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fermata

noun. musical punctuation to prolong a note beyond its normal duration.

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AFTER CALLUM'S PARTY, WE SLIP back into our usual hostility.

Yelling at each other never warrants some type of heart-to-heart or apology, because it is par for the course when it comes to us. If—whenever—Callum tries to go soft on me, I only fight harder.

On Tuesday's pep band rehearsal, which has more people than the Halston Student Orchestra, I avoid Callum on the drum kit (we divvy the parts up by song) and set up camp beside Shane at her keyboard, rhythmically shaking a tambourine. He and I don't look at each other the whole time. From warm up to pack down, our eyes and bodies slide past each other like water and oil. When he rises to leave the drum kit and I walk near—I play drums for Bruno Mars' Treasure—his shoulder brushes against my forearm, and I push away the hot flush crawling up the back of my neck with a vehement glare.

I take comfort in the cycles of our conflicts. It always goes: altercation, radio silence, little barbs, big barbs, altercation again. It's familiar, predictable. Each stage has something useful about it. For instance, at last Friday's party—altercation—I get to sink into the role of Bad Guy and vent anger. In the radio silence phase, I don't have to hear Callum's irritating voice. Little barbs require me to witty, suave, and big barbs demand that I read him well, to know which insult will really stick.

Callum is my hardest mental exercise.

The rivalry is all because of me, of course, but I didn't intend to start it. I would say our enmity truly flourished in the spring semester of our freshman year, but the seeds were planted months before, at a party much like the most recent: the one where we kissed.

This party was at the old percussion section leader Toby Minhas' house. The rooms were fit to bursting; more than just alcohol was entering people's bloodstreams; the music vibrated through our bodies like a jackhammer; and in this chaos, Callum found me, took my hand and said, "Be my strip beer pong partner?"

(He wouldn't love strip beer pong so much if he didn't have his body and his face.)

I'd laughed, gleeful, because that's not a sentence a girl hears often, from a guy that looks and behaves like Callum. This—band friends, loud music, drinks and exhilaration soaking every cell of mine—felt like a movie moment, those instances when I considered my own life not completely meaningless.

"Do we strip and drink if we lose, or is it choose one penalty?" I asked, receiving the cans of gin and tonic he pushed into my hands. I cracked one open and starting pouring into the pyramid of cups.

"Both," Callum answered, "but how about you drink and I strip? I would never force a lady to be indecent."

I cocked my head, glancing around the room. "Which lady?"

He laughed loud, head tipping back so I could see the shiny hollow where his neck sank into his collarbones.

Long story short, we won but narrowly.

I've always been a heavyweight drinker, so I was relatively unharmed. Callum lost his shirt, shoes and belt. Though the winners were supposed to stay and face new challengers, we tapped out and dashed off to the upstairs bathroom.

Callum sat down on the edge of the bathtub and shoved his shoes back on. I preened in front of the mirror; my mascara was smearing but in a way that made me look ruffled and seductive, my cheeks splotchy and flushed. Our eyes met briefly in the mirror, and we smiled in time.

Turning around, I chuckled at the garments draped over my left arm, still warm from his body heat. "Do you just like getting naked?"

"A bit, yeah."

"Un scandale. Are you an exhibitionist?"

"Depends," he said lowly, looking up at me from his seated position, "are you a voyeur?"

Excitement flurried through me. "Unfortunately not," I returned, "I like to fuck in so much privacy that my partner doesn't even know who I am."

(That's true. Sometimes I will give a fake name to really destroy any lingering connection come the morning after. I'd be just a memory, and not even a correct one.)

At the mention of fucking, Callum drew in a sharp breath, releasing it in a amused hum. He stood up then, and I looped my fingers through the belt loops on his jeans to pull him one step closer. His waistband hung dangerously low, cutting right across the V formed by his jutting hip bones and flashing a horizontal sliver of his black boxers. His tanned muscles tapered down to a fine dusting of blond hair on his lower abdomen. Reaching for the pile of his clothing on the counter, I snapped his belt—black and studded with silver grommets—taut in my hands.

"Kinky," he said.

I rolled my eyes and threaded the belt back on, buckling tight, hefting his jeans up. Pitching my voice higher, "Young 'uns walking around with their trousers sagging to the ground these days."

Then I draped his shirt back across his shoulders. The music was muffled outside, but the bathroom felt like an echo chamber, each breath between our faces and rustle of fabric loud in my ears. Callum slipped his arms into the sleeves and watched me, eyelids lowered and expression smoky, as I dressed him up. I started from the lowest button and worked my way north, occasionally pausing when my fingers just ached to touch his skin.

"I feel like you should be doing the reverse," he whispered, his voice low and resonant.

"Undressing you?"

