Hard Rock Improv

by Ava Lore

  My heart clenched in my chest at the thought of Manny, who faced each moment as it came to him with joy and excitement, afraid of those moments coming to an end. Was it any wonder he paid them off to get them to go away?

  Biting my lip, I dug my fingernails into my palm, fighting back the sting of tears.

  Sonya slapped me on the back. “Oh, come on,” she said heartily, “don’t get all sad sack about it! Bad things happen and the world sucks. We’ll all die alone. So let’s get drunk and watch TV!”

  I was too drunk to argue, and I obediently followed her into the living room, my mind a-whirl with all that she had shared with me.

  * * *

  I threw up. It was not pleasant, but Sonya stood behind me the whole time, and while she didn’t hold my hair, she at least repeated a supportive chant for me: “Puke and rally, puke and rally!”

  I rallied, but went to beer, nursing it between episodes of an Adventure Time marathon, while Sonya seemed to be a bottomless pit for wine. I watched, flickering in and out of lucidity, my brain struggling to throw off the dregs of drunkenness, aching to make plans.

  Half-formed ideas rose and fell, like bits of mushy potato in the roiling soup of my brain. Bits of information poked me in uncomfortable places, vague thoughts that looked coherent from the corner of my eye fluttered just out of focus, and all the while my aching heart cried out for some form of release. I wanted to cry into my glass like the broken-hearted drunkard I was, but I knew I couldn’t because I was sitting next to Sonya, and Sonya never seemed to cry about anything. She also didn’t seem like she would be particularly sympathetic to the tears of others. So I bit my lip, harder and harder, and tried to concentrate on the wheeling wild colors cascading past me on the huge TV screen hanging above the fireplace.

  It...didn’t quite work.

  What can I do?

  Nothing. You can’t do anything.

  Yes, but what can I do?

  Why would you want to do something for someone who will hate you for it?

  ...Because I care about him.

  And if he did hate me for it? Well...then it was a good thing I totally wasn’t in love with him. I was just his fuckbuddy. We were buddies who fucked. Friends4lyfe.

  Definitely not lovers. Whatever the fuck that means.

  I chewed my lip harder.

  I was finally sobering up by the time the sun started to set and the rest of the band, with attendant significant others, came stumbling through the front door.

  “Jesus shit,” Carter said, alerting Sonya and me to their presence. I turned and looked over the back of the couch to see him stagger across the marbled entryway. He collapsed just at the border of the living room, his long legs stretched across the white tiles behind him, his arms outstretched, and his pretty, boyish face planted firmly against the floorboards as he closed his eyes and appeared to hug the beach house. A huge sigh escaped him. “I thought we would never get done.”

  “We probably would have been done sooner if you hadn’t decided you wanted to get a new tattoo during lunch,” Kent said drily as he stepped over his brother’s limp body. “That sort of thing can put a kink in continuity, you know.”

  “Continuity, schmontinuity,” Carter replied. “A video is for five hundred million hits on YouTube. A tattoo is forever.”

  Next to me, Sonya scoffed. “YouTube will probably still be around after you’re dead and I sell your tattooed skin for a line of fine leather purses,” she said. “I’ll be rich.”

  Carter turned one bloodshot eye toward her. “And old,” he said.

  “And rich. Rich can buy a lot of young. Especially in the form of pool boys.”

  Aylen, following behind Kent, gave a gasp and blushed. Even a year out from her escape from the creepy Children of the Corn cult she was still fairly innocent. I was ninety percent certain Sonya had said that just to make her uncomfortable.

  So was Rebecca, who followed behind. “Lay off, Sonya,” she said. “You got let out of jail early for being a whiny handful.”

  “Not sure what part of that is supposed to make me feel bad,” Sonya told her.

  Rebecca, more sweet than tart, made a frustrated sound. Sonya, all bitter and no sweet, grinned back at her.

  Then, behind Rebecca, came Manny.

