September Rain Bk 2, Savor The Days Series (10 page)

For eleven months we’d been exclusive
and he still made my chest want to break wide open when he moved
like that. Especially when his shirt was off. Forget about coherent
thoughts all together when the band was performing. Jake was sex on
fire when he hit the stage.

He leaned forward, grasping the long
neck of his sunburst Fender; his chest glistened as he opened his
mouth wide. Jagger had nothing on him. His neck tensed, vocal
chords tightening as he unleashed the vibrant sounds of pain and
thunder. Behind him, Andrew slapped at the bass, wobbling his head
as he focused. Max wailed on the skins, cymbals, and double-kicked
the bass drums in perfect time.

Nosey
Max
.

Analog Controller was on point. Having
the guys share a house was Jakes idea and even though it meant
suffering Max trying to catch us in the throes of passion and
string-bean Andrew eating everything he could get his paws on, it
had paid off. All three of them together were more Slob than I
could take, but with so much rehearsal time, they were sounding
fantastic. Really, rhythmically, tight. Better than they sounded on
the tracks they’d laid down at a studio in Phoenix for their third
EP. Jake always said the greatest bands sound better
live.

When Analog Controller found their
groove, it was as if they weaved their own world. A place composed
entirely of music. Notes like air, melody like water rushing down a
cliff side. It crashed everywhere and everything. All at once,
created and destroyed in a beautiful flood that washed away my
problems. I soaked it in, never wanting to come up for
air.

I went to rehearsals as often as I
could, which was never enough. I lived in the next town over, and
sure Carlisle were small, but all that really meant to me was that
I had to walk everywhere because the only public transportation
that passed through my speck in the desert was on its’ way to
somewhere better.

I slammed my neck, rocking to the beat
of the familiar melody—a sound as passionate as my name on Jakes
lips. The breakdown was building; all thrumming bass lines and
drums playing in time with my heart.

Right one cue, Andrew stepped forward,
slapping the thick strings of the bass and Jake straddled the metal
mic stand and shifted his hips. His guitar hung over his sculpted
shoulders, out of the way for a breathless moment before his
rasping wails carried off into the bridge.

Sitting atop a blown out
half-stack amp in the corner of the garage where the greatest
band
ever
practiced, I crossed my feet and laughed at seeing my humping
prediction play out.

“You gotta make love to that mic.”
Jake would say and he did.

I covered my mouth when he looked my
direction. Jake never liked it like when I laughed during
rehearsals. He said he didn’t care what anyone else did when he was
playing, but when I laughed, it made him feel like a
joke.

“Any other time,” he’d told me, “laugh
yourself silly. I don’t care if I’m naked when you do it. But not
when I’m playing for you. Please.” He was so very serious about his
music, and for some unknown reason, about me, too.

Jake started singing again; pulling
his Fender up as he tapped the neck, playing the interlude of a
song they’d been working on, Falling Start.

Avert your eyes. Don’t ask
why. Just forget our name and I’ll forget it, too

Cutting the ties. You know
why. Forget you knew me. I’ll forget you, too

Instead of a perfectly timed pick-up
in the melody, Jakes fingers banged out an off-tempo fumbling. With
obvious frustration, Jake stopped playing, waved his hands to the
other two band members, and the music ground to a halt.

He cursed his apology
before turning to me with a familiar look. One eyebrow slightly
raised, hazel eyes a little wider than normal. A look that said,
‘
see, Angel, I told
you.
’

“I thought it sounded really good.” My
standard argument made him turn away.

But it was true. And anyone who had
never heard the song before would never know he messed up if he
hadn’t stopped. But rehearsal wasn’t about showmanship, it was
about perfecting the tune so when showtime came, they wouldn’t have
to worry about mistakes.

