Chapter 37
Paul “Rock Giant” Reed
Trondheim
“No headache today, I trust.”
Paul looked up from his crochet to find Xane resting against the sink unit in the tour bus kitchen. “No,” he said. “Not today. Sorry about the lip.” Whatever swelling had resulted had gone, but there remained a nick in Xane’s lower lip about half an inch left of his piercing.
“Forgiven. It got me at least a dozen sympathy shags.”
Paul and Ash had rejoined the tour as they’d rolled into the outskirts of Trondheim late the previous evening, past the point of the night when anyone was up for talking. Even given the hours they all regularly kept, some conversations were better left until daylight.
“I’m assuming that face isn’t down to the folk museum being closed today?”
Direct it wasn’t, but in over a decade of band life, Paul couldn’t recall Xane ever having asked him anything quite so prying.
Sure, it sounded like a simple observation about Paul’s demeanour due to one of his favourite activities being off the agenda, but it wasn’t.
It was more than that. The clue being the hesitation in their lead singer’s pale eyes.
No contact lenses yet; he’d only recently rolled out of bed and was now wandering about in a pair of beaten-up black jeans, bare-footed, and nursing a brew strong enough to induce angina.
Paul set down his crochet hook. He still had to concentrate on what he was doing to not to constantly muck it up and drop stitches, but it had kept both his mind and his hands busy these last few days.
Ginny or one of the girls had thoughtfully packed it for him when they’d thrown his survival bag into the boot of the Danger Car for his road trip with Ash.
He’d manged a hat a day during their sojourn and was aiming to maintain his record.
Crochet, it turned out, really helped with keeping his mind out of his Bergen hotel room.
“Haven’t seen your girl around much.”
He, of course, hadn’t seen Jodi since they’d left Bergen, though she was in his thoughts pretty much constantly.
“The rest of the Ghosties have been around plenty, but not her.”
“Do you know if she’s okay?”
Xane sighed and scrubbed a hand over his face, before finding himself a perch on the bench on the opposite side of the kitchen table. “I’ve not specifically heard anything to say she isn’t.”
Paul wasn’t sure that meant much. And given that he wasn’t sure what anyone knew, it was impossible to gauge what they might or might not tell him.
“How are you?” he asked, changing the subject.
Xane tilted his head, while his lips became pursed. “Elspeth remind you?”
“Yeah.” Today would have been their former drummer’s birthday.
Paul didn’t routinely make a big fuss over birthdays, especially the birthdays of people who were no longer around to celebrate them, but this one tended to have a melancholy pull on at least two of the people he knew.
He’d had a short Zoom chat with Elspeth a few hours ago.
She’d been subdued but was holding up better than she’d done the previous October seventeenth.
Not that that guaranteed future improvements.
That wasn’t how grief worked. There weren’t any neatly delineated stages you could work through and emerge fixed.
Rather it was a constant rollercoaster. You could drift along fine for years, then wham—loop the loop—and you were mired in the raw loss again exactly as if it’d just happened.
“I’m okay. Okay enough. Have to be. Are we going to talk about what happened?”
“I had a hangover and lost my rag.”
Black hair swished against his bare shoulders as Xane shook his head. “I’ll rephrase. Are we going to talk about why it happened?”
Paul followed the ends of Xane’s hair to the bars through his nipples. Funnily enough he’d never fancied piercing that part of his anatomy. “I didn’t need anyone in my business.”
“Yeah, I guess that explains you trying to choke the living daylights out of Ronnie.”
“Is he okay?”
Xane took a long sip of his brew, then he sucked on his lip ring, making it rotate. “A bit hoarse. Bit subdued, which isn’t such a bad thing. He told me a rather garbled story about the pair of you exchanging bodily fluids at Equinox.”
Well, he guessed it had been inevitable it’d come out. Stuff always did.
“Sounds like he read into it more than he should’ve.”
“Not gay,” Paul muttered. He and Ronnie were never destined to become a thing. He was a cool friend, but it was never going to be more than that.
“Nor’s Ronnie.”
