All Right Now

by Madelynne Ellis

  Ash and Paul were still lying on their backs watching the clouds pass overhead when a car rumbled to a halt in the lane some thirty minutes later. The arrival prompted Ash to lever himself up on one elbow to see what was what, in case it turned out to be those squatters he’d disturbed earlier returning for their stuff.

  There had been squatters, right? He didn’t know.

  What curiously didn’t faze him was when instead of a bunch of unknowns appearing, Spook walked around the corner.

  Spook on the other hand stopped in his tracks and stared at him and Paul in puzzlement.

  “Guys?”

  Paul got to his feet and went to relieve Spook of his travel bag. “What are you doing here? How come you’re not in Sweden?”

  Spook sighed in an exceedingly weary fashion. “There’s been some incident somewhere. Dozens of flights have been cancelled and countless more delayed. I decided I’d had enough waiting around and being switched about. I figured this was at least a roof for the night. Well, what pitifully little there is left of it. Airport lounges suck, even the first class ones.”

  “You’re very welcome to our humble hostel.” Paul performed an elaborate sweeping bow that he just managed to straighten up from. “If you’d care to step inside. Concierge will deal with your luggage.”

  “Hang on,” Spook planted his feet. “Why are you both here? What happened to your plans?”

  “Stuff,” Paul fanned the air as if none of it were of any consequence. “Burst pipes, too much crazy.”

  Spook strode over to where Ash was still on his back stargazing. “I thought you were going to your parents. Is something up with them? Is Ginny with you?”

  “She isn’t,” Paul answered for him. Ash left him to bring Spook up to speed. He’d done all the talking he intended to do on the subject. It was now officially a closed topic. Nothing would be gained by endless repetition of the facts. Rehashing events merely made him feel shitty, and he was actually enjoying the buzz of tequila in his veins.

  Spook’s expression grew increasingly dark as Paul’s matter of fact retelling of the story unfolded. By the end, his brows were in danger of tickling his nostrils.

  “She’s married already. Since when, and to whom?” His shadow blocked out the starlight.

  “Some geezer called Miles,” Rock Giant said.

  “Is Dani aware?”

  “Nope,” Ash responded putting extra emphasis on the P. “Nobody is. According to her, she never told anyone.”

  Spook hunched down by Ash’s side. “Did she mention why that is? You don’t keep that sort of thing quiet without a good reason. There must be a reason why she didn’t tell you or any of us. Was he abusive? Is she in witness protection or something?”

  In all honesty, he hadn’t even considered any of those things. If they were the cause then she’d have said when she was ‘fessing up.

  As Ash didn’t answer, Spook turned to Paul for a reaction. The big guy shrugged.

  “Where is she now, Ash?”

  “Dunno.” Why the hell should he care?

  “Did you break up with her?”

  Of course he fucking had. He couldn’t trust a damn thing she’d said to him for the entire length of their relationship. He’d fallen for someone called Ginny Walters only to discover on proposing to her that woman didn’t exist, and he’d actually been fucking some other bloke’s wife. He didn’t do relationship theft. He didn’t do lies and secrets. And why the hell would he stick around for a woman who’d let him down like that? She knew how he felt about marriage. She knew all his hang-ups. He on the other hand knew not a goddamned thing about her.

  “It wasn’t real.”

  “The hell it wasn’t!” Spook snapped, his lips curling back off his teeth. “That woman loves you. She agreed to marry you in front of a stadium full of people.”

  “Sure, once she’s divorced some other poor sod.”

  “She’s disentangling herself from him so that she can be with you. She’s certainly not been in an active relationship with him for some time. Not for years if Dani’s unaware of his existence. Doesn’t that clue you in to the fact she cares about you? Isn’t all the evidence that’s stacked up since the summer enough? Ginny loves you, Ash. Did you even hear her out properly, or was your mind stuck on the fact she couldn’t dive into a church with you immediately?”

