I shove to my feet and pace, naked, across the room. I still hate this part of the story. The second-guessing. How utterly I failed.
“I was too fucking scared to call the cops, or the paramedics. I called Kate instead, because she always knows exactly what to do, and I never do.”
“Kate just happened to be in New York, too?” Ava's voice is weird, definitely sharp or off, or something. Of course it is. Even if I was powerless against my own addiction, I should have at least staggered through the aftermath without involving my friends. Doubt pricks deep in my stomach. Is this the part that will be too much for her?
“I don’t know,” I admit. “I never asked but I think Kate flew in from whatever tour she was on. I found a stash in the toilet tank and shot all of it. After that, I curled up in a corner as far from the body as I could get.” I ball my hands into fists and press them against my forehead. “There wasn’t enough to really get me high, but enough I don’t know how long I was there before she came. Apparently I had crawled most of the way into the cupboard under the sink, like that would hide me from the cops who would psychically know what had happened, that I killed this girl.” I laugh, utterly humorlessly. “Fucking junkies, right?”
I’ve never said this part out loud before, and it sounds even worse than I thought it would. It doesn’t sound like something you can forgive. Chills shiver under the feverish heat of my skin and I look for the trash can in case I need it.
I’m asking her to live with this, even though I still have no idea how to do that myself. Except I need to make sure she understands what happened next, so I swallow back the acid that keeps percolating up into my mouth, coating my teeth.
“Look, I think in any other circumstances, Kate would have called the cops. But I was crawling up the walls, totally out of my mind with drugs and guilt. Screaming at her loud enough the whole building probably heard me. I was making more witnesses by the second.” I roll my shoulders twitchily. “So she got me out of there, sedated me and stuffed me in a hotel room, and then she went back wearing a disguise, even though the building was too cheap to have cameras. She wiped down the entire apartment, vacuumed for hairs, got rid of the pillowcase I threw up on and the second syringe, and then messed everything up all over again." I close my eyes, because I can't stand the idea of my friend alone in an apartment with that corpse. "She downloaded a voice-changing app, recorded an anonymous tip asking for a welfare check because she heard crying and vomiting inside the apartment, and used a pay phone to call it into the police.”
I force my chin up to look at Ava. Tears stream down her face, and it looks like the only reason she’s so silent is she’s holding her breath.
“The girl had been dead for hours and hours by the time Kate got there.” I’m begging her with my eyes to understand. “Maybe I could have saved her if I was thinking straight, I don’t know. But Kate couldn’t have. She was just trying to protect me. To save the band." I glance away, my eyes lingering on the window with its clean white curtains. "The next morning, she flew Danny out to haul me home, and I ditched him in one of the airports. I tried to walk away from the band, my career, everything. It was all I could think of to save them from me.”
“What was her name?” After all this, that’s her only question, and her voice only wobbles a little at the edges, despite how hard she’s crying. I’m so damn proud, even though I’ve got no right to be. My girl is the strongest person I’ve ever met.
“I don’t know.” I sink down onto the floor beside her. “She went by Raz to us, but I’m sure that wasn’t her real name. She had dyed red hair, blond at the roots.”
“My sister ran away and overdosed in a squat in Chicago.” Ava swipes the heel of her hand across her nose, her face twisting. “There were tons of other junkies and homeless people staying there, but when her body was found, there was no one around. Does that mean there was nobody there when she died? I fucking doubt it.” She gets up and pulls on her pants. “I just think no one cared enough to help her.”
If Angie was in a squat and she had enough dope to overdose, she would have had to go off on her own to shoot up, or somebody would have stolen it from her. I don’t say it, though, because fear is starting to creep back into all the tiny cracks in me.
I know that tone, and it’s not absolution.
“I admired you,” Ava says, her words a bare thread of sound. “I was so impressed with your sobriety and your meetings. You were like a vision of everything I wanted for Angie, but you’re no different from her, are you?” I don't breathe, listening to the clang of pans from downstairs, the heavy, inevitable beat of my heart. "You’re no different than any of her shitbag friends who didn’t protect her from a thing. All you had to do to save that girl’s life was turn her on her side, and you were too high to even do that.”
