Chapter Six Cromwell

Chapter Six

Cromwell

I moved to my desk and logged on to my laptop. Easton was at class, so I dropped my arse onto my chair and flicked on all my mixing boards. I threw my headphones on and fired up the mix I’d started a few days ago.

I closed my eyes and let the beats sink into my body. Bursts of pinks and greens flashed before my eyes. I moved my hand to the mixing table without even looking and turned up the pace. My heartbeat chased the bass as the rhythm sped up. Triangles and squares danced in jagged patterns. Then—

My headphones were taken from my head. I spun around, jumping from my seat. Bonnie Farraday stood behind me, my headphones in her hands. Ice-cold fury had immediately run through me, but it dropped when I saw it was her. That surprised me. My anger was pretty much what I was fueled by these days. I couldn’t understand why it calmed.

I didn’t like feeling confused.

I held out my hand. “Give them back.”

Bonnie slowly pulled the headphones to her chest. I closed my eyes to keep calm. When I opened them again, Bonnie had her arms folded across her chest. She was wearing skinny jeans and a white T-shirt. She had a sweater over her shoulders like one of the posh kids I’d see strutting through the streets of Chelsea in summer. Her brown hair was back in a long plait. And when I looked at her face, she looked anxious.

“What are you doing here?” I asked. I reached behind me to turn off the mix that was now blasting through the speakers. It wasn’t finished. No one heard anything I was working on until it was done. I had a new set to put on the streaming sites. Little Bonnie Farraday was messing up my schedule.

“Did you even look at the assignment list?”

I frowned. “What assignment list?”

Her eyes looked up in exasperation. “The one Lewis talked about for pretty much the entire class.” She walked forward and pressed my headphones into my chest. I looked down at her. She was only about five foot three, if that. She was tiny compared to my six foot two. Easton was just an inch or two shorter than me. He’d clearly got all the good stuff in the womb.

“You and me, superstar, are partners. In composition class. For the next year.”

I stared at her. Locked in on her brown eyes and felt the Fates laughing at me. I couldn’t seem to escape this girl. “Of course we are,” I said, sighing and turning back to my laptop. I’d only just tapped a key to bring the screen back to life when Bonnie shut the laptop again.

Her hand rested on the computer. I didn’t even look up, just said through gritted teeth, “Bonnie. I’m only going to tell you this once. Get off my laptop, and leave. I’m working.”

Her hand didn’t move. She didn’t move. I roved my eyes up to meet hers. “Don’t mess this up for me,” she said, face calm. But her words, spoken in that thick country twang, were anything but. I heard a shake in her voice that made my chest tighten.

I pushed the feeling aside and raised my eyebrows. “And how can I mess this up for you, Farraday?” My tone was shitty. Condescending. I knew it. But she was starting to piss me off.

Her cheek twitched in annoyance, but she still didn’t remove her hand from my laptop. “I’ve worked too hard to get this far, and I won’t let someone like you, someone who breezes by in life, screw it up for me.”

She seemed desperate, somehow. Still, fire lit me up inside. “You don’t know a thing about me.”

“No, I don’t,” she said back. “And I don’t need to. I don’t care whether you like me or not. But we’re stuck together for the duration of this assignment.” She swallowed, and then her voice softened. “To have someone like Lewis teach me is a dream come true.” Her hand slipped off the laptop. I stared at the spot it had just been on. “Don’t take it from me.” There was a small catch in her voice.

I didn’t know why, but it made that damn stabbing feeling I chased away so often slice through my stomach. Bonnie reached into her bag and pulled out a piece of paper. “The TA was handing these out as we left. You were gone before he could get one to you.” I didn’t even look at the piece of paper as it landed on my desk.

Bonnie sighed in frustration. “It says we have to have a rough outline of our project done for Friday’s seminar.” She tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. “I won’t be around for a few days, so we need to talk about this now.”

The thought of working with Bonnie made an uneasy feeling sprout inside me. I didn’t like to feel anything. I was happy numb. But for some reason Bonnie Farraday sparked life back into my dead soul. “I’m busy.” I sat back down, throwing my headphones back over my ears. I had just taken the volume off mute when my laptop lid was pushed down again. This time harder. I had to count to ten…really bloody slowly.

The anger I lived with daily was waking up.

I slid my headphones off my head and put them around my neck. I turned. Bonnie was still beside me, fuming. She closed her eyes, and her shoulders sagged. “Please, Cromwell. I know you’re pissed at me for what I said to you in Brighton. I can hear it when you speak to me. But we have to get this outline done.”

Even at the reminder of that, fire boiled my blood. “I’m not pissed off at you. I feel nothing toward you,” I said coldly. I didn’t want her to think her words had had any impact. Especially how much.

