Finding Storm

by Samantha Towle

  The label he’d originally set up with Jonny.

  After Jonny died, his half of TMS Records went to his parents—my grandparents. I never met my grandmother. She had died long before I found out that Jonny was my biological father. My blood relatives drop like flies. I’m the last of my kind. Maybe I should be worried.

  Funny, Slater.

  Anyway, Jake bought their half of TMS Records not long after Jonny died.

  That’s where the big chunk of the money I have sitting in the bank came from. The trust my grandpa set up for me. Jonny’s half of TMS Records and his earnings from the band. Royalties still come in now from the music made before Jonny died.

  It’s my money, technically, but I’ve never felt comfortable with spending it.

  And I didn’t get it until I turned twenty-one anyway, so I had to earn my way, and I did that by working for the label—basically doing all the shitty jobs no one else wanted to do.

  Brought coffee. Ran errands. Unblocked toilets.

  All the awesome jobs.

  Tru and Jake might be loaded, but they make their kids earn their money to learn the value of it, and because I was—am—legally one of their kids, the same applied to me.

  I had to earn my way like everyone else.

  Well, maybe except for my fourteen-year-old baby sister, Belle. She’s got Jake wrapped around her finger. My brothers have part-time jobs like I did. JJ is seventeen and a star athlete. He’s an amazing soccer player. Some European clubs are showing an interest in him. He has a part-time job at a local coffee shop. Billy is sixteen and massively into music. He does jobs around the label just like I did. Poor kid.

  I go to the trunk and pop it open. Take my leather jacket off and put it in there. Shut down the trunk, round the car, and climb in my girl. Pressing the ignition button, I fire her up. She purrs to life.

  I put my seat belt on.

  Bluetooth hooks up my phone. I select Music and press Random Play.

  A second later, Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze” hums out of the speakers.

  Turning the volume up, my fingers strum against the steering wheel in time to the guitar riff.

  Now, this here makes me happy.

  My car and good music.

  The simple things in life.

  Maybe this is all I really need. Fuck all the other shit.

  I slide her into drive and exit the parking garage, driving in the direction of Republique.

  Can’t say I’m looking forward to this interview.

  I don’t like interviews, period.

  Journalists prying into my life? No, thanks.

  People think because I’m a musician and my life is on the stage that I like being in the public eye.

  I detest it.

  For an intensely private person like me, it’s difficult, being the focal point of people’s interest.

  What I wouldn’t give to be able to just make music and live a media-free life.

  But the world doesn’t work that way, and to be able to do what I love, this is the way it has to be.

  I have to share my life with the world.

  And at this point, it’s not like there’s anything anyone doesn’t know about my life already.

  It’s all there in large print on Wikipedia.

  Raze might be our front man. But my biological father makes me press-worthy.

  So, when a hugely popular magazine wants an interview with me, I go do it for the band.

  Any press is good press, as Zane always tells us. Zane is the VP at TMS Records, which my band is signed to.

  Yes, I know I’m signed to my adopted dad’s label. I know how it looks, special treatment and all that, but Jake didn’t sign us.

  Zane did.

  Jake has nothing to do with my band. Zane makes all the calls when it comes to us.

  If Zane wanted to can us, Jake wouldn’t stop him.

  He doesn’t play favorites in business.

  We do what Zane says, and if Zane tells me I’m going to do an interview, then that’s what I go do.

  I should be thankful that people want to interview us.

  When journalists are still asking for interviews, it means you’re relevant, and if you’re relevant, then you’re selling records. And ultimately, that’s all that matters—that people are still listening to our music.

  That’s why I do this.

  Because, despite what people say about me, we are damn good fucking musicians.

  I just wish the boys were here for this interview.

  It’s a million times easier for me when I have them with me at interviews. Raze is deft at deflecting questions aimed at me about Jonny.

  Me, not so much.

