"Ellie," he whispers.
I freeze. "Ellie?"
He does, too, and we stare at each other. Our breathing is heavy. The silence is like a massive curtain settling over us, pressing us into the couch, and suddenly his weight is more than I can bear. He understands and moves away, his head buried in his hands. It's then that I hear it, the sobs. I know now he's probably drunk, but realize it's the tears causing the drinking, not the other way around.
I close the distance between us as my heart shatters and wrap my arms around him. He leans into my shoulder, crying like the neighborhood bully after another beating from his abusive father. They're hard tears, unfamiliar, but completely wild as they push through the fortress protecting his battered soul.
We sit like that for a long time. The tears eventually subside into an embarrassed swat at his face, and he rubs hard, as if punishing his eyes for putting on such a display. I refuse to let him be embarrassed.
Instead of pulling away, I loop my arm through his and lean against him, gripping his hand in mine. I'm not looking at him anymore, instead staring at our reflections in the giant screen hanging on the wall across from us. I'm not letting him go. I'm not letting him face Ellie's ghost alone.
After another long pause, I can feel him start to relax. I run my fingers along his arm, partly out of my own fascination, but mostly to remind him I'm here, and he's alive. I don't need to see his face to know he's left me to go to that other place again.
"Her name was Elena," he says finally, his voice still trembling a bit as it cuts through the silence.
I don't respond. It's my turn to listen. But it quickly becomes clear that name is all I'm going to get. Ellie is Elena. End of story.
I'm not surprised by the stingy gift, just disappointed. I want more than anything to be his anchor, but he doesn't seem prepared to come into shore yet. I wonder if he'll ever be.
"That's a beautiful name."
"She was a beautiful person."
I nod. "I'm sorry, Luke. Really." I'm completely sincere but I can tell by his expression that my words don't mean anything to him. In fact, I suddenly sense that I understand even less about his story than I thought.
"I am, too," he says quietly. He shakes his head. "But nothing personal, right?" he snickers, pulling away and pushing himself up from the couch. I understand his joke, a ridiculous comment to make while we are both half-naked in a hotel room. He doesn't elaborate and moves back to the bar, draining his glass and refilling it. I instinctively want to stop him, knowing he's doing himself no favors by hiding in expensive liquor, but it's not my place. I will accomplish nothing by turning myself into the enemy. I have no choice but to accept him as he is at this moment.
I reach for my sweater and pull it back over my head. He watches me quietly, and I wonder about the darkness I see suddenly seep into his features. I hold my breath when he looks away.
"Callie, about what just happened, I'm sorry. About all of it. I shouldn't have asked you to come here. I shouldn't have … I just … " he doesn't finish.
"No one can do life completely alone. We're not supposed to."
He looks at me then. I'm close, I can tell.
I get up and join him at the bar. It's my turn to remove the glass from his hand. I place it firmly on the table and drop the remote in his hand instead.
"I'm free the rest of the day. Let's watch a movie."
The light returns to his eyes as a slow smile spreads over his lips.
"Really? You're sure?"
I nod. "One hundred percent."
"Comedy, ok?"
I almost laugh. "Definitely."
Day Ten - Fifteen.
Room 403 becomes our new Jemma's Café, and breakfast club becomes more of a brunch room service. Luke is careful to keep his distance when I visit, and we both understand more and more about what happened when I first came to his room. How the vacuum created by two empty souls sucked them into each other in a moment of mutual weakness. We don't regret the connection, just understand what it was and that it doesn't have an impact on the present.
We spend our days as friends now. Watching movies, chatting about safe topics, and drinking. Lots of drinking. Well, by Luke anyway. I try not to say anything as I watch him fill his glass over and over again. I'm actually amazed he functions as well as he does, given the amount of alcohol that's probably in his bloodstream at any given moment. I know it will be my business at some point in our friendship, but we need each other right now, and I can't bring myself to alienate him quite yet.
