Plaid Shirt Days

What had begun as a mundane, even refreshing, task had unraveled into something that couldn’t have been any more emotionally exhausting. With a little help from her brothers, the bigger items such as her couch, her bed, and her media cabinet were already stored away in the back of the U-Haul truck. Now she was left alone in the almost barren apartment, sorting out of the little things and deciding which ones she should keep and which ones belonged in the garbage. It was only so hard because every little knick-knack she’d accumulated over the past eight months reminded her of him.

She had told him that if he chose to be with Jo, she’d leave, but she never knew keeping that promise would be so difficult.

Lucy never realized that she loved him that much until he was gone.

Now she was left to sort through the pieces of what she was left with, souvenirs from a relationship that could’ve been beautiful if it hadn’t been ruined by ghosts from their past. It was funny how someone could walk all over you, vanish from your life, but you’d still go running back to them at the first opportunity. It was how Jo treated Kendall, and in turn, how he had treated Lucy. The fact that, if given the chance, she’d still go running back into his arms was something that disgusted Lucy about herself.

She’d always been so strong, so independent, a true survivor, but somehow, he’d made his way past all of her defenses. Now, without her walls built up high around her and without Kendall to keep her safe, all Lucy could feel was this numb hollowness deep inside of her. It was something that, no matter how hard she tried, she just couldn’t shake.

She hoped a change in scenery would help, but in the back of her mind, she knew that everything around her would still remind her of him. Kendall Knight was the chill of the wind against her shoulders, the smell of freshly cut grass, and the warm flavor of bourbon.

Lucy could’ve stayed in the building, she could’ve fought for him, but she just didn’t have it in her anymore. That fierce girl with the red streaks in her hair and the devil-may-care attitude was gone now, and when she looked in the mirror, Lucy barely recognized her own features. Hollowed cheeks, stringy hair, the purplish-green circles beneath her brown eyes, they were all the result of a month spent in self-imposed exile. She didn’t used to be this pathetic. In the beginning, she had tried to keep things as normal as she possibly could, had tried to go on living her life as if nothing had happened, but the first time she saw the two of them together in the lobby, she felt that hollow, empty feeling again, only this time, it as painful. Seeing Kendall and Jo together was like being struck by lightening and surviving it.

She couldn’t cry, she couldn’t speak, she could only escape.

That fierce girl who didn’t give a damn would’ve fought for him, but Lucy wasn’t that girl anymore.

She was going through her dresser drawers now; little piles of silk underwear, worn t-shirts, and printed leggings surrounded her on the carpet. The clothes hadn’t been hard to sort through, it was that last drawer that tore her apart, the drawer that housed all the little things she’d tried to keep hidden from herself during her month in exile.

On top of the pile was a Polaroid, that golden-haired boy standing on a tour bus in the middle of downtown traffic, an electric guitar clasped firmly in his grip. Lucy couldn’t help but smile to herself as she remembered that day. It was right around the time she’d just moved into the building, and while she thought Kendall and his friends were cool enough, she didn’t exactly respect their music. Lucy Stone was a rock and roll icon, with three platinum records under her belt by the age of eighteen. Needless to say, she wasn’t exactly impressed with Kendall and his boy band.

Right from the start, he’d been desperate to prove her wrong. With that competitive streak of his, Kendall refused to let it go, trying time after time to convince her that he took his music just as seriously as she took hers. He’d shown up outside her apartment with his guitar, so determined to out “rock” her, only to be defeated.

It wasn’t until he stopped lunchtime traffic with his tour bus that she began to come around.

The girl standing beside her on the street had snapped the photo and given it to Lucy, and when everything was over and done with, Kendall had walked with her back up to the apartment building, leaving his producer behind to deal with the police.

“So…what did you think?” he asked, his hands shoved in his pocket and his dirty blonde hair damp with sweat.

“Okay, okay, so I have to admit, that was pretty badass of you guys.”

“Wait, did I hear that right? Was that a compliment, Miss Lucy Stone?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she replied dryly before she fished the Polaroid from the back pocket of her ripped jeans. “Oh yeah, someone took this earlier. Would you sign it for me, please? That way I can say that I knew you way back when.”

He chuckled to himself as he grabbed a pen from the pocket of his plaid shirt. Turning away from her, Lucy watched the quick movements of his hand before he presented her with the autographed Polaroid.

For Lucy, the girl who thought I couldn’t rock.

Even now, after her heart had been shattered, she couldn’t help but grin as she read those words, and it hurt because she knew that the two of them had so much potential. They could’ve had all the potential in the world, but it didn’t matter if he couldn’t see it.

