Chapter Text
“This isn’t working, Jinx,” Riven sighs.
Even through the damp alleyway wall behind us, I can still hear the thud-thud-thud of the cheap pre-recorded club music they’re filling in with after our set. Dull, listless patrons again. Barely paying attention to us riffing our little grunge band hearts out. Not picking up what we were laying down.
Rarely do, anymore.
“Look, we’ll change it up,” I argue, around the clench of my teeth, my natural stray-cat urge to hiss and spit and blame it on Riven’s growing big head about her musical talents—and, by implication, the rest of the band, and my, lack thereof. We’ve had that fight before. I know it’s not true, I’m just being petty, but my spite won’t let me believe it, “You were right, we’re not challengin’ ourselves, fine, whatever, we just need to do something fresh. You’ve got that new piece you were workin’ on right? The one that’s all classical music motifs and shit? We can play that!”
Riven’s shoulders go stiff. I can see it from here. She’s leaning on the wall, all cool and tall and pink-haired, while I’m pacing back and forth, all restless energy, just a scrawny, skinny blue menace with way too much hair for a hot stinky club, pacing around like the alley cat I am in my ripped jeans, my ripped top, my ripped heart.
I see the brooding thought in her eyes. God, she’s so fucking pretty. I just wanna pick her up and smack her against that wall and put my lips, my hands, all over her again.
But that’s getting to be a rarer event these days, too.
“That song’s not for the clubs,” Riven whispers, “I’m sorry, Jinx. That song’s for me.”
“What?” my brows knit, “What are you saying, Rivs? Our band’s not good enough for you anymore?”
I’m not good enough?
“It’s not working,” she repeats, flinching, looking away from me, “You know it’s not, Jinx. We’ve both—we’ve both gotta let go of it before it drags us down.”
“What’s not working? Can you be a bit more fucking mysterious!?” I snarl, exasperated, “What is it? The songs? The band? Us?”
“Any of it.”
There’s a big hard lump of something in my chest—anger, hurt, outrage, sadness, I don’t know, it’s a big ol’ lump of Fuck You, is what it is, I can’t quite bring it to my lips.
Because she’s…
Looking up at me with those big soulful Riven eyes.
Because she’s right. I just didn’t want to see it. Wouldn’t see it, stubbornly, fiercely refused, while the band and our thing and our future’s crumbled down around us.
“Jinx,” she’s reaching out to me, one more time, putting her hand on my cheek while I flinch and look at her like I don’t know why she’s touching me, like we’ve never touched before, when we’ve been tangled laughing and gasping and sweating in my sheets or hers or a stupid hotel room’s a hundred times, “Look at me.”
I do. Try not to bite her fucking fingers off.
“You’re talented. Got a fire in you nobody’s gonna put out. You’re fucking amazing. You’ll go anywhere you damn well want, you know that, right?”
Her thumb almost gives me that affectionate graze of my lower lip, the one she used to like to kiss and nibble, but she doesn’t.
Her eyes fall from mine, but don’t go to my lips. They go to her feet.
“But I’m not your ticket to the top.”
She’s turning away, slinging her guitar from her shoulder to her back. Walking away, down that narrow alley, to her bike.
I’m left with nothing but my broken heart in my eyes and a scream in my chest that has nowhere else to go.
With shaking hands, I light a smoke.
Six months later, it’s just me, my guitar, and a bridge.
Yeah, screw you Riven, making me pick up a guitar again. I was fine just shrieking my crazy girl feelings into a microphone while you let those strong, skilled hands of yours do the talking on your strings.
But here I am, reining all of that in, strummin’ away at a battered old axe with the volume turned all the way to ‘acceptable’ and my vocals floatin’ out another whisky throated, soulful indie dirge to smoky nights and the memory of kissing the rim of a glass and the end of a cigarette and the mouth of a girl who’s moved on to brighter things and left you with your darkness…
Haven’t smoked again since that night. I kept the last box of hers she left at my place until the temptation was too torturous and I threw it out. Even now and then, when I get a whiff on someone else passing by, the smell comforts me, reminds me who I used to be, but the thought of putting one in my mouth used to somehow put me right back in that alley, back when it was all fresh, and then I kinda fell out of the habit. Heh. Told my therapist about that one, he’s gonna start a whole new branch of quit-smoking sessions that recommend you get dumped by a hot rocker chick with a pink wolfcut…
I lied. I don’t have a therapist.
