by Emma Scott
“Jesus, kitten, I’m dying out here. Let’s go already. We got to be at the airport in two hours.”
He and Jonah eyed each other hard while the sedan driver took my bags and stowed them in the trunk. The driver held the door open for me, and Jimmy motioned for me to get in.
Jonah leveled a finger at Jimmy. “You take care of her.”
“Of course. We got a brand-new opening act, as promised.” Jimmy’s smile was bright and fake. “I take care of my girls. They’re like daughters to me.”
Jonah raised an eyebrow, and his stare hardened to ice.
Jimmy coughed. “Never mind,” he said, climbing into the car. “We got a schedule to keep.”
I turned back to Jonah. He looked down at me and our eyes locked. In the next heartbeat I was standing on my tiptoes and pressing my lips to his. He made a sound in his chest, as if in pain, and I felt the answering ache in mine. I pulled away before the soft kiss became a hard promise I couldn’t keep.
I turned and climbed into the car and didn’t look back. Not even to wave.
I wasn’t ready to say goodbye.
The Summerlin house was trashed. I stood in the center of my room, staring at the mess. The cigarette burns in the carpet, the makeup residue in the sink, unidentifiable stains on the carpet.
“I packed for you,” Lola said from the door.
I jumped, my heart pounding. “You scared me.” My nerves were shot. I sat on the unmade bed and smoothed out the comforter, as if it helped. “This place is a disaster.”
Lola shrugged. “That’s what security deposits are for.” She crossed her arms. “So… Are you with us?”
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
“You’re with us, but are you with us. They don’t call it a band for nothing, you know. We need to play as a whole. Are you ready to do that now?”
I shrugged, not looking at her. “Sure.”
I heard Lola sigh and shift on her heels. “Is it the guy? The limo driver?”
“What about him?”
“Is he another Chett? Another guy who’s going to fuck you up for God knows how many years? Because honestly, Kacey—”
“He’s dying.”
Lola’s arms dropped to her side. “What do you mean he’s dying?”
I stared at her, shaking my head.
Her chin tilted. “You mean like, dying dying?”
I nodded.
“Cancer?”
“Heart failure. Slow heart failure.”
Slow failure that’s going to take him so fucking fast…
“Shit.” Lola sat next to me on the bed. “Oh, honey I’m so sorry.” She put her arms around me though I hardly felt it. “Well. You met him on Friday night, right? Or Saturday morning? Whenever you regained consciousness on his couch?”
“Yeah,” I said. “So what?”
“So… It sucks he’s sick, but you’ve known him all of four days. If that.”
I blinked at her. “And?”
“I’m just saying, you found out before you got in too deep. The last thing you’d want is to get involved with someone who can’t give you a future.”
“No.” I shot off the bed, shaking my head vigorously now. “No, you are not going to do this.”
“Do what? Give you a reality check?”
“Talk about him. You don’t know—” I waved my hands. “Never mind. I’m not talking to you about him. Or these four days. They’re mine. So let’s…fucking go already. We have a plane to catch.”
“Glad to hear it,” said a voice at the door. Jeannie leaned against the jamb, arms crossed over her black, mid-riff-bearing shirt. She tossed a lock of dark hair out of her eyes. “You’re ready to rejoin us?”
“We’re cool, Jeannie,” Lola said, staring at me, her eyes soft with compassion but hard with don’t fuck this up. “She’s ready. Right? She needed a little break. Some time to chill. Nothing wrong with that.”
“Yeah, I rested up,” I said. “Now I’m ready.”
“Good,” Jeannie replied. As I pushed past her, she threw out the empty threat she’d been using on me since I joined the band: “Because there are a hundred guitarists who would kill to have your job.”
I muttered under my breath, “Promise?”
Friday was the first concert in Denver and I did the show sober.
To say it was a disaster was being kind.
