Unchained Melody (6 page)

But Ryan stood from his stool and slipped his guitar strap over his head, resting it on its stand, and then reached for Callie’s own. ‘It’s already perfect.’ He said, his eyes darting towards the windows. ‘I don’t want to over rehearse it.’

Callie’s eyes widened. ‘Are you serious? No way! Ryan didn’t you notice that I was so nervous then that I didn’t actually play a chord?’

He chuckled. ‘And yet, how did it sound?’ He propped up her guitar and then looked at her with a challenge in his eye.

‘Pretty good…’ she admitted.

‘Exactly. You were nervous as hell, and if that’s how you sound when you’re that nervous, then that’s how I need you to be next Friday night. Music isn’t something you should be comfortable with Callie; it’s something you should feel for the first time, every time.’

Callie inhaled sharply, caught off-balance by Ryan’s poetic musings. ‘That’s deep. You know, for a guy who likes Marilyn Manson.’

He laughed. ‘It sort of was, wasn’t it? Don’t even know where that came from…’

‘Well, I like it.’

‘You’ll like the No Doubt concert video more.’ Ryan took her hand and steered her under the arch which led into his wood-paneled living room. ‘We have some time to kill, so we might as well watch it.’

‘Cool.’ There was a large daybed in the centre of the room covered with brown suede cushions and Callie eased down onto it, glad she had worn her dad’s oversized Mighty Ducks jersey over her two-piece dance leotard so she wouldn’t have to worry about getting a wedgie in front of Ry. She bent her legs back, used the toes of her feet to inch off each of her supple black leather jazz shoes and then jerked the stirrups of her beige dance tights up her calves so her ankles could breathe. Comfortable at last, she cuddled a cushion to her chest and debated whether or not to yank the pins out of the bun under her hat, then decided against the effort.

Ryan pressed the tape into the player and then hit a button on the remote pad built into the wall. The room began to darken as the automated shutters lining the picture windows began to buzz shut, one panel at at time as the T. V, which was almost the size of the entire wall, came to life with static snow. Callie closed her eyes against the offending glare and felt her body begin to melt into the cushion. Her dance exams were endless, and she hadn’t realized how tired she was.

‘I can’t wait for DVD’s to come out over here.’ Ryan confessed, hitting the fast-forward button his remote as he flopped onto the daybed beside her.

‘Ugh. They look so breakable.’ Callie opened her eyes, and saw the copyright warning words on the screening flashing by at four times their normal speed. ‘Why do they brag about the better sound quality? Have you ever heard a song sound better than when it’s played on a turntable?’

Ryan paused. ‘No.’ He admitted. ‘Sometimes older is better… but not when it comes to picture quality.’

‘Well, I disagree; I love black and white photos. Some day, they’ll be cool again- and turntables will replace C. D players once more.’

Ryan looked at her, his face so close to hers that their noses were practically touching. ‘You’re adorable, you know that? Even if you are mentally unstable.’

Callie looked up at the screen, needing to not be looking into his beautiful eyes. Ryan was getting prettier with every passing day and it was getting harder not to be affected by it. But she didn’t want him to know that she’d noticed like every other girl in school, for fear that he’d write her off like every other girl in school. He didn’t let girls get close- so Callie had to be a guy. And guys did not breathe their male friends in like she was trying not to do.

And then Ryan hit play, and Callie forgot all about him and Hunter. She closed her eyes and let the opening chords of Spiderwebs take her somewhere that was of no, and every consequence.

*

‘Mmm, so many places to touch- where to start…?’ Hunter whispered on Friday night from his position against the tree in Wheel Of Fire park under a blanket of humidity caused by imminent rain.

‘Here!’ Meredith stilled his hand through her shirt and then guided it up, forcing him to caress the cup of her bra. Hunter pressed his tongue to the roof of his mouth as his body hardened in reflex to her softness.

