(Complete Rock Stars, Surf and Second Chances #1-5)

by Michelle Mankin

  “This is bullshit. Just because you’re all domesticated and shit doesn’t mean the rest of us have to get tucked into our beds at nine.”

  “What’s going on?” Linc asked, his dilated pupils spiraling around our little circle.

  “Morris is getting on our case about expenses.” Patch told him the truth, but it wasn’t truth anyone wanted to hear. “It’s becoming a big problem. You need to step up, be a leader and lay down some rules, or we’re going to end up owing the label a lot of money after it.”

  “Ash can do it.” Linc snagged a chick who was only wearing a bra and thong. She handed him the vodka she cradled to her chest. He twisted it open and drank from it like it was bottled water.

  “I can do what?” Ash stumbled over, he was pale beneath his summer tan.

  “Be the leader in the group. Patch says we need one.” Linc took another long pull from the bottle sticking his hand into the girl’s bra for a feel while he waited for his cousin to reply.

  “Sure. No problem.” A slow grin spread across Ash’s face. “As the new leader of the band, I say let’s go get wasted.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Where’s the guy with the drugs? I need something that’ll give me a buzz and settle my stomach down so I can eat. I’m starving.”

  “Amen. Moses has spoken from the mountaintop. We have our orders.” I clapped Ash on the shoulder and shot Dominic a celebratory look. The look he gave me back didn’t make me feel like celebrating anymore. It made me feel like a loser. Like he felt sorry for me. A lot like how I felt whenever Karen looked at me lately.

  I couldn’t decide whose disapproval stung more.

  • • •

  We boarded a tiny plane to take us to the next stop. The flight was early, the mood somber. There were no bunks to sleep off the previous night’s excesses, and everyone, except Patch and Karen, looked like hell.

  Linc slumped into his seat. His sandy hair looked greasy and stuck up all over the place. His eyes were hidden behind dark shades. Ash sat on the double row behind our lead singer. He didn’t look any better. The way he eyed the barf bag told me that it wouldn’t be long before he used it. Hopefully, we wouldn’t hit any turbulence on takeoff or he might miss the bag entirely.

  I was stuck across the aisle from the sobriety twins. I avoided direct eye contact with them but noticed out of my peripheral vision that Patch took Karen’s hand and threaded their fingers together. I swallowed hard trying to moisten the dry burn inside my throat. They were a snapshot of marital bliss that made the emptiness in my own life more difficult to assuage.

  The flight attendants did their thing, and we took off without any of them calling us out for being inebriated. I felt pretty fortunate because I was pretty sure being shit faced violated the rules of commercial air travel. There was a reason so many record labels flew their headliners around on private jets.

  I leaned my seat back when I was able and closed my eyes. I tried not to remember how much better things had been a little over a year ago, but it was hard not to take note of our rapid decent. With that first album and tour there had been a sense of optimism, a feeling that we were going someplace, that we had goals that were worth achieving. We had a better album this time around, but we were self-destructing in spite of ourselves. The road that led to ruin was a wide one. Someone needed to find an exit ramp fast. For all the grief I had given Patch, he was the natural candidate to take charge. If someone didn’t, I doubted we would make another tour.

  An announcement mid-flight that I didn’t quite catch bumped me out of my restless slumber. I clawed my way toward consciousness, then started to drift back into oblivion until the murmurings around me rose to such a high level that I couldn’t ignore them.

  I cracked open my eyes. “What’s going on?” I asked, turning my head to look at Patch.

  “There’s been a plane crash.”

  Shit. That certainly was disturbing with us up in the air. “Where?” I glanced at Karen. She was pale. Her grip on Patch’s hand was so tight his skin had blanched.

  “New York. It crashed right into The World Trade Center.”

  • • •

  Our destination had been Seattle. Instead, we found ourselves rerouted to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The winter playground for the rich and famous had one of the tiniest airports I had ever been in. The tarmac ended up packed with grounded planes, the terminal packed with stranded passengers. In shock, we shuffled like zombies gathering around television monitors.

