The Contradiction of Solitude (7 page)

Tate puffed on his cigar and blew smoke rings in the air. Needing something to do with my twitchy fingers, I fished another cigarette out of my pocket. Tate, knowing I never carried my own lighter, handed me his.

“You were the one that dipped your wick in the co-worker. That’s just stupid, Elian. Weren’t you ever told not to shit where you eat?”

“Your metaphors are really inspiring,” I remarked dryly, my lungs seized with the first drag of polluted air. For a man who smoked almost a pack a day, my body never really acclimated to the vice. My lungs still screamed in protest with every pull.

My body knew there were limits to my fabrications.

I licked my lips, picking at a piece of dry skin at the corner of my mouth.

“You know what I mean. Margie will be hounding you forever now. It was a moron move nailing her. Even if she looks like an instant hard-on.”

I didn’t bother to answer. Margie was a nice enough girl, and I had no doubt we’d enjoy each other’s company again. But I liked to keep things simple and uncomplicated. And if there were a chance for convoluted, I’d have to shut it down cold.

“Are you still heading out of town to see your parents next weekend?” Tate asked, changing the subject.

I nodded.

“That’s a damn shame. I was really hoping you’d hit the lake with me and the guys.”

I dropped my second cigarette on the step and ground it out with my toe. “You know I don’t do crowds, Tate,” I reminded him.

“But this one will be low key. Nothing crazy,” Tate cajoled.

I shook my head. “Can’t. You know I’ve got plans,” I said, giving him the same story once again.

“Yeah, yeah, your parents’ anniversary. I guess that’s a good excuse,” Tate muttered, rolling his eyes.

I smiled, something more akin to a grimace. The lie was so easy to tell. I wondered where the niggling guilt was. Where were the concerns of being found out? None of it was there.

I was an endless void of feeling. The only joy I felt was in creating Elian Beyer—son, brother, friend, lover. Likable and loved, Elian Beyer was whoever I wanted him to be.

The friends that I had made since moving to Brecken Forest three years ago were familiar with tales of my mother, Jane, a successful veterinarian and my dad, Kyle, who had just retired from his corporate gig. They knew about my older brother, Wade, who was married with three kids and my baby sister, Leanne, who was just about to graduate from college.

I had created family get-togethers and holidays spent in front of roaring fires at my parents’ home in upstate New York. I used the excuse of my niece’s christening as the reason I couldn’t work over the weekend last month when instead I stayed at home fighting the ongoing battle against the very real demons I was running from.

Tate, Margie, and George heard about weddings and funerals and birthday parties. Family reunions and Fourth of July barbeques. Happy. Normal. Typical.

And I was happy to share the intimate details of my life with the people I had come to know.

They had no idea that none of it was real.

It was so much easier living in the make believe world I had invented than to allow myself to think too long on the ugly, misbegotten truth.

Because Elian Beyer was a lie.

I ran my tongue over my gums, already jonesing for my next cigarette. Tate was talking. I wasn’t listening. My eyes were trained across the street to the figure moving with an unhurried gait.

She had her head down, staring with determined concentration at the ground. Unconcerned. Aloof. Mesmerizing. There was something appealing in the way it was obvious she didn’t want anyone to look at her.

But it was impossible to ignore a woman like that. It was a crime against nature.

I popped a mint in my mouth and stepped down off the curb. “I’ve got to go see a guy about a thing,” I said absently to Tate before walking out into the road, barely hearing the blast of a horn as someone swerved around me.

I ran my hands through my hair, wishing I had gotten it cut at some point in the last six months. I had let myself go a bit. There was more cushion in my mid-section. My normally toned arms had lost some of their definition. Somewhere between running and putting down roots I had gotten comfortable.

Comfort made eating Ding Dongs for breakfast and beer for dinner a common occurrence. I watched the beautiful girl walking in measured strides down the sidewalk. Following. Shadowing.

I wished I had dressed nicer today. Taken the time to wash my clothes and comb my hair.

Because then maybe my outside could mask my rotten core long enough to fool her.

Layna Whitaker, the mystery girl from Denny’s, ducked into the used bookstore, The Lion and the Rose, on the corner of the street. I followed a few seconds later, looking around for her dark hair and slouched shoulders that tried to hide everything.

I found her over by the counter talking to an older woman and looking bored with the entire exchange. I could tell she didn’t want to be there. She wasn’t interested in whatever the woman was saying.

Whatever was going on in that beautiful head was more important than the world around her. I wanted inside that head. I wanted to see life in her Technicolor.

She looked pained and unhappy. She wore the pinched expression of someone hating her life.

I understood that feeling well.

She fascinated me.

I stood there, in the middle of the aisle, blatantly watching her. I wasn’t even trying to hide my obvious stalker behavior.

Finally the older woman left, leaving Layna alone. She sat down on a stool and pulled out a notebook with a green cover, flipping through pages. She then produced a pencil and started writing furiously.

I walked toward the counter, not sure what I was doing. I sort of just wanted to stand there and watch her for the rest of the day. I almost didn’t want to ruin the uncomplicated perfection of observing her with unnecessary conversation.

“Hello,” I said, my voice jarring in the quiet.

