Chapter 4
FOUR
Travis
As part of his conditions of my staying with him, Andy forbade me from smoking, so I had the Ferris wheel of nicotine withdrawal to dominate the amusement park of my ruined life. Andy was also sober after partying hard through the early nineties, and though his rules about that weren’t as strict, I abstained out of respect. It helped to have a clear head to navigate the shitshow.
But I couldn’t completely raw dog life at the moment, so the day after the meeting with Katie Armstrong, I popped a weed gummy in Andy’s basement TV room and turned on Netflix.
Andy found me four hours later, wrapped in a blanket next to an empty bowl of popcorn, watching my third Katie Armstrong movie in a row. I barely acknowledged him when he came in. In this movie, Katie was a small-town bakery owner, and a country music star had come to town to shoot a music video. The scene onscreen featured a flour accident in Katie’s bakery, and the country music star—who had carefully curated scruff, highlighted hair, and veneers you could see from space—was wiping flour from the tip of her nose.
“I couldn’t find you when you weren’t by the pool,” Andy said, dropping into one of the room’s plush chairs. This basement was nicer than any of my apartments growing up, with a huge screen and multiple seats that were deliriously comfortable. My second gummy kicked in, and my body made a bid to become one with the sofa as my mind processed the movie.
“I’m working,” I said.
Andy let those words float for a minute, since it was obvious to both of us that I was watching Netflix stoned. “Right. So what’s the verdict?”
I pointed at Katie onscreen. “She’s good. Really good.” I moved my pointer finger to indicate the hero. “He’s supposed to be a musician, but when they showed him playing guitar, he was holding the fretboard with all his fingers, like a fist.”
“The hell you say.” Andy put his feet up, and the scene shifted to Katie’s apartment, where she was cleaning herself up after the flour incident. She changed out of her baker’s whites into a pretty dress, then looked at herself in the bathroom mirror and shook her head. “What am I thinking? He’d never notice a girl like me,” she said to herself onscreen.
“She’s pretty,” Andy commented.
“She’s beautiful,” I replied. “She’s funny. She has flawless comic timing. She can act. She can sing and dance. She looks good in everything.”
“So you like her,” Andy said.
“What’s not to like?” Katie was sexy, too, though I didn’t say that aloud. It was in the tilt of her chin, her thick lashes, the way she could cock her hip when she wasn’t pretending to be clumsy. She had a body that wouldn’t quit. “She’s literally perfect,” I said. “I’ve never seen a more perfect woman. But she’s right. She’s too perfect, and these movies are okay, but she could do better.”
“And yet, you’re still watching,” Andy observed.
Onscreen, the cowboy kissed Katie. I couldn’t help the disgusted sound I made. “He’s supposed to be a musician?” I heckled the TV. “We kiss way better than that.”
Andy said something else, but I wasn’t listening. I was watching the kiss. I didn’t like it. This was the third guy I’d seen her kiss today, and even though I didn’t know Katie, I was becoming an expert at how she kissed men.
She was good at it. Professional. She knew how to angle her head, where to place her hands. The sides of the guy’s neck, or in his hair, or on his shoulders with her fingers digging in. She knew how to look lost in the moment, like this guy’s presence was carrying her away. She knew how to press against him just enough to be suggestive without being dirty. When Katie Armstrong kissed a man, she knew exactly what she was doing.
It was the men who were the problem. One guy had been so Botoxed it must have felt like kissing wax. The men put their hands on her waist or placed them weirdly on her jaw. This cowboy had his lips pinched closed and was letting Katie do all the work. Katie was a good kisser, and she was wasted on every single one of these deadbeats. Had she ever been kissed properly, even once?
Something switched on in my brain. I felt the pop of disused electrical wires firing up.
I could kiss her better than those guys had. I could kiss her better than all of them.
“Travis.” Andy’s voice was harsh, as if he’d said my name more than once. I glanced over at him.
“What?” I asked.
