The Secrets of Attraction Read online

  “Got this?” I asked. He nodded. I walked to the back room.

  “Jess, wait.”

  I ignored Duncan and shoved through the doors into the back. Grace was in her office at the computer, her fingers flying across the keyboard as she worked on an Excel spreadsheet. I knocked on the doorjamb. She startled, took off her glasses, and rubbed her eyes.

  “Hey, what’s up?” she asked, smiling.

  “Would you mind if I left? The yoga rush is over and I have this killer physics test tomorrow and—”

  “And leave Tanner here . . . alone? It’s only about another hour or two, do you really need to leave?”

  Tanner had been at Mugshot for three months and had come up short twice on the register due to errors. And he was still learning the drinks. I knew he’d be up to speed soon enough, but leaving him here alone wouldn’t be doing any of us any favors.

  “Can I at least grab my book out of my car, catch some study time during the lull?” I lied.

  “Yep, great, Jess. Thanks,” she said, readjusting her glasses.

  I grabbed my jacket and keys and headed out the back door. Cold air smacked me in the face, but it didn’t sting as much as . . . I’d seen them. Spoken to them. The earth was still on its axis. No sinkhole opened to swallow me up. Still. It felt as shitty as I thought it would. They’d have to take their order to go, right? I’d just sit in my car until they left.

  I slid into the driver’s seat of my Beetle and reclined it, closing my eyes. Flash. Duncan’s hand on Hannah’s hip. His smug look. The image was burned into my eyelids. I fiddled with the bracelet, rubbing the curved infinity symbol between my thumb and forefinger. Why couldn’t I take this fucking thing off? Infinity. Forever, Jess. Bullshit. Was there even a chance she was still wearing hers?

  Tap. Tap. Tap.

  I jumped. Duncan’s face filled my window.

  “We need to talk.”

  Know what’s worse than seeing your ex-girlfriend with your ex–best friend? Getting caught trying to avoid them.

  Duncan stepped away from the door to let me out. I jacked up the seat, pretended to look for something, anything, even though we were both painfully aware of the awkward situation. I found a stray straw wrapper and shoved it into my pocket before finally getting out and leaning against the door.

  We stood in silence, glaring in opposite directions, which probably looked like a killer album cover. We could call it Betrayal.

  “Get a new drummer yet?” he asked.

  “Nah, still looking.”

  Duncan and I had never officially talked about him leaving the band. I’d put up a sign on the message board at school and in the local rehearsal place to announce that Yellow #5 was looking for a drummer, even though I had no intention of finding someone new at that point. It was more of a passive-aggressive fuck you to Duncan, the quickest way to cut him as deep as he’d cut me. Four guys in two months had expressed interest. Tanner had collected the names, but we never had any auditions. Maybe I thought it would all blow over and HannahDunk would come crawling back to apologize. Maybe that was what was about to happen. A long-overdue apology.

  “I joined Plasma.”

  Fuck me.

  “Kenny Ashe’s band? Cool.”

  “I guess. He couldn’t believe I left Yellow Number Five. I couldn’t either. Thanks for the heads-up.”

  I glared at him.

  “That’s your doing. Don’t even start with me.”

  “You couldn’t call me? We couldn’t talk about this?”

  “What’s to talk about, Duncan? You made your choice.”

  “We could have worked this out, bro.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong.”

  “C’mon, Jesse. It’s been two months.”

  “What do you expect from me, Duncan? To say, ‘No hard feelings, come back to the band. Hell, maybe Hannah can play tambourine now.’ We’ll all be one big, happy family, until maybe Tanner tries to hook up with her.”

  He squared his jaw, nodded. “Don’t.”

  “Or what?” I asked, standing up straight. I never thought of myself as a violent person, but all I wanted to do was punch him in the throat. I’d been sick. Like, sick-sick, with some apocalyptic flu over Thanksgiving break, when they accidentally hooked up at a party. Acci-fucking-dentally. That’s how they played it.

  Something happened, Jesse, Hannah had said.

  I’d never in a million years thought that the something that had happened was Duncan. I still couldn’t believe it.

