20. Chapter 15
Flavour of the Week
Dallas
The high of being on stage is as close to chasing the needle as you can legally get.
At first, it’s hot under the stage lights and your nerves are fried from the excitement and the worry.
Then, you hear the crowd singing back at you, their whoops and cheers as they chant your name, and from then on, every note buoys you up, like the tide rising higher and higher. It’s glorious.
But just like the high, when the crowd fades, when the show ends, the drop comes.
For me, it’s always hit harder and faster than it has for the others.
It’s a bitch. My whole body aches right down to my fingertips, and it’s all I can do to drag my ass back to our waiting tour bus.
Halfway across the parking lot, I’m nearly knocked off my feet by my brother slapping me on the back.
“Whoo!” he cheers, and I wince. “Great show, baby brother!”
Either he doesn’t notice my less-than-warm response or, more likely, he’s done waiting for me to come around.
It’s not that I’m angry at him. Not really.
He saved my fucking life, and I do know that.
But it’s more that the very worst part of me, the addict part, is angry that he did.
Then there’s the bigger, only slightly less fucked up, part of me that doesn’t know what to say to my big brother.
There is no way to articulate the shame and self-loathing or to explain to him that even though I’m happy to be alive and be getting clean again, there is still a deep, dark cavern of want inside me.
Lately, I’ve been trying to stuff that cavern with music during the day and food the rest of the time.
Every second we’re not practicing or performing, I’m stuffing my damn face.
I’m the one who made us stop like six different times on the drive here.
For convenience store snacks, burgers twice, fried chicken, sub sandwiches and finally Mexican because I was craving burritos.
Apparently Rainy-girl was craving them too, since I heard her slink out in the dead of night and eat the one I ordered specifically for her.
The girl must have no taste buds left because she’s the only human I know capable of consuming that much hot sauce.
Her appetite is also the only one that comes close to mine, now that it’s coming back, that is.
Magic, or Mephedrone to use its actual formal title, is a hell of a drug.
It robbed me of my love of food and stripped me of about twenty pounds, too.
Which, I suspect, is why neither Cohen nor Dutch said shit when I ordered four burritos to their two. Not that I mentioned one was for Rain.
That same Rain who stomps up behind us now. She was the last to leave the stage, while Cohen, who left first, is nowhere in sight. I assume he’s already on the bus waiting for the rest of us since we’re leaving for Cambria tonight.
“We need to talk,” Rain says, darting out in front of us, causing my brother and me to stop short. Her unique eyes are riddled with concern, and she looks between Dutch and me. “All of us.”
“I’m guessing that includes our missing guitarist?”
Dutch eyes her carefully. When it comes to Rain Gamble, my brother is determined to know everything there is to know.
The only problem is that I suspect knowing Rain Gamble completely, this adult version of her, might be like throwing yourself into the storm and then trying to predict where the lightning will strike. Impossible.
She gulps at the mention of Cohen but eventually nods, and in an awkward silence the three of us cross the last few feet of the parking lot.
Dutch reaches the bus first, holding the door open for Rain and me. The lights from inside the living space illuminate the short staircase. Though I hate the brightness, it’s not that that makes me wince a second time.
It’s the laughter. The distinctly feminine laughter that punches me right in the gut.
The impact it has on Rain is obvious too.
Her whole posture hardens. Her spine is rigid from where I’m standing right behind her.
I already have an idea of what we’ll see if we go further.
Rain is braver than me and doesn’t let that stop her.
If anything, she moves faster, leaping the steps two at a time until she reaches the top and gets a crystal-clear view of what’s happening.
Despite my dread, that worsening emptiness inside me, I’m urged to follow her by my brother’s footsteps at my back. I barely crest the top step when Rain snorts, “Fucking hypocrite,” and storms forward. She doesn’t wait for Dutch and me to catch up before I hear her bedroom door slam.
My brother mumbles, “So much for our little chat then.”
I don’t reply. Because in the time between, I’ve taken another step. I see what Rain saw. And I don’t move. I can’t. Because what I’m witnessing makes no sense.
I blink. My eyes must be playing tricks on me. I blink again, hoping the image in front of me will change. It doesn’t.