“I did turn her on her side,” I say weakly. “But she must have rolled back and...” Why did I think Ava could forgive me? Or did I just tell her because I knew, deep down, she couldn’t?
“Excuses,” she sneers, her voice contorted until I almost don’t recognize it.
There is nothing left of the girl who held me in the car outside this house, with all the hope and love in the world in her eyes.
“I had almost forgotten what you people are like. How there’s an excuse for everything, and it’s never your fault.” She turns her back on me and goes to the bedroom door, throwing it open even though I’m starkly naked. “The last thing my family needs is another junkie in this house.”
“Shh, please.” I snatch up my underwear, fumbling to get them on while I drop my voice to an urgent whisper. “Your parents are going to hear you and Kate—”
Ava just stares at me, the tear slipping down her face seeming foreign when the rest of her is so completely still. “You think I care about the cops?” she says, hardly above a whisper. “You think I care about blame? I care about the girl, Jax.” She shakes her head. “And she’s already dead.”
Chapter 22: Dirty Laundry
The air whooshes out of me as Jera plops into my lap, brandishing a hot pink Sharpie. “I’m giving you highlights,” she announces, nabbing one of the front locks and starting to scribble on it. “You’re gonna be Pretty Pretty Princess edition Jaxie.”
I blink. “Quit it.”
She stops coloring. “Really? That’s the best you can do? Quit it? Grow a pair already, you giant vagina.” I shrug one shoulder and she drops her head into my neck, squeezing her arms around me with a groan. “Shit, Jax, you’re so depressing even cheering you up makes me want to slit my wrists. Danny!” she calls across our dressing room.
Danny lifts his head from the arm of the opposite couch, tugging his headphones off one side. Kate says the swelling is better, but he still lies down a lot, presumably “listening to music,” which I translate as meaning the stomach pain is bad. I tilt my head at him, asking if he needs to call the show. Like always, he shakes his head, just enough Jera won’t pick up on it.
“Beat up Eeyore for me, would you?” she says to Danny. “I don’t want to strain something before I have to play a two-hour set.” She grits her teeth. “Sorry, an eighty-two-minute set.”
“Leave him alone.” Danny puts his headphones on again.
She sticks her tongue out at him and turns back to me. “Look, I get it. There’s nothing that sucks more than the last two weeks of being stuck on tour with your psychotic ex-girlfriend, for all of us, but—”
“Don’t call her that.” I shove her out of my lap and get up, checking if the dressing room door is shut before I say, “I think manslaughter is a pretty fucking good reason to break up with somebody, don’t you?” Not that Ava technically broke up with me. I let myself out of the house without saying goodbye, because I didn’t know what to say to her parents. And then I walked for hours until I thought to call a cab to get back to the airport. She didn’t need to say the words, though. Every time she looks at me, I feel those deaths between us.
Jera rockets to her feet, sta
nding on the couch so she’s taller than me for once. “Screw that, Jax,” she hisses. “Raz tried to kill you, if anything. You could be dead right now. Instead you’re here, you’re clean, and I’m not going to let Ava guilt-spiral you right back to where you were.”
“You think I wouldn’t rather be high right now, that I’m not pissed, too?” I ball my fists at my sides. “I laid everything on the line, and I honestly believed she could understand. That she loved me.” I laugh, the sound scraping dryly over my tonsils. “So much for that. But what’s the point in blaming her for not being able to—”
“You need to stop acting like you’re the worst goddamn villain this world has ever seen, you hear me?” Jera steps off the couch and reaches for my hand, her hazel eyes echoing every pulse of pain that rattles through my body. “You’re not the only one who has ever made a mistake, okay? You should know—”
The door flies open, bouncing off the drywall behind it with a crumpling crash, and Kate stalks inside. “You’re not going to believe this shit.”