  “You had a choice,” I said. “At some point, one of you had a choice.”

  Duncan growled and walked away, then turned sharp and got in my face.

  “That’s so typical of you, Jess,” he said. “That this is something we did to you.”

  “It’s not? What is it, then?”

  “Maybe you should talk to her about it.”

  “I’m talking to you.”

  “I dig her, okay? She digs me. It has nothing to do with you. It happened.”

  “Have a nice life digging each other,” I said, shoulder-bumping him hard as I walked past him to go back into the café.

  “Jesse, I want the song.”

  I spun back. “What?”

  “You know what I’m talking about. The song. The one we were writing before . . .”

  “You screwed my girlfriend.”

  “Dude, stop already.”

  “Duncan,” a soft voice called.

  Hannah stood about three feet away from us, clutching her bubble tea in two gloved hands. Her shoulders hunched, she bounced on her toes, bracing against the cold.

  “I’ll be there in a minute, babe.”

  Babe. Knifepoint. Gut.

  Hannah wouldn’t look at me. Had she heard the “screw” remark?

  She turned and walked toward the corner to wait. She pulled off a glove with her teeth and took out her phone; the light from the small screen illuminated her features. Shivering, she brought the straw up to her lips. Who the fuck drinks bubble tea in February, anyway? Hannah. That’s who. I wanted to pull her toward me, wrap my arms around her to stop her shivering. Ask her how she could enjoy a drink that was like sucking fish eyes through a straw. The way I used to ask her. Used to.

  “So—the song, Jesse.”

  I sighed. “What about it.”

  “If you’re not using it, I’d like it. We plan on doing an original for the battle.”

  “What makes you think I’d hand over our song to Smegma?”

  Duncan couldn’t help but laugh at the nickname we’d given Kenny Ashe’s band. He recovered quickly. “Because we wrote it together. It’s part mine.”

  “It’s not finished.”

  “You’re not using it.”

  “Not at the moment, but soon, yeah, I will be.”

  “I thought you said—”

  “I lied, Duncan. You’re easy to replace. Drummers are a fucking dime a dozen. I already have a guy in mind, just have to make the call. Maybe we’ll do the original for the battle.”

  “So you’ve applied already? Deadline is Monday, you know.”

  “That’s why you came here? To get the song?”

  Duncan shoved his hands in his pockets and looked up at the sky.

  “Pretty much.”

  “Not to apologize?”

  He turned to look at Hannah and raised his hand to signal that he needed another minute.

  “If I apologize will I get the song?”

  “Sure,” I lied.

  He squared his jaw again, narrowed his eyes, and then smiled, or more correctly, bared his teeth.

  “I’m sorry I’m in love with Hannah. Sorry she’s in love with me. Sorry this happened right under your nose and you were too full of yourself to even notice that you treated her like shit. Sorry I didn’t give you or your feelings a second thought when I kissed her the first time. Sorry I still don’t. Wait, no, I’m not sorry for that.”

  He stepped back, eyes hard.

  “Just keep t
he fucking song, Jess. I’ll write a better one.”

  With that, he turned and joined Hannah at the corner.

  Neither of them looked back as they walked away.

  I stormed into Mugshot and tore through the back room, knocking paper cups off a shelf in my wake.

  “Jesse?”

  I heard Grace’s voice but my rage was a wave; I pushed through the doors into the café with such force they slammed into the wall. Tanner and Leif stared at me.

  Get a grip, Jess.

  I took a few deep breaths and grabbed the nearest thing I could find to clean.

  “You need to rinse these after you use them, T,” I said, grabbing the stainless steel container we used for frothing.

  I turned on the hot water and started scrubbing the milk crust from the sides.

  Tanner sidled up to me.

  “Hey, um, everything okay, Jesse?”

  “Fucking peachy.”

  He grabbed another of the containers and started scrubbing alongside me.

  “You still have those names? The ones who called from the flier?” I asked.

  He stopped mid-scrub. “Does this mean—”

  “We need to find a drummer.”