  I would like to say I was completely unaffected by his appearance in the doorway. I’d like to say that I felt nothing at all, just a vague sadness or a niggling sense of guilt for inadvertently insulting him and starting a fight. I’d like to say that I felt nothing but a bit of embarrassment over the foolish things I’d said and that I wanted to apologize and let the whole thing blow over as quickly as possible.

  Naturally, none of that is true. I took one look at Manny’s tall, gorgeous form, and felt like I’d just taken a punch to the chest.

  All the wind left me, and my heart seemed suddenly bruised. With each beat, a great, throbbing pain went through me, and when Manny’s brilliant golden eyes locked with mine from across the room my lungs deflated and blackness danced across my vision.

  Then the world became brighter when he shot me a little half-smile, so sweet and almost apologetic. Then he winked and blew me a kiss.

  I gave him a wan smile back, then bit my lip to keep my eyes from watering. Clenching my jaw, I turned away quickly. I didn’t want him to see how much I cared about his approval.

  I didn’t want him to see how much I cared, period.

  ...Oh shit, I thought. I’m totally falling for Emmanuel Reyes.

  And that was the last thing I had planned for.

  * * *

  Two in the morning and I was still awake. The alcohol had left my system, but I still felt wobbly, and I stared out of the window willing myself to fall asleep. Next to me Manny was a warm lump of comfort in the bed, but he had fallen asleep long ago.

  We hadn’t spoken of his problems, or of my interference. We had just sat next to each other during dinner—the most expensive delivery pizza I think I’d ever had—and then retired to the room.

  After being up from four in the morning and working from sunrise until sunset, Manny was one tired drummer boy. We’d spoken of nothing in particular as we’d laid in bed next to each other, the room growing darker and darker as the warm breeze through the window grew cool. I’d asked him how the set was, and he asked me how Sonya was. Both, judging by our answers, were fine.

  Then he’d kissed me, sweet and slow and lingering, making my toes curl and my breath catch somewhere behind my breastbone, before pulling away.

  “Que sueñes con los angelitos,” he’d said. Then he closed his eyes, turned over, and was asleep in an instant, leaving me to press my lips together in disappointment before looking up his Spanish on my cell phone.

  ‘May you dream with the little angels.’

  Even though I knew it had to be something similar to ‘sweet dreams’ in English, I thought: Awwwwwwww!

  Christ, I had it bad.

  Now at two in the morning, the moon was sailing through the clouds and I was wide awake with the curious clarity that sometimes follows periods of intense drunkenness without the benefit of sleep to transfer from inebriation to sobriety. My mouth was also as gummy as the flap of an envelope.

  Need a drink, I thought. A healthy drink.

  With one last glance at Manny’s sleeping form—and a twinge in my chest to accompany it—I carefully eased myself down the length of the bed and over the footboard. When my feet hit the floor, I carefully padded out the door and down the hall to the bathroom.

  There I splashed water on my face until I felt a little less fuzzy, then gulped great handfuls of water while I tried to sort through the riot of emotions and thoughts tumbling through my head. I stared at myself in the mirror. I looked exhausted, nothing like the relaxed, happy woman who had been looking back at me the past few days.

  What was I going to do? As of right now, Manny and I were on speaking terms, but our relationship was still...strained. It was nowhere near what I wanted it to be. It was n
owhere near what it had been only a few days ago. Back then—it seemed so long ago, our afternoon of wild passion behind the waterfall—there had been only heat and passion, an inability to keep our hands from each other, shared laughter, joy, gentleness...

  Now? Things were fine, but obviously...cooled.

  Panic filled me at the thought, and I began to pace in the bathroom. It was quite small, so I only got a few steps from the toilet to the door before I had to turn back, but it was good enough for my fretting purposes.

  What was I going to do? How was I going to fix this thing?

  Ignore Manny’s problems? my brain suggested. He obviously doesn’t want you to help him with them...

