Lick: Stage Dive 1 (19 page)

“I don’t know.”

He shook his head. “We’re friends. Ev, you’re sad, you’re tired, and you’ve lost weight, and I fucking hate that I’m the cause of it. I’m going to make this right with you one step at a time. Just … give me a little room to maneuver here. I promise I won’t step on your toes too badly.”

“I don’t trust you anymore, David.”

His teasing smile fell. “I know you don’t. And when you’re ready we’re gonna talk about that.”

I swallowed hard against the lump in my throat.

“When you’re ready,” he reiterated. “Come on. Let’s get you home so you can eat this while it’s still hot.”

We walked the rest of the way home in silence. I think it was companionable. David gave me occasional small smiles. They seemed genuine.

He tramped up the stairs behind me, not really bothering to look around. I’d forgotten he’d been here last night when he got my whereabouts from Lauren. I unlocked the door and took a peek inside, still scarred from catching Lauren and my brother on the couch last week. Living with them wasn’t going to work long term. I think everyone was getting to the point of needing their own space.

The last month, though, had been beneficial for Nate and me. It had given us a chance to talk. We were closer than we’d ever been. He loved his job at the mechanic shop. He was happy and settled. Lauren was right, he’d changed. My brother had figured out what he wanted and where he belonged. Now if I could just get my shit together and do the same.

Rock music played softly and Nate and Lauren danced in the middle of the room. An impromptu thing obviously, given my brother’s still-greasy work clothes. Lauren didn’t seem to care, holding onto him tight, staring into his eyes.

I cleared my throat to announce our arrival and stepped into the room.

Nate looked over and gave me a welcoming smile. But then he saw David. Blood suffused his face and his eyes changed. The temperature in the room seemed to rocket.

“Nate,” I said, making a grab for him as he charged David.

“Shit.” Lauren ran after him. “No!”

Nate’s fist connected with David’s face. The pizza went flying. David stumbled back, blood gushing from his nose.

“You fucking asshole,” my brother yelled.

I jumped on Nate’s back, trying to wrestle him back. Lauren grabbed at his arm. David did nothing. He covered his bloody face but made no move to protect himself from further damage.

“I’m going to fucking kill you for hurting her,” Nate roared.

David just looked at him, eyes accepting.

“Stop, Nate!” My feet dragged at the floor, my arms wrapped around my brother’s windpipe.

“You want him here?” Nate asked me, incredulous. “Are you fucking serious?” Then he looked at Lauren tugging at his arm. “What are you doing?”

“This is between them, Nate.”

“What? No! You saw what he did to her. What she’s been like for the last month.”

“You need to calm down. She doesn’t want this.” Lauren hands patted over his face. “Please, babe. This isn’t you.”

Slowly, Nate pulled back. His shoulders dropped back to normal levels, his muscles relaxing. I gave up my choke hold on him, not that it had done much good. My brother did the raging bull thing scarily well. Blood leaked out from between David’s fingers, dripped onto the floor. “Crap. Come on.” I grabbed his arm and led him into our bathroom.

He leaned over the sink, swearing quietly but profusely. I bundled up some toilet paper and handed it to him. He stuffed it beneath his bloody nostrils.

“Is it broken?”

“I dunno,” his voice was muffled, thick.

“I’m so sorry.”

“’S’okay.” From his back jeans pocket came a ringing noise.

“I’ll get it.” Carefully, I extracted his phone. The name flashing on screen stopped me cold. The universe had to be playing a prank. Surely. Except it wasn’t. It was just the same old heartbreak playing out all over again inside of me. I could already feel the ice-cold numbness spreading through my veins.

“It’s her.” I held the phone out to him.

Above the ball of bloody toilet paper his nose looked wounded, but intact. Violence wasn’t going to help. No matter the anger working through me, winding me up just then.

His gaze jumped from the screen to me. “Ev.”

“You should go. I want you to go.”

“I haven’t talked to Martha since that night. I’ve had nothing to do with her.”

I shook my head, out of words. The phone ringed shrilly, the noise piercing my eardrums. It echoed on and on inside the small bathroom. It vibrated in my hand and my whole body trembled. “Take it before I break it.”

Bloodstained fingers took it from my hand.

“You gotta let me explain,” he said. “I promise, she’s gone.”

