Heartstrings (3 page)

B
lake was in freefall
.

At first, he convinced himself he’d imagined it. But every time he looked down into the pit, when the stage lights were shining right, Cal was there.

Am I going crazy?

It was possible he’d finally cracked. Maybe the stress was too much, everything with Rhett and trying to hold the band together on the final leg of their tour. Maybe this was it.

But during the next break in-between songs, he sidled over to Jake, leaning in toward the bassist’s ear. He took a swig from his water, then mumbled, incredulous:

“Your ten o’clock. Is that
Cal
?”

Jake brushed his heavy bangs out of his eyes and peered down into the crowd, then let out a disbelieving laugh.

“Good eye,” he said. Then he added, a second later: “Fuckin’ dick.”

Blake didn’t comment. He didn’t have time to, for one. Be it high-school theater or a sold-out rock gig, the show had to go on. He wet his lips, trying to figure out how he felt. It was harshing his buzz, for one.

Knowing Cal was watching, he felt oddly on display.

Which was the stupidest thing for the front man of a bestselling band to ever feel. Being on display was what he did for a living, for hell’s sake. And yet...

“Boy,” he laughed into his mic. “It’s funny. I’ve been doing this a long time. This is our third nationwide tour, second as headliners, and you know what? Coming home is always different.”

He cleared his throat and let out a soft, embarrassed laugh.

“I feel naked up here,” he said. Someone in the crowd wolf-whistled. “Anyway, since this is kind of a homecoming for us, we figured we’d play a couple of our earlier tunes. This one made it onto our first real album, but its roots go back further. I’d say sing along if you know the words, but the words have changed a few times.”

Cal will barely recognize this one,
he thought, leading in with the banjo. Slowly, his guitar lazy and jangling, Rhett joined in. Then Carlo started up a thumping, bassy beat, slow like a heartbeat.

The melody was one of the oldest Blake had written. The first version had been about his high-school ex-girlfriend. Then he and Cal had jokingly changed the lyrics to be about his old van, the title changing from “Mandy” to “Ford Transit.”

Now, it was something different altogether. But that was the funny thing about music. It was adaptable. It could be about whatever you needed it to be about.

Leaving his banjo hanging from his shoulder, Blake leaned into the mic and sang, his voice a low and somber rasp.

“Now that I’m alone I can hardly believe,

How easy it was to forget how to breathe.

I keep turning around thinking that I’ll see you there...

Then I kick to the surface and come up for air.”

Glancing down into the crowd again, Blake curled a tiny smile. He sang toward the cheap seats overhead, then stole a look over toward where Cal stood. Was that woman standing next to him
with
him? She was gorgeous. Blake wondered what a girl like that was doing with a commitment-phobic asshole like Cal.

The song flowed into the bridge, which picked up the pace. Carlo executed the time signature flawlessly. Blake grabbed the microphone stand and pulled it in close against himself, holding it tight in the crook of his arm.

“They say that you never know love ’till your heart’s been broken,” Blake sang. He injected some growl into his voice for the second line, pushing off the mic stand aggressively, where it wobbled and almost fell.

“When I see you smilin’ at him, I’ve got to keep from chokin’.”

“Choke” was the Sinsationals’ first hit single. The crowd ate it up.

Blake wondered if Cal could tell a few lines were directed at him.

As the song hit its peak and wound down, Blake growled the last few lines into his mic, pouring all his frustration into the words:

“Whoever said time heals all wounds, that fucker was jokin’,

It’s been years since you walked out on me... and I’m still chokin’.”

Over the course of the concert, Blake stole glances down toward Cal’s section when he could. By the end of the show, he’d determined that the Asian woman with the sleeve tattoo was definitely his date, the way they kept whispering into one another’s ears. It was somewhat surprising to see Cal with a woman at all, but hey, a lot could change in five years.

As far as the band’s homecoming show, well...

Blake didn’t let Cal throw him off course. He couldn’t. He marched into the show with his head held high. He played the audience with the same skill and care that he played his banjo. A consummate showman, Blake wasn’t the type who never let his feelings show onstage. Instead, he let it bleed into his work. He opened himself up. The naked earnestness of his live shows was a quality he was often praised for, but that wasn’t why he did it.

