TAINTED: THE COMPLETE DUET

by Jenner, Carmen

  “Except he just walked in,” Zed says, extricating himself from under Deb—that’s new—and hurtling towards me. He scoops me up and practically breaks all my ribs in the process. “Man, I knew you wouldn’t bail on us.”

  “And leave Ryan without someone to torment him? Never.” I grin at the man in question, and we even shake hands, because sometimes I can be an adult.

  I glance at Ash, who’s practically fucking beaming, and shake my head. He’s lost weight since I saw him last week, his skin is sallow, and he appears to have a head cold—if his red nose and glassy eyes are anything to go off.

  “Where have you been?” Cooper “Fuck Face” Ryan demands.

  Avoiding you. Avoiding this.

  “Oh, you know, just hanging round my chateau in France. I got back a few days ago.”

  “And yet you still managed to be an hour late for rehearsal,” Cooper says, flopping back down in his recliner.

  “I knew you couldn’t wait to bust my balls about something.”

  “Where’s your axe, man?” Ash asks.

  “I didn’t bring it.” Four confused faces stare back at me. I throw the demo on the coffee table.

  Ryan pounces, snatching up the flash drive. “What the fuck is this?”

  “It’s our next album. Or I guess, it’s mine, if you guys don’t like it. It’d be better with Coop’s vocals, of course.” I give our lead singer a snide smile. “But who isn’t better off with Coop?”

  “You wrote the entire album?”

  “I wrote eight songs. The recording is kind of shitty. It was made on a cheap laptop in a crumbling empty house, but if you can get past the poor quality, there are some fucking killer songs there.” My hands are shaking, and I don’t know if it’s the alcohol withdrawal or because for the first time in years I’m actually fucking nervous. “I have some stipulations though.”

  “Stipulations?” Ryan asks, and it’s funny because we both know stipulations are what caused us to meet and fall in love with Red, and create this rift between us in the first place. “We use the cellist in the recordings, maybe not live, but Brie has to be the one to play those songs. And she gets twenty per cent of the royalties. She helped me write them.”

  Ryan’s eyes narrow. “Brie, as in my cellist from the wedding?”

  “No, arsehole. My cellist. But technically, yes, she played your wedding.” He might be the reason we met, but she’s mine. She was from the day she walked into my chateau.

  “What the fuck, man? You hooked up with her after ruining my fucking wedding because you were sulking over my wife?”

  “Didn’t she beat the shit out of you at Coop’s reception?” Zed chimes in.

  “I like her so much,” Deb says.

  Coop looks incredulous. “So all this time the entire world was looking for you and you were shacked up with a cellist in France? We thought you’d fallen off the face of the earth. You could have been dead for all we knew.”

  “Don’t.” I shake my head and walk away. “Just don’t.”

  “Don’t what, give a shit about what happens to my lead guitarist? To a member of our band?” He gets up and follows. “You and I have had a lot differences lately but that doesn’t mean I want you dead.”

  “Jesus fucking Christ, you’re a drama queen.” I laugh without humour.

  “Did you even stop to think about Ali? And how worried she was?”

  “Did you stop to think about why Ali was thinking of me on her honeymoon?” I counter. I can’t help it. I don’t even know where it came from because the truth is, until today, I haven’t thought about Red in weeks. The intended blow hits hard though, just like I knew it would.

  It’s so goddamn easy to push Cooper Ryan’s buttons. He takes several steps towards me and I don’t back down. I don’t know why I can’t let this go. I’ve already let Red go, so why can’t I leave them be? I just have to keep driving the knife in my bandmate’s back.

  “Knock it off,” Zed says, standing between us. For a passive, he’s pretty damn frightening when he wants to be, but it’s mostly just due to his size. I doubt Zed’s ever hurt a living being a day in his life.

  I raise my hands in a warding gesture and sigh. “Tell Red I’m sorry, but I’m doing okay.” Coop frowns, just a small twitching of his brows and then he nods. “Listen to the demo. Let me know what you think.”

  “You’re leaving?”

