The Sound of Us (17 page)

“Eventually.” He bites his bottom lip and lowers his head, and it’s almost instinctive when I wrap my arms around his neck and pull him into a hug. His face dips into my shoulder and he cries. I hold him, fingering through his orange hair soothingly, letting his tears dampen my shirt. There are no words I could say to make him feel any better, or any fuller, with that sort of emptiness aching inside of him. I have that hole, too. I can pinpoint it, mark it with an arrow, draw dashes to it on a treasure map because it is so familiar to me, like a old, deep scar.

“Thank you,” he whispers into my hair, even though I did nothing to deserve it.

It’s not your fault
, I want to say, just as Dad’s death wasn’t mine, but that won’t stop the doubt from weaseling into his blood and burrowing into his bones, until he’s nothing more than a body bag of guilt and heartache. No words can.

“Come on now,” I finally pull away, brushing the tears from his eyes with my thumbs, and press my forehead against his. He sniffles, chewing on his bottom lip. He’s such an ugly crier, but it only makes me love him more than I already do.

“It was my fault.” He whispers, closing his eyes so he doesn’t have to look into mine. His forehead is warm and sticky, like mine, but we don’t pull away. “Did you know she loved me? Holly. That she honest-to-God did? Every moment, I think. Ever since...well, I don’t know. It’s funny, but no matter how hard I tried to be the limelight, everyone loved
her
. I made all the piss-poor decisions. I drank, I screwed around, and I fucked myself a thousand times over. I should’ve died instead.”

“Roman…” I mutter helplessly, glad in my own selfish way that he hadn’t died because then I would’ve never met him. Without him, I would be infinitely different, and I am thankful beyond words that I am not.

“Roman, I—”

He pulls away and shakes his head, as if dismissing the entire thing, and rubs his eyes with the heel of his hand. They’re swollen and red, but he doesn’t look about to cry anymore. “How did you get in here anyway?”

“I, uh, there was a hole in the wall and…” I point behind me, vaguely in the direction of the crumbled wall.

“Ah.” He doesn’t even look for the hole in the wall as he absently reaches over and plucks the Jeopardy theme on his guitar. “And you’re still sticking to your guns that you didn’t tip him off?”

“I wouldn’t be here if I did,” I offer lamely, because the moment I could’ve told him my heart has disappeared. But what would he do if I did admit it? I’ll never see him again.
Balls to the wall
, as Maggie put it. “And, Roman?”

“Mmh?”

“I—”

“
Fuck
.” His eyes go wide, staring off in the direction of the entrance to the cemetery, and he jumps to his feet, pulling the guitar over his head. Then he looks at me, and suddenly I know that there is no way in hell he could ever love me back.

It’s not John this time, but the fine men of the Horry County Police Department. And they are heading straight toward us. Roman scowls, whirling back to me. “You told them! You—”

“Stop blaming me!” I snap, grabbing him by the forearm and tugging him toward the crack in the wall. I’m having flashbacks to the night we broke into the put-put course, but somehow I think the repercussions of this will be worse.

“You there! Stop!” One of the policeman calls after us, but his voice only propels my feet to go faster. Under my fingers, Roman practically vibrates with anger.

“Front page not enough, huh?” he hisses as we dash over a hill of gravestones and cut around the statue of a weeping angel. “A whole
fucking
year in Super 8 Motels and fuck good that did me. You come along and
wham
! Oh, look, I’m a household name again!”

“Oh please,” I snarl, because his temper’s getting old—fast. “You
love
the attention.”

“Not as much as you, apparently. You think that hair’s bright enough?”

“And yours isn’t?” I almost get sideswiped by a knee-high headstone, and I stumble. “And just so you know, I didn’t give him that memory card. Those photos were on the local memory, asshole! Totally not my fault! If anything, it’s
yours
for taking me with you!”

He shoots me a glare as we duck under a curtain of weeping willow vines. “You could’ve said no!”

“I did, back when you wanted to buy me
ice cream
.”

We hit the back end of the cemetery, and the hole isn’t here anymore. Did I get turned around? I scan the walls, but it must be hidden behind a willow? Stupid me—did I even come from this side of the cemetery?

Roman curses and kicks the cement wall. “I hope you and John are happy,” he grumbles. “Tell him your life story. Go on. I’m sure it’ll be a best-seller.”

“Why the
hell
would I tell him anything?”

