by Lux, Vivian
"I keep my promises, don't I?
I swallowed. He didn't mean it like that, I tried to tell myself. He's not talking about the day you didn't keep yours. He's not thinking about how you weren't there that afternoon. Stop thinking about it.
But guilt fluttered in my belly all the same.
If I told him...anything...about why I did what I did, he'd want to fix it. That's who he was. That's what he did.
But the problem was, there was so much that was beyond fixing.
Maybe even me.
If I told him, if I so much as hinted at anything—Kevin, my job, or even our shared past—he would want to talk. He would make me talk, teasing all of my secrets out of me. He'd stare directly into my eyes, laying my soul bare with bursts of temper smoothed over with kind words.
And I would crumple and tell him. I knew I would, because the words, the pleas for his help and his understanding, were right there on my lips. They were right on the edge of being spoken every second I spent with him.
One moment of weakness would be all it took to shatter this brilliant bubble we were floating in, the one where we were different people, normal people, people who were just having fun.
So I said nothing about the guilt that coiled like a snake deep down in my gut. I didn't give in to the desperate urge to unburden myself and beg for his forgiveness.
Instead, I nodded and kissed him. "You always do keep your promises," I whispered.
Because it was true. He kept his promises. And he sure as fuck kept this one. In the dark of the winding halls backstage, he made me come with his fingers, rough and skilled. Then he made me come again with his tongue, the concrete wall scratching my back as I writhed and moaned. Then he made me come as he fucked me against the wall, pressed up against me so that he was the whole world, the only thing I could cling to, to keep from falling.
And when I screamed so loud it echoed, he said it again. "I always keep my promises, Scar. And I promise...I promise..."
His promise was strangled with a harsh cry as he came. He never said it out loud, but then he really didn't need to. I believed it anyway.
*****
"So, I stole this from backstage..."
I blinked rapidly, coming back down to earth from the most delicious daydream. If daydreams were possible in the dead of night.
We were in his hotel room, another luxurious night not spent on the bus, and I was intent on greedily occupying every square inch of his massive bed. Begrudgingly I sat up. "Wine?"
He nodded, a devilish glint in his eye. "If we don't drink it now, the band will make us share it." He looked down at the label. "Since, technically, I suppose it's theirs too. But fuck 'em. I'm thirsty and I feel like toasting something. What should it be?"
He looked so eager I had to smile, even though I was fighting sleep. "To...um...new beginnings."
"Yeah," he said softly. "I like that. To having fun too."
"To having fun." I nodded. Then waited. "Do you, um, have a corkscrew?"
"Actually? No."
"Should we call room service?"
He stood up. "Nah. I got this," he declared, busily wrapping the bottle in a towel. I stared at him as he flipped it with a practiced motion and gave a hard whack on the underside. My hands flew to my mouth as I pictured red wine all over the pristine bedspread, but he only grinned in triumph and pinched the end of the towel.
"Voilà," he said in anything but a French accent.
The cork was in one hand, the bottle in the other, and he wore a grin of such supreme triumph that I couldn't help but laugh out loud. "Bravo, bravo, bravissimo!" I applauded.
He bowed at the waist. "I don't have wine glasses either," he cautioned me.
"Let's do it like we did back on Wallace Street," I told him, gripping the bottle by the neck and knocking it back like it was a bottle of Boone's Farm.
Keir looked at me with a mixture of awe and disgust on his face. "You know, that bottle cost something like two hundred dollars or some shit."
I licked my lips. "Well, tastes like wine to me."
He looked at me oddly, cocking his head to the side, staring so long I started to squirm. "What?"
He spread his hands. "You. This. I can't believe you're here. I mean...with me, here. I've..." He sagged back onto the bed and hung his head. "I've wanted this for...for so long. When you left...fuck..."
"We don't need to talk about it. It's over, right? Like you said, I'm here."
