Full Tilt Duet Box Set

by Emma Scott

  Hey, you’ve reached Jonah Fletcher. Leave me a message and I’ll call you back. Have a good one.

  An automated message said the mailbox was full.

  My parents had insisted on continuing Jonah’s phone service so we could hear his voice. The mailbox was full of messages from old friends saying goodbye or telling him how much they missed him.

  Instinct had made me hit Jonah’s number. Around Jonah, I felt calmer, less stressed by my own emotions that ran so fucking hot all the time.

  I stared at the phone in my hand.

  My vision blurred, and I blinked furiously until it was clear again. I resumed packing with a vengeance.

  I found her, bro, I told Jonah, tossing a pair of jeans into the suitcase and the force of my conviction had me talking out loud. “I found her, and I’m going to make sure she’s safe. I won’t fail again, I promise.”

  I gave my parents a white-washed version of the truth: a mutual friend had contacted me about Kacey. She wanted to see me. I was leaving tonight.

  “Tonight?” my mother cried. “Why the urgency? Is she okay?”

  “She’s fine, Ma. Last-minute flights are super cheap,” I lied.

  “What about school?” my father asked from the line in the den. “Don’t you have midterms next week?”

  Fuck.

  I hurled a T-shirt into my suitcase. If I missed those tests, I’d probably have to take—and pay for—the courses all over again. “Yeah,” I said, thinking on my feet. “I’ll email my professors, tell them it’s an emergency. They’ll let me reschedule.”

  “Are you certain?” Dad asked. “Last I remembered, college exams were serious business. You can’t just skip them…”

  He lectured on, and I muttered a bunch of bullshit assurances as I hit the bathroom and collected my shaving kit. Finally, he hung up his end with a disgusted snort.

  “Tell Kacey we love her,” my mother said. “Tell her I understand why she left. Okay?”

  Maybe she understood, but I didn’t. On the drive to McCarran airport, the edges of my worry morphed into anger: I wanted some fucking answers. But by the time I was at the gate, the fury had burned out, leaving the reality I’d be seeing Kacey again. Soon. Tomorrow.

  The Drowned Girl.

  I imagined her hair a tangled curtain over her face, her eyes streaming black mascara tears, a bottle of booze clutched in her hand instead of a guitar.

  I slumped in my chair, putting my feet up on my suitcase and wondering what pushed her over the edge. She’d been a mess after Jonah’s funeral, but we were all a wreck then. Walking around like zombies, dazed and shattered. We knew for months death was coming. Still, when it arrived, it was like a cruel surprise. You can prepare all you want for someday. Nothing prepares you for the day of.

  The night Kacey and I drove to the desert to scatter Jonah’s ashes, she looked ready to blow away. As the wind took Jonah’s remains into the black sky, I reached for her hand and let the words fall out of my mouth: “Stay here.”

  I wanted her to stay in Vegas, and I gave her my hand to tell her I’d help her.

  “Help me,” I may as well have been saying.

  Help me, and stay here.

  Stay with me.

  “I will,” she said. And I believed her.

  Yet I didn’t see her much after that night. I was trying to cope with my grief but my true feelings for Kacey kept getting in the way. How do you console a woman over the loss of her man when you wished—with every particle of your body—she’d someday feel that deeply about you?

  The fact that her man had been my brother made the tangle of fucked up-emotions snarl into something I didn’t need or want.

  I dropped by her apartment one night after work, and found her writing songs. On the couch with her guitar, a notebook open beside her.

  “The words are pouring out, Teddy,” she said.

  But I should’ve heard how her voice trembled at the edges and how her eyes were shining and bright. Not for excitement or joy. But in the way you look when you’re scared to death and that fear is lighting up your nerves like a switchboard.

  Two weeks later, she was gone, leaving me with only a simple truth: I needed her. Maybe more than she needed me.

  Theo

  New Orleans was a city as green and old as Vegas was brown. In April, the heat wasn’t bad, but the air was filled with water.

