I feel a lump rise I my throat. “Oh, Walsh,” I whisper.
He hooks an arm around my neck and gives me a noogie. “Just doing my brotherly duties. But that doesn’t mean Joss gets to fuck with Tammy’s head.” He looks up the aisle to where Joss is deep in papers with the crew chief. “He’s not high on my list right now, even if you are sleeping with him.”
I roll my eyes. “God, Walsh, stop it. Honestly, he only wants Tammy to be happy too. Everyone was strung out this morning. He didn’t mean he’d actually fire her.”
Walsh snorts. “You don’t know Joss all that well yet, Little D. He never says something he doesn’t mean.”
“So what are we going to do about this?” I try to deflect. “Because Joss isn’t backing down, and you and I are caught in the middle.”
“And what about you? Are you prepared to take this battle on alongside Joss? Because if you’re just giving in to his pressure, that’s no way to start a relationship.”
I’m not sure what we’re starting is a relationship. I’m not sure what it is we’re starting, but I won’t tell that to Walsh.
“I’m not going to let Tammy decide who I sleep with, Walsh. Surely you can see that’ll never work.”
He nods and sighs. “Yeah, I know. I got her calmed down for now. We’ll see how long it lasts.”
“Do you think she needs some sort of help? Like a doctor or meds or something?”
His head whips toward me and I can see his jaw tighten. “What the fuck, Mel? One night with Joss and now you’re ready to have your sister committed?”
I feel the sting of the words as if he’d flung something at me physically instead of metaphorically. “No, of course not. God. I love Tammy and I’m worried about her. You just told me she hasn’t been herself. And she was seriously out of her head this morning. The way she’s acting isn’t normal, Walsh. You can see that.”
He goes back to looking out the window, but I can see him clenching his teeth as the veins in his neck throb. “I’ll handle Tammy. You just keep Joss out of her way.”
His tone of voice tells me this conversation is over, and I’m afraid of making things worse if I keep pushing. So I stand up and lean down to give him a kiss on the cheek. “Thanks for being a good brother, Walsh. Promise me you’ll tell me if you think she needs anything?”
He nods.
“Can I go see her?” I ask.
“Why don’t you check in with her tonight. We’re stopping for dinner in some little town. Come eat with her. I’ll sit with the guys.”
I agree, realizing I’ve come to a point where I have to get permission to see my own sister. It makes me sad beyond measure. My heart aches as I make my way back to the front of the cabin and sit down at my laptop. The only bright spot is when Joss looks over at me and I see his face break out into sheer, unadulterated joy. It’s such a rare expression for him that I can’t help but stop and simply stare. He quirks an eyebrow at me and I laugh before I go back to work.
Joss
FOR ONCE I’m grateful to have to listen to my crew manager go over every fucking detail of the next two days. It takes my mind off of the lies I had to tell Mel this morning. Things like, “I don’t know what changed between me and Tammy.” Things that make me sick down deep in my core. I can hear my grandmother’s voice in my mind, telling me that lies always come back to haunt you.
That thought is swimming through my head when we finally stop for dinner that night. I slouch off the bus, expecting that I’ll get a table for Mel and I in some dark corner where Tammy can’t see us, when Walsh comes up and murmurs into my ear. “Mel’s going to talk to Tammy over dinner. You and I can eat with the guys.”
I give him a sideways glance. “Fine,” I grumble.
By the time we get inside, Mike and Colin have secured a big table for themselves and a bunch of the roadies. The place is one of those giant warehouse barbecue setups—concrete floors, corrugated metal walls here and there, lots of cow skulls and Texas license plates hanging from the ceilings. The smell of smoking meat permeates the space. Walsh and I take seats at the end of the crew’s table next to one another. The wait staff was forewarned of our arrival hours ago, but I can see they’re still tripping out over us. I try to keep my head down and don’t take off my sunglasses, hoping it’ll dissuade any requests for autographs.
