Chapter 42
Jodi Castle
Jodi woke with a raging thirst and her mind cobwebby. She’d dreamed she’d been driving a succession of cars through labyrinthine lanes that kept getting narrower until she was certain she was going to wind up embedded in the hedgerows.
The vibrations through the bunk told her they were in transit.
Presumably, on the road south towards the port and back to Britain to whatever fate the Ghost Boys awaited.
She’d heard bits of the conversation between her boys, Samson, and Brian, but not enough to know the outcome.
When three of the four had trudged into the bunk room long after midnight, grim-faced and tight-lipped, she’d asked, “What happened?” but Balin, Jez and Lee, had all crawled straight into their bunks without answering.
Nash hadn’t appeared. Whether that was because he’d been arrested, disciplined, or simply sent to Coventry by the rest of them was unclear.
Flugwhump, who’d been settled by her shoulder, jumped down from the bunk and started scratching at the door to the lounge area.
“It’s too early,” she told him. The square of sky visible through the skylight confirmed it was still hours before dawn.
Her girls, Mel and Zar, were cosied up with Balin, one on his legs, the other tucked against his side.
Lee’s curtains were drawn across his bunk, but a yard of blond hair spilled from beneath them, proving he was in there.
The bunks belonging to the crew had their curtains drawn too.
“Meow,” her little bestie complained, followed by the scritch-scratch of his claws against the door.
“What is it? Do you need to pee?”
So did she, but she didn’t want to move, and more likely Flugwhump just wanted to sit on the back of the banquette and watch the world roll by from the window. Jez’s eyes glittered in the dark from up near the ceiling, but when she returned his gaze, he rolled out of sight.
“Mee-ow!”
“Okay, I’m moving.”
Flugwhump trotted through the door the moment she cracked it open. She could see straight through to the front windscreen. They were on a narrow grey road, sandwiched between pine forest and rolling snow-topped mountains. There was no other traffic, and no illumination besides the headlights.
Nash lay asleep on the left-hand side of the leather banquette, still dressed in last night’s clothes including his boots, a leather jacket pulled over his shoulders, and his head on a pile of merch shirts.
He stirred while she was unlacing his boots.
“Jo?” he enquired, cracking one shadowy eyelid.
“Thought you’d be more comfortable.” She kept on with the task and pulled his foot free of the boot, avoiding making eye-contact. “The bunk’s free if you’d rather…”
“Aren’t you going back there?”
She shook her head, now wide awake, even if she was yawning into her sleeve.
Flugwhump jumped up and occupied his favourite spot by the window.
“I’m not sure I’m welcome back there.”
“They’re all comatose.”
“Still.”
He closed his eyes again.
Jodi dropped onto her butt, and leaned her back against the opposite bench, unable to tug her attention away from him.
She’d been too worried about what was going to happen to the band earlier to think straight, but now it was imperative that she did.
Whatever the outcome, she couldn’t continue along the trajectory she’d been travelling.
Couldn’t keep making excuses for Nash to ensure her security. It’d been a false security anyway.
There were creases in Nash’s cheeks, and the remains of kohl smeared around his eyes.
He looked so boyish, lying there. Harmless.
An overgrown child, hardly a man at all.
It made it all the harder for her to open her mouth and say what she needed to say, but they needed to talk, and now, in the dead of night, they at least had the privacy to do so.
How to begin was another matter.
Jodi imagined herself pulling off the engagement ring and not saying anything at all, simply placing it on his chest and walking away. Returning to the bunk room and delaying the consequences until daylight. Was she really that much of a coward?
Perhaps...
“There a reason you’re staring at me?”
“Why’d you do it?”
He peered across at her from under his dark fringe, eyes unfriendly, then pushed into a seated position, dislodging the jacket. It crumpled in his lap. The T-shirt he was wearing was torn at the collar, and face on, she could see that not all the shadows around his eyes were down to smeared kohl.
“I’d have thought you were the one person other than him I didn’t need to explain it to.”
“We’d agreed to put it behind us.”
“We had, yes. But then you planned a little rendezvous with him the moment I was busy.”
“That’s not true.”
“Fucking is. Krista told me. The second we were on stage; you were out back canoodling with him.”
“That’s not what happened.”
She’d kicked Rock Giant to the kerb.