Seated on the small banquette couch is Cohen.
He’s got an open beer in his right hand, and that arm is flung around a blonde woman.
On his other side is a man. Equally blonde.
But none of that is what I latch on to. It’s Cohen’s hand, resting so fucking casually on another man’s thigh.
Not his knee, not somewhere friendly. His thigh.
His jean-clad, ready-to-be-gripped thigh.
Too stunned to speak, I just stare open-mouthed.
My brother has no such issue.
“At least you found age-appropriate groupies.”
“Shut up, Dutch. Just because you’re too busy chasing after pussy you can’t have, doesn’t mean we all should.”
My brother rolls his eyes. He also mumbles something under his breath that sounds suspiciously like, “Who says I can’t,” but that’s the end of his reaction. Unlike Rain, Dutch isn’t easily ruffled.
“Hey! I have a name!” The girl pushes out from underneath his arm. “Let’s go, Jake!”
The guy’s disappointment is obvious as he looks Cohen over one more time. Yet, he gets up too. They traipse past me, but not before this fucking guy looks back at Cohen one more time.
“He’s not a fucking meal,” I grumble, earning myself a sneer from both of them as they exit the bus.
Cohen’s too busy arguing with Dutch about their presence, when what they’re actually arguing about is our lead singer. Neither of them notices that the strangers have left until the bus door slams.
“Man, you just killed any chance I had at getting laid.”
My brother ignores him. I don’t.
“Pretty sure you did that all by yourself, Co. Calling it ‘chasing pussy’ is one thing when you’re some teenage douchebag. It’s a whole other when you’re a thirty-year-old man.”
“Sue me, Dax,” he sighs, slumping against the seat. “I just wanted to get some.”
“No. You wanted to piss Rain off. Mission fucking accomplished.”
I shove past him and my brother, heading for my bunk.
There’s no reason for me to be so angry right now.
Cohen doesn’t owe me anything. We’re just friends.
Best friends. Of course, it’s natural he’d be keyed up after the show and want to get laid.
But why did it have to be with…them? Why didn’t he tell me?
The questions firing through my head make me spiral even more, and I need something to drown them out, or I’ll risk walking my ass right off this bus and straight to the sketchiest bar I can find. Sketchy bars and hard drugs go together like peanut butter and jelly.
“Why are you so angry about this, man?” he calls after me.
I can’t answer that. How do I explain that seeing him hold a man’s thigh like that, owning and possessive, is everything I’ve ever wanted him to do to me?
Then he just goes and does it to some stranger?
Like it was nothing, and not some twisted-up version of my wet dreams and worst fucking nightmares.
Watching from the sidelines while he was with Rain a decade ago was awful.
But she was our Rain, and I loved her too, so I said nothing.
But strangers? Fuck that. Fuck Cohen. Fuck his questions.
My headphones make it easy to drown him out. They’re the huge, noise-cancelling kind, and I pull them out from the small storage box beside my bunk and pop them on. Already, that quiet is better. Better still is the voice of Adam Morell, the lead singer of the Dread Knots, screaming in my ears.
My brother shakes his head before ducking into the bus’s small bathroom.
There’s a shower in there that is barely big enough to fit me, let alone Dutch’s much larger frame, but he always showers before bed.
A habit developed from the last few years of working overnights at the warehouse.
He’d come home sweaty from hauling boxes and assembling parts; tonight, it’s the show that did it.
I continue to ignore Cohen, grabbing a seat at the small dining table rather than join him on the couch.
He keeps trying to talk to me. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see his lips moving; I can feel his eyes on me, but I don’t make eye contact, nor do I hear a word, not until one track ends and the other begins.
In a moment between, I finally catch him scowl and say, “Fuck this,” before sulking away to his own bunk.
There’s no point in moving. It’s late. Sure.
But I’m not exactly a great sleeper at the best of times.
Sleep is always dangerous, and with the events of tonight, I already know I’m too rattled to find peace.
Instead, I let the music play on. The whole album plays; my brother showers, waves goodnight, before turning off all but the light directly above me.
I don’t wave back. I let the sounds of a different album, Dead Man Walking by The Casualties, take over.
