It wasn’t my fault my eyes were drawn to her breasts. Blame the necklace.
Something womanly about Amy had always been intriguing. She wasn’t one of the athletic girls with boyish bodies and abs so tight you could roll a joint on them and have plenty of room left. She was more like a woman from the movies, one who was older and wiser, with a pinup girl’s kind of savvy. She always dressed a little on the frumpy side, the kind of girl you didn’t think much of from the outside but when you peeled back the layers—and I’m speaking metaphorically right now, but I wanted to be speaking literally—you found an enormous treasure underneath.
Amy snubbed Darla and turned away. And Darla—now it was her turn to be pissed. Whatever was going on over there made Amy angry, and focused, and passionate. Jesus, I wanted to tap into that. What was Darla saying to trigger such a hot response?
Something in me melted, softened, as if a hard core of steel had been driving me forward, tinged with anger and coated with regret. My heart began to beat faster and hope slammed itself repeatedly against my chest wall. What if? What if? What if? was the beat that ran through my head and, as Darla walked away shaking her head slowly, mystified, I felt the same way—except, from a completely different angle.
“Hey, Sam!” shouted Tyler, the new bassist for the group. He was filling in while Joe was at orientation for law school at Penn. “Can you help me with this amp?”
“Yeah, sure,” I said and stood. My eyes broke away from Amy for a few seconds and when I turned back to look she was chatting with Goddamn fucking Liam. He had a way of holding his body like he was the only man in the room. In a way, he was—he was the dude. Liam needed to be the only guy in the room—and when I say need, I mean need. It was his weakness. There was something about the fight in him and the constant arrogance that made him equally fascinating and annoying. It got tiring to pull him out of fights, or to pick him off of a girl’s wrath. Most of all, it got tiring because if you have to repeatedly prove your manhood...
Maybe it’s not as strong as you think.
Amy
From the Ladies’ Room door, I watched Darla march off, finally taking the hint. She seemed like someone who would be pretty interesting once you got to know her, and I didn’t like being nasty to her. But anybody who was passing herself around the band like a tray of appetizers...are you kidding me? That’s not the kind of person I wanted to be friends with.
I watched her walk up to the stage and grab Trevor like she owned him. The way his hand snaked around her waist, enjoying a handful of flesh, how her arms slid under his ribs and then up, fingers intertwining with his hair and their mouths connecting. A tug of envy pulled inside me. Not that I wanted Trevor—but I wanted that. I wanted a man to touch me, and own me with his hands as if nothing else mattered in the world.
Trevor pulled back, whispered something in her ear, and she tipped her head back and laughed. It was an intimate moment, and one I felt privileged to watch, despite feeling disgusted by the easy way she traveled from man to man on that stage. Dammit! I wanted to be that close to a group of people. I wanted to be part of something so edgy, and fun, and intense.
Instead, here I sat in the back of the bar, with a fucking tablet in my lap, nose buried in a book, which was not something new. It might be my tablet nowadays but I was still the mousy, bookish Amy. The part of me that hated what Darla represented now admired it a bit. She was free—really free, up there talking, and laughing, and joking.
And then, she stepped away from Trevor and damn it if her hands didn’t touch Sam. He reached for her in a friendly hug and I knew, from the body language, that there wasn’t anything going on. All the air in me whooshed out in one big, relieved sigh at the same time that I imagined myself her, that his palms were wrapped around my shoulders, that his cheek touched mine, that the friendly, quick embrace was nothing like what Darla and Trevor had just shared. Sam pulled back and said something. Whatever it was, it seemed kind because Darla smiled and I saw a single tear travel down her cheek, then disappear past her jawline and under her shirt.
The shine of Kleig lights made it possible to see everything and Sam’s face softened, the compassionate look making me wonder what on Earth was going on. Something had morphed up there—the atmosphere was less exuberant and then, the new bass player. It all clicked. Joe. Joe Ross was...gone?
As if on cue, an all too familiar voice said from behind me, “If you stare any harder they’ll turn into stone.”
I whirled around and there stood Liam, wearing a ratty t-shirt, jeans that fit every part of him perfectly, and with hands tensed and ready to perform. He grabbed the chair next to me, twisted it around and straddled it, crossing his forearms over the back. “You’ve still got it bad, don’t you Amy?” he said, pointing at Sam.
It was just a flick of a finger, nothing obvious, but it made me burn inside.
Something about Liam made it impossible to lie. “I know. I admit it.” It was the first time I had acknowledged it to anyone. It made me feel complete somehow, as if it were out there—an emotion that now had form.
“You see the new bass player?” he said.
“Yeah?” I asked. “What’s going on? Where’s Joe?”
“Joe left,” he said with a tone of intrigue injected. Liam could do that—there was an affect he had, a way of being on stage all the time. It got old pretty quickly but when he was on, he was on. The golden boy.
“Left? You mean left for good?”
“No, he got into Penn. He’s at some kind of orientation but we had to get a new bass player because he’s not going to be back that often.”
“Is that why Darla’s crying?” I asked. “One of her fuck toys is gone?” I used the words on purpose just to seem Liam’s reaction.
He flinched. “Your horns are showing, Amy.”