“Brenda said… Is that the first dream about Jason that you’ve had, Brynn?” His voice is low.
I think about lying. Almost do, but stop myself. “No. But they’ve been less lately.” Even though it’s the truth, a bit of guilt still weighs me down, since it’s not the whole truth. Dad’s being cool. He’s letting me go out with Christian. I don’t want to jeopardize the progress we made by telling him about talking to Jason. I don’t even want to think about how he would react.
He closes his eyes and I know it’s because he’s hurting. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Because I can’t. Because you don’t believe me. You’ve never said you believe me. “It’s…hard.”
Tell me I can. Tell me you want me to. Tell me you believe me. That you just trust in me like she would have.
But he doesn’t. And the doorbell rings. “I’ll call you later, okay?” I tell him. It’s silly that Christian insisted on coming over to get me, but kind of sweet, too.
Dad hugs me. “Have fun and be careful.”
I tell him I will, and then I take a few deep breaths before going to see Christian.
…
“Gummy bear?” Christian asks as we drive down the freeway. Even though he’s been back for months and I’ve seen him eat a hundred bags of them, it still sounds so odd.
“Sure.” I smile at him and wonder if it’s the first one I’ve given him since I’ve been in the car. It’s shame if it is. I made a vow this morning. As I remembered all those tears I shed with Brenda and how I let her hold me, I promised myself I wouldn’t ruin this day. That I’d have fun and nothing would change that. Not even Jason.
This day will be the best.
“How’d you find this place?” I ask as we drive.
“I’ve played there before. Went for coffee, saw the stage, and there you go.”
“Are you playing today?” I ask.
He shrugs. “Nah. I wouldn’t want to do that to you.”
“Do what?”
“I know you just want to be friends. We’re almost on a date. If I play for you in that kind of environment, you’ll have no choice but to fall for me.”
“Ha! Whatever!” I smack his arm. What he doesn’t know is it would take less than that to make me fall for him.
The hour goes by quickly. We talk about classes, homework, parents, the upcoming dance at school. My heart trembles when that topic comes up because dances are so closely tied to Mom. How important they are to me, and embarrassingly, what is often expected after them. But the subject drops quickly and before I know it we’re pulling into the parking lot of a cute little coffeehouse. It looks like it belongs in Seattle or New York. Like a place that’s dark inside where people have poetry nights. I’ve never been somewhere like this. I feel jittery excitement at the thought of being here with Christian.
We head inside and I’m even more impressed. It’s not like the chain coffee shops you go into. The furniture is old and mismatched and the little round tables slightly dinged. The stage is small. There’s a patch on the curtain, but it doesn’t look old. The place has charm. It definitely reminds me of somewhere Christian would spend time.
“I love it,” I say.
“Yeah? I thought so. I have pretty good taste, ya know.”
We go to the counter and I order a vanilla latte. Christian gets a regular coffee. “Who comes to a coffeehouse and gets regular coffee?” I ask him.
His forehead crinkles as he looks at me. “I’m thinking a lot of people, Bryntastic.”
“No one I know.”
“You know me.”
My stomach bubbles. “I do.”
We get our drinks and sit at a small table in the corner. There’s a guy on stage with his guitar on his knee, singing. He has a good voice, but not nearly as good as Christian’s. We drink our coffees and listen to the music. After a few songs the guy leaves the stage and a girl with dreadlocks comes on, carrying a guitar and a harmonica.
She’s incredible. I watch Christian lose himself in her as she plays and sings. He studies her. Watches her fingers move. I have a feeling if I were to talk to him, he wouldn’t hear me. And that’s okay. I like seeing him like this. When she takes a break, I tell him, “I used to get like that with my pottery, too. So totally lost in it that I didn’t notice anything going on around me.”
“Sorry. I didn’t realize I was spacing out.” Our table is next to a wall, and Christian leans against it. There aren’t too many people here and they aren’t paying any attention to us. Most of them have their eyes on the stage, waiting for the girl to play again.
“Music was big in helping me deal with shit. It’s almost like it transports me to another world, ya know?” he says. His voice is low, so no one else hears, but loud enough for me.
“Yeah. I get it.” And according to him, he found it because of me.
“That’s why I think you need to get pottery back.”
“I know.” I try to take a sip of my coffee and realize it’s empty.
“I’ll go get another one,” he says, and before I can tell him he doesn’t need to, Christian is on his way to the counter. The girl starts to play and sing again, this mellow, relaxing beat that makes me want to lose myself as though I’m the one playing.
A couple minutes later, he returns.
“Will you tell me about it? About Angelica?” I ask. Christian pauses with his coffee cup close to his mouth and I add, “You don’t have to. I know I’m not one to talk. I haven’t told you about anything.”
“That’s not true.” He sets his cup down. “You told me you lost your mom while you were making pottery. That everyone thinks you lied but you didn’t. Those are big things.”
I nod, because they are.
