String Boys, page 23
He kept it simple, none of the flourishes or complex finger work he did on the violin, but Kelly could still hear it—that pure, sweet instinctual knowledge of how to make that instrument sing.
The song, which started out simple, grew complex and powerful, swelling into a final amazing, moving crescendo that literally left Kelly breathless.
After the final flourish, one by one the screens disappeared, leaving Seth smiling shyly into the camera.
“That was my original composition,” he said, as though prompted. “Oh. It’s titled Kelly’s Concerto.” Someone off camera said something, and he blinked, looking even more self-conscious. “Number Three,” he added. “Kelly’s Concerto Number Three.”
Kelly clapped his hand over his mouth and ignored the burning in his eyes.
Okay.
There you go.
That’s why he ignored the guys in the gym and put up with Marco, the hands-grabby asshole.
Because who would do that for you? Yeah, sure—it was for school. But that was his third try, and it was gorgeous.
“Pretty music,” Vashti said, closer than Kelly had expected.
He startled and almost dropped the phone. “Goddammit!” He glared at Vashti, his heart hammering in his throat, and Vashti grimaced and took a step back.
“I’m sorry, Kelly. I got sucked into the music and forgot the whole thing we were out here to talk about.”
Kelly jerked back, suddenly wary. “Am I fired?”
“No! God no. Marco’s lucky he isn’t. How long’s he been doing that?”
“How long have I been working here?” Kelly countered.
“Clifton too?”
Kelly shrugged. Clifton was a follower. “Whatever. Some days, I’m just over it.”
Vashti shook his head. “Well, yeah, Kelly. You should be over it all the time. Nobody should have to work with that going on. We wouldn’t ask Julia to do it, or Raven. And we won’t ask you.”
Oh God. Using the system. Kelly needed to remember that sometimes it was the system because it worked. “Yeah. Thanks, Vashti. I’m sorry.”
Vashti sighed and pulled a hand through his own slightly shaggy black hair. His skin was a rich copper color, and he had cheekbones to die for, but Kelly had always been struck by the compassion in his unapologetically kohl-rimmed earth-brown eyes.
He was a pretty boy, and he knew it, but he never abused it.
“Can I ask?” he said after a moment.
“About what? The music?” The video had stopped playing, reverting back to Seth in the original frame, playing in the blue shirt. He’d been hinting at something big for Kelly’s birthday, and Kelly still remembered his sort of romantic idea of taking Kelly away for the big eighteen.
Of course, the more Kelly kept trudging along—work, school, taking care of his family—the more he became painfully aware that a milestone like eighteen didn’t mean much more than another day.
But Seth and his dad had been so kind about celebrating his graduation when the day might have gone completely unnoticed by anybody, even his mother, that Kelly was determined to celebrate it anyway.
Seth wanted to treat him special because he was glad Kelly had been born. Kelly could get on board with that.
“Well, yeah,” Vashti said, laughing. “But also….” He bit his lip. “The way you got mad at Marco, and the way you jumped when I got too close. Kelly, is there something we should know about making you more comfortable here—”
Fuck. This?
“Yes, I’m a sexual assault survivor,” Kelly recited, bored. “No, I’m not made of glass. Yes, I got pissed when Marco grabbed my ass for the thousandth time, and no, I don’t want to talk about it now.”
Vashti grimaced. “Sorry. Just….” And then, suddenly, he looked super embarrassed. “I… you know. Keep asking you out after work, and you always have family stuff. My bad. I shouldn’t assume that’s why you wouldn’t want to date me.” He bit his lip. “Ego.”
Kelly’s jaw actually dropped, and then he started to laugh.
Oh.
“I do have family stuff,” he said kindly, when the laughter had faded. “My dad….” Fuck. “He died this summer, and we’re taking care of my stupid brother’s little girl, who needs all the grown-ups she can get. And I’ve got three sisters, and they miss Dad so fuckin’ bad. And my mom is trying to keep it together, and she needs me. She just does. It’s not a good time for Kelly to be dating.”
