by Jade Allen
I groaned, collapsing onto her and burying my face against her shoulder. “I am going to make you scream my fucking name, just you wait,” I told her, closing my lips around her earlobe to nibble and suck on the little slip of flesh. “I’ll figure out your secrets, you infuriating fucking goddess.”
“Did you seriously just call me an ‘infuriating fucking goddess’?” Mary’s voice rippled with amusement.
“I did. Gonna do something about it?” I looked into her eyes and saw the quick leap of something that looked an awful lot like mischief.
“If you think you came hard fucking me,” she said, licking her lips slowly, “give me a chance to recharge a bit and I will show you how good I can be with my mouth.”
“Deal,” I said, lifting myself up off of Mary’s body and throwing myself back down onto her bed. “How about a little nap, a little brunch, and then we fuck each other’s brains out?”
Mary yawned and curled up against me, and even though I never would have admitted it to anyone, I was happier than I could remember being for weeks—a happiness that had nothing to do with the fact that Big J and ninety percent of his dealers were behind bars.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“You know we’re eventually going to have to go to the precinct or wherever and actually give our statements,” Mary said as we picked over the remains of the brunch she’d put together.
“They said today; they didn’t say what time today.”
Mary rolled her eyes, shaking her head at me. “It’s true! And it’s not like they’ve called us to ask us to come in immediately.”
I’d had a few missed calls from some of the members of my band—one from Jules, one from Mark, and two from Dan; but I hadn’t even made the first attempt to call them back.
“So now you’re free,” Mary said. I heard something in her voice I didn’t like, though; I couldn’t say exactly what it was.
“Free?”
Mary looked down at her plate and started moving crumbs around into little constellations. She’d put a playlist on in the kitchen while she was cooking, and Franz Ferdinand came on; mournful melodic picking plucked at my ears, almost taking me out of the conversation, while Alex Kapranos’ voice crooned. How can I tell you I was wrong? How can I tell you I was wrong? When I am the proudest man ever born…
I shook the song out of my head. “What do you mean, free?”
“I mean, you don’t have to go to rehab,” Mary said, her voice going sharp. “You can go back to everything you left behind. You can party it up.”
I bit my bottom lip. I couldn’t, in all honesty, say the thought hadn’t occurred to me. While we’d been showering together, it had filled my mind that I could go out and find a new source; surely someone was already jockeying to fill the void that Big J’s arrest made in the local drug scene. Nick probably already knew who might have product. The Miami culture scene hated a vacuum more than nature ever could.
“I could,” I said slowly. “But I’d have to leave you behind if I did that.”
Mary looked up sharply. “Yes, the hell you would. I’m not dating an addict, Alex North. Not an active one.”
I took a deep, shaky breath. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking,” I said, picking at the crust from my toast. “I’m not…I don’t think I want to…” I bit my bottom lip until I felt a sharp little jab of pain and then backed off. “I’m not saying that I’m going to be clean and sober forever.”
“Okay,” Mary said. I saw her open her mouth to say more and I raised a hand to silently ask her to hear me out.
“But for right now, it’s pretty easy to see that I wouldn’t have been on the hideout from J if it weren’t for the fact that I was flirting too much with that whole scene.” I swallowed against the tightness in my throat. “I think…I think I want to see how this goes.” I looked down at my plate again. I could see a little bit of yellow residue from the runny yolk that I hadn’t managed to sop up with toast. “The only thing I’m really sure of right now is that I want you.”
“North, this…there’s a reason that they tell people not to get into relationships until they’ve been sober for a certain period of time…”
“Fuck that noise.” I looked up from my plate to meet Mary’s gaze. “I’m not like, going to do a program or some shit like that,” I said, waving the idea aside completely. “But I think that I should at least give this whole not using drugs thing a fair shot.”
Mary laughed. “So, what you’re saying is you’re not going to consciously be clean and sober, you’re just not going to use.”
“Not for the foreseeable future.”
Mary sighed. “I can’t…if you’re going to just go back to using again in a couple of weeks, or a month…or even six months…”
I licked my lips. “I’m not asking you to commit to me for the rest of your life,” I said quickly. “But you’re—fuck, Mary, you’re goddamn amazing, don’t you know that?”
“You’re not really in the best place to—”
“Shut the fuck up,” I said, my voice absolutely dead level. “I know what I want. I want to stop using for a while and see how it feels. I want to get to know you better. I want to see if what we’ve got going between us is just two broken people or if we can be fucking better than that. Aren’t you even a little bit curious?”
Mary pressed her lips together and I could see the thoughts flicking through her dark eyes as she considered what I was saying. “Okay,” she said after a minute, exhaling slowly. “If I’m honest with myself, yes, I do want to see where we can go with this.” She looked up and met my gaze. “But Alex… I can’t be with you if you’re going to use. You get that, right? And I swear to god if you start using and then lie to me about it because you don’t want to lose me…”
“Want me to call Nick? He’ll tell you in a heartbeat if I backslide. He’d love to have an excuse to call you up and chat.” Mary frowned in confusion. “He still thinks you’re as hot as a fucking four-alarm fire.”
