CHAPTER TEN
I wake up with the new chord progression dogging my mind, feeling like a dieter facing post-binge regret. The girl is still in my bed, but to me she looks like a big piece of chocolate cake. In the moment, I couldn’t resist. In the moment, I only considered pleasure and release. But now I want her gone because she’s guilty crumbs on last night’s plate. In retrospect, it’s easy to know what I shouldn’t have done. But at the time, it’s always harder to see.
After Abigail’s cold shoulder, the girl seemed like something I deserved. Only now am I seeing her as a person. Only now, with the satisfaction behind me, is it starting to bother me.
If only Abigail had been the least bit responsive, maybe I’d be here with her instead.
Except the moment I think it, the idea feels wrong. Worse than wrong. If it were Abigail’s surely-freckled shoulder I was seeing as I grab my guitar, I’d have even more dieter’s regret … and that’s strange, considering I think I like her. Abigail seems nice, funny, smart, innocent, and sweet. The opposite of the single-serving sexual fantasy in my bed right now.
It’s hard to square the sensations. So I stop trying. I head out to the living room in my boxers then sit on the couch and start to noodle.
There’s the ghost of a verse.
The specter of a chorus.
And definitely the beginning of a hook, though I only have half of it.
Even though the music came to me in the night, I can tell there are lyrics here. I just don’t know what they are. Lyrics were always Grace’s job, or sometimes Charlie’s. But instead of those notions bothering me, I begin to work out a few lyrics, too. They’re shit, but for once, I’m able to try.
I’m still playing with the music in my head when the girl enters the living room in last night’s clothes. I’m bothered — but not at all surprised — to realize I don’t even know her name. I stop playing, certain that whatever I have here, it’s not for her ears. It wasn’t inspired by her. I wouldn’t play it about her. I hate how cold I feel, knowing my thoughts make me a bastard. But it’s easier to turn my head than face what I feel looming.
“That’s pretty,” she says.
“Yeah.”
“Do you know where my shoes ended up?”
“They’re over there.” I point. I’m keeping my voice light: polite enough, but barely helpful. I don’t make eye contact. Fortunately, she knows what all of this was. In the past, girls have come out in my shirts, seemingly ready to spend the morning together, cuddling. That’s always harder. This girl is fully dressed, her hair smoothed but still messy. She’s quiet, but I don’t think she’s embarrassed. I suspect I’m more embarrassed than she is. She’ll be taking the walk of shame, but shame is mostly what I feel, too.
She puts her shoes on, then her hand is on the knob.
“See you around, Gavin.”
“See you … ” There’s a pause there for her name, but I still don’t have it and won’t insult her further by making something up.
She gives me a little smile then leaves.
I try to noodle the melody a bit longer. It feels important to try. Usually, I compose in one of two ways: I either wake up in the middle of the night and work in a fugue, creating pages and pages of what seems great but turns out, in daylight, to be awful. Or sometimes, I think I have something new — something I could actually play and sing in public — before realizing it’s one of our old songs turned inside-out and hiding. And I obviously can’t play those.
But it’s no good. I set the guitar aside.
I’m a bastard.
I’m worthless. I’m worse than useless. I’m a user. A predator, perhaps. It’s a good thing that Abigail blew me off. If she’d come here, I might have done to her what I’d just done to that nameless girl. Somehow, I doubt things would have worked out that way, but doubting it makes me feel worse, like I don’t even want to think about Abigail at all. There’s a dichotomy somewhere inside, and she doesn’t fit either side of it. Either Abigail is one of my conquests, which makes me hate myself, or she’s … whatever else I don’t want to face. The latter feels like a black place. A place I don’t even want to consider, lest I fall back into the abyss.
I remember the abyss. Oh sweet God, do I remember.
Before those dark memories can grab me, I shake myself out of position, lay the guitar back in its stand, and head to the bathroom to splash water on my face. The water merely makes me wet, so I turn it as cold as the faucet will go and try again. It’s still not cold enough, because I’m a few floors up and it’s summertime. All I can get is mildly chilly. I want ice cubes. I want a shock, just to see if I can still feel it.
When things were bad, I used to get into fights. Not many, but enough to remember. I didn’t even want to win. I wanted to see what it felt like to be hit. I look into the mirror. None of those brawls scarred my face. It’s like they didn’t happen, as if I’m immovable, immutable, horribly eternal.
It never ends.
There are just endless days of nothing.
No new songs. No respite from the old ones. The same thoughts, the same arguments. Hooks that come back to me from forgotten snippets, and I’ll try to use them before recalling a memory out of the blue, sharp as knives: Grace humming a tune while she watered the plants that used to fill my place. Grace noodling tunes on her own guitar, which she was never any good at playing.
I look back into the bedroom. The shame is gone because it was barely there to begin with.
I’m worse than a monster because I don’t even truly regret what I’ve done.
I’m not sad. Or angry. Or resentful. Or regretful. Or hurt. Or inspired. There’s no new creation, only old wounds. I’m not happy. I don’t want to die.
There’s just … nothing.
And when I think of Abigail, the waitress who’s entered my life twice, I don’t know where I’d put her. It’s like I’m split down the middle. Part of me is drawn to whatever light I sense inside her — something I doubt she even knows is there — and the other part of me wants to run away.
If she came here, things would be different.
If she came here, there would be things I’d need to face.
I wish she’d have talked to me.
But really, maybe it’s best that she didn’t, and that she sees me for what I’ve become.