(Complete Rock Stars, Surf and Second Chances #1-5)

by Michelle Mankin

  All the Dogs were a testament to misery each in our own way. Our lead singer Lincoln Savage had lost the approval of the one woman he had really wanted and now settled for crowd adoration and groupie hookups as inferior substitutes. Our guitarist Ramon Martinez thought he didn’t know how to love, but the reality was he had given his heart away a long time ago to someone who wasn’t free to return it. Our new bassist Diesel Le had been tooled around so badly by his ex-wife that he now projected his hatred onto all women. And then there was me. In love myself yet unable to man up and confess those feelings. We were really a bunch of sad fucks just lucky that enough people like this sweet girl identified with the rebellious theme in our music.

  Regrets and morose thoughts spun like a carousel in my brain a lot lately. The guys in the band had noticed and were starting to speculate about the cause. That’s why I had come out here alone. I wasn’t ready to talk about it. I would. Probably. There was no one I was closer to than Linc and Ramon. Hell, even Diesel. He had been inside the refining fire with all of us after Patches’ funeral. But not yet. After the test results came in, maybe. I might have to level with them then. But instead of finding some time to myself with my drums tonight, I had found her. And here I remained, my feet glued to the floor enjoying myself in way I never expected even with all the bullshit hanging over me. At least until her stepfather had appeared. So much like Linc’s old man. If he hadn’t let go of her, I would have broken his fucking arm.

  “I wish I had more time to talk to you. More time to explain. There just isn’t any.” She threaded her fingers together as if trying to cup sand in her hands. “Time’s precious, but beyond the ability of any of us to control. Right?”

  I nodded, stunned by her insight.

  “But I didn’t want to go without telling you how much it means to me that you didn’t back down from my stepfather. Most would have. Actually I can’t really remember anyone ever standing up to him. And that you did it for me… Well, it means a lot is all. Thank you, Ashland.” She unclasped her fingers and touched my arm. Surprised, so caught off guard by her, I glanced down at her delicate hand resting so softly on my skin and then returned my gaze to her face. She was pretty for sure, but in a more remarkable way than all the conformist clones running around backstage tonight. She had big grey eyes, a cute nose, phenomenal lips and that striking red hair. But it was those eyes of hers that were the complete show stopper. Otherworldly, they reflected her quicksilver emotions. Nervousness. Resolve. Fear. Desire. I had seen all flash within their depths.

  “Ash,” I corrected. “My friends call me Ash.” My voice sounded gruff from the weight of the things I wanted to explore further with her. Things that I wouldn’t, couldn’t pursue. Bad timing to meet someone who so intrigued me if the test turned out the way I feared. And even if it didn’t, she was too young, too innocent. Not at all right for someone like me.

  “Ash,” she repeated, my name sliding so easily between those recently wetted ruby red lips of hers. I imagined them wrapped around my shaft and knew I wouldn’t have turned her down if she had offered to do to me the things the groupie had. My cock was certainly interested in her. It didn’t care about timing or right and wrong. It was all about action.

  “I’m sorry you got drawn into my mess,” she continued. “I think that under different circumstances we might have been friends. It’s difficult to find many of those in our profession. Genuine ones, I mean. But I think it’s better if we just go ahead and say goodbye right now.”

  “How so?” The lust thundering through me made it difficult to focus, but I did get that she was giving me the brush off. And even though wisdom dictated that I take the hint—it was the logical thing to do after all given our differences—the alpha male in me said, ‘Fuck logic.’

  “Because my stepfather wasn’t kidding around. He means what he says. You don’t want to be on his bad side. I don’t want you to be on his bad side. And that’s where you would end up if he thought you were a friend of mine.”

  “Someone who steps in front of him when he’s twisting your arm and hurting you, you mean?”

  Her eyes wide, she nodded.

  “Well, fuck that bullshit.” My gaze grazed the red welt on her arm. “He’s the one who should be worried about getting on my bad side.”

