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bass
noun. the lowest pitches used in music.
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LATELY BAY IS MY SUN, all my thoughts orbit around her, and I'm motion sick.
I've never felt like this before about anyone. I've had crushes and flings and situationships, but no previous experience has prepared me enough for this utter mindfuck. I want her but I fear her coldness, I'm addicted but I don't know if that's healthy. When we first arranged to be enemies with benefits, she stipulated that our behavior towards each other doesn't need to change; does that mean it can't?
Would she push me away if I wanted more? Am I just rocketing to some heartbreak that can be easily avoided if I keep the situation the way we agreed: sex and nothing more? I've been debating what to do with these feelings ever since I realized them.
I occupy my days with distractions. Over Thanksgiving I fixated on my family, helping to prepare dinner, playing video games with Christian, watching Hallmark rom-coms with Mom. Back at Halston, I fixated on my spring enrollments and the software engineering internship I received at a financial technology company, mainly working predictive software for stock trading. The internship is mandated by my degree and accredited as SOFTENG198: Industry Internship. Leading up to the Eclipse halftime show, I fixated on music and rehearsals.
Now our last show is done, the marching season is over, and Bay is hugging me behind the stadium entrance. The hug is a performative gesture because she doesn't want to seem exclusionary. It doesn't rouse suspicion because she's hugging everyone in the percussion section goodbye; she won't be coming to my after-party, and she ignored me when I asked, "Why?"
I hold her briefly in my arms, noting the rest of the drumline shrugging out of their marching uniforms and wiping the sweat and rain from their brow. It started pouring halfway through the show, but bad weather has never stopped the music.
"Let me walk you out at least," I tell Bay, stepping away when my hands start to get the urge to wander across her body.
She cocks her eyebrows, aloof as ever. "Fine."
That one, my heart seems to say, I want her.
It's been a while since the game ended. The Foxes lost, which means they don't need a playoff to determine their middling seventh place rank in the conference. Still, give that it's the last game, everyone attempted to keep the spirits high and celebrate their successes over the whole season. There will be a lot of drinking tonight.
The marching band stayed to play the post-game show, so it's only families and a few straggling students left at the stadium. My parents, waiting in the car park, want to see me (in Mom's words: "I want to squeeze you") before they drive back to Carsonville tonight. Bay and I walk all the way out of the student entrance and around to the car park.
"Good season. I'll see you around, Vierra," Bay says, lingering on the footpath.
The nighttime air sweeps over the sweatiest parts of me, squeezing in through my clothing, and seems to impart its cool confidence into me. Testing the waters, I step closer, slide my hand around her neck and into her hair.
Bay sighs, a negative sigh, almost like I've asked her to perform a chore for me, looking me up and down. Examining our surroundings, her lips turn down, and concern flashes in her dark eyes.
She's worried about being seen in public with me. We never willingly associated with each other before but now, I almost want people to see us together—Bay and Callum, Callum and Bay—and not because we're getting into a heated argument.
Then she shuts her eyes and lets me kiss her goodbye, in the shadow of the arena, soft and slow and sweet, our mouths burning hot compared to the wintry air. It's like I've stepped into an alternative reality. One where things went a whole different way the first time we kissed, one where she's in my bedroom all the time, one where I can hold her in public, because I'm hers.
But that reality would require us to be actually compatible, which Bay keeps reminding me we aren't. From philosophy to relationships, we are wholly opposite. How come my brain can list all her flaws, and every other part of me goes insane at the thought of them?
"See you next semester," I whisper against her lips. Then I step away and watch her get to wherever she needs to be tonight, wherever takes precedence over the last party of the marching season.
About a minute later, my mother's voice, unexpected, sends a jolt of terror down my spine. "Callum. Who was that girl?"
Crap. How much did she see? Did she see us kiss?
Heart thundering, I turn around, pretending to be at ease.
"Hi, Cal!" Christian waves at me as my family approaches from the car park.