“Don’t fuck this up. Bad ideas, remember?” he said. “You’ve been having a lot of them.”
I scoffed and looked back at the screen. I had punched my former agent—who had been robbing me for years—and gotten an assault charge. Then I had skipped a court appearance to go to New Orleans, and…Okay, I was impulsive, and all of that was a bad idea. But like I’d told Katie, bad ideas were my favorite kind.
I watched Katie as the cowboy’s ex-girlfriend—who was skinny and evil, of course—came into the bakery, unaware that the sweet, small-town baker had kissed her ex. The evil ex-girlfriend was talking loudly about getting her boyfriend back. Katie looked down, quietly crushed.
I wouldn’t sleep with her. That wasn’t in the deal, and besides, my dick had been in cold storage for months. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt genuinely aroused by anything—not porn, not real-life women, not even my own hand. My body was taking a perma-nap from the waist down. Depression? Anxiety? Stress? Crushing self-doubt? Apocalyptic lack of belief in a future that contained any form of happiness or fulfillment? Take your pick from the buffet, or have a little bit of everything.
I wasn’t going to see her naked, and that was fine. But I could mess her up a little. Like she’d asked me to.
“I liked her,” Andy said. “She’s a nice girl. I don’t want to see her hurt.” We were quiet as in the movie, the cowboy had dinner with his ex-girlfriend, supposedly to talk things out. It was inevitable that Katie would see them in the restaurant and get the wrong idea.
“Let them get back together,” I heckled the TV. “They deserve each other.”
“Both of the agents asked me if you’ve been using,” Andy said.
I frowned. The question was more annoying than offensive. “I’m not. I quit two years ago.”
Even if I felt like lying to Andy—which I didn’t—there was no point. No one knew more about drug use than Andy Rockweller. If I had scored, if I had done anything stronger than these weed gummies in the six months I’d lived here, he would know.
Personally, I had been more of a recreational user. I tried whatever came my way—and in the music business, quite a bit came your way. Drugs were fun, but they never scratched my particular itch, and eventually I gave up out of boredom. It was a hobby that cost a lot of money, so you had to be all in.
“They were just doing their due diligence,” Andy said. “I told them that you’re not using. I would know if you were. I told them you’re basically a good kid who’s had some bad breaks lately, and you haven’t handled it well. I told them that being around a nice girl would do you good. And reviving your career wouldn’t be the worst thing, either.”
I squinted at him. Andy was hard to read, and it was especially hard with my IQ lowered.
“Wait a second,” I said, slow on the uptake. “You didn’t tell me about the meeting beforehand. That’s why I didn’t remember it was happening.”
Andy’s gaze moved innocently away. “I might have said something.”
“No, you didn’t. You sprung that meeting on me. I never agreed to it.” I sat up—a few inches up, anyway. “Tell me the truth. Did you set it up because you want me out of your house? You should have said something if you do.”
“I like having you here,” Andy protested. “You’re low maintenance. It’s like having an animated houseplant.”
That really should have offended me, but—fuck. I was an animated houseplant these days. I used to go onstage and rip up tens of thousands of fans as an average day. I traveled the world and dated beautiful women. Sure, I hated my band, the music sucked, and a lot of the time I’d been miserable and/or loaded, but at least I’d done something with my life.
I glanced back at the movie. Katie had indeed seen the veneer guy with his ex, and she had closed her bakery and was about to drive out of town. What woman would close down her whole business over a dude? It made no sense. I didn’t have to watch the rest, because I already knew the ending, and suddenly, that didn’t cut it.
“This story is too predictable,” I said.
“It’s just a movie,” Andy said.
“Not the movie. Well, yes—the movie. But I meant the script Katie wrote. It wasn’t exciting enough. It was tame. I already knew the ending.”
“I don’t like the sound of that,” Andy said.
“Too late. You got me into this.” I smiled at him. “This script is going to have a plot twist. And I’ve decided I’m going to write it.”