by Tasha Black
Jesus. Too much time under the lights today, for sure.
He shook off the cobwebs and kept singing.
A minute later and the weird incident was forgotten.
A light breeze swept in at last after a stifling day. It felt good against his skin, nice way to end the night.
Johnny was in the middle of his guitar solo, really shredding, when the cloud cover finally broke, bathing the stage in the light of the new moon.
Johnny had just enough time to notice the haze over the crowd before the moonlight gripped him like a fist.
His skin tingled with electricity and a crawling pain ignited on his forearm.
He faltered, the Strat yelped out flatly.
His fingers fell uselessly off the strings and he stopped singing.
Seth, the bass player, was solid. Johnny heard him fill in the last few bars as the chorus approached.
The crowd would probably think it was planned that way.
But Johnny could barely hear the crowd or the song now.
There was something alive in his arm, scratching to break free. He watched as the skin writhed and stretched.
He looked away and caught Seth’s eyes. Seth nodded at the mic with a what the fuck? look on his face.
Johnny would have liked to know the answer too, but the chorus was coming and he was rooted to the spot.
Seth grabbed the mic and held it out to the crowd. They filled in eagerly.
“You can’t hide the…
Strength…
Of…
The…
Pack.”
Johnny’s arm seethed with electric pain.
What the hell is happening?
Inside he felt the flapping of wings.
He could deny it all he wanted, but he knew where this was going. And he needed to get away. The consequences of losing control were unthinkable.
He pictured the bodies of the crowd, burning to ash, or trampling each other in an attempt to escape.
He turned to run, oblivious to the shouts of his bandmates.
Seth stepped in front of him, arms out.
But Johnny dodged and slipped away.
If he could just get away from all of these people, maybe everything would be fine.
Two steps later, he was engulfed in red flames.
His first thought was that he was too late.
He’d let his control slip too far.
And now everyone was going to pay.
Then the flames turned to a rosy purple, and the truth hit him. The flames were not his own.
He’d blundered in front of the pyrotechnics. They switched again, in time with the song, and he was showered in green sparks.
He fell to his knees as a pair of hands lifted his smoldering form clear.
Someone threw a fire blanket over him.
Fear overwhelmed him and he fought to breathe.
He wasn’t afraid of the fire - never of the fire.
It was that out of control feeling.
He peered out.
The crowd shrieked as the clouds covered the moon again.
He looked down at his arm.
The pain was gone.
His bandmates gathered around him. He noticed almost absentmindedly that the music had stopped.
Paramedics pushed past. He would have to deal with them.
But not yet.
He flashed Seth a grin and stood, tossing the fire blanket aside. He pushed past the paramedics and grabbed the mic.
The crowd stood before him, silent.
He took a huge breath, then pulled the mic against his mouth.
“You can’t fake the…” he began.
The crowd went nuts, joining him as he sang.
“Strength…
Of…
The…
Pack.”
His bandmates scrambled back to their places as he belted out the final chorus, with 40,000 screaming fans losing their collective mind.
“You’ll never take the…
Strength…
Of…
The…
Pack.”
Seth leaned in as the roar washed over them.
Johnny waited for a question or accusation, but it never came.
“Now that’s fucking Rock and Roll,” Seth shouted with a conspiratorial grin.
2
Neve closed her eyes for a fraction of a second as the cab pulled up.
Breathe in through your nose, and out through your mouth. Nothing matters but right now - just one moment, one step at a time.
But the advice she always gave patients didn’t do diddly squat for Neve herself.
She was late. Really, really, really late. And it wasn’t the first time.
She allowed herself one glance down at her wrist.
The rose gold bracelet of the Tag Heuer watch accentuated the honeyed glow of her skin. But the time on its mother-of-pearl face brought a worried smile to her own.
Michael wasn’t going to be happy. If he hadn’t left already.
She slipped her carefully folded cash to the driver, grabbed her bag and slipped out of the cab and onto the street.
“Thanks,” the cabbie yelled hoarsely.
She’d overtipped. She always did when she was feeling guilty. And it seemed like she was always feeling guilty these days.
The outdoor seating at Mama Giorgio’s was full. Beautiful people flirted and celebrated under the fairy lights.
A young woman about Neve’s age smiled into the face of her date. He smiled back at her and leaned forward to smooth one of her brown curls behind her ear.
The carelessly intimate gesture wrenched at Neve’s heart and she turned on her heel and marched to the doors.
Her feet hurt. Hell, even her cheeks hurt from smiling at her rehab patients all day, trying to help them feel understood and accepted for who they were.
You are lovable. You are enough.
The small Italian restaurant was dimly lit and smelled like heaven with a side of marinara. She and Michael had been here on their first date.
Could that have been a year ago now?