I fucked up my solo on “Talk Me Down,” I came in late on three different songs, and I riffed the opening chords for “Taste This” at the end of the set, forgetting we’d played it already. Jeannie had to stop the show and make a joke about an early encore while shooting me a death glare.
“What the actual fuck, Kacey?” She screeched at me in the green room. “You go and take a leave of absence for four days, supposedly to get your shit together, and then come back more flaky than before. Are you trying to ruin us?”
Violet and even Lola were waiting for an answer.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I was out of it tonight. I’ll be fine tomorrow, I promise.”
But I wasn’t. Not on the inside, anyway. I managed to get through the next night’s concert without fucking up, but the second it was over, I hit the green room liquor stash hard.
The first burning taste of whiskey nearly made me puke. The second was better. By the fifth, the ache in my heart wasn’t entirely gone, but it was bearable.
We partied back at our hotel, with the band—and fifty of our closest friends—crowded into the suites Jimmy rented. I’d never been claustrophobic, but I felt it that night. Too many bodies, talking too loudly and drinking too much. Smoke—from pot and cigarettes—hung in the air like a gray haze, and the music was so loud I could hardly hear the guy hanging off my shoulder. He was tall, handsome in a slick kind of way. Like a mobster. His stubble grazed my cheek as he leaned in. Not a roadie or part of the crew. A friend of the record execs, maybe. Or not. I didn’t know who he was and I was too drunk to find out. Did it matter?
He could be anyone, and I could be anyone to him.
“Anyone plus anyone equals no one,” I slurred.
“You’re wasted,” he laughed. He leaned in, his breath wet with vodka on my ear. “You want to get out of here?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I really do. I really fucking want to get out of here.”
He smiled with hooded eyes and started to walk me out. I resisted and stepped away from him, staggering a little.
“Let me powder my nose,” I said.
That perked him up even more. “You got some blow?”
“I have to take a piss,” I said loudly.
I passed Jimmy and Violet and Lola, all talking and laughing. I ducked and weaved to avoid being spotted. Bypassing the bathroom, I hurried out of the suite, down the hall to my own room. The swirling pattern on the carpet made me dizzy. I expected the mobster to appear any moment behind me, as if this were a bad horror movie I’d already seen and knew what was going to happen.
I fumbled the key card into the lock and practically fell inside. I slammed the door, locked it and threw the deadbolt. The strength ebbed from me and I slid down the door, tears streaming down my cheeks. I swiped my eyes and my mascara left streaks on the back of my hands.
Even two rooms away, I could still hear the party. I covered my ears, staring down at the purse in my lap, my cell phone sliding out. I picked it up, went to my contacts and found Jonah’s number. My thumb hovered over the call button but wouldn’t touch it. I couldn’t call him drunk and hysterical. It would worry him to the core and what could he do about it anyway?
It was too fucking humiliating. We’d been separated as many days as we’d been together, and I’d already fallen apart. He’d probably finished eight more pieces of his installation. His legacy. I was drunk on a hotel room floor.
I kicked off my black stilettos and struggled to my feet, my sights on the mini-bar. I threw it open, grabbed a tiny bottle of something brown and started to twist the top, ready to turn the night into oblivion.
I set the booze down but didn’t pick up the perfume bottle. Jonah made it for me. If I broke it, I’d have nothing left of him.
I sucked in a deep breath, took a bottle of water from the cabinet and shut the door tight.
Then I went to bed.
Behind my closed eyelids, my thoughts swam together in a blurry infusion: dancing water and lights, fire and glass, and an ugly green and orange afghan around my shoulders. I wrapped myself in the colors and finally slept.
“Hey. Jonah.”
I lifted my gaze from the bubbles fluttering to the surface of my nonalcoholic beer. Oscar peered at me.
“You still with us?” he asked.
“Sorry?”
“You okay, man?”
“Sure. Great.” I took a sip and pretended to be interested in the people moving and talking around us. Theo had had to work late at Vegas Ink, so it was just Oscar and Dena sitting across from me at a tall table in the Lift bar at the Aria Hotel, one of the few that didn’t allow smoking anywhere on premises.