“I gave you the benefit of the doubt, and you fucking betrayed me,” Nash said. “You didn’t mean any of what you said to me the other night. You must think I’m a fool.”
Jodi bit her fingernail, unsure how to defend herself, or even if it was worth the trouble.
Nash obviously had his version of events all worked out, and no matter how much she argued to the contrary they wouldn’t change.
All that would happen was that the thread of their conversation would gradually shift from the truth to him forgiving her, to him making her feel as if only he could save her from herself and all her bad decisions, when in reality, the one genuinely bad decision she kept on making was believing all the hogwash he fed her.
“And now the band’s screwed because of you and your inability to keep your knickers on.”
“That isn’t why the band’s screwed.” She got to her feet.
“It’s screwed because you attacked a man in front of a huge flippin’ audience because some bitch who’s had it in for me since the tour began whispered a load of shit in your ear, and you believed it.
Not only that, instead of asking me what happened, you decided I was guilty and that the answer was to take a pop at him.
Why the fuck did you do that, Nash? You had to know there’d be consequences. ”
He leaned forward, snarling. “Well maybe when it comes to my fiancée and the guy she keeps screwing behind my back, my brain doesn’t exactly fire on all cylinders.
Jeezus, Jo, there are limits to what I can take, you know.
Was it not enough that you got fucking high with him, then tied the knot with him, and came on his face and all over his monster fucking cock?
Why say all that stuff to me the other night, if you were already planning to sneak off for a repeat the second my back was turned? ”
“That is not what happened. I just told you that?”
Nash stood. “Bullshit! It’s exactly what fucking happened.”
“No, Nash, it isn’t. It’s just what you want to believe to justify your actions, but it’s not the truth, and even if it were, it still wouldn’t make what you did right.
I was ready to give us another chance. I believed you when you said we could put it all behind us and move on, but we can’t, and we shouldn’t.
Maybe the truth is that we don’t belong together. ”
I felt like ripping off a limb to finally admit that fact aloud.
“More like you’ve realised we’re fucked. The Ghost Boys are fucked. You fucked us, so now you’re moving on to more fertile ground. I’m sure it doesn’t hurt that he’s loaded.”
“It hasn’t anything to do with him. He’s done with me anyway. No, Nash, the truth is that I’m breaking up with you because you’re an arse. You’ve always been an arse, and I’ve been too fucking stupid to realise it.”
“You’re breaking up with me. You’re...breaking...up...with me. The fuck you are. You’re mine. You’re wearing my fucking ring.”
The bus came to an unexpected halt throwing them against one another. They fell hard against the seating.
“Fag break,” their driver announced.
She’d entirely forgotten they weren’t alone, and that Raoul—or was it Ray—had been privy to their every word.
“I’ll give you kids five.” The driver’s cab door slammed.
On top of her, Nash grabbed her face and forced her to face him. “You’re not ending us. You’re not, Jo. We’re not breaking up. You’re not ending anything.” He slammed his mouth against hers.
Jodi shoved against his chest. “Get off me.”
“No. No. We’re not over. You’re not dumping me for that prick. We can figure this out. We can—”
“I don’t fucking want to figure it out. Stop touching me. Stop—” She couldn’t get her arms free and into a position to shove him off despite a weight advantage, but then he’d always had spaghetti arms, and an unfailing ability to know exactly where to apply pressure.
A shadowy form dropped onto his back.
Nash yelped, his eyes going wide. He twisted away from her attempting to reach over his shoulder. “Fucking cat. I’m going to wring its fucking neck!” He let go of her and made a grab for Flugwhump’s hissing form now a metre or so further along the leather.
Jodi scooted into the corner of the seating away from him.
Blood stains were leaking through the cotton covering his back where Flugwhump’s needle-like claws had lacerated him through his shirt.
Nash made a dive towards her cat, resulting in a mad scramble.
Her shadowy baby’s nimbleness was unfortunately eventually overcome by Nash’s size advantage.
He grabbed Flugwhump by the scruff of his neck and held him aloft as if he’d just claimed his opponents head on a battlefield of yore.
“Let him go.”
“Oh, I’m going to let him go, all right.”
Keeping the squirming cat at arm’s length, he made his way to the bus steps.
“Put him down, Nash.”
Nash hit the door release, then hurled her saviour down the steps.