Rock N Soul (37 page)

Eric’s brow wrinkled for a moment, then he loosened his shoulders and took a breath. “I was thinking. You said yesterday that you would have to save up some money to get to Allison’s house.”

Shit. I looked at Chris with wide eyes. He put the guitar down and stood up again.

“If he offers,” Chris said softly, “we have to take it, don’t we?”

I nodded, both at Chris and at Eric’s question. The feeling was back, the one that said it was time for Chris to go. It wasn’t quite as intense as the sense of dread from actively trying to delay things, but my pulse still sped up and my nerves still sang with adrenaline like I was late for a job interview, like I was wasting too much time. I wondered where that feeling had been before today and why it had to show up
now
. Why I couldn’t have a few weeks to enjoy this before letting him go. It seemed ridiculously unfair.

Eric didn’t seem to be fazed by the look on my face, and he hadn’t heard Chris’s question, so he took a breath to continue.

Please don’t say it, please don’t say it, please . . .

“I can get you a flight if you want,” he said. “You can fly out there today and I’ll give you some cash to rent a car and drive back to Boston. That way you could finish what he needs to do without it being a big burden on you.”

“You rat bastard,” Chris said to Eric.

“Thank you,” I heard myself saying. “That would be nice of you.”

“Awesome,” Eric said. “I’ll make a phone call and get you a flight. Then I can drive you to the airport.” He stepped onto the balcony, pulling out his phone.

I sat on the end of the bed and closed my eyes.

“Tyler,” Chris said, loudly. “Don’t do this. I’m not ready, okay?”

I looked at him but not at his eyes. “I know you feel it too. Bad things will happen if we don’t go.”

“Fuck the bad things,” he said. “I’m not fucking ready. I won’t go.”

“I’m not going to risk it,” I said, putting my elbows on my knees.

“I don’t care,” Chris said. He knelt in front of the bed so he was at my level. “I’m not ready. I don’t care what happens. I’m not ready to go yet.”

“What if you go anyway?” I whispered, voicing the fear that had dug its way into the base of my spine. “What if we decide not to go see her and you lose your chance and just fade away?”

“Then we won’t be any worse off,” he said. “And there’s always the possibility—”

I cut him off there. “There’s obviously an afterlife. And if the religious crowd is right, you get into one by being a good person and you get into the other by doing the wrong thing. I’m not sending you to hell because I was selfish, Chris.”

“I don’t care,” he said again. He put his hands on the sides of my face. “Tyler. I don’t care.”

I moved back, sitting upright to pull my head out of his hands. “That’s really sweet and everything, but if I turned out to be right, then you’d care after a few millennia. And I can’t have that on my conscience.”

“This is bullshit,” Chris said, rocking back on his heels and glaring—in my direction, but not at
me
. “Why the
fuck
would they,” he motioned at the ceiling, “let me stay just to fuck with me like this? To fuck with
us
like this?”

“I don’t think it was supposed to happen this way,” I pointed out. “It didn’t happen like this for Chad. He just helped them finish their business and then they left and he was fine.”

“Will
you
be fine?”

“Fuck you.” I twisted away from him. “I’m not having this conversation right now.”

“Tyler—”

“No,” I said, loudly. “I can’t talk about it. Not when he’s right out there.” I waved my hand at the balcony.

He was quiet for a few seconds. “This is bullshit,” he said again.

“Oh, man,” I said, turning my gaze back to his. “I know.”

He leaned up to kiss me, and I had never in my life been so conflicted in what I wanted. Half of me wanted to push him away because kissing him now would feel like saying good-bye and I wasn’t ready for that yet, but the other half of me wanted to pour every ounce of my soul into the kiss and let him help me bear it.

And after all, he was only a couple of days from being gone forever, and every kiss was numbered now. So I let him kiss me and I tried to concentrate on his lips and how they felt on mine, and I tried to burn it into my memory without acknowledging to myself that that’s what I was doing. My eyes started stinging like venom was pooling behind them, and I fought hard against the tears. I mostly won the battle, although when the balcony door slid open and Chris pulled away, I knew that my eyes were just a little too bright.

