by Jaime Samms
“No.”
“You think I’m an idiot, though.”
Wayne chuckled. “Always have, bro.”
More silence coalesced around them, like a palpable presence in the room with the three men.
“But I get it,” Wayne said after a while. “We’ve all done dumbass shit, you know. Hell, Chris knocked Stephie up when they weren’t much older than you were when you met Greg.” He chuckled, and Christian grunted. “Remember when I was drunk and tried to steal the truck?”
“And drove it through the garage door. Man. Dad was pissed at you for months!”
“I have to admit, him forcing me to work it off was probably what saved my ass. I was ready to run so far, so fast from this place.” He shook his head, a rueful smile touching his lips and bringing some life back into his eyes. “Being cooped up in the shop with him for three months seemed like hell at the time, but it was probably the best thing anyone ever did for me.”
“What is that?” Damian said, remembering something their mother had always said about how their father dealt with poor behavior. “The Buck—”
“Buckley’s cure.” They said it together and both laughed.
Trevor grinned. “Tastes awful, but it works.”
“Shit, man, we’ve all screwed up. And Mom was right last night. Dad being sick was not your fault, and there was nothing you could have done about the way he died. It would have happened if you’d been there to watch it or not. Shitty timing, for sure. But if you need to hear me say out loud, I don’t blame you, then, Trev.” He turned to face Trevor more fully. “I don’t blame you.”
His gaze was steady and firm and Trevor had no choice but to believe him.
“Mom hasn’t been able to look me in the eye….”
“Give her time. She and Dad were together twenty-five years. Not all of them fun, but she knew they were getting close to the end. I think maybe, she hung on to the fact that if she wasn’t with him at the end, at least he’d had a chance to square things with you.”
“And I screwed that up really well.”
“You know what, we can’t crawl into her head and find out what’s going on in there. We never could, because she doesn’t want us to know when it’s not good. And you know she won’t say anything at all until she’s reasonably sure she can say something nice. Something you want to hear. It’ll make you feel better when she does, but be honest. It’s what she’s always done, and telling you what you’ve wanted to hear hasn’t always led to you hearing what you needed to hear. She loves you. But everything can’t be solved with oatmeal and apples. Just let her figure this out in her own time, okay? And make sure you tell her you love her. Every day. More than once.”
Trevor nodded.
“And for what it’s worth, if I even get an opinion on this one, Stan might be an old fart, but I think he’s good for you.”
That made Trevor smile faintly. “Thanks. I like him too.”
“You’re welcome. Now. I have a business to run, and I suppose”—he shot Chris a long-suffering look—“a new mechanic to find and hire for a few months. You”—he poked a finger at Chris—“get to fire him when you get home.”
“Me!”
“Just sayin’. Take care of my little brother, ya shit.”
“You know I will.”
They clasped hands briefly and Wayne left the apartment.
“So….” Christian remained leaning on the TV stand and let the silence crawl back in from the corners to surround them.
“So.”
“You want to talk about it?”
“No.”
Chris sighed and moved to sit on the bed, leaning against the wall. “He always treated you like shit, you know.”
“Lenny? He did not.”
“Yeah, he did. And you let him get away with it.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure I do. And I’m not saying you didn’t give as good as you got, when you went on a tear, but I’m not one of the guys. I don’t have a vested interest in keeping you and Lenny from each other’s throats, and I never have, so I can say what no one else will. He was a shit to you. This is good, you getting out from under his shadow.”
“Under h-his sh-shadow.” Trevor frowned. “Wh-what are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about how much influence he’s had over you. Not to put too fine a point on it, but you can’t even talk when you think about him leaving. What are you going to do with a mike in front of your face?”
“P-p-panic?”
“How about try believing those fans are there to see you because of you. Not because of what you think he’s made you into.”
“H-hasn’t m-made m-me anything.”
“Except dependent on him. Because he needs to feel needed and loved, and before you go getting all steamed, just listen to me. I get that he needed love. Needed to feel like someone wanted him around, but at some point, Trev, you have got to stand up and demand the same for yourself.”
Trevor shrugged. Unable to look at Christian, he picked at the loose threads of the quilt covering the bed.
“Let him go, Trev. Let him go, and take a fucking look around here. Everyone came to you. The band, your mom, everyone, even Lenny’s fucking boyfriend, is here for you. If that doesn’t tell you that you don’t have to spend every waking breath trying to keep Lenny’s life together, and maybe spend a little bit of that effort on yourself, I don’t know what will.”
“I—” Trevor really didn’t know what to say to that. Christian just didn’t get the connection he and Lenny had.
“Listen—”
“Just don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“D-don’t say you aren’t g-going to t-try to t-take his place. Or th-that it’s only t-temporary.”
“I wasn’t going to, schmuck. I was going to say thanks. Thanks for trusting me enough to stand in his place onstage and at least try to help get you through this. I know how huge it is. I bitch about him, because you’re family and he’s a putz. You’re in trouble, and he’s got a nice, rich, clearly infatuated boyfriend to put him back together from whatever traumas he needs to work through. You get me. And that’s a huge amount of faith to put in me. The guys just need someone to play the guitar. I know how much more than that it is for you.”
