Chapter 26
Calise’s apartment
Wauwatosa, Wisconsin
She blinked. “Shane. From college, Shane?” She hadn’t seen or heard from this man in so long. He looked like crap.
“One and the same, babe. I’m sorry I scared you, but I had to make sure we were alone. If that seer had been here, I would have—”
“Would have what? How do know about Lucas and what the hell is up with your eyes?”
She took a tentative step forward but he shrank away from her.
“He infected you?” his voice was poisonous. “What do you see?”
“Your eyes…they’re not like an angel’s or a demon’s…what are you?”
Shane hesitated as if weighing the decision what to say. “I am a transitor—stuck in between being an angel and a demon. When you knew me in college, I was an angel.” He fumbled with a button on the front of his shirt.
An angel?
Stomach turning, she clenched her eyes shut and pulled out the Shane of her memories. “I can see you now. You were beautiful, Shane.” His name rolled off her tongue as it had so many times in the past. Emotions she had long since forgotten rose to the surface. “You fell? Why? Did I do this to you?”
Guilt washed over her. Her mother said angels shouldn’t love humans. In college, Ellen warned her not to break up with Shane. Calise wanted to go to him and comfort him, be whatever it was he needed her to be to make him whole again.
If I did this to him, I can make it right. I can save him.
Or was it already too late?
In college, they couldn’t stand to be apart from each other; they’d lie around and hold each other—she never wanted him to let her go. When she was under his spell…
He edged a bit closer. “I don’t want to blame you, Calise. It’s my fault that I fell in love with you—that I’m still in love with you. Don’t deny that there was a bond between us then—that’s still between us. Can’t you feel it?” He put his hand on her cheek.
His touch used to send ripples of heat through her. Now, he was like a damp sponge and smelled musty and stale. She was careful not to startle him as she gently separated them. “That was a long time ago. Why are you here?”
His brows wrinkled and he set his jaw grimly. “Nara. That’s why I’m here. To warn you. Let me help you, Calise. Nara’s a demon. She hunts and kills seers like your friend, Lucas. You need to stay away from him. You’re in danger.”
She shook her head and sighed. “Yeah, I keep hearing that a lot lately. But I can’t stay away from him. What could someone have said or done to keep us apart in college? Remember how we were?”
Were.
His shoulders slumped and his face darkened. Trembling, he said, “Not a day goes by that I don’t still think about you. The only thing that kept me away from you, was you.”
Her cheeks burned. “Me? Shane, you were the angel. I’m just human. Of course I thought I loved you. You were overwhelmingly perfect. I couldn’t compete with your love, and you knew it. You weren’t supposed to fall in love with me. I know about the rules now. But I’m sorry—you tricked me. How…why did you fall?”
“I fell because of my love for you—you broke my heart. I wasn’t as strong as I thought I was after you left me. But you can save me, Calise.” He held her by the shoulders. “You can bring me back. Come with me now. I can help you. Just tell me where the seer is, and I’ll take care of everything.”
Her mind snapped back into focus and she wiggled her shoulders free from his grip. “What do you want with Lucas?”
“Calise, I…” He reached for her, arms outstretched.
“I’m not so sure I need, let alone want your help. Leave. Lucas will be here any time now, and he hasn’t done anything wrong. He helps cleanse the world of evil, and it seems to me you’re aligning with it.”
His trembling got worse, and anger seemed to bubble from his being. “Lucas knows all about us and our past. He knows everything. He knows in the end, you’ll need me to protect you from Nara. Our love is still there. We can make it work, like your parents did.”
He knows about my parents—and Ellen! “If you want to help me, if you still love me, get Nara off Lucas’s back. He and I are going to be a family.”
Instantly, he was so close to her that their noses were almost touching and his hand was on her throat. Her heart pounded and Shane, the man she once loved, now scared her to death.
“I can hear it,” he whispered hoarsely. “A second heartbeat inside you! You are having that seer’s child?” Shane screamed. “You could have had everything with me, and this is what you choose?”
He released his hold on her neck and threw his hands up in the air.
She coughed, massaging her neck. “Shane, what’s happened to you? How can I help you?” Her mind and body told her not to touch him because he was a time bomb. But in her heart, she felt pity. Tentatively, she wrapped her arms around him and hugged him, hoping in some way to calm him. His temper was so volatile that instead of being the man she used to rely on, this was a man who terrified her.
He melted into her arms. His tensed muscles relaxed into her body. “Remember the first time we met?”