Yes! His internal cry was a victorious one. He’d been dating Meredith for over a month and every weekend night he’d found himself in this exact predicament; making out with her in the park while their friends got up to similar things with each other on the playground equipment further away. As exciting as the nocturnal make-out sessions had been, and although he really did enjoy the kissing; enough was enough. His body wanted more and now. In fact he’d gone from wanting it, to needing it. How many lunch hours did he have to pass listening to her theories on why all the teachers sucked, why Home And Away was better than Neighbors and why why Godzilla was a ‘totally underrated’ movie before he got to feel a bit of skin on skin action? If he didn’t let him past her bra tonight he was pretty sure that his leaden balls were gonna fall off.

‘No way!’ Alannah said loudly, her voice carrying across the otherwise silent night. ‘Ryan Weaver does not have parties! His folks would lose their minds!’

‘It’s not a party. Just like a B. B. Q thing.’ Jed, Alannah’s boyfriend rushed to say. ‘I say we check it out. Could be fun!’

‘Who’s going?’

Hunter’s eyes flew open and on auto-pilot, he broke off the kiss he’d been so invested in and began to pull Meredith away from the tree. Ryan was doing what?

‘Hey?’ Meredith yelped, adjusting her shirt. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Ssh,’ he said shortly, craning to hear.

‘Oh you know… Ryan and Callie, Reece and Marnie. I heard that Laine and Cash were going as well, but not until later because they’re having dinner-’

‘Who’s having a party?’ Hunter interrupted Jed, sure he had heard wrong. ‘Ryan? As in, my Ryan?’

Jed looked at him and snorted. ‘You mean, your life-partner Ryan, right?’

Alannah giggled. ‘Yep that totally sounded gay.’

Hunter scowled at Jed to cover his embarrassment. ‘Whatever. What’s happening at Ry’s?’

Jed pulled Alannah up against his side. ‘Reece is over there tonight. Apparently Callie and Ryan are going to jam for them and then have a pool-party.’

Hunter wouldn’t have been more confused if Jed had said: ‘Callie and Ryan are in a Burlesque act tonight but we need to be wearing ruby slippers to get in.’ A strange feeling munched away at his stomach lining as he realized how much he hated the names: ‘Callie and Ryan’ being spoken without ‘and Hunter’ tacked onto the end like how it was supposed to be. They were a trio; an exclusive trio, who avoided the populace. Callie and Ryan did not host B. B. Q’s without him, and he certainly wasn’t the kind of friend who ditched them to make out at the park with his girlfriend! He felt a pang of guilt in his chest, and then a needle of jealousy. Even if he had been a bit ignorant, where did they get off throwing a party and not inviting him?

Hunter turned to Meredith. ‘Look I’m sorry. I know you guys like to hang out here but if Callie and Ryan are having a jam session, they’re going to want me there.’ He let go of her hand and retrieved his keys from inside his pocket. ‘I’ve missed a million practices lately, so if I don’t show up, they’re going to be pissed.’

Meredith glared at him, crossing her arms. ‘So you were invited?’

Hunter paused, feeling his cheeks go hot. Damn it! Meredith could be so cool most of the time but sometimes she’d get in these nasty little digs- always in front of people too, like she was trying to humiliate him. He kept his expression serene as he twirled his keys on his index finger. ‘I don’t need an invite. Hanging together is implied with us Mer. That’s just how we are.’

‘Then can I come along?’

Hunter wanted to say yes but things were already weird enough between Callie, Ryan and himself. If he showed up for the first time at Ryan’s place in a week dragging her along he’d be mocked if not told to beat it. ‘Another time, okay?’ Before she could pout, he winked and added: ‘I don’t want you to see our act until we’ve got our shit together- that way, you’ll be all impressed and stuff.’

Meredith rolled her eyes, but the ferocity had left them. ‘Fine.’ She motioned to his car. ‘Hurry up. Maybe we can meet up after?’

Hunter was afraid to exhale lest he made his exasperation obvious. He just ducked his head and said. ‘Yeah okay I’ll track you down…’ and then took off for the parking lot before she could force him to change his mind.

As much as he had enjoyed feeling her up, there was one thing that felt better under his fingers than anything else in the world: his guitar strings.

5.