I do have a guitar, and a perfect spot to lean with it. I’ve got a park bench nearby with the shape of my skinny ass so firmly entrenched in it Veleria City Council probably thinks I sleep there. They’ve tried to move me on a couple times. I’ve got the soft sea breezes and the occasional seagull for backing vocals.
Busking’s not the worst. It’s sure ain’t what I wanted to be doing, but since the band split up, that’s not on the cards. It’s not the worst, though.
It’s probably keeping me from worse things.
And, except for the occasional weirdo coming up to harass me or whatever, it’s pretty dang peaceful.
It’s a pretty bridge, the Old Veleria Harbourview Crossing, aka ‘Confession Bridge’. It’s all broad old stone and fancy railings and fancy lamp posts, all very decorative. Older part of town that used to be the super fancy part, maybe a hundred years ago. Now it’s just the ‘picturesque’ part, that delicate architecture and the way the bridge is angled to catch the perfect light spilling over the water at certain times of day, dawn on one side, dusk on the other. No matter which way you look, you’ll see the golds and pinks and oranges spilling on the water, the river at your back, the sea at your front.
It’s a whole vibe, and what it brings is flocks of seagulls, flocks of tourists, especially the ‘romantic’ kind.
See, the bridge’s kinda got a reputation. I mean, look at it, and imagine all kinds of soppy, the-music-swells-and-yearning-eyes-and-startled-gasps-as-he-gets-down-on-one-knee kinds of scenes. Gross, ugh. Visitors here sure do imagine that, though. People tie balloons with their love confessions tucked inside them before they’re blown up, tie them to the railings all over this thing, or fill ’em with good old helium and let ’em go into the sky.
Council’s put up signs designating spots, stopped trying to stop them, was never gonna happen. It’s probably causing a public littering problem, and the stray escapees are sometimes annoying when they bump your guitar while you’re playing, but they’re harmless trite whatever to me.
What’s good about this bridge, despite all the icky romance vibes, is that people totally swarm it in the right seasons, to tie their dumbass balloons, come out on a date to stare at the light on the water, and boy, do we get some confessions.
I’ve only had to talk like, three people down from the railing, too, so it’s better than other bridges across town in that regard. I know, grim stuff, but that’s reality for ya, especially when big emotions are involved. And best of all, despite the shit lump my life became, I’ve never even been one of ’em! See! Hah! Take that! Told you I didn’t need a therapist, dad!
Anyway, all those people come, and they bring their big emotions with ’em and all it takes is a bit of my quirky, erratic, slightly scary and crazy rocker girl Jinx showmanship to catch their attention, get them staring at me, laughing nervously, before I segue into a soulful strum and serenade them on behalf of whatever dull-eyed loverboy–or girl–is hanging on their arm, winking at them like they planned all this with me in secret…
And the blushes and the smiles come quick, and then so do the coins, flooding into my old guitar case like never before. It’s like a f’cking magic trick. Anywhere else in town I’d be chased off. I might have to swallow my punk rock indignation every dang day I do this, but it’s paying the bills. The bills might be a bagel from Jericho’s bodega on the way back home, but a girl’s gotta eat!
It’s a pretty sweet gig, and it’s what I got.
Until one day, I show up, drag my lazy ass out of bed early morning to set myself up.
And there, right across from my bench, right where the railing curves out to the sunrise spot, is a piano.
It’s small, vintage, both well-cared for and visibly well-loved.
And then, walking over, finishing her morning tea—not even coffee, freakin’ tea—is a girl.
She’s little and blonde and radiates ‘wholesome’. She’s got a little white dress and a blue bow in her hair and a smile like an angel on her face when she looks out over the water and takes a deep breath.
Then she sits at her keys, and lets her fingers speak.
Oh, hell.
I don’t know what I’m expecting, some bit of human-made-muzak, some innoffensive tumbling of notes in the background of the few people crossing the bridge or starting to gather up to watch that sunrise. Background noise, a little annoying to have to share space, but she looks harmless, I can deal…
But what rolls out of her keys is soft at first, sentimental and nostalgic without crossing into twee. She’s a light touch, each note carefully considered, but never feeling fake or constructed. She’s heartfelt. Genuine.
