by Amity Cross
Zoe was silent for a while, and then she came out with the mother of all questions. “Do you have feelings for her?”
“I don’t know,” I replied truthfully. Back in LA, I would’ve said yes without blinking. Now I wasn’t so sure the thing that was churning inside me was love, hate, or something in between.
“Maybe you should talk to her and figure it out.”
“Talk to her about what?” I scoffed. “I don’t want to talk about that thing.” I didn’t know what else to call it.
Zoe laughed. “You don’t have to have a deep and meaningful. Start again. Get to know her beyond the Jessie you met in LA. I’m not saying you should forgive her or start a relationship or anything. I mean you should try to get to know her as a person first. Find out what makes her tick. Then you might understand why she did what she did.”
Zoe was so smart sometimes it made me feel inadequate. I told her as much, and she laughed.
“You know I’m the brains of this operation, Dee Dee.”
“All the way,” I said, lying back on the bed. “Thanks, Zo.”
“Feel a little better?”
“Yeah, but I wish you didn’t go in person. I mean, it fucked up your trip.”
“It didn’t screw it up,” she reassured me. “We’re doing the same thing, just backward.”
“You’re too good for me, Zo.”
“We’re perfect for each other.”
Jessie came back twenty minutes later with a plastic bag of food in one hand.
“I saw a bar back there a bit,” she said, dumping the takeout on the table. “There was a cover band playing. It looked like a rock thing if you’re interested.”
I thought about what Zoe said on the phone. Had Jessie really run out on me because she was scared? If she had, then wasn’t it a big deal she had the guts to come back and face me?
“Sure.”
She looked at me like she didn’t expect me to agree without an argument and quickly changed her expression. “Okay. Later.”
We ate in silence, neither of us knowing what to say to one another, and I found myself wanting a drink to take the edge off.
“Well,” she said a moment later. “If we’re going out, I’m going to have a quick shower and get changed.” She dusted off her hands and collected her rubbish, dumping it in the plastic bag. Rifling through her bag, she pulled out some clean clothes and disappeared into the bathroom.
Once the door was closed, my mind instantly went to the conversation I’d had with Zoe. I thought about that first tour we’d been on with The Stabs. Zoe had been so hell-bent against letting Will get under her skin that she needed a talking to. I’d paired up with him to try to convince her to take a chance.
Zoe was my best friend, but fuck, she could be stubborn. We’d been standing together in the elevator one day after breakfast, and I’d said the most profound thing I would probably ever say in my entire life. Sometimes, you’ve gotta take a chance, no matter how broken you’ve been in the past. Did I really say that to her? What kind of person was I if I couldn’t take my own advice?
This time, Zoe was the one who was dishing out the home truths. Get to know her. I think I’d used that one on her at some point, too. With a sigh, I cleaned up the remains of dinner and changed my shirt, pulling on my denim jacket. When girls say they’re going to take a quick shower, it usually meant forty-five minutes at a minimum. I flicked on the television and found a rerun of The Simpsons to bide my time.
I could hear the water running in the adjoining bathroom and the splashes as she moved around. All I could think about was the fact she was naked in the next room. It was a typical guy thing to do, but I sat on the end of the bed, my hands jammed underneath my legs, my focus totally shot.
When she finally emerged in a waft of steam, I looked up, and my heart stopped. Black skinny jeans hugged her ass, a loose-fitting blue singlet hung around her breasts just so, and she had her beat-up biker boots on. One hundred percent of the things about her that turned me on were on show. Why the hell did she have to look so fucking gorgeous? I mean, she could wear a garbage bag, and I would still be hard.
“Did you want the shower?” she asked, and my gaze snapped back up to her face.
Unable to remember how to speak, I shook my head.
“Did you want to go, then? I can drive if you want to have a drink. I remember where the place was.”
