Chapter 24
(Draven)
“How the hell do we have a split vote when we have an odd number of people voting?”
My text to speech device, turned up to its loudest setting, drowned out even the grumbled attempt at whisper-speak that Claude had been attempting since Ozzy had pulled him aside and had a firm conversation with him about boundaries and behavior.
While he hadn’t made the announcement yet of which drummer would be replacing him while he was away for his medical appointments, I knew from our conversation Friday night that he’d already chosen Kit.
When I’d pulled my phone out Saturday afternoon to find the first flight back to the Providence airport he’d flown out of, Ozzy had stopped me.
“No, hold off on that,” Ozzy said. “We told them we’d make the announcement Monday so that’s the timetable we’re sticking with. I want to see if Claude makes an effort to tone it down or if he just keeps right on with the bullshit. From all accounts, he was pretty quiet backstage during the show last night. I’m curious to see how he does tomorrow, when it’s just band members and guards hanging out.”
“What does it matter, if you’re not going to use him as a replacement?”
“’Cause now I need to see if it’s worth continuing to spend the time mentoring him,” Ozzy explained. “And maybe because I’m still holding out hope that the over the top attitude was due to nerves and misguided competitiveness. I can work with both of those but there’s nothing further that I can do for him if that’s just the way he is.”
“Fair enough. Johnny will be relieved to know you’re going with Kit. He’s already taken a liking to him and loved the way he lent his voice to the sing-along by the fire pit last night.”
“Man, talk about surprised when I first heard him. If I didn’t already think so highly of him as a drummer I’d suggest he look for a band to front.”
“Then it’s a good thing you do think so highly of him in that regard because I’d hate to picture any scenario where we only had Claude as an option for your replacement.”
“I mean, if we seriously stepped in so much shit that we needed a sacrificial lamb to buy us safe passage, I could see where having him around could come in handy, otherwise, no, nope, nothing else comes to mind.”
We’d chuckled at that, then left the conversation alone, now that I knew where Ozzy’s thoughts were at, my focus on making sure everything was set up for the show, which had been phenomenal. Now it was Sunday afternoon and we’d gathered in Jagger, Robbie, and Keegan’s suite to work out how we intended to spend the day together.
I watched everyone looking around at everyone else, shoulders shrugging in response to my question about a tie vote, and rolled my eyes.
“Okay,” I typed. “Everyone who voted for food, strip clubs and chicanery, raise your right hand.”
I did a quick count, pausing in front of Keegan to nudge his knee. “Your other right, fucker,” I grumbled at him.
Everyone chuckled when he switched hands, while I just shook my head and made a mental note of whose hand was raised this time, so I could try to figure out who the hell hadn’t voted.
Claude’s hand being in the air was no surprise, nor were Keegan’s, and Dash’s. Seeing Jagger choose going with Keegan over hanging back with Robbie at the beach sort of came as a shock, until I remembered that Jagger had opted to remain by Robbie’s side the last three times a vote had come up. Balancing time in a poly relationship, especially one that took place while living a mostly nomadic lifestyle, could not have been easy, but so far they were doing an awesome job of finding balance.
Rebel looked torn, then it dawned on me that he’d had his hand up for chicanery the first time I’d asked. Now, he had both hands up and just looked sheepish when I cut him a look.
“Okay, so now we have one undecided fucker, great, that settles nothing,” I typed, “which of you bastards didn’t vote the first time?”
“It, um, was me,” Kit said, a slight flush spreading out across his nose. “I didn’t know that I was supposed to. Sorry.”
Unlike Claude, who’d automatically assumed that he got a vote, Kit just looked sheepish as he squirmed in his seat.
“Nothing to apologize for. You now hold the deciding vote in how we spend the rest of our day, so what’ll it be?” I typed.
I’d known when I’d declared the day to be one of group bonding where we’d be spending our time together that the guys would have differing thoughts on what that time should look like.
While option A was chicanery and shenanigans, option B involved the beach, a bonfire, swimming, and lounging around on the sand. Ozzy, Mickey, Robbie, and Johnny had quickly opted for that one, and I suspected that to be the way Kit was leaning, too. Now to wait and see if he’d actually have the guts to say that out loud.
“The beach,” he said after looking around at everyone.
“Good man,” Robbie declared, which just made Kit flush a little more.
Ozzy had already warned me that he was shy about accepting praise, and welcoming and receptive of feedback of all kinds, even when it came out as harsh and hypercritical, something Ozzy had also expressed regret about.