How could she forget?
It was Calise’s first college frat party, and she was ready. As a freshman at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she was well aware that Halloween on campus was legendary. She’d heard directly from her brother Dean, an alum, that anything could and did happen on this sacred collegiate holiday. Anecdotes from her brother included underage students strutting up and down State Street with cans of beer while openly taunting police, students high on mushrooms hanging from trees thinking they were on mountaintops, and couples fornicating in alleys with voyeurs galore. To say that she couldn’t wait to engage in some lewd and lascivious behavior of her own was an understatement.
Ellen and Sarah, her best friends, scored an invite to a frat party where there were rumbles of a full bar and live band. Calise and Sarah dressed up as playboy bunnies complete with fishnets, fuzzy ears, and black patent leather pumps. They wanted attention. Their more respectable friend Ellen, Calise’s roommate, dressed up as an angel. Ellen’s night would be kept busy trying and failing miserably to keep the other two out of trouble.
The hot trio did not enter the party unannounced. While Calise was walking down the stairs to the basement of the frat house after a cursory view of the ornate main level, she missed a step and tumbled down half a staircase.
“Grace, thy name is Calise,” her dad had always joked.
She lay stunned on the floor, still looking, she was sure, quite fabulous. A hand reached down for her. The hand itself became the single most perfect appendage she’d ever laid her eyes on. A silver skull ring adorned the thumb and nail that looked as manicured as hers. She was rewarded with warmth that seemed to actually pulse when she reached up to grab the stranger’s outstretched arm.
Her embarrassment level rose to new heights when she realized how absolutely ridiculous she must have looked falling, so she decided to keep her head down when she stood up. She didn’t want to see a face displaying pity for her klutziness, so she chose not to even look up at her chivalrous frat boy. A whisper-soft finger ran down her cheek while she mumbled, “Thanks.” When she found the nerve to look up, the mystery man was walking away, and Calise caught a quick glimpse of a rock hard ass in tight-fitting jeans with a muscular upper body that appeared ripped and a head of long, dark hair.
The not so subtle buzzing of Ellen and Sarah behind her made her turn to face them.
“Did you see his hair?” Sarah cooed.
“What did his hand feel like?” Ellen asked with a serious face.
“Is he in the band? Where did he go? Did you see how he smiled at Cali and touched her face?” Sarah scanned the crowd in front of them and pointed.
His back was to them and his arm was draped around a girl surrounded by dazed-looking men trying to chat her up.
Ellen stiffened.
“What?” Calise wondered what had spooked her.
“Why would he be with her?” Ellen was visibly shaken.
“Who is that whore that’s stolen Calise’s knight in shining armor?” Sarah teased, trying to size up the competition.
“That’s Nara,” another girl remarked in passing. She shuddered. “She lives on my floor.”
Nara turned to look at them with a warning in her eye.
“Stay away from her tonight, girls,” Ellen whispered. “Your frat boy is making a serious mistake.”
Calise knew Ellen was right but couldn’t help thinking that she needed to save him from this woman. But it was he who was trying to do the saving.
Sarah was still fixated on the mystery man. “He’s so—wow.”
“Really, Sarah; and to think we haven’t even begun drinking heavily yet!” Ellen laughed. “What will men look like to you at the end of the night?”
Just then the band started playing, opening their set with AC/DC’s You Shook Me All Night Long. Calise was theirs. She loved some 80s metal. The girls pushed their way into the crowd to head bang.
She saw a flash of hair on the drums when she went to replenish their beverages during the opening riff of Guns N’ Roses’ Welcome to the Jungle. The hair was wicked long and black with bangs covering the face. His head rocked with the music but she recognized a flash on his thumb. The silver skull ring! She froze and watched him. When the song ended, his hair settled back to earth, gracing her with a full facial frontal. He looked right at her and Calise closed her gaping mouth, mesmerized. She tingled everywhere it mattered. Every beat he played, she felt throughout her whole body.
He winked at her.
Calise was captivated. She stood there drinking shitty beer and watching his every move set after heavy metal set.
Then she was there—Nara.
She bumped into Calise so hard that she actually stumbled backwards and spilled her beer. Something deep inside of Calise snapped. The air around Nara seemed to radiate the energy of an impending storm.
She had a feeling of something off, something wrong. The energy from the girl made Calise want to run—to Ellen… or that hot drummer.
Even though no one believed her, Calise had felt these odd energies around certain people for years. She tried to ignore it. She’d tried to wish it away. And failed.
