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

by Michelle Mankin

  I shook my head.

  “Good, but if you change your mind let me know. There are easier ways.”

  I gave Diesel a squinty eyed look. The guy had an odd sense of humor.

  “Do you remember anything?” Linc queried.

  I loved these guys. After being together and putting up with each other’s shit for as long as we had, it was that or hate ‘em. I chose the easier route. But I wasn’t going to talk about it. There was only one person on the entire face of the planet that might understand, and she hadn’t spoken a single word to me since the night I had crushed her.

  Three fucking years ago.

  “How are you feeling?” Linc squinted at me.

  “Is this a trick question?” I shot back.

  “He’s good,” Diesel decided. “He’ll live. We probably shouldn’t have called her.”

  “Called who?” My sluggishly beating heart stumbled on the next beat.

  “Karen,” Diesel replied.

  “Fuck!” I swore. “Why the hell would you do that?”

  “We thought you were about to check out. You were choking on your own vomit. We had to turn your head to the side to open up your airway.”

  In another time and place I might have found it disturbing how well versed we all were on the management of drug overdoses. Right now I was just grateful, except about Karen.

  “Call her back and tell her you were mistaken.”

  “Mistaken about what, Romeo?”

  I wouldn’t ever want her seeing me like I was right then, soaking wet and standing in the tub in my boxers with my band mates around me like we were having a fucking intervention in the master bathroom of my Malibu rental. I would have squeezed my eyes shut in mortification, but I was too busy filling my parched soul with the vision of her. “Mistaken about whatever they told you that brought you all the way up here from OB,” I managed to say.

  “Don’t read too much into it. I was in LA meeting with a rep from Roxy. Diesel mentioned you were dying. I can see that he was exaggerating, though you do look like hell.”

  “Thanks.” I grinned like a deranged person. She was giving me the business and good. Like the old days. And I missed it. Missed everything about her. My life sucked without her in it.

  “Well, you gentlemen seem busy. I’ll leave you to your Kumbaya moment.” She swept a cool gaze around the room stopping on Diesel. “Lose my number, bass man.”

  His lips lifted into a slow smile. I think he liked her attitude, too.

  “Don’t leave.” My voice broke adding to the pathetic nature of my current condition. But in my defense, my throat was on fire, and I didn’t want to let her go. Whatever it took, however we could manage it, I wanted her back in my life. I had done my penance for the surf shop purchase. If Patch wanted to re-up for a third tour and completely destroy their marriage, this time it was completely on him.

  She stopped just outside the bathroom, but she didn’t turn around. The guys all took that as their cue to spring into motion. I received wet slaps on my back while she received murmured goodbyes from everyone except Diesel.

  He looked back at me, and then at her, and just said, “Good luck.”

  I stepped out of the tub, dried off quickly and wrapped the towel around my waist over the wet boxers now plastered to my skin. Hopefully, she couldn’t tell how my cock reacted to her. After the things I had said the last time I saw her, I didn’t think she would let that go.

  “Why do you want me to stay?” She turned around slowly, challenging me.

  That was the final Jeopardy question, wasn’t it?

  “The truth. No bullshit,” she prompted, and it was like time rewound itself to the last time I had seen her, except that I could see the long years of my own loneliness reflected back to me in her own eyes. Along with the pain my words to her had inflicted. Distrust lingered in her guarded gaze.

  “Because you’re my closest friend, and I missed you.”

  She inhaled sharply. She obviously wasn’t expecting me to be quite that candid. “If that’s true, then why did you treat me the way you did?”

  This part would be tricky. I didn’t know the state of her marriage, and that had always been sacrosanct. “Your husband called me about the surf shop thing. Let’s just say we had a pointed discussion. He wasn’t real keen on me doing that for you.”

  “Yeah? Well, I can see why. It has certainly remained a source of contention between us. So much so that I’ve finally conceded it.”

  “How do you mean?”

  Her gaze shuttered. The years that couldn’t be erased suddenly came crashing down on her shoulders. She looked suddenly wan and tired, almost strung out like I was. “What really happened here, tonight, Ramon? I’ve never seen you so gaunt. Was this really an accidental overdose or something more?”

  “It’s a dose I’ve done before, but from a new supplier.” I shrugged dismissively.

  “Heroin?” She peered at my arms looking for needle tracks.

  I was more discreet than that. She would have to look between my toes.

  “You never used to do hard stuff like that,” she mused, and she was right.

  “That was before. Before I pushed you away.”

  “I wish…” She swallowed. “I wish you hadn’t. But you did, and here we are and…” She sighed. “I don’t want to worry about you, but I’m going to have to now, aren’t I?”

  “Not if we can be friends again.”

  “I’m not your crutch, Ramon. If you want to get sober, then get sober. Do it for yourself. Don’t drag me into it.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “You’re being extremely accommodating, but you’ll have to pardon me if I’m a little slow to start down this road again.”

  “I just want us to start over.”

  “Too much has happened for us to ever do that.”

  “Can we at least start talking to each other again?”