“Then why is she calling you?”

“I don’t know and I’m not answering. I haven’t spoken to her once since I fired her. You gotta believe me.”

“But I don’t. I mean, how can I?”

He blinked pained eyes at me. We just stared at one another as realization dawned. This wasn’t going to work. This had never been going to work. He was always secrets and lies and I was always on the outside looking in. Nothing had changed. My heart was breaking all over again. Surprising, really, that there was enough of it left to worry over.

“Just go,” I said, my stupid eyes welling up.

Without another word he walked out.

David and I didn’t speak after that. But every afternoon after work he was there, waiting across the street. He’d be watching me from beneath the brim of his baseball cap. All ready to stalk me home safely. It pissed me off, but in no way did I feel threatened. I’d ignored him for three days as he trailed me. Today was day number four. He’d traded his usual black jeans for blue, boots for sneakers. Even from a distance, his upper lip and nose looked bruised. The paparazzi were still missing in action, though today someone had asked me if he was in town. His days of moving around Portland unknown were probably coming to an end. I wondered if he knew.

When I didn’t just ignore him as per my usual modus operandi, he took a step forward. Then stopped. A truck passed between us among a steady stream of city traffic. This was crazy. Why was he still here? Why hadn’t he just gone back to Martha? Moving on was impossible with him here.

Decision half made, I rushed across during the next break in traffic, meeting him on the opposite sidewalk.

“Hi,” I said, not fussing with strap on my bag at all. “What are you doing here, David?”

He stuffed his hands in his pockets, looked around. “I’m walking you home. Same as I do every day.”

“This is your life now?”

“Guess so.”

“Huh,” I said, summing up the situation perfectly. “Why don’t you go back to LA?”

Blue eyes watched me warily and he didn’t answer at first. “My wife lives in Portland.”

My heart stuttered. The simplicity of the statement and the sincerity in his eyes caught me off guard. I wasn’t nearly as immune to him as I should have been. “We can’t keep doing this.”

He studied the street, not me, his shoulders hunched over. “Will you walk with me, Ev?”

I nodded. We walked. Neither of us rushed, instead strolling past shopfronts and restaurants, peering into bars just getting going for the evening. I had a bad feeling that once we stopped walking we’d have to start talking, so dawdling suited me fine. Summer nights meant there were a fair number of people around.

An Irish bar sat on a street corner about halfway home. Music blared out, some old song by The White Stripes. Hands still stuffed into his pockets, David gestured toward the bar with an elbow. “Wanna get a drink?”

It took me a moment to find my voice. “Sure.”

He led me straight to a table at the back, away from the growing crowd of post-work drinkers. He ordered two pints of Guinness. Once they arrived, we sat in silence, sipping. After a moment, David took off his cap and set it on the table. Shit, his poor face. I could see it more clearly now and he looked like he had two black eyes.

We sat there staring at one another in some bizarre sort of standoff. Neither of us spoke. The way he looked at me, like he’d been hurt too, like he was hurting … I couldn’t take it. Waiting to drag this whole sorry mess of a relationship out into the light wasn’t helping either of us. Time for a new plan. We’d clear the air then get on with our respective lives. No more hurt and heartache. “You wanted to tell me about her?” I prompted, sitting up straighter, preparing myself for the worst.

“Yeah. Martha and I were together a long time. You probably already know, she was the one who cheated on me. The one we talked about.”

I nodded.

“We started the band when I was fourteen, Mal and Jimmy and me. Ben joined a year later and she’d hang around too. They were like family,” he said, brow puckered. “They are family. Even when things went bad I couldn’t just turn my back on her …”

“You kissed her.”

He sighed. “No, she kissed me. Martha and I are finished.”

“I’m guessing she doesn’t know that, since she’s still calling you and all.”

“She’s moved to New York, no longer working for the band. I don’t know what the phone call was about, but I didn’t return it.”

I nodded, only slightly appeased. Our problems weren’t that clear-cut. “Does your heart understand you’re finished with her? I guess I mean your head, don’t I? The heart’s just another muscle, really. Silly to say it decides anything.”

“Martha and I are finished. We have been for a long time. I promise.”

“Even if that’s true, doesn’t that just make me the consolation prize? Your attempt at a normal life?”

“Ev, no. That’s not the way it is.”

