Shit. Maggie saw that?
How much had she heard?
“I wasn’t eavesdropping or anything,” she added quickly. “I went out to smoke a joint with some of the guys, in the backyard. Zane dropped a comment, something about Seth and you and ‘too much speed.’ I don’t know, at the time I didn’t think much of it. Just figured you guys were high, and there were a lot of drugs going around back then, but… I guess maybe Zane knew more?”
Zane knew?
Oh, God… I’d been so stupid. So naive.
If Zane knew, maybe my brother knew.
Maybe everyone knew.
Maggie sighed at the look on my face. “Would you please do me one sweet favor and stop being so hard on yourself?”
I chewed on my lip, just kind of stewing in this uncomfortable mix of relief and shame.
Why did I think I had to hide from Maggie? Sure, I knew she was kind of a straight arrow; a little booze, a little pot… but it’s not like she hadn’t seen it all and then some working in the Dirty universe. Her dad had lived that life, too; so in a way, she was born right into the craziness. And it’s not like I was being served up heroine on a silver platter; I’d heard stories about her dad’s parties back in the day, and whatever I’d heard, she’d heard more. Maybe even witnessed. If anyone would understand the things I’d been through, it was Maggie.
“Jessa, please listen to me,” she said softly, before I could say anything else. “I know you lost your parents, young, and I know there was pain. A lot of it. We all saw it. You think you hide that stuff and you are good at hiding, hon, I’ll give you that. Behind that pretty face of yours, it’s hard to know what’s really going on. But believe me, I’ve seen the worst there is, and it is not pretty. It might’ve once been pretty, but that pretty goes fast. My dad was more or less an addict, you know? I mean, I never really thought of him as one, but he put his party life over me and my mom, so what else would you call it? He’s pushing sixty and he’s still high every time I see him. God only knows how he’s made it this long with whatever shit is in his veins. But that’s the glamorous life, you know? He’s rich, he’s got a new young babe on his arm every other month, and he likes his drugs. Whatever. It’s ridiculous the shit he gets away with. I’ve seen what drugs can really do. You know I volunteer at a women’s shelter? I have for years.”
“Yeah. I know.”
“Well, those are the ones who’ve fallen through the cracks. They didn’t end up with the glamorous life. I’ve met women who’ve lost teeth to meth addictions and men’s fists, who’ve lost everything, and worst of all their self-esteem, their self-worth, their self-preservation. They’ve lost themselves. Believe me when I say, I’ve known lost women. What I see when I look at you is not a lost woman. I see a woman who found a way back to herself, long before it was too late. Don’t give up on that.”
“Thanks, Maggie,” I managed, tearing up. “But would you understand what I mean if I say that sometimes I think I’m not hard enough on myself?”
“Fuck that,” Maggie said. “As your friend, I’m here to tell you it’s okay to let yourself off the hook for whatever’s happened in the past. And I’ll tell you something else that may be a revelation to someone like you. I know it is to a lot of women who walk into the shelter.” She leaned in and said, “It’s okay to ask for help.”
“Yeah,” I said, starting to really get that concept. Especially when I saw all the strength and compassion in Maggie’s pretty gray eyes. “I know we’re the same age, but you know, I’ve always kind of looked up to you?”
“Shit. What kind of drugs did you say you did again?” She grinned and sipped her wine.
“I didn’t say. And I’m serious. I’ve always admired you. You’re tough as shit, but you’ve always kept your sweetness, you know? Like you come strutting into a room in your high heels, all five-foot-nothing of you, and start kicking butt and taking names, and all the guys just melt. They’re useless globs of putty in your manicured hands. Even Zane, and that’s saying something, believe me. You just always seem to have it all figured out. You have this amazing, perfect life you’ve built for yourself that’s just so you, and I envy that.”
Maggie just stared at me, her eyebrows going up… way up. “Perfect life?”
