The Killing Ride

by Christine Michelle

  “I’m Lindsay. I know it’s probably weird since we met at a concert and spent a few weeks on the road together, but hopefully you don’t hold our unusual start against me.” She was babbling the words out, the only indication that she was nervous to be here meeting my family.

  “Anyway, I need to go introduce her to mom and dad. They here yet?”

  “You’re introducing her to them?”

  “Why the hell else would I have her here, Deck? What the fuck?”

  “Sorry, I just… come on dude, this isn’t something you do.”

  “It’s okay,” Lindsay mumbled as she grabbed my arm. “Jay told me about his past, so I get it. You’re not hurting my feelings by asking that. The thing is, your brother and I are together!” She said the last in a no-nonsense voice that did not broker any argument. It actually startled me, her level of assurance, because I wasn’t sure I was feeling it like that. I just knew that I wanted to have what my brother had with Ever one day, and I figured this was how normal people started on the road to that point.

  Honestly, we had a great time together the last few weeks on tour. She was fun to hang out with, and eventually she managed to talk me into the wilder side of things and after a drunken night, about a week in, we ended up in bed together too. The morning after had been slightly awkward, because if I was being honest, I hadn’t been feeling her in a physical way. It wasn’t the best sex I’d ever had. Not the worst either, but much like the rest of our relationship, it was just comfortable.

  “You must be Lindsay,” Ever offered cheerily as she approached us with a genuine smile. “It’s nice to meet you. I’ve been wondering about the girl who finally captured J-Bird’s attention.”

  Lindsay giggled. “I’m thinking that makes me sound like something special since he never brings women around.” She was smug about her response as she pulled harder on my arm. It was obvious that she was threatened by Ever. “You must be Ever. I hear about how happy you are with Jay’s brother all the time.”

  “Do you now?” Deck asked, brows furrowing at the tone Lindsay had taken with Ever. I swear to fuck, if I didn’t know better – and I was beginning to think I didn’t know better – I would say Lindsay was trying to mark her territory. It seemed Deck thought so too.

  Ever just continued to smile at the woman, but her body language had changed. Instead of being friendly and welcoming, her shoulders were drawing in, and muscles tensing up. She was gearing up for fight or flight. “Come on Lindsay,” I told her as I attempted to pull her away. “Let’s go see who else is here.”

  “Are any of the whores you used to be with going to be here? Because I don’t think I can take meeting any more of them.”

  “Meeting more?” I asked.

  “I meant meeting any,” she corrected, though she didn’t sound the least bit sorry about the slip. I continued to pull her away, intent on laying into her for that shit as soon as I got her somewhere a bit more private. There was no way I was going to add on to the shit that Ever had to carry around with her these days. It just was not going to happen. Not for anyone. Once I got her a little down the hall, I stopped and glanced around to make sure no one was there.

  “What the hell was that about?”

  “What do you mean?” She asked innocently.

  “Don’t!” I warned. Her eyes rounded out in surprise at my tone. “This is my family, you fuck with them, and it will be a problem.”

  Her shoulders sagged. “I’m sorry. You’ve just talked so much about her that I didn’t know how to handle myself. I was jealous, okay? That’s all.”

  “Do not pull that shit again.” I wasn’t easily swayed by tears, big eyes, or slumped shoulders on women, especially when they had pulled some shit. “You step over that line again we’re out of here and you will never be coming back. That means we’ll be over too.”

  “Jay, I said I was sorry,” she told me.

  “I’m J-Bird here, and that’s what you’ll call me,” I explained to her, not willing to waiver now that she’d pissed me off by basically attacking my family. I had caused enough pain and strife in Ever’s life, and I wouldn’t be the cause of any more shit coming down on her.

  The rest of our time at the club cookout was spent pretty uneventfully. Lindsay was a bit more reserved after my conversation with her. My parents weren’t exactly thrilled to meet her, but they held their tongues. I guess no one saw me with Lindsay. I wasn’t surprised though. She wasn’t someone that normally would have caught my eye, which was sort of why she had.