The little busgirl has come by to refill our waters down at my end of the table about six times in fifteen minutes, and Walsh rolls his eyes at me as she hits us up yet again. “I’m going to have to piss for the next three hours,” he mutters under his breath. I can’t help but laugh and I start to relax. God, I wish he and I could get back to who we used to be. I miss him so much sometimes that I can almost feel it in the air around me. It’s chilly and damp and dull.
“Can I get you boys something from the bar?” our middle-aged bleach-blond waitress asks as she smooths her hand over her tight t-shirt, thrusting her chest out at the same time.
“Nah, I’m good,” I say, keeping my eyes on her face.
“You can have a beer, you know,” Walsh says as he looks at me. “I’m not going to freak out or anything.”
I smile wryly. “I’m fine, really. But thanks.”
“Just water for me,” Walsh tells her when she looks at him.
“Okay, but if you boys need anything else at all, just holler. I’m Carrie.”
“Sure thing.” Walsh smiles benignly.
“Hey, Walsh!” Mike yells suddenly from midway up the table.
“Yo,” Walsh replies.
“Why the hell were you over at the auditorium this morning? I called for a car and they said you and Joss had both of them over there. Did you leave something last night?”
Walsh shoots me a sharp look out of the corner of his eye. He’s no better at lying than I am, so I’m sure he’s freaking out right about now. “Yeah, Tammy thought she’d lost something over there, but turns out Joss had picked it up.”
I see the glint in Mike’s eye, even from several seats away. He leans back in his chair and affects a casual air. “Oh yeah, man? I heard it was Mel that you guys lost, and Joss was kind enough to keep her overnight for you.”
The crew guys sitting in between Mike and us start snickering.
Fucking asshole. I’m halfway up out of my seat before I feel Walsh’s arm on mine. “Don’t do it. Not here,” he mutters. I slam back down in my chair. Then he raises his voice so Mike will hear it. “Dude, that’s my future sister-in-law you’re talking about. Let’s not go there, all right? It’s all good, and everybody made the bus, so drop it.”
I can nearly see the wheels turning in Mike’s head. “You protecting Mel or Joss?” he asks bitterly.
I’m clenching my jaw so hard to keep from responding that I can feel a sharp pain shoot up the side of my head.
“I just don’t think this is the kind of conversation we want to have right now, right here, man. You can dig that, can’t you?” Walsh asks.
“Yeah, I can dig that—Hey, Joss.”
“Shit. Just don’t, Mike,” I grit out as I run my hand through my hair.
He bats his eyelashes at me. “Just making friendly conversation, bro.”
“What do you want?”
“Do you remember that time you and Walsh both had the hots for Samantha O’Neil?”
Walsh tries to choke back a laugh.
“Yeah. What the hell does that have to do with anything?” I ask.
“Just taking a little walk down memory lane. You always were pissed she picked Walsh over you, huh?”
“Yeah, we were what? Twelve? I never quite got over it,” I snort. “What the fuck is he going on about?” I mutter to Walsh under my breath.
“I have no idea,” Walsh whispers. “But I’m guessing he’s fucked up as usual.”
“See, what I remember,” Mike continues, “is that, after she started going out with Walsh, you kept flirting with her behind his back.”
Colin laughs, shaking his head. “Bud, that’s not kos
her, even when you’re twelve.”
A cold shiver rolls over me and I watch Mike. I’m suddenly thinking there’s mote to this than simple professional jealousy.
“Yeah, you know, it was a long time ago and we were kids, Mike, so I don’t really remember exactly how it all went.”
“Huh,” he replies. “I remember it real clearly. Walsh went on spring break with his parents and you spent the whole week calling Samantha, trying to get her to go out with you. And wait! Didn’t I see you with her at Kyle’s Big Burger one day? You two were sharing a Coke I think. It was so romantic—in a twelve-year-old cheating kind of way.”
I can’t believe he’s such a prick. I did eat lunch with Samantha one day, but only because we’d run into each other at the burger place. Our mothers knew each other and were sitting at the table next to us. And yeah, I talked to her on the phone because she’d called me wanting to know when Walsh was going to be back.