Blake Bradley was just a man who wore his heart on his sleeve. He couldn’t help it. He’d never been able to bottle things up, not like Cal could. He had to let it out. He had to
talk.
When he was happy, he had to
gush.

Those emotive qualities were what set him aside from other artists and made his live shows such intimate spectacles. But the downside included nights like tonight, where he left the stage feeling all messed up, a mixed bag of emotions he was having trouble sorting through.

* * *

A
fter stopping
outside the venue to sign a few autographs, Blake caught a cab straight to the hotel. He shouldered past everyone who approached him, whether they appeared to recognize him or not. He was in one of those fucked-up, difficult-to-articulate moods.

It was bad nostalgia. That’s what it was. Seeing Cal down in the crowd had taken his homecoming and twisted it into something that hurt more than it should have.

He showered and kicked back with a Jack and Coke on his plush hotel bed, the rest of his suite empty. The tastefully-appointed decor, all slabs of distressed wood in a vaguely southwest-inspired motif, made the room feel like an expensive mausoleum.

Draining his unfulfilling minibar cocktail, Blake stared up at the ceiling, watching shadows fall over the exposed beams as the light outside shifted.

* * *

A
nd just like that
, he was dragged back unwillingly to an earlier time; to a similar ceiling in a hotel with similar decor.

Blake’s eyes snapped open. He’d dozed off. He woke with a head full of bittersweet memories and a throbbing erection aching awkwardly in his tight jeans. And a bad idea.

Cal hadn’t said a word to him since Blake had called and begged him not to leave the band. But he’d been poking around at the concert. Whatever that meant. Maybe Blake could stop by Cal’s dad’s bar, see how he was doing at least. Leave a gift for him that had been collecting dust in Blake’s old house for years. A peace offering.

It was one of those roads that would probably lead to disaster. But from where Blake was sitting—frustrated, horny, sleep-deprived—it didn’t sound too unreasonable.

S
aturdays
at The Garage were generally nice and easy. From seven in the evening they had a weekly darts tournament that kept the regulars occupied. The Nuggets game, which Cal put on the bar TVs mostly for his own benefit, started a bit later.

Coming right back to work the day after had helped, but he’d left that concert in a weird mood.

All the same, it hadn’t been a bad experience. Maybe he was being too charitable toward himself, but he felt like he might have finally gotten over Blake. Even in the moment when he was pretty sure their eyes met, it didn’t twist in his gut like the dagger he’d expected.

He was growing up and getting over. Who could have thought.

“Hey, boss?” Yanmei hollered from the door to the kitchen. “Mick says we’re out of pineapple rings, I’m gonna whiz to King Soopers.”

Cal turned and gave her an affirming wave. One of The Garage’s specialties—if you could call any of their food special—was the Hawaiian, a burger that came with Canadian bacon and pineapple. Cal couldn’t stand it, but it was a best-seller.

With Yanmei off on an errand, Cal took over the running of both ends of the bar. Since the place wasn’t huge, it wasn’t that much work, but the trickle of orders was steady. He poured tap beers, mixed a couple of basic cocktails, and doled out some generous shots.

He was tapping a fresh keg of Crooked Stave when it happened. A break in the usual chatter as a couple vacated their stools. Then someone new stepped up to take their place.

Cal stood. He wiped his hands off on his apron.

And he was face to face with Blake Bradley.

Blake, who stood a little shorter than him, was dressed down in a simple red check shirt and a pair of Wranglers. He wasn’t wearing a hat. But there was no way in hell Cal could have mistaken him for anyone else.

And judging by the widened state of his ever-changing hazel eyes, Blake hadn’t mistaken him for anyone else either.

“Cal,” Blake said, like it was an affront.

The two men stared each other down.

“You seem surprised.” Cal kept his voice level, despite the fact that he was feeling anything but even-keeled. Seeing Blake on stage was one thing. Being this close to him, hearing Blake
say his name...
that was a whole separate ballgame.

“I am. Didn’t know you were working here.”

