Always You

by Roxie Noir

  I fuck her harder, faster, and she shouts with her head thrown back, nails digging into my shoulder. I grab her knee and put it over my shoulder, the back of her thigh against my chest, and somehow I get even deeper.

  Darcy gasps my name, shouts it, her hand slides off my shoulder and grabs the sheets in a fist as she clenches around me like she’s about to come. Thank fuck, because I’m unraveling fast, my self-control unspooling with every second.

  I put my hand over her fist, on the sheets, and she lets them go so I can lace my fingers through hers and I hold onto her tight, like she’s my lifeline. Her eyes come open, and she’s sweaty and undone and wild. She grabs my hair and looks me in the eyes.

  “Fuck, Trent,” she gasps.

  And she comes. I can feel it as her whole body tenses, wrapped around me, and in seconds I’m following her over the edge, face buried in her neck as I shout some string of nonsense, coming so hard I think my vision goes blank.

  Even when it’s over, we don’t move. I can feel her heartbeat, her chest move as she breathes, and I’m still wrapped in her.

  Slowly, we unfurl. I flop over next to her, both of us diagonal on the enormous bed, and Darcy rolls over onto her stomach, hair around her face. I think she’s smiling. I reach out and lightly run my knuckles along the lumpy, smooth-skinned new scar on her back.

  “You okay?”

  Darcy raises the one eyebrow I can see, like she thinks it’s a funny question.

  “I’m fine,” she says.

  “I mean your back.”

  “Yeah, I got that. These sheets have a thread count of a million or something, it was like fucking on a cloud,” she teases me.

  I just slide my knuckles carefully along her back. I feel like this situation should have weight, should have gravity, that I should say something meaningful to her right now that could tie what just happened to the years before of us, but I can’t think of a damn thing.

  It doesn’t feel heavy. It feels weightless. I take her arm, tug, and she scoots toward me until her head’s on my shoulder, her other hand drumming patterns on my chest. I stroke her hair, my mind blank.

  “Trent,” she says after a while.

  “Darce.”

  “This wasn’t a bad idea, was it?”

  “This was a great idea.”

  She laughs, her fingers still playing patterns on my chest.

  “Are you still gonna think that tomorrow?”

  “I’ve got a good feeling about it.”

  More drumming. Something else occurs to me.

  “Hey, Darce?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You’re still on the pill, right?”

  She rolls in, resting her chin on one hand, and looks at me like she’s laughing.

  “Don’t you think the time to ask that was ten minutes ago?” she teases.

  “Ten minutes ago I was barely thinking,” I admit.

  “I’m still on it,” she says. “You’re not barebacking groupies right and left, are you?”

  I snort. Before tonight I hadn’t been with anyone in months. Not that I couldn’t have, but random hookups weren’t what I wanted.

  “Don’t you think the time to ask that was ten minutes ago?” I tease right back.

  “I was hoping you’d be a gentleman and wrap it up if you thought you might have super-syphilis,” she says.

  “I’m quite safe with my five-groupie-per-night habit,” I say, and Darcy just rolls her eyes.

  “Glad to hear it,” she deadpans. “You get the other four out of the way before we went trespassing?”

  “Something like that.”

  “I think we left the meat thermometer behind,” she says, turning onto her back, her head still propped up on my chest. “And the baby powder, whatever that was for.”

  “Shit, that was a nice thermometer,” I say. “I could’ve used it for steak or somthing.”

  She just laughs and tells me I can’t cook for shit, and I say I can, and even though we’re naked and we just had insane, explosive, world-ending sex this feels... the same. It feels like everything I liked about us, only with less clothes.

  After a while, Darcy sighs, yawns, looks over at me.

  “I should brush my teeth before I fall asleep,” she says.

  Until a couple years ago, when we all suddenly had money, Darcy’s teeth were constantly giving her problems, because it’s not like any of her foster parents were going to pay for dental work. It was the first thing she spent her Dirtshine money on, and she’s religious about her teeth. Drunk, high, drunk and high, doesn’t matter. She brushes.