Jake signaled the band. Max
began the tally, tapping his drumsticks together in countdown.
Then, the chaos of notes began to swirl again. All at once, it was
Max with his big drums, Jake nimbly fingering the frets of his
guitar, and Andrew deepening the melody. Jake, who lived to play
and whose main complaint was that the band seriously needed another
guitar player to perfectly capture the sound he wanted, began
flawlessly singing and playing the way he always had. It was an
amazing thing to behold: one man playing both leads. Jake did
it
so
well.

I glanced at the clock
mounted on the back wall of the garage above the
Greatest Quotes
poster
and signaled to Jake. “I have to leave.” I screamed over the music,
“I’ll be late.”

Jake kept playing as he stepped away
from the microphone. “I’ll take you.”

I shook my head, moving towards him.
I’d get to stay longer if I let him drop me off, but I didn’t want
to interrupt rehearsal. “It’s not far.”

“Tonight?” He asked, with a loaded
smirk.

“Yes, please,” I nodded.

One, quick kiss was all he could
afford, but he still managed to send my stomach fluttering. He eyed
me up and down, mouthing the word, ‘sexy,’ as if accusing me. I
grinned, feeling his eyes on me as I waived to all of them and
hunched my way out of the half-open garage.

Outside, the heat was just as intense,
but there was a light breeze. I turned my face to the warm sky and
strolled a few feet with my eyes closed, knowing there was nothing
in my path and it was thirty strides to the corner.

I hated leaving in the middle of
rehearsals when my opportunities to watch felt so few and far
between. Especially because, Jake was always in a great mood
afterwards. Good was Jakes’ signature move—his way of life—he was
always good, in every way. But the most relaxed and happy time of
his day was after he played for a while. After shows, he was on
another level.

But it was Friday and that meant I had
to pay a visit to Doctor Williams. It also meant that it was Jakes’
night off from work and the Foster would be working, too. I loved
Fridays.

11

—
Angel

I kicked at the gravel on the
sidewalk, dreading my appointment. I didn’t want to meet with
Doctor Elena Williams. Her office smelled like bleach and floor
polish, and when I was inside it, I’d spend most of my time
pretending to be somewhere else.

She seemed nice and all, but I don’t
know that she ever helped me. Maybe it was her technique that
didn’t jive. She was always asking questions about how my problems
made me feel instead of telling me how to fix them. Kind of made me
feel like she was full of shit, to be honest.

She had a very snug space on the
second floor at the county clinic. It was an all-purpose type of
building with an emergency room and small hospital. There was a
cancer clinic held one weekend a month, but the wing I visited was
very small; used mainly for psychiatric care.

Walking inside the small lobby, I
headed straight for the elevator and waited.

It was going to be bad.

The sweat beading on my neck didn’t
stop even though I was out of the heat. A rivulet slid down my back
as I walked into her office and took my seat.

“Hello, Miss Patel.”

Her fingers clicked on a small, gray
remote and the sounds of the ocean filled the room. Doctor Williams
smiled cheerily while recorded seagulls called. She opened her
notepad while running through the customary pleasantries. The
‘hi-how-are-you’s.

Freaking
therapist
. No one addressed me by my last
name, except her and my gym teacher.

My last name is supposed to be Asian,
but I’m not sure what kind—Middle Eastern or Oriental. I don’t look
like either one. My eyes are all round and brown. Not thin and
black. And my hair . . . well, it’s nearly the same color as my
eyes and thin. Not thick and black. But I love the dry heat and can
get a wicked tan when I want.

When I was little, I would obsess over
not knowing. I used to wish I’d been born in Ancient China. So much
so, that inside my head, I built a hazy world set on a mystical
mountain top, up so high the only scenery was shrouded in purple,
magic clouds. There wasn’t a soul in sight to witness my birth. Not
even my mother. (My shrink said it had something to do with
abandonment issues, but whatever.) I was a daughter of the sky,
sheltered by ancient trees and fed by lotus blossoms. Long, lush
vines dressed me in flower petals and velvety green
leaves.

I could imagine that place
so vividly, that I sometimes wondered if it was real, if I was
reincarnated and remembering things I wasn’t supposed to, from past
lives.
That
made
me wonder if reincarnation was an actual
thing
, because sometimes I felt
ancient. Well, stretched beyond my years, anyways.