“Ugh,” Mary said, rolling her eyes. “I will never in a million years understand how guys in a band can all have the hots for the same girl and not self-destruct over it.”
“Because we don’t let it interfere. I’ll call Nick right now and have him give you his word that he will call you the minute he ever finds me using, if I haven’t told you first.”
Mary took another deep breath and stared into my eyes, and I saw that knowing, penetrating look that I loved—but that also intimidated me, even after seeing her at her most vulnerable.
“We’ll come up with ground rules,” she said finally. “I’m not going to be responsible for your sobriety. Let’s make that clear right off the bat.”
“That’s fair.”
“We’ll get you in with another counselor. I can’t be your counselor if I’m seeing you romantically.”
“Whatever you want,” I said with a little grin.
Mary frowned sharply. “No. You are going to act like a fucking adult and you are going to name your own terms and we are going to have a mature goddamned relationship, or I’m out right now, even if you are the best lay I’ve ever had.”
I smirked. “I knew I’d get you to admit it.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
A week had passed since the raid on Big J’s house, and as I walked into the rehearsal space the band had taken with help from the label, I felt nervous for the first time in years. It was a weird feeling; even though I was still dealing with odd kinds of numbness as time went by, certain things were way more overwhelming than they used to be. Normally, right up until my stint in rehab and my time with Mary, I’d have already had a buzz going on by the time I went in for rehearsal; as I walked into the building the band had taken, I was clean as a whistle.
Mary and I had agreed that after I did thirty days of complete sobriety—starting over from the night when we’d both done coke that night of the raids—I would see if I could manage to drink alcohol. I’d never had a problem with managing my intake on that befor
e, and Mary had admitted that most programs insisted on complete sobriety, but that she had seen a lot of users who didn’t seem to have a problem with alcohol. If I showed signs of trying to find a fix, though, I would have two choices: go sober again, completely, and stay that way, or end the relationship.
“Yo! Looking good, North,” Jules said from a corner of the rehearsal room. Since the record label had put it out and around that we were working on new material for an album, the band and I had agreed that we might as well make the fiction into fact, now that Big J was behind bars. His bail had been set at three million; they’d managed to raid the rest of his houses the same night as they’d busted in on my meeting with him, and they’d rounded up so much of so many kinds of drugs that even at the most optimistic, he wasn’t going to be out this side of my eightieth birthday. If I lived that long.
“Has Mary got you on a cleanse?”
“Asshole,” I muttered; then I grinned, “She’s got me on a cleanse all right; I sweat all my toxins out every night under a fucking down blanket.”
The rest of the guys were almost done setting up, and I snagged one of Nick’s spare guitars while I waited for them to work out all of the sound. I wasn’t ready to admit it to Mary yet, but I’d already noticed, since I’d been clean for a week—not even any ‘buffering’ drugs in my system—that ideas were starting to flow. Melodies, little dribs and drabs of lyrics. Smiling to myself, I started picking out the meandering, musing melody of Silverchair’s “My Favorite Thing,” playing it to myself. None of the other guys in the band were even paying attention to me. Got my fever down/ and weighed it up/ And I know the sounds remaining/ won’t strain all the silt from my eyes…You’re my favorite thing/ You’re my favorite/ the one that I love, the one so I’d die for your love… I closed my eyes as I played, losing myself in my memory of the bright, shining strings, the darker undercurrent of the piano melody. Open my heart, won’t fall apart/ so don’t fall apart… As cheesy as it was, for the first time in the more than decade since I’d first heard the song, I could understand it completely.
I couldn’t be sure that I could hold up my end of the relationship with Mary; I didn’t know what the future held. We had told the police what we suspected about her former boss, and even though she had told me that she couldn’t possibly be my full-time counselor, the label had insisted on paying her to be my “life coach” while the band worked on a new album. I hadn’t said it to her directly, but even though we’d only been together for a few weeks, I knew—knew deep down in the pit of my heart and in the depths of my soul—that I loved her.
After rehearsal, I thought I would make good on the things I’d prayed, the things I’d thought on the night that we’d both been under threat of death; I would buy her flowers, and I would get her the biggest box of chocolate I could find, and I would tell her over and over again how much I loved her. It was the least I could do for the woman who had brought me kicking and screaming into real, true recovery.
“Yo, North! Where’s your head at? We’re ready to go.” I shook off my thoughts and stood, bringing Nick’s guitar with me as I crossed the room.
“Before we get started, I want to show you guys a new bit I’m working on.” I grinned to myself; I wouldn’t admit it in a million years, but I knew they’d know anyway.
The song was about Mary.
THE END
NICK
CHAPTER ONE
“Dude. If I never have to do another interview in my life again, it’ll be too fucking soon.” I laughed at Mark, letting my head fall back against the couch cushions. He had a point; none of us particularly wanted to do any more interviews. Of course, we’d all known that there’d be interviews coming up when we finished recording the album—we’d gone through that wringer the last time, too. But ever since Alex lit up the news with his part of shutting down a major drug syndicate a few months ago, suddenly Molly Riot was golden. So of course, when the album started wrapping up, the phones began ringing off the hook.
