Epilogue #2
“You serious?” I thought tonight could be the luckiest of my life, with meeting Mads and all, but this? A cherry on god damn top! “You’re already planning on going over there and kicking this guy’s arse?” I practically drool at the serendipity.
Cam huffs, “Thinking about it! Why? What did he do to you?”
“He…” I down two more shots because I can’t believe I’m saying this! “Fucker put his hands all over my girl.” I’m a mental case, Cam, institutionalise me! Like sneak me in booze and my guitar and records, but like, lock me the fuck up!
“Jett.” Cam sighs. “Three days ago, you told me you were in love with, uh, I believe you said he was a gogo dancer at the Abbey?”
“Turns out that was, ehrm, not love. He just had a truly great ass.” I slap myself in the forehead.
“So … Jett … aren’t you self-actualized enough to realize this is probably just some girl with another truly great ass and not actually your girl?”
“She will be my girl, Cam, I can fucking promise you that!”
“You expect me to risk getting arrested for beating up some pretty boy actor for touching a girl you aren’t even with?”
“Fine, don’t beat him up, then! Just like, have something unfortunate happen!”
Camden groans, and promises he’s good for it. “Right, I’ll see what I can do. Now go to bed!”
“You know I won’t.” I hang up and make the walk of shame over to where I lobbed the remote and fast forward until that loser leaves the screen and it’s just Cherry and her pack of mean girls.
She’s such a good actress, she’s way too fucking good for you, anyway, look at her!
The fuckery in my brain won’t stop, and the longer I watch her, the worse it gets.
That Rye comes back on the screen, and I growl, storming off the couch.
I pace around the house until the fifth is polished off, and I’ve got my Adidas suit on, the one that lets me channel 90s Liam Gallagher.
I dyed my frizz mess hair orange for my mad hatter costume, and look like such a wank that I throw a matching navy beanie over it.
Suddenly, I’m out the door with a lit cigarette in one hand, a cold Carlsberg lager with a paper bag around it in the other.
Something about Camden telling me to go to bed makes me wanna do the complete opposite, as usual.
I put out the fag after a few minutes, and now I’m calling Camden again, and fuck if I’m not sounding pissed from all that Jack. “On second thought, I’m just gonna handle it. Address, please?”
“Jett,” Cam warns, “what are you gonna do?”
“I just wanna scare him, Cam! That’s all! C’mon!”
“Jett, your therapist and I talked last week, she said this way you get? Right now? She said it’s a trauma response, and that you need to take a triazolam and go to bed! I said I’d handle it!”
“You won’t handle it fucking right, now ping me his god damn address!”
Heavy sigh. “Fine, don’t do anything to get yourself arrested, all right, or I’ll fucking call your mum!”
Fifteen minutes later, and I’m stumbling out of an Uber and into the trendy, low-lit bar under his flat, since I don’t know how I’m gonna get the doorman to let me up. I sip vodka on ice and start checking out all the hot people inside, since no coherent plan is coming to me.
“Damn, you are fucking fit,” I hear myself say compulsorily to a tight, tattooed blonde who sits at the bar next to me.
She looks at me with a smirk that slowly stretches across her face. “Say that again?”
“You are fuckin’ fit, doll, quite like that mermaid tatt on your arm.”
She shakes her head, grinning. “Okay, you’ve got to be him. You’re him, aren’t you? You’re angry, but you’re emotional, like sweet but dark, ugh! My Brit roommate’s been blasting your album for three weeks straight!”
I shake her hand and remind her of my name, complimenting her roommate’s musical taste while she bats her lashes at me like crazy.
“Why the hell are you sitting here by yourself looking like that?” I ask boldly.
“I’m actually just having a little liquid courage before I go upstairs to meet up with my … booty call.”
“And what’s up with this wank that he won’t even come down and meet you for a drink?”
“Well, he is kind of like, on this…” She lowers her voice, “Hit TV show, and he doesn’t really want to be seen so close to where he lives. They’re just about to close, so I was gonna have a quick one and head up there.”
I sigh internally because, shit, of course, the plan has to drop in my lap like this. It’s official, the unhinged, out of control Jett is the only one steering the god damn bus, and with this much Jack in my system, it’s going to be like this for the next six hours, at least.
“Please.” I take her hand and squeeze. “Please tell me you’re not … planning to go up and fuck Rye Meadows?”
Her eyes stretch open wide, and I swear her pupils dilate. “Wh-why, how would you know that?”
I point at myself and make a sweet, sad little smile to go with it.
“Emo boy, yeah? Lots of friends that are birds, y’know.