  “We’ll see.” She cocked her head to the side, and that’s when I realized she had no braid. She had cut her hair severely short. It barely covered her ears. I didn’t like the way it matched the rigidness of her expression. She seemed almost as detached as Patch had been the last time I had seen him. Her lips were pressed flat. Did she smile at all anymore? “You have my number,” she decided. “Call if you want to, only not between nine to five. I’m starting a new job next week, and I don’t want to be taking a lot of personal calls. I want them to know I take my position seriously.”

  “What about Offshore?”

  “It’s Simone’s now. I sold it to her. I’m taking a job with Roxy in their East coast branch in New York.”

  “You’re moving to the city?”

  She nodded.

  “You hate the east coast.”

  “I’m gonna try harder to like it.” She glanced away. “Dominic doesn’t like me being in OB anymore.”

  “He’s an idiot.” Her lips tipped up at my vehemence. I wondered what had happened with him that he would do this to her. OB was home to her. If a person had a compass, then OB was her true north.

  “It’s for his career. He has an opportunity to go up a pay grade and serve stateside. It’s a desk job which he doesn’t like very much, helping the manufacturer redesign an important piece of equipment, but we’re making compromises. Both of us.” She was putting on a brave face. I had seen her do it plenty, but this was all wrong, the sacrifice on her part too huge. You might take the surfer girl away from her ocean, but you couldn’t get the saltwater out of her veins.

  “I’m sorry.”

  She nodded once and then she was gone, her practical work heels clacking away on my wood floors. It made me sad to see her shoehorned into a role that didn’t suit her. Nor did it suit me to watch her walk out of my life again.

  On that thought, I started rifling through the rumpled sheets on my bed, found my jeans and fished into the front pocket. Phone in hand, I punched in the number I knew by heart.

  “Hello.”

  “Hey, surfer girl.
You said for me to call if I want to. Well, I want to now, if that’s ok?”

  “Alright,” she said after an extended breath.

  I would go first, catch her up on some things, hopefully then maybe she would open up her heart to me again.

  Eventually.

  “Gonzolo’s divorcing Maria. The Martinez men suck at relationships, but I think you probably figured that out by now.” I raked a hand through my hair, wishing she were actually in the room with me and not just on the other end of the phone. “Not that the divorce itself wasn’t the right thing to do. It’s only that it’s going to be hell for my three-year-old niece. I’m an uncle now. I didn’t know if you had heard. Luna is the one right thing in my messed-up family.”

  “I took baby clothes over to your dad’s when she was born,” she said softly. “And I don’t agree with your statement. I think there are a lot of good things about your family.”

  “Yeah, well, anyway…” I proceeded to tell her about my niece, about how much I loved that little girl and everything else that had happened in the last three years, making sure not to leave out any of the painful details about me. She probably thought she had seen me at my lowest point. I wanted her to understand that the reality of my life without her had been so much worse.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  * * *

  Karen - April 2008

  “Hey,” I said into my cell, balancing it between my shoulder and ear while I unlocked the door to my apartment on the twentieth floor. It was Ramon. I knew before I even looked because I had programmed one of his guitar solos in as his ringtone. “How are you?”

  “I’m good, but what’s going on with you? You sound out of breath. I didn’t interrupt anything of a personal nature, did I?”

  “Not unless you call carrying a laptop, a purse and the two sacks of groceries I need to get me through the next two days something of a personal nature.”

  “You bringing your work home again? You did that the last weekend, too.”

  “Yeah. I have to.” I dropped my keys in the dish, shut the door using my hip, set my messenger bag that held my laptop on the chair, and put the sacks on the counter in the amount of time it had taken him to ask the one question and me to answer it. I’d had lots of practice being efficient since moving to the city.

  “Dominic off doing weekend training again?” he asked.

  “Yeah, but this one’s actually for an entire week.” I transferred my cell to the other ear and began unloading groceries with my right hand. I had lots of microwave meals that I needed to get into the freezer.

  “You work too hard, surfer girl.”

  A wistful pang pierced my heart. “Surfer in name only,” I corrected. I was a land bound city girl now surrounded by claustrophobic concrete and buildings that blocked out the sun. I longed to fill my eyes with the wide-open view of the ocean and my ears with the soothing roar of the surf. “Not much else to do but work,” I groused, frowning at the stack of Lean Cuisine boxes before closing the freezer door. “I miss your dad’s cooking, too.”

  “I’ll tell him you said so. I’m calling him right after I talk to you, and then Gonzolo. I wanted to check in with everybody on the other side of the world before things get too hectic over here.”

  “You still in London?”

  “No, we did Wembley last night. We’re in Ireland now. We’re doing a set at a three-day festival.”

  “Cool. Is it as green as they say?” I slammed the freezer closed and flipped off my high heels pumps, leaving them where they landed in the middle of the kitchen floor. If Dominic were home, he would fuss. Since joining the military, he was all about everything being put away in its proper place. I shied away from the thought of my husband including me on that same list.

  Four short strides brought me to the small couch by the window. I collapsed onto it bringing my feet up on the cushions, drawing my knees to my chest and staring up past the rooftops to the open sky I could see through the break in the buildings.

