Tracks (Rock Bottom) (8 page)

Theresa is doing some dishes in the sink. I figure I'd do some job hunting to get my mind off things.

As I'm searching and applying for jobs, my mind still wanders to those pictures in the paper. I never even saw anyone standing outside my doorway. How scary, the
thought people are watching your every move and you never know how to anticipate it. I feel a pang of sympathy for Jeremy, but in the back of my mind I wonder if he even cares, or maybe even likes it. He is a little bit of a narcissist.

I apply to a few jobs here and there. I have an undergraduate degree in political science, so I apply to a lot of courthouses and police stations. I’d really like to work part time in a courthouse so I could get my foot in the door with the lawyers who own law offices and the judges. If I don’t make the DA office, I
have to have a back-up, right?

When I finally look at the clock, it’s 1 p.m., and I’m hungry. I stand up and stretch, about to walk over to the kitchen, when I hear my cell phone ring. Theresa turns around on the couch where she’s watching TV to look at the phone vibrating on t
he dining room table. I freeze.

“Go
pick it up!” she half whispers.

I walk over to the phone and, without looking at the caller-id, slide the button on the screen over. “Hello?” I say as I put it up to my
ear.

“Dy
lan,” I hear in a silky melody.

“Hi Jeremy,” I say as my mouth goes dry. I almost instant
ly begin to pant. Theresa silently claps her hands in a giddy way.

“How was the rest of your night?” he says, and I can hear a lot of commotion in the backg
round.

“I just went straight to bed. I was exhausted. Are you feeling ok
ay?”

He was silent for a minute. “
Yeah, I guess I was tired too…hey, you want to come here? Maybe watch the show tonight from the wing?”

My heart leaps. “Yes!” I blurt out, too excitedly. He chuckles. “Ok. Rich will be there soon.
”

“Alright,” I sigh. Ewe, am I actually swooning? I put this feeling to memory
for later consideration. “Bye.”

“
See you soon.”

We pause.
I wait for the other line to die, but I still hear him breathing. Obviously, he was waiting for me to hang up, too. He chuckles and I laugh.

“Bye,” I say and hang
up. I’m not one of those lovey-dovey “you hang up first” girls. Ewe.

Theresa stands up and hugs me. I hug her back and laugh u
ncomfortably. “Um, why?” I say.

“I’m just so happy for you,” she says in my ear. “I thought
you were asexual for a while.”

I laugh. “I am asexual.”

She backed away from me and looks in my eyes. “Oh no, honey. That conversation you just giggled out…you’re sexual.”

I blush.
I hear a knock at the door. Theresa walks over to open it, and Rich is standing at the top of my stairs. Again he’s wearing all black with black sunglasses. I smile and wave. He nods at me in return. “Ready, miss?” he says in his big voice. I check myself in the mirror hanging by the door, running my fingers through my straight hair. I slip on the gold sandals that are next to the couch and grab my gold purse and throw it over my shoulder. It’s really heavy. I’m going to have to clean it out ASAP.

As I’m walking down the stairs, I take a second to really absorb how crazy this all is. In just a matter of three days
-look how much my life had changed. I’ve had feelings that I would have sworn two weeks ago could never exist in me. I wondered idly if my parents had ever even once felt this way towards each other. I stopped that thought dead in its tracks. No, I’m not letting them ruin this night with Jeremy the way they ruined all of my other relationships my whole life. Jeremy is special; someone I was pretty certain I could never find the equal to again.

Rich opens
the back door to the familiar sleek, black car. I crawl inside and once again do my make-up on the way to meet Jeremy, back at the Wilbur. The drive is shorter than I remember, and we pull up to the stage entrance just as I’m putting away my lip gloss. I quickly spritz myself with flower-scented mist before Rich opens the door. I take a deep breath to calm the butterflies fluttering rapidly in my stomach before I exit the car and step onto the asphalt. Rich and I walk towards the steel door. He reaches it first and opens it for me and I step inside to the darkness.

We walk down a short way before I see the madness ensuing inside. People are running here and there, mostly in all black and wearing headsets, though some had business suits on. Some are yelling over the headset, some at each other, others
are carrying heavy equipment. Rich and I walk slowly down the hall. “What’s going on?” I yell to Rich above the noise.

“Getting ready for the show,” he replies. His voice is so deep and booming all the time, he doesn’t need to yell.
We continue until we make a right and come into the hallway that I recognize. I look behind me and see another steel door and realize that it’s the door by the stage I was carried through the first night. It’s nice to have my bearings straight. We pass the smoke room and I’m thankful to not see prostitute pixie or bottle blonde in there, but there are a few younger people standing around, listening to music and smoking cigarettes. Some are pretty girls that are scantily clad. The butterflies in my stomach stop and are replaced by jealous knots.

We finally reach the wooden door to Jeremy’s dressing room and Rich knocks loudly. I hear a smooth melody answer, “Come in!” Rich opens the door and puts his hand on my lower back, basically pushing me in. I stumble a bit and
Rich closes the door behind me.

I see Jeremy draped on the couch. Beer bottles clutter the white desk with the mirror
and the coffee table. I assume he had some people in here last night. The knots tighten and make me want to throw up, remembering the kind of activities he likes to enjoy with certain females.

I
finally look directly at Jeremy and everything in my body turns to butter. I tingle with electricity. He looks astonishing. It’s a hot day, and he has a sheen of sweat covering his body. His tight white T-shirt clings to his muscular chest. His dark jeans are again hanging low on his hips, exposing his hip bones. He’s barefoot and sleeveless, so casual yet he makes it look so elegant and beautiful. He has his signature grey guitar on his lap and a cigarette hanging from his gorgeous pink lips. He’s clean shaven today, which kind of disappoints me. I loved the way his face felt when it grazed against mine. I imagine for only a moment the way his stubble would feel against my inner thighs…

“Hi!” I say, quickly. He smiles around his cigarette and
lets go of the neck of his guitar to remove it from his mouth.