My best friend is a girl, and…” I drop my voice to a whisper, “She thinks her boyfriend Rye might be cheating on her, that’s why she sent me to do recon.
Are you—is that who your booty call is?”
Her jaw drops, and steam practically billows from her ears. “Rye has a girlfriend?”
The part of me that hates liars must be tied up and gagged in the boot of my brain right now. “Yeah, they’re pretty serious, or so she thought.”
“He told me he was single, he swore to me! Ugh! That asshole!”
“This is not your first time fucking him? So sorry, darling.”
“Was about to be the second time! Ugh!”
I pat her hand and order us shots. “Tell me how angry that makes you, go on.”
She thanks me, slugs down the shot, and I pay while she rants, working herself up into an emotional, angry little tornado that is just right for some revenge. This is what Rye deserves, I tell myself and somehow believe it, for touching Mads in places I cannot.
“Amanda, I think you’re incredibly strong. Why don’t you go unleash the beast on him? Don’t hold back or take any excuses, and I’ll be outside with a car for us. Gotta call my friend and tell her the bad news. After you’re done giving him what for, find me. We can go from there, yeah?”
She hugs me, and the worst part is, I don’t feel anything but pleased with myself, watching her storm out of the bar and up to the doorman. Poor Rye Meadows doesn’t know what’s about to hit him.
* * *
I slowly start to feel myself return to my body in the present.
Like anytime I unlock a blacked-out memory, my head is in my hands, and the rest of the world is filtered out.
But the sizzling amber-spiced vanilla sugar scent invades my senses.
The smell of her brings me right back to the current, dimly lit bar reality and out of the dimly lit one in the old memory.
I open my eyes to see my incredibly hot wife standing there in cut-off denim shorts and a tiny pink tank top, braless, with the mask from our hit slasher flick stretched across her perfect tits.
I remember how she was buzzing this morning, packing for next week when we go on location to film our sequel.
Her ivory skin is now a work of art since she became her own boss, painted with Silas’ tattoos in every shade of black, white, and technicolor.
One hand holding her phone at her hip, the other holding a Jameson on ice.
“You rang, darling?” Maddy asks with a cocked eyebrow.
“I … rang?” I look down to see that, apparently, in my daze, I’d pinged her my location. I pull her onto my lap and kiss her neck.
“Wow, you are really out of it, baby.” She gives me a soft kiss and then sits next to me with a worried look on her face. “Where were you, Jett?”
She means where in my mind, and to make up for the absolute bullshit I just recalled from that place, I need to tell her everything. Now that I’m a married man who parties less, this blackout recall happens often enough, once every other month or so.
“Fuck, nowhere good. I am such a fucking wank!”
She strokes the back of my neck. “No one’s perfect, baby. Another blacked-out memory?”
I nod. “This time about the night we met.”
She grins in the most skeptical way possible, “We’ve literally role-played that night, more than once. You’re telling me there’s more you haven’t told me?”
“Uh…yeah. But like, I swear I just remembered it myself. Those radio people were asking about that night, and the memory, like, ripped itself out of my subconscious. And it isn’t good. You’re gonna need to down that drink and then polish this beer off, and you’re still not gonna like me much.”
Of course, I half expect her to say, 'Aww, baby, I will always like and love you, no matter what,’ but instead she shoots her whiskey back and sighs, “Well, out with it!”
“So…You know my quote, how I don’t associate—”
“With liars? Yeah, heard that a few times in the three years we’ve been married, and yup, before that, too. And yet, we’re both professional liars, Jett!”
“Well, I suppose you’re right about that because I’m the fucking liar, Mads! I am. Me. I’m a hypocrite and a fucking arsehole!”
She kisses my knuckles. “Will you just tell me? Remember, nothing you can do will shock me.”
“Do you, erm, remember a bloke named Rye Meadows?”
“Why wouldn’t I remember Rye- Jett? Oh fuck. What did you do?”
“So, you know I came home and watched Elite’s Academy, but that wasn’t where the night ended, not even close.”
She turns to the barkeep to ask for more whiskey and “lots of fries.”
“Well, I guess I forgot to mention I got so jealous watching Rye put his hands all over your ass that I downed a fifth of JD and blacked out, then proceeded to prowl around LA looking for him, ready to kick his ass!”
“You did not!” She looks momentarily dumbfounded.
“You’d known me for a few hours, and you were so jealous you—” Then she gasps, her hands flying over her mouth, the low bar lights reflecting off my favourite thing I’ve ever bought her, her coffin-shaped sparkler.
“Oh my God, Jett! You did that to him? I remember that!”
“Yes and no…”