Boy in a Band (A Morgan Mallory story) Read online

  Boy in a Band

  Lisa Loomis

  Boy in a Band

  By Lisa Loomis

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, places, incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2010 by the author of this book, Lisa Loomis. The book author retains sole copyright to her contributions to this book.

  ISBN 978-1478147855

  Cover design by Lisa Loomis and Brandie Lamprou (EMarketID).

  Photo purchased from iStockphoto

  www.LisaLoomisBooks.com

  For Dennis, Parker, and Hunter, my family, who believed in me from the start and whose unwavering belief in me pushed me to keep writing, even when I felt like giving up.

  In memory of Charlie, who inspired me with his music. He taught me to listen to the lyrics and the story: the real boy in a band.

  Prologue

  I could see him up ahead of me, strolling along the shore. The waves breaking, the surf rolling in, water swirling around his feet, white foam wrapping around and then out again. Footprints filled in by surf and then erased. He stopped and looked back at me to see how far I had strayed. As usual I was poking along, looking for beach glass and shells. He whistled.

  I looked up in his direction, squinting into the sun. His blond hair, tossed by the breeze, caught the sunlight, his bare chest golden from the beach. When I caught his eye, he smiled at me and motioned for me to catch up. I sped up my pace walking along the ocean's edge to where he stood, eager again to be with him. As I got closer, I stared at his face, so familiar to me, yet still able to make me catch my breath. Had it ever not? I couldn’t remember. He reached his hand out, and when I took it, he laced his fingers in mine. We walked along the ocean, just close enough that the water played around our feet and ankles, at times sucking our feet into the sand. The sun was low in the sky, reflecting off the water.

  “I love the colors. How it plays off the water,” I said.

  “I know you do. You always have,” he answered.

  “What does that mean?” I teased.

  I brought his hand between my breasts and wrapped both hands around it, holding tightly, afraid for no reason I could remember.

  “Nothing really, I just know,” he replied.

  We walked in silence for a long ways. While he held my hand, he intermittently squeezed my fingers. We both understood now how to be with each other without the need for so many words. He stopped and pulled me to him, wrapping his arms around my body. His skin was warm from the sun, and I breathed in the smell of him. Oh god, how I loved that smell, a slight lemon, vanilla, along with a light musk, but not strong. My body instinctively pressed into him, turning up the heat between the two of us. I looked into his blue eyes, at times so intense, at times so mischievous; I could tell he was happy. How many times had I looked into those eyes and seen other things? My thoughts raced back to when we first met. I could see him in his room, playing the guitar. I remembered the angle of his head and his long thick blond hair, just a hint of a wave to it. What had he played? I reached back. Oh yeah, Classical Gas. “Have you ever heard it?” he’d asked.

  We’d come such a long way. He put his hands on both sides of my face and tilted his head slowly to the side. I closed my eyes and waited for his lips to touch mine, remembering how much I could want him. My body tingled in anticipation. He kissed me slowly, soft lips parting mine. His tongue entered my mouth, probing slightly, and then more knowingly. I could feel my longing for him move in and out, like the tide, flowing through my body, desire pooling within me. I kissed him back, my arms wrapping around his neck before I slowly ran one hand down his back, feeling his firm body, and tucking my fingers inside the band of his swim shorts. His hands ventured lower and he cupped my ass.

  “Ummm,” he said.

  I felt a tingling between my legs, a sensation he could easily make me feel. My hips almost of their own will pressed towards his body. He squeezed my ass, pulling me to him. I could feel his body, his lips, his tongue, a complete sensory overload and wondered again how he could make me feel this every time he touched me. Gayle flashed through my mind. “What magical hold does he have on you?” she’d asked more than once in anger.

  I could never answer her, and I was confused as to why all of a sudden. I felt the heat spread from between my legs into my stomach and his kiss squelched the why question in my head. I pushed harder against him and wished I wasn’t restricted by a public place. I wanted to rip his clothes off. I wanted to feel him naked against me, feel him in me. My heart was racing, my body melting into his. The sound of gulls squawking overhead, the children laughing in the distance, playing in the surf all faded away as I lost myself to him. The sound of the waves crashing in time with my emotions as we stood kissing, the water lapping at our feet, ignoring the outside world, aware only of each other. His hands moved to my hips, his fingers digging slightly into my skin as he held me against him. I pressed my pelvis forward, unable to deny the desire, and could feel his hardness.

  “Whoa, kid,” he said, pulling away slowly.

  I gradually opened my eyes and looked up into his face, his expression was sexy and raw.

  “I better get you someplace private before I do something crazy and take you right here,” he said, smiling with that lazy grin of his.

  “I’ve always wanted to do it on the beach,” I said, smiling, imaging us rolling in the sand.

  “Mm,” he said.

  “Mmm, yourself, you bad boy,” I teased, backing toward the water.

  Then I saw the look in his eye, and I circled around him the other way. That mischievous look generally meant trouble was on the way.

  “Oh, no, you don't,” I laughed.

  I knew he was thinking about cooling us both off in the ocean. He’d forced me into the ocean on too many other occasions. Instead, I reached out and gripped his hand firmly, tugging him in the direction of our towels.

