Red Velvet Crush (20 page)
Authors: Christina Meredith
W
e are in the garage, just Ginger and me. It's cold and sunny, the start of winter. We both are wearing hoodies, but Ginger has his sleeves pulled up, probably because his arms are so long. Dust floats in the sunshine between us.
My head is bent low over my guitar. Ginger's knees are angled toward mine, facing the open garage door.
“Can I just play a little bit of it on my own?” I say to him, not noticing his stillness, the fact that he has stopped playing. “Just to get theâ”
I lift my chin. Birds had been chirping. The street had been buzzing and whirring with the sounds of husbands who have been locked inside the house for too long. I swear it all has stopped.
Ginger's hand hovers over his strings, quiet. I sit up and shiver.
Ty is walking up the driveway, slow and straight. He looks thin. Clean. Scrubbed somehow. As if he has been through some serious shit, something that drained him but left him stronger. Like leeches or a bloodletting of some sort.
The driveway draws out, becoming longer, the space between us immeasurable. I want to run to him in slow motion, a chariot of fire on a wet gravel path.
Ginger puts his guitar down and stands. I am still sitting.
I am a statue. Lungless. Breathless.
Here he is, on a random Tuesday afternoon. It should be an auspicious date with double digits and flags out on the street, or a full moon at the very least.
My heart is a hummingbird trapped in my chest.
Ginger and Ty smile at each other and shake hands.
I don't really know what to do. I've never had anybody come back before.
I set my guitar down at my side.
Ginger ducks under the open garage door and reappears, even taller, with his gold ten-speed between his legs. He waves, rolling across the yard and toward the street.
Ty is wearing a black T-shirt under his tan jacket. When he moves closer to me, I spy a little red cupcake silk-screened on the pocket over his heart, and I push Ginger's empty chair toward him with my foot.
Without hesitating, he takes a seat and reaches for Ginger's
guitar. He slides the strap over his neck then stretches his legs out in front of him, first things first.
He starts to strum lightly.
“Ginger told me what you have been up to,” he says as I follow along.
Watching his fingers warming up with chords and slides, I let the soft sounds flow and melt into me as I soak in the arc of his shoulders, the timbre of his voice, the substance and shape and smell of him.
Ty slows and then stops completely, waiting for me.
I grab my guitar and glide right into the middle of a song, catching him by surprise. It's a song that was born in my bedroom and brought to life in a motel in the middle of a summer's night, a song of lamplight and soft guitar, a song of longing and absolution, a song of mine.
He looks over at me, his eyes golden, bright, and sure.
“Where you start isn't always the beginning, is it?” he asks.
I smile, leading him back in.
I sing while shooting stars dance and glimmer behind my eyes, lighting me up. We start again.
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CHRISTINA MEREDITH
writes with the music turned up loud. She is the author of
Kiss Crush Collide
. She lives in California.
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Cover art © 2016 by Natalia Martin Rivero/EyeEm/Getty Images PeopleImages/iStock.
Cover design by Sylvie Le Floc'h
This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used to advance the fictional narrative. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real.
RED VELVET CRUSH
. Copyright © 2016 by Christina Meredith. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
EPub Edition © May 2016 ISBN 9780062062291
ISBN 978-0-06-206227-7 (trade ed.)
16Â Â 17Â Â 18Â Â 19Â Â 20Â Â Â Â
PC/RRDH
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