47. Interlude 15
If You Leave
The Preaching Pistols are a fucking mess. Sure, we made it to the stage and managed to scrape our way through a handful of songs, but even at that, you could see the crowd inside Flamingos realizing with each passing track exactly how messed up we are.
Rain’s words are slurred. She’s wasted and so is Co.
His fingers barely make each note. Same goes for my brother, although judging by the state of his pupils, I’m pretty sure he’s high rather than wasted.
Meanwhile, I’m doing my damn best to keep time with the drum beat, but that doesn’t matter if everyone around you is too fucked up to hear it.
Midway through ‘A Thousand Hearts’ Cohen gives up altogether.
“Fuck this,” he snarls before storming off stage.
At which point Rain bursts into visible and audible tears and chases after him. Dax trips, loses his balance, and falls on his ass. Leaving me to be the one to approach the mic.
“I’m so sorry, ladies, gents, we’ll uhhhh…”
And that’s about as far as I make it before the crowd starts audibly cussing us out, and full-on fucking booing. I close my eyes, take one deep breath, if only to stop myself from screaming at them.
Can’t you fucking see that we’re falling apart! I want to shout.
Aren’t you our fans? Aren’t you supposed to care that we’re not okay?! I long to ask.
But all of those will cause an even bigger media shitshow, and I’m sure Cohen walking off stage tonight will be enough of one on its own, so all I manage to choke out before I leave the stage too is a gruff, “I’m sorry.
So fucking sorry,” before collecting my brother who is only semi-conscious and carrying him off stage with me.
Backstage, I can still hear the booing although the curtains and concrete walls of the venue dull it a little. That and the furious screaming coming from our dressing room.
“Cohen, Please! Please! Just listen!” Rain is half screaming, half pleading. There’s no half anything from Cohen.
“If you wanted to break up with me, Rain, you should have just done it!” he screams. “Not whore yourself out!”
He doesn’t leave her any time to reply or defend herself. I push through the door of our shared dressing room, still supporting Dax under one arm, to hear, “Or maybe I’m just not famous enough for you, huh?”
Cohen is up in Rain’s face. He has her backed up against the wall and is pointing an accusing finger at her. Normally when they fight, Rainy gives as good as she gets, but right now, she’s cowed. Her head hangs, and she doesn’t leap to defend herself as more accusations are hurled at her.
“Maybe you thought you’d be his next Delilah.”
At the mention of Blue Grace’s wife, former supermodel Delilah Grace, Rain visibly blanches. Her reaction only eggs Cohen on.
“Didn’t think about that, did ya, Rainy, that you fucked a married man?! A father?! Then again, I shouldn’t expect you to respect a man’s family when you’ve never fucking had one!”
That is where I draw the line. I release my brother, who staggers two steps and collapses again, while I jump between Rain and Co.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, maybe it’s time to step back, man. Take a breath.”
My hands rest on Cohen’s shoulders, urging him to take my suggestion before I make him take it.
“Of course,” he snarls, swatting my hands away, “There he is, good ol’Dutch Kelly, always stepping in to play her hero.”
He leans around me so he can continue to sneer at Rain, “Maybe you should fuck him too, huh.”
“Fuck you, bro.” I shove him for real this time. Hard enough that his knees hit the ratty sofa against the opposite wall and he sinks back into it and laughs. No, he downright cackles, and there’s no joy in it.
“The joke’s on you, Dutch. Actually, it’s on all of us. Tell him, Rain.”
I look back and forth between the two of them, confused by what she’s supposed to tell me. Meanwhile, Rain’s eyes close in a slow blink.
“Tell ’em, tell your precious Kelly brothers what you told me before they walked in here.”
I don’t know what I thought she was going to say. But it sure as hell wasn’t, “I’m pregnant.”
My head swivels to Cohen, expecting him to step up and admit to being the father.
“Don’t look at me.” Cohen keeps right on laughing. “I wrap it up. Every-fucking-time. Good thing too, otherwise I’d probably be baby-trapped to this bitch by now.”
Cohen’s eyes flash with a vindictive kind of pleasure as he spots the hurt that flashes across my face as I look at a dejected Rain.