  “Are you kicking me out?” I ask, half-teasing.

  She looks over at me, hair spilling onto my chest.

  “You don’t have to go,” she says, her voice suddenly careful. “If you don’t want to.”

  She pauses.

  “I’ve got an extra toothbrush,” she offers, and I laugh.

  “My toothbrush is next door,” I say. “I think I can make it.”

  We sit up. I kiss her, just one more time, then grab a towel, go to my room next door, and get my toothbrush. I bring it back and brush my teeth next to her, both stark naked in her hotel bathroom.

  We get back into her giant bed, and even though there’s enough space for us to both splay out like starfish, she curls against me and I put my arms around her. We fall asleep that way.

  It’s not nearly late enough when I wake up to a knock at the door. I’ve got the sense that it’s been going on for a while, that someone’s been knocking for ages, but I lie there and stare at the ceiling, feeling like my eyes had been glued shut.

  Darcy’s still lying on one of my arms. The knock sounds again, louder, and she suddenly wakes up with a snort.

  “The fuck is that?” she asks, somewhere between baffled and furious.

  “Door.”

  I’m still half in the strange dream I was having, where I was trying to chase an incredible number of iguanas from our recording studio, but I sit up, legs over the edge of the bed.

  “I’ll get it.”

  “It’s my room,” she says, plopping her face down onto her pillow. She sighs dramatically, then rolls over, sitting up as well. “I got it.”

  She grabs a robe from the bathroom, tugs it around herself. I flop backward onto the bed and listen to her walk to the front door. I wonder, briefly, if the bed is visible from the door, but I decide it’s not.

  “Hey,” Darcy says, opening the door.

  “Hi,” says Gavin, who sounds far too fucking awake for — I check the clock — 9:30.

  “Shit,” Darcy mumbles. “Is it time for stuff already?”

  “Did I wake you?” Gavin says, obviously teasing her. Dick.

  “Guess.”

  “Sorry,” he says, and he sounds like he’s trying not to smile. “I was actually just looking for Trent, I wanted to talk over a slight guitar modification I’m thinking of but he’s not in his room or the lobby and he’s not answering his phone. You’ve not seen him, have you?”

  There’s a long, long pause.

  “Me?” she finally asks.

  Listening in the bedroom, I put a hand over my mouth so I don’t start laughing.

  “Yes,” Gavin says.

  “Trent?”

  “Yes.”

  “I haven’t... uh, I don’t know? He could be anywhere? Like sometimes he goes and walks around or something, maybe he didn’t take his phone but I’m sure he’ll be back soon. I haven’t seen him, that’s all just a guess.”

  “If you do see him, would you mind telling him I’m looking for him?”

  “Sure,” Darcy says, then yawns.

  “Thanks,” Gavin says. “Go back to bed, rehearsal’s not ’til noon.”

  “Thank fuck,” Darcy mutters, and the door closes.

  She shuffles back in, already throwing the robe off, then crawls back into bed.

  “Gavin’s looking for you,” she mumbles, her face already on the pillow.

  “I heard.”
r />   Practically on cue, something buzzes very faintly in the other room of the suite.

  “Bet that’s him.”

  “We can talk later,” I say, rolling over and carefully throwing an arm over her back. “Plenty of time.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Darcy

  When Trent leaves later that morning, he kisses me goodbye, and it’s electric and warm and familiar, all at once.

  “See you in thirty,” he rumbles, kissing my forehead. I’m in the robe again, still sleepy. “Oh, and Darce?”

  I raise my eyebrows.

  “If we’re not going to tell Gavin and Joan about this, you might consider lying better,” he teases.

  “He just thought I was tired,” I protest. “Also, shut up.”

  Trent laughs, then he’s through the door. I turn, yawning, for the kitchen, and have to step over a pile of clothing.

  And I stop. I look at the front door, then back at the clothes strewn everywhere.