She realized suddenly that it must have been almost exactly a year, because it was right after McGrath had bought out the Lattimers and they’d stopped taking new patients at Sanctuaries for a few weeks to re-organize.
It figured the only time she’d had to meet a decent guy was when they literally sold the business. She was lucky it had happened before she was an old woman.
She scanned the tables, but didn’t see Michael.
He had probably left an hour ago.
Familiar fingers of panic stretched across her chest.
Neve Whittaker, the consummate professional, “The Angel of Malibu” as she was referred to anonymously in People Magazine, was a failure in her personal life.
She’d missed her own best friend’s wedding for work. Kitty had said it was okay, but Neve knew that it wasn’t. And in the years that passed, Neve was too caught up in work to make things right anyway.
She slid her hands together, clicking her stackable rings, as she always found herself doing when she was nervous.
She was turning to leave when she spotted him.
Michael sat at the bar, his white shirt crisp, his large frame slumped a little.
She took a deep breath, smoothed down her skirt, and strode up to him.
“Michael,” she used the voice she reserved for new patients. The one she hoped summoned up grandmothers and gingerbread cookies, and all things peaceful and sweet.
He turned and she saw the half-finished martini in his hand.
“Look who decided to stop by,” Michael said.
His words had a slight softness around the edges. The martini was obviously not his first drink.
He glanced at his watch, a perfect match to hers, but he didn’t really focus on it.
Was he joking, or was he being sarcastic with her?
“I’m so sorry I'm late,” she said, trying to keep her voice light enough
to adapt to either possibility. “I got hung up at work.”
“There's a shocker,” he said, staring right into her eyes.
At work she would call this behavior confrontational.
She took a breath and pretended to herself that he had oppositional defiance disorder. The parents and loved ones of her ODD patients tended to think they were just jerks, and to a certain extent they were not wrong. But there was some nuance to handling this kind of thing.
Deflect, redirect.
“Did you eat?” she asked him kindly.
“No. I was waiting for you.” He still sounded angry but his voice was pitched up an eighth from before.
To anyone else it would sound like the beginning of whining. But Neve saw it as progress and knew that she was on the right track.
“That was nice of you,” she told him quietly. “I’m sorry you had to wait.”
He squinted and pinched the bridge of his nose, obviously coming back to himself and feeling bad for what he’d said.
She almost felt guilty for working him over. He should be mad at her. She was an awful girlfriend.
She waited and let him speak. It was important for the hurt party to have their say.
“I’m sorry, babe. I'm really glad to see you. I don't mean to be a jerk. It's just…”
And he was back, thank God.
“I know. I was supposed to be here and I wasn’t. You know how my job gets. Sometimes I can’t just walk away. But it has nothing to do with how I feel about you—” she tried to explain.
“—I know,” he cut her off. “Let’s see if they still have our table.”
Neve knew she should be relieved that she could just eat dinner and enjoy his company. But something in her wanted to say her piece too. Maybe only because it was a luxury she never got at work.
He pulled out her chair for her, and they perused the menu together. After a few minutes of chatting about food, things felt more relaxed. The waiter brought red wine and big glasses of water.
The muted chatter around them, the tinkling of forks against china plates and the glorious smells of garlic and fresh bread filled Neve’s senses. She was starving - she hadn’t sat down all day, let alone had time for a proper meal.
She took a sip of red wine as Michael told her all about his colleague, Beth, who was forever in a feud with one partner or another.
Vaguely, she realized he’d been talking about Beth a lot lately. She made a mental note to figure out whether she should be worried.
Then her phone dinged loudly in her bag.
Oh god, what now? They knew she had plans.
Michael looked down at his plate.
“Let me turn that off,” she sighed.
She plucked it out of her pocket and glanced at the message for just a second.
Ugh. Stupid Angela was in a screaming match with a patient. Clearly McGrath had hired her for her cup size, not her references.
Neve was pretty sure the place might just fall apart when she wasn’t there one of these days.
She fired off a quick response.
“It’s like they completely forget how to do their jobs the minute I walk out the door. I swear to god, Angela would have been fired a dozen times by now if she didn’t have such big…”
Michael was staring.
“Sorry! I’m turning it off,” she said immediately, and set it down on the table, showing him her empty hands as if she had lowered a weapon.
“Neve, I think we need to talk,” he said.
He was speaking in the kindest, softest voice.
Like he wanted her to think of peppermint tea and being rocked to sleep in her mother’s arms.
Oh, no.
“Neve, I’ve been giving it some thought. And I’m not sure this is going to work,” he told her sadly.
The floor dropped out from under her. For a minute she couldn’t breathe.
A swirl of emotions flashed before her, and she picked one, almost at random.
“You invited me to the place where we had our first date so you could break up with me?” she asked indignantly.
“No. I invited you here so I could propose to you on our anniversary,” he told her, his voice thick with compassion. “And if you had walked through that door two hours ago, I would have…”
“Michael.”
