Chapter 24
(Kit)
“Why am I the only one who has to wear a blindfold?" I asked, eyeing the purple bandana Johnny held out to me.
“Because my esteemed band brothers and I have cooked up a surprise to officially welcome you to Blissfully Immune,” Johnny declared. “So, put it on so you can be surprised.”
“I swear if you guys are dragging my ass on one of those survivor adventure things or some shit like Fear Factor, you will find out just how fast I’m willing to tap out if it involves ziplines or bugs,” I declared as I reluctantly accepted the blindfold and wrapped it around my head.
“You can’t see anything, can you?” Johnny asked, fiddling with it while Rebel tied it in place.
“Not even a sliver of light,” I grumbled.
“Good, don’t mess with it,” Johnny said as he made a final adjustment.
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” I muttered and slumped against the back of the couch.
“Don’t worry, you’re gonna love this,” Rebel said, his voice rumbling in my ear as he sat beside me.
“I bet you say that to all the boys,” I scoffed.
Snorts, chuckles, and Johnny commenting he does, made me feel a bit better about this whole blindfolded thing. I trusted my bandmates, but I’d heard horror stories about bands hazing their new members and hoped I wasn’t about to be part of those statistics.
“I do not,” Rebel protested. “I only say it to the ones I plan to call back.”
“Gotta get their numbers first,” Ozzy said.
“Damn, I knew I was forgetting something,” Rebel shot back.
Their voices were distinctive enough that I could easily follow the conversation, especially when Rebel spoke.
I could almost picture the look he was giving Ozzy, all wide-eyed innocence that we all knew was fake.
If Rebel were an emoji, he’d be the one with devil’s horns and a battered halo hanging from the tip.
The image made me yearn for the notebook I carried everywhere these days, thanks to Rebel.
Fucker had gotten it for me himself, along with a pack of regular pens and the most obnoxious, googly-eyed troll pen with hair that stood up at least three inches.
I’d treasure it long past when it ran out of ink, not just because he’d given it to me, but because with it, I’d written the first song that I was truly proud to share with the band.
Thank you twisty roller coaster ride and forty-five seconds of regretting my life choices, which was what the song ended up being about.
And not just my life choices, when the band started adding bits in, like Rebel’s line about screaming tires in the night and a brother’s sacrifice that he could never pay back, it became a testament to the mistakes that still haunted us.
The way they worked to shape it, diving in even when I hemmed, hawed, and hedged about what I’d been going for, showed me what Rebel had tried to explain to me when I’d told him my songwriting was too rough to share with them yet.
I couldn’t have asked for more patient or knowledgeable teachers.
No one had given me shit about my word choices or the way some of the lines had lacked punch.
I’d bristled when they’d dissected the song, until I saw them fill in the gaps, building off the lines where I’d bared my soul, adding their own pain to the narrative.
“How long did Draven say he had us booked at the lodge for?” Dash asked.
Out of all of them, he was the quietest and the hardest to get a read on. Sometimes I’d spot him at the edge of the group, staring off into space like he was searching for something.
“Three and a half weeks of pure and utter relaxation,” Ozzy replied. “You will find me in one of the hot springs when I’m not in a food coma.”
“I’ll either be on a snowmobile or in front of the fireplace with my guitar,” Rebel declared.
Now that caught my attention. “They’ve got snowmobiles?"
“Yup.” Rebel replied, “Why, are you interested in joining me?”
“Hell yeah! Think we can find a few thermoses for hot chocolate?”
“I never ride without one,” Rebel said. “We can throw a couple in a backpack and see where the trails take us.”
“Bet!”
The bus rocked gently over what felt like a speed bump, and not long after, we parked, and Rebel took my arm.
“Almost there,” Rebel said as he escorted me off the bus.
What hit first was the scent of fresh air tinged with something slightly fishy, then light, when Rebel tugged the bandana off my face.
“Surprise!” Rebel said. “And seriously, welcome to the band; we’re lucky to have you on the road with us.”
