Rhythm by Marie Lipscomb
Chapter Sixteen
Beth
“This is shit.”
She tears out the page in her sketch pad, scrunches it, and hurls the balled-up sheet across the room.
Two weeks. Two weeks of trying and failing since she left the cabin.
No inspiration, nothing.
She storms out of the spare bedroom in her apartment she uses as a studio, traipses down the hall and flops onto her bed, burying her face in the forest-green duvet. There’s only one thing on her mind, one image she can’t shake no matter how hard she tries to ignore it.
With a sigh, she rolls onto her back, pulls her phone out of her pocket and calls Sadie.
Old Reliable picks up after three rings. “What’s happening, baby girl?”
“I’m broken. I can’t paint. Well, I can, but the only thing I want to paint is the thing I’m not supposed to be thinking of.”
“You’re not broken. You’re being haunted, that’s all.”
Beth frowns and rolls back onto her stomach. “Am not.”
Sadie chuckles on the other end of the line. “Are too. Haunted by the memory of that beard rasping against your thighs.”
Her stomach flips at the thought, but she makes herself scowl. “Stop.”
A long pause and then. “Did you call me for permission?”
“No!” Beth stands and walks back to her studio. “Maybe?”
“Paint him then. Get it out of your system. You may as well get something out of it.”
“Thanks. Yeah. You’re right.”
She ends the call, and gets to work. Once she starts, it’s impossible to stop. She works straight onto the canvas, creating the piece she’s been holding back on ever since she left the cabin; her and Finn, an explosion of light and fire and color, bodies entwined, backs arched in ecstasy. She obscures his face with grasping fingers, splayed across his cheek and jaw. It’s beautiful, intimate, and frankly, sexy as hell. Gold and copper shimmer in his beard, and she takes painstaking care over every detail of him; his tattoos, the shape of his body, everything she has committed to memory.
When evening draws in, and she’s too tired and hungry to go on, she sits with a bowl of vegetable soup and a sourdough roll, her laptop perched on the arm of the sofa.
Her fingers flex with the need to look him up, but she won’t. She can’t. It’s bad enough she’s painting him. Bad enough she spent three goddamn hours making sure she painted his tattoos just right. She can’t.
She won’t.
She releases a breath and stares defeated as the Vixen’s Wail homepage loads, and he glowers at her from the thumbnails of the recommended videos. The words ‘watch again?’ glare at her like an accusation.
Tomorrow she’ll work on something different, push him out of her head and focus on something else. She’ll accept it for what it was; a one-night-stand with a guy who played her like a fucking maestro. Tomorrow.
Finn
“Fucking hell, Finn.”
He waits, his breath a solid mass in his lungs as Mia pores over the lyrics. The band’s vocalist blinks slowly, her brow creased, either in concern or confusion. She fusses with the midnight blue tip of one of her braids, poking it against her cheek.
The purple light in the back of the RV casts violet highlights on her dark brown skin, and the crimson contact lenses she’s experimenting with give her a kickass vampiric look. The fans are going to dig it.
For all Finn’s talent, Mia is the powerhouse of Vixen’s Wail. Her voice, and the way she uses it to craft emotion in their music, is nothing short of incredible. Having her look over his attempt at putting his raw feelings into lyrics is absolutely terrifying, no matter how long they’ve been friends.
The band has been on the road for a month, travelling in a rented RV from venue to venue. So far, the tour is amazing, and he’s even managed to go a few minutes without thinking of her. It’s everything he’s ever dreamed of, but he isn’t content.
“Are you okay?” Mia can always see right through him. They’ve worked together for more than ten years, and have been through so much. She knows him, and can always see deep beneath the surface of his skin where he’s rawest.
“Yeah.” He nods and tries to smile.
“This woman hurt you, didn’t she?”
“Alright, whose ass are we kicking?” Nic, the band’s violinist chips in from the back of the RV, hidden behind a cluster of cardboard merch boxes. They stand and pound their bone-white fist into the center of their palm. “Vixens assemble.”
Finn chuckles and shakes his head. “I’m alright, honestly. No ass-kicking required.”
Nic pouts and slumps back down into the seat, tossing their long, bleached white hair over their shoulder. “Got my knuckles all excited for nothing.”
“I can definitely work with these lyrics,” Mia smiles, turning Finn’s attention back to her. “And seriously, if you need to talk about anything…”
Finn shrugs a shoulder dismissively, and glances out of the window, at the endless streets of crowded chain stores rolling by. In a couple more nights, the tour will be over, and they’ll get to play their triumphant hometown show. It’s the biggest venue they’ve played, and it’s close to being their first sell-out show.
“I’m good.” He nearly convinces himself.
Mia’s eyes bore into him though, and he can almost hear the reprimand trapped behind her smirk. “So, what’s this song called?” She asks finally.
“I was thinking B.B.”
“As in, the letter B?”
“Yeah. Twice.”
She raises her eyebrows. “Well, it’s no worse than your last title suggestion.”
“Hey now,” Finn laughs. “Cacoffiny is a masterpiece!”
“Agree to disagree.” Mia lets the braid fall and rests her chin on the heel of her hand, tapping her crimson talons one by one along the curve of her cheekbone. “So, B.B…?”
As Mia’s eyes dart to the painting of him hanging above his bed, her smirk dissipates. He scolds himself for being so obvious. Pity is the last thing he needs, because he knows himself, and he knows he’ll wallow in it if given the chance.
“Beth Barlow.” She reaches out and takes his hand. There was a time when that gesture would’ve set his blood alight, but now there’s nothing but camaraderie. “You know you can talk to me Finn.”
The other members of the band are either only half-listening, or fully listening and only half pretending not to be. He doesn’t mind. They’re family. Perhaps it would be good to get it all off his chest, to release the burning confusion and hurt from its cage behind his ribs. He draws a deep, slow breath as the lyrics sheet blurs in front of him.
“I’ve been a complete dipshit.” It’s painful to say aloud, but once he starts, it’s impossible to stop.
Mia listens as he pours his heart out. Of course, he doesn’t tell her all the physical details, but the emotional ones…he surprises even himself as he admits how much he let Beth mean to him.
Nic comes to sit beside Mia tearing up a receipt as they both listen, the violinist arching one perfectly preened eyebrow in disbelief. By the time Finn finishes, his cheeks are burning, and he doesn’t doubt they’re practically glowing neon pink. But it’s out there in the open, the story of how he fell for Beth, only to find his feelings were entirely one-sided.
“Wait. You stormed out on the woman of your dreams over half a phone call?” Nic rolls their eyes. “She could’ve been talking about anything. The storm, her art, the fact you were drinking whisky at 9 a.m.… anything!”
The world tilts a little. Finn stares ahead, trying to grasp at the sliver of hope, only to have it slip through his fingers. “No.” He shakes his head. “She said she hated herself for what she’d done. That’s the part that got me. What we did made her hate herself. I made her hate herself.”
Mia’s eyes glaze over as she raises her eyebrows. “That’s rough.”
“I know.” Finn swipes his hands back over his hair and rests them on the back of his head. “This is why I never do the casual thing. I can’t stop thinking about her. It felt so right, and then… bam.”
The silence in the RV is broken only by the gentle rumble of the engine, and the soft click of the blinkers as they make their way around a corner. Instinctively, the band members brace themselves, holding on to anything fastened down as they lean into the turn.
“Do you want to start working on the melody for this song?” Mia offers, sensing his need to change the subject.
He inhales sharply, and pulls a sheet of music from the folder beside him. It’s the sheet he’d worked on while Beth stood in front of him, painting him. Her song, the one he tortures himself with constantly.
“I already started.”