  Tall enough to see over the other passengers, I stood near the back of our group between Ash and Linc. The cousins were pale, their expressions blank. I scanned for Karen. She was near the front, wrapped up in Patch’s arms. His jaw was set. Even from a couple of feet away I could tell she was still crying. I stuffed futile fists into the front pockets of my jeans. Patch turned, his hard gaze meeting mine. Guiding his wife in my direction, he met me halfway. Even Ash and Linc drifted toward each other. Our differences forgotten, we were united in our grief. We remained at those monitors for hours watching the appalling events unfold. The towers fell. The citizens of New York spilled into the streets, disappearing into clouds of soot and debris and reemerging with expressions as devastated as the rubble around them.

  Air traffic came to a standstill for days. Our concert was cancelled. Eventually, Zenith moved us into a three-bedroom condo near the slopes and footed the bill. If we hadn’t been so despondent, we might have enjoyed the view. But no one could find much hope in those early days. Our lives as they had been before, the lives of everyone across the country and around the globe had been changed forever.

  “Ramon,” Patch called, and I ripped my gaze away from the television coverage to glance at him. He looked as rough as we all did. We were strung out not by drugs, but by the horror of what we seen and heard. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

  “Sure.” I gestured to the empty spot on the sectional beside me. Linc was in a chair, Ash on the opposite end of the seating group. Both had their elbows on their knees. I don’t think they registered anything beyond the depressing replays and the ticker tape details at the bottom of the screen.

  “Nah, not here. In private,” he clarified. “In your room. Karen is asleep in ours.”

  “Ok.” I stood, wondering what was up. His tone sounded ominous.

  I followed him into my room and shut the door. When I turned around to face him, his expression was more serious than I had ever seen it.

  “I’m enlisting,” he said.

  “You’re what?” My voice was incredulous.

  “I’ve been talking to my dad…about what’s happened. About what I want to do. What I need to do. I’m taking Karen to OB first. Then I’m going straight to boot camp. I’ll be gone six weeks.” He shook his head. “This is bullshit. What the four of us have been doing. We used to be a band of brothers. Now we’re just a bunch of guys going nowhere. I want to be part of something important. I want to make a difference. I want to be a Marine and serve my country like my dad.”

  Fuck.

  My jaw dropped. “What did Karen say when you told her?”

  “I haven’t yet.”

  “Are you crazy? She’s your wife.”

  “She would have tried to talk me out of it.”

  “I would too if I thought it would do any good.” I raked my hair back and gave him a baleful look. “I’m sorry I’ve been such an asshole lately. I don’t know what’s come over me.” But yet I did. Regrets and recriminations crashed into me. “I’ll straighten my shit out. Only don’t make any rash decisions. Take some time to think it over. The tour’s nearly over. If you still feel the same way after it ends then…”

  “I already spoke with a recruiter. My mind’s made up, Ramon. Say you’re happy for me.”

  I wasn’t. I respected the hell out of our military. I just didn’t want him in harm’s way. All the years of our friendship flashed before my eyes. Suddenly, everything in the world felt too close and inescapable.

  “Shit, man. I didn�
�t expect the wall of silence from you.” He glanced away. I watched his fingers curl into fists. “You know how my dad’s always wanted me to follow in his footsteps though he never pressured me. I thought you would understand, but maybe things are worse between us than I imagined.”

  “I do understand, Patch. I get it. Totally. It’s an honorable thing you’re doing.” I swallowed, and manned up following his example. “I’m proud of you. Happy for you if a career in the military is what you really want.” I looked him straight in the eyes and saw his determination. “Only don’t get hurt. Ok?” I wasn’t bullshitting.

  He gave me a tight nod, so I lightened things up.

  “Good, ‘cause I don’t have time to be breaking in a new friend. I’m gonna be too busy trying to find a decent bassist, and it’ll be a full-time gig trying to deal with this bunch of assholes without you around anymore.”