Eric smiled at me. “I got you an early flight to Albany,” he said. “We can go out for breakfast and then I’ll take you to the airport.”

“Thanks,” I said. My throat felt raw, and I couldn’t look at Chris. If Eric noticed, he didn’t say anything.

In the end, saying good-bye to Eric was far less climactic than I’d expected. The check came, and Eric paid it, then leaned back in his seat and cleared his throat.

“This is it, huh?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said. Chris was clutching my hand under the table like he’d forgotten how to let go, and I gave his hand a squeeze. “I guess so.”

“I brought a case for the guitar,” Eric said. “I thought maybe he would want to keep it. So he could play it sometimes.”

“I doubt he’ll be around that long,” I said, and my voice cracked in the middle but none of us acknowledged it.

“Then you should keep it,” Eric said. “I think he’d like that.”

“I would,” Chris said. “Keep it.”

I just nodded. Words were tough, and I didn’t feel like fucking with them at the moment.

“Do you want the rest of his stuff?” Eric asked. “There are a couple of things I’d like to keep, but I can send you—”

I spoke over him, a little too loudly. “Can we talk about this some other time?”
Like maybe never.
But that might not be strictly true. I could envision a night, years from now, when I would be on the brink of convincing myself that I’d bought the guitar on eBay and I would need something else to hold on to so that I could remind myself that it had been real, and Eric might be my only link to that.

“Sure,” Eric said. “Give me your phone, and I’ll put my number in it.”

I handed it to him, and he fumbled with it while he tried to figure out how to enter contacts. Chris squeezed my hand, and I looked over at him.

“You should get a selfie with him and send it to Carmen,” he said. He was grinning and the mischievous twinkle I loved was back in his eyes, but his hand still had a death grip on mine.

I smiled. “You’re right. That would be hilarious.”

“What would be hilarious?” Eric asked, handing the phone back to me.

“My ex-girlfriend is a huge fan, and she’s a bitch, so Chris suggested that I take a selfie with you and send it to her.” It would be even funnier if Chris were alive and I could also mention that I’d had breakfast with Eric Painter
and
gotten head from Chris Raiden, but I didn’t think I could bring that up. Not now. And anyway, even under better circumstances, pics or it didn’t happen, and taking a picture of Chris sucking me off would pretty much amount to a dick pic, and nothing good ever came of sending dick pics to disgruntled ex-girlfriends.

“A big fan, huh?” Eric asked. “The kind who just happen to get lost at the concert and find themselves naked in our dressing rooms, but while they’re there would we bone them please?”

“Pretty much,” I said. “You were number one on her free-pass list.”

Eric laughed. “I’m number one on a lot of girlfriends’ free-pass lists.”

“You’re also so fucking humble, dude. Just like I assumed you would be.”

He laughed again. “Show me this chick.”

I pulled my hand out of Chris’s with some difficulty and found the picture I’d shown Chris before. I held it out to Eric.

He leaned forward and inspected the picture, then lounged back in his chair and smirked. “I’d fuck her.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Did you miss the part where I said she was a bitch? Trust me, you don’t want anything to do with her brand of crazy.”

He shrugged. “Great tits make up for a world of bitchiness.”

“So do you want me to give her your number?” I asked, my voice dripping with sarcasm. “I mean, she
did
leave me like seven hundred voice mails about how I’d killed Chris by not magically making a steak cook faster. I’m not sure you really want that type of girl knowing your phone number.”

Chris purred in my ear, “You’re so hot when you’re being snarky.”

“Jesus, dude, we’re in public,” I hissed back at him. He kissed me full on the mouth and it was the hardest thing ever to not let my lips react to it while people could see.

From the corner of my eye, I could tell that Eric was watching us—or me, rather, but still—with what appeared to be great interest. “I guess you’re not hoping to get back together with her?”