My birth certificate was a
contradictory piece of evidence to those ideas. It said that I was
born in a hospital in Flagstaff during the month of September to a
mother who was only twenty when she had me. The bracket labeled
‘Father’ was left blank. So, the part-mystery-Asian-thing was a
much more likely possibility than being birthed by nature on a
misty mountain top.

+++

“Angel, you’re drifting, again,”
Doctor Williams said.

“No, I am attempting to ignore you.” I
sighed and tried to let go of the associated stress.

The ocean sounds dissipated as she
turned the boom box volume down to background noise and gave a
good-natured chuckle.

“You said you’d tell me about her. You
have to try.”

“Hm, let’s see . . .” I tried not to
sound sarcastic. “She’s dead,” I announced with an eye roll,
because that was what we’d always come back to. Every problem I
ever had was born of my dead mother.

For three months, we had
been building up to it, to me telling her what I remembered about
my mother. She used the months to prime me with a trigger
phrase,
“that day,”
which she said in very a particular way, in a slow, relaxed
voice. But I fought her every time. I didn’t want to remember. Half
the time, the anxiety that memory triggered made my head hurt—just
knowing she was going to use it soon did, too. The other half of
the time, I’d imagine my ears melting off my head, sliding into a
puddle on the floor. Then, I’d wrap my arms tight across my chest
and stuff my fingers into the creases at my elbows and pinch. Not
hard enough to leave a mark. If I let myself do what I really
wanted—curl up and drift away—she would have had a field
day.

“That’s precisely why we should talk,
Miss Patel.” Her voice was all soft and soothing.

“We,
” I shook my head. It happened every week. She’d tell me to
talk about my mom and I’d tell her to suck it. Well, in my mind.
Outwardly, I whined. “Do I have to?”

“We made a deal: one detail a week.
That’s all. One memory.” She rested her folded knuckles over her
lap. “We are learning to communicate our feelings, to change those
harmful patterns of behavior. There can be no progress if there is
no change.”

I rolled my eyes. She
thought she was
so
deep.

I picked my brain for something
meaningless, something she wouldn’t be able to read into. “Her name
was Margaret Barry.”

But even that small fact made me
wince, because if you think about it, it really was a telling
detail. My mother never shared the identity of my father with me,
just like she never shared her own last name. She so obviously
didn’t want me and that bald-faced rejection of a simple
commonality made me want to contract into a tiny ball. Like that
old movie, Incredible Shrinking Woman, I wanted to become too small
to see. Too small to feel.

Doctor Williams’ spectacles
slid down the slender bridge of her nose the way they always did
when she was serious. The sounds of crashing waves lingered while
she responded, “You gave me that one last week.” Her tight curls
seemed to stiffen as she sorted through her session notes. “Tell me
the first thing that comes to mind when you think of
that day
.”

“Empty,” I blurted and wanted to kick
myself. All the honesty with Jake made me too aware, too
open.

What that doctor didn’t get
was talking about my shit only made it worse. Like a flare gun to
the chest, it seared me to think of those days: times when I
assumed, as most kids do, that all people are good. I made a
conscious choice not to think of her, not to go to that dark place,
and still, her two words echoed—
“that
day”
—and a memory flashed.

+++

The scene opened up like a blanket
unfolding a backdrop that put me on a roadside. I was there,
standing, empty, watching a far away part of my life play out in
third-person. I stood at the end of a gravel driveway, looking on
at a little blond girl, all pigtails and smiles. She was a sharp
contrast to the woman beside her. The woman—the girls’ mother—was
all dark hair, dead eyes, and a long frown. The day was young and
cool, though the sun was bright. The woman lifted the girl by the
waist, taking her upon her hip. Their mouths were moving, but I
heard no sound. The girls’ tiny white dress seemed to sparkle in
the stark sunlight as she was set in the front seat of a big brown
car.