The Lift was a far cry from the unfussy restaurants we usually hung out in, or the little house Oscar and Dena rented in Belvedere. The Lift had huge, thick pillars of what looked like gold tree bark, rising up from a carpet of swirling purple and violet. Guests drank $12 cocktails at purple tables and chairs, and a solid gold wall backed the bar. It was elegantly gaudy, to my mind, but I needed the distraction.
Or so I told myself. I’d never been dissatisfied with our usual hangouts before, but Kacey Dawson had splashed color and light into my life, and now what had been usual for me now seemed plain and drab. The Lift was anything but plain and drab, but the purple made me think of Kacey. Rubbed her absence in my face.
Who am I kidding? Everything makes me think of Kacey.
“Tell me about the girl,” Oscar said. “I heard from Theo you had a rock star crashing with you. Rapid Confession is on the radio twenty-four seven at work. They’re the big time, man, and you had their guitarist on your couch?”
“Not a big deal. She needed a break from the party scene and now she’s back with her band.”
“But she was with you for four days.” Oscar wagged his eyebrows. “Anything interesting happen during that timeframe you’d like to report?”
I expected Dena to scold her boyfriend for being crass, but her dark-eyed gaze was intent on mine. “Was she good company? Did you enjoy having her there? Tell us everything.”
I knew Dena’s interest was slightly more refined: she studied classical literature and Middle Eastern poetry, and was a true romantic. Still, it was an anomaly I’d let someone else into my circle, and the curiosity flowed off them in waves, battering me from all sides. I took a sip of my fake beer to help quell my irritation. They meant well, but I felt like a kid coming home to report a first crush.
“There’s not much to tell,” I said. “She mostly rested up while I worked at the hot shop or A-1. I went to dinner with the family on Sunday and she hung alone with a pizza.”
“You canceled with us, though, to stay in with her,” Oscar said. He smiled knowingly over his beer. “And Theo said she’s hot.”
“He did?” I took a sip of beer. “That’s…interesting.”
“He did.” Oscar leaned back in his chair. “So you had a beautiful rock star in your apartment for four days. Please tell me you did not let a situation like that end with a hug or a handshake.”
Dena swatted Oscar’s arm. “Will you see her again?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. She wants to get out of her band contract but it’s not easy to do. If it’s even something she wants to do…”
“Would you like to see her again?”
With everything I am…
“I don’t have much say in it. She’s going to be on tour for months.”
“There are magical devices called phones.” Dena rested the heel of her hand on her chin, eyebrows raised. “You can call her, can you not? Text? Skype?”
“She needs space to figure out what she wants without interference from me,” I said. Oscar started to reply but I cut him off. “Look, I don’t know what’s going to happen next, okay? What I do know is I have a lot of work to do before the gallery opening. So it’s better to not have distractions.”
A short, tense silence fell, followed by the guilt that always assailed me on the rare instances I snapped at anyone. I started to apologize for being shitty company, but Oscar and Dena weren’t my best friends for nothing. Their concern for me was palpable in that noisy, ostentatious bar. Oscar leaned toward me, his expression serious for a change, while Dena slipped her hand across the table into mine.
“Tell us.”
I set my beer glass down, turned it round and round on the purple table. “She had to go,” I said quietly. “They’d ruin her if she broke her contract. She needs to decide what’s best for her, and I couldn’t ask her to stay anyway.”
“Why not?”
I gave them a look. “You know why not. You know why I don’t get involved. I have nothing to offer her but friendship and even that has an expiration date.” I scrubbed my hands through my hair. “It was stupid. The whole thing. Reckless and stupid.”
“What about what you want, Jonah?” Dena asked. “What do you want?”
I looked at my friends who’d been in love with each other for as long as I’d known them. Dena’s search for deeper meanings was the perfect counter-balance to Oscar, who skimmed along life’s surface like a jet-ski. She grounded him, he made her laugh. My gaze strayed to their locked hands, his dark skin against her pale, fingers entwined. I remembered Kacey’s hand in mine at the diner.
