pretty damn mature despite the sporadic tantrums. I told the guys I wanted to think on it for a while. I tried to come up with names that I thought would mean something to everyone, but mostly to Bambam. I thought back on what got me into listening to music in the first place.
Bambam was around two years old, and I was five. I've already shared to you all the qualities my parents possessed, so I won't go back into that. But in addition to all their addictions, they also liked to party. They would send us to our rooms at night once all their friends began to arrive. I noticed that Bambam was always wearing the same diapers when he woke up that he wore to bed. They never checked on him. Never fed him at night or changed him or even checked to see if he was breathing. This is probably something that had been occurring since he was an infant, but I didn't really notice until I started school, because I think I was just too young. We weren't allowed to leave our rooms at night. I don't remember why I was too scared to leave my room, but I'm sure I'd been punished for it before, or it wouldn't have bothered me. I would wait until the parties were over and my parents went to bed before I could leave my room and go check on Bambam. The problem with this was that I couldn't hear, so I never knew when the music would stop, and I never knew if they had gone to their bedroom, because I wasn't allowed to open my door. Instead of risking being caught, I would just press my ear to the floor and feel the vibrations of the music. Every night, I would lie there for no telling how long, just waiting for the music to stop. I began to recognize the songs based on how they felt through the floor, and I learned how to predict which songs were coming next, since they played the same albums night after night. I even began to learn how to tap along with the rhythm. After the music would finally stop, I would keep my ear pressed to the floor and wait for my parents' footsteps to indicate that they had gone to their bedroom. Once I knew the coast was clear, I would go to Bambam's room and bring him back to bed with me. That way, when he woke up crying, I could help him. Which brings me back to the point of this story, how I came up with the band name. I learned how to differentiate chords and sounds through all the nights my body and my ears were pressed against the cedar floor. Hence Sounds of Cedar.
Inhale, exhale.
Beat, beat, pause.
Contract, expand.
I don't even realize how on edge I am until I see the white in my knuckles as I grip my phone. We both remain still for several moments while I attempt to get the image of the five-year-old Lisa out of my head.
It's gut-wrenching.
Me: I guess that explains how you can differentiate vibrations so well. And I guess Bambam agreed once you told him the name, because how could he not appreciate that?
Lisa: Bambam doesn't know that story. Once again, you're the first person I've ever shared it with.
I lift my eyes back to her and inhale, but for the life of me, I can't remember how to exhale. She's a good three feet away, but I feel as if every single part of me that her eyes fall on is being directly touched by her. For the first time in a while, the fear etches its way back into my heart. Fear that one of these moments will be one neither of us can resist.
She sets her laptop on the counter and folds her arms across her chest. Before her eyes meet mine, her gaze falls on my legs, and then she slowly works her eyes up the entire length of my body. Her eyes are narrow and focused. The way she's looking at me makes me want to lunge for the freezer and crawl inside.
Her eyes are fixed on my mouth, and she quietly swallows, then reaches beside her and picks up her phone.
Lisa: Hurry, Jen. I need a serious flaw, and I need it now.
I force a smile, although my insides are screaming for me not to text her back a flaw. It's as if my fingers are fighting with themselves as they fly over the screen in front of me.
Me: Sometimes when I'm frustrated with you, I wait until you look away, and then I yell mean things at you.
She laughs, then looks back up at me. "Thank you," she silently mouths.
It's the first time she's ever mouthed words, and if she weren't walking away from me right now, I'd be begging for her to do it again.
Heart 1.
Jennie 0.
• • •
It's after midnight, but we finally finish adding icing to the fifth and final cake. She cleans the last of the ingredients off the counter while I secure the Saran wrap around the cake pan and slide it next to the other four pans.
Lisa: Do I finally get to meet the raging alcoholic side of you tomorrow night?
Me: I'm thinking you just might.
She grins and flips off the kitchen light. I walk to the living room to power off the TV. Bobby and Sorn should come home sometime in the next hour, so I leave the lamp on in the living room.
Lisa: Will it be weird for you?
Me: Being drunk? Nope. I'm pretty good at it.
Lisa: No. I mean Irene.
I look up at her where she's standing in front of her bedroom door, watching her phone, not making eye contact with me. She looks nervous that she even asked the question.
Me: Don't worry about me, Lisa.
Lisa: Can't help it. I feel like I've put you in an awkward situation.
Me: You haven't. I mean, don't get me wrong, it would help if you weren't so attractive, but I'm hoping Bambam looks a lot like you. That way, when you're shacking up with Irene tomorrow night, I can have drunk, wild fun with your little brother.
I hit send, then immediately gasp. What the hell was I thinking? That wasn't funny. It was supposed to be funny, but it's after midnight, and I'm never funny after midnight.
Shit.