  “Do you remember the first time?” he asked.

  I pondered his question. There had been many different first times.

  “The first time we what?” I teased, pulling him to me and pressing my body into his.

  “I’m not talking about that,” he said with a smile.

  “What then?”

  “The first time we met.”

  “Your room, raining out, 'Classical Gas',” I answered tartly, squinting slightly at him.

  “Pretty girl at my door,” he said, still smiling.

  “It was the only first time you didn’t have a say; all the others were on your terms. I reluctantly went along,” I said. “Wait, you did think I was pretty.”

  It made me giddy to hear him say it, that I was pretty. He laughed out loud, and it made me smile. I loved it when he laughed; it was irresistible, like music.

  “You didn’t like them? I mean the first times?” he asked, looking slightly hurt.

  “I didn’t say that. I said they were on your terms. Now I have some say. Finally. Took a long time, you know,” I said.

  “Morgan, I didn’t think about it. I was young.”

  “And dumb. I know,” I said, looking into his eyes.

  I leaned in to kiss him, and he pulled me tight to him.

  “And by the way, you weren’t exactly reluctant,” he teased as he squeezed my hand.

  I wanted to stay in the moment and not let the past rush in. I wanted to think of only the good. I wanted to not have the doubts. Please I said to myself get over the doubts. When he let me go again, I focused on our towels in the distance: the red and orange and blue of the fabric, bright colors against the sand.

  “Let’s get a cold beer,” I said, again pulling him in that
direction.

  As we walked across the sand, my thoughts were getting jumbled. I tried to remember what year it was. Was it 1973? No, that was when we met. I focused on the towels, but for some reason, we couldn’t reach them. My feet felt heavy and my ears were ringing. I looked to see his face, but it had blurred. The sound of the ocean was getting increasingly louder. I held on tighter to his hand. The colors of the towels suddenly shifted and swirled together like a messy finger painting, and then I was falling, falling through black. I couldn’t feel his hand anymore. Where had the sun gone?

  “No, no, wait,” I shouted. “Don’t. No, please no.”

  The thoughts were there, but the sound wouldn’t come out or couldn’t be heard. I knew and didn’t want to know, my mind trying to protect me. The fog cleared, and still I tried to stay under. I could feel my body tense, trying to stop it from shaking.

  “Hey. Hey, now, it’s okay, it’s okay,” his voice broke through, and the dream faded away.

  “Babe, you’re sobbing again in your sleep.”

  I kept my eyes shut, coming up gradually; not wanting to face the reality I knew would fill me. Please don’t let this be real. I sluggishly opened my eyes, and my body was still heaving in sobs, my pillow damp on my face, his face hovering above as his arm stretched across my stomach, caressing, worrying. As I looked into his blue eyes, I could see the pain he felt for me in his face, his eyes searching for a way to help. The tears ran out the corners of my eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered, ashamed.

  He pushed a strand of hair that was stuck to my cheek gently off my face.

  “Morgan,” he paused, a little too long, which made me want to cry again.

  “It will be all right,” he said tenderly.

  His tone was so compassionate it made my heart break, tiny pieces shattering inside me.

  “I know,” I said through the tears.

  I knew he was hurt. He pulled me tightly to him, holding me while I cried.

  Chapter 1 - 1973

  My family has lived on the same street in San Jose, California, since I can remember. There was another house in San Jose when I was first born, but we moved from there when I was five and I don't really remember it. This house is where I have grown up, the one I remember, and it sits on a dead end street, or at least it’s what the sign says. It’s not a cul-de-sac with a circle at the end; it just goes straight, then stops because there’s a creek running at the bottom of it. I’ve joked with Gayle that I hope “dead end” isn’t an indication of our future.

  At the end of our street, on our side of the creek, runs a white guard rail fence with a higher chain link fence behind it that runs a long way in both directions. The obvious intent is to keep people out and the cows in. Across the creek, there's a dairy farm that smells like cow shit pretty much all the time, but I’ve grown used to it. Random moo’s float across the creek now and then and at night the medley in the creek gets pretty loud with the frogs and toads croaking, along with crickets chiming in. Of course there is the regular neighborhood sounds too, doors slamming, garages opening, people talking, mowers.

  There are a bunch of kids on our block, and we are all within a year or two of each other, so we hang out together a lot. Sometimes it’s a big group, sometimes just a few of us. We generally hang in the street or go to the creek. The chain link fence meant to keep people out, doesn’t. We’ve discovered a way to climb up on the wooden fence and get over the chain link fence into the creek. There's a section where we have almost folded the chain link fence in half and are able to slide over. All our parents know we go there.

  We also sneak onto the farm, which we are not supposed to do either. They no doubt know this too, but no one says anything about it. I suspect they think there is not much danger in the vast field of the farm. On the far side of the creek is a huge oak tree where someone built a platform high in its branches. To reach the platform, you have to climb up steps that have been nailed to the tree, scrap pieces of two-by-fours from the houses being built around us. I’m not much for heights, but I’m not much for being called a baby either. It’s scary going up, but once you’re there, you can watch everything that goes on over on our street and at the creek. You can watch the cows and the goings-on at the farm as well.

