2. Send Me an Angel
CHAPTER 2
Send Me an Angel
JOEL
S ome fucking bird is about to die. I open one eye against the sunlight and spot the noisy fucker on the branch outside the window. Maybe the better solution would be to cut that tree down. Then no more birds will show up to happily chirp away when I’m trying to sleep. Wait . . . since when has there been a tree outside of my bedroom?
There’s a soft moan in my ear, and a warm arm wraps around me, long pink nails delicately scratching my chest. Right, I’m not in my room.
I scrub at both eyes and turn to find a shaggy mop of—blond hair? Why was I expecting red . . . ?
Something tumbles around in my stomach—a memory. Oh, that’s why. I dreamt of her again. The girl who’s been living in my head and not letting me know peace for two fucking years.
“Mmm,” the blond murmurs.
Next to her, my best friend sits upright, the movement sending his chin-length brown curls swaying. His hair sticks out at odd angles, and as the sheets fall to pool around his naked waist, the sun tattoo etched into his back ripples with his muscles.
“Key,” I groan. “I’m going to fucking kill that bird.”
He yawns. “No, you won’t. That’s Gary.”
I raise my eyebrow. “Gary? You named that menace Gary ?”
“Yeah, Gary. I’ve grown accustomed to him now. He has a family.”
As I cover my face with my hands, the woman between us stirs again. We glance at each other, and I point at myself before pointing to the door, letting him know I’m getting the fuck out of here. Key brought her home—he can deal with the aftermath.
I gently lift her hand off my chest, then slide out of bed and stand. Fuck, where are my clothes?
“Heh-hem.”
I follow the sound to find Key pointing toward the window where my nemesis is happily hopping back and forth between branches. It’s a cardinal. His bright red plumage reminds me of my dream, and I nearly stumble over a discarded high heel.
“Shit,” I mutter, stooping down to grab my boxers, jeans, and the shirt I was wearing when Key invited me in on the culmination of his date last night.
I step into my boxers and flip him off on my way out the door, slamming it intentionally too hard behind me, then pause.
“What the fuck was that?” the woman’s voice asks.
“Asshole,” Key says, loud enough that I can hear him through the door. I laugh, then head back toward my own bedroom at the opposite end of the house, the rest of my clothes thrown over my shoulder.
It feels empty now that James and Dave have moved into their own places with their ladies. I kind of miss those early days of the band in San Francisco, when it was all of us together playing whatever gigs our manager, Al, could get us. Wondering when we were going to afford studio time. That first album release party. It all feels like such a blur now.
In the shower, I rinse away any fluids that might remain on my body after last night’s adventure. It’s not like I’m ashamed of it, and I definitely didn’t run out of there because I regret it. But I’ve found when Key and I go to bed with one woman, she’s the one who wakes up feeling embarrassed. So, better that one of us disappears before they get the chance to question all of their life choices.
When I step into the kitchen twenty minutes later, Key is standing behind the counter in a pair of sweatpants and flip-flops, drinking a beer.
“Hey,” I say. “Bit early for drinking, don’t you think?”
He shakes his head. “Not early enough.”
I raise my eyebrows as he chugs the beer down, then turns to the fridge and pulls out another. “Dude, you all right?”
“Just a hard day, that’s all.”
I flip through the calendar in my head. No dates jump out at me. As far as I know, it’s no one’s anniversary or birthday. No one’s died, so . . . is this about the girl who just left?
“If you wanted me to deal with the chick, you could’ve just said so,” I hedge.
“No, no, it’s . . . never mind.”
Fuck. Is he regretting last night? “Listen, I know it doesn’t happen that much, but if you’re not cool with it anymore, we can stop.”
He looks up at me with an odd expression. “I—what?”
“Is that why you’re drinking yourself to death on a Friday morning?”
He looks down at his beer. “Oh! No, it’s . . . nothing about that. We’re cool.”
“Then what the fuck is wrong?”
His head tilts back, and he sighs. “It’s been eight years to the day since I last spoke to . . . my family. Since they dropped me off at that place.”
“Oh.” So it’s going to be that kind of day. “Right, yeah. Sorry, man.”
With a shrug, he takes a long sip of his beer. “It’s fine.”
I slump into the bar stool opposite him. “We could do something today. Go see a movie? Or there’s that new go-cart place we saw a few weeks ago. I could embarrass your ass on the track to distract you.”
Key smiles but avoids looking at me. “Thanks, but I think I’m just going to go back to bed. Didn’t get much sleep last night.”
His eyes meet mine for a second, then he takes his beer and slips down the hall. After a few quiet moments, I hear the door shut, and I let out a breath. I hate his shitty family. Bunch of holy rollers who won’t talk to him anymore because of the music he loves and plays. But they’re his family. Even though 99 percent of the time it doesn’t bother him, the one percent it does is rough.
