Felix
Ty, Gabby, and I join Jenna down in the studio, where Jenna is splayed out on the couch looking done with the world.
“Ahhh,” I say. “You clearly need a hug. Gabby, hug her for me, please?”
“I’ll hug her,” Ty says, and catapults himself on top of his mom.
“Oof,” Jenna says.
Gabby stands at the foot of the couch while I collapse into my chair next to June.
“Do you need another hug?” Gabby asks.
Jenna sighs. “Yeah, I think I could use one.”
I was mostly joking, but it actually does help to watch Jenna and Gabby embrace on the couch, and then settle back next to each other like old friends. Almost like Jenna’s allowed to be part of my life.
“I am so sorry about that,” Jenna says to Gabby. “Alec isn’t usually that bad.”
“No, I’m sorry,” Gabby says.
“You both need to stop apologizing,” I say. “Knowing the two of you, you’re going to get caught in some endless apology loop and we’ll all be here until the end of time.”
“Alec should apologize,” Ty says, settling onto the floor next to the couch with Angry Birds.
“He should,” Jenna says, and looks over at me. “He wants to make a rule against flirting between members of the band.”
“I heard,” I say. “I also heard he wants to be the cello manager.”
“Just what you want, I’m sure.”
I raise an eyebrow at her. “I am the first chair cello. I have always been the first chair cello. Whether there is one cello or twenty cellos, if there is a cello manager, it is me.”
“And he’s humble about it, too,” Gabby says.
Jenna smiles. “Yes. Always underplaying his own skill.”
They laugh, and I figure I should be bothered, but it’s actually awesome to watch them bond over mocking me. Then I remember what Gabby heard last night, and my cheeks flush.
Hopefully Gabby herself is too embarrassed to bring that up, even in the name of humiliating me.
“It really is good to meet you,” Jenna says. “Felix speaks highly of you. And of your ability to keep secrets.”
“Oh, yeah,” Gabby says. “I won’t tell anyone. The last thing I want is to make trouble for you guys.”
Jenna looks up the stairs, and I know what she’s thinking. Trouble doesn’t need to come at us from without. It’s already brewing from within.
“Do you want me to talk to him?” I ask.
Jenna looks surprised. “You don’t have to. I’m fully capable of yelling at Alec on my own. I do it often enough.”
“She does,” Ty says, not even looking up from his game.
“I don’t mean yell at him,” I say. “Maybe I could just tell him we’re trying here, and ask him to cut us some slack.”
Jenna considers this. “You would do that?”
“Of course. If you think it would help.”
“Well,” she says. “It can’t hurt.”
Gabby nods her agreement, and Jenna turns to her. “So, tell me all the embarrassing stories about Felix.”
Gabby’s eyes widen, and she looks at me. Her cheeks turn pink.
Jenna gives her a curious look, and I know I have to get ahead of this.
“My most embarrassing quality,” I say, “is clearly my inability to speak quietly on the phone in the middle of the night, wouldn’t you say, Gabby?”
Jenna’s eyes widen, and Gabby looks horrified, like a trauma victim describing the origins of her deepest scars. “Yeah,” she says. “There’s definitely that.”
“Seriously?” Jenna says.
I rub my forehead, and then Jenna starts to giggle. It grows more and more high pitched, and she hugs her stomach.
“Ty?” I ask. “Is your mom having a breakdown?”
“That’s her tired laugh.” He looks down at his iPad. “But it’s only two in the afternoon. You guys must have talked really late.”
Jenna giggles even harder, and Gabby gives me an alarmed look. But from Ty’s general disinterest in the conversation, I’m sure he doesn’t have a clue what we’re talking about.
At last, Jenna gasps for breath. “Yeah. I think I need a nap.” She smiles at me, and I smile at her, and I wish we could curl up right there on the couch and fall asleep in each other’s arms. Something. Anything. When I agreed to this, I had no idea how starved I’d feel for little things like that.
But if I had, I know I’d have made the same decisions. The idea of cutting her out of my life now is like thinking of removing my own hand.
“We should let you get home,” I say.
Jenna eyes me. “Do you have to?”
“No,” I say. “But you probably should get a nap in, if you’re going to call me tonight.”
“Mmm,” she says, her gray eyes gleaming. “This is true. It might be a late one, though. Ty and I have a date with The Game of Life.”
I shake a finger at her. “All that lies that way is misery.”
She smiles. “I remember.”
I’m hit with this overwhelming need to kiss her. I stumble to my feet and run a hand in my hair. “We’d better get going. I’ll give Alec a chance to cool down.”
Jenna nods. “I’ll call you later.”
“Please,” I say, and Gabby and I ascend the stairs. When we get out to her car, she squeals.
“You two are so cute!”
I roll my eyes. “Yeah. Our sexual frustration is super adorable.”
Gabby starts the car, but doesn’t back out yet. “Jenna is awesome, though. And she smells like coconuts. Can you find out what shampoo she’s using? Because that stuff is goooooood.”
I groan and whack my head against the headrest. “You are killing me.”
Gabby gives me a pitying look. “Are you okay? I mean, this isn’t being too stressful, is it? Because if it is—”
“I’m not going to use. I don’t even want to right now.” And I don’t. But god, four years . . .
Gabby sighs. “That’s good.”
