But for this girl, I want to play something different.
I choose an Apocalyptica cover of “Enter Sandman.” It’s complex and beautiful and interesting—all the things I’m imagining she is after only a few moments of meeting her. I look up at her while I play, and her expression has gone from amused to impressed. She likes what she hears, and she’s paying enough attention to what I’m doing that I’m wondering if she may know a thing or two herself.
When I finish, her face is serious. “I’m going to give you my number,” she says, reaching into her purse.
My mouth falls open a little, and I smile. “I won’t argue with that.”
“I want you to come audition for my band,” she says.
I blink. “Your band.”
“Yes,” she says, holding a card out to me. “I’m Jenna Rollins, from Alec and Jenna. We’re going on tour in a few weeks and we just lost our cellist—”
I lose track of what she’s saying as my brain stutters over the first part. That’s why she looked familiar. She’s Jenna. From Alec and Jenna. I’ve heard stuff from their new album playing on the radio, noticed the cello pieces, but that’s not what stops me.
Alec and Jenna are in love, like dramatic-movie “kiss-in-the-rain, roll-end-credits” kind of love—most of their songs are duets about their relationship. She was a teen mom and Alec stepped in and parents her kid—this kid. Their perfect couplehood practically is the band. If they’re going on tour then there hasn’t been some breakup I didn’t hear about.
But there is no way in hell she wasn’t just hitting on me.
Shit, I think, and then realize she’s waiting for me to respond. “Your cellist is Mason Brenner,” I say. “He’s good. I’ve heard him play.”
“He’s also a douche,” she says. “So we’re in the market.” She’s still holding out the business card, and I take it. It’s done in sleek grays and black, and behind her name and phone number is the Alec and Jenna “AJ” logo.
“Let me give you my number, too,” I say, because I’m not sure how I’m going to convince myself to call up Jenna Rollins and ask to audition for her and her boyfriend. Especially because she’s even more beautiful in person.
“Sure.” She pulls out her phone. “And you are?”
“Felix,” I say. “Felix Mays.”
She smiles at me, and I get the sense that she knows exactly how confused I am. I’m beginning to wonder if she and Alec have some kind of open relationship they somehow manage to keep secret.
I give her my number, though I have to fish it out of my phone. It’s a new one, on my dad’s phone plan, so my dealer can’t reach me and my old friends can’t call. Which means the contacts list on this thing is embarrassingly bare, but I’m not about to show her that.
Jenna fidgets with the clasp on her purse, still smiling. “I really hope you’ll audition for us. I’d love to work with you.”
I can’t imagine why that would be, but I also know I can’t turn it down. “What do you want me to play for the audition?”
“Anything,” she says. “But preferably something you love.” And then she puts a hand on her son’s shoulder and he waves at me, and they walk off down Hollywood Boulevard along the row of stars.
I grip my bow, stare after them, and wonder what the hell just happened.
Two
Felix
My sister Gabby calls while I’m packing up. When I answer, she sounds nervous, which for Gabby means overly enthusiastic, like a cheerleader on uppers.
“Hey, Felix! How’re you doing!”
I know exactly what she means to ask. “Hey, Gabs,” I say. “Still clean.”
She lets out a tiny relieved sigh and her voice dips to a more natural pitch. “That’s good, Felix. Really good.”
“Agreed.” Now, with that out of the way, we can have a conversation without her trying to discern the state of my sobriety from unrelated news. Any less direct answer would only serve to increase her anxiety. I don’t fault her for it. She loves me, and I put her through hell. Any response she deems “dodgy,” and she’ll be peppering me with questions designed to divine the truth without having to outright ask.
Probably because she’s learned from experience that if I’m back on drugs, I’m not going to answer honestly.
“You will never believe what happened to me today,” I say.
“You still coming over for dinner?” she asks. “You can tell me all about it. Will has his critique group tonight and I’m just getting off my shift now, so I can grab us some take out.”