Lisa is still looking down at the screen on her phone. Her jaw twitches, and she shakes her head slightly, then looks up at me as if I've just shot her through the heart. She drops her arm and runs her free hand through her hair, then turns to walk to her room.
I. Suck.
I rush to her and put my hand on her shoulder, urging her to turn back around. She rolls her shoulder to brush my hand off but pauses, only partially turning to face me with a guarded expression. I step around to her front so she's forced to look at me.
"I was kidding," I say, slowly and very seriously. "I'm sorry."
Her face is still tense and hard and even a little disappointed, but she lifts her phone and begins texting again.
Lisa: And therein lies the problem, Jennie. You should be able to screw whoever you want to screw, and I shouldn't give a shit.
I suck in a breath. At first, it pisses me off, but then I focus in on the one word that reveals the entire truth behind her statement.
Shouldn't.
She didn't say, "I don't give a shit." She said, "I shouldn't give a shit."
I look up at her, and her face is so full of pain it's heart-breaking.
She doesn't want to feel like this. I don't want her to feel like this.
What the hell am I doing to her?
She runs both of her hands through her hair, looks up at the ceiling, and squeezes her eyes shut. She stands like this for a while, then exhales and drops her hands to her hips, lowering her eyes to the floor.
She feels so guilty she can't even look at me.
Without making eye contact, she lifts an arm and grabs my wrist, then pulls me toward her. She crushes me to her chest, wraps one arm around my back, and curves her other hand against the back of my head. My arms are folded up and tucked between us while her cheek rests against the top of my head. She sighs heavily.
I don't pull away from her in order to text her a flaw, because I don't think she's in need of one right now. The way she's holding me is different, unlike all the times in the past few weeks when we've had to separate ourselves in order to breathe.
She's holding me now as if I'm a part of her—a wounded extension of her heart—and she's realizing just how much that extension needs to be severed.
We stand like this for several minutes, and I begin to get lost in the way she's wrapped herself around me. The way she's holding me gives me a glimpse of what things could be like between us. I try to push those two little words into the back of my head, the two words that always inch their way forward when we're together.
Maybe someday.
The sound of keys hitting a counter behind me jerks me to attention. I pull back, and Lisa does the same as soon as she feels my body flinch against her. She looks over my shoulder and toward the kitchen, so I spin around. Bobby has just walked through the front door. His back is toward us, and he's slipping off his shoes.
"I'm only going to say this once, and I need you to listen," Bobby says. He still isn't facing us, but I'm the only one in the apartment who can hear him, so I know he's directing his comment to me. "She will never leave her, Jennie."
He walks to his bedroom without once looking over his shoulder, leaving Lisa to believe he never even saw us. The door to Bobby's bedroom closes, and I turn back to face Lisa. Her eyes are still on Bobby's door. When they flick back to mine, they're full of so many things I know she wishes she could say.
But she doesn't. She just turns and walks into her room, closing the door behind her.
I remain completely motionless as two huge tears spill from my eyes, scarring their way down my cheeks in a trail of shame.
Lisa
Bambam: Gotta love rain. Looks like I'll be there early. I'm coming alone, though. The guys can't make it.
Me: See you when you get here. Oh, and before you leave tomorrow, make sure you get all your shit out of Jennie's room.
Bambam: Will she be there? Do I finally get to meet the girl who was brought to this earth for us?
Me: Yeah, she'll be here.
Bambam: I can't believe I've never asked this, but is she hot?
Oh, no.
Me: Don't even think about it. She's been through too much shit to be added to your list of concubines.
Bambam: Territorial, are we?
I toss my phone onto the bed and don't even bother with a reply. If I make her too off-limits to him, it'll just make him try that much harder with her.
When she made the joke last night about screwing him, she was just trying to add humor to the seriousness of the situation, but the way her text made me feel terrified me.
It wasn't the fact that she texted about hooking up with someone. What terrified me was my knee-jerk reaction. I wanted to throw my phone against the wall and smash it into a million pieces, then throw her against the wall and show her all the ways I could ensure that she never thinks about another man again.
I didn't like feeling that way. I probably should encourage Bambam. Maybe it would be better for my relationship with Irene if Jennie actually started dating someone else.
Whoa.
The wave of jealousy that just rolled over me felt more like a tsunami.
I walk out of my bedroom and head to the kitchen to help Jennie get things together for dinner before everyone gets here. I pause when I see her bent over, rummaging through the contents of the refrigerator. She's wearing the blue dress again.
I hate it when Bobby is right. My eyes slowly scroll from the dress, down her legs, and back up again. I exhale and contemplate asking her to go change. I'm not sure I can deal with this tonight. Especially when Irene gets here.
