See Her (Turn it Up #1)

Chapter 3

3

JACK

“ H oly shit,” I say to myself as I get out of my truck and make my way up the path to my sister’s pool house… that I live in.

I’m inspired, for the first time in months. I need to get in the zone immediately. No distractions. Break through .

“Holy shit,” I say again.I open the door and am immediately assaulted by Trooper, my German Shepherd.He jumps up from his cushion in the corner and comes bounding over to me. His paws are on my stomach and he’s nudging me to death with his big schnoz. He’s letting out a high-pitched whine, doing the best he can not to bark with excitement that I’m home.

Holy hell, I was only gone for two hours.

“Okay, okay,” I say, trying to get him back down on the floor while scratching his ears. “DOWN!” I say, when he doesn’t cooperate.He listens, and sits with his tail thumping like a mallet on the wood floor.“Okay, good boy, that’s it.Calm the hell down and then I can give you attention, see how that works?”

He finally chills out after another couple of minutes. I give him one last pat on the head and head to my desk that sits in the corner of the kitchen, rifling through it for my notebook.I called my sister, Sarah, on my way home and asked where it was, stating that I needed to write in it, ASAP. She practically cackled with delight at the notion she was right, that I’d find something to write about if I got out of the house.She confiscated it as an intervention when I wouldn’t quit brooding over the damn writer’s block and forced me to go out into the world and find inspiration elsewhere. She has no idea that I did indeed.

I find it in the top side drawer where she said she left it, flip it open, and grab a pen as I sit down.

I need to write. Now.I feel like a dark cloud has evaporated from my brain, and who knows when it will come back.

Break through .Something happened when she said that. Mayzie.Why, I don’t know. People use those words all the time. Every day. But for some reason, her saying it at that moment, in that place, at that time…. It’s like the planets in my universe aligned. I don’t care about the logistics right now. I need to let the words come, no matter how crazy.There has to be something that makes sense mixed in there somewhere, I can feel it.

I write the words break through down in the middle of the page.I stay calm and stare at them for a minute, letting whatever thoughts come.The ones that make no sense and don’t flow, I acknowledge and dismiss them.I’ve heard that this is what meditation is like. Break through, break through …. I write words like walls and pounding around the two words in the middle of the page until realization hits me deep in my gut.It’s quick and fleeting, but I get the message.Up in the corner of the page, I start to write:

You’ve got your walls up, but I can see through,

See through

To everything I want.

I’ll give it everything I’ve got

To break through ,

Break through.

“Holy shit,” I say to myself for, what, the third time since meeting Mayzie?I just wrote four lines.This is huge.For months I’ve not come up with anything.I’ve written words down, sure, but I didn’t feel anything when I did.There was no excitement, no energy, not the feeling of encouragement you get when you’re expressing yourself to the fullest and it just keeps coming out of you.But here I have four lines that I am passionate about.

This could become a song.

I set my pen down and sit back, allowing myself to think of Mayzie for a minute.Her light brown hair had a few lighter strands in it; her grey eyes, wild and innocent with a hint of mystery.The feather tattoo on her inner left forearm that I only caught a glimpse of… She was sweet and a little shy.I could tell she was being brave by talking to me.When she came to my table she seemed so nervous, like she’d come over to talk to me on a dare, but not like she didn’t want to talk to me.That’s what was so heartening about it.She smiled at me like I was one of her best friends, without even knowing me.

She’s a person that makes a total stranger feel good. When I caught her dumping a canister of sugar into her coffee, she seemed so embarrassed, but she shook it right off.She can laugh at herself.Then I was a dumbass and got up and left, chalking it up to just an exceptional interaction. But when I walked out the door, I realized the further I walked away, the worse I felt.During that short time in the cafe, I was feeling joy and didn’t realize it until I was walking away. Away from her .

She brought me to life with that laughter and that smile, and being away from it seemed to take that life away again.

I could actually feel the warm, buzzing feeling in my chest dissipating with each step.And then I found myself standing outside the place, trying to decide if I should go back in and ask to sit down with her, or if that would make me look too much like a creeper.

Then she came out and I didn’t think; I just acted. I felt ridiculous, but I couldn’t bring myself to care.That joy came back immediately.The time I spent talking and laughing with her in the park ended too soon, but she inspired me, and I knew I had to get home and write.And as weird as this sounds, I had the crazy sense that if she knew what I was feeling, she would want me to write.It was crazy that she seemed to care, without really knowing me.

Trooper comes over and nudges the hand resting in my lap.Seeing his furry face reminds me that I get to see Mayzie again on Sunday, if she shows. Please let her show .He tips his head to the side, like he’s really listening to me.“Come on, pooch. Let’s go outside.” I get up and we head out the back door, into the early afternoon.

Mayzie

I take my earbuds out and stretch my arms above my head. I’ve been working for three hours straight, and it’s time to take a break.I grab a glass from one of the cupboards and get some ice and water from the fridge.It’s late afternoon, and I’ve put a good dent in one of the jobs I signed up for earlier.

When I got home, I spent an embarrassing amount of time obsessing about Jack, and dissecting the crap out of our interactions. The guy took me hostage with his charisma and made me stupid.

Having a lean, chiseled, tatted man who plays music and is genuinely friendly and charming initiate a conversation with me was like seeing a unicorn at a gas station.