“We’re still on,” I say. Before I got out of rehab this last time, I’d only spoken to my sister once in six months, when she came to visit me in treatment and stared at me like I’d been diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor. When I got out, I begged her to give me my cello back so I could make money doing something other than cashiering at the gas station, where not only would half the clientele be high, but the meniality of the job made it a constant fight not to put a needle in my arm.
She’d cautiously agreed, getting it from where she’d had it stashed in a climate-controlled storage unit to which only her boyfriend had the key. I’d known when I started using again that she was the only one I could trust to keep me from pawning it, even if I begged her or broke into her apartment. Both of which I did.
God, she has every right to hate me. I’m beyond thankful she doesn’t. And more, that she actually seems to want me back in her life.
“I’m feeling Chinese,” Gabby says, and I know she’s talking about this crazy place she loves.
“Get me the Mountain Dew Chicken,” I say. “And a couple of those breakfast egg rolls. The ones with the sausage.”
“Done. See you at my place in an hour?”
“Give me an hour and a half,” I say. “I’ve got to run by the clinic first.”
Gabby pauses and takes a deep breath. I’ve told her that the medication is prescribed, and I can only take it under supervision of the clinic at least for another week or two, but I know it still makes her nervous. I don’t blame her. Suboxone is an opiate, and I’m in recovery. I didn’t want to stay on the stuff myself, but my therapist sat me down with the numbers and convinced me I had a much better chance of staying clean if I let the maintenance drugs block some of the cravings, probably for a couple of years.
“Okay,” Gabby says. “See you in a few.”
I hang up, empty my cello case of today’s earnings, and put my cello away. I’m not loving the dirt left behind by leaving her case open, so I’m thinking if I want to keep doing this I might need to get my backup case from my dad’s place for money collection.
If I don’t get a job with Alec and Jenna, which seems so far-fetched I’m beginning to wonder if I imagined it.
Except there’s her card tucked in my pocket, next to my chip.
I load my cello into my dad’s spare car and drive halfway back to Valencia to the clinic. It’s at the facility where I did rehab—my dad read an article while I was still doing inpatient about people finding drug dealers out of corner Methadone clinics and insisted I do all my outpatient treatment at an upscale facility. I was fairly certain this was because he cared about me staying sober and not because he wanted to brag to his friends about how much my treatment cost. It doesn’t make the treatment easier, but it does keep me out of sketchy neighborhoods where I would be more likely to find a dealer, so I didn’t argue. After peeing in a cup (to ensure I’m not on heroin, and that I am on Suboxone) and swallowing my pill in front of the nurse, I head back to West Hollywood to Gabby’s apartment.
Gabby opens her door and throws her arms around me, and already I can smell the delicious scents of Fong’s, creators of all things that don’t belong together and yet somehow do. I squeeze her back, and she holds on way longer than she used to. We were close before I went to New York, and I wish I could put things ba
ck the way they were.
I wish a lot of things I can’t make happen.
Gabby lets me into her new apartment—I still think of it as her new place, though she’s been here almost a year—which is a mismatched mess of mod furniture and stuff she bought on Craigslist.
“Still working on the exorcism of Sarah?” I ask. Last time I was here, all the furniture had been purchased by Will’s ex-fiancée. Now Gabby’s footprint is starting to contend with hers, at least.
Gabby rolls her eyes. “Getting closer. But until we sell that couch—” she points at a high-backed, sharp-angled purple couch that dominates the living room—“we can’t afford to buy another one.”
“I’d buy it from you, but I don’t have a room to put it in.”
She raises an eyebrow at me. “There are only two kinds of people in this world. Those who can afford to buy our couch, and those who want it. I’m guessing you’re in category B.”
I smile. “Yeah. And I owe Dad enough money to buy a house in a lot of places.” I pause. “Not in LA, though.”
