Stay Until We Break (11 page)

“Hey, Sunny!” Jason calls to Sonia as she walks back towards us from the Waffle House. What the hell? Jason and Sonia know each other? “Long time, no see, girl!” Jason says. “What are you doing out here with Soft? Have you been kidnapped or something?”

Oh, nice. My stomach drops to my feet as the cop’s ears perk up, but my blood really boils when Jason plants a kiss right on Sonia’s cheek. I feel my eyes go wide, the vein bulging on the side of my neck.

“You look hot in that dress,” he says.

“Thanks,” she says, sounding slightly annoyed, but not annoyed enough, if you ask me. “What are you guys doing here?”

“We’re headed to Nashville,” he says. “Stopping for some waffles, you know, at the Waffle House! What the hell else do you get here, anyway? Besides cramps?”

“Wait a minute,” Justice League Jerry says. “You’re Jason Foley of the Pumps! I love that song you guys do—‘Two by Eight’? Catchy tune.”

Jesus Christ. I think Emmy is about to retch again.

“Thanks,” Jason says with a smile so smug I’d like to wipe it off his face with my fist. Then he puts his arm around Sonia and says, “Where are you guys playing tonight? I mean, assuming you’re not all in jail?”

“Murfreesboro,” Sonia says. “And we won’t be in jail, smart-ass.”

“Oh cool, not far from us,” he says. “We’ve booked a couple of rooms at the Sheraton downtown if you guys want to swing by. I think our set’s done by eleven.”

“What?” I say, in total shock. “You’re actually inviting us to hang out?”

“These riffraff are friends of yours?” the cop says, gesturing at all of us with a nod.

Jason pauses before answering, but Sonia gives him an elbow in the side and a pleading sort of look that I hate with all my heart.

“Yeah, Sunny and I are old friends,” he finally says. “Though she’s not technically in the band.”

“I’m managing the tour,” Sonia says.

“Tour?” Jason says, looking skeptically in our direction, and laughs. “You guys are on tour in that piece of junk?”

Travis makes two fists at his sides as his face actually gets a little life in it. I give him a warning look, because as much as Jason is a prick, what we don’t need is to start shit in front of a cop.

“I’ll call you at the hotel later, all right?” Sonia says. “We’ll come hang out after the show.”

“We will?” I say, stunned.

“Excellent,” Jason says, giving Sonia the once-over from head to toe. “You better, Sunny. We’ve got a lot to catch up on.”

“Yeah,” she says. “Sure.”

“Hey, think I could get an autograph?” the cop asks. “I’ve had that song stuck in my head for days.”

“Sure,” Jason says. “Anything for a fan.”

Now I think I’m going to be sick myself.

Jason follows the cop back to the cop car and the fucking Pumps saunter off, into the Waffle House. I exhale and run my hands through my hair. I feel like I want to puke I’m so stressed out. But Sonia looks calm and cool as anything.

“You fucking know Jason Foley?” I ask her. Right now this is the least of my problems, but still. What the fuck? “How the hell do you know him? And why were you so nice to him? And why didn’t you ever tell me you’re friends with him?”

“Calm down,” she says. “We just went to PDS together. He’s from Princeton.”

“He’s an asshole,” I say.

“I know he’s an asshole,” she says. “I just told you, I’ve known him for fifteen years.”

“Why didn’t you ever tell me about him?”

“Tell you what?” she asks, looking completely confused.

“Guys,” Joey says, nodding in the direction of the cop, who’s now making his way back towards us. “Can you have your lovers’ quarrel
after
we figure out how to not go to jail? Please?”

Justice League Jerry stands in front of us, a lot more relaxed now, smiling as he holds on to the Waffle House napkin with Jason Foley’s autograph like it’s some sort of holy item. I grit my teeth in renewed disgust.

“Seeing as you’re all friends with the Pumps and Jason was a decent enough guy to vouch for you, I’m going to let you go,” he says.

Okay, now I really
am
going to be sick. All we need is to owe that asshole any favors.

“You just saved yourself a headache,” Sonia snaps, her temper getting the better of her, and I’d clamp my hand right over her mouth if I could reach it in time. “You had no business searching us. There is no probable cause here.”

“Is that what you think, little girl?” Officer Jerk-Off says, and oh fuck, my blood starts to slowly boil. “We’ve got a war on drugs here in this country. And we’re going to win.”

