The Sound of Us

  His voice grows softer as the song finally winds to a close and my stomach dips because I don’t want it to end. I am in big, big trouble.

  “Roman?” My voice is timid and foreign to my ears. His fingers brush lightly against my cheek as he pulls a stray strand of pink hair behind my ear. My face turns toward his hand to feel his warm fingertips against my cheek again. Caspian is ten thousand leagues out of my mind.

  “Yeah, Junebug?”

  “I’m glad I met you.”

  Down the beach, a group of college kids light a squadron of fireworks into the night sky, sparks of white that, from a distance, look like shooting stars. They howl as the sparks fade into the darkness. I almost jump out of my skin, startled by the sound. Roman blinks and shakes his head as if snapping out of a daydream.

  “It’s getting late,” he mutters suddenly, and jumps to his feet. “Aren’t your parents worried?”

  Anger flushes over my cheeks. “I’m not a kid!”

  “How old are you?” he calls over his shoulder as he begins to leave. “Sixteen?”

  I fist my hands, marching after him. “Almost nineteen! Fuck you very much!”

  “Same differe—” His foot catches a sinkhole and he faceplants into the sand. I squat down beside him. He props himself up on his elbows and gives a long, tired sigh. “Karma’s a bitch.”

  “Apology accepted,” I reply, and jut out my hand to help him up.

  Chapter Twelve

  You’d think Roman would drive a Bentley or a BMW, a sleek car with way too much money spent on the rims. Nope. He drives a crappy-ass apple-green hatchback. And when I say crappy, I mean that very modestly. This car looks like it runs on duct tape and prayers. Mid-90s. Rusted hubcaps. Tan pleather seats—the works. I glance into the backseat to make sure there aren’t any serial killers waiting under the massive amounts of fast food wrappers and dirty clothes.

  “Are you sure there aren’t any...murderers? Rapists? Homeless people back there?”

  He doesn’t even glance back as we get inside, and he pulls the seatbelt over his shoulder. “Nah. Just empty Taco Hell wrappers and my moldy socks.”

  Because that makes me any less frightened.

  “Charming,” I reply.

  “Boaz contributed. I think he left some underwear back there, if you’re interested.”

  “That’s gross.”

  “And knowing my face is on your...” he flicks his gaze down to my lap, then back up again quickly, “is awkward.”

  I calmly put my hands in my lap, my cheeks prickling with embarrassment. “Touché.”

  He inserts the key and the engine whines as it tries to turn over. “C’mon baby...,” he begs until, after a squealing noise akin to the death of Wilbur, the engine roars to life. He kicks it into drive and we pull out of the parking lot. “So, taking you back to the condo?”

  “Yeah,” I reply, like there’s any other place I could go. Back to his place, maybe. But wouldn’t that be super sketch? Or an invasion of privacy? “Where do you stay, anyway?”

  He gives a stiff shrug. “A motel off the interstate.”

  “Not your parent’s—” I stop myself before I finish, but I’ve already let too much slip. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to pry...”

  “No, it’s fine,” but I can tell by the tightness in his voice he’d really rather talk about something else. “My dad lives in Myrtle. So does Holly’s family, but let’s just say I’m not welcome within a hundred yards of their house and leave it at that.”

  “And your dad?” As I ask it, his knuckles tighten around the steering wheel.

  “He disowned me when Hols and I moved to Nashville. To him, trying to make a career in music was like joining the circus. It wasn’t respectable enough. You ask him, I abandoned my family. You ask me...” He trails off. The lights of Ocean Boulevard flicker shades of blue and red over his face like a kaleidoscope. I wait for his answer, but he just presses his lips together and flicks on the radio.

  His own song, “Deep End” blares through the speakers and he quickly turns it back off.

  He clears his throat. “Silence is good, yeah? We don’t need music.”

  “I can hum something?”

  “Can you sing?”

  “I’m so good I can shatter windows.”

  He chuckles, and for the first time since the beach, he cracks a ghost of a smile. “So, I’ll hum a song, and you guess what it is, then vise versa. Just so we both know, I’m going to own this game.”