“Man, he just caught me at a bad time and in the worst possible mood to hear what he was working on, and it wasn’t even his fault. He didn’t approach me and ask me to listen, I chose to click on a clip he’d shared with me, and I ripped it to shreds before I could check myself and phrase things a bit gentler. Shocked the hell out of me when I found out that he’d worked on the suggestions I’d made, but what stunned me more was when he sent me a revised version to listen to after I’d torn the previous one to shreds. That’s when I knew the guy was going to be one of the great ones.”
“Gotta be able to take criticism if you wanna grow,” I said.
“True enough, but most people don’t come back for more.”
If the critique was as harsh as he’d claimed, and I never knew Ozzy to sugar coat anything, then it was a testament to Kit’s desire to be the best drummer that he could be for him to open himself up to more of the same treatment.
Too many people claimed that they wanted brutal, honest feedback only to balk when the praise they’d misled themselves into thinking they’d earned never materialized.
I’d never understand the way the mind worked, or how people were able to delude themselves into thinking that sheer and utter crap was really solid gold, but they were the same folks who immediately started whining about people being harsh and mean when they received the honesty they’d claimed they’d been after. I mean, if they’d wanted smoke blown up their asses they should have said so, then proceeded to the local fetish club where I was certain that there were people there into that sort of thing and willing to give them exactly what they were after.
There were a few grumbles, and I noticed Claude looking a bit sour, but he didn’t say fuck all as we dispersed to our buses.
After a brief stop to pick up supplies, we bounced along a bumpy road toward the private beach where for ten bucks a vehicle, we could spend the day in relative seclusion.
Considering how many people we had, we were lucky it wasn’t ten dollars a head, not that we’d have minded paying it when all the money they raised went to maintaining the long stretch of beach and the jetty that stretched out into the waves.
“Whoa,” Johnny breathed as we stepped down off the bus. “This is just like West Island beach back home.”
“Tell me about it,” Rebel said, stretching his arms up and sighing contently. “I lost count of how many songs we wrote out there.”
I knew, without anyone coming right out and saying it, that a time would come when guys would break off with notebooks and instruments, looking for a place to create and commune with the voices in their heads. One, if not more songs would be birthed here today, in between relaxing and bonding.
As for me, I was looking forward to walking along the beach with Johnny and collecting sea glass, shells and whatever shimmering rocks called to us from the surf. We needed this way more than we needed another day of sightseeing and drinking our way through clubs and pop up events.
I knew the guys in Damaged Saints, aside from Mickey, had been heavy party boys for a very long time, myself included, but the pyro accident that had ended my singing career had changed all of us.
We were all still processing the fact that we’d been betrayed by someone we’d been close enough to that we’d been working on arranging the chance for him to cut a demo, only to have it literally blow up in his face when he’d grown impatient.
Seeing Claude trudge down off Blissfully Immune’s bus with Ozzy at his side made me a little anxious, wondering if he was going to be pissed when he learned that he hadn’t gotten the spot.
He had been quieter since the evening by the bonfire, far more subdued and with far less alcohol in his hands when I saw him. Whatever Ozzy was saying to him, and might still be saying to him, since I could see Ozzy’s lips moving as they walked a little ways away from the group, must have had some kind of impact on him. He looked like a chastised child, with his head down and his hands shoved in his pockets, sneakers toeing a rock as he and Ozzy kept walking.
I hoped it was a case of anxiety and nerves that had made Claude act out the way he’d done. He’d definitely seemed to feed off Dash’s competitive nature, and I could see where someone feeling out of their element and uncertain could have been made to feel like behaving the way he had was the best way to fit in. I hoped he trusted and respected Ozzy enough to admit to it, because honesty was the only way anyone was going to be able to help him find better coping methods. Ozzy had said he was a badass drummer and he never gave that kind of praise unless it was warranted. Which told me that his mouth and demeanor might be the very thing that was keeping him from landing a permanent home with a band.
As for Kit, he was walking beside Rebel, who was already stripping off his shirt and hopping around, trying to pull off a shoe without toppling over. I shook my head as Kit was forced to grab his arm to keep him from faceplanting in the sand as they laughed about something.
He was in good hands and it was good to see Rebel laughing. He’d been broody lately, even after Johnny’s good news, which left me to wonder what was going on with him.
Look at me, in manager bear mode. I’d really come to think of Johnny’s band family as an extension of my own band family.
“Last one in gets cuffed to the headboard at the next hotel,” Jagger declared.