  “JEEEEEEEESSSEEEEEEE,” my sister, Daisy, yelled up the stairs for the fourth time. From the decibel of her screech, I knew we were at Defcon Two. Next it would be Dad, threatening to take away the keys to the Beetle or . . . well, there wasn’t much else he could punish me with at that point. I’d become too skilled at punishing myself.

  Stay in my room? If I wasn’t at work, my ass was in bed anyway.

  Take away the Fender for a week? I hadn’t touched it since HannahDunk.

  Put half my paycheck in the swearing jar? Fuck that.

  I pawed around my desk for my phone and blinked the morning grit out of my eyes. 10:00 a.m. My tongue had been replaced with a bloated, hairy caterpillar.

  Lemonade and vodka had seemed like such a good idea after our Friday-night Mugshot shift.

  Saturday was McMann family breakfast day. The only time we were all under the same roof at the same time. Weekdays my mom crunched numbers for long hours. Sundays my dad would go off into his writing cave with strict orders not to be bothered. I worked most nights at Mugshot and spent afternoons practicing—or now, staring at the ceiling. Saturday-morning breakfast was my parents’ attempt to create a perfect family moment.

  For the most part, I was okay with enforced family time. I offered up just enough details to satisfy my parents, laughed at Daisy’s lame knock-knock jokes, and made funny faces with baby Ty. Half the kids I knew had parents who were divorced. Mine still groped each other and “never let the sun go down on an argument.” And while I didn’t add much to the conversation since my breakup with Hannah, at least there was always bacon, well done, the way I liked it.

  I tugged on the first pair of jeans I found on my floor, and ran a hand through my hair. Yee-ouch. My temples throbbed as I teetered downstairs. The morning was bright. Too bright. The pale-yellow walls of the kitchen burned my eyes like neon. I swallowed back a dry heave.

  Friday after work, I’d gone over to Tanner’s house with the plan to talk band strategy, which we did for all of two minutes. Yep, still need a drummer. Will call those guys. Find audition space next week. That was the extent of it. Then the vodka flowed and the poor dude had to listen, once again, while I analyzed the fuck out of my breakup.

  “Could you get the juice glasses, Jess?” my father asked. He stood behind the griddle, flipping pancakes in the air, performing for Ty, who sat grinning in his high chair.

  It was a daunting task, but I gathered the glasses from the cabinet and placed them on the center of the table next to the juice carton. My ass was an inch above my seat when Daisy blurted:

  “Jesse’s half-naaaaaaaayked.” She stuck out her tongue for emphasis. Proving, once again, that ten-year-olds are minions of the devil. It had only gotten worse after my breakup with Hannah. Daisy loved her. My mother looked up from the newspaper.

  “Shirt, Jess,” she said.

  I stumbled to the laundry room and grabbed the first white tee I put my hands on. My pocket vibrated. It was Hannah.

  Oh hell no.

  I leaned against the laundry room wall and slid down, as a memory from last night exploded in my brain. The drunk text. Three little words. If I didn’t answer the call, maybe that vodka-fueled moment of weakness would cease to exist.

  “The cakes are getting co—hey, you okay?” My father peered behind the laundry room door. “You’re looking a little green around the gills.”

  With great effort, I pushed my back against the wall and rose to standing, ignoring the dizziness I felt from getting up too fast.

  “Yeah, fine, I’ll be right there,” I said. My phone buzzed, alerting me to the missed call and a voice mail. Great. This had to be bad. I listened to the message.

  Hey, you. Meet me at the swings. Noonish. Please. We really need to talk, Jess.

  After breakfast and a long, hot shower that finally made me feel human again, I pulled on a gray hoodie and headed out to the playground at the corner. The afternoon was even brighter than the morning. I squinted to block the sun. Normally I would have raced down the street, but I was in no rush. The message had put my brain into overdrive. As I walked, my mind reeled with scenarios of what exactly Hannah had meant by We really need to talk.

  Of course, I knew what she meant. We did need to talk, because we hadn’t talked since the breakup. Or talked civilly, at least. I’d become an avoidance ninja, always ducking and disappearing, knowing the moment I locked eyes with her I’d be a goner. Hell, I couldn’t even get rid of the stupid fucking infinity thing on my wrist because that would mean we actually were finite.