  “Don’t know yet. We landed in the wee hours of the morning, lass.” He faked a terrible brogue. “We went straight from the after show meet and greet in London to the private jet to the hotel here.”

  “Text me some pictures.”

  “Will do. Why don’t you text me some, too. Of you. I bet you’ve already stripped off those confining work clothes and are already lounging on the couch in sexy lingerie staring at the sky and wishing you were in OB right now.”

  He had most of that right. It was uncanny the way he knew me and my routine, but then we talked nearly once every week, even if it was only just to say hi.

  “No stripping going on unless taking off my shoes counts. But you’re right about me missing home.” That was a longing that never left me. I released the curtain, set my feet back on the floor and glanced around at the efficiency apartment that was actually large by Manhattan standards. Even so, the walls felt as though they were closing in on me most of the time. My claustrophobia was most pronounced during my morning commute. When I was on the subway several stories below ground smashed together with everyone else, I often had to close my eyes and pretend I was out on the ocean to control my panic. But experience had taught me that the feeling would subside. I was usually calm by the time I sat down at my cubicle at work, and once there my job kept me busy.

  Mostly.

  “Enough about me and my boring life,” I forced brightness into my tone. “What’s on your agenda for the day?”

  “Not much till noon. You know how it is. Diesel and I will have to try to get Linc and Ash up and functional for the day.”

  “I thought they were doing better this time around.”

  “Um-no. They are actually much worse. Ash starts the day with a bottle of vodka for breakfast, Linc with a handful of who knows what kind of pills. It only goes downhill from there.”

  “But your shows are getting such positive reviews.”

  “You stalking me through the media?”

  “A little, I guess.” My cheeks heated. “I was part of all that chaos once way back in the day. The Dogs are forever an OB band to me. It makes me proud when you do well.”

  “When you’re right in the middle of all this craziness it doesn’t feel like there’s anything to be proud of. It’s more like just survive day to day and cross your fingers as you move from one crisis to the next.”

  I’m sorry.” That sounded like my life only without the excitement.”

  “Not your fault, in fact it was much better when you were on tour with us.”

  “Yeah, no one plays the bass like Dominic.”

  “I’m not talking about him.”

  “You trying to sweet talk me, Romeo? I seem to remember you calling me a mother hen and a pain in your ass on more than one occasion.”

  “Nothing motherly about you. I just said that to get you angry. You’re pretty all the time, but when you get worked up you’re fucking sexy as hell.”

  That was an eye-opening bit of information that I wished he really believed was true.

  “But maybe you’re right. Maybe I am trying to butter you up. We have a couple of days after the festival before we have to head to Scotland. Since you’re all alone and just said you’ve got nothing to do, I was thinking maybe you could join us for a couple of days. The flight from JFK to Dublin is only five hours. The guys would all love to see you. It would be like old times.”

  Dominic would never go for that. But I didn’t tell him how my husband felt about Ramon and me being friends again. I gave him a partial truth instead. “That’s an expensive flight.” I made a good salary but living expenses were high in Manhattan.

  “I didn’t mean for you to pay your way. I invited you. I’ll have our manager call the airlines and book you first class. There’s even surfing on the west coast of Ireland around Donegal. I’m dying to check it out. Don’t overthink it. Say yes.”

  • • •

  Ramon

  I stood beside the window in my hotel room an ocean away fr
om her, crushing the satin curtain in my hand, holding my breath and waiting for her answer.

  “I can’t,” she said, sounding genuinely regretful, like maybe she wanted to see me as much as I wanted to see her. A guy had to have dreams. “Don’t send me pictures of the beach. It’ll hurt too much. But thank you for asking.”

  “I shouldn’t have mentioned the surfing. That was selfish manipulation on my part to try to entice you. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s ok.”

  “Are you going home to visit OB anytime soon?”

  “Christmas.”

  “That’s eight months away.”

  “Yeah I know. Tell me about it.” She sighed. “I better let you go. I have a mountain of dull paperwork to complete and you have a lot of other calls to make. Tell everyone hello from me.”

  She clicked off after my assurance that I would. The static filled void on the line echoed the yawning disappointment inside of me. I released the curtain and turned away from the window. The view of St. Stephen’s Green barely tempted me to go outside and explore it. I had come to realize too late that the pleasures my life afforded me were only half what they could be without someone to share them…without her.

  Sighing, I took a seat in the wingback chair, opened the photo library in my phone and scrolled through the pictures of Karen. The few I had were years out of date. Though I had been through New York and had dinner with her and Patch a couple of times, I knew better than to snap pictures of her. Since the surf shop purchase and the rumors that had accompanied it, an unspoken mistrust lingered between Karen’s husband and me. Besides, the three of us together in a photo wasn’t the way I wanted to think of her. Especially not with Patch’s proprietary arm around her. Once I had believed that he deserved her. No more.

  I closed my eyes and leaned my head back in the chair. It wasn’t fun anymore. The tour. The travel. The nonstop stress with Linc and Ash being so out of control.

  And the women.

  Well, they were never who I wanted them to be.

  Chapter Twenty-Six