  She smiled at my vehement response and smiling she was more than just cute. She was a wrecking ball to my resolve, Prettier in person than in any of the videos I had seen of her and so enticing in that little yellow halter top with the tempting bow dangling between her shoulder blades. I imagined untying it and taking those pins out of her hair. What would those glorious red curls feel like around my…. No… I reined those thoughts back and settled for tracing her subtle curves with my gaze instead. No sex. Not with her. Not with anyone. Not for a while. Potentially not ever. I wouldn’t put anyone at risk if there was even a chance they would get infected. Ironic to be sure. Divine justice for my own irresponsible behavior over the years.

  The familiar icy dread returning, I had to remind myself that no diagnosis had actually been made. I had momentarily forgotten my apprehension in her presence. That song of hers was so fucking full of hope it had me expecting a miracle. And that hope sprang from within her. She was the source. No wonder her star had risen so fast. Just a handful of minutes with her was all it had taken for me to realize it.

  “I…I wasn’t expecting to run into you tonight.” Her eyes twinkled like stars emerging in the sky as the sun relinquished its hold on the day. “I had hoped to, sure, you know, since I love…your music so much.” A few more spirally crimson curls shivered free of their pins as her hands fluttered in front of her chest. “It’s just now that I’ve actually met you for real.” She gave me that utterly beguiling look. “I’ll never be able to look at your picture the same way again.”

  “No reason to settle for a photograph, Fanny. You have your things to do tonight, and I’ve got mine. But afterward, there are a lot of parties. I’m sure we can manage to bump into each other again. Maybe talk some more.” Unwise, Ashland. But yet doing the ‘whoever and whatever the fuck I wanted’ rock star entitlement thing was a hard habit to crush. I might not be able to take this where I wanted with her spread out on the sheets beneath me, but I wasn’t ready for whatever the hell this was to end yet, either. So shouldn’t I leave myself an opening? A contingency plan? I had been walking around like a zombie. But what if the diagnosis wasn’t what I feared? What if I received favorable news? What then? Who then? As I continued to stare into those starlit eyes of hers, I felt something shift and lock into place that was startlingly certain. Her. If I had a future on the other side of this, I wanted that future to include her.

  “There is a reason.” She shook her head. “Samuel Lesowski. My stepfather. You two didn’t exactly hit it off.”

  “You’re an adult. He doesn’t have to know everything you do, does he?”

  “No.” Her face brightening, she shook her head excitedly and more curls escaped.

  “What do you say then? How about this? You be just you and I’ll be just me. A girl from Beverly Hills and a guy from the beach. None of the other stuff. It’s not important. I’ve got a hurdle I have to clear next week, but afterward I can come back to LA. We could meet somewhere.”

  “I don’t know.” She captured and wrapped one of her curls around her finger while blinking uncertainly at me through the thick fringe of her crimson lashes.

  “There’s a coffeehouse,” I plowed over her reservations. “The Cosmic Cup in Manhattan Beach. It’s by the water. Quiet. Close enough to where you live, but a fair enough distance from the bullshit of LA. How about Wednesday at ten o’clock?”

  “But…”

  “But nothing. You wrote that song, ‘Tomorrow Today’, right? Make every moment count. I believe that. We can’t control time, but who says we can’t manipulate it. We bumped into each other tonight for a reason. Don’t you think we owe ourselves a chance to find out what that reason is?”

  T
ext log

  - Wednesday 10:15 AM -

  Fanny: Hey, Um. I’m here at the coffeehouse. The Cosmic Cup.

  - 1230 PM -

  Fanny: I’ve been here a while. I thought you said ten but maybe I got that wrong.

  - 2:03 PM -

  Fanny: Did you mean ten at night?

  - 8:45 PM -

  Fanny: I didn’t hear from you earlier. But I swung back by the coffee house again, you know just in case.

  - 9:15 PM -

  Fanny: The vanilla latte is pretty decent. So it wasn’t entirely a wasted trip.