Chris had moved his lips from my mouth to my neck, and I tried to swat at him surreptitiously. “Not at all,” I said. “I’m kind of involved elsewhere. And besides, seriously, I’m lucky I didn’t need therapy with all the guilt-tripping she gave me.” Chris started sliding his hand across my thigh, and I groaned. “Christopher David Raiden,
behave yourself
.”

He put his lips next to my ear and sex-growled, “You know my middle name, baby?”

“I read the band bio, remember?” I pushed him back to a safe distance on the bench. “Fuck. I have to walk out of here, you know.”

Eric chuckled. “I see he hasn’t changed.”

Chris stuck his tongue out in a fake-sexy way and rubbed at his own nipples. I rolled my eyes at him. It felt good to be normal again, even if I wasn’t sure how long it would last.

Eric held out his hand. “Phone, please.”

I tore my eyes away from Chris, who had licked his own finger and was trailing it down his chest with an exaggerated porny expression on his face. “You’re such a dweeb,” I told him, then realized I hadn’t followed what Eric had said. “Wait. What?”

“I’m going to call her,” he said. “Give me your phone.”

Chris stopped with his ridiculous display of sleaze and grinned. “Oh, shit, she’s going to flip.”

“She’s not going to believe him,” I said, but I handed Eric the phone. “Carmen Anders. Might still be listed as ‘Psycho Bitch.’”

He pressed some buttons and then held it up to his ear. “Hey, is this Carmen? Cool. Listen, this is Eric Painter.” He paused for a few seconds, listening. “Do I sound like Tyler?” Another pause. “Well, I was going to offer to fly you out to California and fuck you senseless, but not if you’re going to be like
that
.” Another pause, and then he took the phone away from his ear. “She said to tell you that you’re a jackass. And then she hung up.”

“I told you she was a bitch,” I pointed out. “To be fair, though, I
am
a jackass. So she’s right about that. You shouldn’t fly her out here, though. I guarantee you’ll regret getting involved with her.”

“Oh, believe me, I wasn’t really going to.” Eric stood up and walked around to my side of the table, then crouched beside me outside the booth so our heads were at the same level. “How do you work the camera on this thing?”

I snorted a laugh and took the phone from him. “I give it three seconds after she gets this before she’s calling back. Do I answer?” I snapped a picture of us and then started putting it in a text.

“Hell yeah,” Eric said. Chris slithered closer to me in the booth and slipped his arm across my shoulders as I hit Send on the text. I leaned in to Chris and waited for Carmen’s inevitable reaction. Eric slid back into his seat on the other side of the booth and tapped his fingers in a drum beat on the table.

The phone rang, and I answered it. “Hey, babe, how’s it going?”

“TYLER LINDSEY, YOU GIVE HIM THE PHONE RIGHT NOW,” she screeched.

I held out the phone to Eric. “It’s for you.”

He took the phone and put it up to his ear. “Believe me now, princess?” A pause. I couldn’t hear what Carmen was saying, but he rolled his eyes super hard so it was probably saccharine-sweet and over-the-top. “Well,” Eric said, “I mean, yeah, I
would
have offered to fly you out here and give you a full backstage pass, if you know what I mean. But Tyler here says you were a Grade A bitch to him after my buddy Chris died.”

Chris nibbled at my ear, and I lost any hope that I was going to be able to walk out of this restaurant without a full-on boner.

“Well, listen here, sweetheart. You can’t treat people that way,” Eric was saying. “Chris’s death was an accident, and I’m offended on Tyler’s behalf that you’d try to blame him for it.” Another pause. “Yeah, I absolutely would have flown you out here. If you’d been nicer to my boy. But I guess that ship has sailed, huh? Peace.” He hung up and slid the phone across the table to me.

I laughed, and it was only a little throaty. “Way to tell her what’s what.”

Eric shrugged. “Least I could do.” His phone started to buzz then, and he checked it. “It’s our publicist. I have to take this.” He pressed the screen to accept the call. “Eric here.”