“Are you sure about that?” I asked, disbelief thick in my voice. I picked up my beer, gulping down the bitter, dark ale and creamy foam. Something to calm the nerves. “I was getting over you,” I said, my voice a pitiful, small thing. My shoulders were right back where they belonged, way down. “A month. I didn’t really give up on you until day seven, though. Then I knew you weren’t coming. I knew it was over then. Because if I’d been so important to you, you’d have said something by then, right? I mean, you knew I was in love with you. So you’d have put me out of my misery by then, wouldn’t you?”

He said nothing.

“You’re all secrets and lies, David. I asked you about the earring, remember?”

He nodded.

“You lied.”

“Yeah. I’m sorry.”

“Did you do that before or after our honesty rule? I can’t remember. It was definitely after the cheating rule though, right?” Talking was a mistake. All of the jagged thoughts and emotions he inspired caught up with me too fast.

He didn’t deign to reply.

“What’s the story behind the earrings, anyway?”

“I brought them with my first pay check after the record company signed us.”

“Wow. And you both wore them all this time. Even after she cheated on you and everything.”

“It was Jimmy,” he said. “She cheated on me with Jimmy.”

Holy shit, his own brother. So many things fell into place with that piece of information. “That’s why you got so upset about finding him and that groupie together. And when you saw Jimmy talking to me at that party.”

“Yeah. It was all a long time ago, but … Jimmy flew back for an appearance on a TV show. We were in the middle of a big tour, playing Spain at the time. The second album had just hit the top ten. We were finally really pulling in the crowds.”

“So you forgave them to keep the band together?”

“No. Not exactly. I just got on with things. Even back then Jimmy was drinking too much. He’d changed.” He licked his lips, studied the table. “I’m sorry about that night. More fucking sorry than I can say. What you walked in on … I know how it must have looked. And I hated myself for lying to you about the earring, for still wearing it in Monterey.”

He flicked at his ear in annoyance. There was still a visible wound there with shiny, pink, nearly healed skin around it. It didn’t look like a fading earring hole at all.

“What did you do there?” I asked.

“Cut across it with a knife.” He shrugged. “An earring hole takes years to grow over. Made a new cut when you left so it could heal properly.”

“Oh.”

I waited to come talk to you because I needed some time. You walking out on me after you’d promised you wouldn’t … that was hard to take.”

“I didn’t have any choice.”

He leaned toward me, his eyes hard. “You had a choice.”

“I’d just seen my husband kissing another woman. And then you refused to even discuss it with me. You just started yelling at me about leaving. Again.” My hands gripped the edge of the table so tight I could feel my fingernails pressing into the wood. “What the fuck should I have done, David? Tell me. Because I’ve played that scene over in my head so many times and it always works out the same way, with you slamming the door shut behind me.”

“Shit.” He slumped back in his seat. “You knew you leaving was a problem for me. You should have stuck with me, given me a chance to calm down. We worked it out in Monterey after that bar fight. We could have done it again.”

“Rough sex doesn’t fix everything. Sometimes you actually have to talk.”

“I tried to talk to you the other night at that club. Wasn’t what was on your mind.”

I could feel my face heat up. It just pissed me off even more.

“Fuck. Look,” he said, rubbing at the back of his neck. “The thing is, I needed to get us straight in my head, okay? I needed to figure out if us being together was the right thing. Honestly, Ev, I didn’t want to hurt you again.”

A month he’d left me to stew in my misery. It was on the tip of my tongue to give him a flippant thank-you. Or even to flip him off. But this was too serious.

“You got us straight in your head? That’s great. I wish I could get us straight in my head.” I stopped babbling long enough to drink more beer. My throat was giving sandpaper serious competition.

He held himself perfectly still, watching me crash and burn with an eerie calm.

“So, I’m kind of beat.” I looked everywhere but at him. “Does that cover everything you wanted to talk about?”

“No.”

“No? There’s more?” Please, God, don’t let there be more.

“Yeah.”

“Have at it.” Time to drink.

“I love you.”

I spat beer across the table, all over our combined hands. “Shit.”

“I’ll get some napkins,” he said, releasing my hand and rising out of his chair. A moment later he was back. I sat there like a useless doll while he cleaned my arm and then the table, trembling was all I was good for. Carefully, he pulled back my seat, helped me to my feet and ushered me out of the bar. The hum of traffic and rush of city air cleared my senses. I had room to think out on the street.

