Waiting for You (18 page)

He let out a huff and
reached for his cigarettes on the dash.

Crack head finally got
back in the car when Dylan, by swerving, tried to make her fall from the car as
she hung out the window. When that didn’t work, he sped up, close to ninety,
hoping maybe she’d suffocate or something.

Eventually she fell
asleep, or passed out as Dylan said, against his guitar so we stopped at a gas
station and propped her ass against a payphone and left.

Never looked back.

We weren’t far from
Wichita when the sun began to set behind to the left of us. I watched taking a
few snapshots here and there, mostly of Dylan and the way the lighting in the
background mixed with this hair and eyes. His eyes always seemed more like
glaciers when the smudged colors of the sky melded with him.

Watching him now, his
stare on the road, I felt something more than I had in the past few days.
Something stirring deep inside my gut, only it was different from all the other
times I watched a sunrise or sunset. This time I was content, relaxed,
comfortable, not knowing anything. It didn’t matter that I was running because
now, regardless of the unknown, I felt at ease.

Have you ever been in love? It’s a
question you’re asked a lot as a kid from your friends, adults, anyone. They’re
curious. How do you know you’re in love? Is there a distinct feeling you get
and you automatically associate that with love? Do we even really know what
love means? It’s just a word to define a feeling.

To me, love was like
the colors of the sun bleeding and spilling over to the best parts of you and
him together and highlighting what needed to be. Love doesn’t necessarily mean
anything. It’s a word, a phrase given to someone that bleeds the same colors
you bleed, feels those same lines.

I wasn’t sure if I loved
Dylan the way I was supposed to. I knew I didn’t want this to end. I know that
anytime I thought of him, something tugged at those lines and forced me to
consider that I might bleed to the same colors he bled.

My thoughts of bleeding
colors and lines I couldn’t define ended when we made it to Wichita and Dylan
was on the phone with Eddy trying to find a bar called The Brickyard.

We found it hidden away
on a side street and as we approached, Dylan reached for my hand. It was a nice
gesture, colors bleeding, relaxing,
falling, that
was
me.

Smiling, I took his
hand and walked in step with him around the side of the car noticing he reached
inside for his guitar. “Are you going to play tonight?”

His eyebrows pinched
together, smiling, coy, shy maybe. “Not sure, maybe.”

The bar was cleaner
than the one we were in the other night, a long brick hallway led us outside to
a bar open to an alley with an outdoor covered stage. In front of it were
tables with cream plastic chairs filled with swaying bodies as they listened to
a live band. I recognized Eddy right away. The only other time I had met him
was when I was nine. Eddy wasn’t the type of guy you forgot though. He had a
lasting impression.

Dressed in a flannel,
similar to Dylan, he wore faded jeans that in true rocker style hung low with
ripped edges and worn boots to match. His hair was a little longer than I
remembered and his tattered appearance revealed his years of living life in the
fast lane.

His voice, a deep rasp
was perfectly belting out the lyrics to a song I recognized as a Nine Inch
Nails cover.

Dylan smiled when he
saw Eddy, a memory flashing in his eyes as he laughed lightly leading me around
the side of the stage to sit in a quieter part of the alley, watching his
uncle.

With his guitar beside
him, we sat in silence listening to the music, Dylan’s head bobbed to the slow
beat, feeling it.

When the song ended,
Eddy came over to the side and Dylan approached the stage keeping his hand
around mine. Dylan whispered in Eddy’s car when they hugged, words I couldn’t
hear over the hum in the alley.

Eddy smiled my
direction, the same smile Dylan had. They looked a lot alike, same eyes and
smile that was.

Dylan gave Eddy a nod
reaching for his guitar and then leaned into me. “Stay with Eddy.” His lips brushed
my cheek slightly, a fire rose and I shivered at the contact and the excitement
that I might be able to hear him sing again.

Eddy moved closer to me
and sat at the same table Dylan and I had just been sitting at, I did the same.
Pulling out a cigarette, Eddy lit it and then tossed his lighter on the table.
“How are you doing sweetheart?” His voice sounded different now, the thick
baritone he had to his singing voice was marred by years of smoking.

