by Lux, Vivian
But just because he was happy didn't make him any less of a shitty father. As quickly as he dropped into my life again, my father would always vanish, called back to the road like a man possessed. Sometimes I would wish that he would fail completely, and give up to come back home to me.
But instead he met Crusty Pete Dillingham.
The story of that night is now part of my own personal legend. My dad went to see a show at a local dive bar. When they started the show, nothing came out of the speakers except ear-splitting feedback. The tech ran backstage in a panic. While everyone else was covering their ears, my two-hundred and sixty-pound, bearded father vaulted the stage like an Olympic high jumper and ran back to switch out the mis-plugged cables.
"The first thing I noticed was that his stack was a mess. The second thing I noticed was the stench." My dad would always grin at this point, slapping Crusty Pete on his back.
"I thanked him and told him we just lost a guy," Crusty Pete would add, gamely playing his part in the story. "And if he could get his fat ass up early enough in the morning, we'd have more work for him."
Pete introduced my dad to Bash Gills, the drum tech extraordinaire. He was slumming it in between tours, picking up club gigs here and there. But once his real gig started up again, he'd be able to use a guitar tech that was as fast on his feet as my father.
Right here in the story, Bash always made a point to look up and down my father's considerable bulk. "How the man eat so much and still move so fast, I'll never even begin to understand. It defies both logic and physics." Then my dad would guffaw like it was the first time he'd ever heard that joke, and me and Jaxson would roll our eyes so hard they may as well have fallen out. Then we'd start laughing at each other’s, reactions, goaded on by our shared experience of being teenagers in the weirdest fucking place to be a teenager… ever.
I smiled at the memory before my heart could catch up with my head. And when it did, I felt the sick, hollow feeling that always hit me when I thought about Jaxson Blue. And since I was always thinking of him, I was sick and hollow pretty much always.
The feeling remained as we taxied out into the runway. I scrunched low in my seat, grateful for my tiny frame as I nestled close to the window. The guy sitting next to me ignored me completely, putting in his headphones and promptly falling into a drooling, open-mouthed sleep. Something about the way he completely overlooked me, like I was part of the plane itself, made me think of my stepfather again.
After living out my childhood in the background at Graham's house, playing second fiddle to Graham's kids and losing my mother to being Graham's wife, I then lost my mother for real. The ovarian cancer that took her was swift and merciless, transforming her from tired, but still vital, woman to gasping shell in a matter of eight months, start to finish. She succumbed when I was fifteen, and suddenly Graham looked up and noticed I was there.
"Liliana, I know things haven't always been great between us," he started to say at the kitchen table the night after her funeral.
But I’d had enough. I held up my hands to ward off his apologies. "You don't have to say anything Graham, I've already called my dad."
"Your… dad?" Graham spat the word.
"Yes… my father."
"Liliana, I raised you. I'm your father."
My grief was still way too fresh for me to stay cordial. "You didn't raise anything, Graham. I raised myself while you weren't looking."
His face got really tight around the eyes right then. He sagged his head into his hands and ran his fingers through his thinning hair. "Lily, I know it hasn't always been easy…"
"No shit," I said, loving the way his eyes darted back up to stare at me, shocked that I had the gall to swear at him. "It hasn't been, but it's about to get a hell of a lot easier for you Graham. I'm out of your hair. It's all been arranged."
My suitcase was already packed. When my buttoned-up stepfather stood at the door and watched my grizzled, tattooed father bundle me into his beat-up van, I thought I caught the glimmer of tears in his eyes. For one moment I almost went back to him. My father, the man whose genes I shared, was a complete stranger to me. At least the tight-ass man who was waving goodbye was a known quantity.
But by then, it was too late to look back. I blinked back the tears and repeated "fierce" to myself until I felt slightly better. We started rolling backwards, but there were no engine sounds…
"Stupid piece of shit, start!"