“Yeah. You know. You’ve got the band. You kick ass at your job, and you’ve got the work you do at the shelter, too. You rock all of it. You help people. You help me. And, you know, you’ve always been an incredible friend to me, and shared with me, let me in, and I haven’t even—”
“I married Zane in Vegas,” she blurted.
I froze, stunned.
“You… what?”
“Oh, for the love of Christ,” she gushed. “That felt so fucking good to just say it out loud to someone. Pass me that wine?”
I passed her the bottle and stared at her in disbelief, my mouth gaping open as she took a swig.
“You… How? When? Why?” I stammered.
“Exactly.” She sighed. “You see, Jessa, we all do stupid shit we’re not proud of. Perfection is an illusion. Even beauty is kind of an illusion. And that’s what you are when you model. An illusion. But here’s the thing: you’re a real person. You deserve a real life. So go out there and live it already, and stop worrying what everyone else thinks. You don’t need to be perfect or even beautiful all the time. Just love yourself and the rest of it will figure itself out.”
Yeah, that was some kick-ass Maggie advice, but I was kinda stuck on that other thing she said…
“You… married Zane?”
“Yeah.”
“Zane.”
She rolled her eyes and took another swig of wine. “Yeah.”
“Zane.”
“Yes.”
“And then… you got a divorce?”
“Nope.”
“No?”
“No.”
“As in… you are married to him? Right now?”
“Technically… yes.”
“What does that mean?”
“You know. ‘It’s complicated.’”
“Oh, no. Do not throw my words back at me,” I said. “You are not getting out of this that easy.”
She grinned a little, kind of painfully.
“When did this happen?”
“Last April.”
“April! That was almost a year ago!”
“I’m aware.”
“And you’re living together?” I couldn’t quite wrap my head around it. Zane lived in L.A., and she lived here.
“No. We are not.”
Oh.
“So you’re just… married.”
“Technically.”
“But not really… married?”
“That’s about it.”
“Because… Zane…” I floundered, unsure how to put it. “He isn’t really…”
“He’s not husband material,” she said flatly. “You can say it. We both know it’s true. And yet, I’m the idiot who married him on a stupid fucking whim in Vegas.”
“Right. And you aren’t… like… secretly an item, then?”
“Well, every other time I see him he has some random woman wrapped around him, so no.”
“And yet… still married?”
“Yup.”
I gaped at her. I couldn’t help it. This was huge. “Does anyone else know about this?”
“No one. Well, my dad and his latest arm ornament. They were there, at the fucking ceremony. Other than that… no. And we made them promise not to tell. But Jesse saw us, apparently. Coming back to the hotel in the middle of the night, me with my bouquet and all, and he put two and two together… He asked me about it about a month afterward but I just denied it like hell. Laughed in his face, actually. Told him we were just partying, that I was wasted and Zane was looking out for me, that the bouquet and the ring he saw me wearing were just gags, party favors given to Zane by some bachelorette party we ran into while we were bar-hopping. Guess he figured the whole notion of me marrying Zane was so ridicul
ous, when I laughed it off, he bought it… ended up apologizing to me for even asking.” She shook her head, her shoulders dropping. “God, I’m such an asshole.”
“You are not an asshole. It’s your private business. If you don’t want anyone to know, that’s your choice.”
We sat there for a few minutes, drinking wine, me from my mug and Maggie straight from the bottle.
“It is pretty ridiculous, though,” I ventured, cautiously. “You. And Zane. In Vegas.” I cast her a sideways glance. “Married.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Mrs. Zane Traynor,” I mused.
Our eyes locked. I snorted a little as I tried not to laugh—which made Maggie lose it. Apparently, we were both in need of some tension relief, because once we got going, we totally fell apart.
“Hey, babe,” I said, in my best impression of Zane, “can you fetch my slippers?”
“Oh my God.” Maggie mopped the tears from her cheeks with her sleeve. “Stop making me laugh or I’m gonna piss myself.”
“Shit,” I said, getting a hold of myself. “I really don’t mean to make light of your troubles.”
