Nocturnes (28 page)

My head swirls like the contents of a filthy toilet bowl on its way down—shit, piss, puke, and every other foul thing you can throw in. “Give me the lecture, Toombs. I need a lecture.” I lean my head against the door to the bathroom cubicle. I guess we’re on the bus. I hadn’t even noticed.

And look, there’s my phone on the floor with Eve’s number poised at the ready, waiting for someone to hit the magic call button. I do this almost daily, so it’s no surprise I’d try to reach out to her the day I cash in my sobriety chips.

What a fucking asshole I am. I hit the home button to close the call screen.

Toombs bends down to squat beside me on one knee. “I’m not giving you shit. Lecture yourself if you want. Only thing I got to say is this. Every minute—every fucking
second
—you go without a bottle in your hands is one second of your life reclaimed. Take whatever you want from that, but you know it’s true.”

I rub my suddenly raging gut. Fuck, how can there possibly be a single drop of fluid left in my stomach? By the looks and smell of things, I puked up half an intestine along with whatever the fuck I drank.

“How many seconds are in a day?” I ask.

He doesn’t miss a beat. “Eighty-six thousand, four hundred.”

I grin despite the revolt in my belly. God, the bitches in my stomach are powering up their nuclear weapons now. “You always were good at math.”

“It’s an affliction.”

“Eighty-six thousand, four hundred is a lot of fucking seconds.”

“Then, you better make every one count, asshole.”

My stomach spasms. I grab the bucket and unload a mouthful of green-tinged gunk. Fuck.

Toombs stands and wets a washcloth in the nearby sink. He squeezes out the excess water and dangles it in front of my eyes.

I accept and wipe off my face. God, what a fucking wreck.

“I found you passed out, clutching your phone with Eve’s number pulled up and this in your other hand.” Toombs drags a familiar black notebook from his back jeans pocket and tosses it beside me. “I read it.”

Great. All those stupid fucking lyrics—

“Maybe you should read it too.” He slams me between the eyes with a pointed glare.

I glance at the notebook and shiver again, but this time, it’s not because of the cold, wet, stinky clothes glued to my skin. “I don’t want to.”

Too many memories. Too much pain. Too much truth for this liar to swallow.

Toombs doesn’t reply to my quiet tantrum. He reaches into the shower and turns on the water. “I’ll find a bag for you to dump that shit into.” He points at my shirt. “Get in the shower before everyone else comes back.” Without another word, he trudges down the aisle and opens every window on the bus.

I glance at the notebook.

Are you happy yet, Rax?

No. I’m very
un
happy.

You thought alcohol would make you happy again. How’d that work out for you?

Completely shitty—physically, mentally, and emotionally.

So, what are you going to do?

Instead of feeling sorry for myself, I make another promise. This one I will keep. “I’m going to write music. That makes me happy.”

It’s true. If I took out all the things in my life that pushed me in the wrong directions and led to misery, I’d be left with my friends (whom I have here on the bus), Eve (whom I can’t have until I get my shit straight), and music (which I can create or play any time I want).

Music is the answer. It always has been. I just never noticed how powerful it could be until now.

Mind racing, I crawl into the shower, clean up, and get dressed. I head to my bunk, notebook in hand. Jinx’s and Toombs’s trophy beams at me from the corner. I cover it with the sheet. I don’t deserve kudos for anything at the moment.

With trembling hands, I open the music journal and read. The story of an alcoholic on a downward spiral unfolds, and it isn’t until about three-quarters of the way through that the tone of the words changes from one of entitlement and greed to remorse and longing.

Lonely, gut-wrenching lyrics dust the pages. Recognition of bad deeds done to good people. Needs gone unfulfilled. Or too fulfilled. Even the musical notes scrawled across the paper reflect sadness and loss.

When I finish reading, my chest hurts. I set the notebook on my stomach and gaze at the metal cage above my head.

I’ve never given
anyone
love—not my parents, my friends, Toombs, or even Eve. But hurt? I got that shit in spades and deal it out to anyone in my way. Let the cards land where they will. Rax Wrathbone will do whatever it takes—lie, cheat, or swindle—to win the game.

Well, the game’s over. By my own definitions, I won. I got Jinx. I got Toombs. I got Eve.

And then I gambled them all away.