  I just answer the questions, like a good little robot. All the while, getting angry and pissed inside. Because if I don’t answer their questions or give them the words they want, then I’m being disrespectful and ungrateful. I’m shitting on Jonny’s memory and what he gave me, which is my talent, apparently—you know, the talent that doesn’t measure up to his.

  The thing these people forget is that I didn’t know Jonny. Yes, he’s my biological father, but I never met the man. Yet I’m expected to answer questions about him like I did.

  People speak about Jonny with reverence. They love him, and that’s great for them.

  But for me, Jonny Creed is the black fucking cloud over my life.

  I would never say this out loud, but I resent it.

  I resent him—a dead man.

  I’m angry with my mom for doing things the way she did back then. Keeping me from him.

  I get her reasoning. I understand it more now that I’m older, but it doesn’t change the way I feel.

  And the way I feel is …

  Trapped in my own life.

  Do I say any of this out loud?

  Nope.

  I can never say what I really feel about his impact on my life. How hard it was—and still is—finding out that Jonny Creed was my father.

  How being constantly compared to him on a daily basis is no picnic.

  Hearing people say that my musical talent will never equal his.

  But the thing is … I don’t want to equal his talent.

  I want my talent to stand on its own.

  But it never will.

  Because the moment the world found out that a living, breathing genetic piece of Jonny Creed was left behind, my life stopped being my own.

  I knew all of this. I knew me going into music would give them an open pass to me.

  I just didn’t realize how hard it would be.

  I guess the hollow feeling I have inside of me nowadays is all that’s left after being chipped away at all these years.

  If only I could stand up and say what I really feel.

  But I can’t.

  I can speak my mind on anything. But Jonny Creed.

  I swear though, one of these days, I’m gonna snap and go all Michael Douglas in Falling Down if I’m asked one more time if Jonny’s musical influence is the reason why I became a guitarist.

  I drive up to Republique twenty minutes later and get lucky, finding a parking spot that just opened close by.

  I slide my baby into it and turn off the engine, leaving the music playing—Eminem’s “The Monster.”

  I glance at the clock on the dash.

  I’m a few minutes late.

  How very rock ’n’ roll of me.

  Needing a nicotine fix to get me through the next hour, I light a cigarette up and inhale deeply, resting my head back on the headrest. I lower my window down a touch and blow the smoke outside.

  Sometimes, I think life would be easier if I wasn’t a musician. Well, I don’t think it. I know it.

  If I lived my life away from the music business, worked a nine-to-five job, life would be piss easy.

  I close my eyes and imagine it.

  No more press. No more social media. No one saying I’m not good enough.

  Sounds like fucking heaven.

  But then there�
�d be no more music. No more Slater Raze.

  No more days and nights in the studio. No more writing sessions with the boys.

  No more shows.

  I know I feel off at the moment, but I also know without a doubt that I would miss being onstage. I would miss the sounds of thousands of people singing along to the words of the songs that I wrote.

  There’s nothing like that feeling that comes from hearing people sing your words back to you.

  Sometimes, when something is embedded so deeply inside that it makes you who you are, you can’t give it up, no matter the damage it does to you.

  I do what I love; I pay the price. I give it up; I pay the price.

  Sounds like a fucking winner to me.

  Jake once said to me, “You wanna live your life the way you do, then you gotta listen to people’s criticism. But that doesn’t mean you have to hear it.”

  And I try not to hear it. I do. But it’s hard.

  At times, it’s all I hear.

  Sighing, I put my cigarette out, dumping it in the empty coffee cup I left in here yesterday.

  Leaving my car, I take the cup with me and drop it in a nearby trash can.

  Okay, let’s get this shit done, and then I get back in the studio, where I belong.

  I walk over to the restaurant, push open the door, and walk inside.

  I’ve been here once before, years ago though.

  I walk over to the hostess station.

  The woman behind it looks up at me.

  I’m hit with a moment of recognition.