Nodding, I grabbed the car keys from my pocket and held them out. I didn’t want to be attracted to her, I couldn’t handle it, but the image still flashed through my mind of us just staying in and peeling off those tight jeans. When her fingers brushed against mine, it would’ve been so easy to pull her on top of me and pull that singlet over her head and… But I couldn’t trust her. Not yet or maybe not ever.
Jessie drove us the ten or so minutes to the bar she’d seen and pulled into the car park, which was already crammed. Seemed like it was a popular place, but maybe that was because it seemed to be the only place. Utes, beat-up trucks, and other assorted bombs were parked haphazardly on the gravel, which was a glaring indicator of the clientele, so I would probably fit right in.
The bar itself was a small, dark hole-in-the-wall. At one end was a stage, set about half a meter above the floor and packed tight with the house band’s gear. They had a half decent drum kit, and their amps—being Marshall with Orange heads—weren’t bad, either. The music nerd in me wanted to go up and have a closer look, but my eyes settled on the bar, and it was probably a good idea to go there first.
The music that was blaring out of the sound system was pretty good, too. Rock mixed with some indie and punk. When a NOFX song came on, Jessie started to nod her head next to me, her eyes scanning the crowd.
“You’re into punk?” I asked, surprised. I took her for an indie girl, not this hardcore stuff.
She shrugged, looking up at me. “Yeah. The American stuff, though.” When it came to punk, there was a distinct difference between the British and American bands. “But I like lots of different things,” she continued. “Indie. Rock. Electro.”
“I would never have picked it.”
“I was a rebellious punk rocker once upon a time.”
“I was the class clown.”
She smiled. “I believe that.”
The bartender came along then, breaking our conversation, and took our order. A moment later, when I felt the slow burn of scotch down the back of my throat, my nerves began to settle along with my libido. I downed the rest in one go and slammed the glass back down onto the bar. I didn’t know what else to say to her, so I just walked off across the bar, weaving through the crowd that had started to thicken even more, and found myself beside the stage.
Curious, I began looking over the band’s gear, seeing what stuff they had rigged. There was a lot more to music than just playing. I mean, there were so many things you could do with sound that just made the thing you were playing so much richer. The effects, reverb, distortion.
“Hey,” a voice said beside me.
Looking up, I saw a guy watching me. “’Sup, mate. This your stuff?”
“Yeah, I’m the guitarist.” I wondered with the kind of people that were filling up the bar if he was worried I was going to swipe something.
“Just checking out the gear you use,” I said.
The guy scratched his head. “Yeah, not the top-of-the-line shit, but we get a decent sound outta it.”
“Orange are great,” I said pointing to the heads over their amps. “I have a lot of mates who use ’em and swear by ’em.”
“Do you play?”
“Yeah. Guitar.”
“What’s your rig?”
“Similar, though I have a more recent model Marshall, and my head’s a Marshall as well.”
“Sweet.” The guy was well and truly hooked with the amp talk. “What pedals do you use?”
“I made my own,” I said. “I had some old stuff lying around, and I got a mate to help me with it.”
“Shit,
that’s a bit complicated for me, hey. I got mine off eBay for dirt.”
“Nothin’ wrong with that if it makes a good sound.”
“Dave,” he said, holding out his hand.
“Dee,” I replied, shaking it.
Another guy came up beside us and looked me up and down.
“Hey, this is Stu, our drummer,” Dave said, elbowing his friend.
“Hey, mate.”
“Hey, you’re Australian?” Stu asked, narrowing his eyes at me.
“Yep.”
“Then I’m positive it’s you.”
I frowned.
“Yeah,” he said. “Rolling Stone.”
I grimaced. “Yeah, that’s probably it.”
“You’re in that new Aussie band that’s been kicking about. The Devil’s Tattoo. I was reading that article today, and when I saw you come in with your girl, I thought I recognized you.”
I was in another country in the middle of buttfuck nowhere, and some guy had just recognized me. I probably should’ve been all over it, and on an ordinary day, I would’ve, but I wasn’t feeling it.