“Yeah, you do.”
“No. Seriously,” I told her. “I really appreciate you telling me this. It means a lot that you trust me enough. I have very few real female friends, and I need to start valuing the ones I have more.”
“Well, you’re doing better than me, anyway. I’ve got pretty much none. Except you. And maybe Elle on a good day. And now of course there’s Katie. You might say… I’m married to my work.”
We fell apart again.
Yeah, we needed tension relief. Big time.
Ah, shit. Speaking of tension relief… I sobered again.
“Have you had sex with him?”
“It’s Zane,” she said, mopping her tears away again. “What do you think?”
“Uh-oh.”
“Just don’t ask. You really don’t wanna know.”
I wrinkled my nose. Zane was hot and all—like way hot, objectively—but there was still the brother thing, as in he felt like one to me. “No, actually, I don’t.”
“Good. It’s too depressing.”
Ouch. That sounded bad.
Like really bad.
“So I take it… things aren’t good between you two?”
Maggie took another swig of her wine and gave me a look. “It’s complicated.”
Right… “So… are you planning to stay married, then? I mean, I’m assuming not, if you’re still keeping it a secret.”
“If I knew the answers to such questions, Jessa Mayes, I wouldn’t be drinking wine straight from the bottle.”
Ouch again.
I chewed on my lip, considering. “Have the two of you… talked things through, though? Together?”
“Come on, Jessa. You know there’s no talking to that man.”
“Damn.”
“You could say that.”
“So… what are you going to do?”
She wasn’t laughing anymore, and suddenly the tears she was wiping away were real.
Oh, shit.
Shit.
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “What would you do, if you were me?”
I stared at Maggie, stunned. I’d never seen her cry before. And I felt so much compassion for her in that moment. So fucking much. Because she had feelings for him. Real feelings. That much was obvious.
If she didn’t, there’d be no problem at all. Just divorce his ass, or get an annulment or whatever, and be done with it.
But she hadn’t done that.
“I guess that would depend,” I told her honestly, “on how much I loved him.”
Chapter Twenty
Jessa
The Back Door was exactly that; a bar with its main entrance off a narrow, skeezy alley in back. Maggie and I arrived together for the Dirty show, walking in at the tail end of sound check, a giant bouncer who seemed to know Maggie letting us in. The first thing that struck me was how much smaller and danker it felt than it used to. The second thing was the smell; it smelled exactly the same. It was the sweet, slightly rank smell of decades’ worth of spilled beers seeping into softening wood and carpets that never fully dried, mixed with sweat and cologne.
It was a dive bar, really, and that’s what I’d always loved about it. A rotting old monument to the past, the Back Door was one of a very few bars in town where local, up-and-coming rock bands could still play. Dirty had gotten their start here; the owners had let them play and drink when they were still underage. Plus, they were affiliated with the Kings motorcycle club, so there was that connection. The owners also owned Misty’s, the strip club downstairs. As far as I knew, there was never any Misty; there was however a Bear and a Snake. Father and son, they were built like tanks and about as friendly to strangers, but as long as you had no problem with them—or the Kings—they had no problem with you.
Both Bear and Snake were longtime Dirty fans, and Bear’s wife, who was roughly the same size and build as Bear, had a long-standing crush on Zane. I was also pretty sure Snake was in love with Elle, since I never saw him as warm and fuzzy as when she walked in a room and started giving him shit. I had memories of Elle at age twenty, all pretty and badass in her leather miniskirt and sneakers, her platinum hair in braids, her electric bass slung over her shoulder, sneaking me—then age seventeen—into the Back Door by telling Snake I was her twin sister. I knew he didn’t believe it, since I was taller than her, even back then, and we really didn’t look alike. But I still remembered him letting me in, never taking his eyes off Elle, and never cracking so much as a hint of a smile as he told her, “So long as you play ‘Love Me Two Times’ for me tonight, Elle.”
