Over You

by Cole, Stevie J.

  “Give it time. Give it time. I’m feeling it right now.”

  “Dude,” Nash said. “How are you not feeling this?”

  “It’s gonna hit bro-man like a freight train.” Danté laughed. “Choo-motherfucking-choo.”

  The masseuse moved her hands right above my ass, kneading in a way that forced out a guttural grunt.

  “Oh yeah. That one’s really sore.” Nash groaned, and I glanced to my right. He’d flipped onto his back and struck a Hugh-Hefner pose with one arm behind his head. “You can work that one as hard as you need.” The sheet bopped up and down in a slow, rhythmic motion while the pretty redhead who tended to him grinned.

  “Seriously, man?”

  He shrugged. “I told you. It’s dangerous to let jizz backup.”

  Then the inferno hit. An iridescent aura filled my vision, and I melted into the cold table. The New Age music in the background seemed to infiltrate my mind, sucking me right inside its tantric wave, pulsing my vision with swimming colors. “Oh. Man. . . Oh man. Oh man. . .” I literally felt my pupils dilate.

  “The inferno hit. Didn’t it?” Danté’s chuckle ricocheted through my head.

  That high was transcendentally epic. Each swipe of the masseuses’ hand was orgasmic. I was laughing. Danté was laughing. Nash was groaning while that redhead beat him off.

  That high was on a level like none other until my body temperature shot up like I’d been thrown into a fire. My heart raced. My mouth went as dry as the Gobi Desert. No wonder he called it an inferno. Fight or flight alarms went off inside my head like air raid sirens. I shot off the table and grabbed the sheet before I bolted toward the door.

  I just needed out of that room, away from the music. I needed air, but halfway through the lobby, everything went black.

  10

  Georgia Anne

  The Practical Peacock Pub was a quaint Victorian nestled amongst a row of thatch-roofed townhomes. And while the hand-painted sign over the door of a peacock wearing a monocle may have beckoned the occasional wandering tourist, the pub was nothing more than the local watering hole.

  After I finished wiping down the mahogany bar, I perched on one of the stools. The news played on the flat screen tucked to the side of the room. Brexit. That’s all they talked about. . .

  “Want a drink?” Tom asked, grabbing a pint glass.

  “So, you may not have noticed, but. . .” I pointed at my purple shirt with a peacock emblazoned across the breast. “I’m at work.”

  Tom waved a dismissive hand through the air and placed the glass under the tap. His grandfather, Fergus Perry, owned The Peacock, and that eccentric old man didn’t care about anything. During winter, half the strays in the village wound up by the stone fireplace, and the town drunk, Henry Grimsley, had a running tab Tom swore had been open since 1985.

  Tom slung beer-foam from his hand. “You don’t ever drink.”

  “Not really.” I’d had my fill of that ages ago. For numerous reasons. I took a breath. “Anything else happen with Kirby?”

  “No. It’s been a full twenty-four hours without her crazy arse harassing me.” He lifted his drink in the air in a one-man toast before turning it bottoms-up and chugging.

  The jingle of the little silver bell over the entrance caught my attention. Fergus and Henry shuffled through the wooden door wearing their staple wool vests and flat caps—even though it was June and sunny.

  “Hello, love.” Fergus patted my back before he took a seat at the bar.

  Henry gave me a peck on the cheek. The stout scent of cigar caused my nose to wrinkle.

  Fergus arched a bushy, gray eyebrow when I went to push up from the chair. “Where are you going?”

  “Behind the bar. . .”

  He took a slow glance over his shoulder where nothing but empty, mismatched pub tables sat. “For what?”

  Before I could answer, Henry nudged Fergus in the ribs and pointed at the TV. “Look at that twit with his willy out.”

  My gaze moved to the screen, and my jaw all but unhinged. The footage showed Spencer sprinting in front of the Coach store on Rodeo. A grainy, censored blur covered his bobbling dick.

  Fergus slapped his hand over the bar top and cackled. “Turn it up, Tom.”

  “. . .lead singer to the rock sensation, Midnite Kills was arrested a few hours ago on Rodeo Drive for indecent exposure after he fled an upscale day spa in nothing but a sheet and the slippers provided by the establishment. He was allegedly high.”

