We both climbed in the truck and I noticed both of my parents were standing there by the clubhouse door. There was no mistaking the sadness in my mother’s eyes, and my father looked resigned. I didn’t throw my hand up in a final goodbye wave. I didn’t go to them either. I just watched them until we pulled out of the parking lot and got on the road. Once they were no longer in sight I turned to Phoenix. “So, which band are we running security for?”
“It’s just a little band,” he offered with a snicker of a laugh.
I quirked a brow up at him curiously. “I highly doubt we’re running a security job for some home-grown garage band or something. I don’t give a shit I haven’t heard of them. I’m just curious.”
“Oh, you’ve heard of them. Play their shit at the clubhouse enough,” he told me. That got my attention.
“Wait, who the fuck is it?”
“Just this little band called Valhalla Rising,” he said as he laughed when my jaw dropped.
“Are you serious?”
“As fucking cancer.”
“Shit! Dude, they’re one of my favorite bands,” I admitted.
“Well, don’t offer to suck their dicks or anything and shit will be fine.”
I laughed at that. “I’m sure they have plenty of groupies for that.”
“No doubt. There’s also the band they’re traveling with,” he mentioned.
“Who would that be?”
“Dusty Rose,” he told me.
“The bitch band?”
Phoenix chuckled. “Might not want to call them that to their faces unless you want to have your ass handed to you by a chick.” It was my turn to laugh, but he didn’t join me this time. “Serious, man. Those girls do not take shit. They’re in a male driven world, trying to rock out with the big boys. They battled to get where they are, and they don’t take well to anyone demeaning that fight in a good way.”
“Noted,” I told him as I turned to glance back out the window and watch the familiar terrain of my hometown fade away with each mile we drove.
“When is the last time you had any fun, Jay?”
“It’s been a while,” I admitted.
“We’re about to change the fuck out of that.”
“If you say so,” I told him.
Chapter 4
Reminders
Christina – (Age 23)
The semester was almost over and I was so thankful that it had gone as smoothly as it did. Taking time off of school after Steven’s death had been a tough decision, but one that was necessary. Now, I was only a semester behind, and then I could graduate. Unfortunately, the two courses I needed weren’t even available until the fall so I couldn’t finish up and graduate over the summer. It was hard to believe it had been two years since Steven took his own life and changed mine so much. I stopped in at the local coffee shop when my cell phone started ringing. I glanced down and debated not answering it. I couldn’t place the reason, but ever since Lindsay left for USC, I had a nagging feeling about her in the back of my head telling myself I couldn’t trust her. I was sure it was simply because no one in my life had been trustworthy up to this point and I was just waiting for the other shoe to finally drop with her too.
“Are you dating anyone?” Lindsay asked as I picked up my phone.
“Hello to you too,” I retorted.
“Stop changing the subject. Tell me, have you met any yummy guys over there that I should know about?”
“You know I haven’t,” I informed her, not for the first time.
She sighed in my ear dramatically. “When are you going to get over the man who cheated on you?”
“He didn’t just cheat on me, Lindsay, he died. He died with a ridiculous amount of secrets and he died as my best friend no matter what.”
“I thought I was your best friend,” she pouted. I was sick of this particular conversation. It was not the first time we were having it.
“Look, I have to go. I need to find a job for the summer and I’m out looking right now. Is there anything important or can this wait?”
“I guess it can wait, though I think the status of our friendship is very important.”
“So, you tell me every time you bring it up,” I teased. Truth be told, I didn’t think I was teasing anymore. I’d grown tired and weary of my friendship with Lindsay. It had started out when we were children living just down the street from one another. Then my mom had to move us into a shitty, one-bedroom apartment after my dad left us for the other woman. When that happened, we at least still went to the same school. Once my parents died and I was shipped off to the group home, that changed. We no longer went to school together. It was just by chance that when we both started college we ended up in the same dorm and ended up convincing our respective roommates to share a room with one another instead.
“I’m sorry,” Lindsay finally apologized. “You’re right. I need to stop doing it. I’m just waiting for you to get back out there and find your happiness. What about the graveyard guy? Are you still painting your soulmate?”
“Yes, I’m still painting him,” I told her. There was no point in hiding the truth. She’d find out soon enough. I planned on putting his image in a gallery one day. Hell, I had enough of them I’d painted over the last year to fill an entire room.
“You should find him. Isn’t there a reverse image locator on Google or something?”
“There is, but my images are paintings and not likely to lead me to the real person.” I knew this because I had become curious one day and attempted to do it.
“What a shame,” she offered up and then she seemed to remember that I told her I was busy. “Okay, well I better let you go so you can hunt for that lucrative summer job!” She laughed as she hung up. Of course, she would laugh. Her parents were still footing her bills for everything while she attempted to get her master’s degree. My parents were dead. My husband was dead. His life insurance was earmarked for a kid that may or may not be out there. The only income I had was what I earned for myself. My summer jobs had to earn me enough money to pay the bills for the rest of the summer and the fall semester too. It had been easier to keep up with the apartment I was in when I had Steven’s help financially, but I’d managed since he’d been gone. Barely, but I managed.
