Background Music Read online

  It always felt like a cliché when I said Charles was my best friend, but it was true. Cheesy but true. I wasn’t just mourning the loss of my lover, but my confidante. Sera, my childhood best friend, couldn’t help me. Relationships were not her style. She didn’t know anything about them. She would probably just make a joke that it was time to get a divorce lawyer on speed dial.

  So, my betrayal started innocently. I was lying in bed, watching Never Been Kissed, staring dreamily at Michael Vartan, glancing at my phone, willing it to come alive with my husband’s number. When it finally dinged, I dropped my bag of Skittles and snatched it up, unlocking the screen without a glance. I found a text from an unknown number in place of the one I had hoped to find.

  Unknown number: Hey I got your number from Sam. I was hoping you would be interested in jamming.

  Me: I’m sorry, I believe you have the wrong number.

  It should have ended there. But it didn’t. It didn’t and I still don’t know what to do with this version of me that I have become, so far removed from everything I had convinced myself that I was.

  The unknown number apologized, and I politely convinced him/her that it was all right. Then nothing. A quiet nothing for weeks. Then suddenly I was sending out a text that countless fuck boys—that was the term Sera schooled me on—had sent out into the night. “You up?” I had asked. It was well after midnight, and I was alone in my bed. My husband was home, but he had developed a habit of coming home so tired that he never made it upstairs. He would sit on the couch to take his tie off and never find a way to rise again until morning. Leaving me alone.

  I wore my weakness on my skin for weeks after. Guilt is an accessory I never desired to acquire. My true colors, they weren’t supposed to be painted this way. After a while, the guilt lessened and the gaping hole in my chest began to fill. It began to fill with the words of a man I never intended to meet, but secretly hoped I could.

  We never exchanged names, photos, or spoke on the phone. It was a strictly textual relationship. It was in part to ease my guilt and in part to lessen the temptation I felt to take any further steps toward a full-blown affair. We really never flirted either. Well, he would flirt sometimes, and I would awkwardly change the subject, all the while feeling a rush in my limbs and a warmth between my legs.

  Cheaters seek out exactly what they are missing from their current partners. A stark contrast, a beautiful distraction.

  I found myself guarding my phone with my life. It was always face down when I set it on a table. At night, I would let it charge in the drawer, away from prying eyes, or I would turn it on airplane mode to silence any text that might make its way to me at a late hour. My paranoia was ridiculous.

  Charles never looked at my phone. He never turned his head when it would ding or ring. He wasn’t around enough for there to be a risk of him taking notice when my mystery man would reach out, and besides that, my friend knew better. He knew I was married and would never text me at odd hours unless I reached out first. That fact made everything worse. We were careful, careful because we were doing something wrong. Our conversations were not sexual or romantic, but the intimacy that was there was wrong, and we both knew it.

  The intimacy was in the small details. The songs he would send me, lyrics I needed to hear to get through the day, the week, the night. I missed his song suggestions, when everything went dark. I missed the way he lifted me up.

  When I told him all about my marriage and what I became, he had said something that stayed with me, something that woke me up: “You’re more than background music for someone else’s life.”

  I didn’t want to be that anymore. And when I saw those words, it truly hit me that I had once been the song in someone’s life, and now I wasn’t anymore.

  I made my way back to my phone and pulled up his text, looking at the song. I clicked over to iTunes and after finding what I was looking for pressed “Buy Song” on Hallelujah by Jeff Buckley. I walked over to my little record player and stuck the end of the auxiliary cord into my phone, letting Jeff’s melodic voice fill my apartment. I closed my eyes and spun around slowly in the center of my living room, careful not to lose balance, the alcohol still swimming through my veins. After that song was over, I listened to all the others he had sent me in the past before falling to sleep, easily, for the first night in weeks.

  There will always be those people that are viewed by others as unchangeable. I knew I was one of them, and fuck, I may still be one of them in the eyes of some. I had been back home for over four months, and I believed I was a new man in many ways. I worked hard to get here. Maybe it wasn’t impressive to some, but for me, it was something I hoped the people I loved took notice of.

