All Right Now

by Madelynne Ellis

  “It saves my voice.”

  He secured a perch on the beam running parallel to Ash’s.

  “What do you want?” Ash asked.

  “You…committed to the band. Moping isn’t going to fix anything.”

  Great, he was about to get a lecture on getting over it, when there was no getting over it. “I’m not moping,” he huffed. “I’m grieving. It’s what you do when you lose something…someone.”

  He was outright broken.

  Xane’s lips curled. “Ash, I know emo bullshit when I see it, and currently you’re it. Seriously, you’re so it you could give the Angst Brothers lessons on how to be miserable twenty-four seven.”

  The Angst Bros. were some new outfit who were flavour of the month with the under-eighteen’s crowd. They dressed like new romantics, wore their hair long and their pretty boy hearts on their sleeves, and probably cried into their pillows every night over the injustice of them failing to get laid. Ash hadn’t decided if they were serious or merely taking the piss while milking it in download sales.

  “Look, I know what happened, Ash, and I agree it was shit, and not only that, it was shit on top of a year of other shit, but ultimately, this is the ending you chose. So, either live with it or do something to change it.”

  “In what way is this what I chose?” he snarled. “I proposed, Xane. If I chose anything it was to commit to a happily ever after with a woman I loved and whom I thought loved me.”

  “She does.” Xane threw out as if it were an established fact.

  Ash huffed dismissively, ’cause the way he saw it, that wasn’t a given. “She’s married to someone else. A fact she conveniently omitted to mention.”

  “But not out of malice,” Xane said reasonably, as if that made everything forgivable. “She was trying to protect you. And it’s not like her and Miles are together. She hadn’t even seen him in years.”

  Ash shook his head so much his brain seemed to rattle. Whatever happened to the concept of your friends being willing to take your side? “She lied, Xane. She told me big fat porkies, and lots of ’em.”

  Xane refused to be riled. “She temporarily omitted some details of her background in order to avoid creating an issue. We’ve all done that.”

  No—they really hadn’t.

  “You know what? If you’re just going to sit and defend her, you can fuck right off.”

  Xane shoved him with his booted foot. “I’m just saying that instead of wallowing you might like to think things through, and use some actual reasoning while you do it.”

  “Why don’t you just fuck off like everybody else?”

  Xane sighed again. He curled his fingers around the support beam above his head and settled his arse more comfortably. “That’s the thing, Ash. Unlike the ‘everybody else’ you keep referring to—” He made air quotes around his emphasis. “—Ginny didn’t abandon you. You sent her away. Otherwise, she’d still be here, and you’d both be planning your wedding.”

  “She’s married, lugwit.”

  Xane ignored the insult. “Do you ever consider that it might have been wise to talk things over with her properly before you flounced off? Ash, she didn’t tell you about Miles because their relationship was already over in her eyes, and she was terrified you’d react in exactly the way you did. Bravo for being predictable. Also, you were ill, and she thought you had enough to deal with.”

  “I’ve never been so ill and fragile that I required the truth hiding from me.”

  “Jeezus, Ash! We were all keeping things from you last summer. You were a bloody mess. Have you any concept of how close everything came to unravelling? Really, do you actually know how close it got? After Elspeth tried to end it, I wasn’t sure we could ever bounce back. We were all going through the motions because we didn’t know what the hell else to do, and even then the label and management were only a step away from cutting us adrift. Do you think we all wanted to jet off to Australia? We weren’t given a choice. It was a case of show willing or call it quits.”

  “Great, so you were all lying to me. That makes me feel so much better.”

  “Because we all cared enough to want to protect you, that’s why.”

  This was unbelievable. There was no justification for lying. There really wasn’t

  “Ash, I know you don’t want to hear this, but I’m going to say it anyway. That woman loves you. I know, because no one who didn’t love you with every ounce of their being would have stuck around and put up with all your crap post poisoning. Have you any idea how much of a friggin’ nightmare you were? Ash, there were times when I was ready to bray you around the head with your guitar and bury you six feet under. Ginny saved your arse, believe me. She probably deserves the credit for saving us as a band too. Like I just said, they were already sprinkling soil over our heads, and all you did was mope around and accuse everyone else of slacking off, while you failed to do a damn thing to try to get yourself back into shape. I don’t know what Ginny did to turn you around, but the transformation was astonishing. She saved us.”

  “That doesn’t prove anything.”

  Xane huffed. “Listen to yourself. It proves her absolute dedication to you. Ash, I’m telling you, that while she may have omitted to mention she was married, that woman never once lied about loving you. What’s more, she still loves you.”

  “Lovers don’t lie to one another.”

  “Lovers lie to each other all the time. The same as we lie to ourselves.” Xane scratched at his scalp in irritation. “Please, try to set your hurt aside for a second and listen to me. I’m not trying to belittle your disappointment. I know how deep that gash in your chest is. Ash, you’ve never been good at hiding your emotions, and you’re leaving goddamned arterial spray everywhere you wander at the minute. What I’m trying to explain is that you don’t have to be miserable if you don’t want to be. And if you don’t have to be, why would you choose to be miserable? What purpose does it serve?” He paused a moment and gave a sniff while a passing thought raised a brief smile. “Well, I suppose the band might get a few decent songs out of it, but I’ll trade our whole catalogue and future catalogue for the chance of you being happy instead.”

