In the Absence of You Read online

  “Yeah, got a shower and shit this morning,” I say. “I’m fine.” Aishe doesn’t speak. She bows her head, and because I’m an idiot I look at her. It’s enough for Zoe’s eyes to widen into big, beautiful saucers of realization and pain. Then she covers her mouth with a hand that trembles. My Zoe’s fending off tears I’m the cause of, and she stares at the menu on the wall as we slow to a halt.

  “Zoe, baby,” I try, watching her storm off the elevator with Nadia close.

  “No, you— Don’t even.” She swats a hand at me and rushes toward the breakfast café.

  “Please, you don’t understand. I need to talk with you!” I’m desperate. I want to follow her, but Troy stops me. He’s got a steel grip around my upper arm, holding me back.

  “Emil! Okay, it’s time. Aishe, do you mind?” he asks. One glance at her, and I see her as pained as Zoe. What the fuck’s going on around here?

  Russian roulette.

  “Outside,” Troy demands while I try to stare through the waitress blocking my view of Zoe. She loves me. She still fucking loves me!

  “No, we gotta get ready for the bus,” I say. I don’t want to hear him out.

  Troy opens an enormous glass door to a pool area and pushes me out first. Shuts the door after us and doesn’t stop until we’re at the far end, away from the after-breakfast crowd mingling and smoking.

  “Do you see the mayhem you’re causing, Emil?”

  “What? Mayhem?” I don’t understand.

  “Yeah, mayhem. You’re wreaking havoc on every damn female in the group right now.”

  “I am not! I didn’t know Zee would be on the elevator. I had no idea or we wouldn’t have taken it—”

  “Oh man.” He shakes his head, lifting his hands and scrubbing his face. “You really don’t see it, do you?”

  “See what?” A few girls meander our way, and one of them does a double take. Troy turns me like I’m some kid and nudges me forward with a shoulder until we’re hidden behind a leafy tree.

  He’s silently fuming. “Listen up, Emil. Zoe’s here, right?”

  “Yeah. Hard to forget.”

  “Did she come here to get her heart broken all over again? Or did she come because Nadia and she are like sisters and she wants to console her? Tell me.” He’s impatient, eyes flaring with anger. “What do you think? Be honest.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not stupid.”

  “Cool. I’ll take that as ‘I get it. She’s here to comfort her friend.’ Nadia lost her baby less than two weeks ago, Emil. Her eyes are pink from crying, but she handles it in silence so as not to disturb the band.”

  “I know,” I say.

  He suppresses a growl in his throat. “Okay. Let me spell it out for you. Right now, Zoe’s in so much pain that she can’t be of much support to Nadia. She’s crying over you, all over again. Okay? You think it’s getting any better after the prank you just pulled? You think she can be there for Nadia when she’s busy having her heart ripped out?”

  “I just want her to talk to me!” I roar. “That’s all I’m asking. Zoe didn’t even let me defend myself. She believed everything that journalist said, and she doesn’t even know her. How can she trust some fucking paparazzi over her boyfriend? That Georgiana chick distorted the truth. God. Zoe… I love her so much.”

  Everything I’ve ever felt for her swells in my chest and blows up through my throat. I’m about to start crying. I dig my face into my hands trying to hold back, but I can’t stop heaving for air.

  “Dude,” Troy says, sounding less mad than before. He squeezes my shoulder. “You’re not earning extra points by being with Aishe, you know. She’s the third girl you’re hurting in this mess, so just quit it. Not that I see a reunion with Zoe in your future, but you need to be decent.”

  A wet gasp escapes me, but I stop short of crying in front of my friend. Compassion paints his expression though, and I can’t handle it. Avoiding him, I stare at the ground. I study the intricate pattern of tree roots poking up from the dirt beneath my shoes.

  “This should be self-explanatory, but here goes: if Zoe’s on tour with us, don’t hurt her by flirting with anyone else.”

  “It’s why I didn’t want to sign boobs,” I croak out, sounding childish even to myself.

  “Why did you do it then? Am I wrong, or did you insist on a tramp stamp too last night?”

  I don’t know why I did it. “I was drunk, and I missed Zee.”

  A plethora of logical retorts rush through my mind, but Troy doesn’t utter them. Instead, he murmurs, “Aishe is an amazing person, and she doesn’t deserve your second fiddle treatment. How about you let her go if she’s just there as a backup?”