  It was a train wreck I couldn’t look away from. The shaky footage showed Spencer stop at a crosswalk, grab the lamppost, and swing around it like he was Gene Kelly in Singing in the Rain.

  “Hailstorm was also charged with solicitation as the arresting officer reported he asked if he could frisk her. The LA County Jail released Hailstorm on a two-hundred and fifty-thousand-dollar bond. Devil’s Side Records has declined to comment.”

  Spencer’s mugshot flashed across the screen, and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to see how blown out his pupils were.

  “You’ll never catch an Englishman doing crap like that,” Henry said.

  “Mick Jagger,” Fergus countered.

  “Aw, Mickey never ran about with his wee-willy-winkle bobbing about.”

  While Fergus and Henry argued whether British rock stars possessed more couth than Americans, I stared at the screen. A commercial for Cadbury came on, but the image of Spencer racing down Rodeo Drive butt-naked had been seared into my mind. And for the first time since I had left, I knew I had made the right decision.

  11

  Spencer

  “That’s it?” I arched an eyebrow at the portly cop sporting a graying porn-stache. The plastic bag he held out had nothing but a sheet and terry cloth slippers from the day spa. No wallet. No jeans. No shirt.

  The man hitched up his shoulders.

  “You want me to change out of this jumpsuit and into a fucking sheet?”

  “It’s what you came in with.” A smartass smirk turned his lips. “Although, the sheet was tied around your neck like a cape. Looks like that satanic music you play has gone to your head, son.”

  Devil music. With a sigh, I snatched the bag from his grasp. “The person posting bail didn’t bring any clothes?”

  With a frown, the cop shuffled to the side of the room and took the receiver from the phone on the wall. His fat finger pressed the button. “Darlene, are there any clothes up there for the Caped Crusader?”

  I wanted to cup my hand over his mouth and shove that self-righteous chuckle back down his throat.

  “Alright.” He hung up. “Darlene’s bringing your fancy clothes to you.” He hitched his slacks back under his gut. “What makes you want to wear eyeliner?”

  “Satan.”

  His brows pulled together, his mustache wiggling. He busied himself by fiddling through Tupperware containers of inmate’s belongings. The heavy, metal door creaked to my right, and a wiry woman with bouffant brown hair stepped in and handed me a folded pair of jeans and my Van Halen shirt.

  No shoes.

  After I changed, the cop led me down a corridor and into the booking room.

  Booking rooms in jails are something a person needs to experience to truly appreciate. And I’d had my fair share of experiences—in multiple cities and countries. They all reeked of piss and locker-room feet. There was always the woman standing at the payphone in nothing but a stained undershirt, shouting about bail money. At a minimum, there would be one drunk puking in the corner. Everything felt corroded by a combination of Ebola and fecal matter, and while that typically didn’t bother me, this particular time, I was barefoot.

  Familiar with the drill, I walked to the counter to wait on my paperwork. The cop went over the ins and outs, the bail that had been posted, the trial date. Yadda, yadda, yadda. I scrawled my signature over the line marked with an X, then pushed it across the stand.

  The cop looked to his left and then his right. He leaned over the counter. “‘Dolly Want
A Screw’ is the best song. Could I get an autograph?”

  The pen rolled across the worktop, stopping next to my hand. Although I wanted to tell the guy to fuck off, I was in the middle of a police station, so I scribbled my name on a blank piece of paper.

  After admiring it for a second, he mumbled something about getting laid by Jessica, then slid that autographed paper beneath his keyboard.

  On my way to the exit, the glass doors slid open. Ricky stormed in, cheeks puffy and hellfire-and-brimstone red to which I gave a one-fingered wave when I brushed past. “Do you know the amount of legal shit I’ve had to handle today?” His hand seized my shoulder, and I elbowed his side, shoving him away.

  “If I remember correctly, when I first signed, you told me the troubled-rocker image sold.”

  “Troubled rocker, not the bat-shit crazy, I-ate-bath-salts drug addict, you idiot.”

