Page 19 of Come Back To Me

He rubbed a hand across his face and stared up at the ceiling.

“Why do I feel like I just hit a nerve?” I asked. I was suddenly excited. David was hesitant to talk about himself, he preferred to listen. To me, that was the mark of a true artist—someone who gathered instead of took. I propped my head on my hand and ran my fingers up his chest. If I could get him a little bit hard he’d tell me anything I wanted to know.

“What is it? Tell me,” I urged.

“I’m average,” he said. “Middle child all the way.” I wanted to laugh, but I didn’t. “—So I had to find something to be good at. To set me apart from my cocksucker older brother and my needy baby sister.” I laughed at his description of his siblings. Whenever people spoke about their siblings, there was both love and resentment present.

“So, you…”

“Started playing on my older brother’s guitar. Turns out I had a pretty good voice too. But I didn’t know that until a girl told me.”

“What did she say? Who was she?”

“She was my neighbor. She’d hear me singing in the backyard and one day she told me that I sounded like Mark Lanegan. I didn’t know who he was so I looked him up. The biggest compliment came when she asked me to sing at her birthday party. She was three years older than me. Paid me a hundred bucks too. First paid gig.”

I imagined long legs, tan, dark brown hair—and I was jealous of her because she heard him sing before I did, recognized Lanegan in his voice.

“Do you think you sound like him?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think about it.”

“But that’s what narcissists do,” I said. “They think about themselves…”

He laughed, lifting my fingers to his lips and kissing them. He turned to look at me. “Do you think I’m good?”

The vulnerability in his eyes warned me to be careful: soft eyes and thick lashes. He cared about my opinion. How had I become that to him in such a short time? And he was good…but he could be better. Maybe that was cruel of me.

“I think there’s always room to be better,” I told him.

“What does that mean?”

I rolled away, aware that I’d committed a sin. I needed to learn to keep my mouth shut. The truth wasn’t necessary in every situation.Tact, Yara.

“You’re good. No one can refute that. But, it’s almost like you’re faking it.”

TACT, YARA!

David got out of bed and walked out of the room. I couldn’t see his face so I didn’t know what he was thinking.

“You don’t have to be a bloody baby about it,” I called after him.

I got up too, pulled on my clothes in a huff. I heard the stitching rip in my shirt as I yanked it over my head. I was angry he’d taken offense, angry I’d said what I had. What was wrong with me? I blew things up in less than a month. I needed to take a walk, clear my head. I was halfway to the door still trying to wedge the heel of my foot into my shoe when he grabbed me around the waist. He lifted me easily and I didn’t struggle when he carried me back to the bed and tossed me down onto my back. It was one of those moments when I realized I could be mature and talk this out instead of leaving town and starting a new life. I had already decided on Santa Fe.

“Just because you hurt my damn feelings doesn’t mean I want you to go,” he said. “My feelings are my problem, not yours.”

I propped a leg on my knee and stared up at the ceiling, not convinced. I could smell him on the sheets.

“How mature,” I managed. It was true, but it came out sounding sarcastic. Not many people could do what he’d just done.

“Sometimes I feel like I’m faking too,” he said. “It was a hard thing to hear. Like you’re in my brain fucking around with my insecurities.”

I sat up right away. “Is your family supportive of what you do?”

“Are you kidding? No way. They want me to do something respectable with my life. This has all become as much about proving them wrong as it is about the passion.”

“Well, there’s your problem then,” I said, sighing. “When you try to prove your art you’re going to fail every time.”

“Yeah?”

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