When Callie’s eyes opened, she was shocked to find herself in almost complete darkness and not in her own bed, which was the only place she was used to waking up in. She blinked up at the ceiling which was glowing several shades of grey, and listened to light rain fall outside, her lips tugging down reflexively. She hated rain! She hated anything that wasn’t bright and still. The Queensland weather was so ideal one moment, and then threatening to rip the state apart the next; blow it over, submerge it, uproot trees and wipe out power lines… whatever mood took its fancy. Eight years she’d been in Australia, and she was no more used to it than she had been when they’d first arrived.

But the rain was light at least, and she hoped it would abate at the earlier humidity of the day. She was only just beginning to breathe in a deep calming; This-is-October-not-cyclone-season-yet breath, when she became aware of something long and warm stretched out beside her. She turned her head, and found herself staring into Ryan’s eyes.

‘Oh!’ She smiled as it all came back to her; she’d rolled onto her back on Ryan’s lounge, watching the No Doubt video upside down and evidently she’d drifted off. ‘Sorry! How long have I been out for?’

‘Over an hour.’ Ryan’s voice was soft, as though he was trying not to disturb the darkness. He wasn’t prone like her, but propped up on one elbow and stretched out on his side, staring down at her. ‘You looked so peaceful that I let it be. We’ll watch the video another time.’

Callie was chagrined. ‘Oh no way, you watched me sleeping?’ She covered her face with her hands, well aware of how odd she looked when she slept. Her mother and father had always joked that she lay like the dead -not tossing and turning, not muttering to herself like others did, but completely still and silent. Callie knew enough herself, because she always woke up in the position she’d gone to sleep in; which was almost always on her back. Her strange nocturnal habits were one of the many reasons why she didn’t have a bunch of girlfriends, because even in the second grade, she’d known that it was weird to sleep like a corpse, and that she didn’t want anyone seeing it or laughing at her at slumber parties and telling everyone. So she just hadn’t gone and plead homesickness instead which had lost its adorability at about age twelve.

But Ryan pried her hands away from her face and lifted them up above her head, pinning them to the couch so she couldn’t hide again. ‘Don’t be embarrassed Callie. I’ve always wanted to see what a dreamless sleep looked like.’ He smiled fondly. ‘It was as graceful as your dancing. You looked like Snow White, waiting for a kiss from her hero...’

Callie’s bobby pins were digging into her scalp under her hat and she needed them out before she got a migraine. She shifted to sit up and fix it, but Ryan’s grip tightened, keeping her in place. ‘Not yet,’ he said, ‘I’m still debating whether I should or not...’

Callie was confused. ‘Should what?’

Ryan wet his lower lip as his gaze drifted down to her own mouth and just like that, Callie was paralysed by equal measures of dread and amazement. Was Ryan actually thinking about kissing her? Her mind was slowly switching gears from ‘sleepy’ to ‘holy crap!’ but nothing he could have said would have been able to overwhelm his pointed silence. If Ryan had declared: ‘I want to kiss you,’ it probably would have made her laugh. But staring at her mouth well, that was something else. Something powerful.

Anticipation shivered through Callie. She knew she should flinch or turn her head to the side; because they were friends and that was all she wanted to be! She’d thought that was all he wanted to be too! But just as Callie parted her lips to say: ‘Don’t’ Ryan’s gaze flickered to hers and suddenly, Callie couldn’t have moved her lips or turned her neck if she’d tried. Those now aquamarine eyes of his were glowing, and his thick eyelashes cast shadows over his cheeks, making him look darker and more mysterious. In that moment, they weren’t Ry and Cal, but two young adults alone in a dark room together while rain pounded on the roof. It was so strange and exciting and somehow incredibly upsetting and her nervous system was going into overdrive. Logically, she knew that girl and guy friends probably always kissed at some point, and that it was just the whole hormonal thing confusing them both, but Callie and her mates liked to take stands against doing what everyone else did and now… now… she didn’t know who she was let alone what she wanted.