  People stared as we made our way through the waiting room. Paparazzi and a handful of news stations crowded the exit, cameras at the ready.

  Ricky pulled a pair of Aviators from his shirt pocket and handed them to me.

  “You brought sunglasses, but you couldn’t bring me shoes?”

  “Two-hundred-fifty-thousand-dollars bail!”

  “Ah, come on.” I patted his back when we stepped to the doors. “That’s chump change for all the publicity this is getting. Right?”

  Ricky mumbled asshole under his breath as we stepped into the California heat and an array of clicks and whir of shutters and a flurry of flashes. We fought our way through the parking lot to Ricky’s Range Rover. The paparazzi followed with their cameras. After I’d climbed inside, they closed in with their lenses to the window.

  “Vultures,” Ricky muttered once he’d shut the door.

  There was a pack of gum on the console. I grabbed it, tossed a stick into my mouth, then I took one of his woodgrain pens and wrote: Pro: She never had to see me like this. The engine cranked, but the pap didn’t budge. Ricky laid on his horn, swearing as he threw the car into reverse. The vehicle jolted back, giving a few of the guys a good shove. Another blast from the horn and the crowd finally dispersed.

  The Range Rover tousled over a speedbump, the movement jostling Ricky’s jowls. “What kind of drug did you take to make you do something so idiotic?” he asked.

  “Something Danté had.”

  Ricky rolled his eyes so hard his entire head followed suit.

  I tried to replay the events from yesterday, but the last thing I could recall was running out of the massage room. Before that, it had been a typical day of bullshit, aside from the fact that a woman who claimed to be my mother had called my personal phone.

  I tapped a finger on my knee. “Oh. And from now on, you need to ask me before handing out my number to women claiming to be my mom.”

  He leaned over the steering wheel, checking for traffic before he floored the accelerator and pulled onto the highway. “I thought I was doing you a favor.”

  “A favor.” I snorted.

  Ricky Swathe only did things that benefited his bottom line. I knew exactly why he had done it. The headline, Spencer Hailstorm Reunited with Long-Lost Mother would do wonders for sales. Up the interviews. Blah-fucking-blah. That woman had called, and all he heard was the ca-ching of cash flow, not giving a crap how it would flare up my abandonment issues. “Yeah. That was no favor.”

  “Come on, Spencer. She sounded like a nice lady.”

  I focused my attention on the palm trees whizzing by. “Yeah. Real nice leaving a baby in a truckstop bathroom.”

  “People screw up. Everyone deserves a second chance.” He laughed and turned on his blinker. “Or three or four. You should know that.”

  My head whipped around. I shot what felt like an I-want-to-stab-you-in-the-face glare at him. “How about you just worry about the music, and I’ll worry about my life.”

  The engine revved when he merged onto the interstate. “Well, buddy.” He reached over the console to place a hand on my shoulder, his sight aimed at the road. “Those two are one and the same, now aren’t they?”

  Ricky dropped me at the front of my house, warning me the label could drop me if I didn’t get my act together. They could. But they wouldn’t due to that whole cut off your nose to spite your face bullshit. And besides, the guys at Deviant Fault would be chomping at the bit if Devil’s Side let me go.

  The air-conditioned air hit my face like a gale-force wind. My footfalls echoed into the ceiling as I crossed the windowed room that housed my Porsche and Lamborghinis.

  Like clockwork, I snagged a bottle of liquor when I passed the bar, not even bothering to read the label before I uncorked it on my way to the living room. Turned out, it was aged whiskey when I placed it to my dry lips.

  I fell onto the couch, cradling the drink while telling myself this was better than doing a line. Then, out of habit, I dialed my voicemail, listening to saved messages from Georgia:

  March 2nd. Beep. “Hey, babe. It’s me. Just calling to tell you, I love you.”

  April 5th. Beep. “I loooove you. Miss you. Can’t wait to see you.”

  May, 17th. “Spence, you won’t believe what I just saw. Oh my god. Where are you? Call me back!”

  I played through every single one, and then I came to the one that twisted my insides.

  June 22nd. “I just realized tomorrow would have been my due date. Can you come home?”