I grab Jinx’s and Toombs’s trophy, roll to my side, and hug the hunk of metal and the notebook to my chest. I can mine something positive out of the tragedy of my life. I now know how.

It’s time to win back the people I love. For good.

Side A: “Eve’s Nocturne”

A month later, the tour bus rolls into New Orleans, and I’m a pinball, bouncing from one emotion to the next: worry, excitement, anxiety, anticipation.

Our gig last night in Baton Rouge was fucking amazing. The fans were insane. The music flowed. I felt good.

And happy.

After our driver Freddie parks the bus, Toombs swings into the seat beside me up front and taps my phone with a pretzel he’s been gnawing on. Eve’s number is open, but as usual, I don’t have the balls to dial her.

“You gonna call?” he says.

“Yeah. After the show tonight. I’m gonna do it.” I’m sure I’m ready, but… What if she found someone else? It’s been a couple of months with zero communication. All kinds of shit might have happened since I last saw her.

All kinds of shit has changed for me, that’s for sure. After my relapse, I took my life by the horns, stared it straight in the eyes, and told it I wasn’t putting up with bullshit excuses anymore. I started eating right (which Letty fucking hates because there’s no more junk food on the bus), I bought some weights and began working out, and I wrote a bunch of songs.

Alcohol is no longer part of my vocabulary. I’m the only one who owns me, and Rax Wrathbone ain’t nobody’s bitch.

In addition to the lifestyle changes, I’ve also ventured into the World of Communicating with People. Toombs and I—and Jinx too—have patched up the remainder of our issues (namely, me treating him like shit through the course of our lengthy friendship) and returned to the way things used to be. Well, aside from tag-teaming groupies and me sticking my dick in his ass. I miss our old times, but we’ve moved on, and we’re both more than okay with how everything turned out.

And on top of setting things right with my friends, I now have something I never had before: hope.

If I could fix the total shitstorm I rained down on Toombs and Jinx, I’m confident I can fix any goddamn thing you throw at me.

“You need me to hold your hand when you dial?” Toombs interrupts my reverie with a punch to the upper arm.

A grin splits my mouth. I shake my head and punch him back. “I don’t want you anywhere near me, dickhead,” I tease.

Letty flits over, shaking her sassy ass in her plaid miniskirt, Shades right behind. He scoops up a handful of butt when he thinks no one’s looking. She slams a cucumber on the table, braces her hands a few inches from mine, and pegs me with a pissed-off snarl. The cucumber’s guts leak from its gaping chest wound.

“Next time we go to the grocery,
I’m
doing the shopping. I’m sick of this shit you call food. What good is a cucumber? No good. Unless you’re shy a dildo, then it’s fine and fucking dandy. But I don’t want cucumbers in or out of my twat and certainly not anywhere near my mouth. You hear me, Rax? No more goddamn cucumbers.”

I lift a brow. “Zucchini, then?”

She hesitates. “What does that taste like?”

“Better than cucumbers.”

“Steeped in twat, it might actually be kinda good.” Shades snaps off a piece of Toombs’s pretzel and chomps it. Toombs snarfs down the rest of the stick.

Jinx wanders over. “Is that like tossing salad?”

Toombs chokes on his pretzel, and four sets of eyes veer toward her.

“No, it’s not like tossing salad.” A huge grin falls over Letty’s face. “Thanks a lot. Now I have an image in my head of you laid out on a table with lettuce brimming from your cooch, surrounded by every vegetable known to man, a zucchini in your mouth, pointed at Toombs’s bare, hovering ass. So, how do we make that shit happen? ’Cause I can bring the salad dressing.” She rubs her crotch.

Toombs, Shades, Jinx, and I bust out laughing. When the roars die down, Jinx leans over to Toombs and says, “Really, what does that mean, ‘tossing salad’?”

He takes her by the elbow and says, “I’ll show you, baby.” They waltz down the aisle to the tune of more laughter.

I never realized how much fun my bandmates were until I saw them while I was sober. In fact, I never realized how goddamn colorful the world was until now. Everything is brighter, more vivid—even the music. On our first tour, I climbed onstage every night, went through the motions, did my part to support the band, and promptly forgot about it as soon as I had a bottle in one hand, a groupie in the other.

Now, I feel the music so strongly, I can almost see it. Feeling
anything
is pretty new to me. Sometimes I have a little sensory overload, but it’s better than the alternative.

