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glissando

noun. a continuous slide upward or downward between two notes.

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I'm clocking off of my shift to take a ten-minute break.

I slip out from behind the bar, skirting the edge of the dance floor, heading for the personnel door. Then my name rings out from the microphone. "—finishing off the night, the Foxhole's own Bay Rodriguez!" announces Haniya, one of my co-workers on duty. "T-minus two minutes."

I most certainly did not sign up to play.

My head snaps to the stage, eyes wide in disbelief. I mouth, What?

Usually waitressing or behind the bar, tonight Haniya is responsible for Live Music Fridays. Onstage, she smiles secretively and cuts her gaze to a table across the room. Callum's table, where he sits with five of our bandmates.

Oh, the motherfucker. His audacity is unbelievable, throwing me onstage in my break just so he can test who's the better kit drummer. My face twists into a glare. Callum's watching me, too, expression inscrutable.

How long has he been watching me?

Haniya turns up the volume of the pop hits playlist streaming through the speakers. Compared to the performances that have been enchanting the Foxhole tonight, even though it's more polished and produced, the dance songs feel cold and synthetic, holding none of the energy.

Changing trajectories, I start cutting through the crowd. Pushing himself to stand, Callum excuses himself from his friends and starts towards me. My furious strides meet his laid-back ones, right in the middle of the dance floor.

"What the fuck? Did you do this? I'm working," I hiss.

He has to lean close to hear me over the music, the chatter, the ambient noises of drinks being poured. His nose nearly skims my cheekbone. "Not now, you're not."

"What if I chose to take my break another time? What if the bar needs me?"

"I tipped your co-worker to cover you," he shrugs.

I glance at Haniya, who is readjusting the positions of the microphones onstage. She notices after two seconds and raises her hand in the okay gesture, smiling approvingly. I can practically hear her voice inside my head: not bad, girl.

"Oh, my God," I snort, my lips widening into a betrayed half-smile before I can help myself. Haniya always loves a show.

And Callum already charmed and/or bribed her into doing this. Typical. Too late to hide my smile from him, I press my fingers into my brow bone, protesting, "That doesn't matter. I don't know any songs, and I can't improvise like you, and I don't even have an accompaniment—"

"—excuse me?" a high-pitched voice cuts in. Shane materializes behind Callum and walks straight into my arms, hugging me tightly in greeting. "No accompaniment," she scoffs. "What about me, Bay, what about me? Blasphemy."

I laugh, smelling liquor on her breath. I step away and gently brace my hands on Shane's shoulders. "Shane," I ask, snapping back into bartender mode. "Do I have to cut you off?"

"No, ma'am," Shane answers, straightening her posture. With a conspiratorial tone, she leans in to whisper in my ear. "I'm just saying..."

Over Shane's shoulder, Callum is still staring oddly at me, his hair tousled and eyes heavy-lidded. My expression is unconvinced, then grudging, and finally when Shane steps away I glower at him. She has a plan. A song, easy but classic, that will work.

I would be lying if I said that the drum kit hasn't called to me every time it's on the stage.

"I hate you," I seethe, peeling off my apron, "so, so much."

Callum only smiles. Shane starts heading to the stage. As I walk past him, I shove my apron into his ridiculously firm torso. When he receives it, his fingers brush over my skin before I slip through the crowd.

Behind me, I can hear his smirk without seeing it: "Knock 'em dead."

Now there's a spotlight on my face.

It's not harsh, warm orange light ringed in red, but it still helps to blur out the faces of the crowd in the Foxhole. Shane is already taking her position behind the keyboard, feet stumbling but hands spreading octave to octave with practiced confidence.

"Hello, hey, everyone," I speak into the mic. "Um, because there's just two of us, everyone has to sing for this one to work, okay? Everyone. Thank you."

People chuckle, but when Shane starts playing the familiar rock ballad intro, they immediately know the song. Everyone leaves booths and stools to spill onto the dance floor, spinning each other around and clutching each other's hands. They're all going to sing. Don't Stop Believin' is a national treasure.

