Page 5

Chapter 5

Nat

Like a burn, he lingers.

My fingers wander across the strings of my guitar like drunken, meandering butterflies, my legs cast atop the coffee table in my sun-soaked living room, but I don’t hear the music because I’m back in last night, with . . . him.

The boy from the bar. The one I shouldn’t have noticed, because I don’t often notice boys. But I noticed him. The way he leaned over the bar to engage Anita, the way she beamed back. The way his soft laugh pulled at something inside me—caused me to look over.

Then, I couldn’t help but note the long, lean flow of his athletic frame, his skin like the glowing sepia space right before night clutches the day in darkness. His smile, a curve of pale crescent moon.

When he turned to me, those eyes . . . Those eyes were earth and stars melded together into soft, molten pools of life.

And like a wayward comet, I was pulled into his orbit.

Now?

Now, he lingers like a burn.

“All right.” Charlie Holland swivels his head from his half-melted position on the armchair. I forbade Charlie from smoking in the house where my daughter lives, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t get good and baked before he gets here. “Talk.”

My fingers pause on the strings of the guitar, letting the music fade. “The hell does that mean?”

“Something’s up with you.”

I groan. “I hate how well you know me.”

“Well, I know it ain’t about Juliet, ’cause I don’t think you liked her even when you were fucking—”

“Well, I wasn’t thinking about her, but now I am, so thank you—”

“Dude.” Charlie rolls his head back to stare at the ceiling, mussing his long blond curls. “You barely ever thought about her.”

The next words tumble out without my permission. “I kissed a guy last night. And I liked it.”

“Whoa, whoa.” Charlie jerks upright and turns to face me, eyes so wide, white shows in a ring around the soft brown. “Okay, wait. Back up for me, Katy Perry. What?”

I scrape a hand over my face to avoid having to look at him. “It wasn’t anything, okay? I didn’t even get his name.” But I did get his number. “It was a kiss, it was kinda hot. That’s all.”

“You sure?” Charlie cocks his head, expression turning shrewd. “You think it’s ’cause this whole part-time Zamboni shit is stressing you?”

I exhale in a long, heavy sigh. “Yeah, maybe.”

“Honestly . . .” Charlie straightens his head towards the ceiling. “Maybe it’s a sign, you know?”

First Jerry, then Brenda, now Charlie? I grit my teeth. “Et tu, Brute?”

“I’m serious, man. JB keeps bothering me to bother you.”

“I’ve worked at the rink for seventeen years.” My voice comes out harsher than I intended. Seventeen years—since I was a stupid, young parent, fresh out of high school. “I’m not leaving.”

“Dude. I might not have an MBA or anything, but I know there’s no way you launch a successful business going at it half-assed and part time.” Charlie side-eyes me, and I pretend like I don’t notice.

“Jesus. You sound like Brenda.”

Even though, goddammit, they’re both right. I ain’t paying for my kid’s college on a part-time Zamboni salary .

It’s why I started repoing cars for JB in the first place.

Charlie shrugs, his shirt scraping against the leather. “Maybe you could get more work from Coach?”

“Dingoes don’t have the budget for that.” I snort. “And that’s assuming Coach would even want to put up with more of me. Which I guarantee he doesn’t.”

Back when he was coaching Day River High, Ethan tolerated a lot of my shit. I repaid him with alcohol, drugs, a dumb-ass fight, and a flatlining career.

I don’t know why he even lets me into the locker room, let alone pays me to sharpen skates for the Dingoes. It’s practically charity.

“Oh, come on.” Charlie mutters. “He don’t keep you around ’cause you’re that good at sharpening skates.”

The words prick goosebumps along my skin, warping the ink on my arms into tiny hills and valleys.

“All I’m saying”—Charlie shrugs again—“is pick a lane, Nat. You’re going in five different directions and getting nowhere.”

I don’t have a response to that because it’s true. Because even after all these years, I’m still puttering around in neutral. Still walking the same path, stuck in the same rut.

That’s the problem with an all-encompassing dream—even if it never feels like more than a pipe dream. When you lose it, you lose your sense of direction.

My thoughts cut off when Syd nudges through the door of the townhouse. “Hey, Dad. Hey, Uncle Charlie.”