  June 23rd had been the breaking point in my life. In her life. In our lives. And dammit, every time I allowed myself to think about it, another piece of me died.

  The blue haze of the fading dusk eventually morphed into nightfall, shrouding the living room in darkness. The bottle of liquor ended up empty. I went in search of something else to numb the pain of memories, and then I passed out on the couch, knowing that while seventy-five percent of the population knew my name, at the end of the day, when I needed someone, I was alone.

  _____

  Two days after I streaked down Rodeo drive, I sat in first class on flight DL85 waiting to take off to London. The jet engines whirred to life, buzzing and humming while passengers ambled through, intermittently bumping into my chair.

  Leo and Nash sat in pods on either side of me. Sunglasses in place and drinks in hand. Well, Leo had opted for green tea. . .

  Nash leaned over the plastic divider between our seats. “That’s a MILF.” He swatted the stupid manbun the label insisted I wear. “Check her out, dude.”

  I gave the woman with an hourglass figure a fleeting glance. “Yeah, man. Total MILF.”

  Nash frowned. His brown eyebrows pinched together in a look of constipation or confusion—the two had to be one and the same. “Have you ever wondered if you’ve accidentally screwed your mom?”

  “What?” My lip curled at the disgusting thought. “No. You’re sick as shit.”

  “Hey. Neither one of us knows who our moms are. It could happen.”

  Correction. He didn’t know who his mother was. While I had no clue what Vicki looked like, I at least had a name. Speaking of Vicki. . . That phone call was something I had failed to mention to the guys, for multiple reasons.

  Half Nash’s torso remained draped over the seat divider. He kept inching over into my space, then dipped his chin. His Aviators slid down the bridge of his nose, and his gaze set on something behind me. I turned in my seat, spotting a brunette in tight, black leggings, pushing onto her toes to reach the overhead luggage compartment. Her bag tumbled out. Coins and pens and tubes of lipstick scattered the aisle.

  When she bent over, Nash groaned. “God bless yoga pants.”

  “You’re a misogynistic dick,” Leo mumbled before hopping out of his seat to help the girl with the impressive ass. Ever since he’d sobered up, Leo had become the too-nice, too-sensitive one of the group. Always trying to rectify the shit Nash and I started. He was more like a counselor crossed with the Good Samaritan than a rocker. Always talking about achieving nirvana.

  “Look at him,” Nash said, shaking
his head. “Acting all chivalrous. You and I both know, by the end of the flight, he’ll have gotten a blow job in the bathroom.”

  I settled back in my seat and closed my eyes. “Buddha would not be proud.”

  The shuffle and coughs of people filing onto the plane created a soothing lull. I had almost dozed off until the grating, shrill tone of our assistant’s voice jarred me from peace.

  “I’ll tell them, Ricky.”

  Everything about Becca was like nails on a chalkboard. Her presence provoked an unpleasant cringe when she waltzed through the cabin in her bright-yellow pants suit and those awful 1960s Oliver Goldsmith sunglasses. It looked like Breakfast at Tiffany’s vomited up Courtney Love.

  Shoving her phone into her carry on, Becca made her way down the aisle, stopping between Nash and me. “Ricky said to play a song from the upcoming album at the show.”

  The upcoming album that wasn’t going to happen. I glared at her. “Tell him to fuck off.”

  One side of her red lips twitched. She hated me. Admittedly, I did make her life hell, but on the same token, she drove me batshit crazy. I told the label we needed an assistant, as in, someone who made sure things were handled and left us alone. For some reason, Becca felt her duties also included acting as the morality patrol. She attempted to meddle in everything down to Nash’s excessive masturbation and my drug consumption.

  “You mean that pop crap?” Nash asked. “I’m not playing that shit.”

  She pointed her witch-like nail at him. “Don’t start with me. I have a migraine.”

  “And I have a raging hard-on from the two Viagra I popped this morning instead of my Xanax.” Nash grabbed his junk and gave it a good jostle. “We all have issues, sugar tits.”

  I laughed.

  Becca rolled her eyes. “That pop crap is what’s in, and if you want to stay relevant and, more importantly, with the label, you’ll play it with a smile.”