Rock N Soul (25 page)

“She’s right,” Chris said. “She always told me to go easier on the stuff. And don’t blame her for this, dude. Don’t. You don’t know anything about what was going on.”

“Oh no,” I said, shaking my head. “I am not going to let you defend your drug dealer to me from
beyond the grave
.”

Chris frowned too. Frowns all around, then. “I just wanted to tell her good-bye, okay? Because there at the end she was the only person in the world who would take my phone calls.”

I blinked and looked at Jerri again. “Is that true?”

She raised her eyebrows. “I’m only getting half the conversation here.”

“Oh,” I said. “You were the only one who would talk to him?”

“That’s what he said.” She shrugged. “I mean, he said Eric would talk to him about strictly business band-related stuff, and that Gabriel Sinclair would text him. And I guess he and Tori fucked sometimes, but he didn’t really look forward to that.”

“That’s incredibly sad,” I said, turning my gaze to Chris. “One of the most popular men in the world and nobody would take your calls.”

“Yeah, thanks, Tyler,” he snapped. “I really wasn’t able to figure out how shitty my life was without you summing it up for me.”

I looked between them again. “Well.” That was all I could think of to say.

Chris crossed his arms. “Will you let me finish saying good-bye now?”

“Yeah,” I said, a little more softly. “Yeah, go ahead.”

“Tell her that I appreciated her. And that it’s not her fault.”

I repeated that to Jerri. “Do
you
think it was your fault?” I asked afterward.

Jerri tucked her gun back into her jacket. “It was his own fault. Not mine.”

“She’s lying.” Chris stepped a little closer to her, watching her carefully. “I know her too well for that.”

“Well,” I said to Jerri, “
he
thinks that you think it was your fault.”

“He doesn’t know my life,” she said, then made a big show of rearranging her jacket and not looking at me.

“He knows about your Lincoln fetish and the birthmark thing,” I pointed out. “So clearly you were pretty good friends.”

Jerri gave a humorless chuckle. “We got along well, I guess.”

“So is he right?”

She turned her eyes to the tile on the floor and then sighed. “I usually don’t let it get to me. But when I heard about him . . . it sort of did.”

“Tell her I don’t blame her for it and that she needs to move on,” Chris said.

“He says you should move on. He doesn’t blame you,” I repeated. “And you should find a job that’s less likely to kill people. He didn’t say that part, though. That part was me.”

“You’re very judgmental,” Jerri said, cocking an eyebrow at me and crossing her arms. “Especially to people you don’t even know.”

I shrugged. “I’ve gotten kind of fond of Chris, despite my better judgment. And I wish he wasn’t dead. But I guess he’s right, and you’re right. You didn’t force the syringe into him that night. That was all him.”

Jerri nodded. “I told him, man. I told him to stop.”

I looked back at Chris. “Dude, when even your
dealer
tells you to quit, you should really consider quitting.”

“Point taken,” Chris said dryly. “I’ll check myself back into rehab tomorrow.”

“Is that all?” I asked him.

Chris looked at Jerri for a long time. “Ask her . . . if Eric said anything to her. Afterwards.”

“He wants to know if Eric said anything to you after he died,” I repeated.

Jerri’s eyes darkened for a second. “Eric . . . Well, all he really said to me was a pretty impressive string of cuss words and a threat to go to the police.”

“But he didn’t?” It seemed like the kind of follow-up question Chris would have.

“No,” Jerri said. “But I think that was mostly because he knew me and Chris were close. Friend-ish. And at the time, he was all about doing what Chris would have wanted.”

Chris nodded slowly. “Good.”

“He says that’s good.”

“And hey, Chris.” Jerri paused. “Where is he? I want to pretend I’m making eye contact.”

I motioned at Chris. “Over there. And here are his eyes.” I poked at them with two fingers, and Chris flinched backward.

Jerri made almost eye contact with him. “You shouldn’t go talk to him, man.”

“Why not?” Chris said. I repeated after him as unobtrusively as I could.

“Because nothing good will come of it,” Jerri said. “He’ll just say the same shit he always says and you’ll come out of it feeling worse than you did before. Like always.”

Chris stayed silent, his eyes locked on Jerri’s, and after a moment Jerri looked at me. “What did he say?”

I shrugged. “He didn’t say anything.”

Jerri returned her eyes to where I’d pointed. “You know it’s true. Don’t do it.”

“I have to,” Chris said. “I have to say good-bye.” I relayed the words and Jerri frowned again, still sad instead of angry.

“Well, good luck, man,” she said. “And you get Tyler here to come talk to me again if it goes badly and you need to vent.”

Chris nodded. “I will. And if I finish moving on after I say my good-byes, just know that I’m glad I knew you.”

I told Jerri what Chris said. She smiled and nodded. “Me too.”

Chris looked at me. “Now hug her.”

“What?” I gave him my most dubious double eyebrow raise. “I’m not hugging her.”

“Hug her,” Chris demanded. “It’s part of my moving on. Vicarious good-bye hugging.”

I looked at Jerri. “He wants me to hug you good-bye from him.”

“Seriously?” Jerri said.

“Yeah, unfortunately.” I held my arms out.

Jerri gave me a quick, hard hug and smiled. “Thanks for . . . whatever it is you’re doing. And good luck with Eric.”

I stepped back to a safe distance and returned her smile.

We left the florist’s shop and went back to the hotel to regroup. Chris seemed to alternate between being happier now that some of his unfinished business was resolved and nervous now that he was closer to talking to Eric. I could understand that, I guess. But still, the pacing was getting a little annoying.