The music dulls the cravings. It douses the anger. It threads the broken pieces of me back together, one stitch, one note at a time. Time passes. Hours probably, but I don’t notice until the door at the end of the hallway opens a crack and Rain tiptoes out.
Her tiny feet are socked and make almost no noise thanks to the carpet that runs up the bus’s central hall.
She’s not alone either; that kitten is with her and moves just as quietly.
She doesn’t notice me. Not at first. But when I take my headphones off, the movement catches her off guard, and she jumps.
She almost squeaks but covers her mouth at the last second.
The music has clearly done its job right because I almost grin.
“Dallas,” she whispers, “You’re still awake?”
“Can’t sleep, remember?” I whisper back.
She nods. She knows all too well about my insomnia. She’s sat through it with me more than once.
“Neither could I.”
“Demons?” I ask. She nods again.
Demons. A word that means something special to Rainy and me.
“Same,” I confirm, even though I doubt she needs me to. She slides onto the opposite bench, so we’re facing one another.
“Do your demons wanna play with my demons, Dax?”
We’re keeping our voices low so as not to wake Dutch or Cohen, yet there’s still a note of teasing in her voice. So, I tease back, “That sounds like a dangerous game, Rainy. I don’t think your demons could take mine.”
An old familiar game, an old familiar conversation, which ends before we start tallying up our trauma by the smallest mew from the cat. It easily jumps into the booth on my side. Taking its time, it rubs against me, strides across my thighs, does three small turns and nestles in my lap.
“Sorry about Kitten.”
“Don’t be. And why Kitten? Aren’t you going to give her, or him, a proper name?”
Rain shrugs but gives a soft smile as she eyes the kitten who’s decided my lap is an appropriate place to nap.
“Didn’t want to get attached because I never thought I’d be able to keep her. So she’s just Kitten. By the time I realized I could never let her go, the name had stuck.”
There’s a lull in our conversation. I scratch absent-mindedly at Kitten’s ears. The looming threat of whatever we say next is tangible. My tongue is thick with the need to confess. Late-night confessions are nothing new between us.
“So, Cohen lied about having a girlfriend, huh?”
I can’t help but chuckle a little with relief. That’s lighter than I expected.
“Pretty sure,” I confirm.
“And your brother?”
“Definitely a lie,” I reply, though mention of my brother brings the heaviness back. “Between his job and taking care of my sorry ass, Dutch barely has time to take a shit, let alone date anyone.”
“And what about you, Dax?”
Her eyes are so dark, but not unkind as she waits. My response is a derisive snort. “I think you know the answer to that, Rainy-girl.”
She’s a lifelong Necker like the rest of us. Hell, her parents were junkies in their own right. She knows better than anyone how the drugs eat away at literally everything else in your life, until they are all that’s left.
“Easier to chase the demons away than to face them,” she sighs. For a second, those dark eyes of hers empty out, like she’s no longer here with me but somewhere else.
“Too bad they always come back,” I finish her thought.
“Except when the music plays,” she whispers as she reaches across the table and thumbs at my headphones. Her nails graze the sensitive skin of my neck. I shiver a little at the sensation. The first of its kind in a long time.
“Except when the music plays,” I confirm as she pulls back.
Kitten lifts her head, watching Rain as closely as I am while she gets up.
“You know, Dax, maybe if we talked about those demons of ours, they wouldn’t keep coming back.”
I shake my head. “Safer just to let the music keep playing.”
I return my headphones to my ears, effectively ending any further discussion of our demons. Mine are way too close to surfacing right now. Rain takes the cue for what it is. Strangely, so does Kitten. She hops off my lap with a small mew and follows Rain back to their bedroom.
When I finally do make it to sleep, I dream of the girl with purple eyes.
It starts with her singing to me. Not her normal style but a soft lullaby while she runs her fingers through my hair.
It’s something she used to do when we were kids.
Slowly, though, her grip on my hair tightens, her voice gets huskier.
Still, the song goes on until her grip suddenly turns punishing, cruel, perfect, and my head is yanked back.
I’m jolted awake. The bus is still dark. Quiet. I’m alone in my bunk, confused as hell, and rock-fucking-hard.