  “Are you sure about this?” Deck asked me as I was grabbing Lindsay’s purse from where we’d stowed it behind the bar.

  “Sure, about what?”

  “This chick doesn’t seem like a good fit for you.”

  I sighed. “Well, it’s not like anyone bothered to hide that they felt that way when I introduced her, so I kind of got that feeling. I know she’s not flashy, or whatever you guys think I should be looking for. She’s safe though.”

  “Safe?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “She’s been a good friend. I’m comfortable around her and when I met her, she reminded me of what I’d missing at home. Hell, meeting her was probably the whole reason I didn’t just jump back into heading out on the road with another band instead of coming back here.”

  “Well, then, I appreciate her for bringing you back to us, because it was past time for you carry your ass home. You know that’s not exactly the best, healthiest type of relationship going forward though. You’re bound to get bored with it.”

  I laughed at him. “I deserve to get bored. I need to know how to deal with being bored. Flying by the seat of my pants has never gotten me anywhere positive. I miss what Ever and I used to have before I fucked it up. I always saw myself moving forward with something like that.”

  I didn’t miss the low-level growl coming from my brother. I waved his anger off. “I’m not saying I still have a thing for Ever. I’m saying I miss the friendship and easy flow we used to have before I fucked it up. I have something similar with Lindsay.”

  “But do you have passion with her?” I shrugged his question off. “Do you feel like you can’t really get your morning started without thinking about her? Do you go to sleep thinking about her? Do you find yourself wondering what she’s up to whenever you’re apart?” Again, I shrugged. I thought about her sometimes, but she wasn’t something that was always on my mind.

  “I’m not trying to tell you how to live your life, but if you’re not feeling those things then you’re not going to have a sustainable relationship.”

  “Says who? Look at mom and dad. They didn’t even have friendship on their side when they started out.”

  “Yeah, and dad used to run around on her all the time, and damn near broke her before they managed to pull their shit together. Do you really want to go through that? Do you think it’s fair to put a woman through that when you already know that she isn’t the right one?”

  “I don’t deserve anything more than comfortable, Deck.” The admission slipped out before I could pull it back and you would think I’d backhanded my brother with the way he reacted to it.

  “Why the hell wouldn’t you deserve it?”

  “Look at the shit I put Ever through. You think she wants to see me live out some happily ever after considering what she went through because of me?”

  Deck was shaking his head at me, disappointment evident in his eyes. “Ever wants to see you happy almost more than our parents, Jay. She doesn’t carry that shit with her anymore. It’s been a long time and dwelling on that stuff isn’t healthy. You made your amends, you said you were sorry, and you even put distance between yourself and the situation once T-Bone was gone. Plus, she’s had to deal with the fact that she still wasn’t in the best place with her brother before he died, man. Nothing puts shit into perspective quite like the finality of death. If what happened to Ever is what’s holding you back, don’t let it.”

  “Okay, well, Ever might be there, but I�
��m not.”

  “What happens when you are, and you’ve been stringing this girl along just because she’s comfortable?”

  Well, hell. I hadn’t thought of it that way. Then again, I kind of got the impression that Lindsay was using me in the same way I was using her. Maybe it was okay if we both were feeling comfortable in our situation. Either way, I wasn’t about to change anything just yet. How did you even bring something like that up?

  Chapter 8

  The Impossible

  Christina (age 23)

  His eyes were always what haunted me about the images that I managed to capture before I forgot again. Actually, that’s not true. There was never really any forgetting. I tried to, but it never really worked out that way for me since my hands would be busy recreating his face just days after trying to get him out of my mind. I’d call him my muse, but it was more than that. Our meeting had been fleeting and impersonal. I never even found out his name. I never actually spoke to him. His eyes had met mine that day in the cemetery under an overcast sky that was about to dump cold, unforgiving rain down on us. It matched my mood that day. I had gone to see Steven because I didn’t want to talk to anyone who was living. My parents were gone, and my best friend had been rubbing me the wrong way since Steven’s death. Then there was Steven’s family. They hated me because he took his own life, and they thought I was to blame for that. Me – well, I was angry at Steven, and them, and everyone else.

