Because of You (23 page)

“Finn is back in the corner making himself scarce,” I tell her with a smile that I don’t really feel as I lift the glass to my lips and chug the carbonated sweet drink that tastes like home. I love June but I don’t feel like getting into the whole Finn thing with her at the moment. I just want to do what I came here to do, what I always do: relax and enjoy being in the one place that truly makes me happy.

“I’m sure there’s a hell of a story there that you’re not telling me, but I’ll let it slide for now,” June says with a wink, leaning closer to me across the bar so she doesn’t have to shout. “It’s pretty dead here tonight, nothing new there. How about you get that pretty face of yours up on stage and do your thing so I can gush all over you.”

I drain my glass and jump down off of the stool with an excitement in my stomach that I haven’t felt since the last time I was here. Nothing ever matches the feeling I get when I’m in this bar. Well, except for having Brady’s body and lips against me the other night, but I’m not going to think about that right now. Brady isn’t here and therefore I don’t have to be distracted.

I walk away from the bar and head towards the small stage set up in the corner of the room. It’s not really a stage, just two steps up onto a platform in the corner of the room that's big enough to hold a small piano and a stool in front of the microphone stand. The jukebox is usually the music of choice in this place, playing anything from Willie Nelson to Guns N’ Roses, but on occasion when someone comes into the bar who knows how to play and sing, June lets them get up on stage, and the jukebox is unplugged for the night. This is the one and only stage where I can be myself. Where no one knows who I am, no one knows the songs I usually sing, and no one expects anything from me. I can sing what I want, and I can finally breathe.

I make my way up the two small steps and pull the bar stool closer to the mic stand. My eyes scan the crowd until they zero in on Finn. Even though we aren’t speaking, and even though what he said punched a hole in my heart that I don’t know how to fix right now, I still need him up here with me, and I know he wants the same thing. I can see him in the back of the room staring longingly at the guitar that's propped up against the piano directly behind me. I stare at him while I adjust the microphone so it’s level with my mouth, and his eyes meet mine. I offer him a small smile, nodding my head in the direction of the guitar. I’m nowhere near ready to forgive him, but this is what we’ve been doing together since we were teenagers.

I watch as he tilts his head up to the ceiling and lets out a deep sigh before placing his hands on the table in front of him and pushing himself up off of the chair. He doesn’t head towards the stage though. Instead, he turns and walks right out the door of the bar. My breath catches in my throat when I see the door close behind him, and I wonder if we’ve done so much damage to each other that it will never be salvageable. Before I even have a chance to wrap my thoughts around his actions, Finn is walking back through the door with a familiar case dangling from his hand. I stare in disbelief at the oblong box, covered in hummingbird stickers, as he uses it to maneuver his way through the crowd and up to the stage. He walks right by me without saying a word and flings the case up on top of the piano, flipping the locks open and lifting the lid.

My brain screams for me to do something, say something, stop him from doing what I know he’s about to do, but I can’t move. I’m transfixed by the sight of him wrapping his fingers around the neck of
my
guitar, using the muscles in his arms to lift
my
guitar from its case and bring it out into the open in front of so many people. This is MY secret, MY private love and obsession that I don’t share with anyone anymore. How dare he waltz up on this stage and reveal the one skeleton in my closet that can do me the most harm?

I watch him with wide, unblinking eyes as he cradles the guitar close to him and perches himself on the stool. When he strums a few notes and the sound reaches my ears, it lights a fire of fury under my ass, and I jump down off of my own stool and move to stand directly in front of him.

“What the hell are you doing?” I hiss angrily at him as he lazily continues to pluck the strings.

“I’m accompanying you on guitar. Isn’t that what the whole nod was for?” he asks nonchalantly without looking up.

His careless attitude just pisses me off even more, and I reach out and yank the guitar away from him roughly before he can play it a second longer.

He crosses his arms in front of him and stares me down as I stand there holding my guitar awkwardly, out away from my body like it has a disease and I don’t want to get it too close to it for fear that it will rub off on me.