“But I can see that would have been a mistake,” he continued. “I don’t think I could spend the rest of my life playing second fiddle to a bunch of rich, entitled losers.”
There it was. His bitterness had finally won out over his pity.
And that’s what it came down to in everyone’s minds. Because her patients were wealthy or famous, it was assumed that they didn’t have real issues. And because they were considered unworthy patients, Neve’s job was trivial. Which might as well be saying that Neve herself was trivial, since her job was her identity.
“They have serious problems, Michael,” she said tightly, trying not to engage.
“That’s what you’re taking from this?” he snapped back. “Your only response is to defend them?”
His voice was louder now. People were starting to stare.
“It doesn’t have to be like this forever,” she told him.
As if in answer, her phone began to buzz on the table.
She hadn’t turned it off, after all.
And the caller ID was clear.
Sanctuaries, Malibu
“It doesn’t? Show me, then,” Michael said, nodding toward the phone.
She shrugged lightly and held eye contact with him.
The phone went to voice mail.
Then it began to ring again.
Neve tried not to think about Angela and the new patient. Jocelyn Wylde was a mess. She was so young, with so much potential. Potential to conquer the world. Potential to slit her own wrists if Angela screwed up…
The phone trilled in a text.
911 M.S.
And another.
please neve this is bad
Jesus Christ. This could be it.
How was Neve supposed to live with herself if that nineteen year old killed herself tonight because Neve wanted a nice dinner and a pretty diamond ring?
How could she live with herself if she ignored that call?
Across from her, Michael’s handsome face was twisted into an ugly smirk.
And somehow that was the final sign.
They both knew what was about to happen. But she didn’t have to turn him into the kind of man who would take his only pleasure from proving that his girlfriend was a bitch.
It was better for him to leave her now and find a nice woman who appreciated him.
Even if the idea of it made Neve want to sob and hug herself.
“I’m sorry,” she said as she reached for the phone.
“Me too,” he said curtly. He got up and stormed away, almost colliding with the waiter bringing their food.
“What’s wrong?” Neve asked as soon as Angela picked up.
She watched as Michael headed out the door without looking back.
“Tony left with the key to the storeroom,” Angela whined.
So nothing was really wrong.
Neve had just given up her future for nothing.
The waiter set down the food on the table.
“That’s not a 9-1-1 level problem, Angela,” she said calmly. “Hang on a minute.”
But Michael was gone.
The waiter looked down at her in confusion.
She covered the receiver with one hand.
“I think I’m going to need a box for this,” she told him with an everything’s-fine smile.
And for him it was. He was getting overtipped for sure.
Angela’s tinny voice still wailed through the phone, apologizing now.
“I’m sorry, Neve. It’s just that we had an unscheduled check-in, and he threw up all over the front desk. And we can’t get to the extra cleaning supplies. And…”
“It’s okay, I’m on my way in,” she told
Angela. “It looks like my evening just opened up.”
3
Johnny stared out the window at the lights streaking past as the stretch limo headed to the hotel.
The paramedics had insisted on checking him out after the show, so he’d waved his bandmates away, not eager for them to ask too many questions.
It had been harder to dodge all the groupies who were “so worried” about him, batting their eyelashes and pawing at his forearms with their greedy little hands.
He was getting to the point where Johnny the man was over it. But the thing inside him still strained and stretched to get to the females.
Giving the groupies the slip had been nothing to rival escaping Atlanta Moss, the pop princess who’d replaced Jocelyn Wylde on the tour when Jocelyn went off the deep end.
“Johnny, you need someone with you, to advocate for you,” Atlanta had insisted as she clomped along next to him in her combat boots.
He glanced over to find her pouting her already too-pouty lips and arching her back to show off her tiny breasts. Or maybe she was showing off one of those twenty five nearly identical silver necklaces she was wearing. Who knew?
Her sentiment might have been noteworthy except that he knew she had a word-of-the-day app on her phone and advocate had been today’s word.
“I’m all good, Atlanta,” he said tiredly. “And, hey, tell your PR guy I’m not into it, but thanks for thinking of me,” he added over his shoulder as the meds lead him away.
Her fake pout melted into a real pout, and she tossed her blue hair.
He’d been right. She was only after him for the publicity shots. No way was she actually attracted to him.
He tried not to laugh. It wouldn’t look good if he were actually laughing when they examined him.
He managed to keep it together while they looked him over.
One of the paramedics was obviously a big fan. Johnny could tell the lanky young guy was trying to be cool, but it wasn’t working out. He kept asking the same question and forgetting to write down the answer. His female colleague spent the whole time smirking and letting him fall all over himself.
But Johnny tried to be grateful - the guy’s awkwardness downplayed the real drama.
Which was, of course, that he had been engulfed in flames and didn’t have so much as a blister.