“Yo.” Charlie waves from his armchair. “Syd.”

“Don’t you have practice?” I lean forward to deposit my guitar on the magazine-littered coffee table. They’re all Syd’s—makeup and hair and clothes. I see them every day, and yet it still leaves an ache in my chest, that she has to learn this kind of girl shit from magazines in lieu of a mom .

“Practice? Nope.” Syd drops her backpack by the door and kicks off her shoes. “Got an excused absence to work on some stupid history project with Maggie.”

“Come play guitar with me first?” I ask, trying not to sound hopeful, bordering on desperate. Obviously Syd plays hockey—everyone in this town does—and obviously she plays it better than most. It’s in her blood.

Doesn’t make me not notice how her guitar in the corner of the living room has been gathering dust for months.

“Maybe.” Syd beelines for the kitchen to pull open the fridge. “I’m meeting Maggie in a little—did you eat my yogurt?”

“No.” I shove down the weird wave of hope tinged with forthcoming disappointment. “I just didn’t buy it.”

She huffs and closes the door. Stalks into the living room on socked feet. And then, to my complete and utter shock, she retrieves her guitar from the corner.

With a martyr’s suffering sigh, she plops down onto the worn leather beside me. “What are we playing?”

I almost don’t question it. Almost just let it be for what it is, let the music engulf us, just like it used to. Like when she was little, and I was so much more broken, but somehow, settling her onto my lap, arranging her tiny fingers over the strings, somehow, that made the world make more sense.

Quieted my restless demons.

That’s why music exists, why art exists, right? To give life meaning.

Shit. Why can I hear his melted-caramel voice like he’s whispering the words against my skin, into my soul. Maybe it’s because I felt them, because they burrowed in so deep I might never be rid of them.

“So, I know you’re only doing this because you want something.” I swipe my own guitar off the table, settle it onto my lap. Beside me, Charlie chuckles.

“I do not—”

“Play with me first, and then you can ask.” I lift a brow in her direction. “Deal?”

She sighs, tucks her own guitar in. “Fine. But we’re playing System of a Down. ‘Toxicity.’”

“No argument here.” I grin. Girl definitely got her taste in music from me, not her mother. “Ready?”

“So ready.”

I need to escape my own thoughts. My uncertain future—and Syd’s.

Syd grins, and for a collection of blissful, beautiful moments, it’s just us. Me and her and the music. The world, put to rights. As it should be. Syd’s hardly my little girl anymore, but with the music woven around us like a chain of unbreakable threads, it’s so much easier to imagine she’ll always be my girl.

My number one. My everything.

Except, my thoughts wander. To the boy at the bar who I think might haunt me like a ghost I never wanted but can’t seem to bring myself to banish.

I kissed that boy at the bar last night.

It’s not the first time I’ve kissed a boy; there have been a few over the years that have caught my eye, made me curious. But we never got further than kissing.

I never let one of them pin me against the worn brick outside a bar on a cold October evening. Never let a man press against me, muscle to muscle, hip to hip, chest to chest, while he plundered my mouth—

The music fades and Syd lowers her guitar.

As her eyes skate sideways, I know what’s coming, even before she says, “Soo . . . I invited Avery over.”

I hold in a groan. Of course. She wouldn’t be here making music with her old man without an ulterior motive. At least she let me enjoy it for an entire song, I suppose.

I shift my guitar lower. “And why isn’t Avery at practice today?”

Syd picks deliberately at a fingernail. “I’m not sure—”

“Syd.” I sigh, because I already know the answer. “He got suspended, didn’t he?”

“Look.” Her gaze snaps to mine, almost taking me aback with the ferocity burning in her eyes. “It wasn’t his fault. The other guy deserved it—”

“He got suspended for fighting.” My heart feels cold and achy and sad all at once. Shit, the kid really is me, isn’t he? Next, he’ll be slipping in the back doors of tattoo parlors to trade weed and coke for cheap ink and cheaper booze.

“You don’t understand,” Syd says, but before I can interject with a no, I really, really do understand , the doorbell rings.

So I get up to let in my new not-quite-a-problem.

I open the door, and Avery Bennett marches in, blond locks tumbling waywardly from beneath his Day River High Hockey baseball cap. His mouth’s twisted in half a grin, his pupils too dilated for him to be entirely sober.

