The Sovereign Era (Book 2): Pilgrimage

by Selznick, Matthew Wayne

  Huntington Beach came and went as we drove down the road.

  Finally my mother said, “Are you still getting the dreams?”

  “Not really. Lina, though…”

  “That’s…” Her sigh sounded exhausted. “That’s terrible. Tell her I’m sorry.”

  Sure. Hey, Lina, hon, my mom says sorry about all the leftover stress and stuff from that time you had a gun shoved in your face and watched your boyfriend’s dad tear a guy’s guts out with his toenails.

  “Yeah, I will.”

  “Is she seeing anyone?”

  My face got hot. “What? Besides me?”

  My mother chuckled. “No, Nathan. Someone to help with the nightmares. A therapist, or something.”

  “Oh. Right.” I took a deep breath and listened to my heart slowing down for a second or two. “No…she’s been painting. A lot.”

  We were getting close to our off-ramp.

  “Speaking of Lina,” I said. “Can you just drop me off at Carson’s, and she’ll take me home later? I told her I’d come by after the show.”

  She tensed immediately. “You spend a lot of time at Carson Meunetti’s.”

  “He’s a good guy.”

  “I know. I like him. But…”

  “Mom, I’ll be home later. It’s Friday. There’s practice, and a bunch of people will be there. Like every Friday.”

  She nodded. “I get it. I was just hoping, after this big thing we just did, maybe you and I could…celebrate. Go out to dinner.”

  I hated my mother in sheepish-guilty mode almost as much as I hated the reasons for her guilt. It was totally the opposite of the mother I’d known up until a year ago. I didn’t always like that I’d traded my old mom for the truth.

  In fact, I resented the hell out of it. It just made me want to get away from her that much faster.

  “I thought there wasn’t much to celebrate, remember?”

  She laughed, a concession. “Well, we got through it, didn’t we?”

  I sighed. I just wanted to be out of the car, away from her, and with Lina.

  “Can we do it tomorrow?”

  She sighed. “Fine. You’re not going to be any fun with your mother when you want to be with your friends, anyway. I guess I’ll settle for calling Denver Colorado and telling him all about it.”

  “Thanks.” Denver wasn’t among my favorite people; he’d helped keep my father’s secrets for years. But he and my mother went back a long way. “I bet he’ll want a blow-by-blow.”

  We passed the Abbeque Valley exits and headed south to San Clemente. I kept my face against the passenger-side window the rest of the way.

  From The Journal Of Nate Charters – Three

  My mother dropped me off in front of Carson’s house. I found myself waving automatically as the car drove away, then jerked my hand down, feeling like a stupid kid.

  Carson’s house was two stories stacked on top of a three-car garage that took up the entire ground level. I glanced up at the balcony, but no one was watching me. I felt even stupider for thinking anyone would give a shit if I waved goodbye to my mother.

  I’ve mentioned that my hearing is better than…well, anyone’s, probably, with the exception of my father’s. I could hear Car’s stereo blasting through the walls and closed windows despite the sound-deadening foam he’d set up on the walls of the living room. Lots of fuzzy guitars, a grinding bass…I didn’t recognize it.

  I walked to the front door and turned the knob. It was locked, which kind of surprised me. Why bother locking it when Carson and Lina, at least, judging by the cars in the long driveway, were home?

  I don’t think I’d ever come around when the door was locked. Feeling a little resentful that I had to do it at all, which was another stupid thing given that I didn’t actually live there, I knocked.

  Like they’d hear me, with the music so loud.

  I pounded, then I pounded harder, then I put the strength of my deceptively lean muscles behind the knock. The door rattled in the frame.

  Then I remembered the grungy little garden gnome in a planter next to the door. I tipped it over, grabbed the hidden key, and unlocked the door. I replaced the key with a quick glance at the street to make sure no neighbors had seen the deep dark secret hiding place.

  I opened the door and flinched. The music was loud. Very, very loud. It hurt. It made my sternum ache. It made me a little nauseous. I couldn’t get a deep-enough breath in.