Gabby gives me a look that screams pity, and I wish I hadn’t said that. It’s my fault I’ve been in rehab three times. It’s my fault I didn’t stay clean the first time. Or the second.
“Are you going to pay him back for rehab?” she asks. “You know he doesn’t expect it.”
I shrug. “I know. And it’ll probably take me the rest of my life, but I want to try. I want to pay back all of it—even though Dad said I should just pay him back for the two times I screwed it up.”
“Ha,” Gabby says. “That sounds like him.”
Gabby dumps food on plates and we eat it on the purple couch, which is more comfortable than it looks. “Okay, so tell me about this incredible thing that happened to you today. Did you get thrown a fiver by Angelina Jolie?”
I smile, glad she finally asked. I’ve been dying to tell this to someone. To even say it out loud. “Better,” I say. “I got hit on by Jenna Rollins.”
Gabby scrunches up her face. “Whaaaat?” A piece of sauce-covered broccoli slides off her fork and onto her jeans, and she frowns at it. “There’s no way.”
“I’m serious. You know, from Alec and Jenna?”
“I know AJ,” Gabby says. “They’re Anna-Marie’s favorite. She played their first album on a loop for three months.”
Ah. Anna-Marie is Gabby’s best friend. They were roommates before Anna-Marie moved in with her fiancé and Gabby moved in with Will.
“But she definitely did not hit on you,” Gabby continues. “Jenna and Alec are like soul mates.”
I stab my fork into a chunk of bright yellow chicken. “Well she was definitely hitting on me. She talked about my straddling and my fingering. It was crazy.”
Gabby rolls her eyes, and wipes at the stain on her knee with one of the paper towels we’re using as napkins. “That’s just music talk.”
I glare at her over a bite of chicken. “That is not how musicians talk. We don’t sit around the cello section complimenting each other on our straddling.”
Gabby still looks skeptical, which is a little insulting, but whatever.
“She asked me to audition for her band,” I say.
Her eyes widen. This she seems to believe, at least. “Her band. She wants you to audition to play with AJ.”
“That’s what she said.” I toss her Jenna’s card, and her jaw drops.
“Jenna Rollins gave you her card.”
I smile. “And hit on me.”
Gabby throws the card back at me. “She did not hit on you. You’re just desperate. And you’d better remember that or you’ll blow your audition.” She grins, though, and squeals a little. “My brother could play with Alec and Jenna! Anna-Marie will die.”
I give her a wry smile. “Anna-Marie doesn’t know me as anything but a junkie.”
Gabby wrinkles her nose. “She does remember you as the guy who broke into her apartment, but if you get to play with AJ, she just might forgive you.”
I groan and flop back on the couch. I don’t love being thought of—even rightfully—as that guy, but that’s not what’s consuming my mind right now. I just keep seeing Jenna’s gray eyes, and the dress riding up her thigh. And god, that laugh . . .
“You should have seen how hot this girl was,” I say, shaking my head. “It’s been a month and a half. I need to get laid.”
Gabby eyes me over her broccoli beef soft taco. “Try twenty-three years.”
I groan again. “Where’s the sympathy? You have to know someone you could hook me up with.”
I both do and don’t mean it. Since all of my friends have either left the area for college or are off getting high without me, I have quite literally no one to spend time with besides my immediate family, and since my other sister Dana won’t let me see my nephew Ephraim for “a reasonable waiting period” out of rehab, not even all of them. I’m dying for some human connection, but I don’t exactly want to hook up with random girls anymore. I’m trying to move past that, and besides, I didn’t enjoy it that much, even before the drugs.
Jenna, on the other hand, didn’t feel random.
Gabby points her fork at me. “I don’t feel the need to know the girls you’re hooking up with. And no, I don’t have any available single friends.”
“Come on,” I say. “You have to know somebody.”
“Anna-Marie is engaged. I’ve been hanging out with her fiancé’s best friends, but they’re both gay and married.”