  “Yeah, I get that. Listen, I need a favor from you.”

  “Name it.”

  “I want you to keep an eye out on Karen.”

  “I’ve got a tour to finish.” It wasn’t that I didn’t want to help with her. It was that he didn’t know what he was asking. I could never tell him. I could barely admit to myself the way I felt about her.

  “I realize that. I’m not asking for close supervision. She’ll have her parents and my dad, but if they send me overseas, which the recruiter warned is likely, I just want you to make it clear to her that you’re available for her to talk to when you’re in OB and I’m not around. I think you care about her. I know she cares about you.”

  That was news to me, but then I had been an ass to her and him a lot lately.

  “She opens up to you. I’ve seen it. She tells you her feelings pretty straight. She doesn’t do that with everyone. I want that for her. I want her to be able to let down her guard, to have someone nearby who she can trust.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  * * *

  Karen - November 2001

  “You’re going to have to let me go, beautiful.”

  “I know,” I mumbled into his chest. “But I can’t.”

  “Karen, look at me.” He stated in that assertive tone that had gotten more commanding now that he had completed boot camp.

  “Yes, Sir.” I lifted my head, an arrow slicing right through my quivering heart at how devastatingly handsome he looked in full uniform, his light brown hair shorn to his skull and his gaze full of love and affection for me. I attempted to glare, but it wasn’t very effective with my splotchy face and eyes full of tears.

  “That’s my girl.” He hooked his thumb under my chin and brought my mouth to his for a soft kiss. “I love you,” he declared afterward.

  My lips trembled. “I love you, too,” I whispered.

  “It’ll be ok.” He executed a precise military turn and marched toward his brothers. I watched him line up and board the bus. I followed his form as he made his way down the aisle and took a seat near the back. As I watched the bus pull out of the parking lot, I stood like a tree rooted to the asphalt in the same spot where he had kissed me amid a blur of other wives with their own breaking hearts. I had never felt so alone.

  I spent the first week of Dominic’s deployment in a daze. I went through the daily motions. I held my shit together until the night came, then I brought his pillow to my chest and cried into it, muffling my sobs so my parents wouldn’t worry.

  That first month, I sat by the phone every week an hour ahead of his scheduled call anxiously waiting to hear his voice. After we had used up our allotted twenty minutes, I would cry so hard I usually threw up.

  I returned to work at the surf shop. I surfed to the point of exhaustion. I rarely slept. I dreaded the nightmares that awaited me whenever I did manage to close my eyes.

  After six months, he came home for a week of leave. We barely left my bedroom. I was envious of every minute he spent out of my arms. When the time came to say goodbye again, I hoped and prayed I would get pregnant. I wanted a baby to fill that growing emptiness inside of me. I felt so incredibly hollow, like a fragile shell on the verge of cracking from the constant pressure of concern.

  • • •

  May 2002

  “Karen, come quick.” I leapt from my chair in the living room where I had been folding laundry and lunged into the kitchen.

  “Who is it, Mom?” My heart pounded with dread when I saw the phone in her hand. “What ‘s wrong?” I squeaked, bracing while at the same time trying not to shake.

  “Nothing, honey. It’s Ramon Martinez.”

  My panic receded. I hadn’t heard from him or any of the other guys in the band since Dominic had completed boot camp. Though Ramon had attended the hour-long ceremony, selfishly I hadn’t said more than two words to him. The clock had been ticking down. My sole focus had been on my soon to be leaving husband.

  “You scared the shit out of me,” I hissed at my mom, covering the receiver. “Say who it is right away next time.”

  She frowned. I touched her arm to soften my rebuke. She kissed my cheek in silent forgiveness. Blonde hair near the same color as my own brushed my nose as she hugged me tightly for an additional moment. She was a wife. She understood.

  “Hello,” I said into the phone when she released me.