  The GPS on my rental car guided me to the French Quarter and the Le Chacal club. It was almost noon. Mike said he wouldn’t be there until six, and he wouldn’t give me Kacey’s home address or any other personal information until he met me in person. I appreciated the caution, although it left me impatient as hell.

  I checked into a small hotel on the fringes of the French Quarter and took a nap to recover from the sleepless night on a cramped airplane. I had a quick bite at a café, then took a walk up and down Canal Street, searching faces. Every blonde-haired woman I passed made my heart leap. None were Kacey.

  Time crawled by until six, when I went back to Le Chacal. It was a small, dim club with a cartoon jackal in pink and green neon buzzing over the front entrance. A small stage area was on the left, a smattering of thin wooden chairs and tables facing it. The bar was tucked into the back right corner, where a huge guy with a rust-colored beard was getting ready for the night. Backlit shelves of glasses provided the most illumination. A jazzy song played from a sound-system and a few patrons were already there, talking and drinking in low voices.

  I stepped up to the bar. “Mike Budny?”

  The big guy sized me up. “Yeah?”

  I offered my hand. “Theo Fletcher. Teddy.”

  He shook my hand, then planted both palms on the bar, his expression tight. “Call me Big E. Everyone else does.”

  “Sure.”

  “You weren’t kidding about getting here quick,” he said. “Still, I can’t be giving out her personal info until I know the whole story. Are you the reason she split Vegas to drink herself into a stupor every night?”

  “No,” I said. “It was my brother, Jonah. Kacey was his girlfriend, and they were real close. But he…”

  “Dumped her?”

  Shit, one of the perks of shutting down my social life was I hadn’t had to explain this situation to anyone in six months. My chest tightened as I said, “He died.”

  Big E nodded. “Sorry to hear that, man. But it explains a lot. I can hear it in her songs, you know?”

  “I’ll bet.”

  He rubbed his beard and sighed. “Beer?”

  “Sure.”

  The bartender popped the tops off two bottles of something dark, handed one to me. He clinked it to mine, and we both drank. I took a long pull of the cold, bitter ale, as if I could wash the words he died out of my mouth.

  “So what’s your plan, Theo?”

  “See her,” I said. “Help her. Whatever she needs.”

  Big E kept nodding over his beer. His blasé attitude was starting to irritate me.

  “Look man,” I said. “All I care about—literally, the only thing I give a shit about in this world right now—is making sure she’s okay. You called. I came. Now tell me where she is.”

  The big guy gave me one more appraising glance, finished off his beer and set the bottle down. “Saturday nights she plays the Bon Bon on Baronne Street. You might see flyers around. Set starts at nine.”

  “Thank you.” I finished off my own beer and reached for my wallet.

  “On me,” Big E said, and offered his hand again. “I’m glad you’re here, Theo.”

  I shook it hard. The guy was genuinely concerned and without his phone call, I’d be sitting in the Wynn Galleria, apologizing to Jonah for the thousandth time. “Thanks for calling me, man.”

  And for saving my fucking life.

  Bon Bon was bigger than Le Chacal, and a lot more crowded. I got there early enough to grab a two-person corner booth which I jealously guarded. Twice, women asked to squeeze in with me, and twice I said the seat was taken. The labe
l from my beer bottle was peeled off and torn to shreds by the time the lights finally dimmed. From the booth, I had a clear shot to the stage. A stool and a mic stand stood pooled in a circle of light, waiting.

  The stereo music faded to silence and so did the conversations of fifty patrons or so. All eyes turned to the stage. Then she was there. No announcement, no introduction. She just appeared, her guitar already strapped around her, her long blonde hair falling like a tangled curtain to conceal most of her face.

  Kacey. Damn, baby…

  I froze, my eyes drinking her in, gulping down six months.

  She looked thin, dressed in sleek black leather pants and a ratty, olive-colored sweater, oversized and hanging off one shoulder. The stage’s lone spotlight glinted off her hair and skin.

  She was drunk.

  I knew it from the slow, careful way she took her seat on the stool, adjusted the mic, and strummed her guitar once or twice.