  “Yeah ... I got some shit to take care of, but I’ll be back when you guys decide what you want.”

  “You don’t have to go,” Coop says, “Let’s jam, work out some of this stupid fucking tension.”

  “I can’t.” I back away.

  “Levi,” Ash warns.

  “I’m good. Really, I am, but I can’t be here when you listen to it.”

  Ryan’s brow creases. “How the fuck do you expect to play it then?”

  “I can play it. I just can’t hear it.”

  He glares at the flash drive in his hand. “Every song on this demo is about Ali, isn’t it?”

  “Not all, there’s one about you too. It’s called, ‘I Wish You’d Get the Clap and Die, Motherfucker’.”

  Coop smiles. I take a deep breath. “Tell her she doesn’t need to worry about me anymore.”

  “Okay.”

  I wrinkle my nose. “I gotta split before you decide you wanna hug it out.”

  “Probably not going to happen.” Ryan laughs.

  “Yeah well, you weren’t going to marry Red any time soon either, but look how that turned out.” I shrug and turn to the other guys. “Let me know what you guys decide.”

  “Okay, dude,” Zed says, pulling Deb back into his lap. Her brother makes a disgusted face.

  “When are you coming back?” Ash asks.

  “I don’t know, but I won’t leave the country.”

  Not yet anyway.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  PATIENT FUCKING ZERO

  LEVI

  Two days later we’re back in the studio like nothing ever happened. Ryan rides my arse when I accidentally play a flat. I tell him to fuck off, and it’s just like old times. We wrap on the song Brie and I never finished, the one we were recording before I distracted her with my cock. Before the phone call that ruined everything.

  I come in from outside after a smoke. The others constantly give me shit about my pipe, but I like it; it makes me feel distinguished. When I head back into Studio Five, Zed is coming out of the booth after laying down the beats for our next track—though we’ll likely play it all at once for the demo recording. Deb is stretched out on the corner couch typing on her phone, and Coop is scribbling down lyrics as Ash stands by the table looking pasty as fuck. There’s a sheen of sweat on his brow and he’s looking more and more like patient fucking zero every time I see him.

  “Hey, you okay, dude?” I grab a beer and pop off the lid by hitting the lip on the edge of the counter. Then I glance back at Ash, who pitches forward into the table. Several glasses smash together, and Ryan is up out of his seat, but I get there first. He’s out cold. Red rivulets drip from a long gash on his forearm. I straddle his arm, because there’s no fucking space between him and the upended coffee table and slap his face several times, calling his name.

  “Call a fucking ambulance,” I shout to Cooper, who’s just standing there watching on in shock. Thank God his sister isn’t a complete fucking moron and dials triple zero, telling the operator where we are and what type of emergency we have.

  “Ash? Ash, wake up.” I tap his cheek again, and his eyes flutter open. He startles and shifts, looking up at me from horrified eyes. “Welcome back.”

  “Don’t touch me.” He surveys the scene, his eyes locking onto the blood on the shattered glass, and the long rent in his arm as if I was the one who pushed him. “Don’t fucking touch me!”

  “Ash?” Zed throws me a towel—I don’t know where from—and Ash skitters back against the couch as far from me as he can get in our limited space. “Stay where you are.”

 
“It’s just a little blood. You gotta put pressure on it,” I say, wielding the towel out in front of me.

  “I’m sick ...” He pales, and I think he might be about to lose consciousness again, but he pinches his eyes tightly closed and whispers, “I have AIDS.”

  My whole world rocks on its side. He covers his eyes with the hand that isn’t pouring blood. Tears escape his thick digits and trail down his face.

  “What?” I say, certain he’s being an arsehole and punking us. Any second Ashton Kutcher will walk in from outside and declare that we’ve all been Punk’d. But he doesn’t, and Ash won’t look at me. He won’t look at any of us.

  Zed laughs, as if he too is hoping for this all to be some sick joke, but the laughter abruptly chokes off.

  “Ash?” Coop says, his voice strained. “Seriously?”

  “You’re shitting us, right?” Zed says.