  When the cows graze at our end of the farm, we sneak into the field with them. It’s fun to try to get them to chase us. They're more curious than anything and sort of shy, gazing at us, their big brown eyes staring as they chew the grass, half of it falling out of their mouths. Every now and then we get one who will charge us, and then we run, hoping it won’t catch us. So far so good, no one has been maimed. We have cow patty fights, usually boys against girls. Of course the dry ones are easier to throw, the wet ones grosser. Getting tagged with a wet pie is no fun.

  The creek is the main attraction, though; we spend a lot of time getting wet, catching frogs, and flinging creek slime on each other. Oops, another disgusting activity. There are cattails that grow plentifully in the creek and the moss sort of hangs onto them in these big strands that we pull off and wad up. They're like gigantic spitballs that are slimy and stink. We chase each other in and around the creek and try to nail one another. In general when we come back over the fence we’re pretty grungy. The creek over the years has pretty much been a haven for bad behavior for kids or teens; it gets us away from the parents.

  There is a lot of life in the creek: fish and various types of frogs. I love the frogs, even the big old bullfrogs which most of the other girls won’t touch because they think they’ll get warts. Much to our mother’s dismay, Pat and I are always bringing frogs home. I like to bring the pollywogs home too and watch them transform into frogs. One day they're black and shiny and swimming like a fish, and then they start to morph and grow front legs, then back legs while their tail is constantly getting shorter. They continue to evolve until one day they are the cutest little frogs and look nothing like how they started. It’s an amazing and magical thing to watch something become something completely different.

  More than once we’ve had frog round-ups in the house when they've gotten out of their container. Pat and I laugh as we chase them around as they try their best to hop away. They can get into the damndest places; they’ve even managed to get up the stairs. My mom can’t understand why I think they’re cute, but she puts up with it, at least until she shouts “Morgan, come get these out of my living room!”

  She recently bought us a plastic turtle bowl with a palm tree in the middle to put them in. I think she got tired of us using her Pyrex. The tree frogs are my favorites, but they're so fast and jump so far, they're hard to keep around very long. We either take the frogs back to the creek or let them go in the yard once they're grown.

  As for the neighbors, well everyone seems to get along pretty well. The kids hang out together all the time, but the adults only now and then at a social function, and once a year when we have a block party in the street. Last night I laughed when I heard Gary and Ava from next door, on my side of the house, have a fight because Ava caught Andy, her son, looking at Gary’s Playboy magazines. Andy is my age and curious so who can blame him. Apparently Gary hadn’t hidden them well enough and Ava was pissed. I was in bed when I overheard them; parents, like they don’t think we know about stuff.

  My dad gets Playboy too and hides them in his closet, Gayle and I look through them and read the articles, especially the ones about sex. Some pretty graphic stuff. My mom is a housewife and my dad is a businessman who works for a contact lens company and does something with public relations. He travels a lot and talks to people about them. It’s funny, because when he's home, he doesn’t want to talk much. He’s kind of grumpy actually, and Pat and I try to stay out of the way. Maybe he gets all talked out when he's away.

  My younger brother, Pat, can be a real pain in the ass. He’s always trying to find out what I’m doing, spying on Gayle and me whenever he can. We usually know and avoid giving him things to hold over our heads. I’m not
sure he would tell, but better safe than sorry. I guess my mom does sort of work. She helps out a charity, which runs an upscale cookware store in Los Gatos called The Butter Paddle. She doesn’t get paid for her work; the profits from the store go to charity. Eastfield, she calls it, supports a home for abused children, and it gives my mom something to do other than just care for the house and us. I think it’s more of a social outlet for her, but who am I to say.

  When dad’s away, we visit a lot of her friends from the charity: cocktails here, cocktails there. I go to work with her sometimes. We’re at odds a lot right now. She thinks I don’t listen to her. I think she doesn’t understand me, which she doesn’t. She tells me I’m a hormonal teen and not thinking clearly. I think she drinks too much and doesn’t think clearly. We get along the best when dad is around—he expects things to be peaceful and pleasant which means we are all walking on eggshells. This puzzles me as Pat and I hear them fight often and it is anything but peaceful or quiet.

  It seems anymore when she talks to me and dad's not home, it’s yelling. Mom broke her toe last week when she tried to kick me after one of our fights. I was headed up the stairs to my room, and she tried to have the last word—or action. The banister was not so friendly.

  “Serves you right,” I shouted.

  She didn’t find my lack of sympathy amusing.

  “You’re grounded, you little twit,” she shouted back.

  Grounding wasn’t really used in our household, so it was more of an idle threat than anything. Maybe it made her feel good and powerful.

  Chapter 2

  I was eight the summer Gayle moved in across the street, and we became best friends. We used to hang with all the kids on the block, and now they think we’ve gotten stuck up since Gayle and I turned thirteen this summer and prefer to be alone together. They call us the tween bitches. We could give a shit; we’re into other things now, boys for one. Gayle and I talk about the boys and school a lot: who is after who, who’s kissing or having sex, who’s into what kind of drugs. There are girls in our grade who already have boyfriends or huge crushes.