“Because you hate me!” he roars.

I purse my lips. Nothing could be further from the truth.

“You know, this? This here?” He jabs a finger between us, so close I can smell the cinnamon and wet grass on his clothes. “This is the reason I don’t make
friends
.”

“Because you just wanted someone you could pull along for a while instead, right? You saw me and I tickled your fancy. I don’t know why. I’m not pretty. I’m mundane. I’m going nowhere—even my fuck-buddy kept me a
secret
.”

“Well, you know what they say,” he sneers. “Secrets don’t make friends.”

I clench my hands into fists so hard, my nails bite into my palms. The police appear over the last crest. Two of them have Tasers out. Neither of us wants to be tased. Where the hell
is
that hole in the wall?

But then a flash of magenta catches my eyes, past the policeman. A wash of relief floods through me.

Maggie.

She jumps up on one of the thicker headstones and whips her shirt off over her like a flag. A lumpy policeman huffs up the hill after her, and his eyes grow as wide as saucer plates.

This is it. Plan B.

Taking the memory chip out of my pocket, I shove it into Roman’s hand. “Look at it when you get a chance. It’s from John—with love. And do me a favor? If she meant so much to you, you should fight for that Madison gig. It’s what she would’ve wanted.”

His lips curve down into a scowl. “You don’t know anything about her.”

“You’re right,” I reply, pulling off my shirt and tossing it aside. “But I know what I’d do.” He stares, flustered, as I wiggle out of my shorts. Thank God, I have on matching underwear today. When I pop back up, he’s staring, startled, at my chest. “Yes, they’re real. Don’t get caught, got it,
RoMo
?”

“You’re not seriously...” he chokes. But I start running back toward the policemen, waving my hands in the air to flag their attention, before he can finish.

“HEY!” I shout, jumping up onto a marble bench. I reach back to unclasp my bra. Out of the corner of my eye, Roman gapes. A grin breaks out over my face. “FEAST YOUR EYES...” I sling off my bra and throw it at the nearest policeman as I jump off the bench and dodge through a row of tombstones.

“BOOB-A-BUNGA!” Maggie howls, slinging her bra up in the air. “LONG LIVE ROMAN HOLIDAY!”

The policemen turn to follow us, and the second they do, Roman ducks down behind a gravestone, memory card in hand, and disappears. I give the police the middle finger and hurtle over a gravestone, and Maggie slings her double D bra on a weeping angel. We grab each other’s hand and streak through the cemetery screaming Maggie’s favorite song, “Crush on You.”

Halfway through the crowd, our Roman Holiday underwear go sailing into the air.

I hope Roman enjoys the irony.

You know how in every cop drama the police station is always busy no matter what hour of the day? Yeah, that’s a lie. As we’re processed into the system—mug shots, fingerprints, the whole nine yards—I can count the number of officers in the building on one hand.
One hand.

“It’s a Thursday night,” our police officer, a guy named NESKY with a handlebar mustache, shrugs off. “We got public drunks to apprehend.”

“It’s six-thirty,” I argue.

“It’s the beach.”

Maggie nods in agreement. “He’s got a point. I mean, they probably do more than chase beautiful half-naked women around cemeteries.” She bats her eyelashes at Officer Nesky, who thankfully isn’t swayed in the slightest. He tells Maggie to face the other direction and takes her last photo. “This is my best side, anyway. I’d look better in chartreuse, though. You got any chartreuse shirts back where you pulled these hid-vicious gray things from?”

The officer rolls his eyes. “No.”

“Do get a lot of people like us?”

“Streakers?” he clarifies, filling in the rest of the paperwork, before motioning for us to follow him through the door to the holding cells. “Yeah, we get a few. You’re in luck. There aren’t many felons here yet. Later tonight though, mind your elbows.”

He opens the cell door for us and takes our handcuffs off as we go inside. I rub my wrists where the metal indented into my skin, hoping it won’t leave any bruises. Officer Nesky nods to the guard on duty by the desk, and I begin to ask him when we’re getting our clothes back when he shuts the door behind him, leaving us with the guard.

Maggie sits down on one of the benches. “I hope RoMo and Boaz are halfway to China by now.” She gives two men on the opposite side of our cell a sharp glare. She snaps her fingers towards them. “Hey—Hey, my face is up here. Just because I’m free-tittin’ it doesn’t give you an excuse to look. Creeps.”

