by Hope Franke
Sebastian let out a long hard sigh. “There aren’t any flights until morning.”
“I’ll take the train.” Eva didn’t fly. The autobahn was scary enough. The thought of traveling through the air in a steel tube made her blood freeze.
“There won’t be any trains leaving until early morning either.”
Eva speared him with an icy glare. “Then I’ll wait at the train station.” There was no way she was spending the night here. With him.
Another heavy sigh came from Sebastian as he grabbed her suitcase. He held the door of their room open, and she limped by him. The ride down the elevator was unbearable. Standing side by side, she could feel the heat of his body next to her, a hot invisible wall of separation. The elevator beeped, announcing their arrival to the lobby. Sebastian walked ahead and Eva heard him order a taxi.
Eva continued to the waiting area outside where a taxi pulled up. Sebastian put her suitcase in the trunk as she crawled into the backseat. She couldn’t contain her surprise when he got in next to her.
“I don’t need a chaperone,” she snapped.
“I’m not leaving you alone overnight at the train station.”
She spoke through tight lips. “I’ll be fine.”
“I’m sure you will. I’m still coming.”
Eva huffed and stared out the window. The oncoming traffic blurred by in white and red ribbons of light. Her chest squeezed with the heaviness of a steel drum locked tight. Her face pulled down like hard leather. The back of her eyes burned as she held back angry, resentful tears. She wouldn’t let Sebastian see how deeply she was wounded, how lethal his injury was to her. She carefully stitched up the festering sore in her soul, ignoring the poisonous pus.
Eva insisted on pulling her suitcase when they arrived at the station, but she didn’t fight him when Sebastian refused to let her buy her own ticket home. He owed her that much anyway.
“I’m checking your suitcase through,” Sebastian said, “but you have to change trains in Munich and Nuremburg.”
Eva swallowed. What if she got lost? What if she couldn’t find the right platform in time and missed the connection?
Sebastian seemed to read her mind. “Just follow the directions on the ticket,” he added gently. “The platform numbers are listed there.”
Eva snatched the tickets and slipped them into her shoulder bag and followed the signs overhead to the appropriate platform number. See, this was easy. Whatever trial lay ahead of her as she made her way home alone would be a million times easier to face than staying on tour.
Eva had hoped for a crowded waiting area with only a single empty seat that would force Sebastian away from her, but the platform was nearly empty. Not many people opted to spend their nights on uncomfortable plastic chairs waiting for the 5:00 am train.
Exhaustion ripped through her being and she slumped into an empty seat and closed her eyes. She heard the sound of another body easing into a chair opposite her and she knew it was Sebastian. She could feel his eyes on her, staring. Remorseful.
A lump formed in her throat, soft and gooey. The burning in her eyes felt wet and a tear escaped. She jumped to her feet, turning her back to Sebastian. She didn’t want him to see her cry. She left for the restroom she’d spotted on the other side of the platform. Her leg felt like a dead weight, a ball and chain she dragged with her everywhere she went. A middle-aged man with greasy hair and dirty jeans watched her until she disappeared behind the restroom door.
She double-checked to ensure she was alone before allowing the tears to flow. She pressed a paper towel to her mouth to suppress the sobs that escaped from a deep place, like lava bubbling stubbornly to the surface. She thrashed at her chest. Her heart hurt so much!
The one person she dared to love was the only person she’d vowed to hate. And she hated him even more for putting her in this impossible situation.
Sebastian finished the tour before turning himself into the Dresden Police. He owed the band that much and had waited until the bus ride home from their final date in Stuttgart on the last day of August to break the news.
He’d never forget the stunned looks on their faces, especially Karl’s and Yvonne’s. Everyone had expected drama, but not that. Immorality, diva-like demands, a lame explanation (finally) as to why Eva left so abruptly a day into the tour, but not a confession to a crime.
They tried to talk him out of it.