“I’m good. Ran away
from home,” I said, as if this was no big deal, relaxing into the plastic chair
watching Dylan talk with the other guys in the band. “I’m on the run now. I’m
kind of an outlaw right now.”

“It’s the only way to
be, sweetheart,” Eddy said with a laugh, he too watching Dylan. Leaning back in
the chair, his legs kicked out in front of him slouching to one side. “You
ready for this?”

I gestured to Dylan
with a tip of my head when Eddy pushed a beer my way. I sighed taking it. I
didn’t really like beer but I was acquiring a taste for it since it was all
Dylan drank. “You mean hearing him play the guitar?”

“No.” Eddy took a long
drag from his cigarette letting the smoke drift slowly out his nose. “I mean
sing.”

My eyes went wide
shifting from Eddy to Dylan on the stage, beer in hand. “I’ve never heard him
sing before, can he?”

“No one has heard him sing aside from his mom and me,” Eddy said
shifting his weight to lean into the table tapping his cigarette against the
edge.

I couldn’t believe that I didn’t realize that he sang. Of course he
would, given he played the guitar. I guess I always thought he just played
rather than sang.

The thought of hearing Dylan sing had my tummy knotting wondering what
his voice sounded like. If it was anything like it was when he was turned on, I
could picture myself crawling on that stage and clinging to his leg again.

Eddy smiled and pointed to the stage, amused. “You might want to
listen.”

My head whipped around when the amp chirped and Dylan tapped the
microphone once. A taller man with darker hair and ripped jeans strummed his
guitar once catching the crowd’s attention, a slow beat thumped as if preparing
for the set.

“I’m Dylan Wade, Eddy’s
nephew…go easy on me,” he laughed giving a wink to the crowd when they cheered holding
their drinks up. “Uh…this song goes out to brown eyes.” Dylan spoke into the
microphone drawn close to his lips, his eyes trained on the guitar in his lap.
“I hear everything you’ve ever said to me. Just…hear me now.”

Shock was my only
answer, lip-parting shock.

Eddy laughed. “Watch
the drool there sweetheart.”

Dylan looked at me for
a brief moment knowing my reaction. His smile, crooked and powerful, made it
hard not to spill my heart on the ground before him.

While Dylan played the
first riff of that Framing Hanley song, his eyes stayed casted down. When he
looked up, my breath caught.

When his voice rose
above the crowd, both hands clutched the microphone, pouring out words that
came from deep in his soul, I gasped at the intensity having never seen this
side of Dylan before.

I swear to god…

Holy shit!
I
knew he could play the guitar but didn’t know he was hiding that voice in
there. When the part in the song called for his voice to go higher, my jaw
dropped.

My favorite part, if I
really had to choose, was when the music would stop and all I heard was his
voice echo through the bar.

There was something
about watching someone sing and witnessing them pour their emotions into words.
This, playing music, it was easy to see this was a passion for him. I always
knew that as I saw it when we were younger and he’d play the guitar.

Eddy noticed and handed
me another drink, this time it wasn’t a beer but some fruity drink that tasted
like strawberry. “You know why he sounds like that?”

“Like what?”

“That raspy drawl that
nobody has and tries so hard to get when they sing―the shit record labels
dream about signing,”

“Why?”

“That little fucker
cried for eight months straight when he was a baby,” Eddy snorted lighting
another cigarette. “I blame that.”

Nodding, I smiled
thinking about a baby Dylan. When I met Dylan, we were three-years-old and he’d
just moved from Alabama to Washington when his dad took a job there with an
accounting firm. I couldn’t tell you a lot about that time as we were both very
young but I remember some things. Most of which included an adorable icy eyed
boy that captured my heart by calling me brown eyes and kissing my skinned
knees.

So as I sat there with
Eddy and dreamed about Dylan as a child, that one drink became two and then
three, others were added for good measure and before I knew it, I was dancing
on tables and screaming like a groupie as Dylan not only played that one song,
but ten others with Eddy and his band. My favorite was Icky Thump. They played
that song perfectly and I was right there, front and center rocking out.

