Mirrored (Follow Your Bliss series Book 4)

by Riordan Hall, Deirdre

  “Not when he saw how lonely I was, what a terrible boyfriend you were. Not when she started coming around. You turned your back on both of us. Sorry, not sorry, Lex,” Suzie said.

  In a flash of flame, Suzie was on the ground, Brighton, pummeling her.

  Alex spotted the red light of a camera filming. He struggled to pull Brighton loose as Graham and Albert played an ominous backing track.

  “I knew she was mental,” Suzie said, her lip bleeding. “Call me anything you want, but I’m not crazy like that bitch.”

  Brighton was ablaze. She picked up the guitar. “Crazy like rock and roll,” she said, weaving into the song Graham and Albert played. “It’s up to you if he stays or goes, but I’ll always be here. Cos’ I know, I know, I know…” she sang, making up lyrics on the spot. “Come to duel, you’ll leave a fool ‘cos I’m crazy, crazy like rock and roll,” Brighton wailed.

  Brushing past Suzie, Finn’s cheeks darkened like purple coals. “Fine. I quit. The Teasers, Lee’s band, asked me to play guitar for them. I don’t need you. You can kiss my arse when we bust past you on the charts.”

  In Finn and Suzie’s absence, the rest of the song grinded and crashed, the crowd sucking it up in a frenzy.

  Stumbling drunk, Alex, Brighton, Graham, Albert, and his girlfriend, Ana, walked to their flat in a drizzling rain.

  “That was bang on,” Alex said as the cool night air revived him.

  “That was a show,” Brighton added.

  “What were you going to tell me earlier, Graham?” Alex asked, recalling the very beginning of the thread that unraveled into that crazy night.

  Just as he was about to answer, a car clipped the corner of the street they crossed. Alex pulled Brighton back, and Graham fell into them. Alex didn’t see what happened to Albert and Ana. The car kept going and then stopped a few paces away and backed up. Alex flashed to when the MG was cut off on the road to the sea. He peeled Graham off the pavement, ushering them onto the sidewalk.

  Finn staggered from behind the wheel.

  “Shouldn’t be driving, mate,” Alex said as Finn careened toward them.

  “There’s no Gracks without me,” he slurred.

  “Seeing as you just about ran us down killing us, I’d say you’re almost right. But you quit the band; did you change your mind in the last two hours?”

  “Fuck you, Lex,” Finn yelled.

  “I gave you a chance to talk to me. I asked you out right. I sent you a note.” He didn’t add, through a window.

  Finn shoved Alex, but he recovered. In a swift motion, he landed a fist in Finn’s face.

  “You really want to fight again?” Alex shouted, dodging Finn’s blow and returning with another to his gut. “There are better ways for us to handle this.”

  Finn mumbled and then Suzie got out of the car with a camera in her hand. “Between this and what the photogs got, you’re finished Lex, all washed up. Your career will be over.” She laughed hideously. “If we can’t be with you, we’ll play against you.”

  Alex didn’t see Brighton as he continued to grapple with Finn. In his periphery, Albert and Ana tugged the camera out of Suzie’s hands and took off down the street. She stumbled after them. Sirens wailed in the distance.

  “Finny, come on. The cops are coming,” she called over her shoulder, but then gave up the chase.

  “No, he stays here. We’re going to finish this now. I want this over,” Alex growled.

  “It’ll be over when we ruin you, but right now, Finny, we have to go,” Suzie screamed.

  “Suzie, I’ve made it clear I want nothing to do with you. Leave Brighton and me alone. You and Finn can go and do whatever you want and have your own happily ever after.”

  As the rain started to spit down, her eye makeup streamed down her face. At the words, happily ever after, Finn suddenly stopped, as if the rain or reason caught up with him soaking the fabrications Suzie had fed him, addling his mind. His bearing changed from a bull about to charge. He dissolved into confusion or realization. It was like the lights came on in a club after the concert was over, revealing it for what it was: a shoddy room, the floor sticky with spilled drinks, and lies left discarded in the litter.

  “No.” Finn looked at his bloody knuckles and then up at Alex. “I’m sor—” He appeared to choke on the words. “Things got away from me. Jealousy—I don’t know what to say...”

  “Say this is over and that we can talk things through. No more photographers following me, trying to expose some warped story. No more Suzie. Get your guitar. Go somewhere lovely. Figure things out. We’ll still be here for you, mate, maybe not working in a band, but friends,” Alex said, eager not to have the police questioning him.