I whipped my head around to see him take off running for the surf in board shorts, the rest of his shoes and clothes already discarded somewhere. The look on Keegan’s face when he glanced at Robbie, who was barefoot in jeans and a tank top, was priceless. He shrugged and took off after him, still fully dressed, kicking off a footrace between him and Robbie that ended when Robbie raced past him and into the water in his jeans, when Keegan paused to pull his Converse off .
They’d better use a few extra scarfs and hope the headboard didn’t break when they had him tied to it. I’d hate to see the bill from the hotel if it did, but I loved seeing the joy on his face when he finally stripped down to a small pair of swim trunks and waded on in.
Rebel and Kit soon joined the splash fight that ensued, while Johnny laced his fingers with mine.
“I think we’ve earned some alone time, don’t you?” Johnny said.
Nodding, I let him lead me toward the jetty, a small backpack on his back that I knew contained the notebook he kept ziplocked in a bag, since he took it everywhere, even floating down the river when he’d gone tubing with Dash. The pair had come back with a new melody, something they were still looking to put all the words to. Once they were closer, they’d bring in Rebel and Ozzy and the four of them would hole up in a suite or on their bus, polishing it until they were ready to unveil it in one of their performances.
“It’s the perfect day to just live,” Johnny said, our hands swinging between us.
He had a small, covered butter container in his free hand, and I couldn’t wait to see what we found to add to it.
“Damn right it is.”
“I found this tutorial on wire wrapping,” Johnny said as he bent to inspect a speck of blue in the sand. It turned out to be a bottle top, and to my surprise, Johnny pulled a plastic bag from his pack that he looped through one of the D rings. He put the cap in and went right back to focusing on the sand.
“What’s the bag for?” I asked as a gull skimmed the surface of the water before arching back up into the sky, a small fish held in its beak that was steadily trying to flop its way free.
“Just in case we see any litter,” he explained. “One of the reasons West Island beach back home was made private and people have to pay now to be out there was that the folks who drove up from the city treated it with the same disregard as they did our South beach. You can’t even walk in the sand barefoot there anymore with all the needles and glass embedded in it. It’s so bad, which sucks, because that’s where I always played as a kid. We all did. We’d get out of school on warm days and head down there, do a bit of swimming, lounge around, flirt and play frisbee. I keep meaning to pick one up for days like this, then I forget and I’m sad because I know the guys would love to play frisbee on the beach again.”
I made a mental note to get a few the next time we did a supply run. With the lives we led, the simple things and opportunities to make memories were truly important to us.
“It’s shitty, the way people spoil amazing places through sheer laziness, stupidity and entitlement,” I grumbled.
“The disregard for basic common decency is appalling,” Johnny said. “So, I carry a bag for beaches and when I’m hiking in the woods. It might not be much, but it’s something to make the place just a little better.”
“Babe, you make everywhere you are a little better just by being there,” I said as I slid an arm around him and tugged him against my side.
I loved the way we fit, his head beneath my chin, smelling of sea salt and pachouli, gods but I loved that scent on him. Sighing, he snuggled there, tipped his head back, and those inviting lips lured me in.
Sweet and tasting of the raspberries he’d been nibbling on the bus, it soon morphed into all out passion as he melted against me, fisted my hair, and eagerly plundered my mouth.
“I love you,” he said as he drew back, the tip of his pink tongue poking between his lips, even as he lowered his gaze a little.
Oh, hell no. No shy, uncertain Johnny. Not now, not in this moment, no fucking way. I cupped his cheek until he raised his eyes back to meet mine.
“I love you to the depths of the ocean and distance of the farthest star,” I murmured. “I think I’ve always loved you, even when I tried not to see you watching me. I’m sorry it took me so long to get my head out of my ass and see that you were the only one I’d ever need, the only one who could fulfil the hole in my soul that music couldn’t completely close up. You have, though. You with your sassy vulnerability and wild, rebel soul. You’re everything, Johnny. Every damn thing. I love you, too. No clue how I ever got so lucky.”
“Simple,” Johnny said before going up on tiptoes to kiss me again. “You stole my magical Lucky Charms away from me, and all that luck rubs off, let me tell you.”
We laughed at the reference to Jagger’s nickname and the way his permanent presence in my life had segued into having his best friend hanging around all the time, too. The two really were a package deal, but I was glad they’d decided to travel separate paths. Otherwise, I’d never have gotten to where I was right now, and this perfect moment, with Johnny in my arms as we stared out over the rolling ocean to a horizon that seemed to go on forever. Goddess willing, that’s how long we’d have together, too.