Christian sighs, but then says, “My stuff isn’t really a big deal. I mean, she was freaked about my parents getting divorced. It made it even harder on her because she didn’t get that Mom was in love with Sally.”
“What about you? Was it hard on you?”
Christian shrugs. “It was shocking as hell. I was confused, but I think being younger helped me. I was stoked as long as I still had my mom around and was able to get away with more because they didn’t want to upset us.”
I shake my head, but I’m smiling. “Boys.”
“Whatever works.” He looks at the girl singing for a minute and then back at me. “It was hard. Dad was pissed. Hurt. He kind of took it out on all of us and just dropped off the face of the earth for a while. As you know, we moved to deal with it. It was harder on Angelica, though. Like I said, girls are loco and they’re hard as hell on each other. While the guys at the new school thought it was cool I had two moms, the girls gave her crap about it. They teased her about being a lesbian and made big deals about changing in front of her in gym. Shit like that.”
“I bet that was tough,” I whisper. My friends might not be friends with me anymore, but it’s not like people are teasing me.
“But Angelica had us. Mom would have done anything for her. She would been at the school every day or taken her out. Whatever Angelica needed, but Angelica never said anything to Mom. I didn’t get how serious it was at first. Didn’t see it was a big deal, so when Angelica asked me not to say anything, I didn’t.”
Emery’s words play in my mind.
“She lost weight and Mom noticed. She still said she was fine. I got pissed because my sister was so sad all the time. Mom was worried and I didn’t get why Angelica couldn’t just tell the people at school to fuck off, ya know?”
That sounds so much like him. Christian’s one of the most caring people I know, but he doesn’t always get it. Doesn’t see that what’s easy for him might not be easy for all of us.
“So that began the cycle. Angelica started to act out. I started to get in fights to…I don’t know, pull the attention away from her or something. It’s crazy how things catch on in school. The people who didn’t give a shit about it before suddenly did because they saw it bothered her. They saw her as a weak link and it made everyone attack. I wasn’t going to be that weak link, and I wanted to do anything to make it so Angelica didn’t look like one, either.”
“You love her.”
“She’s my sister.” He takes another drink. “So Mom realized what was going on. The school was calling about my fighting all the time. It had been going on for a while. We moved again, and then Angelica just didn’t want to be friends with anyone. She didn’t want to get close and she started to get depressed. Mom had a really hard time. She just wanted to fix her. It was hard for her that she couldn’t. Angelica just got more depressed and I got more pissed. Mom didn’t want me to get as bad as Angelica so she stuck me in classes for my anger. The guitar was better for me than anything else.
“Next thing we knew, Dad was in the picture again and Angelica was going to live with him.”
Wow…how sad for them all. And just because of who his mom loved.
Love is such a powerful thing. My whole life I’ve been looking for it. I felt it from my parents, talking about it with my mom. Thought I was in love with Christian and then Jason. And Brenda’s loving Sally is what tore their family apart. “That breaks my heart. How sad for all of you.”
He nods, but doesn’t say anything else. We listen to the music a little while longer and finish our drinks before he says, “You about ready to go?”
I nod and we get up to leave. We talk a little on the ride back to town, but not too much. Our earlier conversation changed the mood, and it’s both good and bad. I’m glad Christian told me that part of him. I respect him for being able to do it. He’s transparent in a way, like he walks around completely open and letting the whole world see inside him, while I’m completely closed off. Sealed up tight. When I think about what I see when I look inside Christian, I know I like it. He isn’t perfect, but no one is.
“Can we not go home yet?” I ask him.
He looks over at me. “Definitely. What do you want to do?”
“Listen to you play.” If it’s like every other day I’ve gone anywhere with Christian, he has his guitar in his trunk. It’s a part of him. His therapy and his passion. How cool that those things can be one and the same.
“I know the perfect place.” He drives until we get to a park. It’s not the kind kids play in, but a big, open space far enough from the main street that you can’t see the traffic. In the center is a little white gazebo.
“It’s chilly outside, but I have another jacket in the back if you want it.”
I nod and Christian gets me the coat, which I put on over my sweater. He’s wearing his typical nineties Christian fashion with a T-shirt and a long-sleeved shirt underneath it.
He grabs the guitar out of the trunk and then we head over to the gazebo.
“What do you want me to play?” he asks.
“Whatever you want.”
So he does. He plays songs I don’t know. Songs that are his and then a couple of other people’s. Christian’s voice is beautiful. It sings to my soul and makes my hands yearn to be covered in clay so I can match my passion with his. So I can lose myself the way he does.
With each song he plays, I think about the look in his eyes as he spoke about his family. The freedom in them, the honesty, and I want that feeling.
I want it more and more and more.
One of his songs ends and he opens his mouth to start another, but I know if I don’t speak right now, if I don’t open my mouth and say it, I never will. “I met Jason not long after my mom died.”
Christian’s eyes widen, but he doesn’t speak. He sets his guitar next to us and looks at me.