  “We better go,” Graham said when flashing lights bounced off the dark buildings.

  Alex found Brighton and they left Finn fumbling for truth in the rain.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Albert and Ana’s flat was a mass of mumbling and groaning the next morning.

  “Why do I always regret hangovers and yet, I wake up with one at least once a week,” Graham asked, rubbing his face.

  “You’re slow to learn,” Alex said, instantly regretting lifting his head off the couch he and Brighton had crashed on.

  Graham pulled himself out of a reclining chair. Albert and his girlfriend were asleep in the next room.

  “So, last night,” Graham said. “We down a guitar player?”

  Alex shrugged. “Possibly. He did quit. And after that episode, I think things have to cool off. Trust issues and all.”

  “Mind filling in on guitar?” Graham asked Brighton who squinted against the sunshine flooding the window.

  “Let’s wait and see,” Brighton said. “Although I'll admit, playing onstage with you guys was amazing. You’re all super talented.”

  “Aw, shucks,” Graham said, feigning modesty.

  “About playing, I have something set up later today, we’d better get going soon,” Alex said, checking the time on his phone.

  Graham nodded at him knowingly.

  “I can’t move until I have something to drink and find out exactly what I pilfered from the car last night,” Brighton said.

  “You are rock and roll,” Graham commented with his eyebrows raised.

  “I meant I need to drink some water.”

  “I meant that you took stuff from the car,” Graham said, winking.

  “As I imagine it involves images and recordings of me taken without my consent, I’d hardly call it stealing,” Alex interjected.

  “Too true,” Graham answered, fiddling with the camera. He scrolled through the digital images. They crowded around him. “Classy,” he said, nodding at a photograph of Alex groping Brighton’s chest in a dark restaurant.

  “I can’t help myself. They’re amazing,” Alex said, unable to suppress a grin.

  Brighton covered her chest, but he wasn’t sure if it was false modesty or the reminder of her mother’s surgery.

  He whispered, “Sorry, if that was tasteless.”

  She pecked him on the cheek, her eyes telling him she was still his jellybean.

  “And I see there are some from the family reunion at Chaz’s the other day. How they got past your father’s gates…”

  “Long range lens,” Brighton said.

  “That place is a fortress, especially after an incident with a crazy fan landed her in the hospital. Dogs and a metal fence. Bitey. Stabby,” Alex said by way of explanation.

  Graham set the camera aside, pulling out a sheaf of photos and a computer drive. He plugged it into Albert’s laptop and then shouted, “Albs, what’s the password?”

  A groggy voice replied, “Anastasia.”

  “Of course, his girlfriend’s name. I never knew Ana was short for Anastasia,” Alex said.

  “You learn something new every day,” Graham teased.

  The computer displayed files with loads of photographs of Alex, some when he was still teenaged, up to all manner of debauchery. There were
some of him and Brighton on their US road trip, others of Alex piss drunk, and then there was an article titled, The Downfall of Notorious Rocker, Lex Stihl. The three of them read it in silence. Although most of it was fabricated and poorly written, the final paragraphs outlined Alex and Brighton’s unhealthy relationship resulting with the two of them overdosing in a hotel room, a love child, and disgruntled fans disparaging them.

  Brighton’s eyes widened. “I don’t have plans for any of that. You?”

  He pushed the computer away. “Nope. But one of the tabloids at the grocery checkout would pay Suzie for this and print it. I certainly don’t have the image of a well-behaved boy, but this is too far.”

  “It’d put parents off from buying their fangirl daughters our album. It’s the kind of press you ignore or hire someone to do damage control in order to rescue your career. Oh, wait, look there’s more,” Graham said, scrolling through a dozen more articles outlining Alex’s undoing, all penned by, Anonymous.

  “Suzie was collecting dirt on you all these years. She was probably going to sell these. It’s a shame Finn was helping her.”

  “I don’t get it, he didn’t need her. There are loads of girls who’d do anything for him, hoards backstage after shows, at parties…” Graham said.

  “Jealousy, insanity, boredom? I have no idea,” Alex said, trying to puzzle it out.

  Brighton looked reflective. “If his apology was honest, you could forgive him.”

