Like The Wind
J. Bengtsson
J. Bengtsson
Copyright © 2019 by J. Bengtsson
First published as an Audible Original
Edited by Rose Hilliard (Audible)
Proofread by Kimberley Weaver
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Contents
Prologue
1. Bodhi: The Letter
2. Bodhi: Twinkie Issue
3. Breeze: The Proposal
4. Bodhi: Wellness Retreat
5. Bodhi: The Devil Within
6. Breeze: The Pet Sitter
7. Bodhi: Like The Wind
8. Breeze: Sympathy Puker
9. Bodhi: Taste of Freedom
10. Breeze: Team Edward
11. Bodhi: A Matching Pair
12. Breeze: The Morning After
13. Breeze: The Makeover
14. Bodhi: Pinnipeds
15. Bodhi: Still Alive
16. Breeze: Road Trip
17. Breeze: A Fist Full Of Nickels
18. Bodhi: Quicksand
19. Breeze: Big Girl Panties
20. Bodhi: Mother’s Day
21. Breeze: Round Two
22. Bodhi: An Unlikely Hero
23. Bodhi: My Own Eddie
24. Breeze: Glamping
25. Bodhi: On Repeat
26. Breeze: The Higher Ground
27. Epilogue: Bodhi
Afterword
About the Author
Also by J. Bengtsson
Award Nominated Audiobooks By J. Bengtsson
“Watch out!”
Her scream pierced the cab, commanding my foot to brake even before I knew the reason for her outburst. A tree, fully engulfed in flames, crashed to the ground two car lengths in front of us, sending embers cascading up and over the windshield. My sudden deceleration caused the back end of the Range Rover to fishtail and I struggled for control. We both screamed as the truck performed an entire rotation before coming to an abrupt stop within inches of the burning obstruction.
Breathing heavily, I looked to my passenger for encouraging words of wisdom, but she had nothing more to add to the stunned silence. It occurred to me then that the yappy dog in the backseat had actually stopped barking. Apparently he wasn’t a fan of my Tilt-A-Whirl driving skills.
I placed the car in reverse to get us a safe distance from the burning blockage, but with distance came clarity. This narrow road was our salvation, and now the downed tree was blocking us from deliverance. The only way out was through the punishing flames.
Slowly I turned toward my passenger, ready to explain the dire situation, but the minute our eyes met, an understanding passed between us. We were out of options. I knew it. She knew it. The sloppy-tongued canine in the backseat knew it. If we turned around and followed the fire trucks up the mountain, we would die. If we stayed put, we would die. Our lives lay on the other side of that tree.
Incredibly, the woman seemed to absorb every word I didn’t speak. Gripping my forearm, she nodded, ready to meet the challenge head-on. Even if that challenge meant driving through a stone-fire oven.
“Wait, what’s your name?” I asked, suddenly overwhelmed with the urge to know this stranger beside me, the woman who faced the possibility of death with stunning courage and strength.
Her eyes softened, the fear in them temporarily abated as she answered my question. “Breeze.”
I wasn’t sure I’d heard her correctly. “Breeze? Like the wind?”
A tiny smile found its way to the surface. “Yes, Bodhi Beckett. Like the wind.”
1
Bodhi: The Letter
“I see you.”
The microphone amplified my voice as I lifted my arm high in the air and pointed to the furthest seat in the stadium. A frenzy of activity followed, culminating in giddy screams pinging off every surface.
Jumping up and down near the edge of the stage, an adolescent girl squealed, “See me, Bodhi! See me!” I tipped my head in her direction and smiled. Such a trivial gesture, yet enough interaction to turn the girl into a free-flowing sprinkler system.
My band mate, RJ, batted his own lovesick eyes at me before shimmying on up to my side with that snarky grin on his face. Knowing his propensity for pantsing me on stage, I spun around in time to prevent his fingers from getting a hold of my waistband.
“See me, Bode-Hi,” he cooed, deliberately mispronouncing my name because, well, he apparently found it hilarious. It’s not like his name rolled off the tongue either - Renato Javier Salazar Contreras. Dammit, it actually did.
“Bo-dee,” I corrected for the hundredth time. “The H is silent, asshole.”
This little game of ours had been going on since he’d accidentally mangled my name the first day we met. Now he just said it wrong to piss me off. Pushing him away, I puckered my lips and sent him packing with an air kiss and the discreet extension of my middle finger. RJ’s eyes narrowed in on me. He’d been challenged and there was no doubt I’d be paying for it later. Every part of his body language screamed, ‘I’m going to pummel you.’ Had we not been on stage in front of a crowd of thousands, he probably would have jumped on my back and knocked my head into a wall or something equally over the top.
RJ was the youngest child of three sons and, as such, never let a diss go without swift, physical engagement. In contrast, I’d always been a more cerebral, calculated person. Making a sound decision took time and patience. Not so with RJ. There was no thinking in his ‘survival of the fittest’ world. He was all blustery reaction and you either rolled with the punches or hid in a maintenance closet until he’d safely passed.