"I know you want to," he grinned.

I chuckled, shook my head, and did up one more button. I thought his chest was pretty exposed at the beginning of the party, so I left it there, flicked the silver rectangular pendant hanging around his neck, and ruffled his blond waves. "I don't hook up with people I know. I like to keep my social life compartmentalized."

Callum's hand slid slowly to the small of my back, tugging me closer. "Alright. Let's be a firework; amazing but fleeting."

"Uh-huh." My palms instinctively fell on his shoulders. "And when I have to you see you at band? I hate being perceived. I hate that awkward eye contact game."

"You'll never see me again." Then he covered my eyes with his palm, and the bathroom turned into black, pinpricks of red-tinged light squeezing through the seams where his fingers pressed together. "I can do this every single time we meet."

I snorted, disbelieving. "And how do I read music if you're covering my eyes in rehearsals?" My body arched slightly closer, almost pressing me up against the hard planes of his torso.

I shouldn't kiss him.

I shouldn't want to kiss him.

"You're the cleverest person I know," he said, and I could feel his breath on my mouth, the tips of our noses brushing, sending an electric thrill through every limb. "You'll figure it out."

And then his hand finally lowered from my eyes—though I kept them shut—arm curling around my shoulders, and he kissed me. Or I kissed him.

We kissed.

And feelings like that—

The tingling that erased my ability to string together a sentence, and the thumping of my heart in my ears, temples and core all at once, and the heat sizzling where our bodies pressed together.

—weren't supposed to exist.

I actually convinced myself someone spiked my drinks with some drug that night, because there was no way one kiss can invoke a physical response that visceral. Despite all the dirty talk leading up to our kissing, in the living flesh, Callum was gentle and restrained and so passionate I wanted to scream. My rib cage ached.

"Okay," I said, "wait."

A shaky breath fell between us, a moment of shock.

Hesitation, eyes flickering in search and mouths parted.

Then Callum gripped me tight to stop us parting again, pressing me back into the sink, pressing his pelvis into mine.

The way he drew my lower lip into his mouth with his teeth, gently coaxing my mouth open, sent a hot shiver to my core. I wound my arms around his neck, I felt his hand in my hair pull lightly but steadily down, forcing my head to align more even with his, allowing the kiss to deepen further. I felt Callum's control slipping when he reached around me, grabbed my ass, and lifted me onto the edge of the sink. Something irrational, primal, was taking its place.

Jesus Christ.

Eons, milliseconds, I don't know how long later, our mouths parted just as slowly as we had fallen together. Callum rested his forehead against mine, our arms still wrapped around each other.

A shy half-smile tugged the corner of his lips upward. "So."

I cleared my throat. "So."

By then, I had arrived at complete acceptance. This couldn't happen again. It would just ruin everything—the safety of the band, the peace of the current dynamics, the stability of my college social circles. I had (still have) nothing else, nowhere else, no-one else. I would be foolish to throw it all away on chasing Callum and risk the fall.

For the rest of the night, I drifted through different rooms in Toby's house trying to get my pulse to slow down, my fingers to stop trembling.

Following that night, while Callum's flirting continued—or even increased—I started to defend myself. In private, we spoke about the kiss.

"Don't read anything into it. I'm very liberal with sex and shit," I explained. "It's a sensory experience, like taking drugs, which I'm also liberal with."

How sex feels (pleasant, exciting) is not necessarily how I feel (neutral, unaffected). I only sometimes give out my real name. I usually don't distribute my number or social media handles—it's awkward enough potentially seeing previous hookups returning to the Foxhole.

I think the last time I gave out all three (name, number, profile) was in February. At the Foxhole, I comforted a drunk woman and convinced her to leave her abusive relationship. She had quit her hobbies and watched friends drift away and stifled her sexuality for her abuser and had no love left for him.

Renata and I let her stay the night with us. "I've tried to leave before," she told me. "He will never stay away. He spams my phone and shows up outside my flat and even gets our friends to plead his case. I think I'm at the point of needing to hurt him back, just to force him to let me go."

"Biting the hand that traps you. Bite it all the way off."

"But I'm soft. I want to cheat on him or destroy his reputation or crash his car but all of that will get me in trouble—either with our mutual friends who fucking adore him, or with school, or with the law. I'm afraid."

"I have an idea."

She texted her boyfriend: it's over. I've had sex with someone else.

Like you said you don't want 'sloppy seconds' so leave me tf alone

The reply was: you fucking lying whore.

I don't believe u.

Who would want you?

Then a video call started ringing, incoming from his end.

Blistering with rage, I took the phone gently from her hands. "I'm going to answer. Then we're going to kiss. Then I'll hang up, and you're going to block him on absolutely everything. Everything. If he tries to approach you, call campus police, okay?"