  - 10:12 PM -

  Fanny: They’re closing up now.

  -10:15 PM -

  Fanny: Are you getting my messages?

  -10:17 PM -

  Fanny: If you are, but you changed your mind could you let me know?

  Chapter One

  * * *

  Fanny - 2015 Present Day

  I brushed aside a long wispy strand of her strawberry blonde hair and pressed a gentle kiss to her brow. Underneath my lips her skin felt hot. And as I drew back I noticed that her spattering of freckles seemed overly prominent against her pale cheeks. Worry lined my own features. Her fever was spiking again. My little sister looked worse than she had the night before.

  Oh, Hollie. On my knees, I gazed down at her. Not quite eighteen, she was the soft colors of the dawn. I was the bolder hues of the sunset, or so our mother had often described us. She appeared so childlike and frail all tangled up in her thin covers on a pallet of cardboard on the concrete floor.

  My flattened lips turning into a frown, I rose from her makeshift bed, took a step backward and straightened my skirt. One more day, I told myself. I would let her ride this fever out one more day. If she didn’t get better we were going to the free clinic first thing the next morning, the risk of us being discovered be damned.

  I would just have to fight him again if need be. I would do whatever it took. This time the stakes were higher than ever. My sister’s wellbeing meant more to me than my own.

  Fear for her, for both of us: that was why we had run. My heart hammered thinking about the night that had started with Hollie’s panicked phone call. Though I had managed to get her away from him I knew that no distance could guarantee her safety.

  Samuel Lesowski was more powerful now than he had been the day I had given up the rights and royalties to my award-winning song to be free from him. He had invested the sizeable proceeds of that acquisition into a multimedia company with a streaming service. His initial investment had grown into a formidable fortune. He could use that fortune as leverage to destroy Hollie’s hopes and dreams, or worse if I allowed my mind to go there. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t focus on the things he could do. I had to focus on what I could do. I had been in rough spots before. And I had come through.

  Dig deep, Fanny Bay. My mother’s sweet voice echoed her advice inside my head. It was fainter nowadays, but I still remembered everything. Find your Zen. Sweet are the uses of adversity which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in his head. Yoga and Shakespeare, her two favorite philosophies. She had melded then into one uniquely her own. The sound of her voice might have faded over the years, but her memory never would. I wouldn’t allow it.

  I closed my eyes and imagined her beside me. Imagined further that my feet were roots tunneling beneath the cold concrete to the nurturing soil beneath it like the ancient cedars of Cathedral Grove on Vancouver Island. The oldest in British Columbia, they stood strong through the tests of time. They had weathered many hardships. I could manage this one.

  Centered, my determination restored, I opened my eyes and my other senses to the rest of my surroundings like my mother had taught me. Scent first. It had always been scent first with me. I took in the brine of the ocean and the unmistakable fragrance of Coppertone. Then the sound of the roaring waves, the cry of the gulls and the muffled shouts of the surfers outside our hut. Last, the damp humidity seeping through the cracks around the door and the slats of the louvered window and settling deep into my bones.

  My heartrate slowed. The beats became steadier. My next breaths came easier though the pressure of tears still threatened.

  “I miss you, Mom,” I whispered, longing to see her one more time, to be held by her one more time. But it was just me and my sister inside the small, ten-by-ten-foot pumping station we had been hiding in for the past several weeks. Weeks we hadn’t intended. Time we had planned to spend on the other side of the border farther from Samuel Lesowski’s reach. But Mexico wasn’t an option anymore. Not since my purse, along with our passports and every bit of our money had been stolen. We had to regroup. Once Hollie was better we would find another way.

  “I’m going out,” I said out loud, firming my shoulders. “I’ll be back soon.”

  “M-kay,” Hollie mumbled a groggy reply. My leaving each morning was part of the routine now. She was more recognizable. We had agreed at the beginning that I was the one who had to go out. Her fever complicated things. I’d had it, too, but I had gotten over it quickly. As it lingered on in her so did my worries. My brow creased as I watched her turn over, pulling the measly blanket I had salvaged from a dumpster up over her head. “But turn up the heat before you go, Fanny. It’s cold.”

