Beautiful Tragedy (A Standalone Romance Novel)

BEAUTIFUL
TRAGEDY

By
Alycia Taylor

Copyright
2015. All rights reserved.

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CHAPTER
ONE

Molly

I stepped into the crowded auditorium and looked
around. There were way too many people here. Looking for Megan and Jake would
be like searching for two fish in the ocean. The place was wall-to-wall college
kids. There must be three hundred people stuffed into this room designed for
about half that many. I had to wonder what the fire marshal would think of
this.

I did a cursory glance, because I had told Megan I
would meet them here. What I really wanted to do was turn around and go out the
same door I came in. I’m not prone to claustrophobia, and I’m not an introvert,
but there are two things which I am absolutely not interested in. One is a room
full of loud music and loud people, and the other is having a boyfriend. Yet
here I am. One of the perils of friendship, I’d have to assume, was that you
found yourself doing things that didn’t please you, in order to please your
friends. It wasn’t quite peer pressure but along the same lines. The irony in
that was that they thought by forcing you to do these things you didn’t like to
do, they were somehow enriching your life. It was a vicious cycle, but Megan
had been my best friend since kindergarten, so I would find a place against the
wall and endure it for a while. Then afterwards I would meet the man that Megan
had dubbed, “The hottest guy on campus”. Megan would be pleased, and I could go
home with my conscience unscathed.

 
I found a space
big enough to back myself into and stood between a tall white boy with
unfortunate skin and body odor, and a girl that I could only assume must suffer
from dwarfism. Although she was quite a bit better looking than Danny DeVito
standing next to her, she definitely must have made him feel lofty.

I had only started classes here at the university a
few weeks before. Megan and I had always planned to go together, but
circumstance wasn’t on my side when she started over the summer. She went on
without me with my promise to soon follow. Luckily, one of the girls in the
freshman dorm over the summer had gotten a bad case of something venereal (that
was the going rumor anyways) and she’d had to go home before the fall semester
began. Luckily for us, I mean. For her…not so much. Anyway, it freed up a bed
in the dorm and Megan’s roommate agreed to take it so I could have hers and
room with Megan. I thanked the other girl profusely, and because I was so
grateful to her I also suggested she steam clean the mattress…just in case.

While Megan had been attending the university without
me, she’d met Jake. Now, don’t get me wrong, I think Jake is a good looking
guy, but when Megan first called and told me about him, I was picturing Brad
Pitt in Troy. Instead, I’d have to go with Michael C. Hall from Dexter. He was
still a good looking guy…but the son of a Goddess? Unlikely. He had reddish
blonde hair and an athletic body and his personality more than made up for not
having Brad Pitt’s face. He was good to my best friend, and Megan pronounced to
me before I ever met him that he was her “soul mate”. Even if I hadn’t liked
him, who was I to come between two souls that were meant to be?

Megan was anxious for me to make new friends here, but
mostly she was anxious to set me up with this guy, Brock. She thought it would
be great fun if we dated guys who were not only best friends but also
roommates. I did tell her that I didn’t want a boyfriend, but when that hadn’t
worked after three or four tries, I’d gone after his name.

I mean, who names their kid Brock anyways? Okay, I’m
judging again. After all…who is a girl with a name like Molly to judge? But
Brock? Really? It made him sound like one of those fake wrestlers in the WWE if
you asked me, and I told Megan so. She had only laughed at me and said that I
wouldn’t care what his name was once I met him. She said I would forget my own
name when he looked at me with those bright blue eyes. So I had to aim lower…I
went for the music.

“He’s a musician,” I had told her.

“So?” she said.

“So? So he’s probably either a dark and depressed
type, or an ego-maniac. Either way, no thank you.”

“You’re just making up excuses,” she had accused me. I
would have been offended, had she been wrong. Of course I was making excuses. I
didn’t want a boyfriend.

Megan said that his voice was beautiful and he could
play a guitar better than some of the classic rock guys that I liked to listen
to. I told her that would have to remain to be seen, but the one thing I was
sure of was that I would not be going out with this Brock. Then she got down
and dirty about it and said, “Please just meet him, Moll’s. I know you’ll love
him. Just say hello…for me.”

It was a dirty ploy and I shouldn’t have let her get
away with it. But here I am, I had agreed to meet him today…and to be polite,
but that’s it. I’ve told Megan more than a dozen times that a boyfriend, one
month into my freshman year and less than two months after a long stint in the
hospital, would complicate my life way too much. I like things in my life to
remain constant I guess. I drink my coffee black, take my pills at the same
time every day, and I call my grandmother on the same day every week. Megan
says that sometimes she thinks I was born thirty-five. I don’t think so. I
don’t think you have to be older to just not be good with change.

Besides all that change stuff too, I was finally free.
I love my grandma, and she rocks for taking me in when I was just a kid and my
mom bailed on me, but she’s a hoverer (if that’s a word?).
 
I finally feel like at long last I can
breathe. I don’t have my sweet granny looking at me like I might crumble into
ash at any moment, or doctors poking and prodding me, or nurses waking me up
every hour…I’m finally free. I don’t want to muck that up by getting involved
with some…musician.