Vashti perked up, and Kelly could almost hear the offer—I could be part of that—because he was a good guy, and Kelly couldn’t put his ego through the grinder again.
“And that music?” Kelly said. “C’mere. Watch.”
They stood there, shoulder to shoulder, and Kelly could smell the richness of the patchouli Vashti used in his hair and feel the heat he let off on this brisk October day. A part of him poked at his brain about needing that hug, but a sudden, more grown-up part told him how cruel that would be to everybody involved, including Seth.
On Kelly’s little screen, Seth finished and said the name—Kelly’s Concerto Number Three—and Vashti clapped his hand over his eyes.
“Oh!”
Kelly chuckled a little and leaned just a smidge away. “Yeah.”
“That guy really loves you.”
“Yeah. That super talented really adorable guy really frickin’ loves me.”
“So, no dating Vashti.” He grimaced and looked sad, but not wrecked, and Kelly was happy.
“No. I’m sorry. No.” And suddenly Kelly knew he had to tell Seth about this. “Here. Let me take your picture. I can tell him about you, that you’re a friend.”
Vashti smiled crookedly for the camera. “Why would you do that?”
Kelly shrugged and checked the shot. Good. Seth would know that Kelly had options, but only chose Seth. “So I’m not ever tempted for it to be anything else. You’re a good guy. A good boss. And you’re hella cute. But… but before I even knew I was gay, I knew I was in love with him.”
“Can’t compete with that,” Vashti agreed, and Kelly nodded.
“Not so far.”
“Thanks for being honest.” Vashti sighed. “Well, they need us in there. Clifton and Marco are still weeping over the shoes, and Raven’s about to beat them both to death with a pair of pink vinyl boots. This place doesn’t run on love, right?”
Kelly laughed. “Nope. Sadly not.”
THAT EVENING—Monday—as he sat on a bench in his night class and waited for the professor, he sent Seth a text. The night was perfectly cool. The briskness of October hadn’t really set in this year.
This is Vashti—he’s my boss, and he’s super cool, and he was crushing on me hard. I showed him your video, and he said, “That guy really loves you.”
And I told him, “That super talented super cute guy really frickin’ loves me.”
I thought you should know, is all. I missed touching you today. I needed a hug so bad. But he wasn’t you.
He sent the texts, one after the other, and the photo, and looked at his phone for a moment, wondering if Seth would pop on like he did sometimes.
It didn’t happen this time, and once the teacher came in, Kelly turned his attention to his work. It was a basic drawing class, and he loved it because it taught him all sorts of things he hadn’t known to teach himself, things he’d overlooked by trying to learn from art books alone.
He spent the evening lost in sketching the teacher’s cat—and wishing he could have one of his own for the twenty-thousandth time—and walked out into the night feeling somehow calmer and better about things.
When he got to his car, his pocket buzzed.
Check your email when you get home.
But thank you for telling me about Vashti.
I wish I could hug you.
I wish I could let you go.
But I can’t do either of them. So I planned. You’ll love it. I promise.
Kelly was so excited he opened his email in the car.
It was a rental agreement for the day after Christmas through the first week of January, with a typically brief note: My dad will bring you down, and we’ll spend the week together, all three of us. Your family’s welcome—it’s his present to your mom and sisters. Then they’ll all go home, and you and I will be there for the second week.
And you’ll know my touch again by then.
And we can fly.
Kelly hugged the phone to his chest, not feeling silly or sappy or anything bad. That super sweet, super cute, super talented boy really fuckin’ loved him. And life was not all drudgery from school to home to work.
And Seth Arnold wrote him music and gave him dreams when he was too tired to find his own. And in a couple of months, they would hold hands together and fly.
Dangerous Hobbies
SETH LOOKED around the dive bar with narrowed eyes and tried to stay in the present.
When he’d auditioned, in the daylight, the black paint on the walls had been chipped, the red paint on the concrete floors had been stained, and the stage had been a splintered death trap. At night, the curtains, the dark lighting, the loud music—all of it managed to look seedy instead of disintegrating, but Seth knew the risks.