  Before I left this small town, I could barely hold a job, I had fallen into unnecessary debt, I slept with every girl who fell into my lap. While I was gone, I had gotten another year of college under my belt. I worked two jobs. I paid my truck off and dug myself out of a financial hole. I put my nose to the ground and got shit done. It was dull, it was so fucking dull, but it needed to be done. I don’t know what it was that brought me back, maybe I just wanted to show everyone who had doubted me that I could pull my shit together, maybe I would never know. Or maybe Kat was there in the back of my mind.

  Fuck, Kat. I couldn’t believe I saw her. In my head, I played it out endlessly, our fantasy reunion. I would run into her on the street or we’d be in the same checkout line at Wal-Mart, the same line at the bank. Yeah, one of those would have been great, but nope. Not this time. I had scaled her building. I whispered into her window and scared the shit out of her like a goddamn creeper. She didn’t throw me off the top, so that was a good thing I guess. I needed to remind myself of the truth: I was to stay far away from her. I didn’t deserve her. I didn’t deserve her friendship and especially not her affections. Not that I had a chance of being on the receiving end of either again. Let’s be real.

  I was slowly getting back into the swing of things with my bandmates. Weekdays were spent scouring social media for gigs and exhausting old contacts. Weeknights were spent practicing. The band was popular and in demand two years ago. The momentum we built had died in my absence, and I was trying hard to make it up to the guys. It was hard for them to find another singer in our small town. Replacing a guitarist or drummer would have been easier. So they just let it all fall apart when I left. I didn’t blame them for it either. I was always the driving force behind us while it was more of a hobby for the other guys.

  My time now mostly spent away from home was much needed. In many ways, I had not been the model son. Making my family proud should have filled me with something akin to joy, but it didn’t. It felt like a barely manageable lie. It was manageable until my text to Alec. Now my mind was constantly filled with what ifs and maybes.

  After work, I would walk across the street to the comic shop, having recently given up my carpooling option with my boss. I would park my truck across the street from the office and leave it there during the day. By the time practice was over, the sky would be dark and I could easily load up my gear and drive the few blocks home where the house would be dark and I could avoid pointed disappointment.

  Things were different with the band these days. Our songwriter was gone, and I reluctantly took his position. I knew I had it in me. I had been writing for most of my life, but it wasn’t where my comfort lived. I was much more at ease behind the microphone singing words that were impersonal to me. I hated that about myself. I felt like an imposter. I might as well be a fucking lead singer of a cover band. “Anyone want to hear some Journey?” That would get a standing ovation and a steady sway of drunken cheers. Everyone is a small town girl living in a lonely world, right?

  I didn’t start writing yet but I did pull out every old Moleskine from two years ago—scribbled over with desperate yearning for Kat—from underneath my bed and the back of my closet. Singing those songs across the street from her every night felt uncomfortably vulnerable. No one knew who they were abo
ut and would never ask, but the honesty of it all made my skin itchy.

  I thought of the writer I looked up to most and what she would tell me in this situation. She would tell me it’s fucking hard to be open with the world but if she did it then I can fucking do it, too. Then she would punch me in the arm and say I’m being a little bitch. God, I miss her.

  It was Friday night and I was sitting in the back of my truck with the tailgate down. Commercial Street was bare and warm with fireflies and mosquitos keeping me company. I swung my legs back and forth in front of me, trying to keep my eyes away from Kat’s window. The band had pulled away in their separate vehicles nearly twenty minutes ago but I hadn’t budged. I didn’t want to go home, and I didn’t want to go to the bar.