  Paul put a hand down hard on Spook’s shoulder, knocking Spook off balance and his stride. “Jan,” he said quietly, making both Spook and Ash’s ears prick. None of them ever used Spook’s given name, most times they had trouble even recalling it. “It’s too soon. Give him a break. He’s still in shock.” Rock Giant kept his voice low, but the sound still carried over to Ash. It was odd hearing himself referred to.

  “He’s blatantly screwing himself again.”

  “Perhaps. You can’t expect him to be reasonable or logical about things at this stage. Would you be? Of course not. No one would. You saw how giddy he was last night. He was farting rainbows, and scaring everyone with his Gene Kelley grin. Whatever the reasons for it, she’s flung him out of a plane without a parachute. He needs us to be here to catch him. Are you getting me?”

  The blaze in Spook’s eyes paled, and he gave a juddery series of nods. What he refused to do was look straight at Ash. “All right, sure.”

  “You ought to get your facts straight too,” Ash muttered, finding his voice again. “She’s not divorcing him. He’s divorcing her. I have the paperwork to prove it.”

  “Divorce proceedings are rarely straightforward.”

  “Jan,” Paul warned him again.

  Spook backed down with his hands raised. “Sure, I know nothing, and it’s none of my business.”

  The three of them stewed for several moments, none of them speaking. Paul and Spook shuffled about uncomfortably, until Paul eventually said, “Come on inside. I’ll make us breakfast and we can see if Yule Father has been.”

  “Santa,” Ash mumbled. He’d left his case at his parents place containing all the presents he’d bought.

  “Odin,” Spook corrected them both. “Reckon he can be bothered with us?”

  Paul shrugged and turned towards the door. Spook followed, but only for a couple of paces. He tapped Rock Giant on the back. “I’ll follow in a few, just need to…”

  “You realise there’s nothing any of us can say right now?” Still, he left them and headed inside the bolt hole.

  Spook wearily squinted at the morning sky, then sat on the grass beside Ash, who pushed himself up into a sitting position.

  “If you say that you knew I’ll never fucking speak to you again.” Some things were big enough they ended chapters, maybe whole sections of your life. This was one of them.

  “I didn’t know, Ash. I had no idea she’d spring something like this, none.” And yet there were clearly cogs and gears inside his brain working.

  “None? She didn’t confide during one of your many post-midnight conflabs.”

  Spook vehemently shook his head. “I listened when she needed to let off steam, that’s all. Don’t start inventing conspiracies. I’m sorry I snarled. I’m just trying to look out for you and figure out how to make it right.”

  “Yeah. Let’s not go there.” There was nothing and would never be anything right about this situation. It was a long steaming pile of shit, destined to make a stink for a significant amount of time.

  “I guess we now know what all the phone calls were about.”

  “Guess,” he agreed.

  ***

  When Ash finally stumbled back inside a few minutes after Spook, he discovered three of Paul’s most threadbare socks had been strewn across the front of the kitchen island. His name had been pinned to the centre most one.

  “Looks as if we were good boys this year after all,” Paul boomed from across the room. The sound left Ash’s ear’s ringing. He peeked inside the sock and found a satsuma, some vegan chocolate coins, an assortment of nuts, a bleeding candle, and tube of hemp scented hand cream.
Great if he wanted to smell like a stoner.

  “Thanks.”

  “They’re from Yule Father—”

  “Odin,” Spook interjected.

  “—not me.”

  “Thanks, Santa.” Ash raised one of the coins to him in a sort of salute, before scoffing it. “Say, is there any actual food in this place?”

  Rock Giant made a so-so action with his hand. “It’s well stocked if you like frozen or tinned. I managed to grab some milk and eggs from the farmer next door, and there’s a bread maker that I… Well, I played with it last night right after I arrived. He took the lid off an oversized pan and revealed the results.

  “Why’s it in a pan?”

  “There’s no bread basket.”

  “Are those mushrooms in it?”

  “Fuck off, they’re… Okay, it’s leek and mushroom bread…and cheese. It’s cheese and leek and mushroom bread, and there’s baked eggs to go with it.”

