The Sound of Us (2 page)

To say I was shell-shocked was the understatement of the year. To say that I wholeheartedly disagreed with her came in close second. “No way, Bon Jovi. Bon Jovi all the way!” I argued.

“Most
influential
? You even know what that means?” She sniffed indignantly.

“Yeah, Bon Jovi totally changed my life.” Dad had taken me to a Bon Jovi concert half a year before. We had seats in the nosebleed section, but it was still the best night of my life. I refused to wash the cigarette smoke and concert sweat out of the t-shirt after. It resides in the top of my closet now. Whenever I start missing Dad, I pull it down and take a big whiff. It doesn’t smell like him, because he constantly smelled like beer and stale Cuban cigars, but it smells like the
memories
of him. And that’s just as good.

Maggie and I became inseparable after that essay, since she wanted to be a journalist; she kept diaries like I kept music collections. We were like Velcro—she was the sticky, I was the spiky.

But then, five years ago, Roman Holiday came along.

I bet you’ve heard of them, though probably not by name. You can’t really distinguish their songs from Justin Timberlake and Maroon 5, although the front man, Roman Montgomery, does try a
little
ingenuity every now and again.

Sad to say, I doubt he can think his way out of a paper bag, much less come up with something memorable. Nevertheless, no matter how much I fought to get her to listen to other bands—The Format, the Darkness, or even Motion City Soundtrack for God’s sake! —she became
obsessed
with Roman Holiday. She went to the concerts, bought the posters, and wore the t-shirts.

It was worse than herpes.

I thought it was a phase. Like N*Sync and Hanson. But it wasn’t. It got worse when Holly Hudson died, and the band dropped off the face of the earth. Now, Maggie’s obsession is a plague on both our houses. Every tabloid headline, every newspaper snippet, and every photo on the internet she consumes like a vacuum. There’s a paparazzo she follows—I try not to pay attention. He actively stalks Roman Montgomery like he has some sort of vicious vendetta.

I thrum my fingers on the fake marble countertop at the bar. I wish we could afford real wood, at least.

“Oh my God,” Maggie gasps, staring down at her phone, “they’re in Montana! They bought
groceries
!”

“Yay, groceries.”

“No, this is legit! Look at this. Look!” She spins her phone over to show me a blurry image of a dark-haired guy bending over a mound of lettuce. “It’s
RoMo
!”

“He eats healthy at least,” I remark. “I really don’t see why you stalk a murderer on the internet.”

“He didn’t kill her, okay? Roman Montgomery couldn’t hurt a fly.” She rolls her eyes. “Why does everyone think he did?”

“A guy with no alibi? Getting off scot-free?”

“He has an alibi. He was out.”

I quirk an eyebrow. “Out where? Or was he fucking some roadie again and didn’t want to admit it?”

She rolls her eyes, “Smartass,” and returns to her phone, rattling off other news—their contract is running out, their album
Like Thunder
, which came out a month prior to Holly Hudson’s death, is about to go platinum, blah blah blah... “So when are you leaving for Dirty Myrtle? Tomorrow?”

“Yeah. In the morning. Are you sure you can’t go with me?” I try to put as much whine in my voice as humanly possible. “It’s going to be
hell
without you.”

“You’ve gone every year without me so far,” she says, not even sparing a glance up from her phone.

“But this is different! That was with Dad and Mom, not Mom and the step-idiot. He’ll ruin it. All of it. How will I survive?”

Of course, she wouldn’t understand the condo was something between Mom, Dad, and me. It was
our
vacation. And now Chuck—
Charles
—is going to poison it with his expensive shampoos and lavender-scented aftershave.

“Better question,” she replies, “how will the bar survive without you?”

I deflate a little. “I’m prepared to come back to a smoldering ruin.”

“You have so much faith in the bar staff.”

I eye Geoff, our head bartender, schmoozing up a broad-shouldered hunk in the corner of the bar. Behind Geoff, the faucet is running. I take a bobby pin out of my hair, letting a chunk of pink hair fall into my face, and throw it at him. “Hey, earth to Major Geoff!”

He jumps when it hits him square in the ear. “Ow! Sorry. Was, uh—”

“Yeah, I know. Faucet.”

He jumps to turn it off. “I swear I’m not a space cadet, Boss,” he replies with a chuckle. “Nice hair though. Is that fuchsia or electric pink?”