Jennie straightens up, pulls away from the refrigerator, and turns toward the counter. I notice she's talking, but she isn't talking to me. She pulls a bowl out of the refrigerator, and her mouth is still moving, so naturally, my eyes scan the rest of the apartment to see who it is she's talking to.
And that's when both halves of my heart—which were somehow still connected by a small, invisible fiber—snap apart and separate completely.
Irene is standing in front of the bathroom door, eyeing me hard. I can't read her expression, because it's not one I've ever been exposed to before. The half of my heart that belongs to her immediately begins to panic.
Look innocent, Lisa. Look innocent. All you did was look at her.
I smile. "There's my girl," I sign as I walk to her. The fact that I'm somehow able to hide my guilt seems to ease her concern. She smiles back and wraps her arms around my neck when I reach her. I slip my arms around her waist and kiss her for the first time in two weeks.
God, I've missed her. She feels so good. So familiar.
She smells good, she tastes good, she is good. I've missed her so damn much. I kiss her cheek and her chin and her forehead, and I love that I'm so relieved to have her here. For the past few days, I began to fear that I wouldn't have this reaction the next time I saw her.
"I have to go really bad. Long drive." She winces and points to the door behind her, and I give her another quick kiss. Once she's inside the bathroom, I slowly turn back around to gauge Jennie's reaction.
I've been as upfront and honest with Jennie as I can possibly be about my feelings for Irene, but I know it's not easy for her to see me with Irene. There's just no way around it. Do I compromise my relationship with Irene to spare Jennie's feelings? Or do I compromise Jennie's feelings to spare my relationship with Irene? Unfortunately, there's no middle ground. No right choice. My actions are becoming split directly down the middle, just like my heart.
I face her, and our eyes meet briefly. She refocuses her attention down to the cake in front of her and inserts candles. When she finishes, she smiles and looks back up at me. She sees the concern in my expression, so she pats her chest and makes the "okay" sign with her hand.
She's reassuring me that she's fine. I practically have to pry myself away from her every night, and then I maul my girlfriend right in front of her—and she's reassuring me?
Her patience and understanding with this whole screwed-up situation should make me happy, but they have the opposite effect. They disappoint me, because they make me like her that much more.
I can't win for losing.
• • •
Oddly enough, Irene and Jennie seem to be having fun together in the kitchen, prepping ingredients for a pot of chili. I couldn't hang, so I retreated to my room and claimed I had a lot of work to catch up on. As good as Jennie is with this, I'm not as skilled. It was awkward for me every time Irene would kiss me or sit on my lap or trail her fingers seductively up my chest. Which, come to think of it, was a bit odd. She's never really all that touchy-feely when we're hanging out, so she's either feeling a tad bit territorial, or she and Jennie have already been hitting the Pine-Sol.
Irene comes into the bedroom just as I'm shutting the laptop. She kneels down on the edge of the bed, leans forward, and inches her way toward me. She's looking up at me with a flirtatious smile, so I set the laptop aside and smile back at her.
She crawls her way up my body until she's face-to-face with me, and then she sits back on her heels, straddling me. She cocks an eyebrow and tilts her head. "You were checking out her ass."
Shit.
I was hoping that moment had come and gone.
I laugh and cup my hands around Irene's backside and scoot her a little closer. I let go and bring my hands back around in front of her and answer her. "I walked out of my room to a rear end pointed toward my bedroom door. I notice things like that, unfortunately." I kiss her mouth, then pull back.
She's not smiling. "She's really nice," Irene signs. "And pretty. And funny. And talented. And . . ."
The insecurity in her words makes me feel like a jerk, so I grab her hands and still them. "She's not you," I tell her. "No one can ever be you, Irene. Ever."
She smiles halfheartedly and places her palms on the sides of my face and slowly runs them down to my neck. She leans forward and presses her mouth to mine with so much force I can feel the fear rolling off of her.
Fear that I put there.
I grab her face and kiss her with everything I have, doing all I can to erase her worries. The last thing this girl needs is something else to stress her out.
When she breaks apart from me, her features are still full of every single negative emotion I've spent the past five years helping her drown out.
"Lisa?" She pauses, then drops her eyes while she blows out a long, controlled breath. The nervousness in her demeanor twists around my heart and squeezes it. She brings her eyes carefully back to mine. "Did you tell her about me? Does she know?" Her eyes search mine for an answer to the question she should never even feel the need to ask.
Does she not know me by now?
"No. God, no, Irene. Why would I do that? That's always been your story to tell, not mine. I would never do that."
Her eyes fill with tears, and she tries to blink them away. I let my head fall back against the headboard. This girl still has no idea how far I'll go for her.
I lift my head away from the headboard and look her hard in the eyes. "To the ends of the earth, Irene," I sign, repeating our phrase to her.
She forces a sad smile. "And back."