“What are you doing here of all places?”
“Holiday.”
“And who’s the girl? She your other half?” Dave nodded toward the bar.
I glanced over at Jessie. She was leaning across the bar, giving her order to the bartender, and my gaze skimmed over her ass. “Nah, I’m just giving her a lift.”
“You just picked her up?” he scoffed. “Where do I find one like that?”
“Oh, no, I know her. It’s just…complicated.”
“Man, she wants you.” Stu clapped me on the shoulder.
I shrugged.
When they wandered off to get ready for their set, Jessie sidled up to me, handing me a beer. “Making friends?” she asked, her too perfect fucking smile pulling at her lips.
“You know what I’m like.”
She frowned. “Not really, but I can imagine.”
With a shrug, I turned around and watched the guys I’d just met plugging in their guitars. A third guy had joined them, picking up a bass. As soon as Dave tapped on his mic to test it, the crowd seemed to mellow and press toward the stage. They must be well known around here because people seemed to be amped to hear them play. This place was a tiny pimple on the ass of the world, so any band must be a good band when there weren’t any others.
When they started playing, I kinda ate my words a little. They were pretty good. They played a few old-school rock songs from The Rolling Stones and Deep Purple and some newer stuff like Nirvana and even The Killers. A bit of a mix of styles, but they seemed to know enough to pull it off. Jessie moved about next to me, swaying to the music while sipping on her beer, and I was aware of every little thing she did. Her lips around the glass of the beer bottle, the scent of her trademark vanilla perfume, the way her eyes closed as she listened to the music.
When the crowd thickened down front, I angled myself partially behind her, pressing against her back. She said nothing and just kept on moving with the music, rubbing against me, driving me totally batshit crazy. It made me wonder if this was a part of her plan to make things up to me. Or rather, get back into my bed, but my head was too fuzzy to even think about that coherently.
When the song finished and people around us began clapping, I leaned in and whispered in her ear, “I’m going to the bathroom. I’ll be right back.”
She looked up at me over her shoulder with her big fucking Bambi eyes and nodded.
Standing in front of the mirror in the men’s room, I looked at my reflection. My face was flushed, and I cursed the fucking day Jessie Ware had walked into that recording studio. It would be so easy just to take her home and fuck her senseless because that was the only thing my body wanted, but I knew she wanted more. If I did that and then dumped her at her door tomorrow, then I wouldn’t be any better than she’d been.
Fuck, she hadn’t even explained to me why she did it. Wasn’t that why she came all this way? To apologize and try to win me back? I assumed so because why would someone fly cross-country to say they were fucking sorry? Either that or she was scared I would get her fired from Galaxy.
It couldn’t work between us. We lived worlds apart, and I couldn’t get over that thing. Her fuck and run. That had scarred me deep enough that I could never forget it.
Looking at myself in the mirror I thought, Get a fucking grip, Cosgrove. Don’t fall for it. That was the game, wasn’t it? Planting a seed of doubt, cracking the ice, and whatever other fucking metaphors applied.
Waiting another minute, I went back out into the bar and looked out across the crowd, instantly finding Jessie where I’d left her. How could I not notice her in a sea of people? She was like magnetic north in a fucking blizzard. But when my eyes fell onto her delicate body, my blood began to boil.
A guy stood beside her, talking in her ear, and she was shaking her head, moving away. I could almost read his lips. Trying to buy her a drink, trying to pick her up, and trying to convince her to go for a round out back behind a dumpster like a dirty fuck. She was having none of it. Her expression was calm, but she was saying no. Trying to be polite about it when she should’ve slapped him one.
I began to move forward, weaving through the crowd, trying to keep my temper from boiling over. Every now and then, I would lose sight of her, and this overwhelming pool of jealousy simmered in my gut. When I finally made it back, what I saw almost made me snap.
He was a fucking redneck hick, all up in her personal space, probably rubbing his disgusting cock against her leg, and it made me sick. Sick that a pervert could have the fucking gall to pressure himself on a woman like that.