  I hear him, but my mind is on Zoe. Slowly, sluggishly, my head seems to shake on its own. “I never meant for her to see me with Aishe.”

  “Right, and back to Aishe: is it a conscious strategy of yours to string her along?”

  What?

  Sometimes I envy Troy. Chick brains are a mystery, dark and muddled and pink. Dude’s got seven sisters. That’s gotta have helped him out in life. Me, in this muffled bubble I’m in, more than ever I need girls to spell out their shit.

  Aishe’s never complained. She’s just always there when I have a weak moment. “Of course not,” I say. “I don’t want to string her along. The last thing I want is to hurt her.”

  “Then stop sleeping with her.”

  “Man, you have any idea how easy that is to say and not do?” Sure, he’s making sense, but I’ve seen Aishe when I’ve tried to back off and ignore her. She’s not fucking happy. When she climbs to my bunk and I act like I’m asleep, we’re both miserable whenever I’m on a saintly streak and don’t jerk her into my bed.

  “Saintly.” I want to laugh. Because self-suffering is saintly, but making others suffer is the stark opposite. Aishe’s suffering when I don’t accept her.

  You know what’s easy though? Russian roulettes. Click. Click. Pow. I feel my lip quirk at the thought. From the name of it, the idea’s got to be from up north. Damn Russian geniuses. I wonder how hard it is to buy a revolver.

  Oh right, I’m in the states that fostered the Wild West. Not so hard to get a gun, I bet; nothing like home where you need a hunter’s license, plus who knows if they have revolvers at all in Sweden? Maybe we just have rifles.

  “Are you there?” Troy breaks through my thoughts.

  I let out a breath that makes me sound hoarse. “I’m in my happy-place.”

  Troy doesn’t ask for details. When I look up, that sympathetic, safari-colored gaze of his meets mine when he says, “All you have to do is be good.”

  AISHE

  I should be good and ask to swap bunks with Irene again. We’re on the bus, driving to Olympia for our next show, and as it is, I have too much time to study Zoe. She doesn’t look at me, doesn’t talk to me, and from what happened at the hotel, she’s in a familiar sort of pain over Emil.

  I can’t help examining her from the corner of my eye. She’s much plainer than I’d imagined her. The girl is about my height and incredibly skinny—she hardly has boobs or a butt, which from Emil’s mean comment a few nights ago makes me think she didn’t always look this way.

  Zoe looks starved on many levels, a truth I don’t care to explore. Where I’m naturally golden-skinned, she’s pale with a tan that’s greying from the lack of sunlight. Her shoulders are narrow and her hips a tad wider than today’s beauty norm. Being that she’s short too, I drift to her face for clues as to why Emil struggles to move on from her.

  Zoe doesn’t have a long, shiny mane, but she’s got a pretty enough, heart-shaped face with round, blue eyes as the main focal point. I squint, scrutinizing her in secret; the color of her irises isn’t striking either.

  I’ve seen Emil take off with spectacular beauties over the months I’ve traveled with Clown Irruption. They’ve all seemed sweet and adoring, ready for anything that would make Emil happy. How could he be hung up on someone who brings him down?
<
br />   A few weeks ago, a gorgeous girl came up to him. I’d die to have her body, her true-violet eyes, and she had a mouth that could have been extracted from the center of a cherry as far as the shade went. But Emil, he just took her to his room and let her go an hour later. No comment, no afterthought.

  “Hmm, Miss?” Troy holds up a stack of Monopoly money to me. “I believe you just won these.”

  I meet his greens beneath fringed lashes that are so dark they seem wet. “You’ll never get rich. You’re too honest for that.”

  “You don’t think I’m getting rich in this biz?” he asks playfully. “I don’t need real estate. Especially of the Monopoly kind.”

  “Oh you’re rich now?” I joke, because really, I couldn’t care less. Money is the last thing that should be on people’s minds. Living life is what’s important. That and love, I guess. I swallow at the thought.

  Troy does that thing where his torso undulates slowly in his seat. He’s in full control of his body, long, long dreadlocks caressing his shoulders as he half-dances out his response. “Ooh yeah.” He sinks one eyelid into a wink, which makes me giggle quietly.