“It’s called My-Mother-Will-Kill-Me.”

“Sounds about right. Got that whole Lolita thing going on.”

I snort in reply.

Geoff tsks, turning back to flirt the pants off of another patron. Geoff’s a twenty-four-year-old horn-dog from New Jersey, so he has the whole Jersey Shore dark hair and tan thing going on, which only makes the pale mountain men of Asheville, North Carolina, notoriously jealous. At least they don’t have to compete with him. My bartender only swings one way, and it’s not toward anyone with tits. He says over his shoulder, “You’re turning into such a heathen, boss.”

“Ugh, I know.” I mock-roll my eyes. “Now all I need is to go clubbing and bring home a guy with tattoos and a bullring.”

“Well...” Maggie bites her bottom lip thoughtfully, “if you’re not doing anything tonight, a few college guys playing a Quidditch match down at Pack Square Park. They’re probably still there. Wanna go? Most of them don’t have bull rings, but I totes think you can find a tatted Malfoy.”

“Tempting. Do I have to run around with a broom between my legs?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Then that’s a deal-breaker.”

“Muggles,” she scoffs, sliding her phone into her back pocket, and twists her long dreads up into a bun behind her head. She fans the back of her neck with a drink menu. “Just means I’ll have all the Nevilles to myself. Dear
fuck,
it’s hot. Are you ever going to get the air conditioning fixed?”

I shrug apologetically. “Eventually?”

“Eventually,
eventually
. Well,
eventually
you’ll regret not coming with me to the Quidditch match.”

Normally, I would cave and go with her, just to be a good wing-woman, but I’m just not feeling it tonight. “Eventually, I
might.
” Before she can rebuke, I ask my bartender, “You closing tonight?”

He gives me a salute and quirks a teasing eyebrow to the hottie in the corner. “I’ll take my time,” he replies coyly, more to the patron than to me.

Maggie and I slide off our stools together. She holds the door open for me as we exit the bar and split our separate ways. “I’ll make it up to you?” I offer.

“We both know that’s a lie!” She calls over her shoulder, waving goodbye with her middle finger.

What I don’t tell Maggie—and what she doesn’t know, and probably never will—is that while she’s pretending to fly around with a broom between her legs, I’m
not
going home to pack for vacation tomorrow. Not yet, anyway.

I find the number I’m looking for in the backlog of my phone, and call it as I get into the station wagon. The phone rings three times before a soft, liquid voice answers, “Yeah, this is Caspian, how can I help you?”

“Hi, Cas,” I squeak.

“Junie?” He sounds surprised. “Hi baby, is everything all right?”

“Can I come over for a while?” I ask, trying to not sound too hopeful, glancing at the clock on my dashboard. It blinks 2:09 AM in ominous green numbers.

“Yeah, come on over. I just got in.”

Ten minutes later, I park behind the barn at the rear of his house, and sneak through the bushes to the side of the yard so the security cameras won’t see me. His dad is a pilot, so he travels a lot, and his mom is one of those investment bankers, so she takes frequent trips to Bora Bora with her girlfriends and leaves the house to Caspian. It’d be lonely, I think, to be in a huge house like this with nothing but the best security system money can buy, but he says he doesn’t mind. During the few times I’ve been over to his house, he’s had either the radio or TV on. I think he’s scared of silence, and when I retrieve the key from under the back porch doormat and let myself into the kitchen, silence sounds a hell of a lot better than what’s playing on the radio. I cringe.

Roman Holiday.

“Don’t tell me you’re listening to that, too,” I groan, dumping my purse down on the inlet counter.

He looks up from a bowl of leftover Chinese, and outstretches a half-eaten egg roll to me between his chopsticks. “Food?”

“Not really hungry,” I reply, tugging my hair out of its ponytail.

His perfectly tweezed eyebrows shoot up in surprise, as if he just notices the color. “What did you do to your hair?”

“Do you like it?” I ask.

Cas’s eyes are this crazy sort of cornflower blue that remind me of a summer sky, accented by a strong jaw and a thick head of straw-colored hair, tonight pulled back into a small ponytail with a rubber band. It’s hard not to blush when he looks at me.

We’re less than a couple but more than friends. We don’t use each other. We’re just…I dunno. We just
run into
each other. First, it started as harmless cat-and-mouse games at house parties, a kiss here and there, but then it escalated into making out in back bedrooms as the year progressed.

