Heartstrings (5 page)

C
al knew
a moment of confrontation was brewing. He could feel it in his bones, like an old sailor could predict a storm. He knew Blake would have to have the last word, would have to show off his newfound status and wealth and success. Blake couldn’t just let things lie. Not then, not now, not ever.

So when Blake swaggered up to the bar after last call, Cal braced himself for a fight. He shifted his boots on the sticky bar floor, eyeballed the shorter man with a bouncer’s stare. He tried to think of some clever insult, something he could lob Blake’s way to defuse the bomb before it even blew.

But when Blake reached the bar, he didn’t immediately speak. He hovered there, awkward, and that caught Cal off guard.

Their eyes met. Cal wet his lips, suddenly self-conscious. He imagined he looked greasy and worn out, after such a busy night. Why would that even matter?

Blake’s eyes, that peculiar shifting shade of blue-green-yellow, slanted away from Cal after just a moment, as though he couldn’t bear the eye contact.

The son of a bitch seemed
embarrassed
about something.

“Cal,” he said. And the sound of his name on Blake’s lips dug into Cal like a fish hook, barbs twisting deep. He remembered what it sounded like when Blake said that name as a whimper, as a cry, as a moan...

“Blake,” Cal said, nodding congenially. He performed the action with the robotic, jerky motions of a body following a script. He wasn’t sure what else to do.

Quiet fell over them like a blanket. Blake drummed his fingertips in a nervous staccato on the bar top. In that silence, Cal took in the subtleties of Blake’s presence: the hint of fresh, clean aftershave he wore, the way he raked his teeth across his bottom lip as he stared off toward the door. Blake brought every one of Cal’s senses to life in a way nobody ever had.

Cal wanted to lunge across the room, pull the fire alarm, and run away.

But he didn’t. He stood there like an idiot until whatever Blake was pondering came to an end.

The two men spoke up at the exact same moment.

“I had something—”

“I really enjoyed—”

They shut up, then stared at each other. Cal narrowed his eyes. Blake did too. Cal licked his teeth again. Blake stood up a little straighter. Finally, Cal cleared his throat and waved a hand in concession, beckoning Blake to speak first.

“I had something for you,” Blake said, at long last. He said it with about as much joy as a doctor delivering a cancer diagnosis, which was a weird way to prepare someone for a gift.

“For me?” Cal asked, unsure.

“Yeah. It’s…” Blake hauled the guitar case up and set it atop the bar. “It’s been collecting dust for a while.”

“Why?”

Cal tried to avoid viewing the gift with suspicion, but it was hard not to. After so many years apart, this was how Blake chose to break the ice? Crash Cal’s bar, play a show without his consent, and give him a fucking present? Blake was always the sort of guy you could count on to commit grand emotional gestures that passersby might not understand, but this was all over the map even for him.

“I got it for you back before,” Blake said. He didn’t extrapolate further. He didn’t have to. Cal had the funny feeling neither of them had the physical ability to speak the words aloud:
back when things were better
maybe, but no
back when we were friends
and certainly no
back when we were fucking.

“You’ve got a guitarist in your band,” Cal said, unsure. “Why not give it to him?”

Weirdly, that got a laugh out of Blake. A bright, sparkling laugh that warmed a place so deep inside Cal it felt like it brushed his very core.

“Yeah, I do. But uh, he’s a dickhead.” Blake straightened up again, looking down toward the battered black guitar case on the bar top. “Not that you aren’t also a dickhead.”

For some reason, even in the insult felt like a term of endearment. Cal touched the guitar case with his fingertips, dared to flick the clasps and lift it open. Inside was a lacquered acoustic guitar, deep brown wood with some simple but tasteful filigree adorning the neck. Its steel strings gleamed in the bar’s low light, its wood still shiny with a hint of polish.

It smelled... new. Fresh. Even though Blake had said it wasn’t.

“We made it,” Blake said. “Pop and I. For your birthday. Your twenty-third birthday.”

Once, when Cal was in grade school, Lisa Dickinson had kicked him in the balls over a disagreement on the soccer field.

This moment felt almost exactly the same.

