Chapter Fourteen #2
My caseworker had removed me and Griff and put us back in a group home when he found out she was undergoing cancer treatments, which sucked, because we were family support, despite his insistence that we were too young to care for the person who was supposed to be caring for us.
He hadn’t even allowed the staff there to take us to see her, though she’d made the trip to see us when she could, looking frailer and weaker each time we saw her, until one day, the visits just stopped.
No one had wanted to tell us the truth, but we’d insisted on knowing anyway.
Maybe it would have been best to wonder or assume she’d forgotten about us the way others had, but knowing she’d died and been buried in a cemetery that we could at least slip into from time to time to visit had brought closure.
We used to go back on her birthday every year to lay flowers, even when life was truly fucked up.
Next year, I’d take Payden with me and maybe even take him to a few of the early places my band and I used to play back in the day.
Well, the ones that were still standing, anyway.
We’d seen a lot of bars come and go over the years.
Hell, we’d even been in one the night it caught on fire.
Shit.
Focus.
I checked the time and saw that I still had plenty before I needed to start supper, so I logged into the first social media account, stunned to see that I’d been tagged several times since I’d been on the platform last. Several were photos people had taken with me while I’d been playing on the streets, despite my insistence that I wasn’t who they thought I was.
Beneath one of them, about five months back, Griff had posted a message, asking where in the city the photo had been taken.
I’d been in Corpus Christi at the time, having been drawn down there by the offer of a two-thousand-dollar payday to appear and play at a local metal festival.
The woman had paid what she’d offered and found me a couple other gigs too. It was a sweet enough deal that I’d thought about sticking around the area, until it became apparent that she was looking for more out of the relationship than the chance to be my manager.
The guy who’d posted it had replied, and Griff had thanked him. It was enough to prompt me into looking at the comments under a few of the other images too. Sure enough, there was a comment from Griff asking the same question under all of them.
Damn.
Why the fuck would he be looking for me after the things we said to each other the night we’d parted ways?
Okay, so maybe it hadn’t been the best idea to engage in that discussion with him while he was already fucked up, but those days Griff had been fucked up from sundown to sunrise and every waking point in between, so when the fuck else was I going to talk to him?
Sighing, I moved forward with my original plan, which was a long, frank, brutally honest post about what I’d been doing since the band had broken up, along with a plea at the end to take any job applications from me seriously, that I was living in L.A. and looking for work.
I posted an abbreviated version on a second social media account and a link to the original post on my third social media profile since that one didn’t allow for use of that many characters in messages on that platform.
Yes, it was only three by the time I’d finished, and after checking my emails to see that the only message I’d received back so far had been from the same music store manager that questioned my identity, I was starting to feel like I was already failing.
His response read: Holy shit. Dude! You don’t want this job.
At that point, I was starting to get frustrated when I typed back, Dude, yes, the fuck I do!
If this was what the application process had been reduced to, then I was going to need some serious advice on how the fuck to proceed from here.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached the phone-a-friend section of this little fiasco and hope you’ll be patient while we navigate the choppy waters ahead… with any luck we won’t be making a huge mistake in the process.
Before I could talk myself out of it, I pulled Payden’s father up in my contact list, reminded of what Payden said about his parents being the smartest people he knew, and hit the phone icon next to Callen’s name, relieved when he answered after a handful of rings.
“Stone, is everything okay? I thought Payden was working today?” He asked instead of saying hello. Shit, I hadn’t meant to worry him.
“He is, and I have everything set up so I can have supper ready for him when he gets home, since I’m sure the day felt extra-long for him after just coming off his vacation,” I explained.
“But I was hoping you had time for me to pick your brain about the problem I’ve already run into while digging into the job market. ”
I went on to explain to him about the email, as well as the qualifications I didn’t have for some of the jobs I’d found.
I told him about the other idea I’d had, to design flyers the way my band brothers and I had done to advertise ourselves when we were coming up, offering private guitar lessons, and how I feared that the people who saw them wouldn’t believe it was me either, even if I stuck a photo of myself on it.
I tossed around the idea of setting up on a corner or in the park the way I had in other cities, though admittedly, it had barely kept my needs met some weeks with how hard it had gotten to find areas where the cops didn’t come around and try to kick me out almost as soon as I started playing.
By the time I finished, I felt relieved to have shared my concerns with someone, even if it might diminish me more in his eyes.
He hummed and sounded thoughtful, taking his time before he answered me.
“You would have a much better chance of people trusting in what you want to offer if you give them proof that you’re really in the city, but I don’t think you should do that by going out and playing on the street corner.
I think your best bet might be reaching out to the bars and clubs in the area and seeing if any of them would be a fit for your music and have a spot that they need filled.
You don’t need to make it a long-term thing if you don’t want to, but it might be a good way to get the ball rolling. ”
“I-actually, I like that idea better than spending my days wandering around,” I admitted.
“Having things lined up where I can put together a schedule would let me plan things for when Payden’s off too, so we can enjoy our time together.
He’s given me a glimpse inside his day planner so I could see the list of activities and events he’s already scheduled to attend for work, not to mention the interviews and other things he’s responsible for, so having something written will let us see where our free time lines up. ”
“Exactly, and cut down on the worrying, which we both know he’d do if you were out there trying to hustle up money with your guitar.”
“True.”
Worry wasn’t a look I wanted to see on my boy’s face.
“Thank you for your advice and for listening to me ramble.”
“Anytime,” he said. “Oh, and Stone, whatever you fix tonight, make sure it doesn’t have peas in it. He hates peas.”
Chuckling, I headed to the kitchen after we ended the call and checked the box, sighing when I saw that there were peas in the image on the front.
Fortunately, they were easy to pick out while everything was still dry.
I triple-checked that I’d gotten them all before I started cooking too.
No wonder it had been shoved to the back of the cupboard.
I didn’t need a radio, I just started singing while I worked, hopeful that when I started sending emails around tomorrow, it would go better than it had gone today.