“This is MY guitar. It stays in MY house and no one plays it but ME,” I tell him angrily, sounding like a five-year-old throwing a temper tantrum. I should just stomp my foot and hold my breath while I’m at it. I don’t care how juvenile I’m behaving. He knows how important this instrument is to me, and he knows why it stays hidden away in a closet where no one can see it.

“Then play it.”

Finn speaks softly, his eyes never leaving mine. The crowd in the bar has disappeared and now it’s only the two of us on stage: two friends who know everything about the other and who are slowly using those things to destroy years of love and trust.

“What?” I ask dumbly.

He nods in the direction of my outstretched hand.

“Then. Play. It,” he repeats again slowly, enunciating each word. “If that piece of wood means so much to you, prove it.”

My hands start to shake and the weight of the guitar is beginning to hurt my arm, so I bring it in close to my body, swallowing roughly and trying not to cry.

“You treat that fucking thing like it’s the Holy Grail, but you never show it off. You want more out of your life, but you never do a God damned thing to make it happen,” he argues.

“You know why,” I whisper to him angrily. “You know why I can’t do this. You of all people should understand.”

He laughs cynically and shakes his head at me.

“You can’t use Eve as an excuse. Not this time. She’s not here. It’s just you, me, and a handful of people who just want to drink and listen to some good music. Stop being afraid for once in your fucking life. Stop listening to all of the voices in your head telling you why this is a bad idea and just listen to your heart. Bring out that firecracker I saw this morning that stood her ground, told me where to go, and smacked me across the face.”

Shame washes through me when he brings up what I did this morning. Shame for letting myself get so worked up over his words and letting my emotions take over.

“Wipe that look off your face right now,” Finn reprimands as he unfolds his arms and leans towards me. “I said some things I shouldn’t have, and you put me in my place. I deserved it. End of story. Do you want to always be the woman who does what she’s told or the woman who does what she loves and to hell with everything else? Because now is your chance to make that decision. Who do you want to be, Layla?”

My heart is pounding and the hands wrapped around the neck of my guitar are sweating as I contemplate his words. I know who I want to be. I’ve
always
known who I want to be. Could it really be as simple as making a decision and jumping off of the ledge into the unknown?

I turn away from Finn and scan the crowd. They are all laughing and having a good time, slinging back drinks with friends, and listening to the music piped through the sound system. They have no idea that a monumental decision is being made up here on this stage.

“
Who do you want to be, Layla?”

I want to be free. For one moment in time, I just want to be free.

I clear my throat, my decision made, and perch on the edge of my stool with my guitar resting in my lap, one foot hooked on the top rung of the stool to balance my guitar and the other one planted on the ground. I hum a few warm-up bars softly to myself while I hear Finn tinkering with the strings of the extra guitar, making sure it’s in tune. I see June walk out from behind the bar and over to the jukebox, unplugging the machine and giving me a huge smile and a thumbs up. She glances at the guitar in my hand questioningly, silently asking me if I’m okay, and I nod confidently in her direction. I’m okay. This is okay. I can do this.

In a normal bar when you turn off the music, people will boo and complain and shout profanities. But in June’s bar, everyone just goes with the flow. They continue downing their shots of Jack and sipping their drafts of beer, and once in a while, they glance around to see why the music isn’t playing. They don’t care if a stranger is up on stage, and they don’t bat an eye when the music starts back up again, switching from recorded music to live music. They have no idea the woman standing on the stage in front of them is petrified. They are unaware that for the first time in years, she will be playing an instrument given to her by her father and she's putting her heart and soul right smack in the middle of the stage for all to see and judge.

It’s absolutely perfect.

I take a deep breath and a grin of excitement takes over my face as I wrap my arms around my guitar and pluck a few random chords to get my fingers warmed up. Finn chooses the first song, just like he always does when we’re here, and I smile to myself as he strums the first few notes to Janis Joplin’s
Piece of my Heart
and starts us off. This is our song―the first one we ever performed together at June’s bar and the first time I ever found out Finn could play the guitar. He is amazingly talented and I never understood why he settled for the military instead of pursuing a career in music. The many times I’ve asked him about it, he just grunts and replies that I'm the star, not him, and that’s the way it should be.