I’ll admit, when I’d first met the dude, he’d taken some getting used to, and I’d done more hiding than rolling. Growing up an only child and never having gone to a traditional school, toys were my only playmates, and none of them ever beat the shit out of me.
But beatdowns and defensive training weren’t the only things my friend taught me. He’d also modeled for me what it was like to have siblings and, surprisingly, I loved the brutal inclusion. I could barely remember what life was like without RJ and his hyperactivity, but I’m sure it was unbelievably boring.
Both singled out as the fan favorites in a five-man boy band, there were a whole multitude of reasons for RJ and me to dislike each other, but somehow we’d risen above the petty jealousies that came along with preteen fangirls fainting at our feet.
Hunter, Shawn, and Dane rounded out our quintet. Together we made up the members of AnyDayNow, currently the most popular boy band in the industry. We were household names… as long as those households in question had girls under the age of fifteen living in them. Okay, so maybe we were bigger than I gave us credit for. After all, our mere presence in the tour cities prompted irritated locals to bitch about road closures, ear-splitting headaches, and Salem-witch-style hysteria.
As the fan cherished ‘hotties’ of the group, RJ and I were responsible for much of that delirium. The other guys were popular too, don’t get me wrong, it was just that they didn’t have as many bedroom shrines dedicated in their honor. And even though the two of us rose to heartthrob status at the exact same time, I’d learned to harness the awesome power, while RJ was still in the process of trying not to cut his arm off with the light saber.
The band’s handlers worked hard cultivating our images, although admittedly they had their hands full with RJ and Shawn, both of whom provided a steady stream of fodder for the tabloids. Me? I was on autopilo
t and always had been. The tale they’d spun for me from the very inception of the band had been elaborate in its details and carefully crafted throughout the years. I was the wholesome boy next door… or so it would seem. Given the fact I was a former child star who had lived most of my life out of a suitcase, portraying me as well-adjusted boyfriend material was a stretch by any means of the imagination. Not that I was a closet serial killer or anything, but I had issues that dated all the way back to my birth and no amount of whitewashing could wipe away the guilt that plagued me.
Still I was a competent enough actor to embody the character that had been created for me, and I played the part well. To all those sobbing little girls, Bodhi Beckett was da bomb. And really, who was I to burst their sheltered little bubbles? If they wanted to worship the ground I walked on, I was inclined to let them. After all, there were worse things in life than being adored. Besides, the fan devotion had made me a millionaire many times over and afforded me a lifestyle anyone would be envious of. As long as no one dug too deep into my personal life, I really was the perfect fantasy guy to bring home to mom and dad.
Sometimes I wished I were as fearless as RJ, who lived his life like he’d be trampled by a rhinoceros at any moment. I’d never been so carefree, not even when I was young, although it was up for debate whether I’d actually ever been a child. By the tender age of two, I was already supporting my family, although again, it was debatable whether my dad and I constituted a family. For all intents and purposes, he’d been more my manager than my father. Our dinner conversations were about business, not pleasure. The closest I’d ever come to a real family was playing the dutiful son on television.
Don’t believe me? I lost my virginity to a twenty-year-old prostitute my father had hired when I was seventeen. Not that I was aware she was a prostitute at the time. Apparently he felt I was taking too long to close the deal on my own, so he did what any responsible father would do – he found me a sure thing.
We’d met at a party and one thing led to another. Suddenly the pretty girl I’d been flirting with turned into a fucking porn star before my very eyes. It had never occurred to me at the time that she might actually be one. I just assumed I was a really good lover. But no. It was all smoke and mirrors leading to years of anxiety over my sexual partners not being who I thought they were. Thanks, dad, for the lifelong phobia. Way to parent!
Stellar moments like that peppered my childhood, closing me off to real, honest relationships, especially with women. I never knew who to trust so, as a general rule, I trusted no one. It was just easier being alone than finding out years later the woman I married was the star of ‘Debbie Does Dallas.’
It’s not that I was complaining… okay, maybe I was. Even though I’d lived my life in the spotlight, it had never really been by choice, and the older I got the more I wondered if this was truly the road I wanted to follow. I found myself looking forward to AnyDayNow’s inevitable demise. I mean, how long could a bunch of twenty something guys pretend to be bubble-gum chomping teenagers? Not that getting out of my commitments would be as easy as stepping off the beaten path and walking away. I was bound securely around the man who’d made me a star, my father, and cutting myself loose from him promised to be a bloody affair.
Maybe someday, long after the euphoria faded, I’d be one of those dreaded cautionary tales of the ‘former child star’ struggling to find his place in the world. God knows I’d be a prime candidate for self-destruction. But I thought more of myself than to become just some footnote in history. Damned if I would meet my end overdosed on some park bench.
When the time came, I’d bow out gracefully. No point in trying to hold onto a fame that didn’t want me anymore. Besides, it would give me the chance to live the quiet life that had always intrigued me. The idea of showing up at some dive bar with just my dependable guitar playing ‘poor me’ songs to a crowd of twelve hammered assholes was strangely appealing.
