Chapter 60
A deep pressure was building in Joni’s chest. Liz was standing in front of her, and behind there was nothing but cloud, air, and a sheer, plummeting drop.
Liz’s voice was thin, ragged with emotion. “Did you have sex with Patrick?”
Joni swallowed repetitively, eyes down. She noticed the goose bumps on her bare legs, that one of her laces had come undone. Wind licked at her neck.
Dublin. That gig had been a beacon, knowing Liz and Patrick would be there.
She’d been losing her head on that tour.
She needed them. Backstage, after the gig, when Liz said she had a migraine, had to go, Joni thought she’d buckle with disappointment.
Everything was spinning out of control—her life, her thoughts, the drugs, all of it. Liz was her anchor.
And then Liz had said, “Patrick will party with you!” and Joni had gripped his arm like it was a lifeline.
She’d taken Patrick to the after-party, introducing him to the band, proud to say, “This is one of my oldest friends, Patrick Wallace.” Her manager, Kai, whom she was already sleeping with, tried to extract her to do a line of coke, but she wanted a clear head.
She wanted to be with Patrick and enjoy his company. So she’d told Kai no.
“I didn’t think you could say no,” Kai had whispered without breaking his smile. “I’ll put a line on your bedside table for later.”
That’s when she knew she needed to leave the party. “Let’s go somewhere else,” she’d said to Patrick, taking him by the hand.
So they’d found themselves in a dark hotel bar, where no one would recognize her, on cold leather sofas, drinking Guinness.
She’d left in her sequined gown, so he’d wrapped his big coat around her shoulders, and she had breathed in that clean soaped smell of his and Liz’s home.
It had smelled like safety, and she’d curled into it, bare feet tucked beneath her.
“How are you, Joni?” he’d asked in the quiet of the bar, and the way he’d said it, looking her right in the eye, it was as if he saw exactly how she was.
She’d talked with honesty about the exhaustion of touring, how her songwriting was drying up, that she wasn’t happy.
He’d held her hands in his. As they’d talked, she’d become aware of the heat in their fingers, connected, palm to palm.
Patrick had looked down at their linked hands.
Swallowed. “I’m not sure,” he said, very slowly, “that I should be holding your hand.”
She felt an electric charge so strong that she couldn’t stop herself from leaning into it—into him. They kissed.
It was an explosion. Like the best hit of any drug she’d taken, the feeling of it lighting up her whole body, electric and delicious and soft and vibrant and so utterly, utterly addictive that her body ached and quivered with its demand for more—because she never wanted the gloriousness of that feeling to end.
“I’m sorry . . . ,” Patrick said. He tucked his hands under his arms, as if he needed to physically clamp them down. “I can’t—”
“I know,” she said, because she did. Liz and Patrick were the two people on earth Joni loved the most, and she couldn’t lose either of them.
And yet, somehow those thoughts were obliterated by the richness of desire and need and wanting .
. . and without thought, there was only body, and their bodies were leaning in, kissing, and she knew he wanted her.
And it was the best high of her life. And if there was one thing Joni Gold liked, it was to get fucking high.
They were already in a hotel. All they needed was a room. Who says no when the drink is poured and already on its way to your lips?
Now Joni expelled an audible breath.
Liz was staring at her, waiting for her question to be answered: Did you have sex with Patrick?