The beginnings of a bruise darken the skin around his left eye.

Shit, it’s like looking at a blond version of my past. The thought makes my stomach roll.

“Hey, Bennett,” I say. “You’ve looked better.”

He yanks his ball cap a little lower. “The other guy started it.”

“I mean, they usually do.” My fingers tangle through my overgrown hair. How the hell can someone like me explain the wrong of Avery’s ways when my fists aren’t just scabbed but scarred with the history of my own violence. “But that doesn’t mean you gotta end it.”

His jaw clenches, and something inside me softens and hardens at once. That bruise isn’t from his fight—shit. I understand this kid in more ways than I want to admit.

Fortunately, Syd slides up behind me, stealing both our attention.

“Do not kiss him in front of me,” I growl, heading back to the living room. “Bennett, you said you wanted to meet Charlie Holland, right?”

“Shiiiiiiit!” Avery skates across the hardwood floor on socked feet, grinning from ear to ear. “Yo! This is so cool! ”

“Heard a lot of things about you, kid.” Charlie still hasn’t budged from his place in the armchair. “Most of them good. Well, some of them. Well, your reputation precedes you, let’s leave it at that, eh?”

“Shit. You’re like . . . my hero.” Avery plops down on the couch in the seat I’d previously occupied. Syd burrows in next to him, and I take the end seat.

“You need better heroes, kid.” Charlie shakes his head. “You do not wanna be like me. Or Nat.”

Too late , I don’t say, because it’s not. Just because he started like me, doesn’t mean he has to end like me. In fact, I’d really rather he didn’t, given he’s dating my daughter.

“If it means playing pro hockey . . .” Avery trails off. “This is so ill .”

Charlie grins, way too high for conversation. “You a Dingoes fan, kid?”

“Of course I am,” Avery scoffs. “You gotta support the home team.”

“Even if nobody else is,” Charlie mutters. “You play hockey, I assume.”

“Of course. Day River High starting center, baby.” Avery grins, but I see the way it wavers—starting center, but for how long? How many more skipped school days does he have left before his coach benches him?

He really is too much like me.

“Pretty ill.” Charlie leans forward to give him a fist bump. “Nat and I played for DRH too. He was starting center. I was his left wing.”

“Hell, you’re the reason I played at all,” I admit, half wincing, half smiling at the memory. “Remember how your mom used to sneak me into your mites games?”

Charlie tilts his head back to laugh. “Shit, yeah. Thank God Brenda finally got you into squirts.”

Thank God, indeed. My father was too busy with Jesse’s games to bother with an unwanted afterthought like me. I grew up on ponds and backyard rinks. Charity of parents and coaches. Until Brenda walked into Rey’s world and asked, why the first son and not the second ?

“You guys are like, besties.” Avery flexes his fingers, in and out of a fist. “So, are you a music nerd too?”

“Nah, tone deaf.” Charlie shakes his head against the leather armchair. “You?”

I groan aloud. Wrong question, Charlie. Wrong damn question.

“Oh, I play a mean guitar.” Avery’s gaze shuttles down to my guitar on the coffee table, and a huge grin blooms over his face. “Syd’s taught me a little.”

“You’re gonna wish you never asked that,” I say as Avery settles the instrument on his lap. “I have witnessed Sydney’s lessons—”

“Hey!” Syd crosses her arms across her chest. Glares. “I’m a great teacher.”

I watch Avery’s fingers bend awkwardly over the strings. “Yeah, I don’t think the problem, in this case, was the teacher . . .”

Avery starts plucking “Should I Stay or Should I Go.” It’s like the rough approximation of an overenthusiastic child banging the inside of a ten-gallon bucket with a drumstick.

“How am I supposed to hear my own thoughts?” Charlie whines, tilting his head back. “I’m not high enough for this.”

Sydney stays quiet, though her face assumes a puckered expression, like she’s trying to hold in a sneeze.

“I don’t think there’s a quantity of weed or booze that would make this bearable,” I admit. Though they might have sanded down my hard edges.

Charlie whines again. “I take it there’s a reason Syd’s lessons did not continue?”