  “Please, don’t give me that pseudo-scientific twaddle about people choosing to be happy. People don’t choose to be depressed.”

  “In general, no. In this case, you absolutely can choose to attempt to mend things.”

  A lone tear trickled over Ash’s cheek, and he quickly brushed it away, but another replaced it. His head and his heart were in two different places, he knew that. “She allowed me to believe things about her that simply weren’t true. The woman I fell in love with is a myth. She doesn’t exist.”

  Xane sighed and bowed his head. “I think if you went looking, you’d find that she does.”

  “Her name isn’t even Ginny Walters.”

  “And mine’s not Xane Geist. There are plenty of people we deal with on a daily basis who don’t know that fact. Am I a big fat liar as I don’t set them straight? She’s Ginny as much as I’m Xane, and Spook is Spook. As much as you’re Ash Gore. We’re all composites of different parts of ourselves.”

  “You don’t understand,” Ash sniffed, rubbing at the stream of tears he loathed spilling, but couldn’t seem to prevent from falling. “I told her everything… Everything, Xane. There’s nothing she doesn’t know about me.” He’d told Ginny more than he’d ever told anyone else about anything. He’d trusted her, opened his heart and let every goddamned thing pour out. “Connie. My birth mother. My brother taking off. Everything. She knew I’d stopped taking my medication when the rest of you didn’t. She knows everything, and I know nothing.”

  Xane considered this for a moment with his eyes narrowed, and his chin pressed against the centre of his palm. “Us?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “You said everything. Did you tell her about us?”

  Ash swallowed and nodded. “All of it.”

  Xane’s eyes widened in genuine surp
rise. “You’ve never even spoken to Spook about that night. I know as he’s never attempted to rip my balls off for it. So, colour me stunned. I’m assuming it was an abridged version?”

  Ash covered his eyes with his palms, then slowly brushed his hands upwards into his hair, lifting the strands so the shorter sides were exposed. “I loved her, Xane. I wanted her to know the real me. All of me, not the me everyone claims they know. So no, it wasn’t the abridged version. It was everything. I trusted her.”

  Xane pressed his thumb to his sealed lips. “I’m sorry. I should never have done that to you.”

  They were doing this now, after all this time?

  “I took advantage. You wanted something real, and I played on that knowledge. I used you. And I’m sorry for that. I’m sorry I was that dick, and I’m extra sorry for all the shit you’ve been dealt over the last twelve months due to my inability to deal with my issues. All of this comes back to me failing to tell Steve what I wanted from him. If I’d done that, none of what followed would have occurred. Iain Willows would never have got near the band.”

  “And I’d never have met Ginny,” Ash concluded for him. For all the pain he was in right now, he didn’t want her wiped clean from his life or memory.

  Xane knew that too, it was clear in the way his gaze brushed over Ash’s face. “Straight up, you’re a fool if you let her go. Anyone who sees the pair of you together knows that you were meant to be.”

  A few weeks back he’d wholeheartedly believed that too.

  “Some people are just destined for one another. She’ll fill up that big empty hollow in your heart in a way that the band never will, no matter how hard we try. The way I see it, you’ve two options: continue as you are, being miserable as sin, or accept that you’re still madly in love with her and you want her despite her mistakes.”

  “You think I should forgive her.”

  “What I think is irrelevant. I’m saying there’s fuck all point in wallowing. You’re not a hippo. Act. Do something. Either make a clean break of it, or go out and get her the fuck back.”

  It stung to hear it, but in his heart, he knew Xane was right.

  “For all the good it’ll do even if I manage it,” Ash mumbled, one hand clutched to his chest. “She’s still married to someone else.”

  Xane leaned back, so that he was lying flat along the length of the four-inch-wide beam. “That won’t always be the case…”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Work it out, dumbo. You’ve a double first, so there are at least a few functioning brain cells in your head.”

  Xane retrieved his shades from where he had them tucked into the neckline of his shirt, and perched them back on his nose. He glanced over the top of the frames at Ash for a moment before sliding them fully into place. “A little bird told me that in sex…I mean six…weeks, she’ll be a Ms. not a Mrs.”

  Ash’s traitorous heart actually leapt at that prospect.

  Xane swung down off his ledge. “Call her.”

  “No. And say what?”

  “Well, I’m told most phone conversations start with ‘Hello.’ But I imagine whatever the hell the first thing that comes into your head is will serve equally well. ‘Get on a plane to Minsk and come and fuck me, right now,’ would probably work. Anything that lets her know you want her.”

  Ash clapped his hand against his forehead. That was a bad idea, and he ought not to allow the demon sitting with him to tempt him. What was to say if he allowed Ginny back into his life, she wouldn’t find another way to hurt him? And, what was to say she’d even come if he asked?

  His head and his heart warred over the various pros and cons of Xane’s suggestion.

  “If you were quick, she could be here in time for tonight’s gig.”

  He pushed Xane, so that he tumbled off the beam, and landed on his arse.