“I said no,” Jessie exclaimed, trying to push him off, her voice beginning to sound panicked.
“C’mon,” the guy said, his hand fumbling for her breast.
A synapse must have snapped in my brain because I strode forward and pushed him off her with a violent shove. Before he had a chance to recover, my fist connected with his face, jarring through my bones. He fell backward on his ass, parting the crowd like fucking Moses at the Red Sea.
“She fucking said no,” I said, stepping forward to pull the asshole up, but hands were on my arms, dragging me back. It took me a moment to realize that the hillbilly fuck had a couple of mates, but by that time, the guy was on his feet, sinking a punch into my gut.
Doubling over with a groan, I wrestled my way free and launched myself forward. I landed on top of the guy and started punching, blind with anger, the sound of flesh cutting into flesh ripping through the alarmed cries of punters around us.
“Dee!” Jessie shrieked at me, but I didn’t listen.
The other guys hauled me off their stupid fuck of a friend, and I was on my back, a boot sinking into my side. Then a fist to the face and the coppery tang of blood in my mouth as my lip split against my teeth.
I vaguely heard Jessie yelling at me, then silence as the band stopped playing. Dave and Stu were pulling the three hicks off me but not before the one that had tried to feel up Jessie grabbed the front of my shirt and lifted me half off the floor, getting in another punch right over my left eye.
I fell backward on the beer-soaked floor, spots dancing in my line of vision, but I was too angry to give a fuck. When a woman said no, it fucking meant no.
I tried to get up again, to find the fucker who felt her up so I could beat his ass some more, but hands were coiled in the front of my shirt. Long, almond, toned, and delicate fingers pulled me to my feet. I would have gone as far as to say an angel was pulling me to heaven, but that was probably from the repeated blows to the head.
Then she spoke, “Fuck, Dee, we’ve gotta get out of here.”
Chapter 18
Jessie
I fisted my hands in Dee’s shirt, pulling at him so he would get off the ground.
His lip was split, and there was a cut above his left eye that was dripping blood down his face. The other guy didn’t look much better, but it had be
en three on one.
“Get off me,” he said sharply, shoving my hands away and scrambling to his feet.
“No,” I said, pulling him through the crowd. “The cops are coming.”
“How the fuck do you know that?”
I grimaced. “You don’t want to know. If we don’t leave, they’ll probably throw you in jail for the night.” I looked around for the other guys, but they’d already split. They knew the score, which probably meant they got into fights all the time for the kicks. Real upstanding human beings…not.
“I don’t need you to protect me,” Dee said, wiping his face with the back of his hand. He only succeeded in smearing the blood more.
“Fuck you, Dee.” I was sick and tired of his sullen woe is me attitude. Just when things were starting to mellow, he went and said stupid things like that. I grabbed his wrist and led him from the bar, people parting to let us through. Either he was surprised at my outburst or he had concussion because he didn’t argue anymore. I hardly ever swore, but I’d had enough of everything.
Out in the lot, the air was cool and refreshing after the melting pot of bodies inside. The coast was clear, the rednecks having disappeared into the sunset, so I turned and shoved my hand into the pocket of Dee’s jeans.
“Hey,” he said, trying to twist away from me.
“I’m just getting the keys,” I snapped. “I’m not trying to feel you up.” I pressed the button on the fob, and the doors clicked open. “Get in.”
He slid into the passenger seat, a scowl firmly etched on his face. My eyes ran over the trails of blood that had dripped down onto his shirt and made a decision.
As I pulled the car out onto the highway, I caught sight of the blue and red lights of a cop car in the rearview mirror. I’d been right but didn’t bother mentioning it.
“Where are you going?” he asked, catching on that we weren’t going back to the motel.
“I’m taking you to the emergency room.”
“Fuck, no.” He sounded majorly pissed off.
“That cut above your eye is nasty, Dee. It might need a couple of stitches.”