Rhythm, Chord & Malykhin (6 page)

“Nah.” He put the glass to his lips, but I could still catch a glimpse of the corners of his mouth. “Half-marathons.”

Half-marathons. “Thanks for telling me that now,” I snorted.

“You didn’t look winded, and I figured you would tell me when you couldn’t go any further.”

I grumbled and shook my head just as the waitress came by to take our order.

She had barely left when the dark-haired man sitting across from me asked, “So, are you on summer break?”

“Nope, I finished school about a month ago. I just… haven’t been able to find a job yet.”

Saying it out loud was weird. I knew it wasn’t unusual to not find a job right after graduating. Half the people that had finished school at the same time as I did were struggling to land one. It didn’t help that the degree I’d gotten wasn’t exactly bursting with employment opportunities either, but it still made me feel a little raw. When I first told my family I wanted to study history, the first thing out of my dad’s mouth had been, “What are you going to do with that degree? Why don’t you do accounting? Or nursing?”

It was a sore subject, to say the least.

Sacha asked what I studied and I told him.

“Are you planning on teaching?” he asked.

“No…” For a second, I thought about telling him that I wanted to do research or work at a museum, or
something
. But I couldn’t. I’d gotten my degree in it because I liked learning about history; that was all. “I don’t really know, to be honest. I’d rather not teach, though. I think I’d be pretty terrible at it. The kids would probably laugh at me if I tried to be firm about something.”

Sacha nodded solemnly. “You’ll find something, just give it some time. I used to get shit thrown at me onstage when I was younger; if I would have given up every time I heard ‘you suck’ being screamed at me, who knows where I’d be right now.”

This guy used to get stuff thrown at him? He had one of the best pitches and ranges I’d ever heard and he killed his performance every night. “You really had people throw things at you?”

He snickered. “Yeah. The first time was at a high school talent show. This asshole threw a Coke bottle at me and by the end of the song, I’d pretty much been booed offstage. I only stayed on because I’m stubborn.”

I had to slap my hand over my mouth so that I wouldn’t laugh. “If it makes you feel any better, one time, I had a dance recital when I was probably seven, and I threw up all over the stage. I was so nervous. I remember telling my mom I didn’t want to do it but she made me anyway.” There was footage of it too that someone in the family dug out every couple of years when they needed a laugh.

Sacha covered the lower half of his face with the bottom of his T-shirt, and closed his eyes simultaneously. His shoulders shook with restraint. “What did you do?”

“I cried my eyes out,” I laughed.

“I fell off the stage once,” he added, smiling huge.

“You didn’t!”

“I did. I just walked right off of it—”

Yeah, I burst out laughing, picturing it.

“—It’s the single most embarrassing moment of my life onstage,” he said right before tossing his head back and laughing his ass off. “That’s what I get for not paying attention.”

It was the “onstage” that got me. Once I got myself under control, I raised my eyebrows at him. “And
off
stage?”

He ran a hand through the loose hair at the top of his head and closed one single, gray eye. “I had to take a crap into a plastic bag once. The bathroom on the bus was clogged, and we were in the middle of nowhere during a thunderstorm.”

For the record, there’s no way in hell you can hold back a laugh when someone tells you that they took a crap in a plastic bag. Especially not when the story is told in a matter-of-fact voice. It wasn’t possible. On the other hand, it didn’t help that Sacha’s face took ‘striking’ and ‘handsome’ to a different level. I’ve always figured that people in the upper echelon of beauty—sans Mason—were incapable of doing the ridiculous things that semi-attractive people like myself do; like fart or burp in front of others, smell or have stinky shit. But apparently Sacha, whose last name I still didn’t know, was the anomaly.

He’d taken a crap in a plastic bag.

When I had to hunch over and press my forehead against the vinegar-and-lemon smelling table, Sacha poked me in the shoulder. “When you gotta go,
you gotta go
,” he said with another laugh that didn’t hold a lick of embarrassment in it.

I looked up to see that his grin was telling me a story about an incredibly handsome man that didn’t take himself too seriously.

It was like finding a four-leaf clover.

“Did I gross you out?” he asked when I didn’t immediately respond.

I scowled and shook my head. “Are you kidding me? Have you talked to Eli?” He nodded, but there was no way he’d interacted with him enough to not be fully aware of my brother’s mental impairment. I couldn’t see Eli talking to someone for longer than twenty minutes without making some rude and/or inappropriate comment.