Walsh’s hand is clenched in his lap now, and I can see his fingers flexing and unflexing. It occurs to me that one of the reasons Walsh may have been so easy to be with all these years is because he was drunk much of the time. There’s an underlying anger to him right now that I’ve never noticed before. He gives Mike a hard look. “Mike. Enough. Whatever did or didn’t happen when we were twelve is stupid and no one cares. Quit being an ass.”
“Yeah, we’ll see,” Mike answers enigmatically before he goes back to talking to the roadie next to him.
“I did not try to date Samantha while you were out of town, I swear,” I say to Walsh, feeling as much like a twelve-year-old as I sound like one.
“Please. You think I’d pay any attention to what he says? Or care what the hell you did when we were twelve? Joss, whatever problems we’ve had this last year, I know you’d never betray me.” He looks me in the eye. “I know you’ve always had my back.”
My heart freezes and then shrivels inside my chest. I almost can’t breathe because the pain is so sharp. I put my fist to my chest and press down, trying to stop this thing that has me in its clutches, crushing me bit by bit. I swallow once, hard.
“Yeah, man, and I always will,” I say. At least from now on, I think to myself.
Walsh nods and we eat the rest of our meal in silence.
WHEN I was a teenager, I was fascinated with Arthur Miller, the playwright. I liked the dude because he was this tall, nerdy white guy who’d managed to get Marilyn Monroe to marry him. It always seemed to be proof of some sort of divine justice in the universe. Whenever I was feeling like I didn’t fit somewhere, I’d think of Arthur Miller and dream about finding my own metaphorical Marilyn someday. As it ended up, rock and roll is my Marilyn, and of course I’ve come to realize that marrying her has its own set of problems.
One of the quotes from Miller that I’ve always remembered is, “Betrayal is the only truth that sticks.” Walsh said the word at dinner and now I can’t stop it from thrumming through my head—betrayal. As I lie in my bed on the bus after dinner while we barrel across the miles of bleak highway, I can’t help but wonder if Miller was speaking to me when he said that. More and more, the years of friendship between Walsh and me—the thousands of hours of laughter, the millions of shared experiences, the hundreds of times we looked out for one another—seem to come down to one essential truth—I slept with the love of his life. It can’t be undone, yet it undoing everything that came before it.
I can hardly look at Walsh or think about him without my ultimate betrayal coloring the picture. I’ve come to realize that this is my punishment. I am caught in a web of my own making and I will never be free. When I took Tammy there that night, I committed an act that is for life. There is no way to resolve it. No way to assuage the guilt, no way to make amends. If I tell Walsh, it will destroy him. If I don’t, it might destroy me. And as for Tammy? I don’t how much of what happened is playing into her behavior at this point, but I know for damn sure she’s not the same woman she was before I got ahold of her.
These thoughts and the concurrent guilt are keeping me from seeking out Mel tonight. We haven’t talked since we got on the bus in Denver, and even though I crave her warm presence—the only thing that makes me feel hope at this point—I can’t bring myself to go find her. So I lie in my bed and try not to feel quite so wrecked.
Eventually I doze off, and the next thing I hear is the quiet click of the latch on the door to my room. A small figure enters the dark space and climbs onto the bed with me.
“Hey,” I whisper.
“Hi,” she says. “Is this okay? I can go back to my bunk if you’d rather—”
“Shhh, stop it,” I tell her. “Of course it’s okay. Better than okay. I’m sorry I didn’t come find you. I just sort of needed a breather for a few minutes and then I fell asleep.”
“It’s fine. I wanted to wait until Tammy and Walsh went to bed anyway.”
“Yeah?” I readjust my arm under her and play with the ends of her hair. “And how are they?”
“Well, you saw more of him than I did. She’s, um—” Mel sighs deeply then lays her hand on my chest. My heart surges to meet her palm. “There’s something going on with her that’s about more than us, Joss. Walsh says she hasn’t been the same since he got out of rehab. It’s like she’s terrified of losing him or something. I think the whole deal hit her a lot harder than any of us knew.”
I rub a hand over my jaw, wishing I could scrape away the sick feeling that coats my soul like I can scrape away whiskers with a razor. Instead of replying, I roll Mel under me and kiss her, laving her lips with mine, using her soft curves and smooth skin to force the guilt and the pain out of my head. If only she could force it out of my heart.