Danny pulls off his headphones and sits up. He’s moving smoothly today, not guarding his abdomen. That dissipates a little of the tension in me, even as I rub my eyes and turn to face whatever Ava’s done now.
“She says we can’t use the light rig. And she’s right. The goddamn contracts were written before she said we could use her crap. Now we have to rent our own, and we have to come up with something for the show in oh...” Kate snatches her phone out of her purse. “Half a fucking hour. Anybody got a flashlight?”
Danny gets up and closes the door. “We’ll figure it out. They’re just lights. It’ll be fine.”
“It’s not fine,” Jera says. “She’s treating us like we’re her goddamn opening act. We’re the first set every night now, and our name’s in tiny font underneath hers on every flier, email, and banner ad that comes out!”
Danny shrugs.
Kate glares at her husband. “Why are you not pissed about this? You said all along we shouldn’t rely on her for anything.”
“I see her point,” Danny says.
I flinch, and no matter how I try to school my face, I feel like my teeth are a little looser than they were a second ago.
Danny raises a palm in my direction. “No harm meant, man. But if I lost my little sis the way she did, I wouldn’t be okay.”
“So she can get some therapy,” Jera says. “She doesn’t have to play passive aggressive queen bee all over the professional arena.” She throws a hand out, her voice tightening until it almost squeaks. “Literally, arena. Do you think it is an accident she waited to do this until we were playing Madison Square Gardens? I’ll tell you. No, no it is not.”
Of course it isn’t. We’re in New York City. Ava wants to make sure I remember exactly who is buried here, and why.
My temples start to throb. Ava’s every tiny swipe pushes Jera to greater heights of fury. This week, with Jacob’s calming presence gone to Portland with Maya, Jera’s just short of homicidal.
“I’ll pay for all the equipment out of my own share,” I say. “It could be a lot worse.” I look at Kate, and then look away. We could both be in jail right now. And even if Ava decides to keep my secret to protect Kate, she could pull a lot dirtier tricks on my career than taking away my lights. With the amount of our label’s revenues that rely on Ava, it would be the easiest thing in the world for her to get us kicked off this tour. Hell, kicked out of our contract. If our label dumps us, no one else will dare sign us, and now that Kate’s our manager, she’ll be stuck on our sinking ship. It’s my worst nightmare come to life: sinking into obscurity and uselessness, because my fuckups ruined the career my best friends love more than anything.
I wish I could hate her for it, but everything Ava does just paints a clearer picture of her hurt to me. That makes it impossible to build any defense against the pain of knowing I let her down, which just keeps reminding me I let Raz down, too.
Every cell in my body zings and it’s all I can do to keep standing here. I want to smoke, fuck, swallow my way out of this moment, but I know if I run, my absence will just drop the load onto the shoulders of everyone I love. I take one scalding breath that’s not filled with numbing smoke.
I have to bear this.
“Worse?” Kate’s voice squeaks a little. “Yeah, it could be worse, Jax. She could take this straight to the police and we’d both be in cuffs by now.” Danny lays a hand on her back, but the circles beneath her eyes are getting darker every day and I want to rip my skin off that I laid more worries on her when her world is already quaking under her feet.
“She’s not going to turn you in, Kate,” I say, and hope to God I know Ava as well as I think I do. “She wouldn’t do that.”
“Nope,” Danny agrees.
Jera glares at him. “And you know because you and Ava are besties? She despises you.”
“Been two weeks,” he said. “If she was going, she’d have gone already.”
“Look, speculating isn’t helping anything.” Kate shifts her iPad. “We’ve got a show to put on tonight, and I’m sorry, Jax, but buying the equipment we’ll need would be bigger than your entire share, especially custom assembled on short notice. That’s not all either—she told the next promoter we have to advertise our show separately. This will more than double our expenses.” Her gray eyes are full of sympathy. “You’ve never really seen Ava mad. The girl doesn’t know how to be upset, she only knows how to fight. Not catfight either—think Sun Tzu with nuclear capabilities. This is going to get worse before it gets better.”