I glance over at Syd, still holding her sour-lemon pucker. Again, she declines to respond.

At long last, Avery’s ill-performed song closes in a screech of fingers slammed to strings. Charlie groans. “Oh, thank fuck.”

“What’s next?” Avery flashes a crooked grin around the room. Even Syd’s expression is painfully pinched .

“Does there have to be a next?” Charlie groans, both of his hands clapped against his ears. “I wanted to enjoy being high for a while before practice. I should’ve just stayed home with Ben.”

I almost flinch. Not sure why. The last girl I . . . well, dated is a strong word. The last girl I hung around with . . . that relationship ended weeks ago, but it was doomed from the start.

We both knew, but played through the farce of it for the sex, or because being with the wrong person is better than being alone, until it’s not.

I don’t miss her any more than she misses me. So why does the mention of Charlie’s current boyfriend make me wince?

“Teach me some real music, Syd.” Avery nudges Sydney’s knee with his, so naturally, that’s where all my attention goes. “Something you’d play. You ain’t playing three-chord punk.”

“Yeah, but I know more than three fucking chords,” says Syd, unveiling her signature expert-level eye roll. Glad it’s not just me she uses it on. “We never got past that in like, twelve lessons.”

“Learn a few more chords, Bennett,” I say, completely deadpan. “And we’ll graduate you to some good shit.”

Avery grumbles and sinks lower into the cushions. “Bunch of haters.”

“Could just stop fighting and go to school.” I lean over the coffee table to slide a music book from under Syd’s pile of magazines. I don’t play by the book often—I have a keener ear than eyes—but maybe it’ll help Avery. “Then you’d be playing hockey instead of guitar.”

“Right.” Avery glances dubiously at the book, then lifts his gaze back to my face. “Like you went to school?”

Man, the kid truly is a shit. Still pooled in the armchair, Charlie giggles. Sydney, of course, turns a laser gaze on me. Not that she doesn’t already know all this.

Besides, most people can make a fairly accurate educated guess about my childhood just by looking at me. “I went to school.”

“Sometimes,” Charlie says, because of course he’s not on my side. It is the nature of best friends, is it not, to rattle each other’s walls of self-control—until a true opponent makes its presence known, and then I have not a doubt in the universe Charlie would be at my side, and I at his.

“Nah, you know what? You’re right. I didn’t go much.” I lift a brow at Avery. “I did a lot of stupid shit, barely graduated, then started repoing fucking cars instead of playing hockey. You wanna do that?”

How common are stories like that in this town? We all start off playing hockey. Dreaming big. Most of us fall flat long before they’re realized, for one reason or another.

Avery winces. “Okay . . . no?”

I curl my hands over the tops of my thighs so my knuckles are on clear display. Along with my inked fingers and inked hands. Blood and ink, ink and blood, and scars and scabs.

The hands are the truest portrayal of one’s life, are they not? How musicians bear carefully placed calluses, and artists splotches of ink, mechanics oil and grease, smokers yellowed nails.

You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to read a person’s story through the cuts and creases and colors of their hands. You don’t have to look hard at mine to figure out just how many broken pieces I’ve tried to shove together into a solid, working life.

We’re all four looking at my knuckles now, at all the broken things laid bare.

“Trust me, Avery,” I say, even more quiet and serious than usual. “You like playing hockey, don’t you?”

Syd’s shoulders tense in a way I read too easily—she blames herself for my ruined career. I mean, sure. Being a single dad with an infant, toddler, little kid, there’s no way I could have been on the road for days or weeks at a time. No way I’d have wanted to. What parent enjoys missing their kid’s childhood because they’re never home?

But the reality is, I ruined my career with my own two hands long before she came into this world.

“I’m going pro someday,” Avery says, his jaw hardening. “Syd too. ”

Syd snorts, some of the tension draining away. “Sure. A five-foot-two chick going pro.”

My chest clenches tight. Another Taylor with a hopeless dream—which is why I want to make sure she has alternatives, ways to get out of this town.

My daughter won’t be another Day River statistic—another dream ended too soon, another body relegated to long hours of factory work and nights at Michelangelo’s.

“Hey, you’re better than most of the dudes out there.” Avery gives her the realest smile I’ve seen in ages, and that softens me up like butter.