And then Ryan was shifting his weight and leaning down over her and the tension became a warm, paralyzing fog. The moment to say: ‘Oh whoops did I get too close there?’ And laugh the whole thing off had slipped away. Ryan was going to kiss her, and Callie knew that she was going to kiss him back. In fact, she went from feeling stricken, to impatient. She wanted to sweep up and close the distance, and her fingers were twitching, ready to rake his hair back of his face, only realizing in that moment that she’d always want to touch his hair like that, to see if it felt as glossy and smooth as it looked. Her stomach was in knots and she couldn’t draw a breath but she wanted to, wanted his scent inside her lungs.

Callie had always suspected that she was attracted to Hunter because of some half-concealed spark within him that was impossible to ignore, but she’d written her appreciation of Ryan’s looks and talents off as redundant. Who wouldn’t look at Ryan Weaver and go: ‘Touch me touch me now!?’ Being so aware of it had lulled her into a false sense of security, like she was somehow crush-proof.

But now, realizing that there was a chance that he’d thought of her as attractive too was exhilarating, robbing her of her anti-Ryan shield and holding her heart up between them instead.

‘Cal…’ Ryan sighed her nickname so sweetly that it hit her harder than any note he’d ever sung. His calloused fingertips stroked and then over her shoulder, making her skin sing. Her body melted into a puddle of need and for the hundred reasons why she knew they shouldn’t do this, only one reason carried any weight at that moment; Callie was about to experience a real, and perfect dream. She closed her eyes and lifted her face, feeling the warmth of his breath like mist against her lips.

And then the world seemed to crack open like a meteor had struck and Callie jerked up from the couch and screamed. The suddenness of the strike meant that Ryan only just managed to get his head out of the way before she could crack it with her own as she bolted upright, drew in her knees, blocked her ears and attempted to stand- to flee. By the time she felt his hands on her again her body reflexively tried to shake him off, like he was an obstruction.

‘No!’ She wailed when she was yanked back down to her knees. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut and tried to twist out of his hands, the claustrophobic grip he had on her as terrifying to her as the initial tear in the atmosphere had been. ‘Let me go! Make it stop!’

The thunderous boom following the lightning strike rumbled through the mountain, the house and Callie, and her eyes flew open, searching for an escape of some sort, but Ryan held her against him, regarding her with anxious eyes. ‘You’re safe Callie,’ he said in a low, calm voice even though a sheen of sweat now glistened near the part of his hair. ‘We are inside. Our house has surge protection and you are not alone, okay? Ry’s here.’

‘B-but…’ Callie raised one of her fists to her mouth and sank her teeth into the tender skin at her knuckles. ‘That was close Ry! So close!’

‘It’s lights and sound, Cal, just lights and sound. Look-’ he reached behind him, picked up the remote and pressed play. The television came to life, right in the middle of Sunday Morning Callie’s absolute favorite No Doubt song. The uptempo drum beats and strong bass line always made her hyper. ‘Music. It’s the same thing right? Lights and sound.’

The boppy beat filled the room and Gwen’s voice crooning that it was all ‘your’ fault had an instantaneous soothing effect on Callie. She sagged in Ryan’s arms, leaning her cheek against his chest, so grateful in that moment for him and his tolerance of her weird panic attacks that she could have cried for that alone.

‘Oh man,’ she stiffened as light flashed around the edges of the blinds again, pale blue and piercing through her despite the fact that it was miles away. ‘Shit I knew it was going to keep raining but I didn’t think-’

‘I knew there was going to be a storm.’ Ryan cradled her into his lap and kissed the top of her hat, the pressure making the pins in her bun stab her again. ‘That’s why I got you in to watch a movie. We could have practiced more, but I didn’t like the idea of you throwing my Jackson through the balcony doors in your haste to head for the hills.’ He pulled back, making her look up at him with one crooked finger. ‘What’s with that anyway? The people in your life go to the upmost care to make sure you’re inside safely when the weather goes to hell and yet you’re always trying to run to the storms.’

Callie shrugged, the smallest shrug she could manage, for her arms were wrapped tightly around her knees and she liked it that way. ‘I just need to get away from wherever I am when I hear it,’ she whispered. ‘There’s no time for logic; it’s like there’s a puppet-master doing the thinking for my limbs, and I have no control.’

Ryan smiled gently. ‘You’re a little bit useless sometimes, know that?’