  Again, Alex thought of the rollercoaster ride of the night before and the lightness he felt after forgiving his mother. “I have no interest in carrying any more resentment around with me, but if what he said was true about playing with another band, that might be best, at least for a while until he gets his priorities in order.”

  “But who’s going to fill in?” Brighton asked, seeming to forget Graham’s request.

  “You babe, always you.”

  They dragged themselves back to Chaz’s. After showering and curling into a nap, Alex woke to the gruff sound of a familiar voice, carried across a continent and a very big saltwater pond.

  Brighton’s eyes blinked open in recognition. “Sutton?” she asked.

  Alex nodded, running his finger down her nose, across her lips, and then pulling them close. “There’s something I’d like to do with you right now, but I asked him here as our guest, so I should do the polite thing...”

  “Rain check?” she asked, nevertheless tempting him to stay in bed.

  Alex kissed her again. “Rainbows.”

  As they followed Chaz and Sutton’s booming voices to the music room, Brighton said, “When I first met Sutton I realized he reminded me of your dad, and then I realized they all remind me of my dad, really each other.”

  Alex laughed. “They’re cut from same cloth, I suppose.” He took Brighton in his arms. “ I asked him to come out here to record us. A duet, if you’re interested. I was hoping to put it on our album, just one song. The Gracks, featuring Brighton Holmes. It was Graham’s idea. We’d all agreed it’d be cool, even Finn, before. He’d offered to do anything when I was at my worst missing you. But aside from being my girlfriend, you’re an amazing musician, and I want the world to hear what we can create together.”

  “I look forward to playing miles and miles of music with you, Alex Stihl,” she answered.

  They spent the next few days recording a love song, but raucous and rocking nonetheless. Watching his dad and Sutton in the control room, taking up their suggestions, and listening to them riff, cemented an idea Alex had since he was a little boy: music was magic and mystery. But he realized it was also creativity and wisdom and using the ability to listen carefully and not let his ego get in the way. It was patience and diligence, persistence and trust. It was an individual and a group effort. It was all of those things lit up, put under pressure, and then transformed into melodies beautiful, inspiring, and evocative. It was much like a relationship. He gazed at Brighton, her chin rested atop the guitar as she listened to a track playing back. She was music, alive and whole, and she was his.

  With just two days left before Brighton had to return to New York, to be with her mom after surgery, Alex took the top down on the convertible, and he and Brighton hugged Sutton and his dad goodbye.

  “Ye come back soon. We’ll need a few more songs before the Alex-Brighton album is done.”

  “This one might take a while, like a lifetime,” Alex said, squeezing Brighton’s hand.

  That evening, after they rolled into Windover, they pulled all the sheets and coverings off the furniture, breathing life into the house. Brighton threw open the windows.

  “Can we really live in so many places?” she asked, as the sun set over the Atlantic. “Seriously: LA, New York, London, Brighton, Glasgow? Can two people inhabit five cities?”

  “Depends on how much we let them inhabit us. I think there’s plenty of room though.”

  “After I graduate, I want to stay here awhile, right here. Just stay put. Will you be with me?” she said, sweeping through the room and into his arms.

  “Always,” he answered, taking her jaw in his hand and kissing her lightly.

  They sat on a couch overlooking the water as the sliver of the sun disappeared and the stars blinked on.

  “And we can have our own collection of instruments,” she said, kissing him back and straddling his legs.

  “And cars.” He ran his hands along her thighs.

  “And a cook named Milly.” She pulled his shirt over his head.

  “And a recording studio.” He felt her soft skin.

  “And tea, lots of tea.” Her breathing came in bursts.

  “We’ll never have to go anywhere.” He pulled her closer.

  “We can be here, together, always.” She moaned as she ascended into ecstasy.

  “Always.”

  Acknowledgements

  A great big thank you to my friends and family, the supportive writing community who reminds me to be both bold and humble, and all of you readers and dreamers, these words are for you, always.

  About the Author

  Throughout her teens, Deirdre Riordan Hall acquired a wanderer's mindset, traveling the US and throughout Europe as far east as Turkey. Now she satisfies her traveler's heart and longing for faraway places, their unique smells and sights, customs, and languages through story and connecting with worlds—imagined or real—on the page and with readers. She lives with her family in New England, spending as much time at the beach as possible, pretending to be a mermaid.

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  Want more Bliss Books?

  Book 1: To the Sea

  Book 2: Surfaced

  Book 3: In the Desert

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