He did not belong here.
The clientele of this little shit show west of Vacaville was mostly poor, an awful lot of white, and favored big boots and big hair. They hadn’t ID’d Seth when he’d come in to audition as a fiddler for the house band, and they hadn’t asked any questions either.
Seth had played “Devil Went Down to Georgia” straight up, although he’d been practicing country music rhythms since he’d seen the ad.
The thing was, he needed money.
The good news about Bridgford was that he had free room and board—and education, for which he was more grateful every day.
The staff was great about steering him toward financial aid, and although he hadn’t mentioned it to Kelly, the times he’d traveled with the orchestra during the summer had been funded by a grant.
But he’d graduated from buying Kelly stuffed animals with his lunch money to rashly renting a house with his FAFSA money, and he’d been desperate when he started looking up ads on the internet.
Everything classical insisted on daytime practices.
But he was nineteen now, and he could go off-campus without permission or notification. The ads for bar bands had all talked about rehearsals at night. Country and rock music were often much simpler than classical music—he felt like this doubled as practicing without doubling his practice load, which was already extensive.
But most of all, he needed the fucking money.
It wasn’t that he was trying to buy his way into Kelly’s affections. It was that he was trying to keep Kelly afloat! Seth knew, because his dad told him, that Matty’s hospital bills and Xavier’s funeral expenses had wiped out the Cruz savings. Dad said that Linda hadn’t told Kelly, but Kelly had gotten a job anyway because he wasn’t stupid.
None of the baby’s furniture had been usable. All of it had been secondhand and out of code, because they’d sold the new stuff Isela had gotten at the baby shower to fund their opioid habit. Seth’s dad, who had offered to go get Chloe’s things, had hauled it to the trash and gotten new furniture on credit. He’d bought other items too—clothes for Chloe and clothes and school supplies for the girls. He’d privately told Lily, Lulu, and Agnes to come to him when they needed things, and not to bother their mother.
But he couldn’t keep doing it forever. Even with Seth’s room and board paid.
So Seth had resolved to get a job, which was a laugh riot, since he didn’t even have a driver’s license and his job skills were for shit.
He could do one thing—play the fucking violin—so when he’d seen the ad for the fiddle player in a country-western band, he’d borrowed a hat from the drama department and a flannel shirt from Vince, who hated the cold with a passion.
He’d worn tennis shoes with frayed laces because that’s all he had.
The pay wasn’t a lot. He couldn’t have survived on it, but it was enough to rent the house in Monterey. It was enough to send money home to his dad to help pay the Cruz’s expenses.
It was enough to help.
And all he had to do was haul his gay black ass to this place, where neither of those things was particularly welcome, and play as well as he had in the tenth grade.
The playing was easy. Butch, the fifty-something paunchy, graying, red-faced guy who played the lead guitar, said he was the best fiddle player he’d ever met, and Seth had smiled and politely thanked him. His son, Guthrie, played the drums, and he’d given Seth a sideways look, speculative. Guthrie was stringy, in his twenties, with shoulder-length surfer-blond hair and slightly crooked front teeth a little like Seth’s own.
For the most part, Guthrie listened to his father’s instruction, and his uncle Jock’s—who played bass—and hung out until it was time for him to play.
Seth could deal with him as a musician, but he made Seth nervous.
It wasn’t that he was unfriendly or threatening. He just stared at Seth from the corner of his eye, like he expected Seth to do something super excessively interesting or something.
But he played. Together they played three nights a week, and oh, thank you God, this was their last gig until after Monterey.
“You looking almost happy there, Fiddler,” Guthrie said as they were setting up. “All excited about Christmas?”
Christmas? Christmas was three days away, and Seth would be alone in the dorms, mostly. Everybody else got to go home.
But the day after….
“I see my family the twenty-sixth.” Big breath. Kelly. But he didn’t talk about Kelly at the Stomp, because why would he?
