The Sound of Us (21 page)

Terrible new-metal indie rock at that. They screamed the entire time, and the guitarist fell off the stage drunk before the end of the set. What’s worse, instead of drawing a crowd, they repelled people like the Black Plague.
That
should’ve been their band name.

I still had a headache from that stupid band when I woke up this morning. A paparazzo got a shot of me changing into my PJs last night and thirty minutes later, it was viral on every Roman Holiday forum on the net.

The most constructive criticism I got was “Slut nds 2 wrkout.”

I don’t even have privacy in my own bedroom anymore.

Welcome to hell, Junebug.

At least there are better stories than me now. After the photos hit yesterday and Chuck scared the media vans off the front lawn, a good plenty of them left to chase the real stories. Roman landed back in LA over the weekend, and in a strange turn of events he isn’t running away from the paparazzi. He just seems to be ignoring them—and any reporter’s questions about me.

It’s just another reason why Roman’s made for the spotlight, and I’m not, another way we would never,
ever
work out.

I dress down today, in too-big jean shorts, a black t-shirt, and combat boots, pulling my hair back into a lose bun. I don’t even put makeup on. Maggie always says that putting on makeup is like drawing on war paint for the day, but today feels like a waste of good eye shadow. The only battle I’ll be waging is one I’ve already lost.

Chuck takes it upon himself to escort me to the bar again on his lunch break. A few straggling paparazzi look out of their rent-a-cars as we pass, and snap a few photos.

When Chuck drops me off, I make a b-line to the office and let myself inside. Mom taps her pen on the pile of paperwork in front of her, divided and color-coded to specific bills and due dates. Maggie jokes that my mom is super anal, but I think she just likes to have control. She likes knowing what to expect.

Like me, I guess.

Or, at least how I thought I was. Looking at the color codes and numbers stretched out across her desk, I’m not sure I could handle that.

Mom only looks up from her stack of papers when I pull over a metal chair and sit down. She takes off her reading glasses and blinks her tired eyes. She’s wearing the clothes she had on last night. “Good morning, honey.”

I look down at my hands, picking at my cuticles. “I want to tell them, Mom.”

“That’s okay, I can handle it.” She stands and begins to put the color-coded bills into their color-coded manila folders, but I reach over the desk and still her hands. She glances up, and her face breaking open just a little.

It mirrors mine.

“I
want
to do it, Mom.”

She hesitates. “But Junie...”

“Please?”

For a moment, I don’t think she’s going to let me, but she must see something in my face, because she purses her lips and agrees. “I’ll call Charles—he’ll want to be here, too.”

“He’ll get off work?” I ask, surprised, as she comes around the desk.

She closes the office door behind us and locks it. “He doesn’t want the bar to close up, either, and yes. He thought we should all be here, as a family.”

As a family.

Tears begin to burn in my eyes, but I blink them away. I shouldn’t get choked up on something like this. I spent all morning telling myself not to cry, even though I avoided bottom eyeliner just in case. I follow Mom out onto the floor. Geoff looks up from his
Hustler
. The three waitresses, Jess, Mindi, and Barbara, sit at a high-top table sharing a pitcher of mimosas and grapefruit. They glance at each other unsurely.

I clear my throat, hesitating with empty hands. I wish I had a piece of paper to hold, at least. Mom gives me an encouraging nod as Chuck comes through the front door, fanning out his polo. It’s hot as hell outside today, so it makes the bar uncomfortably hot, too. The industrial fans mounted on the dark beams overhead are going full-speed, as loud as jet engines.

I swallow the knot in my throat. “Hi, everyone. Thanks for meeting today.”

“Always when alcohol’s involved!” Mindi raises her glass with a laugh. Jess and Barbara clink glasses with her, grinning. They beckon Mom over, and after a moment she goes and grabs a glass herself. “Fill ‘er up!” they crow.

Geoff, though, reads my apprehension. “Is everything all right, boss?”

At the words, Hal, our bouncer, looks up from flexing his biceps, a frown on his face. And it sort of hits me then, because everyone here is my family, too. I grew up with them. They’re closer to me than my grandparents in Maryland and my aunts in California. They were there for me when I broke my foot in gym in third grade, and when I tried out for cheerleading and was literally laughed out of my auditions, and the time I entered into the high school talent show to do the Thriller dance and the entire crew dressed up as zombies and joined me.

