2 1
crew
noun. a sub-unit in the band, e.g. pit crew and field crew.
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IN THE MORNING, I WALK back to my residence hall completely unaware of the light speckles of rain, the damp air, everything.
I've never had memories so good that I want to replay them over and over. That's why I make up daydreams, those wonderful impossibilities, sweet falsehoods, like being a drumming rock star and discovering my mother is alive and meeting the Irvings again, my favorite foster family. And now, weaving himself around my impossibilities and falsehoods, there's Callum, who is possible and true. I just wish he wasn't.
There's no affection in my heart for him, but he makes my body sing, so. I don't try particularly hard to push the memories of last night away; his hands around and underneath my body, the way I even like the way his sweat smells, how his lip trembles before he orgasms, and before he kisses me, as if those things feel equally good.
I take the stairs instead of the lift, somehow filled with enough energy to endure the climb. When I slip into my and Renata's bedroom, she's already up and working at her overcrowded desk. Soft K-Pop music streams from her laptop, and there are reaction scheme worksheets scattered in between her stationary. We usually tell each other if we are spending the night away from the hall, for safety and just for an update, but I haven't this time.
She, gracious beautiful angel, doesn't push me to admit more even though I can tell she's increasingly curious and worried.
"It's Callum," she says before I shut the door.
I'm stunned. "What?"
"Your mystery lover," Renata says, as if I need reminding. "I was wondering."
I could lie. Callum and I agreed not to tell anyone else—but I didn't tell Renata, technically. She figured it out for herself. She's watching my reaction, and I could pssh and no way this all away, but I told myself I wouldn't ever lie to her. I'm afraid if I start, I'll find it so easy to keep going, and then I'll lose my closeness to her. Instead, I sigh and kick off my sneakers. "How did you know?"
Renata's jaw drops open at my confession, a confounded grin painted across. Then she clears her throat, "You tell me about all your hookups. The only reason you wouldn't is if you didn't want to talk about it—but what would make you, a liberated and detached woman, not want to talk about sex? Someone who embarrasses you. Or someone who hurts your pride." She's twiddling her gel pen between her index and middle finger. "Or someone we both know, thereby transgressing your social compartments. Ergo Callum, who fits all of that."
I'm impressed. "Screw Chemistry, become a detective."
"Also I accidentally saw a notification from him when I went to plug my phone in yesterday, before you left."
Never mind.
"Wow," I drawl, shaking my head in disappointment. "What did it say?"
"You know you don't have to shave for me, right?"
I cover my face. "Oh, my God—"
"—hey, I'm not judging—"
"—you should. Judge me."
"Yeah, it's Callum," Renata echoes, waving a hand at me like I ought to start explaining myself. The last she heard, we were both unhappily cooperating to lead the percussion section. I told her I wished he couldn't speak when he had a pair of drumsticks in his hand; it would solve all of our marching band disputes. "What's going on between you two, exactly?"
Leaning against my bed, I sigh. "He's just unfairly good at sex, so we're fucking until we get out of each other's systems. I still hate him. He still hates me."
"Mm-hmm," Renata hums, not believing me at all. "And you know that repeated sexual contact releases bonding hormones in the brain, yes? Which literally puts him back into your system, yes?" Conveniently, she flips through her biochemistry textbook to a list of neurotransmitters and taps her gel pen on the page. I lean over and read some familiar names in the table dopamine, seratonin, oxytocin among many more unfamiliar ones. "—which is the bane of all with-benefits arrangements, ever, like have you ever seen a rom-com? You yourself have derided other people for—"
"Okay, yes," I exhale raggedly. With all my over-analyzing, of course I have thought all the possible scenarios. Best case, worst case, likeliest case. "I know the risks. I know what has happened to stronger and better people than I, I know."
Only fools go and fall in love.
Renata still looks confused. I am confused, still, to be honest. Of all the people in the world.
Why Callum?
She sweeps her forefingers closer and further from each other, indicating length with an impish grin. "So, is he like... worth it? Is that it?"
"Jesus," I snort. "Not answering that. I promise: even if I catch feelings, I'm walking away at the end of this. I am an expert at leaving things behind even when I don't want to. I know what's good for me."
Foster kids are not generally objects of desire. I was never in one place long enough to become a love interest in anyone's story. I was unused to being wanted, used to being unwanted. One thing I noticed, depending on which school I ended up in and their ethnic demographics, was how mercurial beauty standards are. In a school full of white people I was undesirable—and I can tell things like this, based on who asks for my name, whether anyone wants my social media, if I get offers to join a friend group—and in a diverse school I was pretty and mysterious.
At Halston, I think I'm some kind of beautiful. It feels weird to have your face stay the exact same and have everything else shift around you, like a mirror choosing which wavelength of sunlight to reflect back. But sunlight is sunlight.