“I don’t see why you’re so glum about it, Marky-Mark,” Dan said from the corner of the room. He had taken up his usual position there long before the interviewer had arrived, and now that the guy was gone, he was sketching in his notebook. “Half the questions were for Alex anyway.”
“It just takes so much out of the day,” Jules groaned, slumping over onto the console.
“Where’d Alex disappear to?” I looked at the time on my phone. “We’ve got another one of these in like, twenty minutes.” The label, of course, wanted to maximize the exposure we were getting from Alex’s big adventure. He got most of the attention for the fact that he had basically gotten abducted in the line of leading the cops to the big man in charge.
“He’s talking to Mary,” Jules said, halfway rolling his eyes. Of course, Alex was talking to Mary; I was only surprised she wasn’t actually at the studio with us.
None of us exactly resented Mary—hard to resent the woman who’d managed to drill through Alex’s stubborn ass mental block to get him to understand that he was taking his drug-love way too far—but of course when you’ve been in a band with a guy for years, and breathed his damned farts in a tour van, there’s a bit of friction whenever someone new comes into the picture. Especially when that new someone distracts the lead singer of your band on occasion.
“I’ll go get him,” Dan said, standing up and stretching. He wandered out of the control room, headed for the little courtyard outside where we usually took any calls; it was the most private place in the studio complex—more even than the bathroom.
“You ever talk to that Bianca chick after last week?” I yawned, turning my head to look at Mark. I shrugged.
“She texted me like twenty fucking times, man.” I shook my head. “I played along for a day or so, but Christ.”
“Don’t worry Nicky,” Alex said, coming into the room fast on Dan’s heels. “One of these days you’ll find that special lady who can suck a watermelon through a hose and then sneak out of your bed in the morning before you wake up without even leaving a note.” I laughed.
“But will she leave me a cold beer to wake up to? If not, I’ve still got my hand,” I said with a smirk.
“Your hand, Mark’s hand, Dan’s socks…” I threw an old, cigarette-smelling couch cushion at Jules.
“That was one time,” Mark said jokingly. Everyone settled in to wait the fifteen minutes or so before the next interviewer arrived at the studio: I fished my cigarettes out of my pocket and lit one, Dan went back to sketching, Mark started tapping on the arm of his chair, and Alex and Jules started talking about mixing one of the songs differently.
We’d been at it since the ungodly hour of eight o’clock in the morning, and none of us was particularly excited about another interviewer. The last guy who’d been in the studio to talk to us had wanted to know a bunch of shit we’d already told about fifty people about over the years: how we’d all met, what our process was like, whether we liked recording or touring more, whether we preferred big shows or small venues.
“If the next dude doesn’t show up soon, I’m taking a nap,” Jules said, yawning as he sprawled across the control panel, letting his head come to rest on his arm.
“Yeah,” Mark said, tapping in a beat that was becoming more complicated and faster-paced every second. “Let’s all pile on the couch with Nick and let the dude see us like that. Next month’s Record Spin headline: ‘Is Molly Riot Gay?’”
“Psh,” Dan said absently, not even looking up from his sketchbook. “Of course we are. Like that’s even a question.” I watched him for a minute, as he somehow managed to take a cigarette out of his pack, bring it to his mouth, find his lighter and light the end of it without ever taking his gaze away from the sketch in front of him or slowing with his pencil.
“We just stopped getting questions about that after that one guy from Miami Scene saw Jules kiss Nick,” Alex said with a sigh.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Though true story: after that article came out
, I got so much tail. It was great.”
“How can you tell a difference?” Jules smirked at me. “Skinny Nicky with the big blue eyes and supermodel lips. When did you lose your vcard again? Fourteen?” I rolled my eyes.
“I lost it at the civilized age of sixteen, thank you. You should remember; I hooked you up with that girl’s friend.”
“If we’re going to keep waiting, I’m going to grab a beer,” Mark said finally, finishing off the staccato drumming with a flourish.
“Grab me one too,” Jules called as Mark started for the door, headed to the kitchenette.
“Me too!” Dan thirded the order, and Alex asked for a coffee, and we settled in to wait for the interviewer to finally get there.
CHAPTER TWO
“Guys, next interviewer is here.” Katie, our manager’s assistant, poked her head through the door as she called into the room.
“Let him in, then! We’ve been waiting an extra ten minutes,” Jules said, taking another gulp of his beer.
“Her, actually,” Katie said archly, opening the door wider. It was a good thing she’d given us the warning; I was at least prepared to see a woman walk into the room. What I wasn’t prepared for was a cute-looking girl with short, magenta hair and dark eyes, and a body that could have come out of a Playboy from the 60s. Her cheeks were almost as pink as her hair, and she was wearing a tight Unsung Zeros tee shirt with a pair of jeans that fit her like a fucking glove and a beat-up pair of Docs that had to have come from her older sister or something—they looked that ancient. “Unsung Zeros!” I snickered at the excitement in Mark’s voice. “Holy shit, I haven’t seen one of those shirts in like, ten years.”