  There wasn’t any heat. No electricity. No running water. No food. None of the necessities beyond a case of bottled water someone had left behind on the beach, which I had dragged up here. Going without basics wasn’t a completely novel experience for me, the way it was for Hollie. Our house in Beverly Hills, the nannies, chauffeurs, a chef. That posh life was all she had ever known.

  But thinking about what we once had wasn’t going to get us what we now lacked. I grabbed a bottle from the case, loosened the cap and left the water nearby so she could find it easily when she awoke.

  Time to get going. No use stalling, though a large part of that stalling was hesitance about leaving Hollie alone when she was so weak.

  1. Food.

  2. A drink with electrolytes.

  3. Pain relievers.

  4. Getting Hollie better.

  My current list. Priorities. Broken down. Manageable. To that end I needed chicken soup, Gatorade, Tylenol and cash to purchase them. Beyond those items and a more difficult task to achieve, I had to find someone to go into the Rite Aid to get them for me. I couldn’t do it myself. Even with a knit Lakers cap covering my distinctive hair, and a thick layer of grime blurring my features, there was a chance someone would recognize me.

  Another obstacle.

  But I had the will. The motivation. Hollie needed me to be strong. I would find a way.

  Opening the heavy metal door a smidgen, I stuck my head out and glanced around checking to make sure the coast was clear before widening the gap and slipping through it. Outside the building, I pressed my back to the closed door and scanned my surroundings. The sub-pump structure was at the far end of the public parking lot, and the lot was full of vehicles. The property of the early morning crew of surfers, at least twenty out on the water today. Nearly that many already peeling off their wetsuits underneath beach towels that functioned as dressing rooms. A few locals and some strangers I didn’t recognize were sitting on the low concrete wall that bordered the sand. Some were drinking coffee out of paper cups, the steam rising in the crisp early spring air. Others had their hands shoved in their jacket pockets as they stared out at the water. But whether they were locals, strangers or just interlopers like me, we all had a bottom line commonality. We all paused at the sand where the land met the sea to acknowledge the majesty of the ocean.

  I took my own moment. The ocean churned today like my thoughts. Lighter blue in the shallows, but darker where it became deeper. Reminding me of…well, I had to let go of that otherwise I wouldn’t be able to find the peace I sought. The surfers bobbed on the rolling waves in their dark wetsuits like sea lions. The concrete pier jutted out like an arrow pointing to the vastness of the waters. The rhythmic sound of the surf lappe
d the shore.

  Tempting, it was so tempting to rest and commune. I was so weary, so hungry. But moments could turn into hours and entire days could be lost here.

  Get a move on, Fanny. This isn’t some vacation. Everything you need isn’t going to conveniently fall into your hands. I had learned that lesson at a very young age. If you wanted something, you had to work for it. Often sacrifice to defend it. And as hard as you tried, sometimes you didn’t get what you wanted but only what you needed to get by.

  • • •

  Ashland

  Sun bright against the back of my eyelids, I gave up trying to sleep any longer and rolled out of bed.

  I liked—no, loved—the view of the water. The OB pier and the horizon of blue beyond it out my penthouse windows could have cost me tens of millions to procure. But the building that housed it had been vacant so long and required so much work to bring it up to code that I had gotten the entire apartment, including the offices downstairs for Outside, at a fraction of its worth.

  My only regret—ok, I had a shit ton of them to be honest—but my most pressing one regarding the apartment was the absence of retractable blinds. They were currently on back order. I couldn’t wait for them to arrive so I could sleep a little later than the butt crack of dawn.

  Abandoning my bed and the sheets I had tangled shifting restlessly back and forth during the night, I shuffled into the attached master bath and took care of my morning business: pissed, washed my hands and shaved. I dried my face with a hand towel and clasped the counter as I stared at my reflection in the mirror.