  “Are you challenging my radio heart?” I press my hand to my chest, aghast. “How dare you!”

  “I want to see if you’re the real deal.”

  “Oh, I’m real—” a strand of hair falls into my eyes “—enough.”

  I almost don’t catch the beginning notes to my dad’s favorite song tumbling from Roman’s lips. “’Born to Run,’” I immediately quip. “Bruce Springsteen.”

  “That was an easy one,” he relinquishes and waits for me to think of a song. I warble the first few notes of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” by the Rolling Stones, and instead of guessing the song, he begins singing with me. His voice is light and liquid, like fizzy pop, much higher than his normal voice, but then we get to the main chorus and his voice drops an octave to a knee-buckling caramel sound. His hands beat the percussion against the steering wheel as he really begins to get into it. He winks at me, and I grin between the lyrics, and bob my head to the words.

  Show-off.

  We coast to a stop at a light, the windows rolled down. The tourists hustling across the crosswalk give us a curious look as we howl the chorus. A laugh bubbles up in my throat, and I successfully hold it in...until he does a terrible Mick Jagger impersonation, and I lose it in a fit of giggles.

  He slides me a cheshire grin. “So? Did I win? Huh?”

  “That was decent,” I reply, wiping the tears out of my eyes. “Your turn.”

  Thinking, he taps his finger on the steering wheel until it evolves into a beat. He ducks his head down and begins rapping.

  “Oh my God, that’s so 90s. You’re showing your sublime age, Roman. ‘What I Got.’”

  “How the hell do you know that one? How old were you, ten?”

  I frown. “Do I really look sixteen?”

  “No, I was just being an asshole.”

  I flop down the visor and inspect myself in the mirror. Even at night, my pink hair glows. “Jesus, you can see me from space.”

  “Just means I’ll never lose you.”

  I slam the visor up again. “Surprising,” I reply, but all I can think about is the phrase Just means I’ll never lose you.

  “But I have seen sixteen-year-olds who look thirty. Now, that’s scary. Ever been about to go down on a girl and realize she’s not even legal yet?”

  “Is this your way of saying you make poor life choices?”

  “See, now that’s being an asshole.”

  I punch him in the arm playfully and flick the radio back on, quickly turning it to the classic rock station. A sweet, slow power ballad drifts through the stereo. Almost instantly, my throat seizes. I want to turn it off, but Roman knocks my hand away from the knob before I can.

  “Name this song!” he demands.

  I swallow hard. Of all the songs in all the world, the radio had to play this one. It’s the song I wish I’d heard with Caspian that night, instead of “Crush On You”—the one I always wanted to...

  Well, the song I always wanted to fall in love to.

  And here I am in a minty green hatchback that smells slightly of ass, listening to the song that means more to me than Roman could ever guess.

  I look over to him to see if he’s really waiting for my answer, and he is. “Bon Jovi,” I whisper, unable to tear my eyes away from his melted emerald gaze, “’Bed of Roses.’”

  If he can sense my trepidation, he doesn’t show it as he turns his attention back to the road. We follow a gray Cadillac up the street. “All right, Miss Radio Heart, name the album title and yea
r.”

  I don’t say anything for a long moment. “You don’t even know that.”

  “So you concede?”

  “1993. Released as a single, but then with the album Keeping the Faith.”

  Is it your favorite song? I want him to ask that so badly, it’s almost a physical pain, and I would answer without a blink of hesitation. Yes, it’s my favorite. It will always be my favorite. But he begins to hum Richie Sambora’s guitar solo with a makeshift air guitar before finally saying, “All right, fine, you win.”

  “Awesome.”

  “It is. Not everyone can say they beat the great Roman Montgomery with a Bon Jovi song.”

  “No, I guess not.”

  We hit a standstill at the bungee-jumping attraction on the Strand, so Roman detours off Ocean Boulevard onto King’s Highway.

  “How long has it been since you’ve seen your dad?” I ask.

  He counts on his fingers. “Four...five years?”

  I gape. “That long?”

  “Don’t give me that look. I call him at Christmas.”