  I was angry that I didn’t get to grieve his loss because I was so caught off guard about why he did it, and how our marriage had been over shortly after it had begun, only I had been too stupid to realize it. I was infuriated that he didn’t just have the courage to tell me he had fallen for someone else and let me go. I was so pissed off that he would take his life rather than deal with the responsibility of bringing a child into this world who didn’t belong to his wife. What on Earth was so important that it couldn’t have been worked out some other way? Then that anger would transfer to my mother and father, because they were no better than Steven in their own ways. The fact that none of them were here anymore for me anymore to scream my frustrations out to made me even angrier.

  I thought about going to therapy, but that costs money. I still hadn’t received the second installment of money from the sales of my art in New York, but it was coming soon. That would help tremendously since I didn’t want to touch Steven’s insurance money. It was still sitting in an account earning interest for that day when he had a college-bound kid who suddenly came knocking on my door, looking for help. I laughed at the idea, because who knew if that would ever happen? I didn’t.

  I had been having another bad day, thinking about how everyone had basically abandoned me, and my best friend wasn’t really sympathetic to my anger or my overwhelming grief. That was how I ended up on Steven’s grave, crying my eyes out that day. When I had rung myself dry I glanced up to look directly into the worried eyes of a man whose sadness leaked from his soul as he stood in front of a large stone that I’d admired a few times as I walked the cemetery on previous trips here. My sister was buried not far from here too. She had died when we were little, and I believed that was the real reason my father had walked away from us. I still stopped by her grave to leave flowers and little things for her. My parents didn’t have graves, and I wouldn’t taint my sister’s spot with their memory so Steven’s became where I would talk to all three of them.

  I had already been by my sister’s site earlier. As I grew, the gifts I would leave behind for her grew with her. With us. She shouldn’t have been playing with toys at this point. She would have been into boys, makeup, and trying to see what she could get away with before she got caught. Angel would have been 17 now if she had lived. I wanted her to know I didn’t forget that. I had left a beautiful new shade of lipstick on her grave before coming here and crying out my anger once again.

  I shook off the memories of that day and laughed as I looked the painting over one more time. Each brush stroke proved that my life still wasn’t my own in weird ways. I was obsessed with a man I’d only ever seen one time, years ago. I didn’t know why I couldn’t get him off my mind. Lindsay continuously told me it was because he was meant to be my soulmate, and that one day, when the timing was right, we would meet again and that would be it. The stars would align, and my world would begin.

  Maybe, it was partly her fault that I couldn’t get the man out of my head. She had burned the romantic notion of him into my psyche so much that only the illusion seemed real instead of any of the real people I had met since Steven died.

  I sighed and dropped the brush into the little can I used to hold them as I worked. I wiped my hands on the towel I kept for when I worked. Today, my friend was coming over with the man she’d met a couple of months ago. She claimed he was a sweet guy who she had a lot of fun with. The passion in their relationship was apparently lacking, but Lindsay thought that meant that he wouldn’t cheat on her like her ex-boyfriend had done. The sparks had been so hot between them, chemistry off the charts, and still he strayed. Lindsay said if it meant going through that kind of heartbreak all over again, she never wanted to feel sparks. She had never introduced me to the man who made her feel everything, and I always wondered why. She had told me then that she just wanted to keep him all to herself for a little while longer, but that never changed. Then one day when I asked about him, she simply told me he couldn’t leave another woman alone, and it had ended. For good. She never said another word about him until she was telling me about the new guy in her life. She swore that this guy was comfortable enough to keep but would never be able to break her heart again.