  But even as I thought it I knew it would be impossible for me to leave it alone. Manny’s problems could be solved, easily, and I knew how to do it...so why wouldn’t he let me? Perhaps he was too full of male pride to let a woman handle the problems he’d had with his own relatives.

  ‘...they show up on the mainland, and they always spook him...’ All right. Think about this logically, Rose. Don’t think about this like a lawyer, but like a person who has been hurt a hundred times over...

  Not breaking my pace, I scowled and let my eyes close to half-mast as I struggled to put myself in Manny’s shoes.

  Imagine you lost your parents at fifteen, I thought. When you were far from home. Everything changes in an instant. No one is there for you. Then your relatives come swooping in, and you think you’ll at least have a family to take care of you...

  And then? Betrayal. They only want your money, only want to use you. Don’t give a crap about you.

  You live for your music. You live for getting out from beneath their thumbs, for the day when you can take all your freedom back and leave them behind.

  And then, just when you are about to break free...more betrayal. Locked up. Abused. Kept tethered to people who couldn’t care less. And then you have to pay them off, give them the money you worked hard for, hide the bulk of your wealth, because they have a stranglehold on you.

  You try to escape, but you can’t, and they follow you, until just the sight of their faces scares you, makes you into a scared teenager again, and you stop planning for the future, stop dreaming of a life without them, don’t dare, because the disappointment would be too great if you were foiled again...

  My eyes stung and I rapidly blinked away the tears that threatened to fall. My heart ached for the young man who had lost his family, who was then betrayed by the ones who were supposed to take care of him. No wonder he didn’t want to talk about it. No wonder he didn’t dare hope to evade their clutches. No wonder they scared him so badly.

  No wonder he didn’t act the way a rational adult might act. He was still living like a trapped, terrified teenager, unable to move on.

  Christ.

  My pacing picked up. What would I have done, I wondered, if it had been me who had been used and abused so thoroughly?

  The answer was simple. I would have made a plan and stuck with it. I wasn’t the sort of girl who ignored problems. I wasn’t the sort of girl who sat around crying when her plans didn’t go...well, didn’t go as planned!

  No, I was the sort of girl who beat her head against a wall and did the same thing over and over again, expecting different results each time.

  I stopped my pacing and stared at nothing.

  Is that...is that really what I’ve been doing all this time? I had been approaching Manny, approaching Manny’s problems in the way that I approached all problems. Pragmatically. Stubbornly. With utter certainty in my methods and my plans, sure that I was doing the right thing.

  I couldn’t have been doing the right thing, though. I’d pushed Manny away with my insistence. I’d ended up homeless and on the street due to my stubbornness and pride. I’d been miserable for the past six months. And the six months before that. And the years before that...

  In fact, the only time since childhood that I could remember being truly happy was when I was with Manny. When I was leaning on Manny, adopting his easy, carefree way of approaching the world.

  No planning. No worrying. No borrowing trouble.

  I wanted it back.

  I would never betray Manny. I would never hurt him intentionally. If Manny and I repaired our bond, could I go back to those days, even if it meant ignoring Manny’s problems?

  ...No. No, absolutely not. Not because it interfered with my plans, but because I cared about Manny. I cared about his hurt, his sadness. I wanted to help him, to shield him from those who would wound him.

  I had to fix this for Manny. Without Manny knowing. He had helped me so much, taught me how to be spontaneous, how to live fully in the moment, how to dive into passion so searing and intense that it changed me forever, whereas before I would have been too rational, too practical, too scared to deviate from the Plan again.

  When I went back to the mainland, I knew I would no longer be living out of my car. I would tell Rebecca everything. I would find a new path by opening up my life, not by shutting it down.

  Whether he’d known it or not, Manny had taught me how to be someone who could thrive in adversity, not just survive it. After all, even in his situation he was happier and luckier than approximately 99.9999999999% of the world.