Her wounds were fresh, but she couldn’t bring herself to through away that photograph, if only because it represented a moment in time when they were happy together. She knew that one day, she’d be able to look at that picture and not feel so much pain.

Lucy raked through old papers, crinkled up notes from afternoons spent bored in her classes, most of which were destined for the garbage can. An old composition notebook rested on top of a red and black plaid shirt in the bottom of the drawer. Scrawled across the cover in red Sharpie was the title Songs about Kendall, a notebook filled with fleeting lyrics and disjointed verses. No matter how hard she tried, she could never fully capture the flood of emotions that washed over her whenever she was with him.

Being with Kendall Knight was like being on top of the world, like standing along the shore and feeling the waves crash against her shins, unbreakable. For the first time in years, Lucy had known how it felt to be truly happy. For once, she wasn’t bogged down with all these insecurities that had chased her throughout her eighteen years of life. From the kids in high school that thought she was strange because she had red streaks in her dark hair and fair skin to the record company’s executives and producers that kept trying to convince her that she needed to dress sexier or spiral into drug abuse in order to have an image worthy of the rock industry, Lucy was constantly bombarded with that one little word: change. Either way, she was never considered “good enough,” but when she was with Kendall, none of that seemed to matter. The rest of the world just faded away.

She set the notebook to the side with the picture, still unsure of what she should do with it, before her fingers ran across the worn flannel shirt. After all these months, his scent still clung to the fabric, embedded in every stitch: musky and earthy; like the dirt, grass, and outdoors; punctuated by the crisp note of his cologne. So many memories were intricately connected to the scent of his skin and this one simple piece of clothing, and they all came rushing back to her as her fingertip lightly traced a tortoiseshell button.

It was the same plaid shirt he’d worn on that very first night, the night the two of them made love for the first time.

With Kendall, it was different. Sure, that night, they had been a little intoxicated, and Kendall had only ever been with one girl (Jo), but there was something in each of his movements, a certain deliberateness in the slow drag of his lips against her skin, that made her feel like more than just a one night stand. Even with that smoky molasses taste on his lips, there was a warmth to his touch that sent chills up her spine.

It was an expression of emotion that she’d never experienced before. With most of the other guys she’d been intimate with, it was all about internal motivations, like frustration or some secret fantasy, but with Kendall, the act was something shared between them, and that lent it more meaning.

Lucy slipped his shirt on over her thin cotton v-neck, enveloped by the flannel’s warmth. The shirt was something that she didn’t necessarily want, she knew it would just wind up being shoved in the bottom of another drawer once she moved, but she couldn’t bring herself to give it back to him because it held too many memories.

The only thing left in that bottom drawer was a thin metal ring, twisted out of a broken guitar string. Lucy looked at it for a moment, letting it rest in the center of her palm before she slipped it onto her right ring finger.

She could still remember that night, the night he told her that he loved her for the first time. No guy had ever said those words to her, and she hadn’t known how to react when she heard him, but still, she believed him.

They hadn’t been dating that long, and Kendall had come over in hopes of improving his guitar skills, but truthfully, though they tried so hard to stay focused on the task at hand, there was that buzz of natural electricity between them, that magnetic pull. She could still remember the way his fingers felt beneath hers against the neck of her acoustic guitar, the way that her mind had a way of straying to the fullness of his lips.

It was then that he said those three little words, his jade green eyes vulnerable and genuine, and instead of parroting them right back to him, she fashioned him a necklace out of a new guitar string and one of her picks. In return, Kendall used one of the strings he broke trying to learn how to play to make her a promise ring, pressing the metal against his lips before easing it onto her finger.

Lucy didn’t know why she was bothering to keep her promise when he obviously hadn’t kept his.

The rest of the packing came along smoothly. All of her clothes and home goods were stored away in labeled cardboard boxes, waiting for her brothers to come take them out to the truck. Now the apartment was a clean slate, a new beginning for someone else’s Hollywood dreams. Lucy also felt like she was on the verge of her own new beginning, a different chapter in her life, and though she wasn’t sure what life had in store for her, she couldn’t help but be hopeful.

Before she left, Lucy placed the notebook and the ring on the counter beside the keys to the apartment, each an ancient artifact from what could’ve been. Ripping a sliver of paper from the notebook, she scribbled a quick note.

If you ever wonder “what if?,” you know where to find me.

A wave of relief washed over her as she got everything off of her chest, leaving the part of her that was so much of him behind for the universe to deal with. With her guitar case in hand, she walked out the door.