Play With Me

Crash

It's pure, undiluted torture watching Kelly play my guitar. She rounds her shoulders over the instrument on her lap—a little big for her—and lets her hair fall past her face in a way that half-obscures it. Her graceful fingers shift on the frets and strings in the way that shows she's practiced enough it's becoming natural. She still has to look sometimes. Occasionally stumbles or forgets to press hard enough. But mostly she's just beautiful. I swallow a lump in my throat.

Someone else taught her to play.

They put her fingers in the right spots.

Leaned over her shoulder to point to a section of the fretboard.

Corrected her fingering.

Took her wrist in their hand to relax it when she strummed.

I shove my hair back with both hands, tapping my foot on the deck, and belting the song so she can harmonize with me, and fuck. I forgot how good it felt to make music with her.

She's a lot less shy about her voice than she used to be. That's good. I wonder who helped her feel strong? The thought makes me mad only because it wasn't me. Someone else got her to believe in herself when I couldn't. Got close enough to touch her.

Shaking off that thought before it reaches its inevitable conclusion, I let go of the note I'm holding and shake my head when she echoes the line in the space my voice left.

She's smiling, nodding in time. When I don't come back in on the next line where I'm supposed to, she scrunches her nose, and growls the line—in her pitch—and it's so perfect and fucking sexy my jeans get tighter.

I lean forward, elbows on my knees, pretend I'm watching Tommy tear up the guitar solo when I'm actually covering my crotch so she can't tell.

Kelly keeps strumming the chords, beaming at Tommy. Then she head-bangs the transition between verse and chorus and laughs.

I'm gone.

Done.

Everything that happened to take her away from me—me away from her—flashes through my head between one beat and the next.

The knife slides neatly behind my ribs like it only just happened.

The song—a shameless, exuberant anthem to summer love that I wrote last year right before we broke up—repeats, but I don't sing another note.

Pick up the notebook to make it look like I got inspired and have to write something down, when I couldn't sing even if wanted to.

This is the fifth song Kelly's made come alive and it's freaking me out. She's here. I need her. Crash Happy needs her. I need to make her see that, even though everything that happened wasn't her fault, she should forgive me.

Scratch that. She shouldn't forgive me. But damn, I want her to.

The song jerks to a frantic halt, and Kelly's laughter peals into the near-dark of twilight.

Tommy's chuckling too, but he coughs. "Need a drink," he says, clearing his throat. He puts his arms on the arms of his chair when Kel leaps out of hers and, placing my guitar gently against the table, just like I taught her years ago, trots across the deck.

"I'll get it. I need to pee anyway. What do you want?"

Tommy tells her he wants a beer while I wait impatiently for her to walk out of earshot.

"Crash?" she asks like it's natural.

"I'm fine."

Her smile falters, but she just opens the sliding door to head inside.

Through the glass, I watch her close the door and trot deeper into the house. I stew for several minutes, arguing with myself about what I want to say before I finally turn to Tom.

"You need to leave."

Tommy pauses in re-tuning his guitar. "What?"

"Leave. Now. Make an excuse. I need to talk to Kel alone."

Tommy scoffs and goes back to the pegs. "Not happening."

"What do you mean not—"

"It means," Tommy stops messing with his guitar and leans closer to talk low so she won't hear, "it took us almost a week to get her in the door because of you. Hell, she almost refused to come at all. I'm not letting you corner her when she's just starting to relax. Hence, not happening, Crash."

"But—"

The sliding door zips along its runner, startling me.

"What do you want to talk to me about?"

*******

Kelly 

When I leave the main bathroom and turn right towards Crash's bedroom instead of the living room, deep down I know what I'm doing. The urge has been building to slip deeper into the house and open Crash's bedroom door. I need to face it alone.

The room is revealed, the sun beaming in through the frosted window, the skylight revealing deep blue broken only by fluffy white.

He didn't make his bed this morning. The rumpled sheets beckon me and make me feel sick.

The room smells like him—pine, and rain, and something earthy.

I flee.

Cursing myself for my weakness, I stride faster and faster back down the long hall. I'm reminded of a quote I read. The problem with nostalgia is that you only remember the good parts.

It should be my mantra.

Singing with them today was the beginning. My first mistake, because I love it. But now, being in that room, smelling him, watching sunlight play on the walls of the room where I gave myself to him, it's as if my body has forgotten everything he ever did to hurt me. All I can see is a slideshow of gentle touches, quiet smiles, deep kisses—all the ways he put himself between me and the world when the world hurt too much.

He left me. He took what he wanted, then left me. It doesn't matter if he's hot, or talented. None of that is worth the day he made me feel like nothing. No one else could have made me feel that small. No one but Crash.

Fighting tears, I stalk away from that room to the kitchen, find the glasses and get myself some water from the door of the fridge, willing my hands to stop trembling. Grab a beer out of the fridge and head back to the sliding door. This means nothing. I'll have a drink, listen to a song, then leave. I won't talk about it. Won't let him see how much I feel. Just be a friend, smile at Tommy, and go.

Except . . . except I love him.

How can I be just friends when I'm in love with him?

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