  I blow out a sign of relief. “That’s good.”

  “It would better if he answered.”

  Frowning, I look out the window at the passing mini-golf courses that promise to take you to the Mayan ruins, or the jungle, or through an exotic plane crash. Most of the lights are shut off by now, the courses dark and vacant.

  If Roman’s father was anything like my dad, he would’ve bought the t-shirts, wore the visors, screamed the lyrics, and been front row at every concert. He would’ve been his biggest fan. “I’m sorry.”

  He shrugs. “Price of fame, right?”

  That isn’t what I meant by the phrase when I first said it, but I nod anyway. I want to say something comforting, that it’ll be okay, but his phone begins to ring. He digs for it in his pocket for a cruddy disposable flip-phone, and answers it. “Yeah Boaz?”

  We ease to a stop at a red light. I recognize the liquor store on the corner. CherryTree is close now, just a few blocks away.

  “You sure? —All right, hold on. Lemme ask.” He turns to me. “How adverse are you to breaking and entering?”

  “Is that rhetorical?” I deadpan.

  He tells Boaz, “We’ll be there in five. Yeah, I’m right close to it—you took a taxi? Uh, huh.” He flips the phone shut on his shoulder and shoves it back into his pocket. He flicks the turn signal on, looks over his shoulder, and swerves into the turn lane.

  I give him a leery eye. “Where are we going?”

  “To pay our respects to the dead.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  What I don’t realize until we meet Boaz Alexander in the parking lot of Arrg, Pirates! Mini-Golf is that paying respects to the dead means breaking and entering into a put-put course.

  Boaz tosses a bag of golf clubs over the nine-foot fence that separates the parking lot from the courses. Tonight, he’s fashioning a black t-shirt with a medic cross and the words “Orgasm Donor” tucked into a black and blue kilt, and combat boots. Classy. “You two bro-hahos joy-ridin’ without me? Making me take a yellow cab?” Then Mohawk must recognize me, because he teasingly elbows me in the side. “Finally nice to meet this fine specimen of a woman.” He winks.

  I can’t ignore his biceps and thick shoulders. He’s supposed to be a pianist, but he looks like a long lost member of the Boondock Saints. Maggie would be climbing his back muscles if she ever met him.

  Roman rattles the chain-link fence with a frown. “I don’t remember it being this high.”

  “Brah, it’s been five years, and let’s face it, you made this place famous. So, they heightened the fence, that gonna make you whimper?”

  “Is it sharp at the top?” He frowns.

  Mohawk claps his buddy on the back. “Gimme a push, yeah?”

  I glance up at the building. “Aren’t there security cameras? A guard? Police?”

  Boaz studies me. “You’ve never done this before, have you?”

  “Breaking into a mini-golf course?” My eyes flicker across the top of the fence nervously. Is it sharp at the top? “I was sort of hoping my first time would be a bank, at least. Or my ex-boyfriend’s house.”

  The boys chuckle in that knowing silly-you sort of way before Roman cups his hands and squats down. Boaz shoves his combat boot into Roman’s hands and reaches up to the top of the fence. He eases over and lands on the other side gracefully. He wipes down his kilt and turns back with two thumbs up.

  “Okay bro-hahos, your turn.”

  Roman nudges his head, still squatting down. “You next.”

  I glare at him. “I don’t want to get arrested!”

  He rolls his eyes. “Would you really rather break into your ex-boyfriend’s house?”

  “Maybe.” The fence is impossibly high. I can’t do this. “Just to stick his underwear in the freezer.”

  “Remind me not to piss you off. C’mon, Junebug, it’s now or never,” he sings the lyrics to Bon Jovi’s “It’s My Life.”

  “You really know how to tempt a girl.”

  “Only if it’s working.”

  For the record, this is a really bad idea. I suck in a deep breath, clench my fists, and take a running start. My foot catches hold on his hand and he hoists me up as if I’m as light as a feather. My hands grapple the top of the fence as my other shoe sticks into the chain links. I swipe my leg over, anchoring myself nine feet in the air. This isn’t too bad.

