by Jade Allen
“Just remember,” Mary said, turning back towards the line of cars. She stopped at one; it was an old, run-down looking hunter green Volvo, a boxy-looking tank of a car.
“Nice ride,” I commented. Mary glanced at me, unlocking the trunk with her key.
“It gets me places,” she said with a kind of quiet contentment. “What do you drive?”
I smiled down at my suitcase as I dropped it into the cavern of a trunk. “Currently? Nothing.” I shrugged. “I fucked up my last car somehow, I don’t remember how. One of my band mates said he’d take it into the shop for me.”
Mary unlocked the car at the driver’s side and gestured for me to get in. The inside of the car smelled of her perfume and of cigarettes, an undercurrent of sickeningly-sweet coffee from an ancient spill. I settled myself into the passenger’s seat. “You smoke?” I asked her.
Mary smiled wryly. “Off and on. Mostly when I’m stressed.” She lifted up the center console armrest and withdrew a pack of Parliaments. “Like right now.” I chuckled and took my own cigarettes out as Mary cranked up the car. Immediately I sighed in relief at the flood of cool air from the vents, even as I rolled my window down. Mary shook a cigarette free of her pack and put it between her lips, reaching down in automatic movements to put the car in reverse as her other hand pressed the window button.
In a matter of seconds, we had both lit up our smokes, and she had pulled out of the parking spot, shifted the car into drive, and started to make her way up the lane, towards the exit. “Another rule: if I’m driving, I’m in charge of the music, and no bitching from you; got it?”
I laughed. “That’s the rule for the van, too,” I said. “Unless you want to play some fucking ear-bleed Miley Cyrus shit, I won’t complain.” Mary snorted and pulled out of the parking lot and onto the road. She reached blindly into her purse and I watched as she found her phone, shoved the purse back down under her legs in front of her seat, and managed to somehow juggle the cigarette between her fingers, the aux cord, and her phone. She came to a stop at the light and looked down at her screen. After a moment, she selected something and set the phone down in a convenient cubby, taking another drag of her cigarette as the song started: Yeah Yeah Yeahs, “Soft Shock.” I sat back in the seat I’d taken. There didn’t seem to be anything for me to do except watch the scenery pass by, at least for now.
CHAPTER SIX
The house that Mary pulled up to was both exactly what I would have expected and completely foreign to me. It was one of those old, old Florida houses; big jalousie windows, clamshell shutters pulled back. The exterior was a warm, cheery yellow; the door was painted a deep, sharp red. “Do you own this place or rent it?” I asked, more to make conversation than anything else.
“I own it,” Mary said, shifting the car into park and turning off the ignition on the car. “It’s always just a little too warm in the summer and a little to chilly whenever there’s a cold front, but it’s my place outright.”
I nodded and followed her up the walkway, glancing around the sleepy-looking neighborhood her house was in; the south Florida sun beat down like a hammer, the humidity like a sauna. It was impossible to forget, even in winter, that you lived in a coastal swamp. Mary unlocked the door and opened it, and her security system shrieked as she took the few steps to the console. “Come on in,” she said over her shoulder, punching in her code.
I stepped through the door, feeling—weirdly—more apprehensive even than I had when I’d walked through the doors of Recovery Now. The floors had almost certainly been redone at some point in the house’s many decades of existence; they were hardwood, instead of standard-issue tile or carpet. There was a beat-up, worn-down rug on the living room floor. Mary had an old, scarred leather sofa with an old lady Afghan thrown over the back, a much newer armchair, and a flat-screen TV on an entertainment center that I guessed probably came from IKEA. The thing that shocked me, though, was the sight of an acoustic guitar, settled on a stand, its strings gleaming. “You play?” I asked her, frowning as I pointed.
Mary shrugged, and I saw the color rise in her cheeks. “Not very well,” she said. I grinned. “I had pretensions of playing folk-rock when I was a teenager, but I’ve never really been either good enough that my looks didn’t matter or pretty enough that my talent didn’t matter.”
I laughed. “Which category do I fall under?” I asked, throwing myself down onto the couch. It was even more comfortable than it looked, the cushions almost suspiciously plush under the scarred and scratched exterior. Mary looked at me for a long moment.
“That rarest of breeds: talented enough and pretty enough,” she said with a wry smile. “Want something to drink? Coffee? Water?”
“It’s too fucking hot for coffee, but after what just happened, I really want the buzz,” I said, thinking out loud.
“I’ve got cold brew,” Mary suggested.
“That, then,” I said, lifting a hand in approval. “So, you’re really willing to let me stay here for a while?” Mary shrugged, kicking her shoes off and padding into the kitchen. I managed to get my shoes off as well, kicking my feet up onto the arm of the couch and sprawling over the length.
“Until you can find somewhere equally safe, I don’t really see much choice,” Mary said from the other room. “I mean, what am I supposed to do? Let you put yourself in danger?” I heard movement from the kitchen: the fridge door opening, the clink of glasses, and the clatter of ice, liquid pouring. “Do you take milk? Sweetener?”