Shaking off the inevitable, I focused my attention back on task. I had a job to do. There were thousands of girls who had to fall hopelessly in love with me before the end of the show, and I aimed to please. Allowing the excitement to die down some before repeating my earlier words, I called out, “I see you - in Section H. Yes you… girl wearing the AnyDayNow t-shirt.”
Squeals erupted as every female in Section H wearing a t-shirt with our band logo on it assumed I was speaking directly to her.
“The guys and I, we can’t thank you enough for coming to see us. All of you are like our family and when you’re here, it feels like home.”
You could almost hear the hearts bursting throughout the arena… and RJ’s cynical gagging. Okay, it was a cheesy line. But this was a young crowd who hadn’t fully developed the bullshit gene, so I could get away with sounding like Ferris Bueller here and no one would give a shit. Even if I might occasionally cringe at my own words, my audience gobbled it up like a bag of Sourpatch Kids.
I looked in the general direction of Section H, pretending I could see each and every person in it, though binoculars probably wouldn’t even do the job. These were the nosebleed seats, after all. But really, it didn’t matter whether I could see them or not. What mattered was every girl wearing one of our t-shirts and sitting in that unfortunate section truly believed I’d locked eyes on her for the briefest of moments. It was all about guiding the fans through a fantasy and making them feel like they’d made a special connection with their idol. Their parents paid good money for the privilege and I’d learned long ago never to bite the hand that feeds.
Unlike RJ, I respected our fans enough to give them a performance worthy of their devotion. Yes, they were young and loud and excitable, but they were also responsible for our meteoric rise to fame. If it weren’t for these girls and their moms, and the few courageous men and boys who braved the embarrassment of being seen at one of our concerts, we’d just be five guys standing on stage pretending to be something special while everyone else made fun of us.
At least now when we were ruthlessly mocked for being talentless wastes of space, we had a wad of cash in hand to make the poison go down easier. Would I like to be respected for something other than having nice hair? Sure. But that’s not how boy bands worked. It didn’t matter how many of our songs soared to the top of the music charts or how many shows we sold out, to our critics we’d always be dismissed as a manufactured group of minimally talented guys making a living off prepubescent fantasies. As long as we remained in the band, we’d never be taken seriously as artists, singers, and songwriters.
Five years ago, when we’d been handpicked for AnyDayNow, the distinction between performer and artist hadn’t bothered us. We were all teenagers, eager for success. Our goal back then had been simple – work hard, give the best performances possible, and ride the wave as far as it would take us. We’d accomplished all three objectives, and then some.
As the final song began, the guys and I took our positions, standing side by side at center stage, belting out the words to our most popular song to date, Wait For You. Unlike other boy bands, we weren’t dancers, even though the producers had diligently tried to make that happen. At the beginning of our rise to fame, our dance routines had been so painful to witness that in one scathing review, we’d been compared to a family of three-legged giraffes suffering from ear infections. After that, we were allowed to do our own thing, and it turned out we had just enough spasmodic moves to entertain the fans just fine, thank you very much.
Fireworks exploded overhead as we finished our final encore. Smiles plastered on our faces, we waved to the crowd as the stage descended, shielding us from view. A half a dozen tech guys swarmed around us. We stood silently under the stage while they removed our earplugs and mics, having learned the hard way that anything we said after the show would be broadcast live into a stadium filled with innocent ears. You only had to drop one f-bomb into a crowd of preteens to learn your lesson.
Now free from all devices, it was like surfacing from a deep-sea dive. We could
hear and breathe normally again. In an hour’s time, we’d be ushered out of the arena under heavy security to the chorus of all those little screamers damaging their vocal chords just to let us know how much they loved and appreciated us. There would be pushing and cameras flashing and middle-aged men fighting to keep the makeshift fences from toppling over in the crush of overeager fans determined to adore us to frickin’ death.
But that was in an hour. Until then we were free to be the twenty-something guys we were instead of the larger-than-life perpetual teenagers our fans envisioned us to be. And with the veil of perfection lifted, we transformed into a group of frat boys trying to one up each other. In the short trek from the stage to our dressing room, I’d been shoved, punched, and grabbed in the ass. After five and a half years together, there was nothing off limits anymore.
“Can we all just take a moment to recognize our friend Dane here? I mean bravo, dude. It takes a special kind of stupid to trip over your own shoelace in front of a crowd of twenty-five thousand people.” Shawn clapped for our fallen brother before acting out a step-by-step replay of the entire event by pretending to trip and fake-slam his face into the floor. The slow-motion reenactment had us all in stitches.
“It came untied,” Dane grumbled, fixing us with his droopy, condemning stare. He had what was commonly referred to as bedroom eyes. You know, the kind that made a person look perpetually stoned? Even when Dane wasn’t high, like right now, he still had that ‘Dude, where’s my car?’ expression on his face. And it certainly hadn’t helped his cause when the guy had a spiritual awakening last year and shaved his head. Suddenly those eyes of his took center stage and, truth be told, he creeped the rest of us out in a Steve Buscemi kind of way. “And just so you know, while you dickheads were laughing your asses off, I had blood hemorrhaging from of my nose. I think it might even be broken. So, fuck you all.”
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