I knew he was swearing at the van, but it was too late. I had already jumped in terror at my father smacking the wheel. I jumped so hard at the anger in his voice that for once in his life, Nails Nesbit noticed me. His huge, ham hock of a hand came out of nowhere to cover mine. "Hey Lily," he said, raspy, but gentle. "I know I ain't always been around like I should've, but you need to know that I will never hurt you, you got that? None of this scaredy-cat shit with me, okay?"
"Okay," I said tightly.
"Good. Now, check your mirror for me?"
"All clear… Dad."
Nails shot me a look of surprise. His eyes were nearly hidden under an explosion of untrimmed eyebrow hair, but I was startled to see that they were the exact same shade of brown as my own.
I had never noticed that.
"Okay Lil, let's hit the road."
The fact that a world tour is no place for a fifteen-year-old never crossed either one of our minds. Doing things properly really wasn't my father's strong point.
Except, for some reason, now it was. For some reason, after all these years, he was going to be a proper married man, and wanted me there with him. It was almost sweet… as sweet as Nails could ever be.
"Fierce," I muttered to myself, and then fell asleep.
Chapter Six
Jax
The sound guy looked like he had never actually gone to sleep last night. Not that I could really judge him. Ever since my mother dropped the bombshell of her impending marriage in my lap, my nights had been filled with tossing, turning, and really frustrating hard-ons about seeing Lily again. Sleep seemed like something I'd have to wait for until after the wedding.
I did have to give Annie credit. Once she makes decisions, there was no dithering around. The happy day was scheduled at their home in two weeks.
And somehow, Nails had convinced Lily to come early to help prep. Every time I tried to clear my head, that thought came by to hit me over the head with an anvil. Lily was coming back.
Lily was landing today.
I had studio time that I couldn't get out of. My labeled booked this time weeks ago, before any of this bullshit happened. So now I had to be a goddamn professional, even though I felt like I was ready to crawl out of my skin.
The bleary-eyed tech—I think his name was “Raven” or “Crow,” or something like that—whatever his name was, he flicked on his mic, and his gruff, whiskey-soaked voice came through my monitor. "Okay Jax, were ready for you."
I nodded. The guitar track that I had laid down last week came blaring in through my mic and I began counting the beats. As I counted, the words that I had written last night played over and over in my head. One good thing about insomnia: it gives you time to write.
Annie was watching me from the booth, leaning against Nails. Two blonde chicks that followed me here giggled as I made eye contact with them. But my eye went right to the bottle of Jack. I held up my hand. "Can you start again please?" I asked the monitor.
Blackbird sighed and grumbled a bit, but dutifully rewound the track. I took a quick nip from the open bottle. These words… the feelings I put down… writing it down was supposed to get rid of the pain, not make it worse. But singing it forced me to feel it all over again, and that was a bad thing. It took another long pull as the guitar track wailed in my ears. Then I opened my mouth to sing.
I was a disaster.
"Can we start again please?" I grunted into the mic, feeling the beads of sweat starting to form along my forehead. Annie leaned forward, her lips twisted into that snarl I knew so well. I was disappointing her, w
asting her time, and money. I could already see the tabloid headline now: "Jaxson Blue, Flash in the Pan, Wasted Son of Rock Royalty in Studio Disaster." It would be yet another scandal, just like the one I started back when I was eighteen and broken hearted over losing Liliana.
Scandal seemed to follow me.
But then again, my very birth was a scandal. Why stop there?
When Annie got pregnant with me, it dominated the tabloids. In a fit of masochism, I had looked them up one day when I was thirteen, pimply, and desperate to find out who my real father was. I spent well into the morning combing through the archives, searching story after story, but never coming any closer to finding out who my dad was. As I searched, I snuck sips from the vodka bottle I had found in the unlocked liquor cabinet, so that by the time Annie came home, I was completely drunk.
"Who the hell is he?" I slurred, slamming into the hallway and blocking her path.
Nails was with her—this was one of those times they were on again, rather than off again. He made this growling noise that I'll never forget, but Annie held up her hand.