“And you’re better than all of them,” Syd says, voice firm. Determined. She’s not flattering him; she believes it, with everything she’s got.

And honestly, it’s true. I’ve seen the kid skate. And while Coach Ethan isn’t about to start recruiting from high school, he’s not watching DRH practices for fun either.

“Well, if you don’t stay in school, you don’t stay on the team.” I kick my feet up onto the coffee table, turn my hat around forward, and lean back into the sofa. “You don’t stay on the team, you sure as shit ain’t going pro. That I can tell you from experience.”

“Hey, hey.” Charlie peels himself off the back of the armchair. “This shit’s getting downright macabre—”

“That’s a big word,” I mutter. “For a jock.”

“Says the repo guy.”

“I’m a Zamboni driver,” I correct. “Though maybe not for long if you guys don’t get your shit into gear and win some games.”

“Wait.” Avery leans over the arm of the sofa towards Charlie. “What’s gonna happen to the team? ’cause didn’t your captain transfer?”

“Yep.” Charlie slides lower into his chair. “Don’t remind me.”

“So, who’s gonna be your new captain?” Avery sets the guitar back onto the coffee table. “Devereaux?”

“Dunno,” says Charlie, and I have to agree. Nobody wants to stay in this town—on that team—long enough to take on the role .

Syd nudges my ankle with a socked foot. There are tiny teddy bears on her socks. She doesn’t speak, but I know what she’s saying.

“That ship’s sailed, Syd.” I shake my head. “Long before you were born.”

“I’m sure Coach already has another transfer lined up,” sighs Charlie. “Another young kid who’ll be in and out in a season.”

I wince, because he’s right. “Maybe.”

“He will.” Charlie’s head swivels back and forth against the headrest. “Could’ve been you, once, but you were so convinced you weren’t good enough—”

“I wasn’t—”

“Yeah, and you’re a pansy now.”

“Yep. I am. One who could definitely kick your ass.”

“Think you could kick mine?” Avery pipes up, grinning. “When was the last time you got in a real fight?”

I snort. “Is that even a serious question?”

“Yes.”

“Guitar isn't the only thing I'm better at.”

“Oh, my God,” Syd groans. “It’s like having two little brothers.”

“I’m an asshole,” I say, my tone flat and even. “That’s why nobody can fucking stand me.”

“Why do you think he doesn’t have a girlfriend?” Charlie asks in a mock whisper. “You already got one up on him.”

“Really, Charlie?” I aim a teasing glare in his direction. “You’re both gonna get yourselves kicked out of Chez Taylor—”

“Good thing I have Chez Original Taylor,” says Avery. “Brenda loves me.”

“I think you overestimate Brenda’s love,” I mutter, which is definitely a lie. If there’s anything Brenda loves, it’s broken kids. And I sort of suspect that, just as I’d burn the world down for Syd, Brenda just might do the same for Avery.

I wonder if he has any idea he’s got someone like that in his corner .

“You guys have to stop,” Syd groans. “I will run away if you don’t stop. Dad, play us a song.”

The guitar slides back into my hands, and who have I ever been to refuse a song? My fingers drift over the strings like coins tugged by a magnet, like waves crashing over a hard rocky shore. Rhythm melody, push and pull, the song escaping through my digits, leaking out from the crevasses of my soul for the world to witness.

“Now see, this is music,” Charlie murmurs, dark lashes fluttering against pale skin as he lets each wave of sound consume him. As he gives in to my siren’s call of song and sacrifice. “How do you do that?”

How do I indeed. I’ve always been good at music, because I give it everything, all of myself, leave nothing behind and hold nothing back—unlike hockey.

Music is an unleashing; it’s the one time my soul tastes the world in its truest form, laid bare, unseasoned. It’s the world whittled down to these notes, to this one solitary moment. No half measures, no reserves. Everything.

Except this time, with my fingers dancing and the notes woven around my soul, my mind wanders more than it usually does. Wanders back to darkness and ghosted breath, to warm fingers on warm cheeks. To mouths opening in sync, like my fingers on these strings, to another sort of song I played with all my heart.

I don’t even know his name, that boy at the bar, my new ghost.

But he lingers, just like a burn.