Chapter Sixteen
Stone
Fucker still made me look small, though he wasn’t quite as massive as Shadow, and as always he was unnerving as fuck, with those brilliant, ice-blue eyes of his.
If I hadn’t known him most of my life I’d have sworn he was wearing contacts, but those were just the ones he was born with.
The last time I’d seen on him, all the color had been bleached out of his hair and we’d taken to calling him an ice elf.
It was good to see it blond again, like it had been when we were kids.
Neither of us moved.
Not a handshake or a hug was exchanged.
I was waiting for him to tell me what the fuck he was doing here.
I didn’t know what the fuck he was waiting for.
“I’ve been looking for you,” he said at last.
“I noticed. The question is, Why?”
“You were my brother before we were bandmates,” he said. “That doesn’t end because of a disagreement, no matter how heated it got. You were trying to help me. I should have listened.”
“Yeah, you should have,” I said, still standing there with my arms crossed.
I wanted to hug him. Damn it all, I needed to hug him, but if he was still the bitter drunk I’d left behind, then I couldn’t invite him into the life I was trying to make with Payden.
Not when toward the end there, he had truly started to get mean.
I might not have agreed with all our bandmates’ choices, but calling Mark a mediocre drummer on a good day had been hitting below the belt, especially when Mark had his own demons he’d been struggling with at the time.
“It took a few months,” he blurted, "but I went to rehab. Backslid a few times, but I’ve been out for six months, living above a tarot shop in Palm Springs and picking up occasional gigs with a glam rock cover band to make sure I can pay my rent. I got my chip and everything.”
He even pulled it out of his pocket to show me.
“I fucked up,” he said.
“We both did,” I replied, offering him my hand.
I yanked him into a one-arm hug as soon as he grabbed it, relieved to hear his news.
“Missed you, fucker,” he grumbled in my ear.
“Right back at ya, you rat bastard.”
We slapped each other’s backs, which probably wasn’t the best idea since he nearly knocked the wind out of me before we turned one another loose.
I wrapped my arm around Payden after we’d sat back down, Griff on the other side of me.
Lucas had moved to the other side of Shadow so we could talk business.
I pressed a kiss to the side of Payden’s head and buried my face in his hair for a moment to compose myself.
“Griff, this is my boyfriend, Payden Walters. Payden, meet Griffin Creed. Former Bassist of Savage Destruction…and pretty much the only other family I have in this world besides you and your folks. We grew up together, sort of.”
“What he means is that we shared a foster mother for a while, as well as a couple group homes,” Griff said, being brutally honest about our connection.
“It’s nice to meet you,” Payden said.
“Nice to meet you too, Payden,” Griff said, “and thanks. Something tells me you’re the one responsible for his reemergence.”
Payden blushed and seemed at a loss for words, so I went ahead and answered for him.
“He is,” I said. “He wanted to go on a train ride, and he didn’t want to do it alone.”
Griff nodded and gestured towards the stage I’d been up on a short time ago. “Yeah, you made that abundantly clear in that song, which slayed, by the way.”
Now it was my turn to not know what to say.
“That means it was good, right?” Payden asked, leaning around me so he could see Griff better.
“That means it was beyond good,” Griff told him.
“Thank you!” Payden declared, nudging my side.
“Yes, I know. You told me not to stress about it, you told me it would be fine, and it was,” I said. “So I will be waking up extra early in the morning so I can go out and find all the sundae toppings and ice cream we will need to have dessert for breakfast in the morning.”
“Yay, dessert for breakfast!” Payden squealed.
The moment was perfect. The only noise in the room was the rumble of voices mid-conversation, which his cheerful cry could easily be heard over, prompting someone else to holler, “Hell yeah. Dessert for breakfast.”
I heard Shadow chuckle and looked over to see the corners of his lips twitching.
“The next band better hope they’re more appealing than dessert for breakfast or they are going to have a hell of a time keeping the crowd entertained,” Shadow said, as dessert for breakfast became a rallying cry across the room.
A couple guys on the opposite side of the club added a deep bass growl to the words when they started yelling "Dessert for breakfast!”
Snickering, I shook my head and gazed down at Payden. “See what my little uni started?”
“Yup,” he replied, a sassy grin on his face as he sat up taller. “Another tick mark in the best day ever column.”
“Then that’s all that matters,” I replied.
“Daddy,” Payden asked, pressing his head against my shoulder, “will you write a dessert for breakfast song for me?”
“Of course I will,” I replied, kissing him on the forehead.
“Awe,” Lucas said, though Griff chimed in too and dragged it out longer.
“What, are we back in kindergarten now?” I asked, turning to stare at Griff.
I should have expected that answer. Why I didn’t just shut the fuck up and sit there, I'll never know.
“Yup!”
Groaning, I just hung my head while Payden and Lucas giggled.
“Give it up,” Shadow said, looking grim now. “You’ll never win. Trust me on that.”
Chuckling, I had to agree.
Steve took the mic again as the last dessert for breakfast cry echoed through the room. “Sorry, folks, we don’t have dessert for breakfast here tonight, though I know some of you out there are industrious enough that they’ll probably be playing here in a month or two.”