“There’s four of us kids in our family, and Eli and I used to have to ride the bus to school together in the morning, so we had to wake up earlier than everyone else. He’d make sure to get up before me every single day for years so that he could purposely leave me ‘presents’ in the toilet,” I snickered. “You can bring on the brown pickles with me anytime.”

Sacha chuckled, his index and middle finger pressing against his temple. “What you’re trying to say is that Eli’s to blame for making you this way?”

“Hey!” I cried. I wasn’t sure whether to be insulted or not.

“I mean it in a good way. You’re beautiful—“ I’m not sure how I managed not to fall off my chair. “—And you don’t have a problem talking to me about The Clap, diarrhea and vomiting. You’re fun, Gaby.”

My ears went red. Too worried about saying something dumb, I held out my hands at my sides in a “what can I say” gesture.

Sacha smiled and opened his mouth right before the sound of loud beeping coming from his pocket tore his attention away from the table. Pulling his phone out, he asked me to hold on before answering the call. “Hey… I just finished going for a run… yeah… I’m about to eat.” He shot me a smile when he glanced up. “I’ll see you soon… I miss you too… okay… bye.”

The chances that the person he was talking to on the other end was a family member could be pretty high, but my gut feeling said otherwise. Someone that good-looking had to have a significant other in the picture.

“Girlfriend?” my mouth spewed without a second thought.

He simply shook his head, and I missed the way one of his eyelids lowered in denial. “Old friend.”

Friend?

Sure
. I almost snickered. I’d grown up alongside three boys, two of them becoming manwhores right before my eyes. I understood how they worded their sentences. An “old friend” that you told you “missed” was more than likely an ex-girlfriend or an ex-buddy you used to do things with that you probably wanted to do more things with in the future. Sacha didn’t seem to be like my brother or Mase, but still. An “old friend” was an “old friend.”

It wasn’t my business, though, so I pushed Sacha’s friend and conversation out of my head and smiled over at him, close-mouthed.

He only smiled back at me. The silence settled around our shoulders in a weird fit.

“Are you ready to go?” I asked him.

Sacha nodded and we got up, making our way out. Neither one of us spoke up as we walked back to the venue. I didn’t know what to say, and I guess he didn’t either. We smiled at each other a couple of times when we’d stop at a corner and wait to cross the street.

I heard the guys before I saw them. We were rounding the nearest building to the venue when Eli’s booming laugh mixed with two other boisterous ones. Immediately, I felt this big ball of dread form in my stomach, my shoulders tightening.

I knew Eli inside and out. I could recognize his laugh when he thought something was kind of funny, really funny, not funny at all but he was attempting to be nice, and I was all too aware of the texture his laugh held when he’d either drank too much or smoked pot. And while he was a grown man and I had no right to tell him what to do, there was a reason why one of the conditions I made before coming on tour with him was that he kept the drinking, and by default the partying, to a minimum. Especially when I was going to have to put up with his crap afterward.

Eli laughed again, and I took a deep breath, already palming my chest for the tour laminate I had on a lanyard so I could go into the building through the front instead of the back door.

Sacha’s hand nudged my arm. “You all right?” he asked when I looked up at him.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” I forced a smile onto my face when Mason’s voice pierced through the air.

He frowned. “You don’t look fine.”

We were getting closer and closer to the corner of the block where I would either go in through the front or walk a few more feet and make my way to the back where the bus and trailer were. “I just…” I blew out a shaky breath I hadn’t realized I was holding and shook my head as if I wanted to shake off this entire situation with the idiots. “I don’t like being around Eli when he’s on something.” I had a sudden flashback of the night that had finally been my breaking point, when I decided I didn’t want to keep going out with GO. I’d been so pissed that I didn’t speak to any of them for months after that tour ended.

“He’s that bad?” Sacha asked.

I lifted up a shoulder, fighting off the anxiety trying to make a home in my chest. “Not
bad
, he just… says really stupid stuff. They all do.” Hurtful, personal stuff that none of them had any business sharing.

He nodded as if he understood, and maybe he did. Most people had that one friend that turned into a wrecking ball once they had drunk too much or done something else that changed their personalities or thinking process.