I tap my fingers on the counter. Maybe I’ll get him something to take his mind off it anyway. Distraction is my specialty, but considering he’s still in a bad mood after last night . . . This might call for some big guns.
I grab the keys off the end of the counter along with my wallet, then head out the door.
* * *
“Rise and sunshine, mother fucker.”
Key’s eyes snap open and widen as he looks up at me.
“Joel, what the fuck are you doing?”
I grin, finding my balance as my feet sink into his mattress, then fire the paintball gun at his belly.
“Fuck!” he cries, hand clutching at his paint-covered stomach. Rolling over, he sees the other gun locked and loaded and ready for him. He grabs it and looks up at me. “Oh, you’re dead!”
I run from the room, nearly eating shit as I topple off the bed. Paint splattering off the door frame as I run through it, and I cackle loudly. One ear trained on Key’s mad scramble out of bed, complete with a string of curses, I duck into the kitchen and hide behind the counter.
“Where are you, asshole?” he whispers, and I hold my breath as he approaches. His bare feet pad across the tile floor, and when I think he’s on the other side of the counter, I pop up, shooting him between the shoulders before taking off down the hallway.
“Joel!”
I feel a sharp pain on my ass, so I dive over the couch in a last-ditch effort to take shelter. But Key comes from the other side of the living room, pelting me in the chest, then the thigh as I scramble to get away—blindly firing my gun at him.
“Do you yield?” he yells.
“Never!” I cry, rolling under the coffee table and army crawling out the other side.
He chases me back to the kitchen, and I open the fridge door to narrowly avoid being shot again. I’m breathing hard and sweating, my heart hammering in my chest. Then it’s quiet—the only sound coming from the fridge motor and that constantly chirping bird, Gary. Slowly, I close the door, but Key’s gone.
“Where did you go?” I mumble under my breath.
There’s a squeak in the floorboards, and I turn just in time to feel the sharp smack of a paint ball hitting me dead in the chest. The gun falls from my hands with a clatter, and I reach up to rub away the sting.
“Ow! What the fuck? Not that close,” I say.
“Oh, come on, you failed to negotiate any rules before you shot me in the gut in my own bed.”
I squint to find Key twirling his gun in victory, wiping the paint from his stomach, and smiling . Mission accomplished.
“What are these anyway?” he asks.
“Gotcha paintball guns. They’re new. Had to beat up a ten-year-old for these.”
He laughs, and I snatch the fallen gun off the floor and set it on the counter. “Wicked. So what do I win then?”
My smile drops. “Awesome new toy guns that shoot paint isn’t enough?”
He crosses his arms.
“Okay, fine. Winner chooses the loser’s punishment.”
Key scratches the tip of the plastic gun to his forehead. “Hmm . . . I think,” he says with a devilish smirk, “you’re on laundry duty.”
I blink. “Laundry?”
“Yup,” he says, slapping me hard on the shoulder. “Make sure to do my sheets first. Need to get rid of your rank drool stains, along with paint splatter and any other bodily fluids.”
I press my tongue into my bottom lip and fist my hands at my hips. “Fine. Fine. Laundry it is.”
I’m slinking away, head hung low, when Key calls after me. “Hey, Joel?”
“Yeah?”
“Make sure to separate my colors.”
He smiles at me, and I know what he’s really saying: thanks for the distraction, however momentary it was .
After I’ve changed and collected every piece of dirty laundry lying around the house, I’m up to my knees in clothes, towels, and bedsheets, facing our washer and dryer. There’s a piece of paper taped to the top of the washer with instructions for different cycle instructions from when Becks lived here. Funny how neither of us has had the heart to remove it. That being said, I disregard her suggestions for whites and just shove enough clothing into the washer that will fit, topping it off with a scoop of detergent.
The lid snaps shut with a clang , and I turn the dial to start it. But instead of the expected rushing water, there’s a stuttering bang and a loud gurgle, and then I’m being sprayed in the face by a freezing jet of water.
“What the fuck!” I cry, reaching forward to turn off the valves through what’s now a steady geyser exploding from the hose behind the washing machine. Trying to grip the handles while simultaneously shielding my eyes from the onslaught, I twist and twist until the spray finally subsides.
There’s a flurry of footsteps amidst the drips on the tile when Key bursts into the room.
“What happened?”
“What the hell do you think happened, genius?” I mutter, blinking the water from my eyes and gesturing to my soaked shirt. “Water line burst.”
Key sucks his teeth. “Damn.”
I sigh, looking around at the soaked laundry piles on the floor. “I’m uh . . . I’m going to try to get this cleaned up. Can you call a plumber?”
“Sure, man. Yeah,” he says, disappearing out the door.
“Just great,” I say to no one in particular.