“Yeah?” Sonia says. “Let me tell you something. My father has put away more drug dealers in his career than you will ever find in all the Waffle Houses in Kentucky ever, okay? Now who’s the winner?”

“Oh, I’m sure your father is real proud his daughter is running around the country with dirtbags like this,” he says, getting right, and I mean right, in my face. “Like some whore.”

Now I’m seeing red, and I can tell you, whatever comes next is not going to be good. This I know from experience.

“What the fuck did you just call her?” I say, feeling like I just grew three sizes as I step in closer to him. I can see the coffee stains on his teeth as he grins, his hand moving to his baton. Here we fucking go.

“Are your ears damaged?” Justice League Jerry says. “Or just your brain?”

“Cole . . . don’t,” Sonia says, her voice shaky, her hand on my arm. “Please, I’m sorry—he’s just looking for an excuse . . .”

“Back up, Sonia,” I say, because I’m about to call this guy a lobotomized, sodomized pig and I know when I do, he’ll take a swing at me. But before I can say anything, Sonia has stepped right between me and the cop, trying to make me look at her, but I can’t take my eyes off the pig’s shit-eating grin. Joey clears his throat and taps my shoulder.

“Let’s take a walk, Cole,” Joey says.

“Please, Cole,” Sonia pleads with me. “It’s not worth it.”

The look on her face is what stops me. Reels me back down to the ground. I give the cop one last sneer before turning away and walking around to the other side of the van, Joey right on my heels. The cop starts slinging insults behind me, calling me a godless, neutered faggot, and Joey says, very, very quietly, and very seriously behind me, “If you so much as turn around to look at him, I swear I will kick your ass myself the minute he leaves.” I’m so amped up right now, I don’t even think he can take me. But I don’t want Sonia to see me lose my shit. Over the pounding in my ears, I hear Emmy telling Sonia to stay right where she is, to give me some space so I can cool off.

Joey practically boxes me in against the side of the van. “Back the fuck up,” I say, and when he won’t, I mutter a stream of some of the most vile, foul curses I can muster at him. But he won’t get out of my fucking way until we hear the police car drive off. Then he finally lets me go and lets out a long exhale of relief.

“We good?” he asks.

“Yep,” I say, straightening out my shirt. I feel like a complete asshole, though.

Joey and I walk back around to help Travis load the cabinets back into Steady Beth. When Sonia comes and taps me on the shoulder I nearly jump out of my skin, I’m still so keyed up.

“I’m so sorry,” she says. “That was totally my fault.”

“No, it wasn’t,” I say, running my hand through my hair, looking off to the street, back to the restaurant, anywhere but at her.

“Yes, it was,” she insists. “If I hadn’t insulted him in the first place . . .”

“Sunny, please,” I say, now finally looking her in the eye. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t try to fix it, all right?” I say. “Just see a thing for what it is and let it be.”

***

We drive the speed limit, mostly in silence for the next hour as we make our way south to Tennessee. Emmy takes the front seat so she doesn’t get carsick, her head practically hanging out the window like a golden retriever’s. We don’t play any music in the van because she and Joey still have splitting headaches. I ride in the back with Sonia and Joey, Sonia curled up next to me like a cat, her feet tucked up under her as she pores over the latest issue of
CMJ
, the only one who seems at all upbeat after our run-in with Justice League Jerry. I’d be proud of her for not backing down to that cop if I wasn’t feeling so humiliated.

“I’ve never seen you like that before,” she says. “It was . . . kind of badass, actually.”

“It was stupid,” I say. “I hate that he got to me like that. I should know better.”

“Yeah you fucking should,” Joey grumbles, glaring at me from the other side of the bench.

“I know, I know,” I say, gritting my teeth. “I’m sorry, okay?”

“What’s he talking about?” Sonia asks.

Emmy turns her head and gives me a look, and I know what she thinks—I should just tell Sonia the truth about my past. Travis glances up in the mirror while Joey looks my way. And fuck, now that I’ve just learned that Sonia’s father was once the highest-ranking attorney in the state, a guy who made his career putting drug dealers away, how much do I want to tell her the truth? Not much.

I exhale a long sigh.

“This wasn’t my first run-in with cops,” I say, reluctant as all hell.

“Oh, you really are a badass, then?” she teases.