I hesitate, pulling at the collar of my
Rolling Stones
t-shirt. “Um…” I lick my lips, trying to find somewhere to rest my gaze.

Take it easy, Junebug
, I hear my dad’s voice in my head.

“The Silver Lining will be closing on Saturday.” My voice is incredibly loud, echoing off the dusty rafters like a sonic boom. I clear my throat and repeat those eight words. They feel like lead in my mouth.

“For a party?” Mindi asks, and the other two giggle. “Beach blast!”

I strain a smile. “No. We’ll be closing. Permanently.”

Then comes the silence. The type that sinks, slowly, like a rock. They know I’m not joking anymore. The waitresses down their mimosas and pour themselves another glass, as Mom stares somberly into hers, Chuck’s hand on the small of her back.

A ping of loneliness shoots through my chest, because no one’s here to comfort
me
.

Geoff closes his
Hustler
and scoots back in his chair, his black eyebrows creasing together. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“What happened?” Hal adds.

Life
, I want to tell him,
and my dad
’
s mismanagement of money.

I swallow those bitter words, though, because they aren’t the right ones to say. I focus on the jukebox in the back corner, unable to look at anything else. “You know why my Dad called this place The Silver Lining? I mean, besides that The Kickin’ Chicken was taken.”

No one chimes in to answer, even though they know it.

“It’s because,” I go on, “he believed in a place you could come after you’ve had the worst day of your entire life, and know that it’d get better from here. Not because of the cheap beer or the dollar liquors. He believed in the people. People like us, really.
We
’
re
The Silver Lining. Not where we work. So what happened?” My eyes drift down to Hal, and my throat constricts.

There aren’t many bars that will hire ex-marines with a rap sheet. Never mind that he has a wife and kid at home. Never mind it’s not just my life this will affect, but everyone else’s, too.

“Shit happened. And I’m so, so sorry.” I sit down on the counter, lacing my fingers together. “Saturday’s our last night, guys. Forever. You’ll be compensated for the rest of the month, though. That’s really all we can do.”

I begin to slide off the bar when Geoff slams his fists down, rattling his empty beer bottle. I freeze. “You’re kidding, right?” he snaps.

“We’re doing the best we—”

“We’re not even going to
fight
?”

Mom chimes in, “There’s nothing we can do.”

“But this is our home,” Geoff argues furiously. “I’ve spent more time here than my apartment! I’ve spilt blood on this bar, boss. I’m not going to just give it up. We still need naked Jell-O wrestling.
I
still need to pick up that hot beardman who comes in every Thursday. We can’t just leave!”

“But we can’t stay.” I wring my fingers together nervously.

“Well, I’m not going down without a fight. How much do we owe?”

Everyone looks to Mom for the answer. Even I don’t know. She never told me, but I expect it to be something that we can’t just refinance to fix.

Flustered, she hides a tissue in her bra and waves her hands about in the air, as if she can summon up the number. “Oh, dear, close to one-hundred thousand dollars or so.”

“One hundred thousand,” I repeat. The price of admission into an Ivy League college. The cost of a jetpack. A small house in suburbia. So much money, I almost can’t believe this tiny bar is worth that much. “We owe…
one-hundred thousand dollars
.”

Geoff whistles. “Damn, never mind.”

Barbara pours herself another mimosa. “Why don’t ya get your boyfriend to hand ya the money, Junie? He’s loaded, ya know. Being a rock star an’ all.”

I give her a strange look. “He’s not my boyfriend.”

Jess scoffs. “Oh,
please
. We all read the magazines.”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” I reiterate forcefully, hopping off the bar. A hundred thousand
would
just be a drop in the bucket for a multi-platinum pop star. But I can’t ask Roman for money like that, not now and not ever. It isn’t his problem. It’s mine.

“We can’t raise that much,” Hal mutters, more to himself than to us, but his voice is loud enough that it carries.

Geoff rolls up his magazine, and taps it on the end of the bar. “Then let’s have a party. Celebrate it. If we can’t save the Lining, we can damn well go out in style.”