  “Sounds scrumptious.” Spook tore a piece off the end of the loaf and stuffed it in his mouth. “It’s good.” He gave it a thumbs up. “Let’s have some more with butter on it.”

  Paul slapped the back of his hand with a spatula when he reached for it. “Get your dirty mitts off. I’ll slice it, and you can set the table.”

  Confused, Spook looked around, and exchanged a nonplussed look with Ash. “What, the coffee table?”

  “It’s a table, ain’t it? Ash, you sort us some brews.”

  Brews, yeah, he could do that, but why would any of them want sobering up? He cracked open three of the beers he’d bought last night. “It’s traditional,” he claimed when Spook gave him some serious side-eye. “A century back, everyone had beer for breakfast.”

  Beery breakfast, turned into even more beery elevenses as they polished off the vegan chocolate. Yet more ingredients were thrown into the bread maker in the hopes of producing a Christmas cake. The result was boozy fruit loaf, but no one cared. It washed down well with yet more beer, and eventually helped loosen their vocal chords.

  Paul started singing first, making some mad attempt to impersonate Xane singing a Christmas carol.

  “That’s a rubbish impression.” Spook laughed into his beer bottle.

  “Yeah, well you do him then.”

  “I don’t want to do him.”

  “Do someone else,” Ash encouraged.

  “No.”

  “It’s no good, mate. Spook never puts out. You ought to know that by now.”

  Spook flipped him a matching set of Vs with his fingers, which for some unfathomable reason, Ash found hilarious. Everything seemed crazy funny at the moment. “I reckon he left plenty of ladies buzzing with pleasure after they played with his dick last night.”

  Spook growled low in his throat. He’d already blown a gasket before the gig yesterday when he caught wind of the fact there were Black Halo branded dildos on sale, each apparently modelled on the band member’s own members. There had been some heated words spoken already over how they’d even come into existence, since no way had any of them voluntarily stuck their dicks in a mould. Okay, so Xane totally admitted it, and Ginny had… Well, never mind. He wasn’t thinking about that, or her.

  “Yours was the dick that sold out,” Spook spat.

  Rock Giant beamed as if he’d been offered a compliment. “My awesomeness is finally appreciated.”

  “He can’t help being the biggest dick… Oops, I meant having.”

  “Fuck you, Gore.”

  “No tah, that thing would split me in two.”

  A few stupid words exchanged between friends shouldn’t have meant so much, but the banter sparked a warm glow inside Ash’s chest where there’d earlier been only a vast open hollow. He rose unsteadily, swaying onto his toes and knocking into the table in the process.

  “Sit down, you dope.” Spook tugged on his wrist, tipping him to one side from the waist.

  “Don’t wanna.”

  “Jeez, he’s wasted.”

  He wasn’t. At least, not nearly as badly as he wished he was.

  “We should jam,” he insisted. “I bet Xane has a guitar or two stashed here somewhere.”

  “You want to jam?” Spook sounded utterly incredulous. Maybe he didn’t think it was the time. Ash on the other hand, figured why the hell not lose himself in music. There was no other joy in the world.

  Paul got to his feet. “Well I’m in, as long as no one is expecting us to play Christmas stuff.”

  ***

  Guitars were grabbed, and a fake microphone improvised with an empty beer bottle. They each took turns mimicking members of other groups, and mangling a variety of former chart hits. Singing had never been Ash’s forte. His voice had a grating quality that was prone to setting teeth on edge, but neither of his mates seemed to care. When he combed his hair down flat and burst into a raucous rendition of his favourite Oasis classic, Paul, and Spook backed him up, even leaning in to him in order to yell the “Well…s!” into the bottle mic.

  There was something immensely satisfying about dancing around in his socks, yelling about morning glory.

  “Need a little time to wake up. Need a little time to rest your mind…”

  At the end, they fell quiet just long enough for the smile to start slipping from his face, before Rock Giant launched into another song. Paul took the lead on that one for the first verse, handing over to Spook for the second, and leaving him to finish up. They zipped straight from that into another, and another, the choices getting increasingly weird, then playful, and pantomime stupid. He didn’t know how long it went on for, only that it was dark again outside by the time they stopped. They collapsed on the sofa for Paul to give them his version of the Queen’s speech. And suddenly it was time for more nosh and improvised cracker pulling, constructed from loo roll inners, magazine pages, and jokes they made up on the spot.