And just when I think her piece is about to just loop around and get repetitive, she does this really subtle key change that I somehow barely notice until I’m into it, and it takes the piece from melancholy musing on the past to soaring, uplifting hope for the future while keeping almost entirely the same structure—
Oh hell, she’s talented.
I’m not much of a classical music nerd, but despite so many noisy clubs blasting their drums out, I’ve still got good ears. And I’m not immune to what she just put out. There’s a warm in my chest, keeping the predawn chill away, and it sounds like the floating notes of her piano.
Girl-next-door over there has got it.
She looks up from her keys and feels my eyes and then her eyes, sunny-sky blue, find mine. Then find my guitar, battered old thing, slung across my shoulder as I lean on the bench.
She gives me the sweetest smile I’ve ever seen and lifts her hand in a little wave.
My eyebrows shoot up, I give her a dumbass ‘who me?’ look and then, improvising, give her a cool ‘hey’ salute. I don’t know, I think I’m trying to be cool, but I look like a fucking dork.
She giggles, I only hear a little tinkle of it from all the way over here but it crinkles her whole face up, and she gives me a whimsical eyebrow in return.
She hits a few notes, looks over to me, and waits expectantly. I smirk, pull my guitar off my shoulder and strum a chord or two from my old beastie.
Piano Girl falls in effortlessly, filling the gaps in my listless strumming, improv’ing all the way. A silly little ditty, meaningless, just a couple of familiar bars of familiar songs all mashed together, but she finds every note to harmonize with me.
It’s bright and warm as the sunrise just starting to peek over the horizon.
We finish, and Piano Girl gives an actual laugh, wonderment twinkling in her eyes, and I think she’s about to get up and come walk over to me–or maybe I should go over, introduce myself…? Would that like, wreck my burnt-out-teen-punk-rocker-too-cool-for-you mystique?
The moment passes. She’s flicking her attention away to the approaching couple, gushing about her playing, and there’s something so charmingly genuine in the way she looks up into their faces, listens to them, crinkles her little smile as she talks enthusiastically back about her music.
They’re just the first. More come, and quick, like seagulls to the site of a fallen chip, except instead of greedily grabbing at things, they just fall into a calm half-circle around the girl with the piano.
And listen to her heart on the keys.
I don’t know it yet, but I’ve just met the girl who’s gonna ruin my life.
The first couple months are fine. Totally fine.
She’s not there every day, only twice a week, actually. I think she’s a student. See the textbooks with the logo of a fancy music academy sticking out of her bag. It’s music, always music, girl is really going hard on the one subject, I guess.
We don’t really get a chance for introductions, even on the days she is there, because it’s the busy season now and there’s a constant flow across the bridge…but we find an equilibrium, she and I.
Guess you could call it a ‘harmony’, at least in who catches which little fish. She seems to really get a kick out of watching my antics as I pull all my zany, Jinxy performance tricks to attract and delight passersby. Used to be centre stage, howling and wild-eyed and cracking silly, risque, sometimes real dark jokes with the crowd, depending on the crowd, the club, the vibe.
Here it’s a lot less boundary pushing, lot more family and romance friendly, so I gotta be creative. Lots of puns and double-entendres and ridiculous physical theatre. And then my guitar and my lyrics reel ’em in once they’re hooked, and clink-thunk go the coins.
And she’s just completely enthralled watching me. So entertained. And I don’t even know her name…
Piano Girl doesn’t hail anyone or distract them from their activities. She lets her music speak, and if they come they come, and when they do she’s always got a bright smile and kind words and you can tell when someone’s got her talking ‘music’ because her whole face lights up with total nerd joy. She’s practically glowing with it.
She doesn’t even take tips. No collection box, don’t see her take a single coin.
Yep, girl is really giving ‘autistic nerd prodigy, probably rich parents, no ego, all passion and enthusiasm, just here for the love of Music’ and I kinda hate that I find it so attractive.
God she’s cute. God not my type, I like tall, sexy rocker chicks who smell like boy cologne and can fling me around a hotel room and fling my heart out a window. What would I even do with a sunny little piece of honey-on-white-bread? Why do I wanna go up close and hear what she’s saying with those pretty little pink lips that makes every passing couple hang off every word?
Why am I too gutless to try?