“Yeah, really good.” I roll down the window and stick my arm out. Gabby’s car technically has air conditioning, in that the little light comes on and Gabby swears the air that comes out is incrementally cooler than the heat outside. But I don’t think even she believes it.
“So what are you going to do now?” she asks.
I’m struck with a sudden idea. “I’m going to go to the hardware store and figure out how to rig a cello case so it never closes again. Want to come?”
Gabby looks skeptical. “You. Are going to the hardware store.”
“Are you going to help, or just mock?”
“I’m definitely coming with,” she says. “Because I am not going to miss Felix Mays trying to build something.”
“Good call. I’ll be right back.”
I run back inside the studio to grab my old cello case, and see Jenna and Ty lounging on the couch while Jenna catches up to him in Angry Birds. I wish more than anything I could join them, but instead I load the case into Gabby’s car. We wander cluelessly around Home Depot until two sixty-year-old gay men take pity on us, point out which brackets and bolts to buy, and then drill the holes and install the hardware in the parking lot with tools from the utility bed of their pickup truck.
Permanently open, the case barely fits across Gabby’s backseat, and only if we move the front seats all the way forward. “Okay,” Gabby says. “I have to get to work. Are you going back to Dad’s?”
“I’ve got to hit a meeting,” I say. “But yeah. Eventually.”
Gabby squeezes my arm and then drives me back to get my car.
But before I do anything else, I have to talk to Alec.
I text Alec and tell him I want to talk. He texts back that he’s at the studio and he’ll be there for the next several hours, so after I go by the clinic to get tested and pick up my prescription for the next two days, and then pick up the spare cello case from my dad’s, I drive back.
I find Alec sitting on the couch with his guitar, playing a riff of “Fly Me to the Moon.” He plays so slowly the song feels melancholy, and I sort of feel bad for him.
But not bad enough not to say what needs to be said.
“Hey,” I say.
Alec stops playing and gives me a hard look. Or maybe that’s just his face. “Hey.” He says nothing else, just waits for me to speak.
“I’m here to ask you to cut us some slack,” I say. “We’re doing the best we can under the circumstances. Especially Jenna.”
“The best you can.”
“Yeah,” I say. “And we’re following your rules, so if you could please just get off our backs, that would be great.”
Alec sighs and plays another chord, but doesn’t continue. The notes hang in the air, with no bridge to connect them. “Felix,” he says, “you’re a damn good cellist.”
“Thanks. But that’s not really—”
“And that’s why you’re still a part of the band. We don’t have time to replace you, sure as hell not with someone who’s as good as you are.”
I’m not sure what to say to that. I’m sure Jenna would take offense to the idea he can just decide to kick me out of the band without consulting her, but the fact is, he isn’t, so I wait to see where he’s going with this.
“But this thing with you guys,” he says. “I’ve told Jenna over and over, you just need to do it and get it over with. Break the tension. Having it off so we can all get back to playing the music, okay?”
I shake my head. “That’s the thing. It won’t be over.”
Alec looks exasperated. “And why is that?”
I don’t want to lie, and really, there’s no reason to. “Because it’s not about sex. We care about each other.” I close my eyes briefly. It’s more than that, but I’m not about to tell Alec the whole truth—definitely not before I’ve told her. “We want to be in each other’s lives, and if we spend one night together, we’re going to want another. And another. We’re not going to stop wanting to be together.”
Alec stares at me. “Really.”
“Yes,” I say. “Really.”
“And Jenna wants this too.”
“Yes,” I say.
Alec rolls his eyes. “She thought she wanted that with me once, too.”
I nod. “I know.” I want to tell him it’s different with me, but I know I’ll just sound naive and deluded. And the truth is, I can’t know that. Not for sure.
“You’ve known each other, what? A week?”
Exactly a week, as of today. “Yeah,” I say. “But it’s true just the same.”
Alec sighs. “You’re not doing her any favors, you know. This is just going to make everything more difficult.”
I try not to squirm. The last thing I want to do is to make Jenna’s life harder, but I can’t believe it would be better if I walked away. Easier, maybe, but some things are worth a little hardship.
I desperately want to be one of those things.
“We’re following your rules—” I say, but Alec talks over me.
“Screw the rules. What happens when someone hacks your phone?”
“We thought of that already. We’re using burners.”
Alec shakes his head. “Sooner or later someone is going to get a picture of you two looking at each other the way you do. There’s no way we’re getting through four years of this unscathed.”
“You’re right,” I say. “There’s no way we’re getting through four years of this.”
Alec glares at me, but I can taste the truth of it. The last few days have been so intense. It can’t last forever. Something is going to break. And I know I’m hoping it’s the band while Alec is hoping it’s us. Except I need this job, and Jenna loves the band. I know she does, or she wouldn’t have put up with Alec’s crappy rules for the last year.
“Fine,” he says. “I’ll cut you some slack. But think about what you’re risking here. We’re getting enough attention for the next few years to make all of our careers. Don’t you want that? Hell, if you care so much about her, do you want to ruin it for her?”
I look at the floor. I don’t want to hurt Jenna, but I know what it’s like to get everything you’re supposed to want and discover it doesn’t make you happy.
“I’m not sure,” I say.
Alec strums another chord. “Yeah, well. Stay out of the way of those of us who are, will you?”
I nod, and leave him alone with his guitar.