When we got to the corner in front of the venue, I touched his side. “I’m going in through the front.”

Sacha tipped his head down. “I should start getting dressed so I can begin warming up.” He flashed me that bright white smile one more time. “If you ever want to go running again, let me know. You’re a better running buddy than Julian.”

I couldn’t help but smile and nod.

The dark slashes of his eyebrows went up. “I’ll even let you off easy with only seven miles next time if you want.”

I fought the urge to push him away like I would have if he were one of my demons and snorted instead before backing away. “Go put your make-up on and warm up, Celine.”

I could still hear my brother laughing when I entered the venue less than a minute later.

I
knew
something was going on when I found my twin and Gordo smiling sweetly over at me from their spots in the living space of the bus. The fact that all of the members of TCC and their crew were surrounding them didn’t help any. I usually didn’t sleep in, but a stuffy nose had kept me up. I grabbed a plastic cup from the cabinet over the microwave and then fished out one of the gallon jugs of water that were stashed in the lower kitchenette cabinets, all while watching the group closely and trying to listen to what the hell they were talking about.

The scent of bullshit was strong in the bus.

“I’m in,” Julian said first, looking at Freddy. “You?”

“I’m in,” the TCC tour manager agreed.

What exactly were they
in
for?

Slowly but surely, the rest of the members sitting on the couches all nodded or verbally agreed to whatever it was they were talking about. I slowly slid in to the only seat available across from Carter, which was one of the two chairs belonging to the small table in the kitchen.

“Carter, what about you?” Eli asked the man I spent a lot of time with.

Still in his pajamas and looking only slightly more awake than me, he shrugged. He had his hair down and parted down the middle, the ends brushing his thin shoulders. “I’ll play.”

I’ll play?

Oh
no
.

“How many people is that, then?” Gordo asked. I didn’t miss the smug look he threw my way after he asked.

“Eleven,” one of the TCC guys answered.

Gordo let out the most exaggerated sigh I’d ever heard in my life, even going as far as to make his eyes go wide. “
E-lev-en?
That’s an odd number. We can’t have an odd amount of players in the game.”

This motherfucker.

My brother turned to look at me and shrugged his shoulders. “Flabs, I guess that means you have to play.”

“The hell that means I have to play. I’m not playing,” I said in a careful, controlled voice before taking a too casual sip of water, making sure to keep eye contact with him.

“You have to,” Eli repeated.

“Odd numbers,” Gordo piped in like a little shit.

I shook my head, making sure to keep my features even. If I was careful and really nonchalant about it, my chances of getting out of this were higher. Eli knew too easily how to pull my strings at the right time, and I sure as hell wasn’t going there. “It’s not happening.”

Carter shot me a curious look. “You don’t like to play?”

I glared at the two idiots when I answered. “I don’t like to play with
them
.”

The scoff that came out of Eli and Gordo was impossible to miss.

“C’mon. Don’t be a party pooper,” my twin muttered.

“I’m not being a party pooper. I just don’t feel like getting the crap beat out of me,” I explained to them. Glancing back at Carter, I sighed. “Every time we’ve played in the past, I end up getting hurt. My lip got busted last time, and I’m pretty sure my tailbone was fractured. I also had this bruise bigger than Eli’s head—”

“We need you on a team,” Gordo insisted.

I just shook my head.

“Quit being a baby and play. Gordo promises not to knee you again, don’t you, Gordo?” Eli asked.

The dark-skinned man next to him nodded almost enthusiastically.

They were so full of shit.

“I promise not to knee you either,” Eli amended next. “We can be on the same team if it makes you happy.”

Well, that was part of the problem when we’d played in the past too. I wasn’t usually a competitive person—a game was just a game and if it made someone’s day to win, so be it—but when it came to doing things against Eli, that was a whole different story. We’d been competing for attention, love, food and just about everything else from the moment we’d been born. Arguing and fighting over stuff was second nature for us.

But still. The memory of my bloody busted lip was still fresh in my mind two years later. Before that there had been a visit to the dentist for a new filling, a bloody nose, a sprained back, an ankle I couldn’t walk on for two weeks… the list was endless.

Then there was whatever crap the losing team had to go through. It was the whole purpose behind playing: to embarrass the loser.