  I have a shit memory, and I forget faces easily, but I wouldn’t forget her face anytime soon—or, well, ever.

  She’s the chick who screwed me ’cause I’m Jonny Creed’s kid and had his posters all over her bedroom wall.

  And this was where I met her all those years ago.

  How am I only just remembering this now?

  “Storm.” She beams at me like we’re old buddies.

  We fucked once, lady, and you’re as crazy as a box of frogs.

  What do I do? Let her know that I remember her or feign ignorance?

  Pretend I don’t know who she is?

  I’m totally going with the latter.

  I smile my best I don’t know you, but I’m being polite and congenial smile. I use it often. “Hi. I’m here to meet Jasper Marsh. The table’s in his name.”

  Her gaze sharpens. “You don’t remember me, do you?”

  Oh boy.

  I remember you all right, lady. I just wish I didn’t.

  “Sorry, have we met before?”

  I’m a rock star. I meet loads of people. This should fly.

  Or not.

  She’s looking at me like she wants to stab me with the pen she’s holding. “Have we met before?” Her voice pitches high.

  Abort! Abort!

  “Oh, wait.” I click my fingers, trying to rectify the crazy. “I do remember you.”

  Nothing. She doesn’t even blink.

  She’s just staring at me, eyes scarily wide.

  “Yeah … of course. You and me … yeah, I remember you.”

  Wow. Well done, Slater. Oscar-worthy performance there.

  “What’s my name?”

  “Huh?”

  “My name. If you remember me, you know my name.”

  Shit.

  My eyes quickly scan her shirt, looking for a name badge.

  And wouldn’t you know it? She doesn’t have one on.

  See, this is why you should go to IHOP. The staff there wears fucking name badges.

  I’m staring at her, trying to will her name from the deepest recesses of my mind, but it’s pointless. Even if I had asked for her name all those years ago, I wouldn’t have remembered it a second after she told me.

  So, I do the only thing a guy can do in this situation.

  Go for broke.

  “Sarah, right?”

  Her eyes narrow until they’re like pissholes in snow.

  “No. Right. Mandy then? Stephanie? Becky? Claire?”

  I’m throwing names out there like they’re a damn life raft.

  She makes this noise in the back of her throat, cutting me off. It sounds like she just swallowed a rock.

  I’m so dead.

  “Asshole.”

  She turns away from me and picks up a menu from the shelf behind her. Turns back to me. Her face is a total mask. Not a shred of emotion on it.

  She’s going to kill me.

  This is how I’ll go.

  Death by psycho.

  “Your dad would never have treated a woman like this. He was a gentleman. You’re an asshole,” she hisses.

  You couldn’t be more wrong, lady. I didn’t know Jonny because he did treat women exactly like this.

  And I’m behaving just the same as him.

  Well, if that isn’t a sobering thought, nothing is.

  “Let me show you to your table, Asshole.” Her voice is scarily high. “Mr. Marsh is already here.”

  She storms off through the restaurant. Her heels click aggressively against the tiled floor.

  I follow behind her. What else can I do?

  I know for sure she’s going to poison my food. Or at the very least, spit in my coffee.

  This chick should be a warning to me to be more careful where I put my dick. Obviously, I didn’t learn the first time, but I will now.

  I swear, if I make it through this brunch, I’ll stop screwing random women. Or at least, I’ll write down their fucking names.

  I approach the table, and the guy I figure to be Jasper Marsh rises from his seat. He looks to be in his mid- to late-forties. Shorter than me. Thickset around the middle. Thinning black hair.

  “Storm, thanks for coming.”

  He puts his hand out, and I shake it, noting how clammy his palm is.

  “No problem. Sorry I’m late,” I tell him.

  “You’re hardly late.” He waves me off before sitting back down.

  I take my seat across from him and surreptitiously wipe my hand on my thigh.

  The menu my new best friend was carrying is tossed on the table in front of me. “What do you want to drink?” she barks at me.

