"CJ! You were at that show, right? When Joey passed out in front of the drum kit after sound check, and then we all broke into that gym next door with the climbing wall?"
He turned and leaned back onto the bar, elbows resting behind him, a smirk on his face. "Yeah, man," he said. "Joey was out for the count that night. We tried kicking him, pouring beer on him. He was like hospitalization drunk."
Hayley's veins were flushed with vodka and now they spit adrenaline too as she listened. CJ's voice was sonorous and articulate, his tone untouched by the New York drawl that thickened the tongues of his friends. His face was expressive when moving and like stone at rest; Hayley was nothing short of captivated. She leaned forward over her crossed legs. "So what happened then?"
CJ glanced past Trent and Brandon, noting her as the source of the question, and shrugged nonchalantly. "Nothing really," he said. "Someone threw his drunk ass into a bedroom and I think Riley filled in on drums that night."
"Yeah, and he sucked," Brandon added.
"Eh, whatever. We were all pretty shithammered...I doubt Joey would have been any better at that point." CJ turned around and tapped the counter; like clockwork Kerry set a dark beer down in front of him.
Hayley mind raced as she tried to think of something, anything interesting to add to his story, to laugh about it or jump off into an anecdote of her own, to keep CJ near and in the conversation, but a long pause stretched between everyone as they sipped the tail ends of their drinks. She felt her opportunity start to slip away with a frantic stab, and without thinking, blurted out "So, where'd your girlfriend go?"
As soon as the words passed her teeth she blushed with embarrassment, inwardly chastising herself for asking such a forward question. But CJ just looked back to where he had been sitting earlier, unfazed. "Who, Tara?" he said. "I think she went to go meet the dude she's dating." He took a hit on his drink. "None of the cute girls ever stick around this joint."
"Fuck that. At least Hayley's still hanging out," Brandon said, punching her lightly on the arm.
"Yeah, but is she single? That's the important question." CJ spoke as if she wasn't even in the room, and Hayley set her lips in a straight line.
"Yeah, I'm single," she declared, raising her hand. She was still cross-legged on the bar stool; she felt like a third grader during show and tell with a huge crush on the cutest boy in class.
"Nice," Trent exclaimed. "We got ourselves a single girl who isn't a size 14 in this bar. This never happens."
Everyone laughed and CJ ordered a round of shots for the four of them, toasting to "all the single broads who unfortunately find their way in here." Hayley drank more easily than earlier, and assessed that her intoxication was a lot higher than it should be. CJ swallowed hard and when he looked up, he caught Hayley gazing at him. He offered a small smile, hardly more heartfelt than the smirk he wore earlier, but Hayley's return smile was gaping and bright, overly reciprocated. CJ turned away.
"Do you guys even know each other?" Trent interrupted the moment, and Hayley shook herself free from her brief trance. "I mean, I sort of met him the other night," she offered, looking up at Trent's questioning face.
CJ looked confused. "You did?"
Her stomach curled tightly, humiliated. She was playing it all wrong, she wasn't playing it cool at all and she knew it. Here she was, finally talking to the boy she had been unable to unstick from her head for the last 72 hours and she couldn't for the life of her pretend to be disinterested. She combed a hand through her camp-caked hair and hated that she looked disheveled and couldn't even feign indifference but fuck it; she propelled forward. "Yeah...I was here the other night and you were, um, working...the guy I was with told me he knew you. Jay," she sputtered. "Jay told me who you were."
CJ put his hand out in a "hold on" motion. "Wait a second," he said. "You're with Jay??"
The guys all looked at each other for a beat and then burst out laughing, while Hayley, exasperated and stammering, tried to reclaim her statement. "No, no!" she cried. "No, I just met him the other night. Through Beth...my cousin Beth. She knows him."
They kept laughing, and Hayley, sensing the absurdity, finally joined the mirth. Her face still burned with embarrassment but she tried to laugh through it, tried to ignore the dirt under her fingernails and the stubble on her legs.
Just then, Kerry announced last call, and Hayley realized it was far past camp's night-out curfew, and her new friends groaned with disappointment as she said she had to get going. She hugged them all goodbye with promises to come back soon, but as she was delivering the farewells, she noticed CJ slip out the back door, silent as a ghost. Her heart sunk deeply as Kerry wished her a safe drive home.
But as she walked out the front door towards her car, she caught a glimpse of gray smoke unfurling from an alley aside the building. She followed it and found CJ, leaning against the brick wall, dragging smoke into his lungs from a fresh cigarette.
Hayley didn't smoke, but she also didn't know how to approach him in any other way that didn't appear drunk and stupid, so she walked delicately into the alley and asked him to bum a cigarette. Without so much as glancing at her, CJ pulled out a pack of non-mentholated Camels and a pink lighter from his pocket; she gingerly removed a cigarette and lit it by her own hand. The two stood there in silence for a few minutes, and Hayley swallowed a cough as she puffed away, hoping it wasn't obvious that she wasn't a regular smoker, hoping for some brilliant and inspiring conversation piece to come to mind.
But CJ spoke first. "So, you were here the other night?"
Hayley practically spit smoke. "Yeah," she said. "On Sunday."
He inhaled from his cigarette and kicked at the ground. "I thought you looked sorta familiar."