  Sometimes after practice, I would walk the sidewalks downtown and sing at the top of my lungs. My voice would bounce back and forth between the tall old buildings, and sometimes I would see the lights from apartments inhabited above shops flicker from those who did not appreciate my impromptu concerts. I would pick back up after I was a ways past their homes. I didn’t feel like doing that tonight. I felt like walking past my office windows to the empty back lot behind Kat’s shop. I felt like climbing her steps and crawling onto the roof of my office over to her bedroom window. I wanted to crawl into her window and in between her legs. I missed her taste. Fuck.

  I fell back into my truck bed and clenched my eyes. Nope. I wasn’t going there again, where I was unwanted. I pulled my phone from my pocket and scrolled through names, nearly landing on a few where I knew I was wanted. Women who would love to see my name light up their phone. I stamped down my deviant behavior and sat up, cursing the thick night air. I hopped from my truck and walked over to my passenger door, opened it, and threw the phone in. After slamming the door, I let my feet drum up a steady echo down the sidewalk toward the train tracks.

  I wondered what Kat would think if she knew the entire set for our first show would be centered around her and the moments we had together. I reached down to the hair tie around my wrist and pulled on it. The snapping sound and sting on my wrist calmed me. I breathed deeply when I made it to the tracks and pulled the elastic from my wrist, reaching behind my neck and gathering my long hair. I had worn it down during practice, and my shirt was still damp beneath it. I secured it at the crown of my head and sat down in the gravel, eventually leaning back and staring at the Ozark sky.

  The beauty of my hick country town was never lost on me. I wanted to leave eventually, again, but I found comfort in the echo of cicadas and the hypnotic glow of our few stoplights. My focus on music once again made me realize that my return home would be short lived. I had gotten shit together. I had pulled myself up. I wasn’t a fuck up anymore but that didn’t mean I had to forget who I really was. I wanted to give myself the summer. The summer to play gigs at the lake, to force myself to play my own lyrics and to save money to move. My heart was set on Nashville. It was a longtime dream of mine. And it didn’t need to be a dream. I needed to use my newfound ability to not be a constant fuck up to get out of here. Away from disappointed parental eyes and Kat’s axis. Fuck it, being ridiculous every once in a while was okay, right?

  I pushed off the gravel and turned on my heel, my pace steady and my heart racing. I walked back to the road and aimed my way to her building. She was probably asleep, but I didn’t care. The closer I got, the more my nerves pulled at my shoulders and throat. What was I going to do? Text her? Call her? Tap on her window again? I went the less creepy option. A Facebook message.

  She would probably never open it, just out of spite. When I found her profile, my chest ached a little. I purposely avoided her social media accounts. It made everything easier. When I saw her profile picture, my cheek flushed a little. God, I’m a moron. She was laughing with her arm around her best friend, her red hair falling in waves over her bare shoulders. They were at the lake with two pina coladas in front of them. Their cheeks were pressed together, flushed.

  I was smiling like a creepy idiot when I rounded the corner of Kat’s shop and found the back parking lot covered in light. Kat’s car was facing the back of the building with its headlights on. Light came from the back of the building as well. My ears caught the sound of something slamming onto the ground and Kat’s voice cursing.

  It was becoming increasingly obvious as every day passed since his sudden reappearance in my life, that I couldn’t get Reese out of my head. I couldn’t. I had done so well at getting over him. He had moved away, he had deactivated his Facebook, he had fallen off the map.

  Running into him was easier than running into my ex-husband could have been. Both men had caused me to stay confined to my apartment after our endings, although for completely different reasons. One from embarrassment. One from fear.

  He looked so different, too. His light brown hair was now down to his shoulders, and he was bigger. His solid arms had drawn my attention as he braced himself on the roof next to my window. This image was the one distracting me when I dropped the box I was carrying in the back of my shop and spilled the contents onto the concrete below.

  Sometimes, when you’re so intently focused on someone that you miss, you think just maybe you can will them to appear. When Reese reached down to pick up the pieces of a violet vase that had shattered before me I was so absorbed in the colors, so much like a bruise, that I shrieked and fell back on my ass. He reached forward to grab my arm but was just a second too slow.