Even as I said them, the words felt false. Keir closed his eyes, and for one second I thought he would ask me, and I knew that if he did, I would tell him. This would no longer be just us having fun, mutually agreeing to pretend the past never happened. If he asked, I would start talking. Tell him everything, all the horrible, terrible things I did, the damage I had done, confess my deepest and darkest sin. If he asked.
But he didn't. He kissed me, eyes still closed. "Let's get some rest," he said instead.
Chapter 29
Keir
Rane looked up from his ever-present phone. "Yo!" he called out from his back bunk as our bus rolled ever northward. "Keith is calling. Wants the whole band on. Five minutes."
Twitch groaned himself awake, and he and Pepper stumbled over to the built-in table we used for band meetings. Balzac came out of the bathroom, scratching his ass a few times before settling in as well. Rane set his phone in the center of the table and plopped down next to me.
"Any idea what this is about?" I asked him.
"Something about the hometown show." He shrugged.
Just then, the phone rang. Rane reached over and put it on speaker. Then he looked up and saw Scarlett hovering behind him.
Without a word, he grudgingly made room for her to sit down and listen.
I had to duck to hide my grin of triumph.
"Ladies and gentlemen, change of plans," Keith's tinny voice squawked from the small speaker. "We've got a request that just came in."
"We're listening," Rane said.
"Radio station that's sponsoring the Buffalo show, maybe you guys have heard of them, WGRX?"
I sat up straighter. "99 Rocks?" I asked. I couldn't help but look over at Scarlett, whose eyes were wide. She grinned at me and nodded excitedly.
WGRX was Buffalo's oldest rock station. The music I grew up listening to, my dad grew up listening to, and hell, maybe even my grandpa might have taken a gander back in the day. It was a classic, an icon, the only pure rock station left in western New York. I used to dream about hearing my songs played on there. Now that they were, I would be lying if I said that thrill wasn't still there.
"They're doing some kind of giveaway, a hometown heroes thing for you guys. They wanted to know if you'd be down for a meet and greet the night of the first show."
I looked up, resisting the urge to shout hell yeah before we discussed it as a band.
But all around me I saw grinning faces and nodding heads. We all looked at Rane, who leaned forward and shouted into the speaker, "Hell yeah!"
There was a burst of static on the line, and then Keith was already talking. "… everything up then. This is going to earn you some big points, guys. Good move. Drinking with the fans is always a little dicey, but you guys have good security. I'll call Rick and let him know."
Rane stabbed the off button and sat back with an excited grin. "I say this calls for a toast," he announced.
"Hell yeah!" Twitch echoed. "I don't give a shit if you guys make fun of me for it. I still think it's fucking awesome that 99 Rocks plays our shit on their station. I mean, like, that's what I grew up listening to."
"Not me," Pepper sighed. "I was always more of an NPR girl."
"We know," Rane deadpanned. "We try not to hold it against you."
Pepper scowled and raised two long, elegant middle fingers. "You're all a bunch of uncultured swine."
"Yup, and you're one of us," Rane crowed, then leaned back and ostentatiously scratched his crotch.
I heard Scarlett giggling behind me and turne
d to look at her. "What?"
She spread her hands. "I couldn't write a better ending to my piece if I just made it up myself. It's practically writing itself now. Hometown heroes meeting up with the fans? Damn, you guys are making my job easy."
I don't know why I kept forgetting that Scarlett was here to write about us. But if it made her happy, it made me happy too.
Last night there had been a little…something…that passed between us. She wanted fun, and I was doing my damnedest to honor that request, but something else took over. I had thought that maybe, in the dark of the hotel room, she might be ready to talk about why she had left. She was. I could sense it, right there like a living thing sitting between us at the table.
And I had pussied out.
Everything was going so well. Everything was so fucking perfect. I couldn't have fixed it better if I tried. Scarlett was here, with me, with the band, while I did the thing that I loved. Maybe I didn't want to know why she left. Maybe she was right, maybe Rane's whole annoying life philosophy was right. I should let it go. Let the past be the past.
So when she was ready to tell me, I chickened out and didn't ask her.