Rebel pressed something into my hands as the guys cheered. When I finally tore my gaze from the empty stretch of beach, I looked down to see a giant popcorn bucket with Stitch’s face all over it.
“Hell yeah we are!” Johnny said.
“You’re cool,” Dash said. “I can rock with you.”
High praise coming from him.
“Thank you for saving my dream,” Ozzy said. “Getting to watch you guys soar to greater heights will be my pleasure.”
Words caught in my throat, so I just hugged him in response.
“Come on, you’ve got sea glass to find,” Rebel said, draping an arm over my shoulder as soon as I stepped away from Ozzy.
“Did you do this?” I asked as we headed for the water.
“It was a group decision. All I said was that a day at the beach would be the perfect band bonding experience to officially welcome you.”
“Really?”
“Okay, so I might have reminded them of what you said about hobbies, but Ozzy was already thinking beach too. We’ve got a cooler full of things to chuck on the hibachi and some frisbees and things for later.”
“Thank you. I knew there was a big softy under all that snark.”
“And hair, don’t forget the hair,” he replied, twisting a lock of those red-gold waves around his finger.
“Yeah, the hair is pretty cool too,” I conceded as I bent to poke at a sliver of something aqua in the sand.
Score!
Into the bucket it went.
“Where are we anyway?” I asked, eyes glued to the sand, shoes and socks discarded, and legs of our jeans rolled up as we walked in the surf.
“Lake Superior, I hope it will do until we reach the coast.”
“My first Great Lake,” I declared, drinking in the view. “Talk about spectacular.”
Every now and again I’d turn up a bit of trash, but Rebel had brought along a plastic bag for just that reason, shrugging when I raised an eyebrow at him.
“It’s the least we can do,” he said. “I wish folks would do more cleaning up on the beaches back home. They’re impossible to enjoy now, which is a shame, with all our beautiful coastline.”
“People suck, sometimes.”
“Unfortunately.”
He plucked something dripping from the water and turned it towards the sun, the coin catching a glint of light and shimmering when the sun hit it. “Hey, check this out. It’s not American.”
He turned it over, studying it from a different angle. “It’s not Canadian either; I think it’s British! Sweet!”
He plonked it into my bucket among the other treasures we’d found.
“Are you sure you don’t want to keep it?” I asked.
“Naa, I want you to add it to your treasures,” Rebel said. “Maybe make something out of it that we can display on the bus.”
“A shadowbox,” I said, already envisioning it. “With the coin at the center and shells and sea glass around it. Let’s see what else we find. We can sort through it all when we have the rest of the supplies and put it together.”
“We?”
“Hey, it was your idea,” I said. “I know it’s not as exciting as rebuilding an engine…”
“No, I’d love to help,” he admitted. “It just surprised me to be included.”
“Why wouldn’t you be?”
“I dunno,” he muttered. “It’s your thing, ya know.”
“So? Doesn’t mean I have to do it alone.”
“True. It’s always more fun to work on a car with someone else,” he admitted. “There’s plenty of coastline out where I built and a T-top Camero in the garage just waiting for us to cruise in. Unlike the Impala, it's road ready and raring for a long drive. Can you tell I like muscle cars?”
“Really? I never would have guess,” he said, dryly. “Why’d you choose Newport Beach instead of something a little closer to New Bedford?”
“It’s close enough,” he explained. “I always loved it out there. When my old man was growing up, the amusement park was still open. He was always nostalgic about that place, so he’d take me out there, just to walk along the coast and tell me stories about the bands he and his friends saw at the Palladium and the time they got the Free Fall record for riding it sixty-four times in a row.
He said they’d cut school and spend the day on the rides, since it was never crowded, and stick around for a concert later.
Old school shit, no seats, just mosh pits everywhere. ”
“Damn. Did you get your love of music from him?”
“Hell yeah, his CD collection is a thing of beauty,” he explained.
“He’d come in from work, grab something at random from one of the racks, and fill the house with music for the first hour before you could even talk to him.
That was his de-stressor. Everything else could wait.
