Never Enough: A Rockstar Romance

by Roxie Noir

  “Am I living in a telenovela?” I ask, eyes still closed. “This is absurd.”

  “Hard to say, given as how I’m also in it,” Gavin says. “But you’ve not fainted dramatically nor met your long-lost twin who’s turned out evil, so I don’t think you are.”

  “I did think I was dissolving.”

  “That’s less telenovela and more after school special about the dangers of drugs,” he teases. “I should have filmed you, could have scared a whole generation off the devil’s weed.”

  “They had those in England, too?”

  “Of course,” he says. “And they didn’t work there either, trust me.”

  Another car honks and then goes around us, squealing its tires as it turns onto the main road. My phone buzzes, another regularly-capitalized email from Valerie, something more about Eddie and Gavin’s supposed feud from the looks of it.

  Gavin reaches over and takes my phone. This time, I don’t argue.

  “Fuck this,” he says, dropping it into his cupholder and adding his. “We’re going on a bloody date with no phones, no one else, and no bullshit.”

  He takes my hand and kisses it.

  “And we’re going to have a delightful goddamn time, though I do have a problem.”

  “Get in line,” I tease. “Everyone’s got a problem.”

  “I’ve got no idea where to take you that we’ll not be recognized.”

  Now I laugh.

  “It won’t be hard,” I say.

  “I’m quite famous, you know.”

  “Turn left and trust me.”

  He grins, kisses my hand one more time, and then we drive off.

  We slide into a half-circle vinyl booth, and a waitress hands us menus, then disappears. Gavin looks around curiously. No one looks back. He puts one arm around me.

  “What’s this place called again?” he asks.

  “It’s ‘the Korean restaurant with the booths near 6th and Vermont,’” I tell him. “If that needs clarifying, it’s the one with the random portraits of European royalty everywhere and the lamps shaped like weird Cupids.”

  He’s quiet for a moment, looking at a huge painting of a woman with a huge dress and a neck ruff on the wall opposite us, over another couple in another booth. I have no idea why this Korean restaurant has these huge paintings everywhere, but they do.

  “Is that our Queen Bess?” he finally asks.

  I tilt my head.

  “Bess?”

  “You know, Bessie Tudor, the virgin queen?” he says. “Do American schools teach you nothing of proper history?”

  “I know all about how we dumped your tea into a harbor and then kicked your asses,” I say.

  Gavin grins at me, rubbing my shoulder with his thumb.

  “You colonials have always had quite the attitude.”

  “We earned it via that ass-kicking,” I say, laughing.

  “Can’t even spell correctly,” he goes on. “Call it soccer, make abominable tea.”

  “Do you even drink tea?”

  “Not here I don’t,” he says.

  “At least we don’t have a dish called mushy peas,” I point out, laughing. “I still remember the day that I found out it really was just peas mushed together.”

  “And what’s wrong with that?”

  “Everything,” I say.

  “I bet you’ve not even had blood pudding or haggis,” he says. “Then you’d know questionable food.”

  “Is haggis the sheep stomach?”

  “It is. Technically it’s Scottish, not that they’re known for fine cuisine either, just bloody good alcohol.”

  “The drunker you are, the better haggis is?” I ask.

  “Right,” Gavin says.

  The waitress comes back. I order the same thing I always get, spicy tofu soup, and Gavin says he’ll have what I’m having. She looks skeptical of him but doesn’t say anything.

  “I told you my father was Scottish, right?” Gavin asks. “He made it a point of pride for us to have haggis at least once a year when I was growing up. It’s actually not quite as bad as you’d imagine.”

  I settle back against his arm and lean into his shoulder. He’s told me his father was Scottish at least twice already, but there’s something oddly comforting about the re-telling. It feels intimate that I already know this about him, that we’ve talked so much he’s forgotten what he’s told me.

  “I refuse to believe that,” I say.

  “Hand to God, I swear he’s Scottish. Talks like the fat bloke from Austin Powers.”