I have the first verse and pre-chorus before I should play (drums build suspense, so they should be used sparingly). I take a seat on the stool, tug my denim skirt down my thighs, set my feet on the bass and hi-hat pedals, and search the faces of the audience. I can't spot Callum in the crowd.

I can't remember how the actual drum part goes for this song, but I make it up. Low anacruses during the next verse, then in the choruses I drag up what I know of the 80's genre and settle into a steady, unembellished beat with lots and lots of crash cymbal.

"Don't stop!" Inside the bar, a hundred voices echo as one, "believin'. Hold on to that feelin'."

Finally I glimpse Callum, not drinking or dancing or singing along like I though he would be. He's far back at the table where Shane and the other band members were earlier in the night. Of course, now there's no-one else sitting down, all lost to the tide of nostalgia and dreams.

"Strangers, waitin', up and down the boulevard," people chant, hugging friends and tilting their faces to the ceiling. My heart breaks free of its cage and soars on an invisible, heaven-bound stave. I'm happy.

Weird. I seldom am, and I'm so fucking happy right now.

Magic follows Callum wherever he goes. He knows what to do to encourage people to have fun, to let loose, and make memories. That's why he's always the life of the party, even among strangers. All the bliss of the audience right now is even because he put me on this stage. The next roll I take around the drums ends with fierce strike on the crash, and Callum smirks like he knows I'm imaging hitting him.

More than hating just him, I hate that some of my best memories are inextricably linked with him. I can't think of marching band without thinking of Callum. I think of euphoria and sex at midnight, and imagine his face hovering above mine, our matching slow inhales as he sinks into me, like the first time every time.

Just like I won't be able to relive this moment now, taking the spotlight like teenage Bay wanted, the recipient of all the room's attention, without picturing the proud smile that's ghosting across his lips. Like I'm his creation to be proud of.

It terrifies me, the notion that for the rest of my life I might think of true happiness and see Callum instead.

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If someone told me last year that Callum and I would one day willingly hang out, without music or sex on the table, I would have complimented their powerful imagination and told them to never let that childish naiveté dull.

But not long after the live music night at the Foxhole, it happens.

First, there was a band leadership meeting. Keller, the section directors, the field crew volunteers, and the drum major, and all the section leaders meet in the band room to discuss the Duquesne away game at the end of the week. We need to make sure all our section has submitted the appropriate forms, secured their travel documentation, and know which bus terminal to meet at (the instruments and uniforms are being transported to Pittsburgh separately ahead of time; the band is taking a coach).

I was planning to smoke after that, Callum said he wanted to procrastinate his studying, and somehow we both end up high on the fringes of the campus. For me this particular strain makes time segmented instead of a line; I zone into one moment and then am plucked out of the time continuum, dropped into another moment an hour later, all the minutes in between wiped from my memory.

We are near the Music Department, on a simple avenue that serves as a shortcut from the School of Fine Arts to the School of Humanities. On either side, adolescent sycamores line the asphalt road, forming a canopy overhead. The late fall trees are bare of leaves. Through the gaps in the branches, the clouds above well heavy with rain.

Callum unceremoniously drops his skateboard to the ground. "I'm going to teach you. Get on."

"That's what he said."

Callum rolls his eyes and extends a courteous hand. I take it in mine.

"You're right-side dominant, so this leg goes in front," he explains, briefly placing his foot on the front of the board. I follow. "And you push with your back leg."

I squeeze Callum's hand, unsteady on the board. "This is your grand scheme to get me injured and take over the center snare parts."

"Yes. You got me."

My mouth is dry, my throat is numb, and my head is slightly spinning. I'm horrible at it. Callum is almost collapsed with laughter by the time I set my board down at the start of the avenue. That's one moment; the weed makes me zone into the next.

As I roll along the slanted avenue, Callum walks alongside me. When I sway, or when the board snags on a pothole in the road, he seems ready to catch me. Eventually I improve enough to skate, by myself, up and down the avenue at a blistering speed of two miles an hour.

