by Ren Benton
She stuck to the subject he seemed willing to discuss. “Does running help?”
“If it’s enough of a pounding.” He took a deep breath and released it in a white puff. “This qualified right up until my body gave out. Now my head is screaming reminders of how I got in this condition.”
“Your condition seemed pretty great when keeping up with you was turning my lungs inside out.”
“I was showing off, which is why I’m so pissed this happened in front of you.”
“I’ve seen you worse.” Bleary-eyed. Vomiting blood. In a hospital bed with tubes coming out of him. Given those options, she’d vote for winded-and-pissed every time.
The bitter note returned for an encore. “I didn’t come to prove nothing has changed.”
His perpetual need to prove himself hadn’t changed a bit. Being his appointed judge was as exhausting as ever. “Jesus, Lex, do you think I can’t see that you’ve changed? I’ve seen it even from a distance. I’ve heard it in your music.”
He stiffened beside her, and his voice went flat and suspicious. “What have you heard?”
He’d always been gifted. Saying he’d never written a bad song was fact, not flattery. There was no flaw in any of his albums, even the one that wasn’t up to his personal standards, but there was a distinct difference in the two most recent, written at a distance from rehab and all that came before — more focus, more determination, pushing boundaries into unfamiliar territory that was nonetheless so intrinsically Lex Perry, his earlier work seemed like mere foreshadowing.
“You’re clearheaded. You’re honest, even when it hurts.” The fog he’d labored under in the past had burned away, exposing sharp, dangerous edges he used to flay his subject, which was always, one way or another, himself. Amnesia, for all its thematic references to letting go of the past, was a merciless condemnation of imperfection that left her heart raw and sore upon initial listen. “Especially when it hurts.”
“I never lied to you.”
Keeping a secret like I drink suicidally when I’m out of your sight was dishonesty by omission. So was never sharing what he was drinking to escape. She learned more about what he’d been going through from his music than he’d ever come out and told her.
But the time when she might have deserved explanations from him had passed. Her continued guessing at his motivations had already dripped poison on their current working relationship. “I’ve been afraid for the past two months that this was a... joke.” That wasn’t the right word, but her guilt for attributing malice to him bit deep enough without full disclosure. “I wondered if you’d let me think there was a possibility you’d do the music, put it off until the last minute, until it was too late to get anyone else, and then tell me no.”
His grim tone had teeth. “You thought I’d sabotage you.”
She deserved to have that chunk torn out of her. What did she expect half a minute after praising his clarity and brutal honesty? “I wondered. I prepared for the worst. But I know what you’re like when you want something.” She would never forget the way he used to look at her, like he’d unearthed a great mystery of the universe and wouldn’t rest until his understanding was complete. “You had that look when you were talking about the movie last night. Lex Fucking Perry on an unstoppable mission to make something his.”
“Sure it’s not part of the joke? The clock is still ticking. I could kill another couple of weeks, give you nothing, and leave you stranded.”
“You won’t.” She’d known before she left him alone in the studio, but conviction sank into her marrow now, even as he proved he knew the best way to screw her over. He was right, in a way — he had never spoken a lie to her.
And he’d said he wanted to be the one to bring the music out of her movie.
He lengthened his stride to get away from her, and she knew he wouldn’t wait for her to catch up this time. She trotted after him and placed her hand on his arm. He snatched away from her touch and turned on her, lips compressed, nostrils flared. She’d insulted his integrity and wounded honor he would swear he didn’t have even while charging into battle to avenge an assault against it.
She hadn’t lost her knack for attacking when she was only trying to explain she was on his side. While rationale was everything to her, Lex cared only about outcome, and to him, everything came to a screeching halt when she thought badly of him.
She stuffed her unwelcome hands into her pocket and got to the point he would have wanted her to make up front. “There’s no one else I would trust with anything that matters as much to me as this movie does.”
His defensive anger drained more quickly than it had formed, leaving behind only the residue of weariness he’d shown in the kitchen. “I won’t let you down, Gin.”
It had the weight of a vow, way out of proportion to the task at hand, but Lex Perry didn’t know how to do anything halfway. “I knew that as soon as you said yes.”
The moment the house came into view through the trees, the sheer, stubborn will preventing Lex from falling on his face deserted him. He scrambled to replace it with promises of an all-day nap if the meat puppet he piloted carried him all the way to a bed. Gin had been one wince from putting him in an ambulance and wouldn’t object if he blew off a day of work. Playing hooky would prolong his stay another twenty-four hours.
As soon as he showered, he’d be in that studio even if he had to roll down the stairs to get there, but he had a long tradition to uphold of bargaining himself through pain.
The glitches in his body’s communication system were a lingering consequence of devoted alcoholism. His brain didn’t sound the alarm when he overdid something. There was no perception of discomfort to warn him to tap the brakes. Nothing stopped his acceleration except slamming into the wall.
Today’s collision left him with a skull full of broken glass lacerating the backs of his eyeballs, shriveled lungs, and a stomach determined to extrude through his mouth. He hadn’t felt so physically miserable since going through withdrawal, but at least Gin hadn’t been around to see that.