“Dylan,” he says, in what I now consider to be his usual greeting.
He sits up straight and motions me to sit beside him.

I take a seat, but this time I’m a little more relaxed being close to him. I don’t feel the need to sit almost on the arm rest. The leather feel
s familiar against my skin. I like feeling familiar in his space.

“It’s fitting you should be here. I’d like to start fresh in this place,” he says, with a serious look.

“My reaction was uncalled for,” I said, even though I’m not sure I agree with that. I’m just in such a good mood. “I had no right to be upset.”

He smiles a wry smile and takes another drag on his cigarette. His eyebrow goes up like he knows I don’t believe a word I’m saying.
I continue talking to distract him. “Where are your, um, friends today? Or do they only come after?” I start to feel a little bit of the burning again in the pit of my stomach.

He laughs a little.
“I got rid of them. They won’t be around anymore.”

I give him a confused look. It seemed like he liked them an awful lot. “Why? Seems like you were buddy buddy…” The burning builds.
I feel my face being to scowl.

He sighs as he strums a few cords on his guitar softly, the cigarette hanging from his lips. The sound is beautiful from that beautiful guitar. I don’t know instruments but
I know that guitar is special. He pulls the cigarette from his lips and lets some smoke escape slowly. Watching him blow that smoke out of his mouth is so sexy, the tingling in my groin goes from zero to sixty.

“I got rid of them because I knew they would upset
you.
And since they don’t really matter to me and you matter to me a great deal, I got rid of them.”

His eyes bore into me as he continues to strum his guitar. He doesn’t even need to look at it to play. I absorb his message. He cares about me, which is good. However, he doesn’t care about two girls he was obviously intimately involved with, which is not so good. I feel a sudden defensiveness for these girls. “
In that case, I hope it stays that way and I don’t get thrown out as easily as they did.”

He stops playing and puts his guitar down on the floor next to him gently. He folds his hands and places them in his lap
, with his cigarette in between two fingers. “What’s up with you? Why are you so damn defensive?” He tries to sound angry but seems amused. His angry voice is rough and sexy.

With that I stand up off the couch.
I don’t understand why I’m angry. I obviously take him by surprise. His eyes widen and he looks up at me.

“I don’t know,” I answer honestly. I turn red. “I’m sorry. I honestly don’t understand what I’m feeling.” The words are spilling out uncontrollably. I try to scream at myself to stop but it just feels so good to get it off my chest. “
I feel like an idiot. I’ve never felt this way. I don’t understand how to go down this path. It doesn’t make any sense to me. And it’s so soon and sudden.”

Jeremy stands
up and places his soft hand with rough fingertips on my arms. He runs his hands down my arms slowly to grab my hands. We stare into each other’s eyes for a minute. I start to feel ridiculous, and I laugh at myself. He smiles and laughs a low laugh too. We sit back down on the couch together. “Feel better?” he says, smiling.

“Yea
, actually.” I’m slightly embarrassed. He lays back slightly on the arm rest.

“So…” he starts. “You’ve
never been in a relationship?”

I guess I opened myself up to this line of questioning. But I remember
what I was thinking on the stairs outside of my house before I came. Jeremy is, quite possibly and probably, one of a kind. I decide that I’m going to try to be as open as possible and let my guard down a little. That way, if it goes wrong, I can shrug my shoulders at fate and say, ‘Hey, at least I really tried.’

I sigh. “No, I have. I’ve dated a few guys here and there. But I’ve only bee
n in one serious relationship.”

He puts his elegant hand up to his face and rubs his chin for a moment. He immediately puts his hand back in min
e. “It was a bad ending, then?”

I shrug. “No,” I answered honestly. “I just didn’t love him. I was comfortable with him, and at the time I thought it would be enough.
But I’ve seen that life, and it doesn’t work out for anyone,” I say darkly.

I look at him and he is listening patiently, hanging on every word.
His bedroom blue eyes burn into me.

There’s a knock at the door, and Jeremy yells for them to enter. A woman comes in, dressed
in all black, and pulls in a food cart. Jeremy thanks the woman, and she leaves.

Over lunch, the most delicious seafood and pasta I’ve ever tasted, I tell Jeremy about my parents.
It’s hard for me to talk about, as only one or two people in my life have ever even known.

My life as a child on the outside seemed normal enough.
My parents were very loving to me when I was younger, an only child, and I learned a lot from them. A lot of good things: how to focus in school, responsibility, and critical thinking. It’s what got me into Harvard. However, I learned a lot of awful things from them, too. My parents were friends for many years before they got married. They worked together numerous times when they were organizing political marches and benefits for the Democratic Party in the sixties and seventies. My parents married for convenience, so they didn’t have to be alone. They both wanted children but had thrown themselves into their work for too long to have met anyone, and they were approaching the age where it was too late to conceive.

They got along well enough. They never fought
or argued, but they were never intimate either. They were just…nothing. They barely spoke. They never took me on family trips or took family pictures with me. It confused me so much as a little girl. I knew my family wasn’t normal. Then one day when I was seven my mother took me to my father’s college so she could drop a book off that he had forgotten at home. She walked up to the receptionist’s desk and handed her the book, talking causally to her. I ran ahead of the desk, excited to see my dad. Mom told me to go to his office to say hi. I remembered running up to his office door, which was shut, and pushing it open.

There
I saw a young girl, no more than 18, bent over the desk. She was naked from the waist down, and he, also naked from the waist down, was pounding her from behind. I immediately felt the blood rush from my young face. I heard the girl moan, “Professor Ackhart” before I snapped out of my shock enough to shut the door quietly.