Calise rushed Nara from behind and gave her a hard push. “You don’t deserve him.”
“And you do, filthy human?” she snarled.
That was one of the last things Calise remembered of the male-dubbed hot chick fight.
The next day Ellen told her that Calise’s man of the hour, named Shane, pulled Nara off of her, and she sported the black eye and fat lip to prove it. A beautiful first impression, if she did say so herself. Calise was sure he was thinking, When, oh when, can I see her again?
****
Calise was swooning in Shane’s arms. She felt drugged and delirious.
“I was wondering when I could see you again, Cal,” Shane cooed in her ear. “Remember how I saved you?”
She couldn’t stop the memory from coming. She welcomed it.
****
The next weekend the very same frat where Calise had made a spectacle of herself on Halloween hosted a dinner, and each frat boy could bring a guest. Sarah nabbed an invite with the lead singer of the band, named Topher, who asked Sarah if she could wrestle up any single friends that would come to be dates for some of the currently unattached boys. Ellen and Calise read that as babysit the nerds, but they had nothing better to do.
Ellen was rewarded with a pre-med hottie while Calise got an accounting major who was a small boy with a pleasant combination of drool and food stuck in the corners of his mouth throughout dinner. How could she not find him enchanting? He had the gall to grab her knee during dinner, and she was lucky to get a close-up on his longish yellow fingernails. Guys that are the biggest dorks are sometimes the gutsiest. He smelled like compost, and Calise read his energy, too. It was negative, but flaccid and limp, like a noodle.
Then he walked into the room. Shane. Her Shane. With Nara. Ok, not her Shane just yet, but Calise’s drunken, klutzy first impressions weren’t always her finer moments. Ask Ellen.
“Can I show you my room?” Calise’s “date” asked somewhat politely after dinner.
She figured she’d quickly appraise his room, then feign an ailment and casually run into Shane on her way out of the house. Via this encounter, Shane would be convinced of her utter perfection wherein he would break up with Nara and become hers.
Stellar plan.
“Sure,” she conceded and followed him upstairs. His roommate claimed the top bunk bed while her “date” slept on a mattress on the floor. She walked in and looked around to appease the little geek. When she heard the door click shut behind her, fleeting panic reminded her that she’d neglected to tell Sarah and Ellen where she was going. Now it was too late.
His energy changed. Instead of malleable it was steel. He’d tricked her. When he turned around to face Calise, she knew how wrong she was about his geeky outward appearance. He became a predator and his sinister eyes now said that he meant business.
Shit. Now what?
She’d yell if he tried anything, but then she began to doubt herself. Who was she kidding? Would he try something right here in the frat house with all his brothers around? She could hear her older brother Dean smiling and saying he wouldn’t trust any of his frat brothers alone with her.
She took a hesitant step backwards and accidentally fell onto his mattress and just that fast he pounced on top of her. The air around him seemed to darken. He was deceptively strong. She always thought in a rape situation she’d pull the guys nuts off or bite off part of his cheek, but she froze. He pinned both of her wrists over her head in such a firm grasp that she couldn’t move. His unnatural pressure on her legs intensified so she clamped her thighs tightly together.
“Get off,” she managed to say. Her struggling actually helped him spread her legs. His hardness pushed down on her.
He gave a wicked smile and drooled on her face. “Oh, I plan to,” he said, cold as ice.
Everything was going black as she started to succumb to the shock of it all. Maybe she should close her eyes and he’d be done fast like her high school boyfriend. Then the sane part of her mind woke. Fuck that shit.
“HELP!” she yelled in the loudest voice she could muster with such a shaky undertone. Calise fought in earnest now. No way would she go down without a fight.
“This happens all the time here, missy. We boys are brothers, remember? We protect each other, not little shit sluts like you.”
She’d have to call her brother Dean when she got her ass out of this mess and thank him for not letting her visit his frat. Ever.
Just then, she heard a pounding on the door.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
Strong hands hit the locked door. She heard Ellen’s frantic voice. “Calise! Are you in there? Are you ok?”
“We are BUSY. Go away.” His eyes bored into hers and she succumbed to sheer panic. He was going to finish this one way or another.
“Open up now!” Calise heard what she knew in her heart was Shane’s voice. Hope pierced her for a fleeting moment when the creep’s head turned toward the door. Her attacker was not put off, but simply annoyed. He wasn’t afraid of Shane, but this frat loser should have been.
“You haven’t been summoned to this place. Go away!” he growled.