There were days like today where I wanted to yell and scream at the universe and everyone in it about how unfair life was. Damn my best friend for making me feel inferior, for making me feel like I should have moved on from my own heartache by now, and for making me feel like a freak for being obsessed with a man I’d seen one time in my whole life. Even if she hadn’t come out and said the words, that was what she meant when she asked about my paintings. Her sarcasm when addressing the man as my soulmate had never been missed.
The first time she’d called him that, I’d thought she’d been sincere. I didn’t think that anymore. Hell, I didn’t think she was much of a friend anymore either, but I’d already lost everyone else in my life, and I clung to the person I once thought she was. Stupid of me, most likely, but I was human after all.
Chapter 5
Bring Me To Life
J-Bird (Age 24)
The first year of touring with Valhalla Rising, Dusty Rose, and an even newer band called The Infinite Something on and off was cathartic. I managed to pull my head out of my ass, get laid, and even start a little fuck-buddy relationship with one of the girls on tour. I was beginning to think Phoenix had the right idea all along. This was the life I needed to be living now that my best friend and I would no longer be taking over the world of our fathers.
“You almost look happy,” a sweet, sexy voice called out to me as I watched the first few rows in the crowd. The crew was switching sets out from Dusty Rose – who had just come off stage – to the bigger setup that Valhalla Rising had.
“I’m content and that’s enough for now,” I answered.
“See any trouble in the masses?”
I turned and gave her one of the smirks that drove her wild. “I see t
rouble, all right, but it ain’t out there in the crowd.” Her grin widened and in an instant, she was launching herself at me. Long legs wrapped around my hips as her arms came down around my neck, resting lightly on my shoulders while I propped up her weight with the grip I had on her ass. She was still wearing her second-skin, tight leather pants and had lost her shirt somewhere along the way, so she was down to a black bra and the sweat dripping down her torso. Her dark hair hung limply, pulled down with the sweat she had worked up on stage.
It never ceased to amaze me just how fucking horny she was when coming down from playing a set out there with her girls. “You know I’m working,” I told her as I licked a trail of sweat that was dripping down her neck. The salty flavor of her popped on my tongue as she reached down and smacked my ass.
“Always such a party popper when it’s your night to play babysitter out here.”
“Babe, they don’t pay me to fuck,” I explained, not for the first time.
“I could,” she offered. I dropped her immediately and gently pushed her away from my body. That shit was insulting. She didn’t do it often, but every now and again, her spoiled rock princess routine rubbed me the wrong way. I was no one’s whore. She realized her mistake right away. “I’m sorry,” she apologized. “You know I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“Yeah, well, I think we’re done here tonight. I need to get back to work.” I turned my back on Maci and looked out at the crowd that was becoming a little restless while waiting for the main band to hit the stage. Something had happened with their bassist and they were trying to work that out. “You guys might need to do an encore until VR can get their asses out here,” I informed her.
“Oh, so you’re the concert manager now?” She asked.
I shrugged my shoulder and no sooner had she huffed about my lack of answer when she attempted to pick a fight with me, than the actual tour manager came bounding over. “Where are the other girls? We might need you back out there. I think Alex might have just broke his hand.”
“You don’t need them. Tell VR I can go on in his place. I still have plenty of juice left in me, and besides, I know all their music too.”
“Right! Okay! I’ll go let them know. Don’t go anywhere.”
As soon as the asshole left, I glanced down at Maci. “Look at that, you not getting your way with me will end up saving the day for all those fans out there.”
“You’re a dick!”
“I can be,” I admitted and turned back to the crowd again. “Better get them to hurry it up. I don’t think even the loyal fans are going to remain calm much longer.”
“Shit,” she hissed and then she was off and running, probably to Valhalla Rising’s dressing room to let the guys know what was up with the crowd.
Maci and I had come to an agreement about three months earlier. Her on again off again boyfriend was off again. I was getting sick of groupies who reminded me a lot of the club sluts I’d grown up seeing prance around the clubhouse. The two of us talked about it and decided we would help each other scratch that itch exclusively for the remainder of the tour. It had been working for the most part. Then there moments like the one earlier where she thought she could just buy my services, so she didn’t have to share me with the security job. I would never be anyone’s whore though, and even after pointing it out to her that her offer would make me just that if I accepted, she still slipped and pulled the offer back out on the nights when she couldn’t get her way.
She had also been hinting about wanting to take things in a more of a relationship direction. There was no fucking way I could do that though. I wouldn’t always be able to travel with her on tour, and after seeing how she was, there was also know way I’d be able to believe that she could be faithful to me if I wasn’t along for the ride. That shit was important. One day, I wanted what my brother had with Ever. I wasn’t sure I deserved it, but that didn’t stop me from wanting it.