“I’ll take it sweet, but no milk,” I called back. I looked up at the ceiling; after the shock of being kicked out of rehab, the prospect of my imminent demise was starting to filter through my mind. “You know, it’s weird,” I said, turning my head as I heard Mary coming back into the living room. “Without the stuff in my system, I think…” I paused, trying to figure out what it was I wanted to say. “I think clearer but also muddier. It doesn’t…” I shook my head and sat up.
“A lot of people notice that,” Mary said, handing me a glass with pitch-black coffee and islands of ice. Her own coffee was a deep caramel tan, and for a moment I almost regretted my choice of no milk. But I didn’t like milk in my iced coffee; there was just something about the texture of it that made it so nasty. Mary sat in her armchair and took a long sip. “Your brain is used to working through the drugs; it has to re-learn how to operate without them.”
“It’s like I don’t have any fucking filter anymore,” I said, looking around the room. I hadn’t noticed the line of bookshelves that hugged the wall, leading to the hallway that I assumed went to her room and the bathroom. “Is there more than one bedroom here?” I asked, looking at Mary once more. “Not—I mean—the couch is more than I deserve, but I’m just curious.” Mary laughed, and I wasn’t sure if she was laughing at the question or at my self-correction.
“There’s another bedroom, but I mostly use it as a home office,” she said. “There is a futon in there, though. You can sleep in there if you want.”
“This couch is pretty fucking comfy,” I pointed out. “I may not even get off of it for the next hour.”
“Well you’re going to have to get up eventually. You need to get in touch with your band mates, your label, and whoever else needs to know you’re out of rehab,” Mary said, setting her glass down and looking at me with that level, matter-of-fact expression on her face that I both loved and hated.
“Why do you always look like that?” I licked the lingering sweetness of the coffee off of my lips.
“Like what?” Mary raised an eyebrow.
“Like you know what I look like underneath my skin.”
Mary’s dark eyes flashed with amusement. “I think you’re interpreting more in my face than I’m putting out,” she told me.
“You just look like you know the fucking thoughts in my head.”
“I watch people,” she said, looking into her glass for a moment, watching the ice shift as it melted. “I don’t know. It’s not…” I watched the color ri
sing into her cheeks again. “I’m not purposely trying to make you feel uncomfortable.” Mary sighed, “I should probably get my laptop and start filing for unemployment.” Her lips twisted into a grimace of distaste.
“Don’t let me get in your way,” I said, taking another big gulp of coffee and fumbling in my pocket for my phone. Mary was right; I needed to get in touch with people, let them know what was going on, where I was. It occurred to me that probably Dr. Farber had already notified my manager or the label—whoever he was reporting to—about the fact that I’d been kicked out of rehab. “I’m never going to hear the fucking end of this.” I sighed as I turned my phone on. “Go do your thing.” Mary gave me another one of those looks—as if she was peering into my brain—and then stood, taking her coffee with her into the hall. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath; whoever I talked to was almost certain to be completely and totally pissed at me for getting myself kicked out. Nick first. He’s the most likely to think that if I got kicked out for fucking my counselor, it’s not a complete waste. I opened my eyes and unlocked my phone to get to my contacts list.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Seriously, dude? Fuck, that blows.” I had made my way through the list of people I needed to call; Nick had asked if I wanted him to pick me up, if I was safe where I was. When I told him I was at Mary’s, he asked if he should bring me condoms.
“Yeah. Who won the betting pool?” I was—finally—able to see the humor in the situation by the time I called Mark.
“Officially, there’s no betting pool,” Mark said, and I could hear him grinning. “Unofficially, Dan totally has booze money for the entire fucking weekend.”
I laughed. “Who’d I outlast?”
Mark chuckled. “Nick, Jules, and Ron.” I rolled my eyes; of course Ron, our manager, had joined in the pool. “I wagered you’d last at least a full three weeks, Dan thought you’d finish the program.” I smiled to myself; Dan was the optimist of the band, as far as anyone could really be. He believed that people were mostly good, he believed intentions counted. He’d been through a lot of shit that I would not have been able to deal with, and come out on the other side of it with some of his innocence intact; how, I don’t think I would ever understand.
“So, we need to come up with a plan,” I said finally, changing the subject. “Obviously, it’s going to be hard to get me into any kind of rehab place, and Big J is—last time I checked—still looking to fuck my shit up. What do you think?”
“I dunno, man. What does Jules say?”
Jules and I shared the position of “brains” of the band in a certain respect. Whenever there was a need for a plan, whenever we needed direction, it was either Jules or me who came up with the ideas. Nick was a smartass, but he was better at picking apart ideas than in coming up with them. Dan and Mark were good at refining a basic concept, but they didn’t put themselves forward much.
“Jules said stay put and get in touch with Ron, see what the label says.”
I sighed. “There’s the problem of me getting Mary fired over this, too.”
“That’s some bullshit,” Mark said; I heard him sigh. “Can we come over? I mean—obviously, none of us is going to bring you drugs or anything like that. But this is probably the kind of thing we all need to be present for.”
“Hold on,” I said. I took the phone away from my ear. “Mary!” I heard one of the doors in the hall open.
“Yeah?” I wondered if she had just been waiting for me to get her attention.