  The place was hushed and seemed to hold its breath when finally she moved her mouth to the mic and said in her rich, somewhat weakened voice, “Hi, I’m Kacey and I’m going to sing a few songs for you tonight.”

  The crowd erupted into applause, breaking me out of my trance. Then Kacey started singing and I was immediately plunged into another one.

  That voice…

  She sang about waking up surrounded by beauty and peace. Opening her eyes after a long nightmare of loud music, a party that never ended, and a costume she could never take off.

  I sat still, my eyes either open to inhale her, or closed to better hear her words. The first song gave way to one about a lover’s kiss that erased every other kiss that came before. The next was about a night spent under stars.

  I was transported to the Grand Basin, a camping trip with friends, listening to Kacey sing around the fire. Something shifted in me that night. Some cataclysmic alteration of who I was as a man. It was that night that she ruined me. Or saved me. I didn’t know which.

  Song after song, I relived Kacey’s time with Jonah. Specifics hidden in the lyrics, leaving the emotion exposed in sharp detail. By the time Jonah’s health was declining in a song called “One Million Moments,” I was clutching my beer bottle hard, half hoping it would shatter, cut me open and break the spell of pain. Stop the tide of feeling from rising to the surface.

  God, she’s so fucking beautiful.

  Drunk and disheveled, reeking of misery and defeat, and she was beautiful to me. I wanted to bulldoze through the chair and tables in front of the stage and grab her, carry her out of this place and the people who applauded the grief she gave them in songs. I wanted to put my hands on her, confirm this was real; that I wasn’t dreaming of sitting in a New Orleans jazz club, listening to Kacey Dawson sing.

  “This is my last song,” she said. “It’s called ‘The Lighthouse.’”

  Kacey strummed a long intro of sad harmonies. Over the course of the song, they degenerated into purposefully discordant notes evoking a ship breaking apart, plank by plank. Through the melody, Kacey’s tears fell, her voice hitched and faltered but never quit. Her breaths were stolen, like someone gasping for air, but they didn’t disrupt the song. They were the song, as much as any lyric or chord.

  The last note hung in the air, then dissipated. The crowd sat hushed for half a second before breaking out into subdued applause that grew in intensity, until the small, dark club was suffused with sound.

  I watched, transfixed, as Kacey brushed the hair off her face, smearing the mascara that stained her cheeks. “Thank you,” she murmured into the mic. “Goodnight.”

  She slipped off her stool and disappeared behind the black curtain. As the crowd around me returned to normal conversation, I sat in my booth, feeling her voice and music reverberate through me. When the sound system came on with some jazz number, I jerked out of my thoughts, and frantically scanned the club for Kacey.

  Shit, I’d fucking lost her all over again. She probably slipped out the back while I was mooning like an idiot. I relinquished my seat and wound my way through the crowd, searching faces.

  I spotted her at the last stool on the bar. She sipped a cocktail as a man at her elbow scribbled something on a cocktail napkin and slid it across the bar to her. She picked it up with a game smile and nodded. As the guy left the bar, his smile was hopeful.

  I realized my hands were clenched into fists. Kacey told me once that during her time with her old band, she’d take roadies or fans to her bed at night. Was she back in that habit too?

  Kacey stared after her admirer, waited until he was out of sight, then tore the napkin into long shreds.

  Good.

  I let go my fists and my breath, and moved toward the bar as Kacey slid off her stool and picked up her guitar. She stumbled, nearly fell. Another guy steadied her, and she flashed him a grateful smile. He leaned to say something in her ear. She shook her head and squeezed through the crowd of people, many of whom grabbed her arm or hand or even reached to hug her.

  I followed, my pulse pounding faster with each step that closed the distance between us. She pushed out the front door and stepped into the street. Her hair—not pale white anymore but brassy blonde—glowed like a flame under the street light, then the door sliced her off.

  Fuck.

  I pushed through the crowd, now closing in on me like a zipper, and shoved open the door. I looked right and left, up both sides of the street that were lit with ornate, old-fashioned-looking street lamps.

  Gone. Again.

  “Fuck me.”