As badly as he’d wanted her miles away from today’s humiliation, he wouldn’t have told her to go on alone if he hadn’t known her need to fix broken things would keep her close. He might not be in any condition to play bodyguard, but as long as her body didn’t wander too far, he could collapse at the feet of a threat and trip it while she ran to safety.
Not to be outdone by mere bodily frailty, his mental health decided it would be the perfect time to split open like an overstuffed trash bag and spew reeking slime on the only person unfortunate enough to be close to him. Gin couldn’t have been more supportive. She acknowledged his changes, she said she believed in him — all things he wanted to hear from her — but his thorny brain hooked onto her uncertainty and became hopelessly entangled, unable to let it go.
How dare she have even a moment of doubt about him just because he’d never been anything but unreliable in the past?
He had no reason to be angry with her, so he turned the anger on himself, leading to the launch of a war in which he was the only combatant and had to invent phantoms to fight. No wonder he was so fucking exhausted.
The steps rising toward the front door looked as daunting as Everest.
Not even the motivation of a perfectly toned ass wrapped in the loving embrace of tight leggings ascending ahead of him could inspire his feet to climb. If he died in a driveway in Colorado, ten yards from shelter, at least his last sight on this earth would be a pretty one.
Gin turned and arched a brow that questioned his lack of progress.
Stalling to give his energy one more shot at rallying, he knocked his shoe against one of the layered sandstone slabs. “Good ol’ Pennsylvania bluestone.”
“You two know each other?”
“We formerly shared the title for Pride of Susquehanna County.”
“Who has it now?”
“Fracking.”
“Oh, that bitch.”
The teasing curve
of her lips sank into his chest and dragged him up the first step.
“Is your dad still there?”
“Making the employment rounds at the gas companies.” After getting fired from every other job in a fifty-mile radius. Cliff Perry couldn’t be trusted to show up sober or on time, or drive, or do anything involving good judgment or safety — like father, like son. “Basically, they pay him to go to bars and shout about how beneficial the industry is to the community.”
“At least he’s keeping busy.” She took a backwards step up another level.
He followed, disgusted that they’d been reduced to such transparent maneuvers but too close to weeping with gratitude to be a prick about it again. “Will the polite chitchat extend to Mom?”
“Your vicious mother has been sending me pictures of that gorgeous Victorian she’s renovating.” She ducked her head to check her footing. “But Claire isn’t discreet, so you knew that already.”
Yeah, he knew, but his mother was less forthcoming than he would have liked on that one subject. He’d filed away each of the few words she saw fit to share. “She says you’re a cheapskate.”
“She snapped up those salvaged glass doorknobs this cheapskate found, didn’t she? And she can’t say it was a mistake to put that obscenely expensive flocked wallpaper on an accent wall instead of covering every wall and ceiling in the house.”
One velvet wall was too Interview with the Vampire for his taste, but he approved of anything that made his mom happy. “She appreciates your style guidance.”
“She appreciates my envy.” She reached the door. “It keeps her young.”
He planted one foot on the final step. Almost there. “Do you still have the house in New Orleans?”
Her smile withered. In the time it took to blink, she cleared the crumbling husk and installed another in its place, but the replacement looked like a cheap reproduction. “What else would I do with it?”
Shit. He’d blurted the first thought that crossed his mind to keep her talking about decorating and real estate, his rotted brain a second too slow to remind him her brother died in that house. So many ghouls had offered to buy it for twice its bank value so they could turn it into a morbid tourist attraction, she would never trust anyone enough to transfer ownership. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”
Her eyes widened as if an apology from him was unheard of — which, five years ago, it would have been. Her lips shifted, testing and rejecting words. She finally settled on, “We’re out of practice and bound to step on each other’s toes. Let’s call it even and forget about it.”
He’d like to know how his stupid swipe at her deepest wounds could possibly make them even, but she cringed as a frigid wind swept across the stoop, and his priorities changed. Keeping her warm was one responsibility he’d always been able to fulfill.
“Forget what?” He stretched his arm past her and pushed the door open.
After a shower hot enough to redden his skin, Lex had inched away from death’s door. He threw on clothes and veered toward the kitchen, attracted by noise and the scent of coffee. The studio beckoned from the other direction, but not giving the kids a sendoff would be a dick move.
“Morning!” Piper singsonged when he joined the gang.
Ethan waved the coffee pot at him. “Plenty of liquid life to go around.”
“My ulcers regretfully decline.”
Ethan winced. “If you’re trying to make me feel sorry for you, mission accomplished.”
Matt hunched over the island, protecting his cup. “You’ll change your mind when he’s hovering over you, sucking up all your java air.”
Lex hovered over him. “I don’t see your name on it.” He sucked up as much air as his lungs would hold.
“Mo-o-o-o-m,” Matt whined.
Gin rapped the handle of a cast iron skillet with a spatula, making it ring. Her hair was damp from her own shower, and she’d returned to her uniform of lumberjack flannel over jeans. “Alexander, quit teasing your brother. Matthew, you don’t own the air.”
Since she’d kept the scolding equitable, Lex didn’t stick out his tongue while putting the width of the island between himself and the air hog.