  He placed the pieces of cracked porcelain that were in his hand on the ground then stood up, towering over me, reaching his hand for me.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked as I let his warm fingers wrap around my own, pulling me up.

  “I was out walking,” he said. “I saw light back here.”

  Reese lived nearby, I knew that, but there was a lie in his voice. It wasn’t much in his inflection, but in the mannerisms that accompanied his response. The look away, the hands shoved into pockets as soon as I was upright. They gave away what his voice nearly hid.

  I hadn’t forgotten what he let slip when he was on my roof. He worked next door. He was working right next door to where I lived and worked. How had I not known? I had been running this new information through my mind for the past week. When it came down to it, I shouldn’t be surprised. Reese was ether getting a ride to work or walking. I had never seen his vehicle. And with all the hours I was putting in, I was rarely outside the building. This was also due to the fact that my social life was six feet under.

  After I dusted my hand off on my jeans, I looked Reese in the eye and got straight to the point. “How long have you been working next door?”

  He shifted. “About four months.”

  I felt like the air in my lungs had caught on fire. Four months. How had I not felt him? I felt his absence so deeply years ago, how did my body not sense his return to my orbit? I realized I was shaking my head absentmindedly like a bobble head since he answered, and I wasn’t sure how much time had passed. I answered with a pathetic “Oh” then went back down to my knees and started picking up the pieces of the shattered vase.

  I saw a shadow of Reese kneeling but I waved him away. It was just a tiny vase and he had done enough. I was swimming in a shallow grave of gray toned emotions.

  And that’s when it started pouring rain. Sheets of it. I let out a shriek and ran into the back of my shop. At the rear entrance was a large bay door.

  My plan for the night was to pull out the numerous merchandise fixtures I had in the back—taking up dust—out into the parking lot. To figure out what I was going to keep and what I was going to get rid of. I was nearly done pulling the last bit of items on my “keep” list inside when Reese came along.

  I was wiping rain from my brow under the shitty light bulb above me when I noticed Reese wasn’t under cover with me. He was pulling a large bookcase toward the dry opening I was standing in. Damnit. When I reached him I was soaked, but not nearly as drenched as he was. Together we wrestled the piece of furniture
I had initially used a dolly to move.

  When I could no longer feel rain beating down on my head, I looked down at my Converse. I squished my toes back and forth and shivered. Wet shoes grossed me out. I needed to get out of them. I needed to get out of all my clothes.

  I looked out at my car with its headlights blaring into my stockroom with a look of despair.

  Reese’s voice broke through the small space, making me shiver. “Where are your keys? I’ll get it.”

  I didn’t hesitate. I was still angry with him, so he could brave the rain if he wanted. I walked over to my desk and grabbed my keys, then turned and threw them at him.

  Together Reese and I pulled the remaining small items inside, cramming them into any space available, and then pulled the bay door down.

  It had sprinkled earlier in the day, but I hadn’t heard anything about more rain. I imagined one small angry rain cloud racing to cover my shop when it knew Reese was on his way. Bring on the pain and the rain. I didn’t know what to do with him in my space. My tiny stockroom felt cramped. The furniture I had set out to organize was now dirty, broken, or in a spot I did not want it to be. Just like myself.

  Wordlessly, I walked to my office door and flicked the outdoor lights off. When I emerged and shut off my office light, I found Reese pulling his long hair up into a wet bun on the top of his head. Jesus fuck. This was bad. He needed to go.

  “Do you want to come upstairs and dry off?” I asked. What the hell? No. This is not what you should be asking him, Kat. Why the hell are you here, Reese? That was the proper thing to say.

  Reese answered yes and before I could figure out what the hell I was doing, we were halfway up the stairs to my apartment.

  I left him standing on the hardwood floor of my living room when we made it inside. I walked down the tiny hallway that led to my bedroom and bathroom, to the small linen cabinet built in to the wall. I grabbed two brown towels and walked back to him.