“Mom, Dad, kid sister?” Guthrie prodded.
“Dad. Family friends. Going to the ocean.”
Guthrie blinked slowly. “Girlfriend?” he implied slyly. “Boyfriend?”
Seth could feel the blush rising to the surface of his skin and couldn’t fight it. But it was dim in the bar, and he was pretty sure he could hide it. “Friend,” he replied, his voice as mild as soap.
Guthrie let out a frustrated sigh. “Fiddler, I’m trying to get to know you. Do you mind?”
Seth shrugged. “I’m very average,” he said with no irony at all.
Guthrie burst out laughing, so hard he dropped the power cord he’d been hooking up. Seth ignored him and Butch’s irritated, “Goddammit, boy, get your ass in gear!” and continued to work doggedly at his tasks.
He played well that night. He knew it in his bones, and even though he didn’t care for the music or the venue—too loud, too much shouting—and he hated the now-familiar smell of beer, the thought gave him pride.
When they were done—“The Devil Went Down to Georgia” being their finale—the crowd was silent for a moment and then rose to their feet. Someone in a sentimental mood called out, “Christmas! Christmas music! Christmas!”
Butch grimaced because they hadn’t worked up any Christmas music—they’d had a tough time putting together the forty-five-minute set they had, given everybody had a day job—and Seth spoke up quietly.
“I know some,” he said, because he’d pretty much cut his teeth on the school Christmas program. Nobody here would mind that it was simple. They wanted… sentimental.
Butch nodded at him. “Go ahead, boy.”
Seth played “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” and “Carol of the Bells” and, in the end, “Hallelujah.”
The crowd held their breath through three songs—not moving, not twitching, not even breathing—and Seth closed his eyes and thought of Kelly. Thought of home.
When he was done, there was an awestruck silence, a lovely, peaceful blanket of quiet, like snow, and then sincere and heartfelt applause.
Seth bowed deeply once and smiled shyly, before turning around and inviting the band for their final bow too.
Someone passed a Santa hat around, where it ended up full on the corner of the stage.
It was a luminous moment, transcendent, and Seth was lost in the haze of it as they packed up and people emptied out of the bar.
He found himself alone in the parking lot, in the thinning traffic, circling around behind the bar toward the bus station.
“Hey! Fiddler!”
Seth pulled his windbreaker up to his ears, cold because he didn’t really have a cold-weather coat, and turned toward Guthrie as he came out with his last drum case.
“Don’t take off so fast. We’ve got some money for you. I can give you a ride if you want one.”
“It’s an hour away,” Seth said, eyebrows raised, and Guthrie half laughed.
“I did not know that. This way to my truck, okay?”
Seth followed him, their long legs falling into easy strides, and Seth was lulled into complacency.
The heavy fist seemed to come out of nowhere.
“Fuckin’ faggots! Give us your fucking money!”
For a moment, Seth lay sprawled out, clutching his violin and watching as two shadows threw Guthrie against the truck, raining blows on his head.
He wasn’t sure when he moved.
Like he had with Castor, he started with a kick, this time to behind one assailant’s knee. That guy went down, and Seth used his elbow to catch the other guy in the middle. The first one came back, and Seth kicked him again, high on his upper thigh, and then cracked the other guy—shorter—in the jaw, hard with his elbow again.
And again. Both men were down, and Seth was kicking them, hard in the ribs as they whimpered. One of them voided his bladder, and Guthrie wrapped his arms around Seth’s waist and lifted.
“Easy there, boy. Easy! You’re going to kill them!”
“Fuckers!” Seth growled. “Fuckers! No! Just fucking no! Not again! Not ever fucking again!”
Guthrie carried him to the truck door, opened it, and shoved him in, and Seth came to his senses. “My violin!”
“Yeah, boy, fuck!”
The violin came sailing in next as Seth scooted to the passenger seat, and Guthrie jumped in and gunned the engine. The truck pealed out of there in a spatter of mud, and Seth tried to wrap his brain around what had just happened.