Cal searched for a pilsner glass on the counter top and started to wipe it down, just so he could occupy his hands. So he didn’t have to look Blake in the face for the entirety of the conversation.

“I took over after Dad retired,” Cal said. “He’s been out of the business a couple years now.”

Blake tipped a tiny nod of understanding, which Cal hated, because it led Cal’s eyes to the hard line of his jaw, the shaded hollows of his throat below.

“Makes sense. How’s he doing these days? We still swap cards, but you know how he is. He’d never talk about what happened in a birthday card.”

That managed to draw a laugh out of Cal. Truer words were never spoken. If Cal hadn’t been living close to home, he probably would have gotten a letter from his father that read
Cancer in remission now, happy holidays
before he’d even heard about the diagnosis.

In spite of the genuine nature of his laugh, the smile on Cal’s face felt strange and alien, like he was a puppet forcing his face to contort ways it wasn’t meant to.

“Yeah, he’s doing good. Playing a lot of golf in Orlando, doing some deep sea fishing.”

“Never thought I’d see the day: your dad turned into a caricature of an old man.”

This time, Blake shared in the laughter. The sound of it, the sudden and jarring familiarity of it, dug into Cal worse than anything from the night before. His hands clenched the pilsner glass a little too tightly. His chest felt compressed. There they were, joking as though nothing had changed between them, when every adrenaline response in his body was firing on overdrive.

“I’ll tell him you stopped by,” Cal said for lack of a better idea on how to end the conversation.

And he had to end it. Because if he kept talking to Blake, the carefully-constructed bunker he’d buried his feelings in was liable to erode away, brick by brick. Blake made it so easy to like him. Even when you tried your damnedest not to.

At Cal’s words, something in Blake’s eyes went cold. He stiffened, straightening up.

“So that’s how it is, huh?” Blake asked the question in a flat, neutral voice. Cal wasn’t quite sure what he meant by it.

Before Cal had a chance to press him on what he meant—or just get angry—they were interrupted.

“The actual fuck, Calvin?”

Yanmei stood at the end of the bar, a tin can of pineapple rings in her hand. She’d opened the top of it, peeled it back, and had a half-eaten one dangling from her fingers. She looked at Cal as if he’d grown a second head. Or maybe like he was actively on fire.

Blake turned his head, looking at her, too. Cal saw the other man’s brows knit together, as though he was puzzled.

Maybe there was a way to graciously escape from this conversation after all.

“Hey, you’re just in time,” he said to Yanmei with a too-big smile. “Yanmei Ellis, Blake Bradley. You two really should meet.”

Yanmei took a bite of her pineapple, then set the can on the hardwood bartop. She frowned down at her fingers, then held her palms up to Blake in apology.

“I’d shake, but I’m real sticky.”

Blake coughed out a laugh and waved it off. Cal could almost watch it happen, the way he slipped back into his showman’s persona.

“Think nothing of it.”

“A genuine pleasure,” she said. “We were at your show last night, loved every minute.”

“Thanks so much.” Blake looked Yanmei over with an attentiveness in his eyes that surprised Cal. But then again, he’d been a slut as long as Cal had known him. Maybe five years hadn’t changed Blake as much as it had changed Cal.

“Say, miss Ellis, can I buy you a beer?”

“Oh, I’m on the clock.” Yanmei ticked a quick, apologetic smile over to Blake, then shifted her gaze sideways to Cal.

Cal spotted the opportunity and took it.

“Hell, take a break if you’d like. Not every day a rock star offers to buy you a beer, Yan.”

Yanmei grinned hugely.

“I’d hug you, but you’ve got that gross apron on.”

Cal poured them both a pint off the fresh keg and sent them on their way. Each of them separately looked back over a shoulder and eyeballed him on their way over to a side table, but Cal didn’t care. He was sure he’d have a veritable interrogation to sit through after closing time, but he just had to get away. Or rather, get Blake away from him.

Because now that he’d brushed elbows with the man in such proximity, it was painfully obvious: a large part of him was still in love with Blake. He poured drinks and made small talk with barflies to distract himself, but all the while, something in his chest throbbed as if a piece of him was missing.