I found myself overanalyzing the whole exchange to the point of insanity, and so I opened my laptop and immediately hopped on my company’s website to see if there were any jobs I could snag, and I’ve been typing my ass off ever since.

I pat my leg and call for Penny, who comes lumbering in from the living room.I take my water and we go outside to throw the ball for a few minutes.Just as we’re coming inside from the back yard, pounding starts coming from the front door.I have a feeling it’s my brother, Ian, so I yell, “It’s open!”

“Well, it shouldn’t be,” he grumbles, letting himself in. “It should always be locked.You’re a single woman living alone for crying out loud.” He tosses his keys on my coffee table and heads to my fridge.

“You seem to keep forgetting that I’m not alone. I have Penny.”

“And?” he asks, pulling out a beer.

“And she’s a good guard dog.Rotties are very protective of their owners.”

“Hate to break it to you, Maze, but Penny’s a wuss,” he says, cracking the beer open and tipping it back.

“Sic ‘em, Penny! Kill! Kill!” I yell to my dog, pointing at my brother. He sits in the nook and she puts her head in his lap, yawning.“Shut up,” I say when he smirks at me.“What do you want anyway?”

He runs a hand through his brown hair.Ian and I look a lot alike;same hair and greyish eyes anyway.He’s just…. bigger.And a dude.And a whopping year older than I am, which he won’t let me forget. We can really get each other going, but at the end of the day, there are times I’m actually thankful for him. Back in high school, he was the popular jock while I was the awkward girl that ran with the wrong crowd. Despite how different we were, he would not let anyone mess with me.

That time could have been a lot more painful without him around.

“Just got off work, and didn’t feel like heading home just yet. ”

“And there was nowhere else you could go?”

“Ouch,” he says, clutching his chest.

“Excuse me, sorry.There wasn’t anywhere else you wanted to go?”

“No. I thought I’d see what you’re doing for dinner.”

“Just a bowl of cereal probably.And why don’t you eat with Tina? Or should I even ask?”

“She’s...” he trails off.

“What, are you guys fighting?”

His eyes widen mid-pull and he exclaims when he lowers his beer. “ Always! She’s driving me nuts!She’s just picking fights left and right, so the thought of going home is exhausting.”

“I’m surprised she’s not blowing up your phone right now then, since you should’ve been home, what, five minutes ago?”

“I left my phone in the car, for that very reason.”

“What does she like to fight about?” I ask.

“What I’m doing, who I’m with, who’s calling my phone…. you name it, she wants to fight about it.It’s like she uses it as a way to just keep my attention on her. All. The. Time.” He hits the back of his hand to his other palm, punctuating each word to make his point.

“Jeez. You were so excited to move in with her.Of course, I still think it was a little fast,” I mutter out of the side of my mouth. Ian is a mechanic, and he met Tina when he worked on her Hyundai Elantra.He asked her out, and they spent every waking moment together for the next three months, and when his lease was up, they decided that since they were together all the time anyway, he might as well move in with her.That was four months ago, and he’s been in hell ever since – according to him anyway.

“Yeah, that first week was fun.But when you’re living in the same apartment, how much more time can you possibly spend together?It’s like she expected things to stay the same when I moved in, and that we’d just be up each other’s asses all the time. ”

“Wow. That’s a great visual for me. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.Anyway, she can’t bust my ass if I’m with you.”

“Fine, you can stick around if you order a pizza while I finish up some work.” I point at him as I take a seat back in front of my computer.

“Consider it done,” he assures me as he heads outside to retrieve his phone from his car.

“And no olives!” I call after him.

Less than an hour later, I’m sitting on the couch, picking hideous black olives off my slice of pizza, while Ian scarfs his right next to me as we watch some Marvel or DC movie on Netflix– his choice.I’m not really into those movies.Nothing against them, they just make so many I can’t keep them straight.Spiderman has something like four movies all about him, and I don’t understand what the difference is supposed to be.

“Why must you always order olives?” I gripe, trying not to inhale as I pull them off.

“Why do you hate what should be a staple on every pizza?” he shoots back.

“They…. ughhh… smell evil,” – heave – “and taste even worse.” – gag– “The odor alone makes me want to barf in my mouth.”

“I’m eating here!”

“I’d like to be too, but I can’t until I get all of these evil little demons off.Ugh, some are chopped up all tiny and hiding in the cheese!”

“You’ll get over it,” he says, returning his attention to the TV.

I flick another olive off of my slice and let Ian immerse himself with the movie while I zone out, and of course, my thoughts float back to Jack.

I wonder if he likes olives…

I think about Sunday, and I’m secretly worrying if Jack will even show up. Three days is plenty of time for him to change his mind, or even forget he met me .

That whole encounter seemed a little too… great, which is probably why I don’t want to tell anyone about meeting him yet.If he doesn’t show up, I’m going to feel so embarrassed at having to tell Annie or Ian that this thing, whatever it is, with Jack went in the toilet before it even started.This way, if I am let down, I’m spared the humiliation portion of the program, can throw myself a mini pity party for the remainder of the day, and come out of it slightly less scarred.I’m still going.I’m not going to be the person I’m worried about him being.Plus, I still have hope that he’ll really be there.