  “Hey, how are you?” Ramon’s deep voice rumbled into my ear as my mom left the room.

  “I’m ok,” I lied. Surviving was more like it, though my husband was the one in a war zone. I really had no right to complain.

  “Yeah? Well, good. I’m in town, so I was wondering if you’d like to come hang with me. Maybe catch a few waves in the morning and grab something to eat after that.”

  “I work in the morning.”

  “At the surf shop, right? But that doesn’t open until later.”

  “I surf with my dad.”

  “So…I don’t think he’d mind if you skipped a day to see an old friend.”

  “Since when did we become old friends?”

  “Man, you’re prickly today.” He blew out a breath into the phone. “Since the day you decided you were in love with my best friend, I guess. Though you’re giving me such grief right now I’m beginning to reassess that status.”

  “Why now? Why after six months do you suddenly find the need to spend time with me?”

  “I…”

  “The truth. I don’t have room for bullshit in my life anymore.”

  “Because I miss him, and you’re the closest connection I’ve got to Mr. Semper Fi. That enough truth for you?”

  “I guess. Ok. Offer accepted. I’ll meet you at the beach by the Pier. First thing in the morning.”

  • • •

  Ramon

  The sun hadn’t yet risen when she appeared, her lonely form coalescing in the grainy grey twilight. No smile. No spring in her step. No shine in her eyes.

  With barely an acknowledgement, she headed toward the surf as if it summoned her. Without hesitation, I fell in behind her, throwing my board onto the water and paddling after her. We didn’t speak as we bobbed side by side on the waves. Only the roar of the ocean and the occasional cry of a gull broke the silence between us. We weren’t really alone. The spot next to the pier was rarely unoccupied. Yet, it seemed as if it were just us two within some kind of commiserative bubble.

  She sat on her board for a long while patiently staring out to sea. I found myself watching her as much or more than I did the set pattern of the waves.

  A perfect swell arose in the distance. I spotted it at the same time she did. Sitting up straighter in anticipation, she spun her board around in the direction of the shore and popped up into position, at once serene in her element. For every wave I took, she took two, executing seemingly effortlessly maneuver after maneuver. Surfing wasn’t a hobby for her. It was her religion. The ocean was her sanctuary.

  Hours later, I stood on the shore alone, my hand resting on my board. She remained on the water. Her stamina was incredible. She had schooled me. I was too out of shape to keep up with her afte
r the indulgences of the last tour. I shifted my weight from one foot to another, my toes sinking deep in the sand as I tried to keep my overstretched muscles from cramping. I didn’t even consider leaving. I couldn’t look away from her.

  Dropping down on her board, she exited a decent curl. Strands of blonde snarled around her face as she used the remnants of the wave to propel herself all the way to the shallows.

  “Sweet ride on that last one,” I observed when she joined me.

  “Thanks.” Only a little out of breath, she shifted her board into a better position under her arm, bent at the waist, undid her leash and straightened while I tried to discretely check out her ass. “You’re not so bad yourself.” I noticed her time in the ocean had loosened the tightness around her eyes.

  “Untrue,” I snorted. “I’m way out of practice.” I motioned over my shoulder to the wall where we had dropped our towels. “We still have a couple of minutes before you start work. Why don’t you sit and talk with me?”

  “Ok.” She rewarded me with a small smile that meant more than the standing ovation we had received at our last show. Not that we’d had a lot of those since Patch left. The Dogs were going to have to work hard to rebuild our reputation with his substitute, a former pro surfer, a buddy Linc had brought in to finish out the tour.

  Situated along the wall, still zipped into our wetsuits to counter the lingering chill in the air, she took one bottled water out from under her towel and offered me another. It seemed crazy the way that small kindness of hers affected me, crazy the way the innocent brush of her fingers against mine sparked my imagination. But then the type of women I hung around were nothing like her, neither kind nor innocent.

  “What are you thinking about?” she asked, her gaze on the water, her shapely legs dangling off the wall above the sand.