"You're drunk," she said this as a statement of fact, like being drunk at thirteen was no big deal.
"Who the hell is he?" I demanded again. Her face swam in front of me, and I blinked a bunch of times. Nails made a disgusted noise, and I realized he thought I was crying. Then I wanted to punch something.
"Who is who?" Annie said.
"You know who! My father, you slut!" The minute the words left my lips I regretted them, but I was too drunkenly pigheaded to apologize like I should have.
I watched Annie's face go white, her nostrils pinch together. I waited for her to scream at me.
Instead she slapped me full across the face. I was already unsteady from the vodka, and the force of her blow knocked me into a pathetic heap on the hallway floor.
Then Annie Blue, my mother, the woman who was supposed to love me more than anything else, stepped right over me, leaving me there to sputter and rage as she and her lover walked back to her bedroom, ignoring me completely. And that was the last time I ever asked about my father.
"Then what did you do?" Lily's chocolate eyes were as wide as saucers as she listened to me. Having her this close, having her hang on every word like this was the biggest fucking ego boost I'd ever had. Sure I was a cocky thing at seventeen, but Liliana Nesbit made me feel like I was king of the whole damn world.
"Well, I vomited all over the floor." She giggled at this, turning the most adorable shade of pink. "Then I stood back up again, and went to bed."
Lil Bit shook her head. "And you guys never talked about it."
"What's to talk about?" I asked her lazily, accepting the whiskey she poured in a glass for me. "Annie made it clear I was never going to find out, not from her anyway." I raised my glass. "But I'll tell you one thing, I never fucking touched vodka again."
Liliana burst out laughing, then padded over to me, her cherry red toenails sinking into the deep pile of the hotel carpet. I opened my arms, and she settled next me with a sigh, using my shoulder as a pillow. "Poor Jaxson," she teased, brushing her fingers down my face.
I was instantly hard for her. I walked around in those days in a state of perpetual hard on, and having her tight little body all snuggled up next to mine did nothing to help that. I was a typical seventeen-year-old, driven solely by lust and hormones, but with Lily it was something more.
Lily was worth waiting for.
"Poor me," I agreed, running my hand along the slip of her waist. "God, you are just the tiniest little thing, I think when we leave again, I'm just going to stuff you in my suitcase and take you with me."
"You probably could."
Her face was so deadly serious that I had to laugh.
"I'm serious!" she protested. "I used to play that game when I was a kid. I called it ‘The Invisibility Game.’ I stuffed myself into these impossible little places and see how long my parents would go before they noticed I was gone."
I leaned back. She told me stories about the so-called parents of hers. "How long?" I asked.
She shook her head, those chocolate eyes registering pain that I hoped that never see again. "Way too fucking long," she said.
"I can't even imagine," I told her, and kissed across her eager lips. "If my Lil Bit was missing for more than fifteen minutes, I'd call out the damn search party. I'd have detectives combing this area with bloodhounds in seconds, I promise you that."
"You are such a weirdo," she sighed.
But I could tell she was happy.
Call it young love, first love, puppy love—whatever the hell I had with her, we were happy. I was happy. Probably the happiest I had ever been. But that was before I made everything go to shit.
Now I was going to have to see her again.
I fully expected her to punch me in the face.
"All right, Jax, I think that's enough for today." Blackbird guy pinched the bridge of his nose, like my singing was causing him pain. It was causing me pain, I knew that much. Feeling relieved and angry in equal measure, I hung up my mic and slunk my way back toward the booth.
"You don't have to say anything. I know," I told Annie.
Annie didn't say anything, but Nails did. "What the hell happened in there?" the big guy asked, showing something like genuine concern.
What was I going to say? The thought of seeing his daughter again had me all thrown off? "Got a lot on my mind," I said curtly.
"I'll send the car, have them take you back to the house," Annie said. Periodically she showed signs of maternal feeling, and it always caught me by surprise.