  And that’s when I lose it.

  My hand slips, and I tip backwards. I don’t even have time to scream.

  “TIMMMBEEEERRRRR!” Boaz yells.

  The next I know, I’m staring up at the cloudless sky, trying to suck in a breath. I cough, dazed, and roll off the lumpy mass that caught my fall. Nothing’s broken, but I think my butt is bruised. Yeah, I’ll regret this ten years from now when I have butt-replacement surgery.

  Roman grapples onto the fence on the other side and shakes it. “Hey! You okay? Junebug?”

  It’s funny, because he actually sounds concerned. “Yeah, I think I’m good.”

  “Oh my nuts,” the lumpy mass I fell on groans, sitting up beside me. Boaz rubs the inside of his leg achingly. “I think you squashed ‘em.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, she couldn’t hit them even if she tried,” says Roman as he scales the fence like a cat.

  I can’t help but watch how he moves, like he’s done it a million times. His feet go into the right holes, his hands reach just far enough up for his shirt to expose a sliver of stomach. Call it a concussion, but my eyes won’t cooperate. I can’t look away. He reaches the top, his arm muscles smooth and taunt under his skin, and swings himself over. He lands on his feet and wipes his hands off on his cut-off jeans.

  “There, that wasn’t so hard.”

  Both Boaz and I give him an eat-shit look as we help each other up.

  Arrg, Pirates! Mini-Golf is shaped like any fantasy Port Royal. We’re near the sixteenth hole on Course One—the course Dad liked the most. It has a waterfall and gives the best view of the pyrotechnic show that goes on every thirty minutes in the small lagoon. There’s a pirate ship in the lagoon, made famous by the viral music video of “Crush on You.”

  I follow Roman and Boaz over the different holes, taking shortcuts through the shrubbery to the dock that leads out into the water.

  At the end of the dock, Boaz heaves his golf bag high on his shoulder and jumps into the knee-deep water. Roman jumps into the lagoon after Boaz. “Want to ride on my shoulders? The water’s pretty gross.”

  “We’re not actually going over there, are we?” I hiss, eyeing the pirate ship. “Anyone could see us from the road! If a cop passes or anyone reports us...”

  He sneezes.

  I narrow my eyes at him. “Excuse me?”

  He sneezes again, but it sounds suspiciously like “Chickenshit.”

  “Fine.” I snap my fingers where I want him to stand and sit down on the edge of the dock, trying to un-see the candy-wrappers and
gobs of bird poo floating near my feet. “I’ll piggyback—”

  Suddenly, he scoops me up into his arms, bridal-style, and follows Boaz across the lagoon to the pirate ship. I clamp onto his neck. I would’ve been cool with a piggyback. I would’ve been better with a piggyback. I’m not too heavy for him, am I? I soon forget to ask when a suspicious floating thing catches my eye. I hope it’s an unwrapped Snickers.

  “Do you think they even clean the water?” I venture to ask.

  He shakes his head. “Why do you think I left my Vans on?”

  “Oh, your poor Vans...”

  “They’ll survive.”

  At the ship, Boaz is already on deck. He reaches down and pulls us up beside him. I stare back at the mini-golf course, darker without the floodlights. It looks...almost mystical, the way the lights from the stores across the street reflect on the shimmering water, casting glowing strings of lights over the odd-shaped greens. You can’t see the trash from here, just the shimmers of aqua and the deep shades of blue.

  “So this is what it looks like from the other side,” I murmur.

  Roman comes up beside me with the golf club Boaz handed him. “This was Hol’s favorite spot.”

  To pay our respects to the dead, he had said. Oh.

  The rock star drops a ball onto the deck and with an expert swing, he knocks it across the lagoon and onto the course. “FORE!”

  The ball disappears somewhere into the darkness.

  “That sucked, bro-ha.” Boaz shakes his head and drops a white ball on the other side of me. He points to a distant blue-green splotch. “Hole Ten. Watch and learn.” With a swift swipe, the ball arcs into the air like a comet without a tail, and lands on the Hole Ten green.