  Troll ordered all bags out of the last bunk bed, far right at the top—opposite Emil’s bed—for Zoe to move in.

  “No, it’s okay, Troll. Zoe can sleep in one of the bunks behind us,” Bo had said about the two beds hidden in a wall of the back lounge. Troll was ready to make the adjustment, but Zoe showed how opinionated she is by telling everyone no way would she sleep with Nadia and Bo.

  Tonight will be the first night we’ll all be in the same bunk area.

  I try to concentrate on the game as Troy passes my Monopoly figurine with his. He draws his mouth into a sexy little victory pout, and I lean over to squeeze his cheek, because really—

  “Stop bragging, dick.”

  He laughs softly, and my eyes stray to Zoe. She’s in one of the captain’s chairs in the front lounge, right behind the kitchen table where Troy, Elias, and I camp out. Elias isn’t a board-game person. He’s just drinking.

  Next to Zoe sits Nadia. They’re streaming some old, feel-good cheerleader movie, and every time the streaming freezes, Nadia lets out an aaww that is much more playful than anything I’ve heard her exclaim since she lost her baby. I’m sure she’s trying to lift her friend’s mood, which makes me sad.

  Everything is complicated in these crammed quarters. As for Emil, I look away every time he’s up in Zoe’s face, challenging her. When he’s in the back with Bo hiding from Zoe the way he is right now, I can breathe freely.

  Zoe tries to keep a light-hearted conversation with Nadia from her captain’s chair. They laugh between themselves over tribulations in the movie. If I’m to be objective, Zoe is always stylish in clothes and makeup, and whatever perfume and lotions she applies make her smell amazing. Her tiny ponytail, in the exact color of Emil’s messy hair, is meticulously tied and never out of place.

  Suddenly, it hits me how fine-boned Zoe’s features are, how her cheekbones are perfectly sloped, leaving a hollow beneath them that looks delicate. Her skin too is delicate, like she rarely sees the sun.

  My heart plummets while Troy wins our latest game of Monopoly. Because I realize that Zoe has that understated beauty you see only if you really love someone. I don’t love her, but out of nowhere I see her through Emil’s eyes, and she’s so beautiful, so special, so different, it makes me huff for air.

  I feel Emil behind me. I’m already at that stage of the plague where the proximity of your love sizzles around you even when you can’t see him. I turn my head, discreet from my high-backed bench, and locate him in the door between the bunk area and the front lounge. He holds the doorjamb with one hand. The other hangs useless as he stares at Zoe with such longing my heart implodes.

  “Doing my best,” Troy replies to a question I asked ages ago. I can’t pull my gaze off Emil.

  “I’m tired,” I say, counting days in my head. She’s leaving on Monday. Two more nights. Wouldn’t it be nice to sleep through the entire rest of her stay? Troy doesn’t answer. He’s a quick study, and it doesn’t take him long to register Emil. I can’t deal with his sympathy. On my way to bed, I detour by the bathroom. I lock the door and let myself cry. Once I’m done crying over the misery I’ve put myself in, I clean my face of makeup and brush my teeth.

  Emil isn’t there when I come out. Others are getting ready for bed too. I draw the curtains closed on my bunk and change into my pajamas. I don’t want to see anyone else, so I dump my bag to the floor and shove it under the bed from behind the curtains.

  Elias and Troll chat quietly while getting ready. Troy doesn’t chime in, and neither does Emil. They all go to bed eventually, and lastly there’s shuffling out there that’s not from the guys. I can’t help peeking out and locating Zoe. She keeps touching her face. I can’t see much of her in the dark, until the flashlight of her phone leads her up the ladder to the top bunk opposite Emil’s. But when I see her, I read a devastation on her features that reminds me of my people.

  EMIL

  It’s hard to fall asleep with Zoe’s irregular breathing across from me. There are only a few feet between us, and through the noise from heavy sleepers, through Elias’ low snickering at some video on his phone, she stands out.

  I recognize her slight, stuttering inhales. That’s how she sounded when she was sad. In the early stages of sex, she’d sound like that too. Shit, I wish this was just her touching herself, but my baby is sad, and I can do nothing about it.