“ELLEN!” she risked yelling. He released her left wrist and backhanded her hard to shut her up.
The door broke open. Shane and Ellen bore such a sharp contrast to the dark shadows of the creep and his room that Calise breathed in deep and drank up their light. The faint music and laughter from downstairs wafted into the room with a haze of smoke.
Shane and Ellen were on a mission: Save Calise.
“I suggest you remember who her friends are, and leave her alone,” Ellen barked. She was by Calise’s side and in his face. He held up his hands in mocking defeat and rolled his eyes at her. Ellen dragged Calise out of the room under Shane’s bulk, which blocked the door and the creep’s escape. No one ever saw him again.
****
“The creep was a demon, wasn’t he?” Calise let the memories seep back into her like rain water soaking into barren, cracked soil after a rainfall.
“Yes. Do you remember our first kiss?” Shane pushed deeper into her subconscious, letting his lips brush softly again hers.
“Mmm,” Calise murmured recalling Shane in all his splendor…
****
Shane had sent Calise flowers with a card that read, I’m sorry for what happened to you at my frat house. Let me help you regain trust in my gender. Dinner at Paison’s next weekend?
Giddy with anticipation, Calise arrived at the Italian restaurant early to let the butterflies in her stomach settle. Two glasses of sangria later she checked the concealer job covering her remnant bruises and couldn’t help but smile when Shane sauntered into the restaurant. His head scanned the tables, seeking Calise. He waved and she swallowed hard and tilted her chin up and smiled.
Chill, Cali, chill, she repeated to herself.
“Calise, right? I’m sorry we’ve never formally met. I’m Shane.” He burrowed both his hands into his pockets when all she could think of was touching them again to see if they still pulsed with heat. She could tell him it was purely a scientific curiosity, that she wanted to examine the bone structure and strength of a drummer’s hand…
Shut down the nerdy science part of you, Cali, NOW! her mind screamed.
He slid into the booth across from her and poured himself some sangria. “You must have a good fake ID?” He had donned jeans and a tight old Metallica concert t-shirt that hugged his upper arms just right.
“It works some places, but I don’t look anything like the girl. It works at The R&R Station, which is my favorite bar, of the ones I’ve been in.” The bar offered darts, pool, and heavy metal: her holy trinity.
They ordered dinner and another pitcher of sangria. She drank him in and he tasted better than the sangria—his chiseled features, his thick mane, square jaw, and Caribbean turquoise eyes that sparkled like the sea.
“So, I have to ask you, Calise, how did you end up in that creep’s room last night? He is gone now, by the way.” He looked away.
“Where did he go?”
“Let’s just say he won’t hurt anyone again anytime soon.” When he looked at her, his eyes held pity. Or was it remorse? Calise figured he felt sorry for her bad judgment. She hated pity.
“It was my fault. I can usually sense when things aren’t right, but that guy took me by surprise. Thanks for last night; if you and Ellen hadn’t come—” She pushed the thought away.
“What do you sense about me?”
Calise dared not blink so as not to miss a moment of adoring him. She sensed rhythmic peace that pulsed around him in waves. A man you’d follow around the world because he could save it. “I sense you don’t just try to save people, you succeed. Like Nara. How does your girlfriend feel about us being out to dinner?” she blurted out before she could stop herself.
Shane furrowed his eyebrows and rested his chin in his hand while he talked. “Nara and I are complicated. She knew the night of the party that I was interested in you. You held your own against her. Impressive.”
He gave her the sexiest half-smile with that one compliment that a girl could fantasize about. Had she heard the word interested in reference to herself? “So you two are dating then?”
“She needs someone to set her on the right path, so to speak.” He heaved a big sigh with burden written all over his face. “I thought I could do that for her, but now I’m not so sure.”
“I’m sorry, did you two break up?” she said, sounding way too cheerful.
“I’ll probably never really be rid of her, but for now, I told her she’s on her own.”
“You are a fantastic drummer. I loved watching you with the band.” He blushed and looked down. Modesty is good. “You were incredibly…” It was her turn to blush. “…talented.” She wanted to say “sexy” but scaring him to death wasn’t on her to-do list tonight.
“Thanks. I feel whole when I drum. The music consumes me, and I can get lost from everything that’s bad in the world.” He brought his hands out on the table, laced his fingers together and slowly began to twiddle his thumbs. His long hair was in a ponytail, and Calise couldn’t help thinking of her mother’s reaction to his hair being longer than hers. Part of her couldn’t wait to introduce them.