So, sort of like the buddy without the fuck in it.

He tilts his head, as if gauging his words, before saying, “It looks sexy.”

My heart rises like it’s tied to a helium balloon. “
Really
?”

He laughs, a sound like velvet. He outstretches his hand, and when I take it he pulls me around the counter to where he’s sitting. “Really,” he replies, kissing my neck. It takes a lot of self-control for me to not melt into my Converses here and now.

I lean into him, closing my eyes, so welcomed to losing myself for a while.

“How does your bartender like it?” he asks.

My eyebrows furrow. “Geoff?” I sigh, rolling my eyes, and turn around, pressing my palms against his hard chest. He’s still wearing the clothes he must’ve went out in, a blank V-neck shirt and boot-cut jeans. “Oh, I doubt he noticed. He was flirting with another mountain man. Like he always does. Where was the party tonight?”

“A bonfire down at Matty’s,” he replies, distracted, and kisses my cheek. “You’re so tense.”

I pout. “Not everyone can have a good time all the time like you. Some of us have
responsibilities.
”

He snorts, pulling away. “Sure, but we can have a good time right now.”

I study him. There’s a mischievous glint in his eyes that begins to twist a grin across my lips. I pull my arms around his neck and hang on him. “I’m listening…”

“We could have a
great
time, baby.” To demonstrate, he runs his fingers up my arm so gently, goose bumps ripple up my skin, and he traces his thumb along my lips. My heart leaps into my throat so I can’t breathe, and my head begins to buzz.

I jump, startled, as “Rock of Ages” fills the kitchen, and pull away from Cas to read the caller ID on my phone. It’s Mom. Probably worried sick over where I am. I’m usually home by now, or if I’m not I tell her I’m with Maggie.

It slipped my mind tonight to tell her anything at all.

I hesitate for a moment. If I answer it, it’ll ruin the mood, but if I don’t she’ll burst a blood vessel and keep calling. “Sorry,” I mutter, ashamed that I’m eighteen and still being babysat by my mom. I answer the call. “Yeah, Mom?”

“Where
are
you?” she snaps.

Cas moves away to the kitchen sink, and squirts a small bit of hand sanitizer into his hands, rubbing it all the way up to his elbows.

“It’s two-thirty in the morning,” Mom goes on, “and you’re not even packed yet! I called the bar and they didn’t even know where you were! What if something happened to you? I would’ve never found you.”

“I’m at a friend’s,” I reply, trying to restrain my impatience, twirling my hair around my finger.

“Do I know her?”

Him
. “Uh, no. It’s someone from…school.”

“At two-thirty in the morning?”

“Yes…” I reply, no matter how unlikely it is that she’ll believe me.

She sounds like she can smell my bullshit from four miles away. “Well, we’re leaving at nine o’clock sharp—so you better be packed by then.”

Couldn’t I just stay home? But I knew that wasn’t an option. Family vacations, even without Dad, still required my presence.

I hang up and heave a sigh. Cas looks up from picking at his cuticles with a raised blond eyebrow. “I’m so sorry,” I say. “Mom’s a little…”

He shrugs. “At least your parents care.”

I can’t argue against that. “But trust me, you wouldn’t want to meet them.”

“What, don’t want to introduce me?” he teases, closing in on me again, and grins. “How long has it been since we started this?” he asks, bemused.

“Six months,” I say before I realize how spot-on I am. Six-months to the date, almost, and only seven months since Dad…

He must read the crumbling look on my face. “Don’t think,” he whispers against my lips.

So I don’t.

I reach up on my tiptoes and crush my lips against his. He makes a surprised noise, but then he catches himself and fights back, aggressive and passionate, like he can’t get close enough. I dig my fingers into his chest as his lips migrate to my cheek, to my ear, to my neck, wanting to coat every bit of me.

The heady scent of AXE aftershave fills my lungs as I breathe him in, caught up in the way he tastes—like beer and cigarette smoke—and the way his tongue runs across mine, and how teasingly he bites my bottom lip.

Mom has her vacation starting tomorrow. But tonight…tonight is mine.

He lifts me onto the counter, and presses his hand against my breast. My heart thunders in my ribcage faster than a Led Zeppelin drum solo. We’re breathing heavy, and my face is flushed, my lips throbbing. A lock of hair has fallen into his face, but I push it back behind his ear, looking down at him, our eyes connecting.