  We’re practically in the same bed. I close my eyes, listening. Every person’s breathing is different, and there’s a whistle to Zoe’s when she breathes out through her nose. It’s so subtle I might be the only one who hears it. I love that little sound, and I’ve missed it in my bed. It’s easy to sleep when you breathe with someone you love.

  Zoe and I, we plaited with each other in sleep—the bed would be a mess in the morning. Sometimes I had to dig her out from between twisted sheets and lost pillowcases. I’d find her face beneath the covers and kiss her until she was beamy smiles and glittering eyes.

  “I love you,” she purred then, groggy still, and I liked it when it was the first thing coming out of her mouth. “My silly rock star. Do you know how awesome you are?”

  “I rock, huh?” I’d joke, stretching and feeling as awesome as she saw me, arms way above my head and knocking against the wall. It made Bo curse on the other side.

  “Oh yeah, you rock so hard,” she said, following the shape of my body with her hand, stroking from my cheek, down my throat and chest to my stomach. Playful, she ignored my morning woody even though I jutted it at her. “You sing like an angel.”

  “An angel?” I sent her an incredulous look, which caused her eyes to glitter even more. Angels and I share no traits, I’m pretty sure, least of all a voice.

  “Yeah, with that angel voice, no one can stop you, and I’ll be there with you, fending off chicks and loving you and swooning. You know I swoon more than anyone right?” she inquired.

  “Oh yeah, you’re the swooniest of them all. And the hottest, prettiest, most delicious one too.” She squealed as soon as I started tickling her. She had her spots that drove her crazy, and I usually saved the best for last—under her arms and working my way across rib after rib until I was four down on the left side. By then, she’d be squirming and laughing until Bo demanded we shut the hell up.

  There was no better way to spend a Sunday morning than in bed with my Zee. Our play fights always turned interesting. “Scissor your legs—God, that looks sexy as hell,” I said.

  “How’s this sexy? Can you even see my pussy?” she asked.

  “Yeah, turn a little. No. Sideways.”

  “You won’t get it in like that—I promise you. Only a cock made of steel could press inside when I’m literally obstructing the opening with my legs. Oh-mi-god, you’re so weird!” She launched into a giggle but held her position.

  “I do have a steel cock. Plus, I’m a creative arti
st who needs fodder for my lyrics. Imma gonna start writing love songs.”

  “Aww, really? About me?” Her waist arched off the bed when I showed her I could get in this way too. “Oh all right,” she gasped. “It’s nice.”

  “See? Told you. Ah you’re so soft inside,” I mumbled. “You know how soft you are inside?”

  “Thanks to you, I do.”

  There was a time when I used to be plain happy. With Zee I had no reason to curb it when inspiration hit me; there was no right or wrong place to sing. Hell, she’d ask me to sing in the oddest place, herself. The supermarket. A street corner. She even got me a hat for that one, and we hauled in seven dollars. It’s impossible to be unhappy with someone like her.

  On Valentine’s Day, once the lava cake had been placed between us in a restaurant in Austin, I fed her a forkful, stood up, and sang, “Wonderful Tonight.” It’s one of Zoe’s favorites. Eric Clapton’s voice isn’t similar to mine, but I spent my teenage years perfecting the art of voice imitation, so the switch came easily.

  My bitchy girl, she loved it. With her, there was never any hiding from the attention. Chefs and waiters gathered in the door to the kitchen, and around us the other guests rose to their feet. I didn’t stop until I’d done every verse and added my own flair with an extra bridge and a few choruses.

  Zoe isn’t much of a crier. It’s what made it hard to listen to her tonight. The few times I saw her cry was over Nadia’s situation before Bo and she hooked up. But in that restaurant in Austin, I moved her to tears and it made me feel about fourteen miles tall. She dove at me, told me how amazing I was—the best boyfriend, the best singer, the best, just—the best.

  She doesn’t think that anymore.

  Just let me explain, Zee. Just let me explain.

  Zoe’s breathing across from me normalizes and becomes deeper. In the end, I doze off, falling into a wish of a dream. My body recalls her weight on me, how she hooked her heels around my ankles and locked me tight against her.

  Whenever I turn, in my dream, she’s there with me, accommodating her body to mine and sighing contentedly. She brings out a smile I wake up with in the morning. As soon as I’m awake enough to remember, I remind myself that I’m lucky. Because I had a break from missing her.