The volume of the first band was loud, but the
screeching of the guitar at this very moment might well be the reason I’ll
never hear my own future children say my name. It had to be ten or maybe twenty
decibels above an eardrum-friendly level. Being so far back from the stage, I
can’t really make out the guy’s face whose playing it. He was also singing, and
his voice may have been really nice, if the guitar wasn’t aching to drown it
out.

I squinted, and I could make out a mass of black hair
and lots of tattoos. Uh oh, this had to be the infamous Brock. Megan had told
me that he had black, shoulder-length hair, blue eyes and lots of tattoos on
his arms that were quite nice in their own right. Okay, she had been right
about a few things. He did have nice arms. The V-neck T-shirt that he wore fit
snugly, and his chest looked good as well. His hair was black and he did have
tattoos. I was still squinting, but at an Adonis I couldn’t see. Maybe he was a
much less Latin Enrique Iglesias, but still god-like? At this distance I’d have
to beg to differ.

The rest of the women in the auditorium might argue
with me. They all seemed to be dying to touch him, held back only by the
invisible wall of campus security. I watched him as he was coming to the end of
the song. He threw back his head and as he hit a high note, he brushed a few
sweaty strands of the shiny black hair out of his eyes. I was shocked to note
then, even at this distance, that Megan was right about one more thing; he did
have the prettiest blue eyes that I had ever seen. I had to wonder if he was
wearing contacts, that’s how blue they were. As I looked at him and pondered
it, he brought his song to an end and the audience jumped to their feet, all
but blocking my view of him, and I’m sure severely impeding that of the dwarf
to my right.

I toughed it out to the end…two bands later. I was
rather proud of myself too, having fought off the urge to leave several times.
As the flood of college bodies began to ebb towards the exit doors, I made my
escape. I texted Megan when I got to the courtyard and told her where I was.

“Hey!” she said when she finally found me. “Where have
you been?”

“I got stuck in the back,” I told her. “Hi Jake.”

“Hey Molly. Did you get to see Brock’s set, at least?”

“Was that the guy with all the tattoos?” I asked,
knowing full well that it was. Imagine my surprise when Jake’s answer came from
the guy with all the tattoos who was now standing behind me. He should add
“Native American Tracking” to his resume. I hadn’t even known he was there.

“That’s the guy,” he said, in answer to my question.
His voice startled me, and I spun around too quickly. It made me dizzy and I
almost lost my balance and fell on my clumsy butt. Thanks to cat-like reflexes
on the guy’s part however, I was left standing. Albeit, standing with his hand
on my arm, feeling like an idiot and a pervert at the same time. I felt like an
idiot for nearly tripping over my own feet, and a pervert because I was
enjoying the feel of this stranger’s hand on my arm. I’m not sure now how long
I looked into those intense blue eyes before telling myself he had been holding
onto me way too long. I took a small step backwards to detach myself and said, “Thank
you.” It was my brilliant way of flirting. Most girls can’t pull it off.

“Brock, this is my friend Molly,” Megan said.
“Molly—Brock.”

“Hi Molly,” he said with a grin. I wasn’t sure that I
liked that grin. Not that it wasn’t the stuff that would make a girl’s clothes
melt right off and fall onto the floor, but there was something else there too
that I couldn’t put my finger on. I had to wonder what he was thinking about
all of this “setting up” business. Was he grinning as he thought about ripping
Jake’s head off later for subjecting him to this? Or, was he grinning because
he thought that I was cute? I’m not sure why I care…No, that’s not right, I
really don’t care. I don’t want to be set up…I don’t need a boyfriend right
now. They only get in the way. I swallowed the rest of the embarrassment that
was left in my throat and said, “Hi Brock.” Again…It’s my way with words that
get them. It’s a gift, really.

 
“Let’s go eat,”
Megan said, “I’m starving.”

I wasn’t really hungry, having made myself one of my
special protein shakes before leaving the dorm room, but I had come this far in
my quest to please my friend. I would have to assume that another hour or so at
a food booth wouldn’t kill me.

Jake led the way, and one didn’t need the powers of
perception to know that we would end up at the taco stand. Megan may be Jake’s
soulmate, but if someone asked me about his one true love, I’d have to say it
was Mexican food.

Smoothly, and not a bit obviously, Jake said, “Brock,
why don’t you and Molly find us a table. Megan and I will grab the tacos.”

Brock looked at me and all I could think to do was
shrug. So he started walking away from the counter and towards an empty cement
picnic table in the courtyard. We sat down…on opposite sides of the table. Far
be it from either of us to exhibit any of the social skills we had learned from
the fourth grade on.

We sat there silently, until Megan and Jake returned
with the ridiculously over-sized tray of tacos. Even Brock looked amused. Jake
and Megan took one look at us and said, almost in unison, “This isn’t going to
work.”

“What’s that?” Brock asked. I suspected that he knew,
as did I, that the soulmates would have to share the same side of the table and
he was just messing with them. I was amused and decided to play along.

“Yeah, Jake,” I said, “What’s not going to work?
 
Your attempt to poison us, or clog our
arteries and push us into an untimely death in our forties from high-cholesterol?”

Jake was looking at me, confused. Sometimes, when
Megan called him her teddy bear…I wondered if it was because his head was full
of fluff.