“Not everything in this world is bad, Shane.” She reached across the table and put her hands over his. They pulsed before she even touched them. “You aren’t bad.”
He pulled away. “I know I shouldn’t feel anything for you Calise, but the first moment I saw you, I trusted you. And you trusted me. We feel right.” He reached forward and squeezed her hands.
The effect was immediate. Heat pulsed in waves up her arms and through her whole body. Calise inadvertently closed her eyes and inhaled. Through closed eyes she saw her mother clapping for her at a piano recital then she and Ellen sitting on a front porch swing chatting on a summer day. Two of her happiest memories. Where did that come from?
“What are your plans for after dinner?” Shane asked.
How about never letting you leave my side?
Calise glanced at their reflection in the window of the restaurant on their way out. She couldn’t stop staring at Shane. He was walking out of the restaurant with her.
I rock.
“Although I have enough studying to keep me busy for the rest of my natural life, I won’t be able to concentrate tonight. What do you have in mind?” she ventured, to see if she was a “pity” date or an “I’m interested” date.
“I was planning on going to the Observatory. It’s open to the public tonight. We could see the rings on Saturn. Come with me?” He lifted an eyebrow and if Calise wasn’t already enamored, she was now.
“Yes, I want to come.”
At the observatory, astronomy students and couples on dates took turns looking at Saturn. While they waited, Shane softly put his arm under her jacket and pulled her close. Calise closed her eyes and inhaled. Her eyes fluttered open. He smelled different than what she expected. He smelled of the north wood’s pine trees and rain. She closed her eyes again and leaned into his shoulder.
He walked her home.
Outside her dorm, he paused and pulled her in for a warm hug. Parting reluctantly, he grabbed her chin with his forefinger and thumb. He pulled her close to him and…
*****
Calise jerked herself out of the memory of their first kiss, their first everything else. Ancient history.
Shane held her so tightly that her feet were off the floor.
In the sane part of Calise’s mind, she understood that he knew she couldn’t have resisted him.
Standing in her apartment, he cradled her head in his hands and whispered hoarsely in her ear, “Remember us.”
She wanted to open the floodgate of memories to their past but fought him. “No, Shane. It is over. We are over.”
“You do still love me like you did then, don’t you?” Shane panted.
It caused her physical pain to answer him. “You own a piece of my heart that loves you. But I’m in love—”
“Yes?”
“I’m in love…with Lucas. Shane, I was eighteen. You knew I couldn’t resist you. You were so perfect, I couldn’t compete. But when you quit college, I—” She didn’t want to tell him why she broke up with him. The real reason was that there was no reason.
“I broke up with you. Remember that…”
****
Dating Shane had provided Calise with emotional sustenance. She learned a lot about him and his heart, which was so pure and holy it was scary. She was raised Catholic and would have preferred to forget that in college. But he continued to appear at her dorm room every Sunday morning with his gray tie clinging to his freshly pressed white shirt and a grin on his face. She would just laugh, give up and follow two steps behind him all the way to St. Paul’s, clutching his hand like he was her own personal morality meter. He was a fervent believer in God which she found kind of sexy because although she sometimes thought he was always saying Hail Mary’s to thank God for her, he never pushed his beliefs on Calise or anyone else. He was more one to challenge intellect and question people’s decisions and motivations. He cared about what made people tick.
Poor, sweet, beautiful Shane.
Calise hated herself for it, but she was slowly beginning to resent him.
Frustrated, she guarded her heart from him more and more every day, while he increasingly opened his heart to her.
Calise felt like she was ripping the pages out of a good book without reading it, and burning the pages. Still, her mind and heart were in agreement; she would not spend her life following in Shane’s do-good crusade shadow. She needed to rise and find herself, not follow another person like she’d followed her parents’ advice her whole life.
He will be fine. He is great, but…
She had nothing. Only that her love was based on adoration more than emotion. The only person on her side, the only one who seemed to understand, was Ellen. She had no reason to break up with Shane. The dropping out of school thing was an obstacle she created to comfort herself.
If she broke up with him, nothing he did afterwards would be her fault or responsibility, would it? She didn’t want to hurt him.
On the Saturday night after her last Spring final, she decided to go over and see him to do the deed.
Calise needed to be with someone who was going somewhere but Shane seemed to be waiting for her to get somewhere. She didn’t want to save the world standing behind someone; she wanted to be in front with her own concrete answers.
She couldn’t put it off any longer.