“I’ll tell Mason not to purposely trip you anymore,” Eli finally added with an expectant look on his face. “Deal?”

I hesitated. Along with the bloody lip in the past, there had also been a black eye, an elbow to the center of my chest…

“It’ll be fun,” Bryce, the TCC light guy, suggested.

I
t’ll be fun
, they said.

Just a friendly game, they said.

Well, they were fucking liars. All eleven of them.

Two hours after I was finally guilt-tripped into agreeing to play, the bus made a detour on the journey from the parking lot it had sat overnight to the park it dropped us off at. The drive had only been four hours long, and in the middle of the night, we arrived in Houston, Texas. Unfortunately, there was more than enough time to kill before we needed to get to the venue, so I couldn’t use that as an excuse as to why we couldn’t play. We all piled out, dressed in shorts, T-shirts and an array of tennis shoes.

A few of us, including me, were busy putting sunblock on when Gordo went around passing out pieces of torn-out notebook paper folded into small pieces. There were two papers with stars on them for whoever won team-captain duties and nine pieces of paper with either a “1” or a “2” on them, the deciding factor for which team each person ended up on. We’d already agreed in the bus that Eli and I would be on the same team, so I would choose a paper for the both of us.

That part of it went fine. There was no problem.

Julian ended up the captain of the “1” team and Freddy, the tour manager/sound guy or front of house, got the other piece of paper to command the “2” team.

Julian, Mason, Sacha, Bryce, Isaiah and Mateo were on team one.

Freddy, Carter, Gordo, Miles, Eli and I were on team two.

Still, no problem.

Then they decided they were going to go over ideas as to what the losing team had to do as their punishment. This wasn’t unusual, either; every time I’d played their stupid Soccer Death Match in the past, there had been some bet going on. It had always been something humiliating, so my standards weren’t too high. I was pretty much ready for something involving bare asses or being someone’s slave for a day.

And then Mason’s dumb-dumb-dumb-ass blurted out, “Losing team has to shave their heads.”

Uhh…

“YES!” I wasn’t sure who first yelled out their agreement, but I wish I had so I knew who to nut-punch.

“No!” I threw my arms out and looked around at the group of idiots who weren’t screaming at how dumb his idea was. “Are you shitting me?”

They weren’t.

Why almost all of them thought this would be an excellent punishment for the losing team was beyond me.

“Majority wins,” they said. Carter and I seemed to be the only people against it, and that was more than likely because we had the most hair out of everyone on tour by far. Everyone was so confident that the team they were on would win, they didn’t mind taking a risk.

All the boys were too scared to accidentally break a finger that it was decided there wouldn’t be goalkeepers on either team. Fine, all right.

We split up on opposite sides, team 1 deciding that they’d go shirtless so everyone would know who was on what team. I may have ogled the guys that were in great shape—Mason, Julian and Sacha—a little more than necessary, but I had no regrets. We started playing.

The first fifteen minutes were good. We were all being respectful of each other, happy kicking the ball back and forth as we jogged up and down the field. I exchanged smiles with a few of the guys on the other team as I tried to defend against them in case the soccer ball made its way over in their direction.

Good. Fine. It was going well.

Then Mason, who had played varsity soccer in high school, scored a goal for his team and it was like a small animal had been slaughtered off the coast of South Africa. The sharks came out to play and the aggressiveness on the field multiplied.

My resolution to win didn’t come out of nowhere. There was no way in hell my head was getting shaved, and I was going to do whatever I needed to do to make that happen. Apart from running track, I’d played two years of soccer in high school, plus on and off with these guys most of my life.

In the fifteen minutes after that initial friendly beginning, each player began hustling back and forth across the grass. When Sacha got ahold of the ball and it seemed like everyone else on my team had their fingers up their butts instead of trying to keep up, I started going after him to steal it away. His legs were longer than mine but apparently no one on my team knew what cardio was, and I got stuck chasing after him. Sacha started putting his hand in my face when I got too close, and I had to whack it out of the way each time he did it.

“Stop hogging the ball!” I yelled at him, trying to futilely steal it.

“If it bothers you so much, get it away from me, then,” he teased before passing it to Mateo.