“Do your gay friends have any female friends? Come on, Gabby. I’m desperate.”
Gabby rolls her eyes again. “Felix, I really don’t want to know how horny you get after just a month and a half. You’re barely out of rehab.”
She’s right, but I’m on a roll now, and I can’t stop until I’ve garnered at least some pity. “Plus,” I say, “sex on drugs kind of sucks, so it feels like a lot longer.”
Now she looks interested. I figured that would do it. “Really?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Half the time you’re too high to get it up, and the other half you can’t finish.”
She cringes. “I did not need to know that about my brother.”
She looks a little sorry for me, though, so I take that as a win and bite into my breakfast roll, which tastes like a cross between a pot-sticker and an Egg McMuffin. From what I heard in rehab from some of the veterans, being on Suboxone can be just as bad for your sex life, so I hope I’m one of the lucky ones whose symptoms get better and don’t drag on for years, even off the H.
“Ooh!” Gabby said. “I could set you up with Sheena from work! But you’d have to be nice to her because she’s the RN in charge of the whole shift schedule, so I really want to stay on her good side.”
Gabby hasn’t gotten fired from a job since she started nursing two years ago, but apparently she still worries about it. “I’m nice,” I say. “And even Jenna Rollins thinks I’m hot.”
“She does not,” Gabby says. “You’re cute, but Alec is a million times hotter.”
I pretend to be offended, and maybe I mean it a little bit. When I was waiting for my pill at the clinic, I Googled Jenna and Alec, and scrolled through all their couple photos like a Facebook-stalking ex.
They do look cute together, and I hate him for it.
“I have to warn you, though,” Gabby says. “Sheena is really fond of her hamsters. She’s given them all personalities and matching little felt hats.”
“The hats match the hamsters?” I ask. “Or—”
“The personalities. Like one is Napoleon, and another is wearing a fedora—”
I at once want to see these hamsters and am very afraid.
“They run in tubes through her house,” Gabby says, “so they have access to all of the rooms. She drilled the holes and installed the whole thing herself, like one of those ball machines where
the balls roll all over and then get lifted up to the bottom to go again.” She pauses. “Except with hamsters.”
I grimace. “Do the tubes run through the bedroom? Is this a sex thing?”
Gabby shakes her head. “Jeez, I hope not. But given the things I’ve seen come out of people’s asses at work, I can’t say I would be surprised.”
It’s my turn to point my fork at her. “Find out.”
“Done,” Gabby says.
“If it’s not, you can set me up with her.” This Jenna thing is not happening. I know it isn’t. Even if she’s in an open relationship, I really do not want to get in the middle of that—especially not with a girl with a laugh like hers.
Gabby’s right. In a pissing match between me and Alec, I’m not going to win.
“I’ll try,” Gabby says. “But if you screw her over I’ll be working graves for the rest of my life.”
I’m doing Gabby’s dishes—the least I can do since she bought dinner—when my phone rings next to the sink, and my heart climbs into my throat.
Every time the phone rings, I’m afraid my dealer or one of my old drug buddies has somehow found my number. I called them all before I left rehab and told them I was done, and most of them were cool with it. A couple of them swore at me over the phone, which actually helped, but if any of them get my number, they’re bound to start inviting me back to parties, trying to get me to hang out, even if I don’t use.
I can’t do that. I’ll never be able to do that, even if it means resigning myself to the company of Sheena the hamster-hat lady for the rest of my life.
I dry my hands and turn my phone over. It’s a number I don’t recognize—not my dealer, then, unless he got a new phone. I take a deep breath, and answer.
“Hey, Felix?”
I recognize Jenna’s voice instantly. And now my heart’s in my throat for an entirely different reason. “Yeah,” I say. “Is this Jenna?”
Gabby looks up from the couch, where she’s thumbing through the Writer’s Digest website on her phone, trying to find markets for Will’s novel. “Really?” she mouths.
Everything We Are Page 2