Every night with Dylan
I didn’t think I could have more fun than I was having and every night I did.

By the time they were
done playing, I couldn’t even stand up on my own. I had met a girl,
Lanny
, dancing next to me, she was a good support system,
for my body anyway.

Dylan approached me,
his shirt off and tucked into the back of his khaki shorts. “Look at you all
rosy cheeked and adorable.”

I grinned, spinning,
falling, smiling more than I ever had before. “That was…” I jerked my hand in
the air, with a drink still in it.
“AMAZING!”
I
shouted. Laughing broke out around me, thumping in my ears, blurred vision, I
could faintly make out Dylan, full on cheesy grin. “I had no idea you could
sing like that! Have you always had that in you? I mean Jesus Dylan, you’ve got
talent!”

“You’re drunk, brown
eyes,” he said reaching for me.
“Adorable, but very drunk.”

I can’t argue with
that.

That’s the last thing I
remember aside from waves of memories like puking in the parking lot, swearing
off strawberries and doing my own guitar solo on the hood of Dylan’s car as he
tried to help me down.

“You want me to get up
there with you?” he asked running his hands up my thighs and pulling me to the
edge of the hood.

I nodded but he didn’t
comply.

“You’re drunk.” His arm
gave way and he settled his weight on me, all of it, every hard line. I felt
the cool metal against my back and my bare legs, and ass. I wondered where my shorts
had disappeared to but that was the last of my worries. Dylan was on top of me,
on his hood, just like my fantasy.

Then he pulled away
again. Sitting up on his knees, he gave me a smile. “Let me inform you of
something,” he said in a low strained voice. “I can’t when you’re drunk. I
won’t. You need to remember it.”

Feeling the spins, I
flopped one leg over the side of the car staring up at the starry night. Dylan
laid
beside me, his hands rested on his chest staring at the
same sky.

The parking lot was
empty now, or maybe I just didn’t notice anyone else but what I saw, or thought
I saw, was a clear night and lights sparkling above me, hopeful wishing stars
that told me I could have anything I ever wanted.

“Tell me a secret
Dylan, something you’ve never told anyone else,” I said keeping my eyes on the
stars.

He didn’t say anything,
his breathing light, body relaxed.

Sighing, his breath
tickled my skin when he whispered in my ear, “I love you.”

9.
     
You don’t know anything – Bailey Gray

“
Tell me a secret
Dylan, something you’ve never told anyone else.” I said keeping my eyes on the
stars.

He didn’t say
anything, he breathing light, body relaxed. Sighing, his breath tickled my skin
when he whispered in my ear, “I love you.”

Was I dreaming last
night or did that happen? My head told me I wasn’t dreaming about last night.
My stomach wished I was dreaming and my body confirmed I most definitely was
not dreaming.

Dylan groaned and
pulled out his standard move of pulling the blanket over his head, his arms
thrown over his head.

“My mouth tastes like
bad decisions,” I said peering over at Dylan.

Removing the blanket
from his face, his eyebrow arched, the corner of his mouth twisted slightly
into a half smile. “You look like you made a few bad decisions last night.”

“Nice,” I groaned
knowing I had.

I couldn’t however get
those words
I love you
out of my head.

I looked at Dylan
again; he’d returned the blanket over his head so I ripped it off. “Do you
remember anything last night?”

Jerking the blanket
from my hands, he glared, bloodshot eyes drooping shut as he pulled the blanket
back over his head. “I remember you throwing up on me and all over my car.”

Okay, so maybe that was
good. Part of me, the part that was sobering up, regretted drinking all those
drinks last night and the other part was depressed that he didn’t remember.

My headache told me to
stop thinking all together.

So I did and fell back
asleep.

It was around three in the afternoon when
Dylan’s cell phone started ringing. The sounds woke us both up. Dylan rolled,
landed on the floor, and then answered it, his voice strained from singing last
night.