"But then he'll know your face. What if he targets you?"

I smiled coolly. "I can handle men hating me. Trust."

So we enacted the plan. On camera, I kissed her softly, sweet, no tongue. He started yelling abuse after his shock wore off, but I hung up and blocked his account before his point could be made. "Now get everything else. Even email."

She was free.

The rumor spread that I was such an unfeeling siren that I broke up a happy relationship just for the sake of one night's orgasm. The ex blamed me instead of his own controlling behavior. Not long after, he confronted me on campus, so I hit at all the insecurities his ex-girlfriend told me about, until he ended up bawling in the middle of the Quad like the pathetic worm he is. No regrets.

I am the villain in many men's stories.

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Back to freshman year.

Callum changed dramatically after our kiss. I think I did, too, just by becoming hyperaware of his presences and absences. When people noticed the exchanges between us, I said, "Him? No. Nothing is going on with Callum."

Then: "Seriously, we're not even friends."

Which became: "He thinks way too much of himself."

At the time, I believed it. Slipping into this role was as easy and necessary as re-breaking a bone to make sure it healed in the right alignment, and just as painful. When I was Friend, we had fun and our banter was great. When I became Love Interest, Callum became so...

"Actually, it's such a shame you didn't make the drumline this year. I bet you're just as good as some of the sophomores."

He offered to practice my music with me (though we were on completely different parts) and then he offered to teach me some snare technique and tricks (though I had an itinerant teacher for that) and if felt very hey, pretty lady, you 'actually' play very well. For a woman. Maybe one day you'll be just as good as me.

I know part of that vibe was projection. But there had to have been substance to project onto, otherwise the image would have fallen into nothingness. Here's the substance, the objective reality: collegiate music is elitist. Learning music requires money for lessons and equipment, time to rehearse and join ensembles, a supportive family to drive you to lessons and be band parents and endure your horrible noises when you first start out. Music is not for the poor, the busy, the unsupported.

When these communities at the margin—often Black communities—try to carve out a space in music for themselves, the elite, armed with that money and time and power, learn it and love it and refashion it for themselves. It happened with jazz. It happened with rock and roll. It happened with hip-hop, and now raggaeton and dancehall and all the future genres yet to be invented.

Callum is a white, rich private school graduate whose phenomenal musical talent comes from over a decade of paid tuition, whose social standing comes from reciting the script and fitting the beauty standard, and who is too fragile to deal with a single person disliking him. Liking him would feel like betraying something in myself, something old and shriveled like a seed that never germinated.

Of course, I didn't tell him this.

Did I want us to be enemies? No. Do I feel bad for hairpin-turning from a friend into a bully, with seeming no provocation on his part? Sure, but not bad enough. If there was a higher mathematical being to graph my behavior as a function of Callum's, anyone would see I only got aggressive when he got too close. Inverse proportional relationship.

My optimal response from Callum would have been to see that I disliked him and be okay with it instead of doubling down in either good or bad behavior.

Just walk away.

Just be neutral.

Just do nothing.

It was nothing I wanted; I wanted to be nothing to him. But he didn't do that. He tried even harder for a short while (I could feel his eagerness, his confusion: what went wrong, Bay?), digging for answers, and then, one day, my attacks snapped his self-control.

After that, everything fell into place, like magnets. It felt wonderfully right to me to keep the bickering and pissing contests going, all this bitterness kept rolling by its own inertia. It's too late to go back to neutrality now.

Not without an explanation on my part, and I don't see a need. I don't need to be Friend, Love Interest, or Good Person. I like being Villain. Callum will hate me until we graduate, and then forget all about me, and this is what I want.

With the antagonism and all, this is the safest, the calmest, I've ever felt with him, because it's my most infallible defense.

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The rehearsal rooms in the Music Department are available for enrolled majors or ensemble students to use.

When I have long days on campus or the music rooms in my residence hall completely book out, I get permission from Keller to play here. This practice room has special padded walls for soundproofing, double glazed windows an rubber sealant across the bottom of the door. In the room, there's only a brown studio piano along the wall, a hexagonal drumming practice pad cupped on a silver stand, and a black stand for sheet music.

I'm repeating Amoretto when the door cracks open. I tense up, cursing my very existence. My phone metronome app keeps ticking in synthetic blips, resting on the music stand alongside my music folder.

I turn my head over my shoulder, seeing Callum entering the band room from the eastern door. He looks like his usual self today, with baggy black jeans and a hunter green Led Zeppelin t-shirt.

On top of the practice pad I rest my drumsticks. "What are you doing here?"

Callum shrugs, dangles a familiar looking set of keys in the air. "Keller said I could practice in here. All the other rooms are booked out."

"You have a personal drum kit at your house."