"Fine. Just let me take a piss." The whiskey had traveled right through me without having any effect. I felt clammy with the stink of failure. I needed a shower, stat.
"I gotta go get Liliana at the airport." Nails smacked a gross kiss on my mother's lips.
"Come back to me soon," she simpered.
"Yeah, I'm out of here," I snarled and pushed my way into the men's room. The flickering fluorescent light made my reflection look sallow and unappealing, the bags under my eyes deep purple, the electric blue of my hair a sickly shade of green. This couldn't be the Jaxson who greeted Liliana for the first time in over year. I needed to get my shit together before she came home to me.
I straightened up and tried to shoot myself a cocky smile. "Hey, Lil Bit," I practiced. "How are you?"
Chapter Seven
Liliana
"Okay, I see you," I told my father, then hung up the phone, shaking my head.
He was in the van. I could not believe he still had that thing.
I was on the sidewalk outside of the airport, hysterically laughing at a van.
My father forced the sticky driver's side door open and emerged to find me nearly weeping with laughter. I wiped my eyes and try to explain, then dissolved into a fit of giggles again. "That's, that's the van…" was all I managed to say.
"Sure is," he growled, patting the battered old relic from the 80s with a fondness he usually reserved for guitars, and only occasionally, me. "She still purrs like a kitten too."
"That's the van you picked me up in." I was shaking my head at the symmetry of it all, wishing I had a notebook out so I could write it down.
But my dad didn't get it. "Yup," he rumbled, picking up my suitcase. "You wanna get going?"
"Sure, Dad." I nodded, my chest deflating slightly. He didn't remember picking me up from Graham's house in this van. The start of our wild adventure together. Or if he did remember, he wasn't sentimental about it like I was.
Stop it, Lily. I settled back in the cracked vinyl seat and tried to compose my thoughts.
But the noise from the radio won't let me think. My father has always kept the radio in the van perpetually on "scan." It was an irritating habit of his, left over from the days when he was an itinerant roadie, picking up jobs here and there. He liked to scan for the bands he'd worked for, then shout and crow about them while I nodded in mute, uncomprehending approval. This
was going back to my very early childhood. Back before he got tagged by a friend of his to load amps for Annie Blue's comeback show and saved the day by recognizing that her amp stack was hooked up backwards.
"We headed to a hotel?" I asked my dad between bursts of static.
"A hotel? No, why in the hell would we do that?" My dad swore and I stiffened, before I realized he was trying to shove his way into a left turn lane at the last minute. When we were on the road, the guys called him Captain Rageball because every time he drove, the slightest thing would set him off.
"Erm, last I knew, you and Annie lived at the Chateau Marmont," I ventured.
"Oh yeah, forgot to tell you, Lil…" He'd been forgetting to tell me a lot of things, it seemed. "Annie and me, we're starting a studio. She wanted it in her own space, so we got our own place."
For a moment, the only noise in the van was the staticky radio changing stations and my own shocked exhalation.
"You bought a house?" I gasped. I couldn't keep the shock out of my voice. "First you tell me you're getting married, now you tell me you’ve bought honest-to-God real estate?"
My dad shot me a shy look as the radio switched stations again. I swear we had already run through the dial ten times. "Guess I'm growin' up, Lil Bit. Took a while, huh?"
I felt a rush of affection for my big, bearded dad and reached out my hand. His huge ham hocks swallowed mine entirely, the way they always had. "My father, the family man," I teased. "Do you 'putter around' in the garage? Wait… have you joined a golf club too?"
"Smartass," my dad growled, letting go of my hand. "You sound like Jax."
The station switched again. As if summoned like a genie from a bottle, the thumping bass of "Cocky" blared out of the speakers.
I froze in my seat, my body flashing between ice-cold water flowing in my veins and hot nausea swimming in my stomach. This song was following me, I swear it was.
"Heard that enough for one lifetime," my father snapped, punching the on/off switch. Uncharacteristic silence flooded the van, the better for me to hear the wild beating of my own heart.