  It was the best and worst Christmas of his life.

  Only, in the dark after the other two had finally turned in, did Ash have solitude and quiet enough resting on the sofa to pay attention to the horrors lurking inside his head. Where had Ginny gone after they’d parted ways? Why did he even care?

  Should he be anything other than butt hurt and critical? She’d taken the most magical moment of his life and turned it into the worst in the span of an hour. What the hell was up with him that women constantly found ways to screw him over? Every Black Halo fan on the planet would know by now that he was getting hitched. The band’s email box was probably about to explode from the number of congratulations messages. He was going to look like such an idiot when he had to announce the whole thing was a mistake.

  Worst of all, he’d spoiled his parents Christmas too.

  Sorrow welled, churning up the gallons of beer he’d drowned with the mixture of sultanas and mushroom bread in his guts. He spewed the lot over the floor.

  -23-

  No one had set foot inside the flat for months. The mountain of post wedged behind the front door made it near impossible to open. Luckily, she was skinny, and hence managed to wriggle through the gap.

  Home.

  Inside, her movements wafted the settled dust into the air. Mould crawled out of the fridge when she opened the door, which she was certain she’d left open. More mould resided on the windowsill inside a plastic bag that had once contained a loaf of bread. Had the flat always looked threadbare and unloved?

  Ginny sallied through the flat to her bedroom, stopping in the corridor only long enough to glance wistfully over at Dani’s door. Would they still be friends when news of tonight’s events came out? She slid her phone from her pocket, tempted to pre-empt the storm and send an explanatory text, but she refused to spoil anyone else’s Christmas. This would be Dani’s first spent away from her mother and the witches of St. Agatha. She deserved to enjoy it.

  Her woes would wait, and her pillow would serve as well as a friend’s shoulder for crying into. It’s what she’d relied on for years before she’d dared to reach out feelers and start forging new
friendships. If only she’d made different choices all those years ago, seen the truth of Miles and not fallen for his charismatic façade. Or if she’d pushed for a divorce right after she’d left him then he wouldn’t still have the power to hurt her, and by extension, Ash.

  Not that it was really Miles who’d hurt Ash. Oh, he was showing his typical bullish behaviour attempting to name and shame Ash on the divorce filing. But she was the one who’d kept everything to herself in the first place. If she’d only been honest about who she was… Well, that was hindsight for you. It was easy to look back and imagine that if she’d done it differently then, the present would be perfect. Realistically, her reasons for keeping quiet, had proven valid. What she’d feared was now reality. He’d ended them, but no matter what Ash thought, she’d always been her true self with him, and she did love him with every ounce of her being.

  Ginny slipped the engagement ring out of her pocket and back onto her finger. “I never said no, Ash. I never said that, and I’m so sorry I gave you a reason to doubt my sincerity. I love you. I want to spend my whole lifetime with you. Geneva Winters is not who I am. It never had been. She was someone else’s construct.

  “I just wanted to protect you, Ash.”

  If only Ash had waited a little longer to make his declaration. She hadn’t seen that coming, not really. Not taking into consideration all his hang-ups. “I thought I had time, Ash. I was doing my best to free myself for you.”

  ***

  Ginny wasn’t entirely sure at what point she fell asleep, nor what time it was when she woke. The electricity was still running inside the flat, but at some point during her absence, there’d clearly been a power cut that meant all the clock displays were blinking. Food was pretty scarce too, nothing besides a packet of Ryvita, a few sorry looking fish fingers, some seriously freezer burned broad beans and some even more badly freezer burned ice-cream. She ate the ice-cream out of the tub, and went to sleep again with a belly-ache.

  The next time she woke, she didn’t bother with food, just purged in the bathroom and then curled back into the nest of her duvet again.