For a fleeting moment, it was easy for Cal to forget. The last five years faded away to his periphery, nothing more than an afterthought. What mattered was the beautiful piece of craftsmanship sitting in front of him, a gift from a dear friend who’d clearly poured his heart and soul into making it.

If he’d stuck around long enough to spend his twenty-third birthday with Blake, it would have been the most beautiful thing he owned.

Cal fought the sting of tears in his eyes and gruffly cleared his throat.

“You uh,” he started to say. He wasn’t sure what words were supposed to come next. Probably some expression of gratitude.

Instead he looked up, tentatively meeting Blake’s eyes.

“You wanna take her for a test drive?” he asked.

Blake’s mouth formed a tiny, wordless circle. He looked side to side, as if afraid someone might catch them together, a stolen moment of reconciliation that wasn’t allowed to happen in real life.

“Yeah,” Blake said, a little breathless. “Okay.”

Cal tried to ward himself away, tried to talk himself out of it. Because playing music with Blake again would be the final nail in his coffin. He didn’t want to fall in love again, not with
anyone.
Falling in love all over again with the guy who broke his heart in the first place seemed so stupid.

But when Cal brushed his fingers over the guitar’s strings, all he felt was a lightness in him, a glow, a warmth. A little grin tugged at his mouth, infectious and irrepressible.

* * *

T
he bar wasn’t quite closed
, but most of the stage had been dismantled and most of the regulars had cleared out. Still, there was a sparse audience watching as Cal and Blake pulled a couple chairs over into a corner, Blake with his banjo and Cal with his new guitar. Cal didn’t have a tuner handy, but Blake had an app on his phone that did away with that excuse.

“I don’t even know what to play,” Cal said, running his fingers over the steel strings, enjoying the texture of them. Blake shrugged, plucked a little roll on his banjo that Cal recognized as “Goodnight Ladies,”
a warm-up.

“What’s something easy?”

“Most of our songs are easy. They weren’t supposed to be hard, just fun.”

Blake laughed at that, then started to pluck the opening bars of a song Cal recognized. It was one they’d often played together, an old Mississippi John Hurt number.

“‘Staggerlee’? Really?” Cal snorted, amused.

“It’s Stack O’Lee, man.”

“That’s not even true.”

It was an argument they’d had before. But in the end, the name of the song—or rather, the name of the gentleman featured prominently in the lyrics—didn’t really matter.

Following along by ear, Cal sat out the first few bars, then gently joined in. He finger-picked in tandem with Blake’s banjo, a few light harmony notes here and there. At first, he was cautious. He hadn’t played guitar much at all since leaving the band. But muscle memory was a powerful thing, because soon enough his fingers were flying.

Though the tune was a simple bluegrass staple, the warm, resonant tone of Cal’s guitar elevated it to something else. He could hardly believe how good it sounded.

Once Cal had established his part, Blake took over the vocal melody on his banjo, playing along rather than singing. The standard was a simple one, but the banjo was a bright, jangling counterpart to the warmth of Cal’s chords.

Not once did Cal even have to look over at Blake. They just riffed off one another like nothing had changed, like whatever wordless communication between them hadn’t taken a single day off, let alone five years. Because that was how it had always been between them: easy, natural. There was nothing forced about it.

Cal wasn’t sure he was thinking about the music anymore.

But then again, was it so bad? To indulge in a little nostalgia, to explore his feelings through the lens of a few years’ experience and maturity? Cal continued to play, fingers moving lightly over frets and strings, but he focused now on Blake.

Blake had his eyes closed, as he often did while playing. His agile hands worked the banjo with an expert’s touch, no superfluous movement to them at all. Cal watched the shadows play over Blake’s knuckles, then let his gaze travel up languidly, roving over Blake’s body, settling on his mouth. He had full lips, a mouth that was quick to frown or smile or laugh, a very
mobile
mouth...

Cal felt it like a change in the weather, the subtle shift inside him. A lazy wave of arousal washed over him, tempting him along a different train of thought. He wondered if Blake had any new tattoos. He wondered if Blake would taste the same.

But before he could indulge those thoughts any deeper, Blake plucked a single, loud chord, signifying the end of the song. They ceased playing in tandem, their last mingled notes ringing out together.