Layna looked up, coal black eyes, sad yet lost, bored into mine. I shivered involuntarily.

“Hello,” she murmured, placing the pencil in the crease of the notebook and closing it.

I stood looking at Layna, wondering if we’d stay like that all day, as neither of us seemed in a particular hurry to move or say anything else.

“Can I help you?” she asked after a time, her lips curving upward in what looked like the beginnings of a smile.

“I’m looking for a book,” I said unhelpfully, grinning.

Layna snorted. “Any particular book? Or are pages and a cover your only requirement?”

“What would you recommend?” I asked, enjoying the sound of her voice.

Yearning hot and molten uncurled in my gut, spreading outward.

Lust and attraction were dangerous things. They could make a man rush to his death without thinking twice.

Layna could easily be my death and I wouldn’t care. I wanted her. I lusted. I longed. I desired. I was a man thinking with his penis first and his brain second. But I was enjoying the unreasonableness of whatever this was inside me that painted itself as rational behavior.

Layna came out from behind the counter and I took my time looking at her. She was thin but not overly so. Her legs were long and I could just make out the curve of her hips beneath her unflattering skirt. The bulky sweater gave no sense of what her tits were like but that didn’t even matter.

Tits or not, she was lovely to look at.

She didn’t say anything and I assumed I was to follow her. She climbed the stairs and walked between rows of shelves until she finally stopped and reached up to grab a book. She handed it to me and I smirked when I saw the title.

The Giant Book of Nothing.

“Huh. Looks like a humdinger of a read,” I replied flatly.

Layna cocked an eyebrow. “Humdinger? I don’t think I’ve heard that said this side of 1950.”

I chuckled. It was stilted and awkward. It didn’t seem to quite fit the mood or the situation. I didn’t know how to act around this oddly arresting woman. Smiling felt foreign. Laughing felt obscene.

“Call me old fashioned,” I said, clearing my throat as she murdered my laughter.

Layna didn’t move. She stood there, staring up at me with those big, sad coal black eyes. “So you work here, huh?” I asked lamely.

If I could have jumped into traffic I would have. After being mortally wounded by total humiliation.

Layna’s mouth twitched in that almost, but not quite smile that didn’t seem to belong on her face.

“It would appear that way.”

I looked around, the book still in my hand, struggling to find something to say. What had possessed me to follow her like an idiot to begin with?

It clearly wasn’t to engage in witty discourse over the meaning of life.

“I work across the street,” I told her after an infinite amount of silence.

“I know,” Layna replied, surprising me.

I swallowed, loud and thick.

“Oh really?” I squeaked. Yes, I actually squeaked.

“I’ve seen you go into the music shop twice a day since I started working here,” she explained, not seeming embarrassed by her admission that she too engaged in stalker-like behavior.

It was straight and simple fact.

It should have weirded me out. But it didn’t

Not in the slightest.

“I’m a luthier’s apprentice. George owns the shop and he’s letting me learn under him so I can open my own custom shop someday,” I found myself explaining, not sure why.

“I don’t listen to music. It burrows too deep. I feel it in my bones,” she said softly, and I had to bend towards her so that I could hear the words.

Normal people would have found her statement off putting. Odd. Uncomfortable.

We were both way past normal.

“Maybe you haven’t listened to the right kind of music,” I replied just as softly. It was such a cheesy thing to say. But for some reason, saying it to Layna didn’t feel like a crap come-on.

It felt real. Maybe the realest thing I had ever said.

Layna nodded as if she understood exactly what I was talking about. As though she
heard
me.

Every interaction with this woman was beyond strange.

“Maybe you’d like to come see my stuff sometime,” I offered, my casual confidence disappearing under the weight of her gaze.

Layna chewed on her lip. Small, perfectly white teeth nibbling on plump, red flesh.

“Tonight. After I get off work,” she said, seeming to make an important decision in her acquiescence of my suggestion.

Typically I left the studio at six. But for her, I’d wait.

“Okay,” I agreed.

Layna inclined her head toward the book still in my hands. “Are you going to buy that?”

I handed it back to her. “I’ve had enough
nothing
in my life.”

Margie and Tate left two hours ago. Margie had asked three more times whether I’d go to the party later.

“Thanks, Marg, but you know I can’t,” I told her for what felt like the hundredth time. She looked unhappy. I kissed the top of her head and patted her back. “Go get yourself a piece of ass and put a smile on that beautiful face.”

She had flushed, and I could tell she didn’t know whether to be upset at my dismissal, or flattered at my compliment. But I knew that she would get over her hurt feelings and that we would be fine. I was good at keeping friends.

Until my life didn’t allow for them anymore.

George wasn’t surprised when I told him I’d be staying late. It wasn’t unusual for me to burn the midnight oil working on a project.

As I sat in the darkened studio, smoothing the edges of the new fret board I had just finished, I felt as though I were waiting on the edge of the world. It was an odd sense of anticipation and disquiet that I couldn’t place or understand.

I also realized I had never asked Layna when she got off work. She hadn’t offered any details, and I hadn’t thought to ask for them.

I may very well be sitting in the shop all night waiting on a girl who never told me when she’d be coming.