  “Hey!”

  No good. Fingers in both ears, I made my way to the living room, cringing with every step.

  Lina and Carson were seated on the floor in front of the wall unit that held the stereo and TV, their backs to me. Lina had one of Car’s graph-lined composition books in her hand.

  Carson leaned forward and turned the stereo down by about half until it was just unbearable, not agonizing. He shrugged and said to Lina, “No vocals laid down yet,” in that voice people use when they want to be heard above the buzz of a crowded party. “But you get the idea!”

  The ends of her hair—only those tips were still the pale blonde from when I’d first met her—bounced on her shoulders as she nodded. “I like it!”

  I hovered at the edge of the room. For no reason in particular, I felt like I was intruding on something. Maybe I was.

  Lina and Car met when they were both in grade school, and I know things got pretty heavy for them a couple of years ago, when Car’s parents died right around the guy’s eighteenth birthday.

  It was never really talked about, and I never asked, but I was almost positive things got heavy between them, back then. At least for a little while.

  Lina and I were a little over a week away from our first anniversary, and sure, we’d been though some pretty damn heavy shit of our own…but I still felt like an outsider around them sometimes.

  “Nate! Hey, TV star!” She put one hand on Car’s shoulder to balance herself when she stood up, which didn’t thrill me. “C’mere!”

  Car stopped the tape at the same moment Lina hugged me. The sudden, blessed drop in the decibel level gave me a moment of swaying vertigo.

  Lina shifted her stance and held me tighter. “Easy there, tiger. You all right?”

  I squeezed her. She felt really great. “Just the…loud.” I caught Car’s eye over Lina’s shoulder. “Hey, Car.”

  “Hey, Nate! Nice job today.”

  “Thanks.” Lina and I downgraded our hug to holding hands. “It was…crazy.”

  Car said, “Did you—" at the same time Lina said, “What did you think of Car’s new song?”

  Car closed his mouth and grinned, eyes wide. Whatever he was going to ask me about the show was forgotten.

  “Oh…well…”

  “Oh, don’t sweat it, Nate.” Car waved a hand at me. “It’s not even done.”

  “It’s not that.” I matched his smile. Car’s enthusiasm about his own music was easy to catch and not at all egotistical. “It was…y’know…these ears!”

  Car winced. “Ah, yeah, right. Sorry, man. Here…” He twisted around and turned the stereo volume knob way to the left and pressed the play button on the tape deck. “Here, try this.”

  The sound poured out at a level I could handle. Turns out I thought it was all electric guitar and bass guitar because that’s all it was—no drums. The guitars sounded like a swarm of angry bees armed with chainsaws. The bass snapped, crackled, and chugged like a barbed-wire snake around the guitar.

  “I’ll have Alex play on the actual track, of course,” Car said. “I just wanted to lay this down to give him an idea of what I’m shooting for.” He stared into space for a couple of seconds, then raised his index finger.

  “There. It’s kinda Hüsker Dü…Have you listed to Candy Apple Grey yet?”

  Car had loaned me the record the week before.

  “No, not yet.”

  “That’s cool. Here…wait…right here…”

  I nodded and stuck my lower lip out in an expression of appreciation I wasn’t a hund
red percent committed to. There was so much distortion on the guitar—or guitars—I could barely make out any notes. And if anyone could, it would be me, after all.

  “Yeah, totally.”

  Car sat on the floor playing invisible bass strings against his thigh while the demo played on for another minute or more until it ended in a waterfall of feedback.

  “You wanna read the lyrics…?” Car slid the composition book across the carpet to my feet. “Oh—shit, what time did you get here, Nate?”

  I didn’t wear a watch. “I…I’m not sure…”

  Lina moved back so she could see the clock on the kitchen stove. “You gotta go.”

  “Crap.” Car stood up in a fluid unfolding motion. “Gotta go pick up Tim. Won’t be long.” He walked past us to the counter that separated the living room from the kitchen and grabbed keys from an ugly bowl that looked like it might have been a school project. “Nate, you sticking around for practice?”