I don’t even know why I bought a second bagel. I guess I thought I was stupid hungry.
I don’t know why I doubled back to the bridge, either. It’s not like I expected it, or anything. For Piano Girl to be finishing up and packing up, for once, without somewhere to immediately dash off to like she always seems to, all the other times.
For her to be leaning, stretching, against the railing, talking to one of the seagulls, for no reason at all other than she’s a bit quirky, I guess.
“—see, you wouldn’t judge me for being here instead of at the conservatory, would you, Mr Gully?”
The gull flies off, and the girl sighs.
“…oof, so much for fast, feathery friendship, I guess.”
Sunset’s warm at my back. My footsteps are inevitable, magnetically pulled to her side.
I don’t know why my heart’s pounding. She’s just some girl.
“Yo,” I say.
Yo, fuckin’ really?
Piano Girl’s back straightens. She whips around in a bright little whoosh of blonde hair and faces me. Surprised, taken aback, but can’t deny the delight in that smile either.
“Yo!” she exclaims, completely without irony, “Finally came to say hi, huh, Guitar Girl?”
“Not my fault you’re so popular, Piano Girl,” I shrug, oozing cool girl indifference, I hope, “You could always have come over to say hi to me, y’know. I’m not always dashin’ off after I finish up, see, plenty of time if you had it…”
“Hmmm,” her eyes narrow, “Is that so? Curse my evening lessons, then, for keeping me from your company!”
“Oooh, evening lessons too, huh?” I flash her my wicked grin. “Any part of your life you haven’t devoted to music, Miss Virtuoso?”
She slides her pretty blue eyes from my face to my guitar.
“I’d say ‘my dreams’.” She doesn’t skip a beat. “But that’d be untrue. Those were the first part to get devoted, actually! How about you?”
“Oh, uh,” I follow her glance, shrug again, “I was in–um, a band, a while back. The Loose Cannons. Didn’t, uh, work out, though.”
“I’m so sorry to hear that,” she says, solemnly. I can’t tell if she’s making fun of me, but I don’t think she is. “Sure can be hard to align our dreams with others, can’t it?”
There’s a soft, wistful look on her face. An unfulfilled dream of her own, she’s seeing mirrored in mine. A question she isn’t sure she should ask me yet…
But I’m back in that alley, looking at Riven’s back.
“Got that fuckin’ right,” I spit out before I realize, somehow going pottymouth in front of this next-door-sweetheart feels wrong, like I just spat on a choirgirl in the middle of a church; there’s heat on my cheeks, “Oh, shit, um, I mean–”
She blinks at me, patiently, completely not offended, as I fumble over my rough tongue.
I’m fidgeting enough that I remember the weight in my hands, the rustle of the paper bag.
“–I got a bagel!” I exclaim.
“So you do.”
I thrust it at her.
“Hungry?”
Her eyes are wide. “Isn’t–isn’t that your dinner?”
Fortunately, I can answer that, and proudly do, beaming as I shuffle the second from my bag.
“I got two!”
“You’re not—that hungry?”
My tummy growls like a tuba solo, but I ignore it. “Nope, not at all! One’s fine for me. Thissun’s all yours, Piano Girl!”
She laughs, her big blue eyes wide, a bit incredulous. Can’t quite wrap her brain around me, somehow. But I make her smile.
“Th-thank you,” she murmurs, and her smile’s a sunrise at sunset.
She takes the bagel.
We’re eating together, leaning against the railing, while Mr Gully and his friends circle around in the distance, waiting for us to drop any bit of bagel.
Sorry, Mr Gully, you had your chance, you jackass. She’s all mine now.
“I want to start an orchestra.”
It comes outta nowhere.
“Huh,” I mumble, around a mouthful of salmon and cream cheese, “And here I thought my garage band was ambitious.”
She laughs lightly but there’s a wistfulness under it. I glance sidelong at her.
Light’s dying over the ocean. Only the bridge lamps light her face now. There’s a sea breeze tugging at her messy golden hair, short, cute, hugging her heart-shaped face in loving waves.
“I mean it. I don’t want my life to be on rails. My whole future…it’s waiting for an answer from me I don’t know how to give. But if I’m going to—take the plunge, commit my everything to Music…”
She smiles more warmly, searches my face with her baby blues.