Jillian climbs onboard the bus from her cigarette break. “Are you guys ready to kick New Orleans’s ass tonight? This is gonna be a big one.” She knifes me with a pointed stare.

“Fuck yes. Let’s make history,” I say.

And afterward…well, I hope to make some history with Eve if she hasn’t bailed on New Orleans or found another guy to take care of her.

Big ifs.

* * * *

The crowd is out of control tonight, and Letty’s in rare form. They’re eating her up, and she’s giving it to them hard and heavy. We all are. I catch Toombs’s eye as he and the others exit the stage for my solo. I’ve played “Eve’s Nocturne” alone for every gig since the tour started, but it doesn’t get any easier. On nights like tonight, it’s hard as fuck.

But all this emotion coursing through me has to be good for something. So, I tell myself to channel it, to transform it into a song as beautiful as the woman I wrote it for. And if I play the tune well enough, maybe I’ll find the strength I need to finally hit the call button later on.

The audience settles as the lights go down. Whistles screech from random points in the venue. I switch out my electric guitar for the acoustic and take the chair waiting for me center stage. Despite the sweat drenching my clothes, I’m cold. Being alone on a stage in front of a couple thousand people does that to you.

The spotlight tightens, casting shadows all around. I melt into them, let the darkness absorb parts of me while the light exposes others. Beautiful dichotomy. White, black. Seen, unseen. Good Rax, bad Rax. Like it or not, both make me who I am. But I’m working hard to keep my balance, leaning toward the good end.

I strum the first chord, testing my courage. Being here, in this town again, knowing Eve could be only a few miles away, sets my nerves afire. I calm that energy with another brush of the strings and imagine Eve’s kisses falling on me like the rain in Jackson Square. Her touch like the warm golden sun on my back. My heart so full, I can’t breathe. That’s where peace lies. Right there. With memories of Eve. That’s what gives Good Rax his motivation.

My fingers dance up and down the frets while the other hand plucks the strings. I shut my eyes and feel the notes transforming from simple, individual sounds into complex, concentrated meaning. I guide them this way and that, squeeze the haunting highs and desolate lows from my times with Eve into her song—our song.

And her lovely pale face takes form behind my closed lids. Her icy blues and long, black waves shining in spite of the darkness she wears around her. I remember her ugly dancer feet and smile.

When I reach the midpoint of the song, and I’m fully committed to seeing it through to its conclusion, despite a heart full of longing threatening to choke me, a guitar screech slashes my eardrums. My fingers tumble out of rhythm. Bass drum kicks out a
one-two, one-two, one-two
. The stage lights intensify, and a rainbow of colors fans out around the column of white centered on me. I look to my right.

Toombs marches my way, screaming a hard rock harmony to back up my lead. What the hell is he doing? Cymbal taps knock shit up a notch, and Shades appears on my left, fingers sprinting up and down the frets. Fuck, my bandmates just crashed my song. The crowd perks up, and suddenly everyone’s on their feet, heads banging to this new, evolved tune.

Thoroughly confused, I manage to keep playing while silently demanding an explanation from Shades and Toombs. “What the fuck?” I mouth to Toombs, a little irritated that they’re raping this sacred tune for my long-lost, would-be girlfriend.

He gestures with his chin behind me. That’s when my world flips on its axis and starts spinning in the opposite direction.

The members of Killer Buzz Float take “Eve’s Nocturne” to an epic new level as a figure poised near the top of Just Breathe’s Australian flagpole spirals down it like a high-class stripper. With the lights blaring in my face, I can’t tell, but I think it’s Letty. I stalk closer, squinting, playing, wondering…

And my heart takes off at full gallop.

No. No fucking way on God’s green fucking earth that can be—

Eve.

Motherfucking Eve. Dressed like a dark angel, all in black. My favorite color on her.

I race over and stare, jaw hanging open wide enough to catch flies. Swinging Eve flashes me a huge white smile.

I. Am. Speechless.

It’s like seeing her for the first time after waking up from bionic eye implant surgery. She’s perfect, more majestic in her faded scars than she was when she was flawless. My mare is still untamed, but tenderness hides in her taut muscles, and lines of wisdom that weren’t there before strengthen her face with deeper character. Maybe we both grew together in our time apart.