“Dude, sit down,” I said after a while. “The back and forth and back and forth is about to put me into deep-stage hypnosis.”

“I’ve got all this energy,” Chris said. “And I can’t do what I normally do to relieve it, so you’re just going to have to learn to live with the pacing.”

I had a flashback of Chris releasing energy with Gabriel Sinclair, which made every inch of my skin tingle. Then I realized he was probably talking about the drugs, and the pleasant mental image was replaced with a detailed memory of what Chris looked like lying dead on the floor of the hotel. That image made my skin tingle too, but instead of making me want to reach for him or ask him if he wanted to try to touch me, it made me want to think about absolutely anything else.

And strangle him for dying, too, but that was both impossible
and
counterproductive.

“Let’s go out.” I stood up and tried to smile at him. “You can show me the city. Maybe we’ll see someone famous and you can tell me gossip about them. That will be fun for you.”

He paused in his pacing. “We have to go see Eric.”

I waved my hand in the air to dismiss his objections. “We have five more days here before we have to go back,” I said. “Eric can wait. We’ll take some time to digest the Jerri thing and you’ll feel better afterwards.”
And also you can take a few minutes to stop wigging out about seeing Eric.

Chris was silent for a few seconds, but he was clearly thinking, so I just let him do his thing. After a bit, he nodded. “I guess that would be fun. I can show you the city.”

“Then let’s go.”

We wandered around for a while. It turned out that Chris didn’t have many stories from Los Angeles after all . . . he claimed he’d been too busy to get out much when he’d been here before. After a couple of hours of random walking, I decided it was time to take a break. The sun was getting low in the sky—I guess even in California the days were short at this time of year. Something about that was vaguely disappointing.

Chris had gotten quiet again, and he had that look in his eyes that I was mentally calling the “Oh Shit I’ve Gotta Talk to Eric” expression. It was really starting to bug me. Part of me wanted to stomp up into Eric’s house right then and get the bullshit over with so Chris could go back to smiling. Because as gross as it was that I was apparently physically obligated to smile when I saw him smile, it was even worse that Chris being sad made
me
sad. There were implications of that sort of thing that I didn’t really want to contemplate.

We walked past a little hole-in-the-wall bar with a couple of neon beer signs in the windows, and I stopped. There was guitar music leaking out from the doorway, but not the blaring music of a bar that’s trying too hard to be cool, so it seemed like a good bet for a beverage. Chris kept walking for a few steps before he realized that I wasn’t following. He turned around and quirked an eyebrow at me.

“I’m thirsty,” I said, jerking my thumb toward the bar. “Mind if I go in?”

Chris shrugged. “No, go ahead. Maybe I’ll people-watch for a while.”

The moment we got in the door, Chris made a strangled noise in his throat, whispered, “Holy shit, is that a Strat?” and made a beeline for the girl sitting up on the tiny stage in the corner of the bar, her fingers flying over a black guitar while she sang a slowed-down version of some pop song I’d heard hundreds of times but never quite caught the name of.

I rolled my eyes at his back and went over to the bar, sliding onto a stool and waiting patiently for the bartender to notice me.

Two songs and half a beer later, a tall guy with sandy blond hair sat on the barstool next to me.

“You checking out the talent?” he said after a few minutes.

I tore my eyes away from the stage and turned to him. “What?”

He used his drink to motion at the singer. “You seem to be infatuated with the chick on the stage.”

Which wasn’t true, but it’s not like he had any way of knowing that, so instead I shrugged and gave him a half smile. “I have a thing for guitarists, I guess,” I said, feeling dumb as the words left my mouth.

“Who doesn’t?” he replied, laughing even though what I’d said wasn’t that funny.

I did the half-smile thing again, then turned back to the stage. Chris was sitting on an empty barstool next to the guitarist, watching her fingers move and nodding his head to the beat. The “Oh Shit Eric” look was gone for the moment, and instead he looked . . . content. It was a strange expression to see on his face.

The girl finished that song and then started up another one, a power ballad from one of those eighties hair bands. Chris’s face dissolved into a big grin, and when she started singing, he joined in, harmonizing with her. His voice was a little too hard-rock for the song and the harmonies weren’t perfect since he was obviously making it up as he went, but he had a decent singing voice that did weird things to my toes, and when he looked up and our eyes caught, for a second I forgot to give a shit about acting cool and unaffected.

His grin softened into a more genuine smile (fucking
dimples
again) and I smiled back, and fuck if it didn’t feel like the world stopped spinning for just a moment before it remembered the laws of physics and carried on.

Which was pretty fucking terrifying. I looked back at my beer and took a deep breath to steady myself.

The guy beside me leaned over. “Are you going to ask her out?”

“Who?” I asked, then felt stupid again. “Oh. Guitar girl. Um, no. Probably not.”

“Why not? You were staring at her like you wanted to undress her right there on stage.”

I raised my eyebrow at him. “Actually, no. I just like the music.”

“Do you come here a lot, then?”

I let out a short burst of laughter. “Are you serious?”

He frowned. “What?”

“You’re seriously using that line on me,” I said, reraising the same eyebrow. “Do I come here often.”

His frown faded and almost reversed into a smile, but not quite. “Seemed like a good way to ease into flirting if you were into it.”

I looked back at Chris. He wasn’t watching me anymore. “I’m Tyler,” I said to the guy on the barstool.