  I roll my eyes, because we both know what I meant.

  “And he plays the bagpipes while climbing mountains in a kilt?” I tease.

  “Now you’re just parroting stereotypes,” Gavin says, taking a long drink of water. “Though I did used to own a kilt. Might still be somewhere in my mum’s house.”

  I narrow my eyes, looking at Gavin and trying to imagine him in a kilt, because I can’t quite.

  “And now you’re thinking exactly the same thing all American birds think about men in kilts,” he says, leaning back and grinning.

  No underwear?

  “No pockets?” I ask, doing my best to sound innocent.

  “That we’ve got naught on underneath,” he says, laughing. “I swear it’s the only thing women know about Scotland.”

  My face gets warm. I try to act nonchalant, but suddenly all I can think about is Gavin’s dick, huge and hard as steel in my hand. How I want him somewhere besides my hand.

  “Is that even true?” I ask.

  “Depends on the Scotsman, doesn’t it?” he says, leaning in closer. “Unless you’re asking me what I wear underneath. In which case I could give you a definitive answer.”

  “And if I’m not asking?”

  I’m trying not to smile.

  “Then you’ll never know, will you?”

  “I think I’ve got a pretty good idea,” I say. “Unless you were going to bring all that up to confirm that, yes, you’ve got your Kermit the Frog underpants on whenever you’re wearing the kilt.”

  Gavin just laughs.

  “Would that at least be a letdown?” he asks. “If you’re going to talk me in circles, the least you can do is admit you were thinking about what I’ve got underneath.”

  And now my face is on fire, because yes, I was thinking about his junk, of course I was thinking about it.

  You just gave him a hand job in a closet, I remind myself. Shouldn’t you be a bit beyond blushing at the thought of seeing Gavin’s dick?

  “It’s quite all right,” he goes on. “Think about it all you like, you’re very pretty when you blush.”

  “I don’t know why I’m blushing,” I say. “I’ve only got one sock on right now because...”

  I trail off, fumbling for words.

  “The other’s spunk-crusted and in a dumpster?” Gavin says, though he at least keeps his voice low.

  I cover my face with my hands, trying not to laugh and praying that no one can hear us. When I finally look up he’s still grinning.

  “Sorry about that,” I say. “It was very spur of the moment and I didn’t quite, uh, consider the consequences.”

  “Don’t be,” he says, pulling me in and kissing the top of my head. “It was perfect.”

  “Was it?”

  “No, but I wouldn’t trade it.”

  The waitress appears, two bowls of soup on a tray, and sets them in front of us. They’re both in stone bowls, both still boiling rapidly. I thank her and grab my chopsticks, while Gavin does the same.

  “Not quite what I was expecting,” he says, poking the chopsticks at the bubbling red broth.

  25

  Gavin

  “You like Korean, right?” Marisol asks. “I didn’t actually think to ask.”

  “And you don’t think it’s a bit late now I’ve got a bubbling cauldron in front of me?” I tease.

  “I did think you’d speak up if you wanted something else.”

  “As far as I know I
quite like it,” I say. “We played in Seoul last year.”

  I swish the chopsticks through the broth and come up with a complete-but-small shrimp, head and all.

  “Just eat it whole, it’s so small the eyes aren’t even squishy,” Marisol says.

  I shrug and pop it into my mouth. She’s right. The eyes aren’t squishy.

  “What’s Seoul like?” she asks.

  I just stir my soup for a moment, trying to think of what to tell her because to be honest, I hardly recall Seoul. I hardly remember anywhere that we went on tour. I’ve been to incredible places around the world — Tokyo, Melbourne, Moscow, Rio de Janeiro — and they’re not much better than a hazy smudge in my memory.

  Strangely, one of the worst parts of being clean has been realizing everything I missed.

  “I don’t really remember,” I say, finally. “I just know that every time I showed up in a new city there was inevitably someone waiting for us with some high-grade junk. It was one of the benefits of being quite famously strung out.”

