hustled through the parking lot, trying to pretend that I didn’t see them, but I could feel Dylan’s gaze on me. I always felt it. Even when I wasn’t looking at him, I sensed his stare burning a hole in the back of my head. I kept my eyes focused on the ground, hoping he would ignore me.
“Hey, California.”
Damn it.
“Hi, Dylan.”
“Who’s that?” God, even his girlfriend’s voice was annoying. She sounded like a whiny toddler.
“Some girl who just moved into the building.”
“Oh. How do you know her?” A certain suspiciousness crept into her voice.
Oh boy. Not only was his girlfriend tacky and whiny, but she was also insecure, which I assumed was probably because he cheated on her. No, he definitely cheated on her. Of course he did. What man didn’t cheat?
Note to self: all men are lying, cheating scum.
I spent the remainder of the evening unpacking what was left of my things, which was really just one box, the box I had been avoiding since I’d moved in. I sat cross-legged on the floor and sliced open the cardboard with a pair of scissors, removing the contents one by one.
Justine’s passion, ever since we were teens, had always been photography. I’d listen to her rant for hours on end about the evolution of technology and how no one bothered to develop photos in print anymore.
“They’re going to lose everything,” she’d say. “Everyone just saves their pictures to their computers or to websites instead of developing them. Sooner or later, their computer is going to crash, or another social networking site will take over, and somewhere down the line those pictures will be lost.” She’d hold up a giant photo album for emphasis. “But no one ever loses these.”
To prove her point, every Christmas I’d receive the same gift: an album of all the pictures we’d taken in the past year.
And now, here they were, laid out in front of me. Smacking me in the face with reality.
I knew better than to sift through the recent albums, the ones that would make my eyes bleed, reflecting back on my beautiful lie of a life in L.A. I stacked the albums on the top shelf in my closet, a safe place where they’d never block my path or catch my eye. But when I got to the bottom album, the archives from 1997, I opened it.
Maybe I was hoping to discover some clue, some inclination of where it had gone wrong. But all I found was a series of Polaroids of two fourteen-year-old girls, laying side by side behind the football field, whiling away another fall in Rockland. Justine had always been a boy-magnet, with her small frame, giant blue eyes and teeny nose that crinkled when she laughed. I had a blonde shoulder-length bob and short bangs that looked like they belonged on a first-grader. We were both fashion disasters back then, Justine constantly wearing dark lipstick that contradicted her pale complexion, while I was caught in the middle of a grunge versus goth identity crisis.
I stood up and relocated to the couch, my head propped against the armrest as I flipped through the pages. There was the freshman semi-formal, the dance that Justine and I dressed up and pretended to go to, but instead snuck out the back door to get drunk in the woods with the senior boys. There was my first boyfriend, Ethan Blackwood, the typical high school bad boy who was notorious for his crass humor and irresistible charm. There was the time Justine and I MacGuyver’ed a bong out of a Sprite bottle and tin foil and spent the night blowing hits out of her bedroom window and laughing hysterically.
Ah, high school. How I missed it…
I hadn’t realized I’d fallen asleep until I was awakened by a familiar melody coming from directly above my living room. It sounded like it was flowing from the vents, but it was hard to tell. I listened to the words as they drifted through the walls, like some sort of distorted lullaby.
It's never over,
She's a tear that hangs inside my soul forever
I couldn’t believe it. Someone, somewhere in my building, was playing “Lover You Should’ve Come Over,” the Jeff Buckley ballad that had altered my entire perception of music.
As I haphazardly transferred myself from the couch to my bed, I realized that something about the song was off. It sounded almost identical to the album version, only it was softer. An acoustic version, maybe. I couldn’t place it, but whatever it was, there was something brilliant about it.
***
Two nights later, it happened again. I was in the midst of a dream where I was working back at the Pace offices. I had been assigned my first profile story on a local band, but as soon as I finished piecing the article together, my computer crashed and the entire document was lost. I kept restarting the computer, but all I saw was a giant black screen in front of me.
When I awoke, the same familiar sound was seeping through my vents, and I realized that was what woke me. Only this time, it was a version of Buckley’s cover of “Hallelujah.” I listened until the song ended, and then heard the first notes of “Lover You Should’ve Come Over” strike up once again.
Without even thinking, I got up, threw on a pair of shoes, and proceeded up the stairs to find out where it was coming from.
When I reached the top of the stairwell, I heard the music coming from the first door on my right, the apartment directly above me. I paused and gnawed on my lower lip, contemplating how ridiculous I’d be to knock on some stranger’s door and confess that I was eavesdropping on their music collection.
I turned to head back down the stairs, but froze when something on the door caught my eye. The apartment number stared back at me, mocking me, laughing at my expense.
Apartment eighteen.
The image of Dylan’s registration appeared in my head:
Dylan Cavallari
10 Park Place Apt. 18.
Boston, MA 02111
There was no way in hell I was knocking on that asshole’s door.
I lingered in the hallway for a few minutes, imagining what would happen if I did knock. I pictured his trashy, loudmouth girlfriend answering the door in her underwear and demanding to know if I was sleeping with her boyfriend. I pressed my ear to the door and listened, but didn’t hear any voices so I assumed he was alone.
My second fantasy consisted of Dylan answering the door, telling me that I was a huge bitch and to go screw, then slamming the door in my face. That was what I was most afraid of.
My third fantasy consisted of Dylan answering the door and inviting me in. While Jeff Buckley played in the background, he threw me down on his bed and ripped off each article of my clothing one by one, while condescendingly telling me what a bitch I was. I liked that one that most. It was kind of a turn-on.
Screw it, I told myself. It’s now or never.
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and knocked on the door.