Scattered applause broke out in the bar, Yanmei’s among it.

Cal’s mouth felt dry. And when he dared look up, he saw Blake was staring at him. The look in Blake’s eye sent a shudder through Cal’s spine.
Intense
was one word that was often used to describe Blake Bradley’s eyes, but when Cal looked into their color-shifting depths presently, the word that leaped most readily to mind was
pleading.

That was a look that could get a man to obey. To give up anything.

Cal had to be careful. So careful.

T
he jam session
at The Garage had left Blake rattled. He couldn’t stand the feeling. He kicked around the hotel and the venue both in a state of irritable moping, consuming too many energy drinks and too many tempura veggies from catering.

He typed in a blank text window. Then he immediately deleted it. He sounded like a little girl after a junior-high dance. Jesus. He was a grown man.

He tried. But no, that sounded like a semi-estranged relative.

Fuck, why did it have to be so hard? All he wanted to do was let Cal know that seeing him again had actually been... really good. Great, even. Relieving. He felt as if an immense weight had been swept off his shoulders. Like the removal of that guitar from his closet was the manifestation of clearing out begrudging cobwebs in his heart.

But he couldn’t just
say
that. Not to Calvin Lindsay, whom Blake was pretty sure had No-Nonsense as a middle name.

Fortunately, Erica had a distraction for him prior to their show. Unfortunately, it was Rhett-related.

“Hey, can I talk to you for a second?” Erica asked, peeking around the doorway into the catering room. Blake sat alone, munching on broccoli tempura, and beckoned her in with a batter-covered carrot stick.

“What’s up?” he asked.

Erica dropped down onto the bench seat beside him, frowning at the door. She had deep red lipstick on that lent her moody expression a hint of Old Hollywood drama. Blake wasn’t sure he should tell her that or not. On a good day, she’d appreciate it.

“I think Rhett’s been going through my stuff,” she said.

“That’s... odd, even for him.” Blake wasn’t sure what word to pick there, but “odd” covered many bases.

“Specifically my meds,” she said.

And that put the conversation into a whole new context. Blake made a grunt of acknowledgment, but kept his mouth shut, opting to listen rather than opine.

“I wasn’t sure at first, thought maybe I just wasn’t keeping track. I don’t take them that often, you know?”

Blake knew Erica took painkillers sometimes, courtesy of an old car accident she’d been in as a teenager. She used to play a full drum kit, but the accident gave her lower back problems that hadn’t entirely gone away. Blake always hoped playing the tambourine had at least taken the edge off losing the drums for her. And she was a hell of a backing vocalist, too.

Deep down, the tiny pit of anger Rhett had dug in Blake’s heart rumbled.

“Anyway, a few went missing here and there. But this morning, I went to take one and there’s less than ten left.”

“The Oxy?”

“That’s the one.”

Blake took a deep breath, puffing his cheeks out as he released it. He felt it was his duty to be diplomatic here, even if he assumed Rhett was the culprit right alongside her.

“What makes you think it’s Rhett?” he made himself ask.

“Lily and him hung out in our room this morning. They had breakfast together, room service.”

Lily and Erica were usually roommates, because the two of them tended to go out together while the band was on tour. And Lily having Rhett over made sense, too. While the rest of the band had more or less written him off as the irredeemable prick that he was, she still tried to play nice.

Being in a band felt like managing world diplomacy sometimes.

“Anyway, the pill thief definitely isn’t Lily. You know that all natural green eating and essential oils shit she’s into right now.”

“Yeah, suppose you’re right.”

Blake whooshed out another sigh, then took a bite of his carrot stick. He tilted the bowl toward Erica, who declined.

“You think we should tell Palmer?” Paul and Patricia Palmer were the band’s managers, known as Palmer and Patty backstage.

“I don’t think I have enough to prove it,” Erica said, her tone sour. Blake felt inclined to agree with her, as certain as he was that Blake was guilty.

“Well, thanks for letting me know,” Blake said. “I’ll keep it to myself, but also keep an eye on him. If he’s using more than booze, we should know about it.”

“That’s why I thought I’d tell you.”

After more lighthearted small talk and an encouraging hug, Blake let Erica wander back to the dressing room. He stayed put right where he was, trying not to think about Rhett.