A smile spread on Hayley's lips at his recognition, and she looked down at the ground to try and conceal it. She watched him swing his foot back and forth, but couldn't identify anything he was kicking at except pavement. She took another unfamiliar drag into her lungs before responding. "Yeah, you checked my ID and then you told me being from Pittsburgh sucked. And then you gave me a beer."
CJ began to chuckle and scuffed his foot again, this time on the brick of the building wall. "Oh yeah," he said. "Now I remember you. The look on your face..." He laughed again.
Despite feeling like she should be offended, Hayley giggled in response. That disagreeable feeling was merely peering over her shoulder, and she was more focused on CJ's presence in front of her. "I can't believe you didn't remember me," she said. "I mean, how many Pennsylvania residents do you get to insult in any given night?" She leaned back against the brick wall, facing him.
"Hey now," he retorted. "I said you looked familiar, I'm pretty sure that means that I remembered you." He flicked his cigarette butt away. It flashed through the air like a dying meteor. "And besides, no one I've ever met from Pittsburgh has actually been worth remembering." He raised an eyebrow at her.
"Oh wow, more insults!" Hayley said. "I guess that means I'm not worth remembering then, huh?"
"Well, now you're in New York, right?" CJ said. "I guess that means I can give you a chance. He smiled broadly, but not at Hayley.
She tried to scoff, but it faltered as she watched the smile crack his stone face. Mesmerized, she absentmindedly smushed her cigarette butt under her shoe. Another long pause stretched between them, but before it could become uncomfortable, Hayley said "So, what's your beef with Pittsburgh, anyway?"
CJ shrugged. "It's a shitty place. All industrial garbage and old buildings..." he pulled out the pack of cigarettes again and offered it out to Hayley; she accepted and he lit it for her this time before striking up a smoke of his own. "I feel like the sun has never shown in that place," he continued. "I've never had a good time there. There's nothing to do."
"Nothing to do?" Hayley said, surprised. "You must not be hanging out in the right parts of the city, then."
"Ahhh, I don't know," he said dubiously. "I've been there a bunch of times over the years and never really had a good time."
"Really.." she said, combing her hair over her shoulder. "Do you know what parts of the city you were in?"
"Hmmmm..." CJ rolled his eyes upward. "The last time I was there we played a venue at some old school that they converted into this terrible performance space in the 80s or something."
"The Championship?" Hayley asked. "Okay, yeah, I can understand hating on Pittsburgh if that's what you saw of it. That place is disgusting."
"Yeah, it was pretty vile," he said. "But the other places in that city weren't much better." He kicked at the pavement again.
"Where else have you played?"
He paused, groaning slightly as he thought. "I can't really remember them all right now. I played there more with my old band than this one, and all that happened like four or five years ago." He finished his cigarette and flicked it out of the alley, toward the parking lot.
"Well, next time you're there I'll have to take you to the good places," Hayley asserted. "I promise you it'll be a good time."
CJ scoffed. "Good time? In Pittsburgh? I'm not sure if that's possible."
Hayley reddened. She was losing him, and she could tell. "How about an okay time?" she proposed. "Would you be open to that?"
He kicked at the pavement again, and Hayley wondered how his shoes held up with all the unnecessary scuffing he was doing to them. "Alright," he said. "I'll let you try and show me an okay time." He smiled at his own difficulty and began to walk out of the alley.
"Wait!" she cried after him, and he turned his head over his shoulder. She trotted to his position. "How can I show you an okay time in Pittsburgh when we haven't even been formally introduced to each other?"
"It's Hayley, right?" He turned to face her. "That's what the guys inside said."
When he said her name out loud her stomach pressed against her throat and her hands trembled. He looked her dead in the eye, waiting for her to confirm or deny him, and she couldn't tell what color his eyes were in the half-lit alley but she wanted so badly to see that slow, solid smile on his stone face. She nodded. "Yeah, that's right." She wrung her hands together and twisted them in front of her. "And you're CJ, yeah?"
"Yeah, that's what I go by around here," he answered. "But I am a dude who goes by many nicknames."
"Oh yeah?" Hayley asked. "Like what?"
He pushed his arms behind his back, moving them left to right, stretching his shoulders and yawning. "Well, the best part about nicknames is that you don't pick them out yourself," he said. "These bar kids call me CJ, the band calls me Crackerjack, my guitar tech calls me Hounddog..."
"What do they call you at home?"
That question froze him; he stood still with his arms clasped behind his back. "I don't really have a home," he admitted. "I mean, yeah, I grew up here, but I'm on the road a lot, if not with my band then I'm teching for another." He shrugged and looked up at the sky. "This is the first summer I haven't been on tour in a long time."
The moment of vulnerability passed as abruptly as it arose, and he was back to scuffing his feet, kicking invisible wads of gum around in the gravel. Hayley took a step forward. She was close enough to touch him and considered reaching out to put a hand on his arm, but decided against it. "Is it okay if I call you Corey?" she asked timidly.
She stood transfixed, watching as the smile she desired cut through his statue expression, and she was elated to see it even though he still wasn't smiling at her. "Yeah, sure, I guess if you want," he said. "Doesn't really make a difference to me either way."
She nodded. "Okay then," she said. "Then I'll see you around, Corey." She walked past him towards the parking lot, brushing his shoulder as she passed.
"Have a good night, Hayley."
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