“Right. Okay then…”

My jaw clenched as she started rubbing her arms. Like I’d hurt her. That annoying stabbing feeling was back in my stomach again. She moved toward the door then stopped dead. She spun and faced me, chin tilted upward. “Come with me for a coffee. We’ll hash this out. I’ll write it all up. You don’t have to do anything but contribute to the idea. We just need to decide what we’re gonna do.” I blew out a long breath. I simply wanted to be alone. I was better off alone. “Just come, please. Then you can get back to your drum pad.” She was persistent. I’d give her that.

I really didn’t want to go, but oddly, I found myself getting up. “You have an hour.”

Bonnie’s shoulders sagged in relief, and then I followed her out of the door. I locked it. With a key. I turned, and she must have known what I was thinking. “Easton gave me one. I’m normally the one who picks him up and brings him back home from parties. It made sense for me to have one.” She glanced down. “I won’t use it again without permission.”

Something stirred in me when her brown eyes dropped. I quickly pushed it away.

Bonnie led us out of the quad. She didn’t walk beside me, just slightly in front, which was fine with me. A few girls smiled at me, and I made a decision that I’d get my end away sometime this week. Looked like it wouldn’t be hard to pull around here. I’d gone too long without, and I was getting agitated too easy. Distracted.

Mainly by Bonnie.

Bonnie stopped at her car. “If I only have an hour, I’ll drive us there. It’ll be faster.”

Students looked at us as Bonnie pulled away from the campus. “We’ll be officially dating by tonight, just so you know,” she said.

I snapped my head to her, eyes narrowed. “What’re you on about?”

She pointed at the students. “Downside of a small local college. The rumor mill is rife.”

I leaned back in the seat and watched as Main Street came into view. “Great. That’ll help me get laid.”

Bonnie laughed without humor. “Not so much. You’re the shiny new toy here. Girls thinking you have a girlfriend will only make you even more attractive than you are to them right now.”

“Good to know.”

Bonnie parked outside Jefferson Coffee. She got out of the car, her bag of notebooks and Christ knew what else slung over her shoulder. I had about ten dollars in my wallet and my hands stuffed into my pockets.

I traveled light.

I hadn’t been here before, but the place was like any other hipster coffee shop I’d seen, all red walls, with a small stage in the back.

“Hey Bonnie!” about five different people said as she led us to a table at the back of the room. She smiled brightly at them, losing that smile when she sat down and looked up at me.

My fist clenched. I didn’t like that fact. And I hated that I seemed to care.

I sat down, and a guy came over. “The usual, Bonnie?”

“Yeah. Thanks, Sam.”

“No Bryce today? Never normally see you without him on a school day.”

“New partner.” She said it like she was announcing a death.

He looked at me. The prick nodded as though he could see why she was so pissed off. “The biggest coffee you have,” I said. “Black.”

Bonnie opened her notebook. “Okay. I think we should start with what we can play. That’ll help us know what our strengths will be.”

“I only do electronic music. So I’ll have my laptop. Drum machine and all that shit.”

Bonnie looked at me blankly. “We can’t compose a showcase piece with your laptop and synthesized beats.”

I lounged back in my chair. “That’s what I’ve got. I work electronically. Lewis knows it. He offered me the scholarship. He scouted me out. Think I’d find this bumfuck place on my own?”

“You don’t play anything else? No actual instruments?” There was a questioning lilt to her tone. Like she was privy to something about me I didn’t want her to know. It unsettled me.

I shook my head, stretching my arms and putting them behind my head. I wanted to tell her that mixing electronic beats was playing an instrument, but I didn’t even open my mouth.

“I play piano and guitar. A little violin too, but I’m not that great at it.” Her eyes narrowed on me. Like she was studying me. Testing me. “You can read and write music though, yeah?”

I nodded, thanking God when the coffees turned up and she stopped bloody talking. I drank mine like it was a soda. Sam saw and indicated he’d be back with a refill.

“Lewis wants us to at least have an idea of a theme. What the piece will be about. What we’re trying to say.” She tipped her head to the side. “Any ideas?”

“Nope.”

“I thought something like the seasons? Maybe something to do with nature? The idea of time moving, us being useless to stop it.”

I rolled my eyes. “Sounds like a riot. I can just hear the sounds of birds threading through my bass beat on my laptop.” I was being a dick again. At least more than usual. I couldn’t help it around her.

She rubbed her eyes tiredly. “Cromwell. We need to just get through this, okay? Neither of us has to enjoy it. But we can work together. Plenty of musicians do it, have done it, and have created something good.” She took a drink of her coffee. “I preferred the idea of the seasons changing. That way we can incorporate more instruments and tempos.”

“Fine,” I said as Sam came back to the table and refilled my cup.

Bonnie sat back in her seat, sipping on her coffee. She stared at me over her cup. “Like what you see?” I asked, smirking.

She ignored me. “Lewis told me you were top of all your classes in London.” I froze, my muscles locking.

“Someone should tell Lewis to shut his fucking mouth.”

“I’ll leave that to you.” She rested her chin on her hand. “So how did you come here anyway? Visa?”