  Whenever I asked her about my soulmate, and why she thought I should give it another real try when she couldn’t, Lindsay would tell me it would be different for me, because the two of us were written in the stars – or the paint. She had begged me to show her one of the paintings. She had thought I only painted him the one time at first. Then, I admitted last year, that I’d been doing them. She also knew I never showed a soul. Instead, I kept them hoarded away and locked up. I don’t know why, but I never felt I could share him with anyone else. Maybe that was because I’d have to explain the crazy behind my constantly painting him.

  I wasn’t sure I believed in soulmates, and I also wasn’t delusional. I had seen the man once in my life. He probably had a wife by now. He could have had a wife then. I’d seen a woman with him that day. She seemed to be there with the other man, but what did I know? His eyes, the misery and sadness in them, had been what captivated me so much. I felt like he was singing the same tragic ballad my own body hummed when no one was watching.

  The doorbell rang as I contemplated if I’d ever actually see the man in the painting again. With another sigh I covered the canvas and swiped my hands across my painting jeans to make sure I didn’t have any wet paint left on my fingers. I moved to open the door knowing that Lindsay had called earlier, and she was bringing her new man over to my house. I honestly wasn’t looking forward to the extra company. It would have been nice to catch up with Linds, but not with some new guy tagging along. Linds was never herself when she was knee deep in new boyfriends.

  As soon as I swung the door open, it wasn’t Lindsay I noticed first. It was him. As in HIM! The guy from the cemetery. The man I had been obsessively painting for two damn years was standing just outside of my door as if my paint had summoned him in the flesh.

  “Christina, this is the guy I was telling you I met on the Valhalla Rising Tour.” I finally peeled my eyes away from him to look at my friend. She didn’t even notice I was in a mild state of shock. How could she? Lindsay was too busy beaming a beatific smile toward the man in question. I still hadn’t caught his name. Before I could ask, invite them inside my apartment, or anything else, Lindsay swayed back and forth on her feet. “Sorry, I’ll do proper introductions in a minute. I have to pee so bad,” she told me as she pushed beyond me and helped herself to my apartment.

  I stepped back further out o
f the way to allow the man into the house too. Once he was in, he shut the door and stood there with hands in his jean’s pockets. “Hey,” he said to me. I gave a little wave by flapping one of my hands up from where they awkwardly hung near my hips, fidgeting with the belt loops on my paint jeans. It was then I realized what I must have looked like. Shit. I had my hair jacked up on my head in a messy bun. Not one of the cutesy versions the college girls seemed to pull off effortlessly, but the kind where your hair looks more like it’s capable of turning men to stone with one glance. I had blue streaks dyed into it, but I was sure that I also had paint splattered here and there, as I usually did when I got lost in a project. Shit. I should have put everything up sooner and cleaned up.

  Besides my paint jeans, which Lindsay laughingly referred to as mom jeans that even moms wouldn’t wear, there was my ratty t-shirt that was about three years past when I should have thrown it away. It too was also covered in paint in places where holes hadn’t been worn into the soft and very thin material. While glancing down at myself, I didn’t even notice that the man had moved further into my apartment. At least I didn’t until he spoke again, and he was much further away than he had been before.

  “Do I know you from somewhere?” He asked me while scrunching up his face in concentration, as if he was trying to place me.

  “No,” I told him just before he pulled the cover off of the painting I’d been working on. My eyes flew as wide open as they could possibly go as I watched his face change while taking in the image on my canvas.

  “Really?” He asked me then. “Sure, does look like you know me.”

  “Please, I’ll explain later. I only saw you once before.” I glanced back to the bathroom where Lindsay was still holed up for some reason. “Don’t tell her.”

  The man looked like he didn’t trust me when I said that, but still, he nodded and covered the painting back up again. He moved to my bookshelf, and when he came across the picture I had sitting there, he turned back to me quickly, obviously putting two and two together. The image was of me sitting at my sister’s tombstone. It was the day I had left the lipstick there, right before Lindsay had gone off to college.