“You’ll go to jail,” Karl said, “throw our band off the rails.”
Sebastian shook his head. “The band? That’s what you’re concerned about?”
Karl shrugged. “Well, sure. I mean, that was then, this is now. Let it go.”
“He’s got a point,” Dirk added. “What’s to gain by turning yourself in? Your career is on an upsweep. A confession like this would kill momentum. And for what?”
“It’s the right thing to do.”
“Did Eva ask you to do it?” Markus asked. “I mean, I can see why she’d be mad, but can’t you just pay her off?”
“Yeah,” Karl said. “It’s not like you can fix her leg by doing time.”
They didn’t understand and quite honestly, Sebastian would’ve been surprised if they had.
“She didn’t ask me,” he said. “I need to do this for myself. Look, I laid down my voice and guitar tracks for the new songs at my home studio. Use those to record while I’m… otherwise engaged.”
“You could be otherwise engaged for two or three years,” Karl stated.
“Maybe, but I’m hoping they’ll take my youth and inexperience at the time into consideration, and the fact that I’m freely surrendering myself.”
“That’s a big assumption.”
“I know.”
Eva had been “imprisoned” by her injuries for five years already with no chance of parole. He’d man up and do a few years if he had to.
That was fifty-eight days ago. The judge gave him twenty-two months in a minimum security prison, a three-thousand-euro fine, and ordered him to pay “damages to the victim for pain caused.” He was more than happy to comply with the latter, and he was glad that his recent success gave him the financial ability to do so.
His celebrity status meant nothing to the men he bunked with now. He worked during the day and read at night. They were allowed to watch TV in the dining hall, and he spent the first two weeks glued to the reports of his arrest—not because he cared about what the media said about him, but about how they hounded Eva. He curled his fists and scowled at the images of photographers camping outside the Baumann’s building, intruding on the soup kitchen, nearly tripping Eva as she pushed passed them down the sidewalk. The camera zoomed in and froze on Eva’s face, always twisted with anxiety.
“That your girlfriend?” one inmate asked.
“It’s the girl he hit, moron,” another offered.
“She’s cute.”
Sebastian pushed away from the table and waited by the door for a guard to take him to his room.
The days were long and boring and ran like molasses into each other. The only highlight was visiting day. Despite his crime, his popularity hadn’t slipped, and it was brought to his attention that he had fans creating a scene at the entrance of the prison.
Sebastian smirked a little at that. The only visitors he got were the ones he okayed. To date the list consisted of Dirk and Markus, and his sister who’d dragged their mother along once. He wished Eva would come, but he knew hell would likely freeze over before that happened. He was surprised by the visitor listed on the roster today. His father. Sebastian’s first inclination was to deny him, but then he wondered why. In light of everything that had been going on, he now saw how silly and childish it would be to continue their feud.
He was sitting in the chair behind an empty table when Sebastian arrived with the guard. His father sat straight and tall, his usual stance, but Sebastian noticed his shoulders were thinner and his face, though expressionless, had looser skin around his mouth and chin. His father had aged. Time didn
’t stop for anyone, but despite the change in appearance, Sebastian immediately felt like he was fifteen years old again under the man’s scrutiny.
“Hi, Papa,” he said.
“Sebastian.”
The silence that descended between them was fat and awkward.
“I tried calling,” Herr Weiss began. “Before.”
“Yeah. I should’ve returned your calls.”
Herr Weiss shifted uneasily. “I wish you would’ve told me. About this. When it happened. I would’ve helped you. I’m a lawyer. I know lawyers. It was an accident. You would’ve got off without jail time.”
Sebastian nodded. He could see the wisdom in it now, but back then, at eighteen, he not only hated his father he feared him.
“Thanks for coming,” Sebastian muttered. It felt lame to say it, but he didn’t know what else to say. And his coming was a nice gesture, just a little too late. Sebastian was ready for them to say their good-byes already.