It wasn’t enough. I want more…
But I couldn’t have more.
I mustered a smile. “I want to finish my installation, and I want another eight-dollar, non-alcoholic beer.”
Oscar burst out laughing and seemed content to let the matter drop. Dena’s smile fell soft on me the rest of the evening, and I knew she wouldn’t let me off so easily.
Being the perpetual designated driver, I dropped off Oscar and Dena at their house, Southwest of the strip.
“Don’t forget,” Oscar said, clasping my hand and pulling me in for a half-hug before he climbed out. “Great Basin camping trip in three weeks. Make sure you take the time off from work.”
“Already been scheduled,” I said.
The cheer in my voice was forced: I worried about the loss of work in the hot shop and the loss of tip money from my job, but Oscar and Dena had planned this trip for months. They wanted the time with me and I couldn’t say no. They were my oldest friends, the only friends I couldn’t push away when my last biopsy results were made known. They were ingrained in the fabric of my life, no matter how long a life it turned out to be.
Dena came around to the driver side, wearing the maternal look that meant I had a lecture coming, usually prefaced with a quote from her favorite poet, Rumi.
“That which is false troubles the heart, but truth brings joyous tranquility,” she said.
“And what does that mean, love?”
“It means you miss this girl. Don’t pretend you don’t. You’ll feel better for being true to your feelings.” She rested her hands on the open window. “I don’t like to talk about your schedule, you know that.”
I nodded. ‘My schedule’ had become a euphemism for the time I had left. The ‘gallery opening’ was the finish line I needed to cross.
“And I know you want to leave a beautiful piece of art in your wake. Your focus is solely on the destination, not the journey.” Dena placed her palm on my cheek. “Shouldn’t you also try to do the most important thing along the way?”
I covered her hand wit
h mine. “What’s that?”
“Be happy.”
Salt Lake City
Day Nine without Jonah. Day Five without booze.
I watched the bubbles dance in my champagne flute but I didn’t drink it. Not a drop since that last drunken night in the Denver hotel room. Every nerve ending in my body screamed for a sip, but I only turned the delicate glass around and around. Did they give sobriety chips for making it five days? I doubted it, but they should. Every fucking hour where I didn’t give into the need was a battle.
I sat in a huge, half-moon booth with ten other people in the VIP section of some club. The music was loud and relentless; I could feel the base thudding in my chest. Bodies writhed on the dance floor one level below. In our booth, talk and laughter zig-zagged around me. The girls from RC were flirting with the guys from our new opening act. Everyone was happy our latest set of shows had gone well, but all I could think was I was in the wrong place, doing the wrong thing with the wrong people.
I sat wedged between Jimmy Ray and Phil Miller, the owner of this club and, no coincidence, the Pony Club in Las Vegas. He turned to me now, shifting his bulk toward me with a gust of sweat and too much cologne.
“So you’re my little trouble-maker, are you?” he said.
He smoked a cigar that smelled vaguely like licorice. I hated licorice. My shoulders flinched up and stayed there. I had four people on my right, five on my left. I was stuck tight at the middle of the booth.
“You know, it’s gonna cost me a small fortune to fix up my green room.”
“Sorry about that,” I muttered.
Jimmy turned our way. “Come on, Phil. Let’s not jump right into business without a little pleasure first, right?” He slung his arm around me, his hand grazing my bare arm. I was wearing a silk tank top layered over another, tighter tank top, both low cut. Phil’s gaze seemed permanently glued to my cleavage. “Kacey likes to have fun, is all. Sometimes a little too much fun.”
The Pony Club’s owner chewed on the wet mouth of his cigar. “Hell, I can’t blame you, sweetheart. I like to have fun too.” His right hand landed on my thigh over my leather pants. I brushed it off, humiliation and anger heating my face.