Sweet Forty-Two(29)

“Hi, I’m just showing my cousin around the studio, if you don’t mind.” I held out my arm for a side hug as she casually conquered my personal space.

Something else I’d have to get used to over the next few months.

“No worries. Actually, I’m glad you’re here. My dad rewired for the new microphones last night, and we need to check some pitches. Can you get your vio-fiddle-whatever-you-call-it and play for a few minutes?”

She seemed to be nervous as she tucked a strand of her sandy brown hair behind her ear. Her hair was long and wavy, like Ember’s, and they had nearly identical jade coloring in their eyes. Guess growing up counterculture made you look like sisters. Her skin, though, was pure caramel. Her mother was black, from Haiti, and her father was white. I briefly wondered if, like the bartenders at E’s, she ever felt the need to dress in a certain way to get attention. Likely not...

“Yeah, Reeg, go get your fiddle-dee-doo, and I’ll show Willow, here, how this painfully forsaken drum set sounds. Does no one play this?” CJ stared at the abandoned set in horror.

Willow toyed with the ends of her hair. “They’re not really using that for this album but, um ... you can try it out...”

My brain tried like hell to beg her cheeks not to turn red during her exchange with CJ.

They did.

There was nothing more I could do.

“Be right back.” I attempted a look of warning to CJ, but he ignored me as he drew his sticks from his back pocket and sat on the stool, ready to strike.

The set, and Willow in due time I was sure, if he wasn’t scheduled to leave in a few days. Who was I kidding? That was plenty of time for him.

A few minutes later I was set up in front of the mic, with headphones on, and a mic hanging twelve inches from my strings. Journey and Mags were seated on the couch in the corner of the recording room, while CJ asked Willow questions I knew damn well he knew the answers to in the sound booth.

“Okay,” I interrupted Willow’s hair-tossing giggle with a clearing of my throat, “do you want me to play anything specific or...”

“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.