  And I realize that this morning, Trent’s jeans were exactly in the line of sight from the door, clothes practically pointing a giant arrow to my bedroom.

  I rub my eyes and sigh.

  I could have had anyone in here, I tell myself. Gavin has no reason to think it was Trent.

  Besides us coming in at two in the morning yesterday.

  I pour some amount of ground coffee into a filter, pour water into the reservoir, and just watch the coffee drip into the carafe for several moments.

  Whatever, he’ll say something if he’s going to get upset about it, I tell myself. Nothing I can do now, so fuck it.

  Rehearsal goes way, way better that day. Trent stops fucking up songs he knows by heart, Gavin’s in a better mood, and Joan seems like she’s taking to us like a fish to water. I think we’re all fucking relieved that yesterday’s disaster doesn’t get repeated.

  Afterward, we all go out for dinner together at the sole Thai restaurant in Tallwood, where Gavin has zero beers, Trent has one, and Joan and I each have a couple. Thirty minutes later she’s telling me a story about the time one of her bandmates got silly string in another’s hair and they didn’t speak for six months.

  Gavin and Trent are laughing politely, Joan’s laughing so hard she snorts, and I’ve got tears rolling down my face.

  Fuck Eddie, I think. We’re still a band without him.

  Trent sleeps over again. I’m pretty tipsy, and even though he’s not, we only make it as far as the dining table in my suite before I’ve gotten us both out of our clothes. Sober Darcy wants to fuck Trent, but drunk Darcy really really wants to fuck Trent.

  It’s even louder than the night before.

  The next week is all pretty much like that, though without the part where I get drunk. We rehearse with Joan, we hang out afterward, Trent sleeps in my bed, we wake up in the morning and do it again.

  The last day before we leave again, we end rehearsal early so I can have a last checkup at the hospital. Trent insists on coming with me, even though I’m fine, and even though I protest I don’t mind.

  Actually, when I’m sitting in the waiting room for forty-five minutes, I’m pretty glad he came.

  They clear me to go back on tour, which is good, since I’m doing it no matter what my doctor says. My back still can’t take the friction of the bass strap rubbing across it, so I have to sit, but otherwise, I’m good to go.

  Afterward, we get delivery pizza, a bottle of wine, and hang out in Gavin’s suite. When we show up, he’s on the phone, so we put the pizza down on the coffee table and flop on the couch.

  “I’m just saying, I don’t know how many interpretations there are for that,” he says, but he’s grinning. “Seemed like quite a decided thing.”

  Marisol? I mouth at him, and he nods.

  “Listen, Trent and Darcy have just shown up with pizza so I’m off,” he says, then listens. “Sure, if they’re amenable.”

  He turns to us.

  “You willing to say hello to Marisol?”

  I just hold my hand out for the phone.

  “She says yes,” Gavin says. “Love you. Talk tomorrow.”

  “How’s L.A.?” I ask.

  “Same as always,” Marisol says, sounding chipper. “How’s your back doing? Don’t let Gavin talk you into doing shows if you can’t yet.”

  I just laugh. Gavin’s got a piece of pizza in his mouth and raises one eyebrow at me.

  “I’m fine,” I say. “I got the all-clear and everything. And we got a throne for me to use on stage.”

  “Ooh, tell me about the throne,” she says.

  Marisol and I chat for a few more minutes. Joan comes in, carrying a half-gallon of ice cream, and puts it in the freezer, then sits in an armchair and grabs a slice of pepperoni.

  Trent talks to Marisol for a bit. I eat pizza, drink a glass of wine, and discuss Bigfoot theories with Gavin and Joan. Joan thinks it’s all bullshit, and I think she’s probably right, but Gavin won’t quit winding her up.

  We open another bottle of wine. Nigel shows up and practically chugs two glasses, then sits on the couch and actually seems to relax for once.