"Here," he says after about a week of my visits. "You might as well just have this. It's not like I have anything here worth stealing anyway," he adds with a smile.
I roll my eyes, but my heart nearly stops when I peak inside the small, card-shaped envelope to see a key to his room. I stare up at him in shock.
"Are you serious?"
He shrugs. "I feel bad that you had to wait so long yesterday before I heard you knocking. Now I don't have to roll out of bed to let you in."
I laugh. "I see. So this isn't so much a statement about our friendship, but about your laziness."
He grins. "Basically."
"Business Suit Lady would lose her mind if she knew you did this."
"Business Suit Lady?"
"Yeah, the Guardian of the Lobby who gives me a death stare every time I soil these grounds with my commonness."
Luke laughs and drops beside me on the couch.
"You're talking about Mara Jacobson. Yeah, she's a piece-of-work."
"She's something alright."
I pull my legs up under me and lean back against the armrest to face him. "Really, though. Thank you. I promise I won't abuse the privilege. You tell me when you don't want me to come and I won't."
Luke waves his hand. "Nah, you'd be invited to all my wild parties anyway."
"Oh? What about the ones I want to host here?"
"Will there be pancakes and toast?"
"Absolutely. And all the orange marmalade you can handle."
"Whoa. Let's not get crazy now."
I laugh and study him for a moment. "Luke, tell me what it's like being a rock star."
He glances at me before laughing. I think maybe it's an uncomfortable laugh, but he doesn't seem overly surprised by the question.
"What do you want to know?"
"I don't know. Anything. It's not every day a girl gets to hang out with one on his couch."
"Ah, I see," he replies, suspiciously. "So I was right all along. This whole thing was an elaborate ploy of a psychotic fangirl."
It's my turn to laugh. "Yeah right. A fangirl who had no clue who you were."
He grins, but studies me with that intensity that makes me want to climb inside his head.
"It's different than what people think, I guess."
"Different how?"
He shrugs. "They think it's all glamour and supermodels and drugs."
"It's not?"
He stretches and closes his eyes for a moment before staring at the far wall again. "Maybe it is at the end, I don't know. Not in the beginning."
"You mean when you were first starting out."
He nods. "Then it's all late nights, smelly vans, cheap hotels, and constant fear that your gear will get stolen."
"So no supermodels is what you're saying."
He lets out a snort. "No. You aim for the hot bartender, if you're lucky."
"And were you?"
He shrugs. "Sometimes."
He quiets, and I can tell I'm getting into dangerous territory again. He's determined not to let me, so he continues. "It's not an easy life. I've seen more people give it up than stick it out. You have no roots, no home, just night after night of setup and teardown. Lukewarm catered food, pizza, and cheap beer."
"Did you ever have your gear stolen?"
He grunts. "Yeah. We were parked at this cheap motel outside of Austin. We took the van to get something to eat, but left our trailer. It was locked but they still got in and took two guitars, a pedal board, and pretty much all of Casey's stuff. Thankfully, they left the in-ear system and most of the rest of the equipment. They obviously only took the stuff they recognized. Amateur thieves, I guess."
I laugh. "You lucked out then."
"Yeah. We could barely afford our gas at the time, let alone replacing all our equipment. Believe it or not, I was more upset about losing my pedal board than the guitars. I had my best one in my room. Those were backups I'd tune to different keys when we played 'Sanctimonious' and 'Argyle.'"
"Argyle? Like the sweater?"
"Like the only thing a kid sees as his father is beating him."
I swallow. "Oh."
He grins at my expression. "Still think we're a boy band?"
I shrug. "I don't know. The old ladies really love you."
"No, the old ladies want to make me vegetable soup and teach me Pinochle to keep me off the streets."
"Well, it's no wonder with your ripped jeans and frayed t-shirts!"
He instinctively glances at his shirt. "It's not frayed. It's worn. There's a big difference."