“A jackass is more like it. I was a lot younger, though.”

“What, were you a delinquent or something?”

Even though we’re cruising at fifty-five miles per hour the entire van somehow goes still, like everyone is holding their breath.

“Is it that obvious?” I try to make a joke out of it.

“Seriously?” she asks. “Like, in trouble with the law?”

“Yeah, like that,” I say. “I got locked up when I was sixteen. I was in the youth detention center up in Bergen for a while.”

“No way,” she says, her mouth hanging open. “For real?”

Did it just get much hotter in here? Maybe I’m the one who’s going to be carsick now.

“Wait, do you guys all know this already?” Sonia asks, turning to Joey.

“Sunny, I’ve known Cole since he was nine,” Joey says. “I know when he got his first boner. That’s a much funnier story.”

“Come on, man,” I say. “Really?”

“So what did you do?” she asks, her voice sort of tentative. “Like, graffiti or something?”

“No, not graffiti,” I say.

“Breaking and entering? It wasn’t embezzlement, I assume.”

“No, no, of course nothing like that,” I say. “I used to deal a little weed in high school, that’s all. No big deal. I got set up by a couple of jocks my junior year and got busted and had to spend some time cooling it in the youth house, and then I never did it again. That’s the whole story, honest.”

“Oh,” she says, and then settles back into me. “Man, you’ve been keeping that under your hat, and you were mad at me for not telling you I know Jason Foley? Seriously?”

“I know,” I say. “I’m sorry.” I turn and look out the window. My face feels heavy with shame and my chest feels like it’s made of sand that’s just blowing away in the wind.

“I can’t believe you guys don’t play that story up in your interviews,” she says. “Do you have any idea how sexy that reformed bad-boy angle is? Talk about a missed opportunity. If you’d let me handle your publicity . . .”

“Sunny!” I say, busting out with an unexpected laugh. “Wait, are you serious?”

“You know, I never thought about it that way,” Emmy says. “She does have a point.”

“Right, like Cole needs more girls flocking to him after shows,” Joey says. “Wait, can we say it was me?”

“Sure, be my guest,” I say.

When Sunny puts her hand in mine and squeezes it, and I see that look of understanding on her face, I feel myself breathe normal again for the first time in an hour. But if I really think about it, of course she would understand. This is Sunny, here. She might be a rich girl with a high-powered lawyer for a dad, but she’s also got ink and she walked away from a spot at Juilliard because she knows what’s really important to her, and I know it’s not appearances or what other people think. She’s not going to think I’m a total loser just because I’ve made some mistakes in my past, because she’s Sunny.

And Sunny is awesome.

Cole

By midafternoon it’s hot as hell and Steady Beth’s air-conditioning is barely keeping up. I’m trying hard not to sweat on Sonia, who’s napping in my arms in the backseat, but I can feel my forehead is damp, my T-shirt starts to stick to my back. Joey and Emmy have both fallen asleep, too. We’re cruising the speed limit on a quiet stretch of interstate somewhere between Bowling Green and Nashville when Travis slows down to pull off the road.

“What’s up?” I ask. “Everything okay?”

“Look who we have here,” he says. I look up, out through the windshield, and see Crown’s green Ram van pulled off on the shoulder with the hood open, and Elliot and Vincent bent over the engine. Miles and Anton are standing on the grassy bank. They grin and give us the finger as we pass them.

“Aren’t you stopping?” I say.

“Yeah, but look up ahead,” Travis says. “They picked a great spot to break down.”

Just past the van, I see an enormous warehouse with a red roof and what looks like a blue inflatable dildo on the roof, but that’s no dildo—it’s a rocket.

GOLD CITY FIREWORKS EMPORIUM
the sign screams in red, white, and blue block letters as tall as I am.

“Now that was swell of them,” I say with a grin and nudge Joey awake. “Wake up, Marmaduke. We’ve got some shopping to do.”

Joey’s eyes flutter open, and when he sees where we are, he grins from ear to ear.

“Mecca,” Joey says, in awe.

Now, for two Jersey boys like me and Joey, the sight of such a place makes us a little giddy. You can’t buy fireworks in Jersey. You have to go to Pennsylvania or, better yet, to the South for Black Cats and Roman candles or basically anything that’s actually fun. So “kid in a candy store” doesn’t even begin to describe what we’re about here.