I didn't want the past to matter to us anymore.
I sat back in my chair, listening as the rest of the band shouted over each other in excitement. We were headed inland, away from yet another hurricane prediction. After Charleston, we still had to hit Charlotte, then a long haul up to D.C. From there, it was two quick hops to Philly and New York City before we headed up the New York State Thruway back home again.
Home. I still thought of it like that, even though I hadn't lived there in five years. When I lived in Buffalo, I was desperate to get out, but now that I had been everywhere else, it still had this pull for me.
"Yo, Steve!" Rane's bellow cut into my musings.
"Yeah?" our driver grunted from way up in the front of the bus.
"We're thirsty."
"Why you tellin' me?"
"Cause you should pull over and let us drink."
"Fuck you, I've got a schedule," Steve grumbled sourly. Twitch paled, his finger moving mindlessly to his eye. The bruises had faded to a mottled green and yellow tinge that was giving the styling crew fits. He had taken to wearing his sister's shades onstage for shows and seemed well on his way to adopting his new signature look.
"And I've got a hundred-dollar bill in my wallet and am feeling generous." Rane laughed. "Find us a bar. We're celebratin'."
Steve grumbled again. We were snarled in a random burst of late morning traffic just north of Columbia. “Fuck this,” Steve suddenly decided, and turned on his blinker to cross over to the nearest exit.
"Now we're talking!" I called out encouragingly. "Hey, assholes!" I pounded on the window. "Let us over, we're bigger than you!"
Scarlett shot me a look.
"What? We are!" I protested.
“Come the fuck on!” Twitch shouted, leaping to his feet to press his face against the glass. "You!" he shouted, pointing an ominous finger in the direction of a pissed off looking soccer mom in a minivan. "Let us in, lady!"
I doubted she could see him through the tinted windows, but that didn't stop Rane from joining him. “Let us fucking over, will you? We’ve got places to be!”
Balzac leaped to his feet to join them, banging on the windows with a growl. I looked over at Scarlett, and she shrugged. No one was watching us as I reached out and squeezed her hand.
Then we joined the chant. “Let us out! Let us out! Let us out!” we bellowed, Scarlett laughing hysterically. Twitch bashed out a rapid-fire drum solo on the window, and I swear the soccer mom looked in our direction, which earned a round of hoots from Rane. Balzac lifted his shirt and pressed his considerable gut against the window. "Yeah, baby, I'll give you some sugar, that's it," he leered. "I always had a thing for MILFs, that's right, let us out..." He gyrated alarmingly.
I don't know if the soccer mom finally saw something that frightened her enough to slam on her brakes, or if Steve got tired enough of our shit to make his move. But all at once, he shot us across the lane and sent us flying down the exit ramp to wild applause. At the first bar he sighted, he took the turn so sharply we all fell back laughing, landing in a heap.
Rane stood up and smoothed his hands through his hair. "Take it, my man," he said, holding out the hundred. "You earned this."
Steve grumbled sourly but tucked the crumpled bill in his back pocket. "I'm going out for a smoke. You got twenty minutes."
"We can work with that, right guys?"
We emerged in the parking lot of one of those off-ramp specials. Dusty parking lot, windows full of neon, and the smell of stale beer hovering in the air. "Perfect." I grinned. "You coming?" I said to Scarlett.
She wasn't looking at the dive-ass bar. Her eyes were fixed on the low metal building next door. "Secondhand Rose," read the faded sign that clanged in the hot breeze.
"I'll meet you," she said, a gleam in her eye. "Unless you feel like doing some shopping?"
I held up my hands. "I don't think I'm ready for that level of commitment." I cringed.
She laughed and socked me in the arm. "Go drink. I just want to have a look."
I nodded and debated for just a moment over whether I should kiss her goodbye. Rane was watching, the whole band was standing right there, waiting to see what I'd do.
Fuck it. "See you later," I said, softly kissing her lips.
She pulled back with a smile and rushed away.