  He tilts his head back against the couch and exhales loudly. “I wish I was. I wish this was all just a sick fucking joke, but it’s not.”

  “How?” I snap, because I can’t make sense of it at all. Ash doesn’t do drugs, he doesn’t fuck random women, he eats right, he takes care of himself. “How the fuck did this happen?”

  “I don’t know. A groupie, I guess. I’ve wracked my brain trying to think of how, and who, and why. I don’t fucking know. All I know is, it’s a bad dream, and I can’t wake up.”

  “We gotta get you to a hospital.”

  “Yeah, that would be good,” he says, blanching. I take several steps closer and hand him the towel. He takes it gingerly, his bloody hand coming into contact with my arm. “Fuck! Wipe it off.”

  “Ash—”

  “It’s contractible by blood, you idiot. Wipe your fucking arm.” He’s gasping for breath, and his eyes roll back in his head before he collapses again.

  “Fuck! Deb, where’s that goddamn ambulance,” I shout and wrap the towel around his wound like a tourniquet. It doesn’t really work, because the gash spans the length of his forearm. My phone rings and I ignore it. I slap Ash’s face, hard. “Ash, come on, wake the fuck up.”

  “Maybe you should leave him until the paramedics get here. You’re not even wearing gloves,” Coop says, and I turn and glare at him. “Hey, I don’t relish having to say it, but it’s true. It would kill him to know he’d given it to you too.”

  “Did you know about this, either of you?”

  “No, fuck-stick, we didn’t know about it. Jesus,” Zed says.

  “How long has he been living like this?”

  “Hey, I’m just as in the dark about this shit as you are,” Cooper says.

  “It had to be before the tour,” Deb says. She’s fucking crazy.

  I shake my head. No. No fucking chance. “No way would he keep it from me that long.”

  “Think about it, Levi. Ash used to go through groupies just like the rest of you, but when he was on tour, did any of you see him with a girl?” Deb gives each one of us an accusatory glare. “He’s been sick all fucking month. Did none of you notice?”

  “I just thought he had a flu he couldn’t shake.”

  The paramedics are ushered in by a sound tech. They ask a bunch of questions before even touching him. They’re wearing gloves already, but I feel like I should tell them. I don’t want to be the one to say it, but no one else is. They’re all still in shock. How did we not see this? Why didn’t he tell us, tell me?

  “He has AIDS,” I blurt out.

  “Symptoms? What happened here?” The paramedic is stoic with his response. Of course he is. It doesn’t affect him. It’s not his best friend passed out on the floor. “How long has he been infected; does he take medication?”

  “I don’t know. None of us knew until about ten minutes ago.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Ash.”

  The paramedic kneels by Ash’s head and calls his name. Ash doesn’t respond. The man makes a fist and rubs his knuckles over Ash’s sternum. “I need an Ambu bag here.”

  The other paramedic swings into action, grabbing a mask with a bag attached to it as the first paramedic checks Ash’s airways and tilts his head, placing the mask over his face.

  “He’s gonna be okay, right?”

  “I can’t answer that. The hospital will run some tests. Do any of you know anything more about his condition?”

  I look to the group, but everyone just shakes their head.

  The paramedics hook the bag up to oxygen and put him on the stretcher. We all gather outside as the ambulance takes him away with sirens screaming. Then we pile into Zed’s jeep and follow the ambulance at breakneck speed. Zed tries to keep up as much as he can, but we get stuck at several lights and have to speed so we don’t lose them. None of us know what’s going on and it’s a special kind of torture knowing that there’s nothing we can do for him.

  Ali meets us at the hospital. It’s the first time I’ve seen her since her wedding night, and she hugs me tight. Too tight. I can’t breathe as it is, and when I wrap my arms around her small frame, I’m just going through the motions.

  We sit in the waiting room and I stare down at the dried blood on my arm, Ash’s blood. I scratch at it, and Deb glares at me. She gets up and walks to the nurse’s station, coming back a few minutes later with an antiseptic wipe that she hands to me.