Jera’s hands clench into fists. She takes a breath, but Danny gives her a look that cuts her off cold. “Hey, the venue has some built-ins,” he says. “Think about all the crazy shit we used to wire together at the clubs in Portland.” He nods toward the door. “Let’s go see what we can do.”
He and Kate head out the door, Jera and me trailing behind. My brain is a hedge maze of half-baked plans, just like it has been every day for the last two weeks, but I still can’t find the way out.
It’s different, though, this time. I don’t want to run away and hide, assuming my friends will be better off without me. I want to make them proud. I’m ready to stand up and face all of this openly, but I have no idea how to do it without making everything worse.
I hear the click of her heels before I see her. She has a longer stride than most women, completely confident. “Hey, guys, maybe we should—” I say, but then Ava comes around the corner, smoothed into black leather from head to heels with crisscrossing laces up the front of both legs and all the way up the center of her chest.
It’s too late. This is going to be a disaster. But everyone keeps walking and no one says a word. I hold my breath, partially because it makes it hurt a little less to see her if I don’t catch a whiff of her cucumber and leather scent. As she passes me, she flicks a single glance at me, eyes as hard and emotionless as a rifle barrel.
Jera stops. “Don’t you look at him like that.”
Ava ignores her, and Jera whips around to follow her.
I catch Jera’s tee shirt sleeve and she rips it out of my grip, barreling after the taller girl. “What, you’ve never made a mistake?” Jera says. “You’ve never screwed up in your whole shiny, organic fair-trade life?”
“Back off,” Ava says. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
My pulse leaps as if my nervous system registers Jera’s explosion before it reaches the surface. I jump forward to put myself between the two women.
“Danny,” Kate snaps off.
Arms come around me from behind, stopping me dead. But Danny’s lean where I’m bulky and I know that look in Jera’s face. She’s going to snap, in a big way, and there’s no way I’m letting her hurt Ava even more than she’s already suffering. I twist and try to heave out of his hold without hitting him, but he’s strong. Shit, I forgot how unnaturally strong he is. If he’s in pain today, his biceps don’t seem to have gotten the memo.
I
throw a glance toward the entrance to the stage. We’re alone for now, but I can see crewmembers rushing around backstage, just a few yards up the hall. Kate reaches the two women and lays a hand on Jera’s shoulder, saying, “Hey, let’s not do this here.”
Jera surges forward into Ava’s face. “You think you’re sorry about what happened? Well, guess what? There is no one who is more sorry that your sister is gone than Jax. He knows her pain in ways you will never understand. And you have no idea the hell he went through over Raz even though she tried to murder him.”
Oh shit, she just said that where about two dozen gabby stagehands with smartphones can hear her. Ava tenses, her eyes dropping for a second before they come back up.
Kate tries to insert herself between them and Jera shoves her aside, aiming a withering look at Ava. “But no, you’re all fucking zen. You’ve never hurt anything beyond a soybean, right, Ava? Is that the bullshit story you’re feeding the world?”
Ava stops trying to move past Jera and hisses, “When I made mistakes, nobody ended up in the morgue, okay?”
Jera’s eyes flare. “Oh really?”
“Danny, let me the fuck go,” I growl. “I don’t want to do this with you now, man.”
He doesn’t say a word. I duck and try to throw him off, but he might as well be welded to my back.
Kate grabs Jera by both arms, and the drummer slaps her off, popping forward within biting distance of Ava’s face. She steps back but the wall keeps her from escaping, and suddenly, all that leather seems like a fragile shell that’s about to crack.
Desperate, I throw a vicious elbow back into Danny’s gut. I know it’s his weak spot, I know I’m going to hell and back for even trying it, but I have to get free. I don’t know what Jera’s going to do but I cannot watch her tear Ava into ever smaller shreds. Danny grunts but takes the hit, and his insane grip on me doesn’t falter.
Insatiable (Sex, Love, and Rock & Roll Book 3) Page 24