  Hannah was on a swing, spinning in a slow circle to twist the chain above her head. My mouth betrayed my feelings with a smile. I ran my fingers across the chain-link fence as I headed to the entrance. She picked up her feet, leaned back, and spun around. A grin that made my flatlined heart feel the tiniest spark of hope spread across her face. Maybe the We really need to talk would actually be a confession that Duncan is an ass-weasel, it’s you I love, Jess brought about by my innocent I miss you text.

  Hope was snuffed out moments later when she saw me. She stomped her feet onto the padding below the swing and came to an abrupt stop, jerking forward with the momentum. The grin faded. She tried to stand up, but quickly sat back down.

  “Ow,” she said, putting a hand to the back of her head.

  I trotted over to her. Her hair was wound up in the chain.

  “Wait, don’t move,” I said, crouching down and trying to get it loose without scalping her.

  “Jess, be gentle.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ve done this before,” I said, chuckling and tugging gently at the strands of her hair until they unwound from the chain. My hand lingered, raking through the bottom of her hair for a moment past friendly. She gathered her hair in a ponytail, pulling it away from me and then letting it drop again. I shoved my hand into my pocket. Her cheeks and nose were pink from the cold.

  Did she have to look so damn adorable?

  I sat in the swing next to her, facing the opposite direction, and I straightened my legs and pushed back, gripping the chains, but standing still.

  “I miss you too, Jess. It doesn’t have to be this way, you can say hello to me now and then, it wouldn’t kill you.”

  “Ah, but it would,” I said, swinging. Big mistake. My head whirled. I dug my feet back into the worn rubber mat under the swing and stopped.

  “Jesse.”

  “Why him?” I asked.

  The question stunned her. She looked down, rocking gently.

  “I don’t know, it just . . . happened.”

  “Things don’t just happen, Hannah.”

  “You’re not being fair, Jesse.”

  “Fair? Why am I the one who needs to be fair?”

  “Do you want to talk or do you want to fight?” she as
ked.

  I thought of all the times we’d sat, just like this, before we were officially together. Hannah was a friend, a crush, and then the best of both. At the yearly block party on our street, our parents always joked about how we were destined for each other. Her mother had even said once, “They’d make beautiful babies together,” long before either of us even understood what that meant. When we were younger, it was a source of embarrassment. In recent years, not so much. Jesse and Hannah forever. I’d never really thought about it, the “Jesse and Hannah forever” thing, but I never thought of our ending, either. I swung again, this time slowly.

  “Did I really treat you that bad?” I asked. Duncan’s words had stalked me since our conversation.

  “What?”

  “Duncan said—”

  “You pissed him off the other night, Jess.”

  “Is it true?”

  She sniffled, reached into her jacket pocket, and pulled out a crumpled tissue. She always needed tissues when the weather got below seventy degrees. If you looked in any of her pockets there’d be one, rumpled and close to disintegrating. Feeling mushy over snot rags. I’d reached a new low.

  “The timing of it all sucked, you know?”

  “Because I was sick?”

  She looked at me and pressed her lips together like she wanted to say more but didn’t know how. Oh, fuck. This had happened before I got sick over Thanksgiving break. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. But I did, of course, want to know, being a masochist and all.

  “It happened before then.”

  “Way before?”

  “You’re okay with this?” she asked.

  “Sure,” I lied. “If we’re going to do the friends bit, we have to be able to talk, right?”

  She looked at me skeptically.

  “My birthday, Jess.”

  Her birthday. Of course. I’d been a total jackass because I knew how much she’d been looking forward to her party. I lost track of time was a lame excuse, even though it had been the truth. It was hard to explain, and probably even harder for anyone to understand what happened to me when I got lost in music. I’d been working on Slash’s solo from “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” and I was killing it, just wanted to play it one more time. Time had no meaning as my fingers moved across the frets, burning the memory of the song into my muscles. I’d only gone into my garage to fool around with it for a little while, but a little while had turned into three hours, and I was late, like late-late, to Hannah’s sweet sixteen.