“Dual citizenship. I was born here. In Charleston.”

“You’re American?” she said, shocked. “I didn’t know that.”

“No. I’m British.”

She huffed in frustration. “You know what I mean. You were born here?”

“Moved to England at seven weeks old. Never even visited here since. So I’m about as American as good old Charlie”

“Who?”

“The King.”

Bonnie ignored that. “So your parents are South Carolinian?”

“Mum is.”

“And your dad?”

“Are we done here?” I snapped. We weren’t going anywhere near my home life. I pointed at her scrawl on the notebook. “Seasons. Lots of instruments. Mixed tempos. Probably going to be a piece of utter shite, but it’s what we’ve got. We’re done.”

Bonnie sat back in her seat. Her mouth was open and her eyes were wide. I had a flash of regret on seeing her face turn pale, but I frosted over again, like always. I’d gotten good at it now.

“Yeah. Whatever, Cromwell,” she said warily, pulling herself together. “I can take it from here.” I got up and threw my ten-dollar bill on the table. My chair scraped on the wooden floor, I got up that fast. The whole coffee shop looked over. Before Bonnie could offer to drive me home, I got the hell out of Dodge.

I walked down an alley, which brought me to the park that led to the campus. My muscles were jumping. I pulled out my cigarettes and sparked up, ignoring the shitty looks from the mums out with their kids. By the time I arrived at a large field, I’d inhaled three of the things and was suitably nicotined up. I sat down beside a tree and looked at the guy doing some kind of tai chi in the distance.

He looked like he belonged in a postcard.

I glanced up at the sun. The wind was still, and I laughed with bugger-all humor when I heard birds singing above me in the branches.

Birds.

“Seasons,” I muttered under my breath. What a crock of shit.

But even as I sat there, trying to push the lame and done-too-many-times concept from my brain, I pictured a flute in short sharp bursts introducing the piece. I saw a single violinist bringing in the main melody.

Spring.

Yellow. All the shades of yellow on the spectrum.

I opened my eyes and curled my hands so tightly into fists that my fingers ached. Turning my torso, I sent my fist into the tree trunk I’d been leaning against. I pulled back my hand to see blood seep from the cuts the rough bark had caused.

I shot up from the grass and made my way back to the dorms, the blood dropping on the path back home. I needed my beats. I needed my mixes.

I needed to forget.

I threw the headphones that had been hanging around my neck over my ears and let the high volume drown out the colors and thoughts and images plaguing my head.

I pressed on a new playlist on my phone and lost myself in the heavy sound of garage and grime. It wasn’t the music I made. I didn’t even like it. I just needed to get my head away from Lewis, my parents, and Bonnie Farraday and her questions.

Easton was lying on his bed when I walked into our room. I took my headphones off. Easton stood and whistled low, shaking his head. “What have you done to piss off my sister, man?”

“I was just my usual charming self.” I moved to my laptop and started back up what Bonnie had interrupted. But I saw Bonnie’s shocked, hurt face in my head, and it stopped me in my tracks.

Easton lay down on my bed. He was throwing an American football in the air and catching it again. “Yeah, well, if your intent was to have her seeing red, good job.” He stopped throwing the ball. “So you’re having to work together?”

“Looks that way.” I added the faint sound of a violin over the tempo dip I’d been struggling with. A violin. The sound worked perfectly. I’d never opened my file of actual instruments. Never added them into my mixes before.

I took a deep breath.

Until now.

I forgot all about Easton beside me, too focused on the fact that I’d added in a bloody violin to my mix, until he said, “I get that she can be feisty, but take it easy on her, okay?” His words sank in, the warning clear in his tone. “Not sure she can handle your kind of crazy.” He shrugged. “Small-town girl and all that.”

He swung his legs off the bed. “We’re going to a bar tonight. And this time you’re not getting out of it. Jet lag’s gone. You’ve been miserable long enough. Now you’re just being an unsociable bastard. And I can’t have that. I have a reputation to protect.”

“If there are girls there, I’m in.” I couldn’t believe that I’d actually agreed. But I kept seeing Bonnie in my head, and I knew I needed her gone. I needed to get laid. That’s what all this was. Why she was getting to me so much.

“Finally!” Easton said and clapped me on the back. “I knew I liked you for a reason.” He threw the ball across the room into a basket. “Just bring your fake ID. You’ll be the perfect wingman.” He rubbed his hands together. “I’m gonna see the maestro at work. Been waiting for you to show me the way.”

“Not sure you need my help.”

Easton pretended to consider it. “Sure as hell don’t, but you and me, bro. We’re gonna be on another level with the chicks here.”

I moved to my closet, took out a clean T-shirt, and raked my hands through my unruly hair.

Tonight, I’d dip my wick, get plastered, and forget about the world.

It was too bad that, for the rest of the night, wide brown eyes and the sound of a single violin kept nagging at my brain.