I close my eyes and let the beauty of Finn’s playing wash over me. With my eyes still closed, I forget about the fact that I haven’t played on stage since my father was alive; I forget about the fact that I’ve kept this part of myself locked behind closed doors for so long that I almost lost it. I've almost allowed the one part of myself that I actually love to be snuffed out like a candle.

I gently rest my fingers on the strings and familiarize myself with the rough texture of the wire and how natural it feels to have it brushing against the tips of my fingers. I listen to Finn’s playing with my head cocked to the side, waiting for the perfect moment to jump in with him, like a child standing on the playground as her friends swing the Double Dutch jump ropes.
Almost, almost, one more time around, there it is: the perfect opening.

I take a deep breath and join in with Finn’s strumming, flawlessly. The vibrations from the guitar work their way up my hands and arms until I can practically feel them wrapping around my heart and shocking it back to life like a defibrillator
.
Easing into the first line of the song while I play, I use my real, raspy voice instead of the bubble gum pop voice I usually use.

We make our way through the song effortlessly, and I put everything I have into belting out the song and strumming the guitar, letting the words and the music flow through me and take me away. As Finn closes out the song with the last few guitar notes, he barely takes a pause before jumping right in to the next song. By the time we finish a half hour later, I’ve played and sung covers from Brandi Carlile and Sheryl Crow, to Johnny Cash and Nine Inch Nails. I finally let my eyes scan the crowd after singing the last note of
Something in the Way
by Nirvana and a huge smile takes over my face as I see the patrons in the bar standing on their feet, hooting, hollering, and whistling for me.

For ME. Not Layla Carlysle the pop singer. Layla Carlysle who sings whatever the hell she wants and enjoys every minute of it.

I tip my head forward in thanks but when I look back up, my heart skips a beat, and I feel my face flush with nerves. Standing right in front of me, with a look of awe on his face, clapping and whistling louder than everyone else, is Brady.

I stand there like an idiot, clutching the microphone tightly with one hand and my guitar with the other, while he shakes his head at me in surprise. I come here to sing when I’m home because I can be anonymous. Having Brady here watching me enjoy what I do without having to put on an act sets a swarm of butterflies loose in my stomach, and I have to let go of the microphone and press my hand against it to calm my nerves. It suddenly means more than anything to me that he likes what I just did. I realize I
want
to impress him. I want him to think of me as something other than a pop princess who sings shitty songs that a teenager can write in her sleep. I want him to see that I have talent, even if I rarely exhibit it.

As the crowd continues to shout and demand for more, my eyes don’t leave Brady’s as he walks the few feet needed to bring him right up to the platform I’m standing on. He’s so damn tall that it’s strange to be standing above him looking down. It makes me feel powerful all of a sudden, and all I can think about is being above him somewhere else, preferably a bed, where I can be in charge, taking him inside me, and riding us both to the edge.

He crooks his finger at me, and I lean forward until his lips are brushing up against my ear.

“You up on this stage singing your heart out with a voice dripping with sex is the hottest fucking thing I’ve ever seen. Did you seriously just rock out a Nirvana song? And play a God damned guitar better than Jimi Hendrix?”

I pull away from him just enough so I can look at his face and give him the most seductive smile I can muster, running my tongue slowly across my top lip before biting down on the bottom one. He lets out a heavy breath as his eyes zero in on my lips. I don’t know what’s got into me tonight, but I feel a boldness flowing through me that isn’t usually there when I’m not pretending to be
The Layla Carlysle
. I want to jump down off of the stage, drag him to the back room, and rip his shirt off of his body. I want to push him against the wall, drop down on my knees, and take him in my mouth. I want to do everything to this man, and I don’t care about the consequences.