Trevor hung his head, trying to hide his confusion from his cousin. He couldn’t work out if Christian was trying to be nice or completely piss him off.
Christian snorted softly. “Maybe you’re just a big, inflated rock star now and you don’t remember, but you and I, we’ve done this before. There have been times you got up there and sang, and he wasn’t there. We’ve done it before, and we can do it again.”
“God, Chris—”
“I’m serious, asshole.”
Trevor nodded. “I know you are.” He curled his lip into the smile that might still be a little bit twisted with sadness, but was genuine, nonetheless. “You always are.”
“Everyone in that house has faith in you, Trev. If they didn’t, they would have been refunding tickets hand over fist. They aren’t. Because they all think you, me, and the guys can get up there and give the fans a show that’ll make ’em believe, even without Lenny’s magic.”
“B-back wh-when he c-crapped out on us, it was different. I d-didn’t st-st-st—” He sighed heavily. “I c-can’t even r-r-remember it being th-this b-bad.”
Chris leaned over, sprawled almost prone to reach something leaning on the wall near the side of the bed. “So when did it start?” He straightened, and he was holding the guitar he’d left behind when he’d moved out all those years ago.
Trevor held up his bandaged hands and let them fall back into his lap.
“Have you even tried to sing?”
Trevor shook his head.
Christian drew his fingers lightly over the guitar’s strings. Surprisingly, it wasn’t that out of tune, and he had it humming prettily with a few tweaks of the tuning pegs.
/> “Good guitar,” Trevor noted.
Christian shrugged. “I might come up here at lunch and play a bit. Sometimes.”
That made Trevor smile. You could turn the musician into a mechanic, but you’d never get all the music out of him.
Softly, Christian began to pick out one of the band’s first original pieces. It was on their first album, but had never been released as a single. It was a ballad Lenny had written the music for and Trevor had put lyrics to. They rarely played it on the tour. Damian didn’t really do ballads, and Lenny never wanted to play it, although he never gave a reason why.
“P-play s-something else.”
“Shut up and sing.”
“Play—”
Christian began to hum over his protests and pluck out the melody with the delicate touch of agile fingers.
For a few minutes, Trevor just listened, admiring his skill. He’d always been good, and very obviously, he’d kept in practice, because he had skills now he hadn’t had when they’d been younger. Trevor admired the lithe beauty of his hands and the serenity on his features and he gave the simple tune new and more vibrant life than the original music had.
“F-forgot h-how good you are,” Trevor said.
“Forgot how stubborn you are,” Christian replied with a smile, without taking his eyes from the instrument. He hummed a little louder, falling into a harmony to complement the tune’s chorus, and before he had time to think about it, Damian was wordlessly rounding out the melody.
The words came, eventually, Damian crooning just loud enough to be heard by the two of them, heads close over the guitar. They were sadder than Damian remembered. Or maybe sadder, because now they had context. It wasn’t a breaking up song so much as one about broken promises and a relationship stretched so thin it no longer resembled what it had been. Damian’s voice broke, but his tongue didn’t trip him up. He didn’t lose one heartbreaking word to his stutter, but there was nothing left of him by the time they got to the end.
“And you think we aren’t going to play this one,” Christian said, setting the instrument down next to the bed.
“You want me to end up a blubbering idiot onstage?”
“Is that what it will take to get you past this?”
“God, you’re a brute.”
“Maybe.” He leaned against the wall again and flipped his pick over his knuckles as he talked. “I need this to work as much as you do. I’m leaving Stephie alone with four kids for the better part of six months. She never signed on to be a rocker’s wife. She’s letting me do this because you need me and you’re family. Sure, she’ll have Alice and Julie around, and they’re used to this, so they’ll help her. But I wouldn’t say she was over the moon with me doing this.”
“So don’t.”
Christian leaned forward until he was closer than was comfortable, but he clasped his hand at the back of Damian’s neck and gave him a sharp shake. “I wasn’t going to. She insisted I had to. For you. This is what I mean when I say we’re all behind you, man. So get your head out of your ass and have at least as much faith in yourself as the rest of us have in you, yeah?”
Damian nodded, and when Christian rested his forehead against his, he let himself take comfort in this familial closeness that was older than Lenny, that had existed longer than his life without his reticent father. He didn’t know that he deserved all the support he was getting, but he wasn’t so ungrateful he would throw it back in their faces without even trying.
They went back to the house soon after, and Stan folded him into an embrace, not saying a word. He took that too, the new and precious equilibrium this relationship offered, and managed to get through the day without any drama greater than his niece and nephew being bummed out he hadn’t brought them anything spectacular from faraway places.
It amazed him how easily the band reformed around Christian. Lenny’s absence was there, like a ghostly presence among them, but it didn’t overshadow the gathering, and the rest of the weekend was spent in much needed downtime for them all. Trevor had forgotten what it was like to be Trevor around the band, and not Damian. Not the angst queen who brought so much tension. It was a relief and a bit of a surprise how genuinely happy they all seemed to accept the mundane man behind the makeup and mohawk. He couldn’t remember the last time he was so relaxed, and he didn’t notice when the stutter disappeared.