  I see Jasper’s eyes rise at the tone of her voice.

  “Coffee. Black,” I mutter. “Jasper?”

  “I’m good.” He picks up his coffee cup.

  I can see his lips twitching a smile.

  Great. He’s figured it out that I banged her at some point. It wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out by the tension radiating from her or from the holes I feel her eyes burning into the side of my head.

  But if he didn’t know, then the, “Asshole,” she hisses at me before she departs confirms it.

  The first thing he’s going to write in his article is about how I previously screwed the hostess who served us. Never mind that she’s crazy or slept with me because she’s obsessed with Jonny. No, I’ll be the bastard in the situation.

  Fucking fabulous.

  Zane’s gonna love this.

  “Is there a problem?” Jasper asks, his eyes moving between me and wherever my bad error in judgment has retreated to.

  “She wasn’t keen on our last song.” I give him a smirk and pick up my menu. “So, what’s good to eat here?” I go for a subject change.

  But it’s not always that easy with journalists.

  So, I wait for him to probe some more. Thankfully, he doesn’t.

  “Well, if you’re a pancake man—and who isn’t, right?” He grins, showing me slightly yellow teeth. Odd to see that here in LA where everybody’s smile is blinding white. “Then, the Austrian pancakes are top-notch. But the Maine Lobster omelet is sublime as well.”

  “Pancakes it is.” I need the carbs after last night’s escapade.

  We make small talk until my coffee arrives, which is thankfully brought over by a waiter.

  Still, I check it for signs of poison or floaters. Just because she didn’t bring it doesn’t mean she hadn’t made it o
r dropped anything in it.

  It looks okay. I gingerly give it a sip.

  Tastes okay too.

  We both place our orders with the waiter, who takes our menus away with him.

  I relax back into my chair. I feel my cell vibrate in my pocket, but I ignore it. I never get my cell out during an interview. It’s rude as fuck to do so. Honestly, I can’t stand it when you see people sitting together at a table, eating or whatever, and they’re on their phones, ignoring each other.

  I guess I picked it up from Tru. She doesn’t allow cell phones at the dinner table at home or when we eat out together.

  I take another drink of my coffee. A bigger gulp now that I’m ninety percent sure it’s not poisoned.

  “I appreciate you coming down to talk with me today.”

  “Well, it’s a free lunch. Of course I’m here,” I quip, and he laughs.

  “You mind if we start the interview now, or do you want to wait until after we eat?”

  “Now’s fine.” Sooner we’re done, the sooner I can leave.

  “You don’t have a problem if I record it?” he asks, reaching into his pocket, pulling out his cell phone. “Saves me from missing anything.”

  “Sure.” I shrug.

  Jasper taps the screen on his phone and then sets it on the table between us.

  “Okay. Well, I’m just gonna start with a few basic questions, things the readers want to know. Like who your favorite bands are, what music is on your current playlist—the basic shit. What’s next from you guys. What you’re currently working on. Then, we’ll move on to the night Jonny died.”

  I pause. My eyes snapping up to his. “What?”

  “I want to talk about the night Jonny died and how you feel, knowing you were the reason he was in his car that night.”

  It’s like water has gushed into my ears. All voices and chatter around me disappear. Time seems to slow to a stop.

  “I … I …” I shake my head. “What?”

  I don’t miss the smile that appears in his eyes.

  “The night Jonny died, he received a phone call from a”—he pulls a small notepad from his pants pocket and glances at it—“Marie Walker. She was your mother’s employer and friend, correct?”

  I don’t answer. I can’t.

  “Marie called Jonny the night he died. She told him about you. That he had a son. Jonny got in his car—loaded to his eyeballs, enough drugs and booze in his system to take down a horse—because he was coming to see you. He was driving to the airport to catch a flight, which, of course, he never made. It wasn’t suicide, like many have hypothesized. He didn’t drive his car into that ravine that night on purpose.”