  We finish off the pizza, the wine, and the ice cream. We stay up later than we should, since everything is packed and we’re supposed to be on the road early tomorrow, but this is nice. It feels good, like we’re a real band again and everything.

  Of course, I thought that about Eddie sometimes. Maybe I wasn’t wrong. Maybe the members can change sometimes and the band can stay. Things can take a lot of forms.

  I wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of Trent’s phone buzzing like crazy on his bedside table. He’s already sitting up, blinking, staring at the screen like it’s written in hieroglyphics.

  “The fuck?” I mutter.

  He just shakes his head.

  “It’s fucking four in the morning or something.”

  “Sorry,” he says, unplugging his phone and swinging his legs over the side of the bed, his voice rough and grainy with sleep. “Trent Ryder,” he answers it.

  There’s a long pause. He looks at me, then walks out of the bedroom, still stark naked, and pulls the door behind him, though he doesn’t quite close it all the way.

  “How the fuck are you calling me?” I can hear him ask, and that wakes me up.

  It’s a bad phone call. I can tell.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Trent

  “I’m definitely not putting five thousand dollars into your account if you won’t even tell me what the fuck for!” I say. I’m trying to keep my voice down, but it’s not fucking working.

  “I’m not asking for a handout, just an advance,” Eli says in his flat, affectless voice, the one he’s had since he went to prison.

  “You realize that funding your commissary account at all is a fucking handout, don’t you?”

  No response.

  “The fuck are you going to do with five thousand dollars? Buy ten thousand cigarettes?”

  “It wouldn’t buy that many.”

  “That’s not my point, Eli,” I say, shoving my hand through my hair. I’m pacing back and forth in the living room in Darcy’s suite, and I’m trying to stay calm despite the rage and panic spiking through me.

  “I’m just saying.”

  I take a deep breath and turn on my heel, stalking back toward her kitchen.

  “You need to tell me why you’re calling me in the dead middle of the night from prison and asking me for five thousand dollars,” I say, trying to control my voice. “Fuck, Eli, you need to tell me how you’re calling me at four in the morning, because I’m goddamn sure this call isn’t state-approved—”

  “The only thing I need is the money,” he says, and suddenly there’s a snarl in his dead, flat voice. “I don’t owe you shit, Trent, and I don’t have to tell you shit.”

  “And I don’t have to give you shit.”

  “Are you really gonna do this to me?” he asks, the snarl quiet and dim, but still there.

  In a strange way,
it feels good to finally piss my brother off, because for years whenever he calls, whenever I’ve visited, it’s felt like I’m talking to a brick wall.

  “Yeah, I fucking am,” I say.

  There’s a long pause on the other end of the line, so long I almost think he’s hung up.

  “You’ve always been like this,” he says. “You get lucky and think you shit gold, and I get the short end of the stick and you won’t even—”

  “Don’t even start, Eli.”

  “I don’t know what else you call it. You get the nice fucking grandma judge and she gives you fucking parole, I get the hardass who tosses me into a prison upstate run by Mexican gangs.”

  I take the phone away from my ear and stalk back across the living room, because I’m seeing fucking black. Eli was there the day everything happened. He fucking knows why it did, and he fucking knows it’s not the same.

  “I didn’t beat someone to death on camera,” I say through clenched teeth, even though I know I shouldn’t argue back. I should hang up and go back to bed, because fighting with Eli’s never done a damn thing but piss me off.

  “You still got off light,” he says, voice back to flat. “And now you can’t even help someone who didn’t.”

  “I’m not having this conversation,” I tell him. I should have told him that the moment I answered the phone. “Unless you’re going to tell me what the money’s for or how the fuck you’re calling right now.”

  Silence. There’s a shuffling noise in the background.

  “Bye, Trent,” he finally says, and the line goes silent.

  I keep pacing furiously. He’s always done this, fucking always, and of course my little brother can piss me off more than anyone else in the world.

  But he makes me fucking livid, the way he can’t take responsibility, the way he constantly thinks the world is out to get him. The way he blames me for his shit.