So, yes, now I like feeling desirable. The first person I had sex with was a lacrosse player at my high school at the time I was seventeen. Virginity is a construct, but sex is a marvel. I like clean, compartmentalized hookups. No lingering recognition, awkwardness or obligations. Callum is just my latest source of it. Without him I'd be too busy with studying, work and band rehearsals to go out and fish for a hookup. Plus, I can't even release my sexual frustration manually whenever I have a roommate.
That's why I'm fine with this enemies with benefits arrangement proceeding. I know sex is a type of mental brainwashing. I can survive it. Right now, fucking Callum is worth it because of the sensation and the less combative atmosphere in marching band. Falling for Callum is an unlikely but admittedly possible scenario. If that happens, I will remind myself that it's a hormonal response, one for which I have a contingency plan: I'll just get far enough away for all the feelings to go away. Graduation isn't long now. I never have to see him again after this academic year.
Renata's frowning. "I don't want you to make a promise like that, nor do I want you to do anything you don't want to. I'm just asking questions to clarify stuff; I don't want you to get hurt."
I know she is. I know she doesn't. I walk behind her and wrap my arms around her shoulders, smiling into her dark hair (it smells like shea butter) when her hands come up to squeeze my forearm.
"I can make myself do anything, if I know it's the right thing for me," I tell her. "Trust me."
No, even better: watch me.
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The Saturday morning of the marching band's second show, Moon, I walk into the band room, spot a familiar head of black inky hair by the drum storage, and inhale with delighted surprise.
"Oh, my God," I say, drawing her attention as I approach. "Lien!"
"Lord and fucking saviour, baby!" She wraps me up in her arms and squeezes tightly. I feel tears picking at the corner of my eyes, and I'm surprised my reaction is this strong.
I don't think I realized how much I missed Lien until I see her again.
Absence makes the heart grow fonder, but presence makes you acknowledge it. I always thought I didn't miss people when they leave, but maybe it's because I can bury them. I don't have to think about them again, or think about the hole they left in my life. If I went back to all my old schools, all the public libraries and parks and streets that I've seen in this state, would my lungs pinch the way they are now?
I think of being Lien next year—graduated, in the workforce, returning to the Music Department to help the next generation of marching band members prepare for a game day—and nearly lose it. I swallow away the lump in my throat and blink away the tears.
"Nate's watching the game with his fiancée," Lien tells me when we step out of the embrace. She's come to volunteer in the field crew team today, and catch up with all her old friends and favorite teachers. "But he said he would rather castrate himself than do another game day prep."
"Wait. Fiancée?"
"I know! That's what I fucking told him—he's twenty-two, he's a child!"
Callum isn't here yet, I notice. With the percussionists that are around, Lien included, we start packing the pit percussion instruments into their boxes, wheeling the trolley out to the bus parked alongside the road, wheeling it back in, wheeling it back in.
"What the hell. When did Nate get engaged?"
"Like a week ago, they're waiting for the professional pictures to come back before posting on social media." Lien doesn't need telling; she's an expert, snapping back into the careful and efficient demeanor I knew for three years.
"And how is your slow capitalist soul-death?" I ask, catching up on her life.
"There's a gym in the building where I work. It has a pool and a sauna."
"A fast soul-death," I amend.
When Callum arrives to the band room, wearing a running shirt and athletic shorts, he instantly catches my eye. I see a self-important grin forming, his instinctive response at the sight of me, before he remembers that we're still enemies, and no-one is allowed to know what happens when his curtains are closed.
Then he spots Lien and grins for real, like a toddler. "Lien!"
"I heard my shoes were too big to fill with just one person," Lien mentions, "so Keller gave the job to both of you."
Callum laughs. "Yes, those were Keller's exact words."
"But you guys haven't killed each other! And Scotty tells me you've whipped them into pretty good shape." In all four year's of Lien's undergraduate career, she was the only person to ever called Mr. Scott—drumline expert, percussion itinerant teacher—Scotty. I've always thought Callum was Maude Keller's favorite, and Lien was Mr. Scott's.
Callum shakes his head, his hair bouncing with the movement. "All Bay's doing."
"No. They came to us already glowing."
I mean that. They're talented, they're hard-working, they're kind to each other.
The drum storage empties further, and at the buses in front of ours, other woodwind and brass instruments slot into the hollow spaces underneath the seats. Scanning the hustle and bustle in the band room and outside the Music Department this morning, I try not to dwell on how much I'm going to miss this place, Keller, Mr. Scott, the familiar instruments, the maze of rehearsal rooms and offices in this stone building, this energetic atmosphere, like nothing I've ever known.
My only home.
And then I'll have to leave again.
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a / n:
shorter chapter this time but there's lots of heat coming up, dw
aimee x