He didn’t sign school forms, answer questions, or even pass out our allowances until after the first CD. ”
“I can appreciate that.”
“Same. Now. As a kid, not so much sometimes, especially if I was trying to duck out and he insisted I take my kid sister along so she wouldn’t pester the hell out of him for something.”
“That’s called getting thrown under the bus.”
“Tell me about it. Especially when that kid loved to rat me out.”
“So, you were always a troublemaker.”
“I prefer the term adventurous,” he replied. “I’ll even accept precocious and overly curious. The trouble part was always accidental.”
“Uh-huh, why don’t I believe that?”
“Okay, so mischievous might be an option too.”
“Now you’re getting closer.”
“Fine, my buddies and I got into some shit before I started taking music seriously. Afterward, man, the thing I hated the most was being grounded and told that I couldn’t touch my guitar.
I’d have rather been told to clean the apartment top to bottom or be put on dish duty for a month, but my old man knew how to drive a point home.
Taking away my guitar, that was his best way of assuring that I didn’t pull the same shit again. ”
“Now the truth comes out,” I said, nudging him with my arm. “Troublemaker.”
“Yeah, yeah. I’ve been working on toning it down. No one likes a pissed-off Draven. Now that he’s become our manager, he’s tapped into a side of himself that’s scary as fuck. I’d prefer to stay on his good side, thank you very much.”
“Got chewed out, didn’t you?”
“More than once,” he replied. “It still feels like half my ass is missing.”
“I can check that for you later, if you want.” Those were my words, but the coy, teasing tone in my voice wasn’t one I recognized.
It seemed like he was starting to influence more than just my songwriting.
“Anytime, anyplace.”
Game on!
I reached for the back of his t-shirt and tugged until he stopped and glanced back over his shoulder.
“Seems like just as good a place as any,” I replied, batting at his hands when he reached for his belt buckle.
I fumbled with it for a moment, pressed against his back, before I got it undone, popped his button, and lowered the zipper.
“Just right out here in the open, huh?”
I turned to see that our wandering had carried us down the beach from the rest of the band, so far away that all I could make out was the shape of them on the rocks and sand.
“Unless you’re feeling shy,” I remarked, slipping my fingers through the slit of his boxers to caress him.
“Never.”
He punctuated it by shoving his jeans off his hips so they pooled at his feet, chuckles turning to moans when I stroked him.
“Thought you were supposed to be checking my ass,” he muttered as I nuzzled his neck and shoulder and stroked again, grazing my teeth over the skin this time.
“In a minute.”
“Fuck! You do not play fair.”
“How so? I asked, lips pressed to the side of his neck, stroking slowly, just teasing, since that’s as far as I dared take it, exposed the way we were.
“Gah! You know how!”
“I’m not sure I do,” I replied, nipping him. “You might need to enlighten me.”
Groaning, he sputtered a few unintelligible words that ended in a whimper when I ran my thumb over the head of his cock.
Time to stop now.
“Ass is all there, by the way,” I said, tugging his boxers away from his body so I could peer down the back of them. “No teeth impressions either. I’d say you got off lightly.”
“I’d prefer to just get off,” he grumbled and bent to yank up his jeans.
His ass was right there, barely covered by those thin boxers, so I palmed a cheek and gave it a little squeeze.
Yelping, Rebel jumped, tripped over his jeans, and landed in the sand, ankles still trapped by the denim. Snickers bubbled over as he floundered around, ass in the air, before he rotated onto his back and started flopping, struggling to pull his jeans up so he could stand.
“There is sand in places I don’t even want to think about now, thank you very much,” Rebel grumbled as he stood and tried to brush himself off.
He wasn’t wrong. Even with me alternating between helping him and laughing so hard I just got in the way; there was no wiping away all the sand that clung to his hair and clothes.
“I can always do a sand inspection later,” I offered. “Make sure you got it all off in the shower.”
“You’re hell-bent on getting me naked today, aren’t you?”
“Are you complaining?”
“No chance in hell.”
“Didn’t think so.”