‘I know.’ Callie stared up at him, feeling small and suddenly, she was too warm in his arms. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so close to either him or Hunter for so long. Growing up as a trio, they’d wrestled and stuff, but they were only just getting to the age when they could sit comfortably close to one another without the fear of cootie contamination. But now that she’d slept beside him and woken up to… well, whatever had transpired- Callie was suddenly overly aware of Ryan’s scent, and the feel of his arms closed around her. It was unsettling but it was also so comfortable, she didn’t know how she’d ever manage to sit near him again without crawling onto his lap.

Another low, threatening boom reverberated through the hills behind them and Callie screwed up her face and burrowed into Ryan’s school shirt, the almost kiss forgotten as fresh panic began to mount inside her. Three, two… there was the crack again and Callie’s fingers twisted around the School Emblem embroidered on Ryan’s shirt-pocket and his arms became a vice around her. Under any other circumstances, she’d probably have been bruised from such an embrace but in that moment, it felt exactly right.

‘Callie?’ Ryan asked, when the bluish light had faded from her eyelids. ‘I-’

The door flew open on its hinges, making a distinctive sound as it whacked against Ryan’s foyer wall, one room away. ‘Callie?!’ Hunter’s voice was unmistakable, as was the sound of his wet footsteps as he slopped down Ryan’s tiled foyer. ‘Ryan? Callie? Are you guys-’

‘We’re in here!’ Ryan called out, his voice traveling through Callie.

Hunter! Callie’s heart began to pick up its pace. Hunter’s here! And until that moment, she hadn’t realized how much she’d missed him, or just how out of balance their lives had become in his absence. But before she could scramble to her feet, several things happened; Hunter, wearing a black rain hoodie skidded into the theatre room, just as thunder resounded again. Callie squealed and blocked her ears again feeling like her heart had just been broken.

‘Shut the door!’ Ryan snapped but before he could move, a feminine voice cried: ‘Got it!’ And then, there was a thud and the sound of the rain was muted, if not the thunder.

‘Oh!’ Hunter visibly relaxed, and then quickened his steps across the room to them, smiling at her empathetically. ‘You’ve got her. I was freaking!’

But Callie didn’t care who was there anymore. She wanted out. She wanted to go. And yet Ryan’s arm kept her clamped around him and she closed her wet lashes against his shirt and gulped in his scent- telling herself that it was nothing, just weather and not believing a word.

Hunter stopped then, and looked from Callie, to Ryan, and then around the room. ‘What’s uh… what have you guys been doing? I thought you were having a jam session?’

But before either Callie or Ryan could explain, Marnie and Reece hurried into the hall after Hunter, also wearing rain-jackets, and both stopped and stared at Callie and Ryan as though they were seeing something they ought not see. Marnie immediately deflated, her eyes roaming the room instead, but Reece’s green eyes hardened. ‘We interrupting something?’

Callie wasn’t stupid but Reece’s accusatory tone broke her out of her stupor. She knew exactly what it must have looked like to them all; coming into Ryan’s house to find them wrapped around one another on a big, comfy couch with only the television serving as light. It didn’t help that Gwen Stefani was now crooning: Don’t Speak which had been make-out track number one for the amorous couples at Horizon High the year before. She wanted to say what had happened, and be as upfront as she always was, only there had been more going on, hadn’t there? They hadn’t been caught doing anything, but if that lightning hadn’t struck… well, who knew what might have come of Ryan’s threatened kiss?

‘Callie has Astraphobia.’ Ryan said, standing up with Callie cradled in his arms, then supporting her lower back with one hand as she found her own feet on the floor.

‘Fear of thunderstorms…’ Marnie recited, even though Callie had never raised the subject with her before. ‘Wow. Bad?’

‘If she’s not held down, she becomes a fleeing lightning rod.’ Hunter stepped forward, cupped Callie’s face in his damp hands and looked into her eyes. ‘You okay, kiddo?’

Callie nodded silently, though she was on the verge of bawling again. Not just because of the thunder. Not just because of the almost kiss. But because Hunter was back! Now that the boom of the thunder had lowered to a hum, she could feel her mind working again.