“Can the band come over? They promise they won’t bring me any goodies.” I heard the creak of the floorboards as Mary strode through the hallway to the living room. She gave me a skeptical look.
“As long as they understand that if I tell them to leave, they’ve got ten minutes to get the hell out,” Mary said finally.
“Got that, Mark?” I heard him laughing.
“Yeah, I’ve got it. No worries there.”
I grinned at Mary. “How’s unemployment filing going?”
Mary’s face twisted into a disgruntled frown. “It’s going,” she said bleakly. “I’ll be glad when I’m finished with it and just have to wait and see if Recovery Now challenges it.”
“Dude, you should have Ron hire her as your personal addiction counselor. Problem solved!” I stared at my phone as if it were Mark himself.
“Yeah, no, bad idea,” I said.
“What’s a bad idea?” Mary asked me. I waved a hand to tell her I wasn’t going to mention it. “Fuck, I need to go to the store if people are coming over.”
I stared at Mary in confusion. “Why?”
“Because I am not having people in my house with nothing to serve them,” Mary said tartly. “I don’t even care if it’s not formal or whatever. My mom might be a fucking drunk, but she raised me with standards.”
I shook my head, torn between amusement and amazement. “I told you she’s a head case,” I told Mark as Mary went back down the hall. “She’s going to the store to buy refreshments for you and the guys.”
“Hey, sounds like a classy woman to me,” Mark said agreeably. “Give me the address and I’ll get everyone together and over there.”
Mary came back out of the hallway, her makeup touched up, shoes on her feet, and her purse in hand; I got her address and gave it to Mark. “Can I come with you?”
Mary considered it for a moment. “Probably better for you not to,” she said finally, looking at me levelly. “I’ll get in and out of the store faster on my own. Just relax for a bit, I’m just going around the block.” I’d seen a Publix, and assumed that was probably where she was planning to go.
“Okay,” I said. I knew better than to try and argue with her right at that moment. She had a look on her face that I recognized with a little inner twinge; the look my mom got when she was determined to get her way on something. “Mind if I play with your guitar?”
Mary’s face softened, and she smiled. “You do realize that sounds incredibly dirty in a certain way,” she said, shifting her weight onto one leg.
I laughed. “Well, now that we’ve been kicked out of that place for fucking, no reason not to keep doing it now, is there?” Mary held my gaze for a long moment, and I wondered—briefly—if she was reconsidering inviting me, or allowing me to invite my band mates over.
“We’ll see,” Mary said, and turned to leave. “You can play the guitar if you want.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
“They’re a band, not a football team,” I said, eyeing the lavish spread that Mary had laid out on her kitchen table. I tried to picture her in Publix, rushing through the aisles, grabbing up this, that, and the other thing.
“You say that like I’ve never met a musician before,” Mary said blandly. “You’re all always starving, and you’re all always thirsty.”
I raised an eyebrow. “I’m not sure if I should be insulted or not.” Mary laughed. She had certainly managed to get together enough food to feed everyone—and with enough variety to make sure that no one could possibly say that there was nothing they wanted to eat. Chicken tenders—the food of the gods, Publix’s deli specialty—were piled on a tray; next to them were a few containers of different salads: potato salad with mustard, macaroni salad, and some fluffy green pistachio-and-fruit concoction. She’d also grabbed a tray of cheese and crackers, and a container of mixed fruit from the produce section. There was a gallon of iced tea (sweet), a half-gallon of unsweetened iced tea, and a half-gallon of lemonade.
“I would’ve picked up a case of beer, but you’re supposed to be sober right now.” Mary looked at me archly.
“I’m not a fucking child, Mary,” I protested. “I don’t have to drink beer just because it’s around.”
“You’ve been sober for what—two and a half weeks maybe? I’m not going to throw temptation at you.” Mary crossed her arms over her chest, and I felt a rush of heat—it was only too easy to remember what her breasts looked like underneath her clothes, how they’d looked when she’d ridden me the week
before. “And if they bring beer, it’s staying in their car and you’re not going near it. Understood?”
I groaned. “What is this, a halfway house?”
Mary set her jaw. “As far as you’re concerned, yes,” she told me firmly. “I’m not fucking up your sobriety just because my bad choices helped you get kicked out of rehab.”
“Right, because I was so committed to my recovery as it was; and it was entirely your fault that we fucked. I had no choice in the matter and totally didn’t encourage you in the least.”
Mary’s cheeks turned a bright, dusky pink. “That’s not the point, and you know it,” she said, her voice tight. “The point is that you’re on the run from your dealer, and frankly, you’re not really in a position to argue with me about the conditions of staying in my house, are you?” One of her dark, finely arched eyebrows rose. I clenched my teeth and exhaled slowly.
“No, I’m not,” I said finally. “I’m grateful that you’re letting me stay here and even letting me have friends over. I’m not going to drink under your roof. I’m not going to use. Now stop worrying about it, would you?”
I was saved from Mary’s response—whatever it would have been—by a knock at the door.
“Later,” Mary said, her dark eyes fastening on me with promise.
“Yeah, yeah,” I said, rolling my eyes. I strode to the door and opened it just as Nick was in the midst of his second knock. He grinned when he saw me.