Between the thirty to forty-five minute mark, every player started running as fast as they could. No one wanted to be on the team that lost. The ball travelled from player to player faster than it would have normally. I was getting desperate. Sweaty as hell, thanks to the humidity and the sun that didn’t seem to care I’d put on sunscreen not that long ago, I started digging my shoulder into Sacha’s side to throw him off balance every time the ball got too close to him. The idea of losing my hair—because I sure as hell didn’t have the bone structure to pull off a shaved head—made the beast come out.

The ball came straight at us and I tripped him. Then I tripped him again and again.

And again.

As I ran with the ball at the tip of my left foot, I heard Sacha in the background calling out, “What the hell? That was a yellow card!”

“Suck it up, Sassy!” I hollered back at him.

And then, it really got out of control.

Even though we were laughing our asses off, I started elbowing him—somewhat gently—in the ribs, and I kicked him in the thigh another time. Not-so-innocent-Sacha pulled the end of my ponytail and would use his shoulder to push me away.

The last time I managed to trip him, he grabbed the back of my shirt to pull me down too. Unfortunately, his weight made me fall down hip first, bumping the shit out of my side as I landed next to him, still laughing. Sacha was smart enough to hop up and take off running to get the stray ball.

My shirt was soaked in sweat, my arms and neck ached with sun exposure, and I had dirt all over me. So, it wouldn't have been a big deal when Sacha dipped into our half-limping, lazy-running time by hip-checking me so hard I lost my balance and fell on the ground once more.

At the last minute, before the one-hour timer went off on Gordo’s phone, Carter scored a goal that I didn’t completely understand.

What I did understand was what happened next. Tied, and with everyone on the verge of dying because only three of us ran on a slightly regular basis, no one wanted to add more time to the clock. So the game went to penalty kicks.

Penalty kicks.

It was Eli that said, “One of you merch losers and Bryce should be goalies. I vote you do it, Flabs.”

I was sitting on the grass when I tipped my head back and scowled at him. “Excuse me?”

“You three are the only people that can risk getting hurt,” he said like that made total sense.

I guess it sort of did. Did I really want to leave the fate of my scalp to Carter’s goalkeeping skills? Not really.

“Does that work?” Julian asked.

I nodded, thinking of my bra-length hair. “Fine.” I glanced at Carter and widened my eyes. “I’ll do it.”

“Can I go first? We can alternate,” Bryce, the TCC lighting guy, asked without even putting up a fight.

I rubbed the back of my sunburnt neck and nodded. “Go for it.”

Eli went first and missed. Cold dread went down my spine, and I had to bury my head between my hands when I realized how screwed we were.

I got to my feet and said a prayer under my breath while I marched toward the net-less, lopsided goal.

“Don’t let me down, Flabby!” Eli yelled.

I shook my head at him as I walked backward, mouthing and pointing “This is your fault.” I was going to end up bald. I fucking knew it.

The first person to come up to do a penalty kick was Mason. He winked at me as he got into position. “I love you, Flabbers, but this ball is going in.”

“Shut up and kick.” I waved him on, ready to get this over with.

“Your wish is my command, my bride.” He then blew me a kiss.

I only just barely managed to deflect the ball a half-inch with the tips of my fingers when he nailed it. His team was screaming from the sidelines while Eli and Gordo hollered at me for missing. Dickwads.

Freddy on our team went next and managed to score. Nerves stirred my stomach, but I pushed them aside and focused on what I needed to do as I walked back to the goal.

Next on the opposing team was Julian, who didn’t talk any shit and simply went for the shot. The ball went up high and I was too short to reach it.

“Goddamnit! Why aren’t you taller?” Eli’s bellow came out at the same time I yelled in frustration with myself.

Miles, on my team, went last and scored.

Carter came up behind me and squeezed my shoulder. “Gaby, I won’t be mad at you if we lose.”

I patted his hand and smiled sadly. “Thanks, remember you said that later on, okay?”

The last player to kick was…

Sacha.

He smiled over at me as he took a dozen steps away from the ball and got into position. “You ready to lose?”

I crossed my eyes and nodded. “Bring it on, Sassy Pants.”

He raised an eyebrow before smiling huge. “You said it,” he replied, getting into position.

Sacha’s goal: getting the soccer ball into the goal.

The ball's goal: breaking my damn face.

It wasn't
really
Sacha’s fault the ball curved at the last minute and that my hands were in the air when the ball got intimate with my chin.