Herr Weiss stared at him with brown, watery eyes. “I’m sick.”
A patch of cold spread through Sebastian’s chest. “What kind of sick?”
“A bad kind.”
“How bad?”
“Cancer bad. Pancreas.”
Sebastian didn’t like his dad, but he didn’t want him dead, either. He forced a dry swallow. “How long?”
“Weeks, months. They aren’t promising anything. I just thought you should know.” He stood to leave and nodded good-bye.
“Papa?”
The man stopped and twisted to look back.
Sebastian licked dry lips. “I’m sorry.”
His father lifted his chin. “I’m sorry, too.”
Eva had returned from her short stint on tour a drastically changed person. The first thing she did when she got home besides ignore the probing questions from her parents and the intrusive text messages from her honeymooning sister was rip the poster of Sebastian Weiss off her wall. This was followed by removal of any trace of his presence on her laptop. Swift and efficient swipes and clicks on her mouse deleted all Hollow Fellows albums, cleared their website from her bookmarks and unsubscribed her from their newsletter and all their social media updates.
She’d lain on her bed and rubbed the throbbing in her leg. A glance at her empty chair and her guitar next to it brought Sebastian to her mind’s eye, sitting there that first day when she let him in to play her Duncan Africa. She rubbed her temples. She had to forget him. That was her priority. She needed to be distracted. It was then that she signed in online and registered for university. She needed a new environment, new friends, a new focus. New, new, new.
She chuckled humorlessly. She didn’t know why she had been afraid to go back to school before. Not going was the thing that suddenly frightened her.
Sebastian had given her something—popularity. She hadn’t known he was going to turn himself in. She didn’t asked him to, so it was a shock to wake up one morning to find a pack of media people outside their building looking for her.
At first she was furious at Sebastian. Everything he did ruined her life. She was his girlfriend for a minute, and now it was all the nation wanted to gossip about. She’d become a subject of intrigue. The story about Sebastian Weiss was scandalous and sensational. The rock idol had tried to soothe his guilt by seducing his victim. Can you believe it? Front page tabloid material.
Her family was mortified and so was she. Eva even agreed to an interview, hoping to clear up the falsehoods, but it’d just made things more twisted. She remained the Victim of the Celebrity.
She was practically famous when she arrived for her first day of school. Her papa had to drive her because public transit was no longer safe. She acknowledged that it was a nice change of pace from invisible, though she questioned the sincerity of her new friendships. But she didn’t care. In a way, they were using each other. At least she had one real friend in Annette.
Unfortunately, even six months later, Sebastian’s popularity hadn’t fallen with Eva’s climb. Hollow Fellows songs continued to dominate the charts, and Eva almost had a heart attack when “Flesh & Bone” was released recently as a single. She hadn’t realized Sebastian had recorded it. Turned out he could rock up any kind of song. Eva barely recognized her version, but it soared to number one in just a few days.
When word got out that Eva was listed as a co-writer of the popular hit, it was almost impossible for her to walk the halls. Her cane saved her from several falls.
Annette worked as her bodyguard. “Back, people! Let the girl through. Do you really want to be responsible for causing Eva Baumann to fall?”
Eva smirked. Her friend said her name like it meant something. Like she was someone.
They made it to study hall without incident. Other students would pause and stare when they spotted her. Others would shyly wave and say, “Hi, Eva.”
Annette scowled and muttered about how she was being ignored and threw her mane of red hair over one shoulder. “What am I? Chopped liver?”
They pulled out chairs at an empty table and sat. “It is a reversal of roles, isn’t it?” Eva commented. She patted her friend’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. It’ll pass. I’ll become a has-been and you’ll continue to be the beautiful one.”
Annette puffed. “You are the beautiful one, Eva.” She opened a book, but her eyes remained fixed on something across the room.
Eva looked for what had caught Annette’s attention. A table full of boys. “Which one?” she asked.
Annette’s eyelashes fluttered. “What?”