  “You bet.”

  “Awesome. Be back. You guys have fun.”

  He was headed out the door.

  “I’ll tell you about the show later!” I called to his back.

  “Later!”

  He pulled the door shut, leaving Lina and me alone in the house.

  “The show!” Lina bounced. “Screw the song—tell me all about the show!”

  I knew she was mostly joking, but I liked the sound of that.

  From The Journal Of Nate Charters – Four

  Lina’s bright eyes cheered me up. I took her hand and we sat on the long couch across from the fireplace in Carson’s living room.

  “You saw it,” I said. “What did you think?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Tch! I think Hank Azarrio must be an asshole.”

  “Yeah. He’s like a circus ringmaster.” I laughed and shook my head. “Dude can’t lose, when you think about it. No matter what happens, he can get some drama out of it.”

  “Seems like he managed to do that with you and Byron’s dad.”

  “It’s pretty easy to push Marc Teslowski’s buttons. My mother wasn’t happy with how I handled it.”

  Lina edged closer to me. Her fingers lazily traced random paths on my thigh through my dress pants. “You mean the growl.” Her eyes narrowed as she smirked.

  “Yeah.”

  “I bet they play that on the ‘best of’ episode.”

  I shrugged. “She wants me to be a good little boy. She’s freaked out that if people think I’m some kind of…you know…they’ll think even worse of my dad, and that’ll work against us in court.”

  Despite finally getting the spotlight on me and off of Car’s new song, rehashing the whole ordeal was a drag.

  This was one of the few times Lina and I were alone together in Carson’s house. I found myself thinking about when Car’s parents had died, about a year before I’d met her, and what might have happened between him and Lina around that time.

  What might have happened on this very couch…

  I stood up.

  “I mean…” I looked down at Lina. Her face was open and attentive. “Well…what do you think?”

  She smiled up at me. “I think you should be you. Who else?”

  I wasn’t sure what that meant. “Right.” The idea irritated me, like “being me” was one more role I was supposed to play.

  Lina’s smile faded. She leaned forward on the couch, her elbows on her knees. “What’s up, Nate?”

  Instead of looking at Lina, I glanced in the direction of the front door. “I didn’t expect the door to be locked.” I wanted to sound all casual. It wasn’t a very good performance.

  “Heh. Funny story about that.” My tension must have been contagious; I heard it in her voice. “Funny-strange. Not funny-ha-ha.” She considered. “Well, maybe both.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Have you ever met Cordelia? I think she used to go out with that friend of Crystal’s…K.C.?”

  I shrugged. There were a lot of people in orbit around Car’s band, and they were all a few years older than me. They kind of blended together.

  “No biggie,” Lina said. “I guess a few nights ago, Car was the only one here, and he was playing bass along with the radio, or whatever. There were like, barely any lights on in the house, and, y’know, Car was all into it.”

  Yeah, yeah.

  “So he finishes playing a song, or the radio goes to commercial, I don’t know. Thing is, he looked up from his bass and nearly shits his pants because, there in the doorway of his office…just, standing there…is Cordelia.”

  I couldn’t deny that was a little funny. I liked the image of Car freaked out. That made me feel confused and guilty. I liked Car!

  I didn’t like Car having a history with Lina.

  Or maybe I didn’t like not knowing exactly what that history was.

  Or maybe it was both. The jury was out on whether I really wanted to know the details, or not.

  That all went through my head in a crowded split second.

  “What’d Car do?”

  Lina laughed. “He’s all, ‘Oh…hey…Cordelia…I didn’t see you there.’ And she’s all, y’know, all sultry and weird, like, ‘You don’t have to stop. I like watching.’”

  That made me laugh out loud.

  “No!”

  Lina’s head bobbed up and down. “Yes! So he’s all, ‘Well, I was gonna finish up anyway…it’s kinda late…’ and gets her out of there.” She spread her arms in the universally recognized “ta-da” gesture. “And that’s why Car keeps the door locked now.”