  “Oh,” she says. “That... sucks.”

  “It was quite convenient at the time,” I say. “It meant I didn’t do a lot of sight-seeing, but I also didn’t wander the alleyways of a foreign city at three in the morning looking for a fix.”

  “Would you have?”

  I almost laugh, because of course I would have.

  “Yes,” I say simply. “And I’ve done far stupider.”

  “Do I want to know?”

  My heart clenches in my chest, because I know she doesn’t really understand. If she has to ask whether I’d have gone to the worst parts of dangerous cities alone, late at night, to get a fix, she doesn’t understand.

  Because books can’t explain that part of it, only ugly experience. I can’t help but want to hide that part of myself from Marisol. I want her to think of me as this Gavin, clean and sober and charming, not the track-marked junkie mess who couldn’t finish a sentence. Not the guy who once traded his girlfriend’s shoes for a dime bag.

  Even if that bloke is right below the surface, waiting for me to slip up. Even if I think he’ll probably always be there and I’ll always have to live with knowing it.

  “If you do, I’ll tell you,” I say.

  She swallows. I steel myself, because the mood between us has suddenly gotten somber and serious. As it does when you discuss heroin problems.

  “I’m sorry, this got dark all of a sudden,” she says, stirring her soup and not looking at me. “I didn’t mean to be such a downer.”

  “Right, you’re the downer here,” I say, half-laughing. “Not the years-long addiction to fucking heroin.”

  She smiles and makes a face, concentrating on grabbing a piece of slippery tofu with her chopsticks.

  “You can ask me anything,” I say. “I’ll answer. Promise.”

  She grabs another shrimp out of her soup and holds it in her chopsticks, waiting for it to cool, looking at it like the question she wants to ask is written on its shell.

  Finally, she looks at me.

  “Do you still miss it?”

  I’m tempted to say no, of course not, it was terrible and I’ll never go back, but I tell her the truth.

  “Every day,” I say. “Shooting up feels like floating on a magical cloud and drinking good whiskey while getting a blowjob from an angel, not a single care in the world. Like nothing at all can touch you.”

  “That good?”

  “I barely remember my first kiss or the first time I got laid,” I tell her. “But the first time I got high is still seared perfectly into my memory, fucking clear as daylight.”

  “So it’s better than sex?” she asks, looking me in the eye.

  “It’s better than some sex. My first experience in that department didn’t exactly produce fireworks.”

  “Is it better than fireworks-producing sex?”

  I swear she’s faintly turning pink. I resist the temptation to ask if she’d like to help me find out and instead answer the question, like I said I would.

  “Hard to say,” I tell her. “Being on heroin does make one’s sexual abilities a bit lackluster, so it’s been quite a while since there were fireworks.”

  I have nodded out during the act before. More than once. I don’t mention that part.

  “Everything else was rubbish, though. When I wasn’t high, I was waiting to get high, figuring out how to get high, or finding my next fix. I’ve blown out half my veins, so drawing blood or getting an IV into me is a complete fucking disaster. The strongest painkiller I can ever take is ibuprofen.”

  That’s not to mention the nasty things I’ve done, the relationships I’ve destroyed, the people I’ve alienated. For fuck’s sake, someone died, and even though it wasn’t my fault, I’ll always carry it with me.

  But that’s all deeper and darker than I want to go into right now.

  “How did you start?” she asks.

  I feel a bit like I’m on the witness stand and she’s questioning me. But then again, that’s what I get for going on a date with a lawyer. Future lawyer. Whichever.

  “The first time I snorted heroin I was seventeen,” I say. “A friend of a friend was playing a show over in Yorkshire and some bloke backstage offered.”

  Liam was there. He’d never done it before either, and I think the two of us together were braver and more foolish than one of us alone. I don’t mention that to Marisol.

  “I thought cocaine was what people snorted,” she says, frowning.

  Now I have to laugh.