Laughter and hoots went up around the room, though one large, red-headed guy stood and proudly announced that he was a drummer looking for a band.
“My point exactly!” Steve declared. “Now sit down so I can bring Anarchist Dreams out here!”
The lights went up, amid the tapping of a drum beat, before the guitarists joined in. The one on the right side of the stage was solid, if a little dull and uninspired, and almost immediately, I turned my attention to the other one, who didn’t sound half bad.
“Why is he staring at his hands when he plays?” Payden asked, leaning in so he could speak directly into my ear. “You don't play like that.”
“I did, when I was learning, before I learned to trust that my fingers knew the chords better than my brain did.” I said, once I’d turned his head so he’d be able to hear me.
“He’s paying too much attention to his hands, second-guessing, which is sad, because his playing changes every time he glances up, gets smoother, and takes on an even flow instead of being choppy. ”
If he were still curious, I’d explain more when we got home tonight, after our showers, when we were snuggled up in bed. Get me talking about music and there would be no stopping me, which probably meant it would work the same as when I told him stories, and he’d drift right off to sleep.
Their singer needed to turn his mic up, or the rest of the guys needed to turn their amps down.
Either way, he was hard to hear over the guitars, bass, and drums that accompanied him.
It was impossible to tell if he had a good voice or not.
My gaze drifted back to the guitarist. His head was slightly tilted up, enough to let his eyes drift over the crowd.
In those few moments, the rift he was playing took on another life, passionate and inspired, before he ducked his head again and made himself mess up a few minutes later by focusing too hard.
By the time they finished their five-song set, they didn’t sound any different from any other struggling garage band.
They brought a ton of energy to their performance, though they rarely interacted with one another.
Whether they were still in the feeling-out period, waiting to see if they gelled with one another, or so early in the performance phase as a band that they were afraid of tripping over something or crashing into one another was hard to tell, but it clearly affected their performance.
The cheers were lackluster when they finished, and most folks turned their attention right back to the conversations they’d been having before the band came on.
When the waitress came by, we had our drinks refilled with Griff ordering a Coke instead of a Sprite, but he’d always been a cola guy with a caffeine addiction.
As soon as they’d started making caffeinated water, he’d started drinking that too.
I swear, if they made caffeinated milk, his lactose-intolerant ass would be pouring it on his damn cereal for the extra buzz.
“Are you getting tired, sweetheart?” I asked Payden.
“No, this is fun, plus I have tomorrow off and get to sleep in as long as I want and do absolutely nothing but watch movies and play with you once I get up,” he replied.
“Really?” I asked, smirking as he nodded his head. “And what kind of games do you have in store for me?”
“All kinds,” he replied, then leaned in so he could whisper in my ear. “Including naughty ones.”
Oh yeah, tomorrow was gonna to be awesome!
Steve took the mic again, and a hush fell over the crowd because fog had begun to roll out thick until all I could see was shadows moving through it as the band, Death’s Doorstep, took the stage, and holy shit, they grabbed the crowd’s attention right from the jump when their lead singer strutted through the fog with black hair streaked with electric purple hues, and enough hardware in his face that it had to be a bitch for him to get through airport security.
It didn’t stop there either. I could see metal beneath the shimmery indigo top he wore, and when his leather kilt billowed, there was a fucking corset piercing running up his thigh.
Fucker even had purple contacts in, and the rest of the band was just as goth-ed out.
Their sound was heavy but grungy too, dark, but man, when he delivered those lyrics, he dragged you into the abyss right with him.
I could have listened to him for the rest of the night, but their set only allowed them six songs.
They were amazing ones, though.
At one point, the singer crawled across the stage during a guitar solo and stayed on his knees while the guitarist continued to play.
Everything about the interaction felt natural, from the way the singer stared up at the guitar player, worship and adoration etched into his face, to the way the guitarist stepped over top of him until the singer bent backward, lying beneath the guitarist’s spread legs, the lights dipping lower and lower as the fog washed over them again while the singer delivered the final, chilling words to the song.
Then there was silence.
Yeah, we called for an encore, the whole damned room exploded, and since they were the last band of the night, Steve had them come back out and perform two more songs.
The singer stood behind their keyboard setup for one, and as he had during pieces in their first set, he played, though this time, it was for longer than the intro.
His guitar player’s answering chords were like a plea, as his bass player joined the singer on the harmony of the song.
The drums were light, until their drummer busted out a somber rhythm, joined by the bass player.
They didn’t just play the song, they performed it and the one they finished the encore with before bowing and leaving the stage.
“Now that might be a band for you to meet and think about interviewing for one of your features,” I suggested to Payden. “Something tells me that they will not remain a local band for long.”
His eyes widened before he nodded enthusiastically, and returned to people watching, drinking in the atmosphere in the room.
We'd wait for the crush to die down, chill a bit longer with Griff, Shadow, and Lucas, but not too long. I wanted my boy to enjoy himself tomorrow, not be grumpy and try to sleep the day away, because I fully intended to enjoy whatever games he had planned to their fullest.
And maybe dream up a few of my own.