  “He…wait.” I felt my mood flip, like a physical thing, like something happening just outside of my skin. “He needs to keep the door locked in the middle of the afternoon when he’s here with another person because Cordelia might come in and try to jump his bones?”

  Lina frowned. “I guess so? We were playing the music really loud.”

  “I know.”

  She squinted at me and turned her head a little to the left. “Nate?” A beat. “You’re freaking out.” She patted the couch cushion next to her. “Come back and sit with me.”

  I obeyed. I didn’t want to feel how I was feeling. I didn’t even understand it.

  She took my hand and kissed it. “You didn’t have any fun at the thing, did you.”

  I shook my head. “There were moments. It’s always a good time to make Byron’s dad look like an idiot. But…yeah, no.”

  “I’m sorry, baby.”

  I shrugged. I looked down at our intertwined hands.

  She leaned close and whispered against my ear. “Would it help to know you were super sexy on TV?”

  She gave the whorl of my ear a light lick that sent a jolt of electricity down my side and into my leg. I was hard before the lightning reached my toes, grouchy mood be damned.

  “Sexy…?”

  “Yup.”

  She reached up and guided my chin until we our foreheads touched. “We’ve got the house to ourselves for a little while,” she whispered, “and I’m pretty sure the door is locked, Nathan.”

  There was the slightest bit of chiding there, but I guess I kind of deserved it.

  “Pretty sure…”

  I didn’t resist when she pushed me back on Carson Meunetti’s dead parents’ couch.

  From The Journal Of Nate Charters – Five

  Maybe it was the frustration of the day. Maybe it was the way Lina’s hair, longer than I’d ever known it, slid across my bare chest. Maybe it was the edge of annoyance in Lina’s first kisses.

  Maybe it was the intensity of sensations against the warm animal scent of our skin against the couch; Lina’s sweat, her breath, the taste of her saliva; the tangy bite of her on my hand when I slid it out from between her legs.

  Maybe it was being bare-assed naked with my girlfriend in Carson Meunetti’s living room, knowing the odds were good my girlfriend had been here with him, like this, a couple of years before.

  Conscious thought was nearly suppressed by feeling and by lust, e
xcept for a driving need to lay my claim, to mark this territory and erase any impression, any trace, any mark left by the guy who’d been here before.

  I’d never been so turned on.

  We’d talked about it over the last eleven months. Lina would do anything, really anything, with me, so long as I didn’t actually put myself into her. I’d always gone along with that, even if I didn’t understand it. I was nearly certain she wasn’t a virgin. What was it about us that made that off limits?

  Her fingernails dug into my shoulder, and her breath was short and hot against my neck. I was pushed up hard against her hip. She pushed, soft and wet, against my moving fingers.

  Today was the day. No more limits. No more boundaries. No more excuses. I was hers. I needed her to be mine.

  It’s easy to tell when your girlfriend is about to come when your sense of smell is discerning enough to read a person’s mood and physiology through their sweat and pheromones, when you can sense a heartbeat and blood flow from your fingertips. I brought her over the edge with my hand.

  I was utterly engulfed in her scent, her sounds, her taste. I was past thinking; at that moment I was nothing but want.

  While she bucked and gasped, I pulled her arms above her head, took both her hands in mine, positioned myself between her legs, and sought her out.

  Her body came back to her as her orgasm slid away.

  “Nate…c’mon…”

  Her tone wasn’t encouraging.

  I could feel her wet, warm lips against my dick. So close. I bit into the underside of her upper arm; not hard, just enough to hang on, to hold on.

  My peripheral vision contracted to narrow focus on pieces of her. Her ear. Her hair. Her breast. Her lips.

  She had become discrete instances of stimulation, each adding to my exponential drive to possess the whole.

  “Nate…I don’t…”

  She twisted her hips, denying me. I slid along her inner thigh.

  I let go of her arms.

  I propped myself above her on an elbow and a knee. Her eyes were cloudy with afterglow and just a degree away from being entirely with me.