I inhale sharply. A cutting pain worse even than the night of the party pierces my heart, and words spill out of me without a thought: “You let Blue Grace knock you up?”
It comes out harsher than I intend. More of a judgement than a question. Yet for the first time tonight, her gaze lifts. Those mesmerizing eyes of hers flash with fire, and those pouting lips I’ve always longed to kiss pull back into a ferocious sneer.
“You think I fucking wanted this?! Any of this?! Fuck you, Dutch. Fuck all of you!” she screams, and her gaze travels from me to Cohen and even to Dallas.
“NO!” Her voice is pitched unnaturally high and rises higher, turning more brittle by the second.
“They did this to me! I was scared, alone, not even able to fight for myself, and you think that means I wanted it?! They fucking stole everything from me. Everything! Even you.”
My brain trips over her words. Skipping like a needle that can’t find the groove, because I can’t process anything she’s just said except two words: “They stole.”
In those words, I finally hear everything she’s been trying to tell us for the last three weeks.
I should have been listening, but instead I was too fucking hurt and up in my own fucking feelings.
Like a little bitch, throwing a tantrum because I didn’t get the toy I wanted.
But Rain’s not a toy. She’s a person. That alone should be enough of a reason for me to have listened, not to mention the fact that she’s also someone I’m supposed to care about.
My best friend. My secret love. My hands dig through my twists as my mind reels through every shameful moment.
The dressing room door slamming shakes me, and right away I regret everything that’s happened here tonight, that’s happened for the last three weeks.
Rain is gone, and I launch myself towards the door.
From behind me, Cohen shouts, “Fuck her! And fuck you too if you go after her.”That doesn’t stop me.
My hand locks around the metal handle and rips the door open.
“We’re fucking done, Dutch. You hear me?!” he keeps screaming. “It’s her or me. Her or the band! If you go after her, don’t come back!”
One final glance back at Cohen. He’s breathing hard, and his nostrils are flared.
Then at my brother, who is fucking out of it.
Like genuinely, lights-are-on-but-nobody’s-home out of it for reasons I haven’t had a chance to ask him about but given the way his blue eyes seek out Cohen Brady even now, I have my suspicions.
It dawns on me: who the fuck is Cohen kidding? There is no choice. After tonight, I’m not sure our band is worth fighting for. But Rain is. And that knowledge seals my decision.
I race through the back hall of the club just in time to see her purple hair disappear out into the night. Outside, I’m just in time to see cab lights flash and the door slam, taking my girl away into the darkness.
There’s only one place she would logically go, and I follow. Except, Grams looks clueless when she opens the door to find me standing there.
“Rainy?” I ask, breathless with fear that the girl I love will hate me forever. She has every right to.
“My granddaughter’s not here, Dutch,” she says, but those wise old eyes of hers watch me; they burrow into mine, and because she’s a canny lady, the suspicion in her voice is clear as day.
“Should she be?”
Yes, I say in my head first and then to Grams out loud.
So why isn’t she?
Much to my complete and utter embarrassment, I confess everything that happened at the gig tonight.
I explain my instant regret, and how I wish I could go back in time and tell the Dutch from just hours ago that he is a fucking dumbass.
Grams takes my cursing in stride, though by the time I’m done, the air around us is weighed down with our shared sorrow.
“You know, Dutch,” she says, her voice wavering and creaking, “I told you once that the day would come when you’d have to make a choice. I think that day was today. And, okay, fine, I’m biased because she’s my goddamn grand-baby, but I think you chose wrong.”
“I know,” is all I manage to say back before my face collapses into my hands and I fight for breaths I don’t deserve to take.
That night, Grams puts me up on her old sofa. I’m way too tall for it, and the sleep is hell, but it leaves me with a direct line of sight to the front door. I’ll be the first one to see her when she walks through it. Except she doesn’t. Not that night, nor the next day.
I come back the next day, and the next and the next. I come back every day for three weeks. I stay for hours. Grams makes me tea, and we sit on the front porch, both of us willing our missing girl to come home. She never does.
End Interlude