As Mel responds to my urgent touches, I focus on eliciting those sounds from her—the little gasps and moans and pants—that turn me on so fucking much. I want to utterly consume her, be her everything. I am desperate for her, clawing at her clothes to get them off, tearing delicate fabric, ripping seams and buttons. I sit up on my knees, straddling her, to take my t-shirt off. She’s underneath me with her top and bra gone, her jeans unbuttoned, fly gaping open. Her hair is tousled, her lips puffy. It’s all I can do not to beat my chest and howl at the moon. The desire I feel is that animalistic, primitive, uncontrolled.
Finally, my pants are off, her pants are off, and I’m lying over her, my groin pressed against her heat, my chest against hers as I lean on my forearms and look down at her beautiful blue eyes.
“Are you anywhere near as desperate right now as I am?” I whisper, dipping slightly to rub my chest across her nipples and dragging a tiny moan from her.
“More,” she answers.
I smile.
“Good,” I say as I sit up on my knees and grab a condom off the built-in shelf next to the bed. “Cause I’m not going to make soft, sweet love to you, Mel. We can do that later. Right now, I’m going to fuck the hell out of you. I’m going to fuck you hard and fast. Then, when I’ve taken some of the edge off for us, I’m going to fuck you long. So long that you’re going to think you can’t come one more time and stay in one piece.
“Hope you weren’t expecting to catch up on your sleep when you came in here.” I roll the condom on, and she looks up at me, her eyes big and startled. I lean down and kiss her. “No one’s ever talked to you like this, have they?” I ask.
She shakes her head, but I can see the start of a small smile playing near the corners of her mouth. That’s my girl.
“Welcome to rock and roll, baby,” I say as I grab her wrists, pull them above her head, and plunge inside of her. She cries out at my invasion. “Did I hurt you?” I gasp out as she envelopes me with sweet, sweet heat.
She shakes her head as I pull back and then push in hard. “It’s so good,” she pants.
I use my free hand to plump her breast as I suck on the nipple. She squirms underneath me as I pull back and plunge in again, and again, and again.
Mel’s breathing hard now, pressing her pelvis up against me, one le
g wrapped around my hip, the other knee bent with her foot flat on the bed. It puts me at an angle as I press into her, and I know I need to be deeper.
I release her breast and she moans. Then I shift, continuing to hold her wrists prisoner, and growl in her ear, “Both legs around me.” She lifts her other leg and wraps it around my waist too. I pump in and out a few times then nip at her shoulder. “I’m going to let go of your arms. Don’t move them.”
She nods, her eyes closed and her breathing coming in harsh pants. I place both my hands under her hips and lift her higher as I sit back on my heels. Then I put her ankles on my shoulders. Now I enter her deep and hard and she cries out. I can feel myself spiraling out of control, and I don’t care. I’m filled with nothing but pure want, pure need. I have to be inside her more, farther, harder. My world has narrowed down to Mel. Mel’s body, Mel’s light, Mel’s warmth.
I see her start to lift her arms. Then she puts them back down as if she’s remembered. “Joss,” she pleads.
“What do you want, sweet Mel?”
“Please,” she breathes out. “I need to come.”
I chuckle. “I think I can make that happen.” I continue pushing into her deeply, but I put my thumb on her clit and press each time I enter her. In a few thrusts, she’s coming apart, and I’m following right behind her, grinding out, “Holy Fuck, Mel,” as we speed along the highway in the dead of night.
Mel
I WAKE up and have to orient myself for a moment. Hotel room. Joss’s to be exact. And we’re in—I stop and look around—Detroit, I think. I stretch, letting my poor, overworked muscles loosen up before I turn to observe my delicious bedmate. Joss and I have been sleeping together every night for two weeks now. Through Kansas City, Oklahoma City, St Louis, Minneapolis, and now Detroit. The concert last night went as smoothly as could be, and after an hour or so at the after-party, where we were blessed with the accidental sight of Mike getting a blowjob in the dressing room he shared with Joss, we came back to the hotel and had our own private party.
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