Chuck agrees, squeezing Mom’s shoulder tightly. “That’s a great idea. We’re uninvited to the cookout this weekend, anyway.”

My bartender throws his hands into the air. “It’s settled then! Party, Saturday night. It’ll be the best damn thing in town, mark my words.” He slides his gaze to me, and gives me a reassuring, sparkling grin. “It’ll be a bash worthy of the old man.”

Everyone thinks bars are for hooking up, but anyone who’s ever owned a bar knows the truth. It’s where broken hearts go to die. What better way to tell your girlfriend you found someone better, prettier, and skinnier than her than at a bar where alcohol is readily available for the wound?

You get to thinking what happened, what went wrong in those few months, weeks—days, even—between the connection and the fallout. The more I watched, the less I understood it.

But now I understand. It just takes a taste, a glimpse, of something better to change a person.

To change me.

I’m so lost in thought as I go through the motions of cleaning up—taking the garbage out, putting the money in the safe and locking the office door, making sure the freezer light is out— that I barely realized Geoff’s been talking to me the entire time.

“…Like, he expects me to just forgive him! But like hell that’s going to happen. He fucking
lied
to me, boss.” Geoff mumbles as he gets ready to leave, pulling his one-strap backpack over his shoulder, and grabs his bike helmet from under the bar. “I can’t do this.”

I cut off the lights to the break room and close the door. “Maybe he’s changed.”

“After just a few days?” He scoffs and rolls his eyes. “Boss, you’re too nice—no offense.”

I shrug. “Maybe he’s
trying
, then.”

“To change? People don’t change, they just fake it.”

I study him as he zips up his burgundy jacket. He fiddles nervously with his zipper, able to feel my eyes on him. “I think people can change if they want to.”

“Like your boyfriend, boss?”

I stiffen. “Caspian’s not my—”

“I’m not talking about him,” he interrupts softly. “I mean the rock star.”

I begin inspecting my fingernails, as if they’re suddenly more important than the conversation. “Pop star,” I correct under my breath.

“Oh what
ever
. You fell for him, didn’t you?”

“You can’t love someone you’ve only known for a few days,” I argue.

He throws his head back with a sigh. “That’s why it’s called
falling
. You just trip and there you go, freefalling for some shithead who doesn’t even know what he wants.” Now I know he’s talking about Caspian. He sighs and leans against the counter. “Then what is it, if you’re not heartbroken?”

I downcast my eyes, twirling a lock of hair around my finger. “Scared, I guess.”

“
Scared
?”

“Not...not like horror-movie scared.” I pull my hair over my shoulder and begin to braid it, trying to keep my voice level, trying not to think about how much I just want to
cry
. “Scared like I’m looking down over a long, dark drop, and know that there’s no way across and...” I blink back the tears that begin to burn in my eyes. “What am I going to do after the Lining, Geoff? What
can
I do?”

Geoff drops his backpack to crush me against his chest in a hug. He smells like aftershave. Maybe it’s his smell, or how tight he’s hugging me, but the tears evolve into a outright sob.

“I can’t do anything,” I cry into his chest. “I never
could
do anything else. I don’t have any talents and all I can do is fuck up everyone’s lives and—”

“You do
not
fuck up people’s lives.”

“How about Roman’s?” I point out bitterly. “If I’d told Roman about that stupid paparazzo sooner, if I’d cared a little more—I don’t know. I just screw it all up. I couldn’t save Dad, and I can’t save his bar and I messed up everything with you and Cas...”

“None of that was your fault, boss,” he shushes tenderly, putting his chin on the top of my head. He’s always been like the big brother I never had. “Especially not with Caspian.”

“I just can’t save a-a-anything,” I choke, and swallow the snot already dripping into my throat. If I thought Roman was an ugly crier, I must be the Quasimodo of criers. “I—I—I’m j-just a
stupid
girl.”

“You aren’t stupid,” he says firmly, pulling away from me. He bends down and looks me straight in the eyes. “Don’t you ever think you are, boss. You’re Supergirl.” He scrubs my head. “Get some sleep tonight. You’re looking like complete shit.”

I rub my nose on the backside of my hand. “You always know how to make a girl feel terrible about herself.”