"Well, now I really need a drink," Rane muttered. Then he piped up. "Keir's buyin', everybody!"
My brother clapped me on the back as we headed into the nameless bar, and I couldn't help but feel like I had just won something.
Chapter 30
Scarlett
The year I turned fourteen, my mother stopped paying for my clothes.
"I'm not spending my hard earned money to have you looking like some kind of slob," she complained one morning as I came down the stairs, still bleary from sleep and dressed in my older brother Clark's sweatshirt. "If you want to dress like that, you can pay for clothes yourself."
I was fourteen, with no money of my own, save for the few babysitting jobs I could pick up within walking distance of Wallace Street. I didn't have enough money to shop at the malls or the trendy shops along Elmwood.
So I started visiting thrift stores. But what started as necessity became an obsession.
Thrifting allowed me to create characters. I would walk the length of the racks, touching each piece and letting it speak to me. This fuzzy sweater was clearly the favorite cozy comfort of a sad divorcee curled up with her cats. These bell bottoms were the last thing an aging hippie got rid of as he climbed the corporate ladder. This poly-blend pantsuit was the outfit a new mother wore to her first interview as she tried to dip her toe back into the working world.
I wanted to buy them all. Every time I saw a thrift store, I had to go in and check them out. It was my one addiction.
I was so excited, it barely registered that Keir kissed me in front of the whole band. Only after I put my hand on the door handle did it hit me what he had done.
He'd claimed me in front of everyone.
I pressed my fingers to my cheek, feeling the flush of warmth rise through my body.
Did I like that?
Yeah. Yeah, I liked that.
With a smile, I pushed my way into Secondhand Rose.
Secondhand Rose—why are they always called Secondhand Rose? I wondered to myself. The inside smelled like they all did, like mothballs and disinfectant and occasional dirty feet. I made my way over to the women's section and started idly running my fingers over the hangers. When I was younger I searched through everything one by one, but years of practice had led me to a system that was now foolproof. I shopped by touch.
My fingers danced along the polyester blends and scratchy old mohairs until they came to rest on something that felt very familiar. I reached for the hanger and pulled out a navy plaid skirt.
As I stared at the skirt, a whisper of a plan glimmered in my brain. Rushing over to the dressing room, I yanked it on over my pants. It was a little snug around the waist, but nothing that I couldn't handle.
Besides, if everything went according to plan, I wouldn't be wearing it for long.
I pressed my fingers to my cheek one more time before rushing to the counter to pay for my prize.
I waited at the entrance of the bus, steering clear of the glowering Steve, who was grumbling about traffic and schedules and douchebags as he puffed his cigarette like a steam engine.
Three minutes later, the door of the bar banged open and Ruthless tumbled out en masse. Even Pepper was laughing, though she seemed to realize it immediately and shut herself down with a snap.
Keir rushed ahead to me. "Did you have fun shopping?" he inquired sarcastically. His eyes were shining with drink, and he had that look in his eye.
The rest of the band caught up. I made sure everyone was looking, then wrapped my arms around his neck. "I did," I said, rising on tiptoe to kiss him in full view of everyone.
*****
It was dark in the conference room except for one spotlight on the raised dais. A single chair was placed there, just like I had requested at the concierge desk.
The heavy doors banged shut behind us. Keir raised his eyebrow but allowed me to lead him across the darkened floor.
"Sit there," I instructed.
He sat down and folded his hands on his lap, leaning forward on his elbows. "What's this?"
I grabbed the plastic bag from the thrift store and darted behind the partition. "You'll see."
At the thrift store, I had found a short-sleeved white blouse to go with it, the closest approximation I could get to my old uniform blouse. Quickly, I shimmied out of my jeans and yanked the skirt up to my waist.
Then I took a deep breath.
When I pulled him aside after the show and told him there was something I wanted him to see, he looked intrigued. And even though the rest of the band shouted at him for leaving the afterparty, he still followed me here, ready to see whatever it was I had planned for him.