Real Ugly(27)
“Does it matter?” she asks, and I can't help it. I step in front of her and stop her in her tracks, reaching out to grab the shades before she stops me with a hand to the wrist. Her silver fingernails wrap my skin and squeeze tight, sending a rush of hormones through me that I don't completely understand. This girl has strapped me onto a fucking roller coaster. I'm up; I'm down. It's giving me a fucking stomachache. “Those assault charges you threatened before go both ways, Turner, and I'm not trying to sound sexist, but it's a lot easier for a woman to level them against a man than vice versa, you catch my drift? It's just the way this horrible, ugly world works.” Naomi releases me and steps back, pulling the sunglasses off herself. Her eyes are like nothing I've ever seen, a color that there's no name for yet. They match the desert, red and orange and brown, dry, seemingly barren. Behind them though, behind them there's a whole world hidden beneath the dirt, one that can spring to life with just a drip of rain.
I wipe my hand across my face to help clear my mind. What am I now? A fucking poet? Naomi is just a girl I had drunk sex with a long, long time ago. She isn't an enigma or a mystery, just the one person I made such a stupid mistake with. That's all there is to it.
“Where's my kid, Naomi?” The edges of her lips droop for a moment before something clicks and she lifts her chin defiantly. The wind teases her hair and draws her nipples to hard points under the thin fabric of her shirt. If I were to reach out a hand and touch them … I bite my lip so hard it bleeds and keep my eyes focused on her face.
Behind us, the camp is starting to come alive in anticipation of the show tonight. I have a hard time even imagining getting through it. I don't handle life altering revelations very well. They've never been very good to me in the past. Fuck, this is exactly why I hate secrets. Just when you think everything is peachy fucking keen, some shit has to get stirred up to ruin the day.
I run my tongue across my lips to wet them; this damn desert air is drying me out.
“Please,” I say. It takes a lot of effort to get that word to pass between my lips. Please sounds like begging and Turner Campbell does not beg. Naomi's eyes flicker away and focus on some shrubs at the edge of the parking lot. There's a lot more to this story than first meets the eye, that is for fucking sure. There are secrets wrapped in secrets buried under secrets; I can smell 'em from here. “Come on, Knox, you owe me an explanation.”
Her eyes snap back to mine and her full mouth tightens into a thin line.
“Turner,” she says, stepping forward and poking me in the chest with the corner of her sunglasses. “I don't owe you shit. Fuck off and leave me alone. Stop calling me, stop following me, and you better keep your ass off the stage when I'm on it. Me and you, we have nothing to say to each other.”
And then she steps around me and leaves me in the dust.
I survive the show that night – barely. I play, but I don't play with any heat or substance, and I can tell the crowd knows it. I mean, they still cheer and scream and flail, but they don't drop their inhibitions; they don't evolve backwards and fall to the floor in howling fits of animalistic rage. When they do that, you know you've nailed it. That night, I do good, but I don't blow anybody's mind.
Can't say the same for Turner.
From what Hayden says, he destroyed the stage and caught that whole damn building on fire with his words. She says they were so laced with rage that he was spitting acid and burning holes in the fucking stratosphere.
Good for him.
After our set, I retreat back to the bus and fall asleep.
When I wake the next morning, I can't hold it back. I end up at the table in the front with my notebook open flat and my pen pressed so hard against the pages that the paper tears with every other word.
Blair and Dax watch me silently from across the table while the rest of the band put-puts around the bus like they've got nothing better to do. And I mean, hell, fuck 'em, I guess they don't. They know when I'm like this that something good's coming. Our last album? Yep. Happened just like this.
“You want to take a break?” Blair asks after a little while, scooping some of her bi-colored hair over her shoulder and adjusting the little black and white polka dot bow she's stuck in the front of it. She looks cute, very vintage. Me, on the other hand, I look like shit. I haven't showered or changed my clothes, and I know I probably smell like sweat and beer, but when I'm writing, nothing else matters.
I shake my head and wish I could confide in her. It might make me feel better if I shared my secrets with somebody I actually like. In fact, I think given the opportunity that Blair and I could be best friends. And I don't mean that in the whole shallow sort of, We like go every Friday and get our nails done together bullshit. I think Blair and I could be bury-the-body best friends. Too bad the walls I've put up are taller and longer than the Great Wall of China.