  “If you really put your mind to it and believe in yourself, you can snort near anything,” I say, grinning at her.

  She’s got a huge chunk of tofu half in her mouth, and she just rolls her eyes at me, the message you know what I meant perfectly clear.

  “But snorting heroin is fairly common,” I say. “Shooting it is a bit more advanced, but that’s what will really fuck you up.”

  “Because snorting it doesn’t?” she says, raising both eyebrows skeptically.

  “Comparatively speaking,” I say. “But as I got further in, snorting got me less and less high until I finally stuck a needle in my arm. And then I did that more and more frequently until someone died.”

  I’m making it sound both more and less complex than it was. The facts are easy, but they don’t say anything about the terrible romanticism of addiction, the way it feels like a love that eats you whole from the inside out, how easy it is to think you’re nothing without it.

  How all your time is split into when I’m high and when I’m not high and wishing I were.

  Musicians do love the tortured artist stereotype. Some do. I did. Or I thought I did.

  “Why’d you do it?” she asks. “The first time, when someone said hey, do you want to try heroin, why’d you say yes?”

  “Because I was seventeen and not about to back down from anything,” I say. “Because I was curious, and I didn’t really think I could get addicted, and because I didn’t have a lot else going on at the time.”

  She’s quiet for a moment, looking at her soup, thinking.

  “You’re not impressed with my reasons,” I say.

  “They’re pretty bad,” she agrees. “Though I’m not sure what a good reason to try heroin is.”

  “Perhaps if you’ve just had a leg amputated and the hospital’s out of morphine, it could do in a pinch,” I say. “But that’s a bit extreme.”

  “Did you ever share needles?” she asks.

  I very much want to lie to her, but instead I steel myself and take a deep breath.

  “Yes,” I say.

  Dead silence.

  “But I haven’t in a few years, since the band took off. And I’ve been tested monthly since I went to rehab and it’s all come back clean,” I say quickly, desperate to erase the horrified look on her face.

  Her eyes drop to my left wrist, the one with twenty-one thin leather bands on it.

  “Four months ago?”

  “Four and a half,” I say. />
  Get it over with.

  I take a deep breath.

  “I’ve also slept with loads of women and had the clap twice, syphilis once, and wound up with crabs after a particularly ugly night,” I say. “I’ve not always been terribly concerned with safety, which is probably not a surprise coming from someone who used heroin intravenously every day for several years.”

  She swallows.

  “But I haven’t got any kids,” I say quickly. “And I’ve been thoroughly treated and didn’t pick up anything permanent, thank Christ. And I haven’t got anything now. I’ve been a monk ever since rehab.”

  “Define monk,” she says.

  “I’ve not so much as kissed anyone.”

  “Until this afternoon. Well, yesterday,” she points out.

  I smile.

  “Right.” I say.

  She stirs the dregs of her soup for a moment. I wonder if I’ve given her too much heavy information too quickly, but then she pushes her bowl away and looks at me.

  “Is there anything else?” she asks.

  I frown.

  “Anything else like what?”

  “Like you’ve ever shot a man just to watch him die,” she says. “Or you can’t get off unless your sex partner starts barking or quacking or something.”

  “I’m afraid it’s just the rampant drug abuse and general willingness to shag anyone who presented herself,” I say, leaning forward on my elbows. I’m trying not to smile. “But if you’re into barking or quacking I think I could manage.”

  Marisol leans back in the booth and puts one ankle on her opposite knee, her leg lightly touching mine.

  “Well, if we’re trading histories,” she says, “I’ve had sex with two men total, performed reciprocal oral sex on another, have always used condoms, am on the pill, and haven’t been tested for STDs in the past six months but everything was fine at my last checkup.”

  It’s the first time I’ve found the phrase reciprocal oral sex enticing.

  “And I got bitten by a dog when I was seven but I’m pretty sure I don’t have rabies,” she finishes.

  There’s a long pause, and I realize: I’ve not frightened her away.