  I chose a direction and started off down the sidewalk, thinking it was impossible Kacey could’ve gotten far when she was drunk and lugging a guitar case. Unless she hopped into a waiting cab…

  I passed an alley between Bon Bon and a bustling café. Stopped. Backtracked.

  She had her back to me, trying to light a cigarette, her guitar case on the ground. I approached slowly, not wanting to freak her out. My pulse jumped in my throat. She was so close. Only five more steps and I could touch her.

  I swallowed hard. “Kacey.”

  Her thin body jerked, and she slowly turned. Her cigarette and lighter fell out of her hands. Through a veil of stringy blonde hair, she stared at me.

  “Teddy?”

  Her large, beautiful eyes filled with hope. Her dark brows came together and her mouth tried to smile and collapse into tears at the same time. Relief. She was relieved to see me…and for a split second, the misery that had wrapped itself around me for the last six months loosened.

  Then her features hardened. Instead of looking like she was going to fly into my arms, her expression turned murderous, her luminous blue eyes icy.

  “You shouldn’t be here, Theodore.” She picked up her guitar case and pushed past me. “Go home.”

  Kacey

  My low-heeled boots clopped on the sidewalk as fast I could manage. My guitar case banged my knees, trying to trip me up. I wanted to throw it down, turn around and run to Theo, fly at him and dive into his arms.

  You came. You’re here. You found me.

  The city was New Orleans but my drunken eyes only saw Vegas in the days after Jonah’s death. The grief coming out of the past, roiling in my guts, making me more nauseous than liquor. Making me need his arms holding me. Need his chest to cry against as I begged forgiveness.

  I’m sorry. You’re horrified to see me like this. I know. Jonah would be too.

  That’s when shame hit my veins like a shot of whiskey, and a panic chaser sent me running in the exact opposite direction I wanted to go.

  I heard heavy footsteps behind me, a breathless call. “Kacey, wait.”

  His hand closed on my upper arm and yanked me to a stop. I yanked back, knowing I couldn’t outrun him, knowing I was kidding myself but I fought him anyway.

  “What are you doing here? How did you find me?”

  “Mike called me,” he said. “Mike Budny.”

  “Big E,” I muttered. As sloppy a drunk as I was, I’d been obsessively secretive about
my past, keeping all details on lockdown. My booze-soaked brain tried to recall what I might’ve told Big E that led him to Theo.

  “He’s worried about you,” Theo said, letting go of me and crossing his arms over his broad chest. He wore a black T-shirt and jeans, and the eyes boring into me were whiskey-colored, fiery under the streetlights. “Now I’m worried, too.”

  “Well, I’m tired and I want to go home, so can you make this quick?”

  His light brown eyes widened in disbelief. “That’s all you have to say to me? After six months?”

  “What more do you want me to say? I’m sorry?” I blew a lock of ratty hair out of my eyes. “Fine, I’m sorry. Happy?”

  “Not remotely.”

  “What do you want, Theo?”

  “To talk,” he said. He scrubbed his hands through his short dark hair. “Jesus, Kacey, it’s been six months.”

  “To talk.” I pretended to think it over, while my mind was a shocked blank. “Sorry, Teddy, but I got nothing to say.”

  “Sorry isn’t good enough.”

  We stared each other down, and somewhere behind the alcohol, I knew I wasn’t going to win this standoff.

  “Fine,” I said, handing him my guitar. “Let’s talk.”

  “Where?”

  “Somewhere neutral.”

  “Like?”

  If he was shocked when I gave him my home address in the Seventh Ward neighborhood, he didn’t show it. He punched it into his phone’s GPS and Siri helpfully chirped directions at him.

  “Now I’ll have to move,” I muttered.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  We pulled up to my street with its rows of shotgun houses. Theo parked his car in the carport behind the Toyota I’d bought used in Vegas. On my frantic drive to Louisiana, the universe sat on a pillow in a box on the passenger seat, seatbelted in. I never drove the thing anymore. My house was only ten blocks from the French Quarter.

  Not to mention driving when one was blitzed 24/7 was highly irresponsible.

  God knows I’m responsible, I sneered at myself.