When Key returns fifteen minutes later, his expression is grim. “Good news. I got hold of a plumber,” he says.
“Why does it look like that is accompanied by bad news?”
“He can’t get here for another week.”
My eyes widen, and I drop the sodden pile of laundry to the floor with a splat. “A week?”
He shrugs. “Says they’re super busy, and since we still have water to the rest of the house, it’s not classified as an emergency.”
“What do we do now?”
Key claps me on the shoulder. “Well, considering you managed to get every single piece of laundry soaked, it needs to get washed before it starts to smell like asscrack.”
“That’s very helpful.”
“There’s a laundromat a few blocks away,” he says.
I hang my head. “A laundromat? Seriously?”
Key rolls his eyes. “Oh, come on, you used laundromats for years.”
“Yeah,” I counter. “But that was before I was making shit tons of money playing bass.”
“Come on, I’ll help you load this mess into the car.”
He picks up one of the baskets and starts toward the door. I follow along behind, muttering to myself. It’s not like I loved doing laundry in the first place, and now I’ll have to sit for hours with a bunch of strangers so our shit doesn’t get stolen.
“You could come with me,” I say.
Key grins. “Yeah, no way, man. You lost. Time to pay up.”
He shuts the trunk and drops the keys into my hand. I roll my eyes. “I really wonder why I ever bother with you.”
“Aww, you love me,” he says, ruffling the top of my hair as I try to bat him away.
“I think you’re confusing love with my wanting to smother you with a pillow.”
“Nah, sounds about the same to me.”
I shove him in the shoulder before getting in the car and slamming the door, ignoring his mocking wave through the window. I make sure to flip him off one last time for good measure as I back out of the driveway, and head toward the laundromat.
* * *
“Great, just great. Great, great, fucking great .”
This is the second laundromat that’s closed for repairs. For fuck’s sake, it’s 1988. Are there no working laundry machines in San Francisco? I’m seriously starting to consider whether clothes are that necessary to my life. As the sun begins to set, I spot a neon blue and red sign in the distance that reads The Sudsy Dream . I scoff. Lame, much? Might as well come right out and call it The Wet Dream . But it looks open, with the handful of people I see inside and the rotating dryer drums. Perfect.
I pull up curbside and peer around. I’ve never been to this area of town before but it’s pretty rundown. Looking up at the sign, I notice now that there are missing bricks at the corners of the building and most of the awnings are torn and rusted. There’s a cat sitting in the smudged window of the second floor, which must be an apartment.
I blow out a breath. Well, as long as their machines are in service, I suppose it doesn’t really matter. I open the trunk and struggle to get the four waterlogged bags of clothes inside the front door. A bell jingles overhead, and the sudden smell of laundry detergent and bleach overwhelms my senses, my eyes watering and throat stinging. The few people sitting on chairs in front of the window glance up at me, then return to their books and crosswords, but they don’t seem to give me a second thought.
There’s an older woman smoking behind a counter with a register, and I set down the bags by the door before heading over. She doesn’t even glance up as I approach and I find myself standing awkwardly right in front of her. I clear my throat, but still she continues to read her magazine.
Finally, my patience wears thin after the day I’ve had, and I tap the bell on the counter by her arm. She looks up at me and raises an unimpressed eyebrow.
“Change?” she asks in a voice more akin to Oscar the Grouch than a woman in a furry green cardigan and grey-streaked black hair.
“Huh?”
She tilts her head at the machines. “You need quarters for the machines.”
Oh shit, right. “Yeah, sorry, can you change a ten?”
Reaching forward with alligator green–tipped nails, she snatches the ten-dollar bill from my fingers, then hands me a cup of quarters. I don’t even know if she counted them.
“Don’t leave your laundry unattended. Carts are at the back.” Then she returns to her magazine, holding it up in front of her like a shield.
I blink. “Thanks, I guess.”
As I grab a cart from the back of the store, the doorbell chimes again. My heart jumps into my throat the moment I look over my shoulder, my stomach turning over on itself when I see her. It’s as if the sun has lit her hair, a ring of orange and gold like a blazing sunset around her pale face. Her red lips part in a smile, and the other patrons who ignored me greet her like an old friend—even the old bat behind the register.
Before I know it, I’m moving toward her. Remembering the way her skin felt under my fingertips, the way her blue eyes shone brighter than any crystal. The way she sparked something in me that’s made it impossible to forget her, made it so even my dreams have been filled with visions of her.
“Cherry?”
I’m so focused on reaching her I miss the dryer door swinging out in front of me and slam into it hard, the sound ricocheting around the room as I fall to the floor. My ears ring and my vision blurs, every muscle in my back tensing as I try to blink up at the fluorescent lights of the ceiling. Did I walk right into that door? Or did I die?
Because there appears to be an angel looking down at me.