Immediately my feet got moving. They knew what was up. My boots stomped across the pavement, putting serious distance between me and there. Getting the hell away from him and what he’d said. David stayed right on my heels, however.

We stopped at a street corner and I punched the button, waiting for the walk light. “Don’t say that again.”

“Is it such a surprise, really? Why the fuck else would I be doing this, huh? Of course I love you.”

“Don’t.” I turned on him, face furious.

His lips formed a tight line. “Alright. I won’t say that again. For now. But we should talk some more.”

I growled, gnashed my teeth.

“Ev.”

Crap. Negotiation wasn’t my strong suit. Not with him. I wanted him gone. Or at least, I was pretty certain I wanted him gone. Gone so I could resume my mourning for him and us and everything we might have been. Gone so I didn’t have to think about the fact that he now thought he loved me. What utter emotional bullshit. My tear ducts went crazy right on cue. I took huge, deep breaths trying to get myself back under control.

“Later, not today,” he said, in an affable, reasonable voice. I didn’t trust it or him at all.

“Fine.”

I strode another block with him hanging at my side until again a crossing stopped us cold, leaving room for conversation. He had better not speak. At least not until I got my shit together and figured all this out. I straightened my pencil skirt, tucked back my hair, fidgeted. The light took forever. Since when did Portland turn against me? This wasn’t fair.

“We’re not finished,” he said. It sounded like both a threat and a promise.

*

The first text arrived at midnight while I was lying on my bed, reading. Or trying to read. Because trying to sleep had been a bust. School started back soon but I was finding it hard to raise my usual enthusiasm for my studies. I had the worst feeling that the seed of doubt David had planted regarding my career choices had taken root inside my brain. I liked architecture, but I didn’t love it. Did that matter? Sadly, I had no answers. Lots of excuses—some bullshit and some valid—but no answers.

David would probably say I could do whatever the fuck I wanted to. I knew all too well what my father would say. It wouldn’t be pretty.

I’d been avoiding seeing my parents since I got back. Easy enough to do considering I’d hung up on the lecture my father had attempted to give me the second day after my return. Relations had been frosty since then. The real surprise was that I wasn’t surprised. They had never encouraged anything that didn’t directly support the plan. There was a reason I’d never returned their calls when I was in Monterey. Because I couldn’t tell them the things they wanted to hear anymore, it had seemed safer to stay mute.

Nathan had been running interference with the folks, which I appreciated, but my time was up. We’d all been summoned to dinner tomorrow night. I figured the text was my mother ensuring I wasn’t going to try and wheedle out of it. Sometimes she sat up late watching old black and white movies when her sleeping pills didn’t kick in.

I was wrong.

David: She surprised me when she kissed me. That’s why I didn’t stop her right away. But I didn’t want it.

I stared at my cell, frowning.

David: You there?

Me: Yeah.

David: I need to know if you believe me about Martha.

Did I? I took a breath, searched deep. There was frustration, plenty of confusion, but my anger had apparently burned itself out at long last. Because I didn’t doubt he’d told me the truth.

Me: I believe you.

David: Thank you. I keep thinking of more. Will you listen?

Me: Yes.

David: My folks got married because of Jimmy. Mom left when I was 12. She drank.

David: Jimmy’s been paying her to keep quiet. She’s been hustling him for years.

Me: Holy hell!

David: Yeah. I got lawyers onto it now.

Me: Glad to hear it.

David: We retired Dad to Florida. I told him about you. He wants to meet.

Me: Really? I don’t know what to say …

David: Can I come up?

Me: You’re here??

I didn’t wait for a reply. Forget my pajama shorts and daggy old T-shirt, washed so many times its original color was a faded memory. He’d just have to take me as he found me. I unlocked the front door of our apartment and padded down the stairs on bare feet, my cell still in my hand. Sure enough, a tall shadow loomed through the frosted glass of the building’s front door. I pushed it open to find him sitting on the step. Outside, the night was still, peaceful. A fancy silver SUV was pulled up at the curb.

“Hey,” he said, a finger busy on the screen of his cell. Mine beeped again.

David: Wanted to say goodnight.