“Just whatever comes out. Give me some low and high notes. Anytime.”
I closed my eyes, taking a deep inhale that filled me with thoughts of Rae and our last few days together. Sun, grass, kissing under the Weeping Willow, and her smile. A heavenly smile seen, now, only by God and in the moments I let it slip into my memory.
I let my bow fall across the strings on my exhale in any manner they chose. They chose Chopin’s Nocturne. I kept my eyes closed for a few seconds until my shoulders found their sway. Until my fingers stopped shaking. I hated my hands for making me play this. The melody alone sounded like I imagine fingernails sound when they dig into the dirt surrounding the grave of a loved one.
So painful, one would be wise to pray the notes into nothingness. So evocative of feeling altogether, you beseech their continuance.
Opening my eyes when I was certain the pain had no place else to go, I found CJ looking smug as Willow wiped tears from her eyes, adjusting slides on the soundboard. Journey and Mags held hands on the couch, Mags’s head on Journey’s shoulder.
I wasn’t sure if they were a couple, or if the song simply made them want to cling to each other as the vulnerability of life bled through the connection of my bow and strings.
As I pulled the bow away from its lover, and the notes drifted into the nothingness in which Rae resided, I let myself feel it. Not all at once, as I was in the company of relative strangers, apart from CJ, but I had to acknowledge it was there.
The hole.
I’d heard Bo describe it on more than one occasion as a “Rachel-sized hole,” and I’d brushed it off, half-joking that she was so tiny it’d be like a pinhole. I was wrong. Jagged walls of memories and touches and hope shot up around me, leaving me in a crevasse so steep on both sides I just had to sit. Sit and be in it.
I was still standing, of course, having learned to somewhat control my physical responses to emotion. That didn’t keep their eyes off of me.
“Regan...” Willow’s mouth pinched shut at the end of her sentence.
“Never leave us. Ever.” Journey wiped under her eyes as she accosted me with a patchouli-scented hug.
I smiled, squeezing back. Squeezing away encroaching feelings of emotional nudity. I needed to feel this. More. And often, if I was going to be able to let go of it.
What I knew for sure was I was in no place to go around kissing anyone else. Or almost kissing.
“I won’t leave the group, if that’s what I’m in, but I do have to leave now. Just for the night. I’ll be back in the morning. You coming, Ceej?” I slid off my headphones and set them back on their hook.
CJ met me in the recording room. “Where are we going? We just got here.”
“I’ve got to track down Georgia.”
“Whatever.” CJ pouted as he slid a hand across the small of Willow’s back. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Or in a little bit, if you’d like to stop by E’s in South Park,” he spoke into her ear.”
“I’ll be there,” she whispered just as I was about to roll my eyes.
I couldn’t babysit CJ or his potential submissives tonight. Tonight, I had to apologize to Georgia.
Georgia
The clocks were all stuck at different times, so it seemed. The start of my shift had been hours ago, but it seemed like I’d just gotten there and had been there for days all at once. I couldn’t even tell myself I wanted to go home and rest. There was no rest. Not while my mother was there.
Thankfully, it was football season, so Monday nights at the bar rivaled the crowd size of a summer Saturday night. Hungry and thirsty sports fans would prevent me from staring at the unmoving clocks.
“What was your car doing here this morning?” Lissa couldn’t look me in the eyes, even as she arched her eyebrow.
“What were you doing noticing?” I knew before I finished the inquisition. Lissa’s car was left in the parking lot of E’s at least two nights a week, depending on where she decided to sleep.
“No need to get defensive, I just thought you always brought them back to your place. You weren’t drunk last night, either, right?”
“Nosey, much?” I snapped as I slammed the tray of fruit garnish on the bar, sending several orange slices to the floor.
“Sorry.” She rolled her eyes and her tone rang of an elementary schoolyard.
I sighed, discarding the victimized orange slices into the trash. “No, I’m sorry. It was a long night. I went home with CJ. Not with CJ, but we just caught up. Then I had to show Regan the apart—”
Shit. Lissa hadn’t known I was showing the apartment to him. Or anyone.
“You. Slut.” She whipped my butt with a wet bar rag.
“Ow! What?”
“I saw the way you were lookin’ at him all weekend. Clever move, though, to have him pay you for ... that.” She wiggled her eyebrows and I realized exactly why she and CJ never made it out of the bar together. They’re too much alike.