As much as I liked Maci – most days – I just didn’t see the life I wanted meshing with the Rock star life she had going on. I needed a break from this shit with Maci, truth be told. I felt like she was trying to get too close, and I was only wanting to pull away to solidify the fact that we were just fuck buddies. We had one more month with them on tour and then they were switching out with The Infinite Something for a few months so they could go into the recording studio to work on their fourth album. It would be a much-needed break for a few months.
Chapter 6
Timing
Christina (Age 24)
New York City was everything I expected and nothing like I thought it would be all at once. The smell was the first thing to hit me. At first it was a sour stench of human waste, sweat, and when I got close enough, food vendors would confuse my senses by making my mouth water with the aromas wafting from their trucks and carts. The second thing that hit me about New York was when I went below to ride the subway. The heat down there, while waiting for the trains, was palpable. There is always a thickness to the air in the south with the humidity, but this was different. It was a stifling, unnatural heat to top off an already hot summer day.
I had finished with school, finally, and now I was in New York for a job interview. It was time for a change, but even I had to admit the big city was rather intimidating for this small-time country girl. I had been born, raised, and abandoned by everyone I loved in my little beach town. It was the last thought that made me push for this move, even when I wondered if I might be in just a little over my head here. Besides, I was an artist and an art history major. I was destined to be in a bigger city with a larger art scene. All the better to be discovered, right? Sure. That’s what I kept telling myself.
I made my way to the Oxford House Apartments on East 72nd Street and glanced up. They didn’t seem too bad, as far as an apartment buildings went. This would be where I was housed if I got the job. They were allowing me to stay in the studio apartment that they kept here for staff that rotated in and out of the area. When I got inside, I found the apartment and knocked on the door, as I’d been instructed to do since I didn’t have a key yet.
A man in his early thirties wearing a suit that probably cost more than my entire wardrobe opened the door and smiled widely at me. “Welcome, Christina. I am Bradford Cormack, at your service!” He made a sweeping gesture with his arm, indicating I should enter. Then he chuckled as he slipped back out of the way, and only after I got inside did I realize he had to back himself up into the bathroom so that I could come through the front door into the hallway that led to a small kitchen and a living room. “I’m not really at your service, this is a today only type of thing.” As he joked, I glanced around, looking for another door or something, but that was it, besides two closets that were opened.
I turned to the man, “There’s no bedroom space?”
He gestured with his hand around the tiny living room area. “This is it, my sweet. A studio means that the living and bedroom space are one and the same.”
“Okay, yeah, I just… wow.” I spun in place and wondered what this place rented for per month. Back home it would have gone for $400 a month, at most. “What’s the rent on this place?”
He grinned. “Two grand,” he offered up leisurely while I choked on my own spit.
“Two grand? As in two thousand dollars?”
“It’s a steal, right?”
“It’s something!” I laughed then. “I could rent a whole three- or four-bedroom house back home for that amount of money,” I explained to him.
His brows shot up into his hairline. “Yes, darling, but then you wouldn’t have all of this at your fingertips,” he told me as he indicated the view out of the window. It wasn’t much of a view actually, since the building was only six stories high and there were others towering on three sides of it and a street out front. “Location is everything, especially in the art world. If you want to be a big name someday, this is the place to be.”
I chuckled. “It feels like this place probably swallows up more ar
tists than it shows off.”
“You’re not wrong. Let’s see what you brought to show the big wigs, shall we?”
And that was how I ended up making friends with Bradford – never Brad – Cormack. He was very adamant about his name. He also lifted me up and took me out for drinks when I was told that the position at the gallery would not, in fact, be mine. The consolation prize was that they loved some of my work enough to feature it an upcoming gallery opening.
I was two drinks into my ‘Misery Celebration Spectacular’ as Bradford called it when my phone rang.
“Christina? Where are you? Everything sounds so loud there.”
“That’s because I’m in a bar in New York.”
“New York? What the hell are you doing there?” She asked, though she seemed a bit distracted as I listened to her giggling about something and trying to cover the phone as she did. I, in turn, rolled my eyes.
“I was here about a job.”
“What? No! You can’t move to New York!”
“Well, I didn’t get it, so that won’t be an issue.”
“Good, because I’ll be coming home soon, and I have news!”
“I already know you graduated with your Masters,” I reminded her.
“No, it’s not that. I met this really cool guy at a concert. We don’t have that explosive chemistry I had with my ex, but…” she hesitated, and I just remembered that I never actually met her ex, so I wouldn’t know what kind of explosive chemistry she supposedly had with him. I could almost picture her smiling through the phone though. “He’s great, and we’ve been hanging out. He invited me along on tour with the band Valhalla Rising. Can you believe it?” Her voice was squealing loudly as she mentioned the man.
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