"My house mates are trying to study," he says, "and I'm a considerate person."

"Ah, and that's why you're intruding on me? Because you're considerate."

"Precisely."

Callum drops his twill rucksack and skateboard to the carpet, the tendon in his forearm flexing. He opens a compartment and pulls out his drumsticks, chipped up the sides. "How far through it have you gotten?" he wonders, walking to rifle through the leaves of my sheet music. "Have you memorized it?

I smile smugly, stopping my metronome with a tap of my finger. "Yes." For three days now, but I won't brag.

Callum's peering at me with a power-hungry look. "Really? Shall we test that?" He closes my music folder. Shifting the music stand far enough away that he can stand directly opposite me, he positions himself at the practice pad.

His voice leaves those full lips in a low rumble, "I did a run-through of the coda at one-sixty BPM this morning."

Fuck. I'm only at 140 BPM. "Good for you."

He gives a nonchalant hum, head tilting to read my phone screen. "Taking it easy I see. Cute."

I glower at his arrogant grin. "Put it higher. One-seventy."

"Ambitious."

We start from the beginning. Callum joins in without missing a beat, the dulled rattle of the practice pad nothing compared to the artillery sounds that we'd usually be making. I grit my teeth as a tricky sixteen-bar section approaches, forcing my wrists to stay relaxed.

The most dangerous thing to a snare drummer is tensing up. Speed comes from loose wrists and snappy fingers, applying torque to the bottom of the stick. Callum doesn't trip over the triplets, doesn't even blink. Our sticks fall and rise in unison, striking the rim of the pad as if this were a game day, or a competition—which it is.

"You're not that bad," he says at the end, exhaling one long breath. What bullshit.

"I wasn't trying that hard," I lie.

A roguish smile blossoms on his lips, and we hold eye contact tight like steel wire before our hands fling out, both reaching for my phone. "One-eighty," he brags. "Personal best."

"Then why attempt something you've done before? Do one-eighty-five."

"I would, but true leaders don't have anything to prove."

Callum very deliberately pins my drumsticks to the slippery skin of the practice pad with his hand. He's wearing at least five rings today, all silver and accentuating his long fingers, the prominent hills and valleys of his knuckles.

His hands are one the first things I ever noticed about him. Even the very first day, during freshman band camp, I'd watched him almost religiously, like he was heaven sent. Stadium lights just turned on and competing with the setting sun, soaking in the glory of the green and the anticipation of the marching season to come. A blond boy turning around on the bleachers to wave at me.

I heard Callum's snare audition was so flawless, I don't think anyone was surprised when he became the first freshman in recent memory to make it to the snare subsection. After my audition, I remember hanging onto my phone waiting for Maude Keller to post in the Facebook group for Halston University's musical ensembles. It took her the whole of band camp to deliberate, but eventually the list was posted.

I wasn't on it.

I'm not bitter about it anymore. Much.

This time I'm going to win.

I tug my drumsticks straight back, escaping Callum's hold. I tip my head back to raise a dark eyebrow. "All I'm hearing is that you're scared, sweetheart. Because you're not the leader yet, so you have nothing to lose."

The term of endearment catches Callum off-guard; I see his expression go slack and his amber-brown eyes go wide. When he sees the triumphant expression on my face he matches it, leaning closer until we're nearly nose to nose.

I can do this every single time we meet.

"I've never been afraid of you, sweetheart," he counters, "and I never will."

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a / n:

time for my annual In Defence of My Women essay!

(this shouldn't be necessary, but i've seen firsthand that some wattpad audiences have a lot of unlearning to do when it comes to how they view, judge and treat women characters -- especially when the demographic is young.)

i have long tired of writing easy, clean, likeable women. it's just not as fun from a craft & characterization point of view. in genre romance it's necessary to have two leads that you can root for - and i always have two leads whose growth you can root for. bay is intelligent but morally gray (so, so gray), avoidant, self-preserving, and has no qualms hurting people and being mean - sometimes deserved, sometimes not. she's really quite skilled at it, and it will make more sense when you learn a bit more about her.

bay's character came to me around the time I watched and read, respectively, Fleabag and Conversations with Friends - so if you've engaged with that media, hopefully you understand my angle on creating a flawed but compelling heroine. complexity over likeability, all day, every day.

(any Blackout readers might remember my early author's note on Viv's cockiness and crassness -- and look how her character development turned out. worth it, i hope?)

this is not to say you can't ever say bad things about bay. when she makes bad decisions and acts unkindly, you can definitely call her out. but you can communicate disapproval and frustration without devolving into verbal abuse in the comments.

tl;dr: we start low so we can go up & up. 

trust the process,

aimee x

p.s. gold rush is the song of this book for a reeasson