"Okay," I keep muttering. "Okay, I see. This is not so bad." The board leans one way on its axis, and my arms fling wildly through the chilly air. "Whoa. Okay."

Callum's voice comes out wheezy with laughter, beckoning with his ring-adorned hand. "Bring it back over. Lean to your left." I tilt my body, and the board responds, sending me careening toward the kerbside and the sturdy trunk of a tree. "Not that much!"

Callum sprints ahead of the board and grabs me by the waist. I don't feel danger when I'm high. I laugh incredulously as the board sweeps forward underneath my feet and collides with the pavement. Callum sets me down, but keeps his arm around me.

He puts his head on my shoulder and exhales in relief. "You're disaster-inclined."

A fat raindrop hits my forehead. I glance at the canopy of leaves, through which the stormy sky hangs low. "You're inclined, Vierra," I whisper, my voice scratchy with smoke. "I'm the disaster."

"That's true," he says, temptation glinting in his dark irises.

Then the sky cracks open with a boom of thunder, and pours its contents on us. The sycamore branches are no match for the rain. I gasp as the droplets intensify, soaking through my sweater, and take off sprinting. One hand shields my brow and the other tucks my tote bag, containing my school supplies, close to my chest.

Callum swears and follows, picking up his skateboard first.

The closest building is the Philosophy building, the familiar metal staircase winding up its side. I remember when we smoked here. Laughter bubbles from my throat even as the cold rain sinks into my bones. Callum, a faster runner, overtakes me easily, sprinting for the divide between soaked cobbles and dry stone underneath the first-floor gutter.

When I get out of the rain, he tugs on my wrist and pulls me into him. My chest flattens against his, carried by momentum, my hands seeking purchase from his shoulders. My eyes are closed before Callum even kisses me. In the back of my mind, I hear wood clattering against the ground.

I feel as diffuse as the raindrops pelting the ground mere feet from where we stand. I'm shivering but I'm utterly content to keep kissing Callum until I catch a cold. His tongue works against mine, confident and familiar. A shiver runs through my body when he sneaks his thumb underneath the waistband of my jeans to stroke my hip, the other arm wrapped around my back.

I realize how this looks, one of the only times we've kissed in public. Anyone could spot us right now, and they'd think we were one of those hormonal couples in the honeymoon phase, blinded to red flags by physicality.

What's going on between you two, exactly? That was what Renata had asked me, out of curiosity and concern, and I'd been so assured when I explained my motivations for the enemies with benefits arrangement.

But now I don't know.

I pull away to whisper against his mouth, "You're acting touch-starved."

Callum brushes his nose against mine. "So touch me." Then he pulls me up against his hard body and kisses the hell out of me.

I'm just the skin at the end of Callum's cold fingertips as they slip underneath my sweater—tentative, almost reverent—and flare flat against the sensitive side of my waist. I'm just the warmth at the end of Callum's tongue as he sweeps into my mouth, the sizzling desire passing back and forth with rising intensity. It would have been another competition (who is the better kisser, who can best keep their breath under check, whose temperature stays down?) but neither of us can win without an unbiased referee.

Whether he likes me or not, I know Callum wants me a little more than what we agreed to. It's in his eyes when he orgasms, just before they roll up in his head. It's in the stray minutes he gives me, how much he likes kissing and cuddling just for the 'sake' of it. He moves my hair away from my face when we fuck. He comes to my workplace not to drink or dance or befriend strangers like he usually does but to sit alone, to watch me drum in a pool of light. When we're not fucking, we do stuff that's sliding into hanging out, quality time, with dangerous implications.

I've never been dense or oblivious. My childhood would not allow fantasies to survive; only cold reality. Survival of the sharpest.

So I can lie to everyone except myself: I want Callum a lot more than what we agreed to. For a lot more things than we agreed to. It's hormonal, though that doesn't make it less real. I'm just a novice with a lifeline, cast out to sea.

But I trust that, if and when I have to, I will leave this all behind.

Before either of us gets hurt.