“I like tits and arse, Xane, and even if I’d been remotely interested in it becoming something more than a one off, which I’ll point out I categorically stated wasn’t the case at the time, I’m definitely not interested now I’m hitched.”
Xane’s dually-pierced eyebrow arched impressively, then eventually sank back to normality. “Ronnie hasn’t known you as long as the rest of us. I don’t think he’s got any real understanding of what makes you tick. That, and he gets fixated on stuff. It was me. Now it’s you.”
“Yay!” he groaned, loading his voice with insincerity.
On top of everything else, he’d screwed up a really good friendship at a time when he needed to be hanging on to his friends.
He’d have to attempt to straighten things out with Ronnie for the sake of the band, and because his own code of ethics demanded it.
Hopefully, they could bounce back from the current upset.
“Are you planning on holding a vigil tonight?”
Xane sighed. “Constantly changing the subject isn’t going to distract me. But to answer you, I might take myself up to the roof with a bottle of something for a bit, but I’m not looking to sit around sharing stories.”
“Fair enough.” The roof was the only quiet location on the bus, and for the most part, you could only get away with sitting up there in the dead of night while you were parked up somewhere quiet, otherwise, people wound up gawping at you, or commenting, or getting pissy about the health and safety aspects of it and calling the police.
“You know if you want to talk—”
“I don’t, Xane. There’s nothing to say. Do you want to?”
They both knew that if he did, he wouldn’t be cosying up to him.
Maybe he’d talk to one of his partners, but more likely, Xane and Spook would have one of their weird telepathic conversations and then go and screw their respective loved ones.
Paul didn’t exactly get it, but he missed having someone around he was that comfortable with.
Ash had done his best, bless him, on their road trip, to help him work through his shit, but outside of a love of music and a few common references, they weren’t anything alike.
He missed Elspeth. He missed the D’Amon clan.
And Jack and Gloria, his parents’ pygmy goats, who always had the answers to everything, which was to chew on it.
Hell, he missed his mam and dad, mad buggers that they were.
They’d understand all this. They wouldn’t just tell him he was an oaf for interfering with an established relationship.
They’d get the significance of cosmic signs and the handfasting.
They understood oaths. Had sworn lifelong ones of their own that they’d stuck to through countless ups and downs.
Were determinedly sticking to them now in a way he wished they wouldn’t.
He understood. Christ, he understood. Still, did they have to take the until death us do part bit quite so literally?
“Paul?”
Xane had slid out from where he’d been sitting and was now crouched down to the side of him so that they were on a level. “Are you going to be okay for the show tomorrow night?”
“I’m fine.” Even if he wasn’t, there were too many people relying on him to consider pulling out of a gig at this short notice. “Can I get out, please?”
He waited for his band mate to shuffle aside, then bolted down the bus steps into the sunlight. The arctic wind took the heat out of his skin. It didn’t do shit for his mushy innards.
Okay, so maybe he wasn’t entirely okay, but he would be.
Everything was going to be all right. He just needed to practise acceptance.
Sure, he’d had his heart bruised, and that meant he was feeling everything a bit more sharply than usual, but it’d pass.
Bruises healed. He’d get through this. He’d endure.
Of course he would. The wheel of fate would eventually rotate.
It always did.
And then, maybe, he wouldn’t feel so alone.
He’d seen a happy future written for them in the stars and had listened to the wind between those standing stones whisper their names. All he had to do was persevere and in time... In time all would be well.
That was how the wheel worked.
A wan face looked down at him from the back window of the Ghost Boys bus. Paul’s attention snapped to it—Castle.
She looked as if she hadn’t slept for days or even brushed her hair. His own was easily an inch longer than when the tour started. If he was going to keep it shorn he’d have to get the clippers out.
He almost caught Jodi’s gaze, but she staged a hurried retreat. Was dick spanner giving her hell? He hoped the cats and the rest of the Ghost Boys were providing some comfort. Wished he could be there to do so, too.
His arms ached with the need to embrace her and make everything right.
But she’d chosen dickweed, not him.