Our guard has his back turned to us. He has a box of pizza open, but only the crusts are left, as he watches the small TV up in the corner of the room. Of course, it’s turned to the live coverage from the cemetery. The candle lighting is supposed to commence any moment now, but they keep replaying the moment a particularly burly policeman grabs me by the shoulder just after we’ve surrendered at front gate and pushes me to the ground. There’s a scrape on my knee from that.

“At least they’re classy enough to blur us out,” I comment, leaning back against the cold wall.

Maggie groans. “Yeah, but it makes my butt look
so
gigantor.”

“Could be worse, I mean, what’s up with my facial expression?” I try to mimic it, tongue splayed out, eyes rolled up, and Maggie giggles so hard she has to clutch her chest.

“Oh my God, don’t do that!” she howls. When I mock her, she elbows me in the side. The TV blips back from a commercial to Nick Lively, and she perks back up again. “Ooh! Guard-man!” she calls to our guard, who doesn’t even acknowledge us, “Turn it up, please!”

“Quiet down!” The guard grabs the remote, and turns up the volume. Maggie sticks out her tongue behind his back and nudges me to get up with her. We walk over to the side of the cell closest to the TV. I press my face between the bars because the cool metal sooths my sunburned cheeks.

Nick Lively must be in his media van since he’s standing in front of a black backdrop where my face, and a very old image of Roman—when he still had honey-colored hair and no tattoos—are superimposed beside each other. Between them, Jason Dallas slowly fades in, his black hair pulled back behind his head. I never noticed before, but his eyes are slanted, and his face is long. Like a fox.

Maggie squints at the news banner zipping across the bottom of the screen. “I think they’re talking about the concert next Saturday—oh, I’d give my
right ovary
to be there.”

This time, the guard turns around, his bushy black eyebrows furrowing, like two goth caterpillars in heat. “
Shhhhhhh
!”

We hold up our hands instinctively. “Sorry,” I mouth.

He turns up the volume, and slides back down into his comfy chair. I strain my ears to listen.

“...Talk about one hell of a
Roman Holiday
,” Nick Lively tries to joke with a bleached white smile and forces a laugh so that even if you don’t get the joke, everyone will laugh at the poor attempt.

Maggie just scowls. “You’d think he’d have better material.”

“I’m just surprised he knows what a roman holiday is.”

Nick Lively goes on, “Jason Dallas, a fellow singer who used to be an inseparable part of Holly Hudson’s group of friends, is live from New York City where he’ll be performing next Saturday night at a concert which— as any Holidayer would know—was originally Roman Holiday’s first Madison Square gig, and reportedly Holly’s long-time dream. How do you feel about it, Jason?”

The screen splits open, and the pallid face of the real Jason Dallas blips up. His hair is pulled back into a tiny ponytail; a lock of jet-black bangs feathering into his eyes. “I feel fine. How about you, Nicky?”

“He’s totes gorge,” Maggie tells me off-handedly. “I wouldn’t say no.”

“If you could pick between him and Boaz...” When she mocks aghast, I bump her in the shoulder. “Oh come on. Like I didn’t see you making your sex-kitten eyes at him.”

“I do have a think for men in kilts...” The scary thing is I don’t think she’s kidding. Not that we’ll ever see them again, but I make a mental note to tell the next guy she dates to wear a kilt. She’d go
nuts
.

Nick Lively cuts in with a harsh laugh. “Oh, Jason...you’re a riot.” His lips spread over his teeth in a pained smile. “Roman suddenly resurfacing is a little unnerving, isn’t it?”

Jason Dallas quirks a black eyebrow. The ring on the left side of his lip glistens as he grins. “Unnerving? Nah.”

“When the Gardens gig opened up, you were quick to fill their place.”

“We’re under the same label. We have the same manager. So listen, if little RoMo decides to pay me a visit, I’ll be glad to fight him for the stage. He still owes me fifty-five dollars for a fuckin’ game of strip poker.” He pauses. “I wasn’t supposed say ‘fuck’ on live TV, was I?”

Nick gives another nervous laugh. “You’re something else, Jason. So how do you feel about the streakers at Holly Hudson’s memorial?”

Jason Dallas shrugs. “Don’t care. The black girl’s got nice tits.”

Maggie jumps up and down excitedly. “Nice tits!” she echoes. “Jason Dallas says I have
nice tits
!”