Calise was determined to believe she’d met Shane for a reason and damn it all, she wouldn’t forget it. He’d breathed life into her when she needed it most. He’d instilled confidence in her when she was weakest and most uncertain. He loved her with a pureness that she should have clutched onto for dear life, but instead, was letting go.
She never cheated on him. No mammoth lie hung between them, he had done nothing wrong in particular.
She strolled the familiar route to Shane’s frat house. The hibernating maples sported new leaves. She let it signify a new beginning for her until she saw the beautiful pink flowers of the crab apple trees covering the newly green grass. Perfumed beauty speckled the ground where people took no notice and stepped on it.
Lingering on State Street, she browsed the store windows. Should she get him a present or a card to soften the blow?
I am an idiot. What, like a thanks-for-playing “parting gift”?
Leaving the cherry tobacco smell of another store behind, she eventually found herself outside his room. She heard him drumming along to Led Zeppelin. “Black Dog.” He always said that was one of the hardest songs to play on the drums. He sounded flawless. She stopped at the top of the stairs and touched the door where she remembered her savior, Shane, busted through to get her out of the compromising situation with the creep.
The tears were going to come and she wouldn’t be able to stop them. With her stomach lurching, heart pounding and throat closing, she knocked on his door. He opened it with exuberance and grabbed her up in a sweeping embrace, planting a kiss on her lips that she didn’t reciprocate. Calise put the heels of her hands on his pecs and looked up at him as she began to literally push him away just like she had been mentally doing for months. He let her go and went to shut off the music. He turned to her with his head cocked questioningly.
“What up, my girlfriend? Shouldn’t we be celebrating your exams being done?” He still held a half smirk on his face, expecting a smartass remark from her but getting nothing.
She kept looking at the floor then walked over to examine his music collection.
Enough is enough…get on with it.
“I was thinking about next year and…” She swallowed, searching desperately for the kindest words, the gentlest let-down.
“Yeah, I’ve been thinking about it, too.”
“Shane, stop! I. Can’t. Do this.” She was faltering and faltering fast. The tears began to fall.
“Can’t do what? I promise it will be fine. If it gets really bad, I’ll convince the band to move up here and practice or whatever. I know long distance will be tough—”
“No Shane, I don’t want to do this anymore. With you.” She risked a peek at his face and it only registered confusion.
He was dead calm and serious. “What are you saying?”
Cowardly turning away from him, she answered, “I’m saying I don’t want a long distance relationship, or…” She breathed and whispered, “…any relationship.”
Calise exhaled. She’d said it and she felt better. I feel better.
“Why not? What did I do wrong? I love you, Calise; I would go to the ends of the earth for you. My heart is yours, I’ve freely given it to you.” Then he whispered, “You…you are my everything. I can’t do this life without you. I don’t want to do this life without you.”
Although her heart broke for hurting him, she realized in that moment that love is the trickiest and most fragile game played. Given freely or forced by obligation, love sets us apart from all other creatures. When one person loves another and it is fully returned, a circle is forged and a slice of perfection inhabits the soul. When one person loves another, and the love isn’t returned, that circle is severed. Calise just sliced open their circle with a machete. She saw in Shane’s eyes what she’d done.
She regretted it immediately, but the cut was just starting to bleed.
His eyes were pleading, then the life drained out of them and became empty. Vacant.
“Get out then,” he said softly, walking to his drum set. He sat down and stared at his hands.
“Shane, I…” She left the room and sat on the staircase between the first and second floor.
She heard his stereo turn on, volume way up. It was their song, “Patience” by Guns ’N‘ Roses. The whistling of the song’s intro reverberated though her whole body. She closed her eyes and sank her head in her hands.
What have I done?
Walking heavily back up to the room to check on him, she peered through the open door. He sat at the drum set wearing a Santa hat of all things. His shirt was off; he was so gorgeous. Seeing the tears streaming down his cheeks, the guilt of her actions hit her like a truck.
He drummed.
I just dumped the man who would have adored me forever. For no good reason other than he was flawless and I’m flawed. Crap.
Shane looked up at her and mouthed the word, “Go.”
She did go and didn’t look back, even when the music changed and he banged out death metal.
****
The flood of memories broke Shane’s spell. “I pity what you’ve become and I’m sorry if it’s partly my fault,” she said.
His body went rigid again, then he set her down away from him. He pointed his finger right in her face and spat, “I never want your pity. This is far from over,” Shane warned her and vanished.