  I lose my shit. I don’t mean to. I don’t want to break down in the middle of a busy hospital waiting room, but I do. I roar my frustration at one of the nurses when she asks if I need help. I tell her to fuck off, that it’s not my blood, and I’m asked to leave not so politely by security. Once I’m away from the doors, I slide down the wall and bury my head in my hands. Why the fuck didn’t he tell me? He came to France two weeks ago. I try to remember everything that transpired in those two days, but I was drunk, and—as usual—so preoccupied with my own shit that I don’t remember a single fucking conversation. Did he plan on keeping this shit to himself until the day he died?

  My phone rings and I answer it without checking the number in case it’s Deb or one of the boys. “Hello?”

  “Monsieur?”

  I frown, not expecting a call because I talked to her just last week. “Margaux?”

  “Monsieur, you have to come home, Mademoiselle Kagawa is here.”

  “What?”

  “She came back for you, Monsieur.”

  “Margaux, I’m kind of in the middle of something here.”

  “But, she came for you. She could not live without you.”

  “Margaux, my best friend was just admitted to the hospital. I don’t have time for Brie’s fucking head games right now. I don’t need her here fucking shit up.”

  “But, Monsieur—”

  I don’t hear whatever else she planned to say because I throw my phone against the wall.

  A little later Coop comes out of the building and sits down beside me. He glances at my shattered phone and raises his brows in question. I shake my head. “No word?”

  “Nope.” He scrubs a hand over his face, looking much older than his years. “Fucking sucks not knowing what the hell is going on. Ash’s parents are on their way. Deb talked to them, already.”

  “They know about this AIDS shit?”

  “Nope, doctors called them because he’s listed them as next of kin, but they were just as in the dark about it as we were.”

  I rest my head against the brick wall. “Why would he keep this shit from us? Why go through all of this alone?”

  “I don’t know, man. You know him better than any of us. Why didn’t he tell you?”

  “Maybe because I’m too caught up in my bullshit life.” I sigh. “He came to see me in France.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, showed up on my doorstep. Tracked me down through my fucking lawyer.”

  Ryan frowns. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

  “’Cause you’re not as smart as he is.”

  He laughs, but it’s devoid of any real humour. “He didn’t tell you anything then?�
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  “Nope. I don’t know. Maybe he tried? I was too fucking blinded by misery.”

  “So, no hope for Brie, then?”

  I glance at him. “Why, you worried I’m gonna hit on your girl again?”

  “My wife,” Coop corrects. “And no, but I would like to see you happy with someone else.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t know if that’s ever going to happen. Brie showed up at the chateau, and I told my housekeeper that I didn’t have time for her right now.”

  “I still can’t believe you hooked up with her after ruining my fucking wedding.”

  I laugh. “I paid her.”

  “What?”

  I shake my head. “I paid her to stay with me.”

  Coop lets out an exasperated sigh. “Did you learn nothing from our experience with Ali?”

  “Apparently not. I paid her to come play for me. Then I paid her to stay with me. Then I paid her to stay even longer. I knew money was an issue for her. She was just trying to take care of her dad. I didn’t expect to fall in love with her.” I pick up one of the two battery cells from my phone and toy with it before tossing it back on the pavement. “Anyway, her dad died. She left me, and I let her go.”

  “You’re an even bigger idiot than I thought.”

  “Gee, thanks, Coop.”

  “I’m sorry, but it’s true. You need to go and beg for her forgiveness.”

  I scoff. “That sounds like something you would do.”

  “You’re right. It is something I would do, ’cause I’m not a fucking chump.”

  “I’m not going anywhere. My best friend is sitting in a fucking hospital bed, and none of us know what the hell is wrong with him. I’m not moving from this spot.”

  “You think he’s gonna be okay?” Coop asks, and his voice is quiet, too quiet.

  “Yeah, he’s a fighter. Ash will outlive all of us. He’d probably even survive the fucking apocalypse alongside the cockroaches.”

  “Yeah, doesn’t mean I’m not gonna kick his arse for scaring the shit outta us like this. I can’t believe he didn’t tell us.”