Page 10 of Rock Candy

I started to give him a canned answer. “Oh, you know, enjoying…” But suddenly, the lie puttered out. He and I didn’t lie to each other. That was our connection from the start, so I interrupted myself by telling him the truth. “I had an argument with my manager, and I just wanted to be around music.”

“Ah,” he exclaimed. “The quintessential ‘I wanna get lost in your rock'n'roll and drift away’ moment.”

I smiled at his Doobie Brothers reference, and then I dragged my hand over my face, reliving the frustration of my conversation with Marcus.

“What happened with your manager?” he asked.

Physically brushing away his question by waving my arm in front of me, I said, “I don’t really feel like talking about it. Can you do me the favor of just being my friend tonight? Like can we spend the evening together? Maybe listen to some music and dance a little?”

He nodded, and then he said, “But you know you’re actually supposed to talk to your friends about your problems.”

“Yeah.” I dropped my head back and looked up at the sky. I wasn’t going to talk to Henry about my inability to form attachments because I was pretty sure he was a victim of that pattern of mine. “I like to sweep my problems into a room down the hall and lock the door.”

“Hmm.” He shook his head. “That’s probably seriously unhealthy, but also probably pretty standard in a world where everything decent and good is on fire and everyone is staring at you.” He turned and winked at me. “Luckily, we can listen and dance and get lost in our music.”

He was letting me off the hook and I felt thankful, so I leaned my head on his shoulder as I repeated his sweet consent to my evening’s choices. “Luckily.” I stayed there, leaning on him for a few beats. My touch had him all tensed up again, but I ignored it for a few minutes and just listened to the dude performing. He was singing a folksy cover of the ABBA song “Waterloo,” and he’d done a fairly good job of making it his own.

Sitting up, I signaled at the singer and asked, “What do you think?”

Henry shrugged. “He’s not bad. It’s hard to take ownership of a song everyone knows, and he did that.” My sentiments exactly. “That said, I’ll withhold judgment until we hear an original.”

“Really?” I queried, narrowing my eyes. “Aren’t you the guy who doesn’t want to front a band and play your originals? Isn’t that hypocritical?”

“Whatever,” he smarted. “First of all, as soon as you take the stage, you open yourself up to judgment. So…” He pointed from me to the performer to himself. “You, him, me, we all have to accept that playing music publicly will come with critique. This guy accepted my right to pick apart his performance and everything that he let us see about his personality as soon as he took the stage. Secondly, I am not ashamed to play my originals in public. I just absolutely hate being the center of attention. Hate it. For me, it feels like being violated and in another way, it feels like I'm an imposition. So, yeah, super awkward.”

I stared at him. He was so handsome, even the line of his jaw was masculine. My fingers remembered hard planes of his chest like I touched them minutes ago, not months ago. I wanted my hand buried in the silk of his thick dark hair and my mouth completely engulfed by his.Shit.

“What are you looking at?” he asked. “Do I have spinach in my teeth?”

I shook my head no, looking away from his face as I asked, “How’s the new job?”

He also looked back at the guy singing. “Meh,” he said, “Our lead singer is kind of a dick.”

I scowled. “How so?”

He shifted, lifting his legs so that he was sitting cross-legged on the stone step. “He likes to party too much, and he’s not open to anyone’s opinion. Don’t get me wrong, the guy has talent, but he won’t get out of his own way.”

“Yikes.”

“It’s fine,” he said in the way that makes it a hundred percent clear it’s absolutely not fine.

I shook my head. “You should be fronting your own band.”

He turned to me, letting one corner of his mouth rise up into a half smirk. “You should talk to your friends about your feelings and look at your problems head-on.”

I smiled. “Touché.”

God, I loved looking at his face.

Henry could move,but I knew that, didn’t I? When a man has rhythm, he has rhythm. We danced. I still didn’t understand his social anxiety because he sure didn’t seem to care how silly he looked on the dance floor. Didn’t matter what era a dance was from or how goofy it was, from the Charleston to the Moonwalk to the Electric Slide, he was informed and ready to perform. When the sun went down, and I didn’t need anything but my ballcap to keep me incognito, I felt free for the first time in a long time. No one was watching me. It was just me and him, having fun. Henry was a gentleman. He kept it playful and friendly. The entire night passed by easily as we moved back and forth between the two stages. At some point we ate food, but mostly that was a perfunctory requirement. Don’t get me wrong, I love food. I just love music more, and well, Henry and I had that in common.

As expected, I forgot all about Marcus’s annoying yet somewhat valid assessment of my existence until around eleven p.m., when the very last performer for the night ended her set. With nothing to look at, listen or dance to, Henry and I strolled aimlessly for a few minutes, before he said, “Well, I guess we should call it a night.”

I didn’t think about it much when I answered him. “Booo,” I lamented dramatically. “Do we have to? I’m having so much fun and if I go back to that stinky rental house, I’m just going to wish I was still hanging out with you.”

He looked around at the thinning crowd and said, “I’m not sure what we could do.”

“We could just go back to your tent and hang out.” I wasn’t totally getting fresh. I genuinely thought we could talk or whatever, but I also knew what being alone zipped up in his tent could lead to.

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