The bus tires bounce as they drive over a pothole. His fingers cling tightly to the chain attached to the ruby red heart pendant before it falls from his hands.
“Sam, Sam, Sam… never pictured you for a softy, I'm disappointed.” Chester says.
Chester is the drummer, also known as a world class lady killer and Sam’s best friend. Sam hurls his paperback mystery novel at Chester’s face.
“Says the guy who girls throw eggs at.” Sam retorts.
Chester shrugs, flopping down in the seat next to him. “Least I ain’t whipped!”
Sam smiles, shaking his head; he’s gotten surprisingly used to Chester’s jabs along with the smell of socks and Doritos.
“So how much longer until we get back in town?” Sam asks, trying to hide the eagerness in his voice.
Chester’s shoulders lazily rise and fall as he thumbs through the creased ink pages of the novel. “Tomorrow morning?”
Sam’s skin tingles with pure excitement; he’s missed her so much. He had felt so bad for even thinking about taking this trip because Melody had cried the moment before he jumped onto the bus. It broke his heart to see her cry, so much so that he almost pulled his bag from the bus and called the whole thing off, but she wouldn’t let him. His lips twitch into a subtle smile, thinking about how she has always been there for him. When he and his parents had their fall out a few years back, she was the only one that could save him from falling into the dark abyss of self-loathing, and she continues to do it every day.
That’s not to say that Melody doesn’t have her own baggage; she’s deathly afraid of women her own age. Sam is one of the only people that knows of this. She had explained her anxiety to him when they had only been going out for a month or so, after his first solo performance. That was the night Sam fell in love with her.
The icy air of the fall of Wisconsin had chilled Melody so cold that her bottom teeth were hitting her upper ones, and she was shaking so bad Sam couldn’t tell if she was just cold or having a seizure. He draped his favorite leather jacket around her shoulders, his hands lingering on her shoulder for a few moments longer than he needed before he pulled them back and clung to his own arms. They walk past a group of party hopping girls, even though there wasn’t anywhere to “party” other than coffee shops and lodges. Their glossy eyes stared down on Melody, glaring at her for no real reason as they passed. Melody’s beautiful blue eyes stared at the frosted pavement as though it was the most interesting thing she has ever seen. Once the group had passed she looked up at Sam, her cheeks red from both the cold and embarrassment.
“I guess this is one way for me to tell you of my life long struggle with girls,” she said, “They hate me. I don’t know what I ever did to piss my own gender off, but they hate me.”
The two of them stopped at an intersection, the little red hand across the street commanding them to stay off the road. Sam looked down at her, tugging on the sleeves of his shirt to warm himself, and to distract himself from how close she was standing.
“Their loss.” he said, his voice turning into vapors in front of his face.
Melody’s perfectly round eyes stared up at him; they bounced from his lips to his eyes as she threw her weight from one foot to the other.
To this day Sam doesn’t know what got in to him at that moment; maybe it was the emotional high he gets when he sings or maybe the coffee, or maybe just Melody’s presence. He took a step closer to her, gapping the distance between them, the smell of her perfume tickled his noise and reminded him of the earth after rain. Sam licked his lips, taking in the details of how her copper hair fell over his leather jacket like the strings of his guitar stretch across its neck.
“Sam…” Melody whispered as she nervously watched him get closer.
He gently held his lips a few centimeters away from hers, breathing in the smell of coffee that floated from her mouth like smoke, before he lightly kissed her, and to his surprise, she kissed him back.
Chester throws the paperback book back into Sam’s lap, snapping him back to reality and away from the part of his brain that stores his favorite memories.
“So you got any big ‘romantic’ plans for you and Melody when you get back?” Chester teases.
Sam smirks and runs his callused finger tip around the grooves in the perimeter of the heart pendent, silently reading to himself the words, “I love you most. Sam&Melody.” he had engraved in it. He looks up at Chester, knowing he doesn’t care about Sam’s love life, even in high school Sam was the emotional romantic while Chester was the heart breaking quarterback.
“No, I'm not going to give you something to tease me about.” Sam says as he tucks the heart pendant back into its white box.
Chester rolls his eyes, scuffing Sam’s hair before standing. “You’re my brother! You know I wouldn’t do that.” He winks as he treks down to the bathroom.
Chester isn’t Sam’s real brother, but he might as well be with how much he knows about Sam. He has saved Sam from every piece of crap people have thrown at him since their junior year of high school; plucking Sam and his guitar out of dumpsters and closets has never been an uncommon situation. Sam rarely fights, especially when it comes to himself; it hadn’t been until Melody came along that he had ever felt protective of anything.