"Ah, that's Bay," I call back. "She's the co-leader of the percussion section, remember?"
"I know Bay," Christian chirps happily. "I wrote her a birthday card."
"That's Isabella?" Mom stops beside me and glances down the sidewalk, where Bay is strolling towards the residence halls.
"What?"
She shrugs. "I just... imagined someone less delicate when you said fire-breathing dragon." I believe the last time we spoke about Bay was when I expressed my frustration about Keller making me co-lead with her.
"And that's where you'd be wrong and charred, dear mother," I quip noncommittally. "She is so not delicate."
Mom purses her lips and examines my face. "She's certainly very pretty."
Blood rushes to my cheeks. I clap my palm over my exasperated face. "Oh, my God." Bay is the last person I want to share with my parents, especially when I haven't figured our dynamic out for myself.
"What?" Mom protest. "Just an observation."
"You played well tonight," Dad congratulates, patting me solidly on the back. Changing the topic. Very smart. Thanks, Dad. I love you. "This was the best show yet."
"I agree," Christian says. "The rain made it cooler."
"That's right," Mom, train of thought derailed, remarks, "Make sure you dry off properly. It's cold now and I don't want you getting sick when you need to study."
She starts asking about what my final exam schedule looks like and when I'll be home for winter. She asks me to bring back whatever clothes have become unseasonal so that I'm not overwhelming her with 'all my crap' when I return to Carsonville in summer. Motherly concerns, motherly conversations.
"Come on," Dad interrupts jovially, "the Foxes just played their last game, Callum's last marching season is over. The boy wants to get wasted."
"What?! Can I come?" Christian pleads. "I want to party."
"Uh, no," I say flatly. "And I always drink responsibly." Okay, sometimes I lie.
Mom hums in disbelief and puts an arm around Christian. "Come on, Chris. We'll leave Callum to his celebration—he'll be home as soon as exams are over. Cal, let me squeeze you."
I hug each person of my family goodbye. I return to the backstage area and help transport all the percussion equipment back to the Music Department. I give my address to band members who forgot it. By the time I turn onto my street, I should be feeling like I usually do—tiredness slicking off me like water, effervescent and ready to drink, dance and socialize. There are colorful strobe lights illuminating the windows, people crowded onto the porch and in the front yard, and thudding music pulsing down the street.
Instead I feel hollow. Quen is going to a different after-party with Krista (who does like him back, turns out) and some friends from her residence hall. Bay's opting out. Basic self-preservation recommends that I don't like her more than she likes me, but at this point I can't even stop the feeling of intense longing that sweeps over me. I miss her even though I saw her tonight, kissed her goodbye. I want to wrap myself around her, curl up in bed, and fall asleep.
It's not enough, not coherent or intentional enough to make anything change between us, but that's all I know.
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Callum: what's ur exam schedule
Bay sends me a screenshot of her timetable, four exams within three days.
Callum: do you need stress relief ?
Following the end of marching season, the entire campus falls into a stress pit in advance of final exams. The weather is miserable, a five-day stretch of rain keeping everyone hunkered inside over their textbooks and laptop screens, furiously submitting assignments and revising lecture content. Bay already warned me that she wouldn't be available much over winter, so I'm trying to find some time to see her again before I leave campus.
Isabella: stress relief will take a full night of studying away and stress me out even more
I don't want to see Bay just for sex, but I don't know how to word what I really want. Do you want to hang out? Do you want to watch a movie? Clearly, she's busy, and her answer will be an immediate no and then I won't be able to ask again without pushing against her wishes and against her studies.
Callum: after exams then?
Isabella: maybe idk
I can read tone. Now that marching season is over, she needs no outlet for the attraction she feels to me, thus she's not dying to see me anymore. She has more important things to focus on, and I'm the least of her priorities. Whenever I post Instagram Stories, I check the viewer list for her account but she never watches a single one. Maybe she goes on a social media cleanse to concentrate during finals week.
Eventually, after finals are over, waiting for Bay to start a conversation breaks my willpower. Damn it, I cave, I message first. Again.