  I owed Manny everything, and I would give him something back, even if he never knew it was me. Even if we left this island in two days and never kissed again.

  He hurt so badly, and I could make it better. Somehow.

  So...how?

  Clenching my jaw I began to pace again, back and forth, back and forth, plans rising up and falling as I picked them apart. My meticulous legal brain kept coming back to the law, back to how I could bend them to the rules, use the rules against them, but every single one of those channels involved alerting Manny to what I was doing. Involved bringing more pain down on him.

  I slowed and took a deep breath. All right, I thought. What would Manny do?

  Just then the bathroom door opened.

  I turned and saw a very surprised Carter standing there in his underwear. The elastic in his boxers was worn, dipping low across his pelvis. Normally I would have blushed and looked away, but in that moment I was struck dumb with the inkling of an idea.

  A very, very ill-advised idea.

  And yet it sunk its claws into my brain and did not let go...

  “Oh,” Carter said, seeming to realize someone else was in the bathroom he wanted to occupy. “Sorry. Didn’t know you were in here...” He trailed off and blinked, running a hand over his face. Then he took a step back as if to leave.

  The inkling in my brain wove through my thoughts, taking root.

  “Wait!” I said.

  Carter stopped and waited.

  I licked my lips. “Do you...do you know where the banditos live?” Please say yes, please say yes...

  He looked left and right, obviously still foggy from sleep. “Uh...yes?”

  “Manny’s uncle?” I asked. “You know where he lives? Where I can find him?”

  His eyes narrowed as the cobwebs began to fall away. “Why do you want to know, Rose? What are you planning?”

  Something very spontaneous, I thought. I squared my shoulders.

  “Then you’re just the person I’m looking for,” I told Carter.

  “I am?”

  “I need your help.”

  Confusion crossed his face. “You need me to help you?”

  I gave a firm nod. “Yup.”

  He was quiet for a minute, sizing me up. I could see the wheels turning in his head as he realized I must be asking these things for a reason. “All right,” he said at last. “What do you need?”

  I smiled, and it felt wicked. “Drugs,” I said. “I need lots and lots of drugs.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  The last time I’d worn a thong had been in college, and the last time I’d had legal documents folded up and stuffed in my bra had been never, but that was exactly where I found myself on our second to last full day
in Hawaii.

  I also found myself sitting in the band’s gray van and staring out the window at the house we were casually driving past.

  It was the house of Arturo Reyes.

  Manny’s uncle.

  I stared, disbelieving, until it was eclipsed from view. Then I turned around and gaped at Carter, dumbfounded.

  He just smirked at me.

  I blinked, trying to understand what I’d just been looking at. “If they’ve been cheating Manny out of his money for years,” I asked him, “then why do they live in the shittiest, tiniest house imaginable?”

  From the back row of the van, our tag-along security officer gave a muffled snort. In the driver’s seat, Sonya didn’t bother to hide her derision and laughed out loud. “Because, dear Rose,” she said, “Manny and I are far too clever in hiding his money from them. They can find some of it, but they think he’s got maybe ten percent of what he’s really worth.”

  “That,” Carter said, “and from what I understand they spend it all on frivolous bullshit. You grow up poor and you tend to have problems with money, no matter how much you end up getting later. That’s why lottery winners and NFL players almost always end up stone broke only a couple years after they hit it big.”

  “Yeah, but that’s not necessarily true. How do you know they spend it on frivolous crap?” I asked.

  “I paid a private investigator to follow them around once when they were on the mainland,” Sonya said. “I wanted to see what they were up to.”

  A PI? Sonya didn’t fuck around. “And?”

  “They were up to a lot of drugs and strip clubs. I think one of them bought a used Mustang once but he wrecked it within, like, a week.” She laughed happily at this evidence of karmic backlash. “Point is, even if they were investing it they’d probably pick dumbass penny stocks based on hot internet tips, or buy bitcoins or some other get-rich-quick Ponzi honey pot for losers.”