“I want to walk my own path. With people I believe in.”
It slips out of her while my mouth’s still opening.
“Do you want to join?” her eyes are stunningly bright, even with the world darkening to dusk, “My orchestra?”
It stuns me freakin’ speechless.
“I–um—I’m not a classically trained–um, flattered, Blondie, but I just–”
She’s waiting. Her lips are parted. They’re a pretty, salmon pink, a wide eager smile, perfect white teeth. Big blue eyes, a little upturned cherub nose. An angel’s smile.
“You just…?”
“I just beat up an old guitar and scream the crazy shit that’s in my head into a microphone…” I wince at myself, feel the weight of my own self-confidence crumpling before her blinding sincerity, “I’m–I’m not good enough for what you wanna do. Let’s be real, Blondie, you’ve got crazy talent. You’re a class act. I don’t even know what you’re doin’ here, buskin’ on a bridge…”
There isn’t a wall going up behind her eyes, but there’s a distance growing. She’s receding from me, sad smile on her lips, even though she’s standing the same distance away, right next to me, close enough to catch her sunny perfume on the salty breeze…
And I’m still rambling, “An orchestra? Sure, I could see you actually doing that, you’re amazing, but—I–I’m sorry, I just rub everyone wrong, couldn’t even keep my stinky band together—”
Couldn’t keep my girlfriend, either.
Piano Girl is finishing her bagel, thoughtfully staring out into the darkening sea.
“I don’t believe you,” she says softly. “I think you could do anything you want, if you gave yourself a chance—”
I can’t help it. I snort, bitterly, at her. But she’s not done.
“—if you let yourself believe you deserve one.”
My heart twists. I wanna shout at her that I did—I did try! I did believe I could make it! And it didn’t fucking matter because I wasn’t–I wasn’t good enough!
I can’t shout at her, though. I can’t bring my spitfire punk rock anger up and vomit all my angst into Piano Girl’s sweet, guileless, wise young face.
Instead I just twist mine up and turn away to stare at my feet.
“Sorry, Piano Girl,” I whisper, “Some people are just born losers. I’d just drag down your dream.”
She doesn’t say she doesn’t believe that either, not a single word of it, but it’s written all over her face.
I don’t know what I did to earn her faith, but I have it. Soaring, unyielding, and unconditional. All I did was strum a guitar and croak out a few songs across a bridge from her for a month or two. I don’t even know her name.
“I can’t make that choice for you,” she sighs, “But I’ll be here at my keys, if you change your mind. Or even if you don’t! You’ll be back on the weekend, right?”
“Yeah, whole thing, yeah,” I shrug my guitar over my shoulder and scrunch my bagel bag in my hand, “Seeya then, Blondie.”
Take hers, too, without a word, I’m walking past the bin…
“Wait. You really think I’m letting you go without getting your name?” she calls after me, “After all this time?”
I stop.
“Jinx.”
“Jinx…?” she’s stopped too, studying me. Working my name, my chosen mononym, my stage name and my legal name now, on her tongue. “Jinx.”
Most people think my name’s some kinda joke. They snap it or smirk it at me. She breathes it carefully, almost reverently, like it’s a freaking prayer, or something, and I don’t know how to handle it.
After a moment of contemplation, she brightens, packs up her last things, and I think she’s about to call out to me and say something else.
There’s the lights of a car. A freaking limousine, long and white and gleaming, with gold accents, and I don’t know what that means.
“–oh, shoot,” she mumbles, “That’s my ride. See you, Jinx! The weekend! I’ll be here!”
She’s skipping away, light on her feet as a fleeing gazelle on a nature documentary. Wonder if she also does frickin’ ballet or something, she’s almost got the build, if maybe a bit too nicely curvy–ah—
I’m just staring after her, flabbergasted, feeling like I forgot something—
She stops, like she has too, and twists mid run to call back to me over her shoulder.
“Lux!”
“Wh-what?”
“My name!” she’s giggling, sunlight on the water, “Call me Lux!”
Lux.
A dull-faced gent in a driver’s hat opens the door for her, and in she gets. She’s gone.
“Lux,” I whisper, “Seeya, Lux…”
Lux. Light. It means Light. There’s none out over the ocean now. Sky and sea are dark. She took the light with her.
I toss the waste papers in the bin and wander home.