Callum: are u free this weekend?
Isabella: sorry, picked up extra shifts
Throwing my phone onto the bed, I smother my frustration with a deep sigh. After this semester, campus officially goes on winter break. I'm going home on Sunday. Bay, with no family, will stay on campus like she always does. A crazy part of me wants to open my own home to her, invite her round to have dinner with my family—but I can so clearly see her unimpressed face in my head, her response pieced together from all the conversations we've had about birthdays and foster care and casual sex.
"Are you crazy?" she'd hiss, "I don't want your pity. I don't want to meet your parents. They don't know me—you barely know me. We aren't friends or partners. It's just sex. It doesn't mean anything. Don't forget it."
So I go home.
I put up the Christmas tree and decorations with Christian, who always waits for me so we can do it together. I pick up my grandparents and drive to my aunt's house for dinner on Christmas Day, then spend Boxing Day bloated on the couch watching Disney re-runs with my cousins. On New Year's Eve, my high school friends and I drive to an outlook, get drunk and watch the fireworks explode over the township. Carsonville is a cluster of lights lying on a swathe of black woods. "Does anyone have relationship drama to share?" I ask, sloppily.
No-one does, and no-one asks me if I have any drama to share in turn—to everyone around me, I don't have problems—which I think is what I really wanted when I threw that question out there. I want people to know Bay and I had something, at one point, because really it seems like we have nothing right now.
I am happy, truly, in the periphery. I love my family and friends, I love celebrations, I love holidays. Maybe in future years Bay will fade from my mind and the events of this winter will loom large and bright and warm, occupying their deserved positions of prominence in my memories.
But right now, I can only think about how I sent Merry Christmas and Happy New Year texts to Bay and got left on seen both times.
In that case, then you gotta call it. That's what I said when it seemed Krista didn't reciprocate Quen's feelings, and now I'm refusing to take my own advice. I know I should take her glaringly obvious hints. Our tryst is over. The deal has run its course. She's been drifting away ever since we performed for the last time, but I can't let her go.
Bay always hated this about me, my insistence that everyone like me and grant me access to their friendship. When she first starting disparaging me in freshman year, there was no part of me that thought the right thing to do was to take it on the chin and walk away. No, I had to fight back, match her blade to blade.
And I'm fine with people hating me, actually. I was bullied and hated by complete strangers in high school. I know how to take things on the chin and walk away.
But I can't let Bay hate me. I can't walk away from her.
Callum: what are you doing before spring sem starts ?
It takes her two hours to reply, but at least I wasn't left on seen. This is my last ditch effort before I officially cross the line into pathetic, clingy creep. I know this is not balanced, not healthy. I'm lazing in the living room, Christian holed up in his room with the painting set he was gifted for Christmas.
Isabella: just working n chilling
Callum: do you want to do something? i can drive anywhere
Isabella: when
Callum: anytime
Isabella: like what
Callum: like anything
First I'd actually typed anything you want but decided that was too intense. Phone in hand, heart in throat, I watch the ellipses ripple by Bay's profile picture as she types, stops, start typing again. Then, she sends one ambivalent sentence.
Isabella: I'll msg if I think of something
I sigh heavily. She's not going to message. If she felt the way I feel—hungry, desperately wanting her company—I would know. I suppose I deserve better, but I don't care for better. There's nothing better. I want Bay. So I can only wait until semester starts, and the Music Department's spring ensembles reconvene, and see if our proximity will spark something anew.
Even if I have to provide the fuel for the both of us.
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a / n :
friendly reminder that when you read high school and college stories with friends with benefits / enemies with benefits / roommates / in-secret plotlines, you don't actually want those. where's all the awkward texting and social media stalking and constant anxiety?
let callum be an example (and-or cautionary tale). poor boy. they have a whole-ass situationship, and both of them are suffering. but hey, it's entertaining for us, when the HEA is guaranteed. ;)
see you next chapter,
aimee x