Gin arched a brow as if she knew he’d thought about it. When his behavior remained angelic, her gaze dropped to the Wonder Woman logo emblazoned across his chest.
“Today called for a hero.”
She sent a plate loaded with a pile of golden potato cubes and a wedge of vegetable-studded frittata sliding across the quartz toward him.
“And you are she.” Dicing the amount of produce on his plate would have taken him half an hour, never mind enough to feed five. There sure as hell wouldn’t be food on the table already. “Did I pull an Ichabod Crane, or was Trouble & Toil based on the true story of your magical abilities?”
“Neither. I was bitten by a radioactive scheduling app that gave me the super power of organization.” She lifted a tea bag from her mug and used the string to strangle the water out of it. “I prepped everything last night and threw it in the oven when we got back from our run.”
That sort of thinking ahead might as well be magic, an unnatural gift compared to the mundane spontaneity that kept him hurtling through life without a clue what the future would bring. The last time he tried to plan a couple of hours ahead for a pot roast, he left the house on some minor errand, got distracted by a game of pick-up basketball followed by a jam session, and came home nine hours later to an oven containing something as hard and dehydrated as a hunk of firewood. Since then, he’d stuck to meals like stir-fry that could be completed within his twenty-minute attention span and slow-cooker fare that thrived on neglect.
Neither method resulted in crispy-shelled potatoes with insides as fluffy as meringue. “Good god, these are indecent.”
She rested her hip against the counter. “Can I quote you if I go the celebrity cookbook route?”
“On the condition you call them NC-17 Nuggets.”
“Deal. Ninety-nine more recipes and one friend in publishing to go.”
His sprawling list of casual acquaintances had to include someone at least publishing-adjacent. He didn’t network because endless introductions and meaningless chitchat were his kink. Who was it that pestered him about writing a memoir? He hated the idea of making his life story more of a spectacle than it already was, but making Gin’s cookbook a condition might make confronting that much self-disgust worthwhile.
The mental search for someone who might be useful to Gin was interrupted by Matt being stricken with a neck spasm. His head jerked toward Lex several times in rapid succession.
Gin paused with her mug inches from her lips and blinked deliberately at the young master of subtlety. “Do you know the name of the band that does the song ‘Your Timing Couldn’t Be Worse’?”
Lex cut into eggs even fluffier than the potatoes, too well fed to be annoyed by the manipulative brat recruiting Gin to beg on his behalf. “I do. The band is Out of a Job. The album is called Don’t Drag Her into This. I hear they’re looking for a drummer.”
The industry bulletin cured Matt’s motor malfunction for the time being.
Within the hour, the travelers had been stuffed full of food, a care package of healthy snacks for the road had changed hands, and the luggage had been loaded.
Piper had forged strong enough bonds with Gin and Ethan overnight to make her clingy and weepy as they said goodbye. In anticipation of his turn, Lex stuck near the Suburban so he could pick her up, put her in the passenger seat, and close the door before he got drenched.
Matt looked at the two bags in the back. “Looks empty without your gear.”
Lex agreed a cargo hold not stuffed with instruments was a travesty, but he wasn’t giving up his guitars to justify the cavernous vehicle. “Don’t get used to it. This time next year, it’ll be full of playpens, strollers, and diaper bags.”
Matt shot a glance toward his wife and wiped his palms on his jeans. “Slow down, man.”
Lex wasn’t the one racing into marriage and fatherhood at twenty-two, but his foot may have put some pressure on the gas pedal. He’d snatched Matt out of Wyoming when he barely met legal standards for adulthood. He might have proceeded at a more leisurely pace if not caught up in the whirlwind of being in a rock band.
He could blow off Matt’s worry with assurances everything would be fine, but when had platitudes ever made anyone feel better? He had no idea what the kid needed to hear. “How are you holding up?”
Matt flinched as if the question was a blind-side jab. “Good. Scared,” he revised. “Like the worst stage fright ever.”
That Lex could relate to. “When it’s showtime, you’ll be too busy doing the job to be scared.”
“I hope so.” The corners of Matt’s mouth drooped. “On the bright side, I have zero nerves to spare for the tour.”
“It’ll be nice not to have to drag your head out of the toilet to get you on stage.” Under the circumstances, one long-running gag might be contributing unnecessary worry about inability to support a family. Lex could ease Matt’s mind on that score, at least. “I’m not going to fire you.”
“I know, you grumpy bastard. But you’re never going to promote me to partner, either.”
The whisper of guilt Lex occasionally heard when working on a Gone & Forgotten album in selfish isolation remained dead silent. His was the only name on this invitation, and he never had any intention of sneaking in a plus one. “Did you honestly think there was a chance in hell I’d let anyone else touch Gin’s movie?”
“Nah. That would be like sleeping with your wife.” Matt slammed the hatch closed and flashed a cheeky grin. “But next time I ask, it’ll be so inoffensive by comparison, you’ll have to say yes.”
A sensible person would have quit under his stifling influence — about two years ago, according to the band’s historical precedent — but Matt kept pushing ahead, undaunted, as if he had a written guarantee there would be a reward for perseverance, and nothing Lex said to the contrary discouraged him.