“Which one do you like?”
A flush of red crept up Annette’s neck. “Was I staring?”
Eva removed a textbook from her bag. “Uh, yeah.”
“Xavier.”
“Which one is that?” Eva asked, searching.
“Black hair, beautiful dark eyes.”
The guy in question happened to look over at them in that moment. Annette ducked her head. “Oh mercy. Did he see me staring?”
Eva smiled at the handsome, olive-skinned boy, and they locked eyes. “I don’t think so,” she said without turning away. He cocked a brow, and she raised her chin.
He looked away when Annette glanced up. “He’s so cute,” Annette whispered, “and I think he likes me.”
Eva tried not to sound surprised. “You do?”
“We share a class together. He’s borrowed my books. I think he did it just to have an excuse to talk to me. We’re going to go for coffee sometime.”
“Like a date?” Eva asked.
“I hope so.” Annette giggled. “I really like him.”
Sebastian didn’t know Dirk had released the song until after it had hit the charts.
Dirk visited him with unconstrained excitement. “It was a risk, I know,” he explained. “But when your arrest didn’t snuff out the band’s fan base like I thought it might, I figured we had nothing to lose. I mean, you’re not going to be in here forever, right?”
Sebastian forced a smile. “No one’s more surprised by the song’s success than I am,” he admitted. A small part of him actually hoped he’d see the end of fame, or in his case, infamy, but Dirk’s enthusiasm was contagious. Besides, “Flesh & Bone’s” climb up the charts benefited Eva. Their short-lived, emotionally tearing relationship would at least have a financial payoff for her. If the song gained long-range traction, she wouldn’t have to depend on her parents to support her forever.
Dirk rubbed his balding head and leaned forward. “Is there any chance you’d get out early? You know, for good behavior and all that?”
Sebastian chuckled. “You watch too much TV.” He’d served six months of a twenty-two-month sentence. He saw a lot of forest brush clearing in his future, not guitar playing. Guitar strings were considered a health risk. If a guy got it into his head that he’d had enough of this life, they could be used to self-inflict injury. Sebastian hated how the tips of his fingers had become soft. At least there was an old piano in the dining room and the guys didn’t se
em to mind when he played it, even though it was slightly out of tune.
An hour after Dirk left, Sebastian was surprised by another visitor. Herr Winkle was a tall, thin man who introduced himself as one of Sebastian’s father’s lawyers. He wore a sweater-vest over a white shirt and tie, and a designer winter jacket. He removed his satin scarf as he sat in the seat across from Sebastian.
Herr Winkle pushed glasses with dark, pricey frames up on his nose and got right to the point. “Your father has friends in high places, Herr Weiss. The judge has agreed that you’ve shown sufficient remorse and aren’t any danger to society. He has reduced the remainder of your sentence to six months and is permitting you to serve it under house arrest.”
Sebastian shook his head, flustered at the news. That was a ten month reduction.
“Why would Papa do that?”
Herr Winkle studied him. “I’m not privy to your personal relationship with your father, but I’m a father myself and I know I’d do anything to help my son, no matter the problem.”
The lawyer obviously didn’t know his papa, at least not the side Sebastian usually saw. This move was uncharacteristic and could only mean one thing. His father didn’t have much time left and he didn’t want to die with his son in jail.
“What’s next?” Sebastian asked.
“Your release will happen in three days. You will not be permitted to leave a six-block radius around your place of residence. You’re required to work thirty hours a week for three months doing community service without pay. A parole officer will be in touch daily and make random drop-in visits to ensure you comply.”
“Where?”
“The judge has left it up for you to choose. Do you have something in mind you’d like to do or should the courts appoint you with a task?”
Sebastian leaned back in his chair and grinned. “I know exactly what I want to do.” Herr Winkle stood. “Great. The next half year won’t be that exciting for you, but it’ll be better than what you’d experience if you stayed here.”