Not thinking about Rhett was all the more important these days, because any time he thought about Rhett, he thought about Cal. And how none of this would be happening if Cal was touring with them. And how amazing it had felt to just kick back and play music with Cal again, after all that time. How it felt as though nothing had changed at all.

He realized why his texts kept coming out stupid. Because texts were a thing you
planned
, when typing them. They weren’t spontaneous. They weren’t heartfelt. They were authored, with thought and attention put into them.

That wasn’t what Blake needed. That wasn’t his strength.

He stood up, shut the door to catering, and dialed Cal’s number. He wanted to express some gratitude with his actual voice, hear Cal talk back to him. That would be better. Warmer. More human.

Instead, Cal’s voicemail greeting implored him to leave a message. He hadn’t even recorded a personalized one, just the generic female robotic tone reciting his phone number.

It was better than nothing.

“Hey,” Blake started, “it’s me. I was just calling about last night. It was a lot of fun, catching up and just playing some music with you.” He paused, but not for long enough to think
too
hard about what he was saying.

“I’m in town for a few more days, filming at Red Rocks and stuff. I’d love to catch up again before we roll out.” He took a deep breath, held it. “I missed you, Cal. Let’s... let’s not be strangers, yeah?”

He cut the call, then shoved his phone away deep into a pocket.

Stepping out onstage that night, Blake felt more settled in his homecoming. As if now that he’d tentatively reached across that bridge to Cal, he really was back where he came from.

* * *

T
he gig was great
. Rhett even behaved himself. Although Blake wondered if Rhett’s pleasant and relaxed demeanor that particular night was chemically induced.

It was awful: every few minutes he got the urge to check his phone, just in case Cal had gotten back to him. He’d never had to deal with that sensation during a concert before. And it meant that once the show was over, he stole straight into the green room like a guilty kid trying to evade his parents’ eye.

He unpocketed his phone and held his breath.

No response. Cal either hadn’t heard his message, or he’d listened and rebuffed it.

Great.

Blake intended to go straight back to the hotel, too distracted to socialize. He was trying to figure out what Cal’s silence meant. He called a car, then settled into the backseat and let his forehead rest against the window. The cool glass grounded him, kept his feet planted firmly on the ground even when his heart wandered haphazardly all over the place. Cold rain kept the glass chilly for him, his breath fogging up the pane.

He couldn’t leave Denver without seeing Cal again. Not after getting that close. Not after getting that tiny taste of what reconciliation might feel like.

Just as the cab rolled into the hotel’s parking lot, Blake understood. His insistent longing to see Cal before the band departed was worse than he thought.

He didn’t want to leave Denver without Cal beside him. Like there was a chance in hell of that happening.

Blake shoved a hundred-dollar bill into the cabbie’s hand and staggered outside, his brain racing a mile a minute.

This was who he was. This was what he did. This impulsiveness, this emotion-driven, frenetic existence. He wasn’t scared of his feelings because feelings this crazy felt
right
to him.

Fingers slipping on his phone’s touchscreen in the chilly rain, Blake dialed Cal’s phone number again. He hadn’t thought about what he wanted to say, but the less he thought, the better. He gave in to his id and began pacing back and forth, cursing each ring in his ear. Surely Cal kept his phone on him even at work. There was no way he hadn’t noticed Blake calling.

“Come on, you son of a bitch. Pick up.”

But despite Blake’s imploring, the voicemail was what greeted him once again.

Blake didn’t care.

“Hey,” he said. “Me again.”

He could hardly hear his own voice over the sound of pattering rain and LoDo traffic. He wiped water out of his eyes, realizing that his fingers had gone numb with cold. But he felt warmed from the inside out, powered by the belief that what he was doing was right.

“I wish you’d pick up your phone, idiot,” he said. “I have something I want to say. But if you’re gonna make me say it here, fine: I want you to come with us. Take a couple weeks off. Join us on the tour. We’ll make room. I don’t care if you’re out of practice. I don’t care if you’re still mad.”

Blake gave in to the thunderous beating of his heart, the frantic pace of his speech bolstered by adrenaline.

“I don’t care about any of that. I just want to make music with you again. Call me.”