THANKFULLY, THE guys had agreed to remain in Toronto to practice at their home studio. Christian integrated, or reintegrated, into the band seamlessly and quickly. Despite never having made his living this way, he was a professional and a damn good musician. Some of the songs sounded different, felt different with him on lead guitar, but different didn’t have to be a bad thing.
Damian would have been happy to remain in Toronto until the day of the concert and pay Vance any price he wanted for use of his private jet to get to the concert in Boston and out of the city again immediately after.
Stanley vetoed that idea. “You have to do the sound check with your own voice and your own band, and get used to the space, just like everywhere else, Damian.”
Everyone had begun calling him Damian again. He supposed it was only right. Getting back into the performing mindset was a hell of a lot easier as Damian than it was as Trevor. Trevor stuttered and continually looked over his shoulder for Lenny, coming up behind and grinning like the last few days hadn’t happened. But then, all he had to do was look at his hands, or carelessly bump them against something to know that was a fantasy. Lenny was gone and he was going to stay gone, and however unsteady he was, always looking around the next corner for him, in his head, at least, he knew it was for the best. He supposed at some point his heart would catch up to that fact.
In the meantime, he stayed with Stanley in the manager’s apartment in the city, went to practice every day, and acted like the professional he was becoming rather than the spectacle he had once been.
The media had caught up with him. It always did, and Stanley had taken to sneaking him in and out the back ways to the studio and the apartment, and had purchased three new plain brown wrapper sedans for the band to shuttle around in. They were a lot less conspicuous than the silver stretch limo Damian had originally picked out because it was conspicuous. They’d save it for the tour when they wanted the publicity.
Right now, they weren’t ready to make a statement. They would make the announcement about Lenny when the time came, and until then, the media could go stuff themselves.
Damian worried the sneaking and hiding from the press would only fuel rumors and make fans angry at his secrecy and refusal to make appearances. Well, rumors happened no matter what he did, and rather than anger fans, it intrigued them. They wanted to know what bad-boy Damian was up to that required such mystery, and the media paired him with everyone from the married members of his own band to high profile celebs, even women, which amused him. He’d never made a secret about how very gay and bottomy he was, and the irony that he might hide being straight was a laugh riot.
Even the greedy, down-on-his-luck reality celebrity of that long-ago and poorly conceived weekend debauchery surfaced. He wanted another fleeting sound bite of fame. That was only three days after they returned to Toronto to practice with Christian. Damian flinched at the man’s interview, and the brutal pictures that surfaced, and Stanley spent the day royally pissed as he cleaned up the paparazzi mess. If he had ever doubted how bad Damian’s antics in strangers’ beds had been, he didn’t now.
Damian’s erstwhile bed partner vanished back into obscurity as quickly as he’d surfaced, though Stanley would not admit to having paid or threatened to sue him to shut his mouth.
“You bring that asshole up again, and I will start swinging,” Stanley muttered one evening as they entered the apartment.
“Touchy much?”
Stanley turned on him, fire spitting from his eyes. “You are lucky all he wanted was a chance to say he’d fucked a superstar, and nothing else. It was stupid and dangerous, and if I’d known
what you were actually doing all those times you disappeared—”
“Like you didn’t know,” Damian shot back. “Like everyone didn’t know.”
“Anything could have happened!” Stanley shouted, straining forward, hands clenched. “Anything! You could be dead. You could have caught something.” He stopped, glaring, chest heaving. “Did you?”
“What?” Damian took a step back. “What!”
“When’s the last time you were tested?”
“I took care of it,” Damian said, turning the anger inward. “I got checked out.”
“For everything?”
Damian glared, but Stanley wasn’t backing down. “Yes, for everything,” he conceded at last. “I’m fine.”
“Fucking lucky bastard is all you are,” Stanley growled, turning his back and stalking across the apartment toward the kitchen.
Someone had been by to spruce the place up, because Damian’s clothes, which had been strewn all over the furniture, were gone, the dishes he’d failed to wash now nestled neatly in their places in the cabinets. A heavenly aroma of something meaty and hot wafted through the place.
“Wow. What the hell happened in here?” he asked, tossing his jacket over the back of the couch and trying to return them to the calm normalcy that had defined their interactions since the weekend in Innisfil.
“My housekeeper.” Stanley snatched up the coat and shoved it at Damian. “And you’re lucky you were in a practice session when she called me this morning, because I would have let you listen to the twenty-minute-long tirade in Mandarin. In three days, you managed to make a pigsty out of my home. I let it go, but she… did not. And I don’t blame her one. Little. Bit.” He pinched his thumb and forefinger together and shoved them at Damian’s face.
“Sorry.” Damian draped the coat over the back of the chair closest to the door. “Didn’t even know you had a housekeeper.”
“Well, I do, and thanks to you, I had to give her a two-week holiday.” He tilted his head. “While I live here with you, possibly the biggest slob I’ve ever met, she’ll be vacationing in Hawaii with her boyfriend. So guess who gets to be houseboy until he goes back on tour?”