  “What was that for?” Xane grumbled.

  Everything and nothing. “You give the worst relationship advice.”

  Xane smiled. “Yeah, but the very best head.”

  On any other occasion Ash would have let that come back fly without rebuke, but not this time. “Actually, Ginny’s better.”

  Xane reared back onto his knees. His smile of a moment ago transformed into a pucker. “Yowch!” He proclaimed. But then he looked up at Ash, smiled and laughed.

  Ash offered him a hand back onto his feet, and found himself in Xane’s embrace.

  “I reckon Luthor would disagree with you, but that’s okay. It’s as it should be.” His friend squeezed him tight, and patted him across the back. “I’ll even forgive you for making Spook the best man.”

  “I haven’t decided anything yet.”

  Xane knuckle punched him on the shoulder. “Yeah, you have. Your heart knows exactly what it wants. It’s just waiting for your head to get with the plan.”

  ***

  Ash prevaricated over whether to call Ginny for the rest of the day. He did reinstate her number as one of his speed dial options on his mobile. Then, in a fit of pure insanity, when he crawled into his bunk that night, he hit call, only to hang up the moment it connected.

  Bad idea. Really bad idea.

  They couldn’t just sweep everything under the carpet. He rolled onto his back and gazed up at the ceiling of his little cell. There were all sorts of slots and cubby holes built into the area. He used his fingers to slide a photograph from out of one such crevice. The image had been taken in an unguarded moment back in September. She was sitting on the meadow-like roof of Spook’s sauna, with her knees bent before her and a daisy chain in her hand. Her feet were bare, and her hair was loose around her face. It was a favourite shot, different on so very many levels to all the other photographs he had of her. Normally, she was dressed to kill, or at least to torment him until he fell at her feet. This one portrayed a softer, mellower side.

  Ash’s phone vibrated in his hand, launching his heart up his throat. She’d sent a message, rather than returning his call, but his nerves still quivered as he read the response.

  G: Ash?

  He knew the exact pitch and tone of her voice the question was delivered in.

  Ash stared at that single word for several long minutes before finally tapping out a response. Xane was right. He was still in love with Ginny. He didn’t want things to end like this, but nor were the issues between them easily swept aside or forgotten. Understanding why she’d done what she’d done was the first logical step.

  A: Yes.

  Well, the first step after opening the line of communication.

  A: We should talk.

  G: I’d very much like that to happen.

  Agreed. Although, right this minute probably wasn’t the best time, particularly considering his current location. He could hear the rest of the guys scrambling about, doors opening and closing, the sound of the loo being flushed and Paul flossing his teeth. Whatever conversation he had with Ginny deserved to be conducted in private, and ideally in person. That wasn’t quite so easily accomplished, though, given they were in different countries right now, and he wasn’t in a position where he could take time out to fly back to the UK. In any case, he wasn’t sure he was ready to see her face to face yet. Being that close to her would bring everything—all his jumbled emotions, thwarted plans, and frustration—to the surface all at once. His mind knew more clarity communicating at a distance, when he could pause between thoughts and access his true feelings before his emotions ran away with him.

  A: I’m on the tour bus. It’s not a good time right now.

  G: Let me know when is. You’re in Minsk at the moment, right?

  Yes. They were here until the end of the week, but he wasn’t sure if it was a good or bad thing that Ginny was aware of that. He didn’t want to intimate that she should make her way here. Of course, that begged the question, what was he so afraid of? Why was the prospect of seeing her so very terrible? Was it further heartache he was scared of, or the possibility that all his hurt would be washed away? Wou
ld all this angst of the past few weeks turn out as Xane said, to be nothing more than emo bullshit, largely self-inflicted because his image of the world hadn’t been so accurately rendered as he’d supposed with regard to one component. It was only a couple of details that had changed. The bigger picture remained the same. She’d been there for him, looked after him, loved him when he wasn’t even sure he’d loved himself.

  G: I miss you.

  Ash traced the curve of her cheek in the photograph. He missed her too. Even moved his lips to admit as much, but the thought wasn’t repeated by his thumbs. Instead, he asked,

  A: Have you seen him?

  G: Who?

  G: I guess you mean Miles?

  G: Yes, out of necessity. It was the only way to move things forward. The court granted the decree nisi.

  A: I don’t know what that means.

  G: That in another five weeks I’ll be free of him. Everything that legally needs to be agreed upon has been agreed, so there’s no reason why the decree absolute can’t be granted the day after the waiting period is up.

  Thus, by extension, in a few weeks she could be utterly his.

  If that was what he wanted.

  Right now, he wasn’t exactly sure what it was he wanted.

  Maybe some kind of action rewind on his life over the last twelve months. Not that he could swear to doing things over any differently.

  Nor was there one definitive action that he could trace everything back to and alter, and even if there were, what was to say altering it would lead to a change overall or that he would like the alternate outcome any better? Maybe in that parallel existence Black Halo had ceased to exist, or he’d died as a result of the rohypnol poisoning.

  Sour thoughts, but necessary ones for putting things back in perspective.

  G: I’m sorry I wasn’t straight up with you from the start. I ought to have told you everything.