And they did. Dirty had made it a practice to come back here to play at least once every couple of years, and over the years, it had become tradition to close out every show at the Back Door with that song.
Now, as Maggie and I made our way into the bar, Aerosmith’s “Dude (Looks Like a Lady)” was cranked and my brother’s guitar tech, Jimmy, was center stage, doing his infamous Steven Tyler impression with the mic stand, lip-syncing the song for the amusement of the other stage crew.
I saw my guitar behind him, on a stand next to several others that belonged to my brother, and I got tinglies—and that nervous-sick feeling in my gut. The crew was working out the light show and as more lights came up, I saw the banners; big prints made from Katie’s portraits of the band members, even bigger than the paintings themselves, hanging along the back and sides of the stage. There was Jesse, and me, then Elle, Dylan, Seth and Zane.
So fucking surreal.
I took a deep, deep breath as Maggie pulled me up in front of the stage, where we found Snake. He gave me a giant hug and cracked a rare smile as he told me the band was backstage, and whatever I needed, just let him know. I thanked him and we applauded Jimmy’s performance. When Jimmy saw me, he flew down off the stage, spinning his ball cap backwards to give me a kiss. When he hugged me, he lifted me right up off the floor. “I’ve got you all set up,” he said in my ear as he put me back down on my feet, still wrapped around me. “Can’t wait to see you play tonight.” He held onto me for as long as Maggie put up with it, letting go when she peeled him off.
I just smiled. Jimmy had always had a bit of a thing for me, which he wasn’t shy about. He was sweet. I didn’t mind.
“How’s it coming?” Maggie asked him.
“No worries, Maggs,” he said, hopping back up onstage. “We’ll make this shit look good.” I had no doubt that was true.
Myself, I wasn’t quite sure how an entire Dirty show, typically destined for stadiums and giant arenas, was going to fit on that tiny stage, amps, egos and all, but I trusted that the crew had it covered.
“Just make it sound good,” Maggie said to him. Then she looped her arm through mine and said, for my ears only, “Pretty sure Jessa can make it look good.”
“Oh, God.”
“Still nervous?”
“Yes.
”
“Don’t be,” she said, grinning. “Secret show… very little in the way of expectations.”
I rolled my eyes, not buying that for a second. “Right.”
Tonight’s show, like the others Dirty had played here—since signing their record deal—had only been announced a couple of hours before doors would open at nine o’clock, which meant it had just been posted on the old-school marquee that hung over the entrance. Already, people were accumulating outside; Jude had a bunch of security guys stationed in the alley, and they’d had to fish us through the crowd to get us in. And of course, word would get out fast.
Bear, Snake and their staff would keep all the money from liquor sales and tips, money collected at the door would go to charity, and everyone was happy. That palpable electricity that always charged the air before a Dirty show could be felt, but it was definitely underscored by an unspoken sadness—at this show, Dirty was supposed to announce that Paulie was joining the band. Brody had booked the show while the band was in town, especially for that reason.
Since that was no longer happening, they were donating the proceeds from ticket sales to the hospital where Paulie’s wife was receiving treatment instead.
I just hoped I could do my part and do honor to Paulie, since he couldn’t be here, without doing something ridiculous like fainting onstage. Though maybe that would hold a certain entertainment value of its own—make people feel like they’d gotten their money’s worth, and then some.
The show sold out in twenty minutes—basically, as fast as the door staff could process people in. Within half an hour of the Back Door opening, the bar was at capacity. And I heard there were still a few hundred people hanging around on the block outside, hopeful they might squeeze in later, if enough people left early.
Unlikely.
Once everything was ready for the show and the doors opened, the band and the crew, along with Bear, Snake, Maggie and me, and some friends of the band who’d started showing up, headed downstairs for the private VIP treatment. Apparently, Bear and Snake were keeping Misty’s closed tonight, for us, but they had a bartender, a few waitresses and several strippers on hand to take care of our group.
Dirty Like Brody: A Dirty Rockstar Romance (Dirty, Book 2) Page 22