But first, after we wake the girls, we walk down to the highway to see if we can help Crown out. Travis, Mr. Jiffy Lube (he really does work at Jiffy Lube, at least for now), carries his toolbox with him. We can hear Elliot cursing while Vincent wipes grease off his face with a rag. Miles waves when he sees us approach, but Anton greets us with an empty Snapple bottle with a bottle rocket pointed right at us and a lighter at the ready. Sonia ducks behind me while Emmylou stands there, hands on her hips.

“Come on, Anton,” she says. “Cut the shit.”

“You sabotaged us!” Anton says. “We know it was you!”

“What was us?” Travis asks.

“Looks like somebody fucked with our van,” Miles says. “She hasn’t been running right ever since we left Lexington this morning.”

“Come on, you know it wasn’t us,” Travis says. “Want me to take a look at it? I can probably get you guys up and running.”

“
Want me to take a look at it
?” Anton says in a mocking tone of voice. “You think we’re letting you anywhere near our chariot, grease jock?” He lights the rocket, and we all turn our backs to him and hunch over as it goes whizzing over our heads.

“Sunny, I forfeit my dining budget for the week,” Joey says, rolling up his sleeves, a dangerous look in his eye. “Because this is war.”

***

Tuesday, August 15, 1995

Red Rose Coffee House, Murfreesboro, TN

With Crown the Robin and Tindermelt

Soft Tour—Day 6

Guess I wasn’t expecting the Red Rose Café to be an actual café, with soup and sandwiches and coffee and the whole bit. It’s really well lit, too, like we’re playing in a deli or something. That’s cool I guess, especially since Tara, the girl working there, is a sweetheart and feeds us dinner when we show up. We’ve polished off all the band rations and skipped breakfast today, thanks to Officer Infected Dick, so we’re all starving. I tear into a grilled cheese and a bowl of tomato soup like it’s my last meal, and I’m so hungry it tastes better to me than Mom’s corned beef on Saint Paddy’s.

Tonight we open the show, followed by Crown and then a local act, Tindermelt, three guys in matching cowboy shirts and boots playing this navel-gazing sensitive-guy shit that’s like an unholy coupling between R.E.M. and REO Speedwagon. Ultra self-conscious college-boy rock with a lot of ’80s-style synth in there, and I can’t tell if it’s meant to be ironic or what, but let’s just say I’ll be hanging outside while they play their set. Not because they’re bad (which they are), but because they’re dicks. This I know almost as soon as I meet them and the singer, Wyatt, flat-out ignores Emmy when she tries to talk to him about the mic setup, instead going right to Travis to ask if they and Crown the Robin can use our kit tonight and our amps as their backline.

“Yeah, no, I don’t think so,” Emmy says, answering instead of Travis. Wyatt rolls his eyes at her and I feel my jaw clench.

“Well then we’ll need to cut your set short so we have time to switch gear out,” he says.

“Whatever you have to do,” Travis says.

Now, we share gear all the time to help make the transitions between bands go quicker, or when there’s a problem with space. So that’s not the point. The point is Wyatt is a dick and fuck him. That’s all the point we need. Unfortunately, we’re supposed to be staying at his place tonight, so talk about awkward.

Before we line check, Sonia sits down next to me on the bench. “Emmy is refusing to stay at Tindermelt’s apartment,” she says. “So I’m going to call Jason to see if we can crash their suite at the Sheraton.”

“So we go from one dickhead to another,” I say, my guts twisting. “Hard to say which would be worse.”

“Well,” she says. “I was thinking if we hang out with the Pumps tonight, maybe I can talk Jason into giving your single to their A and R guy at Geffen.”

I can’t even hide how much I dislike the sound of that. “Come on—you really think Jason would ever do that for us?” I argue. “I thought you said you knew him.”

“He invited us to come hang out, didn’t he? Maybe he would.”

I’m so exasperated right now, I don’t even know what to say. I look away, out the window to the parking lot.

“Whatever,” I say.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Cole, if you’re going to make it in this business, you have to put up with dicks—you know this. That’s the way all business is, especially the music business. It’s full of dicks just like Jason and Wyatt and way worse.”

“Do I look like I need a lecture right now?” I ask, gripping the neck of my bass. “Really?”

“I wasn’t . . . I didn’t mean . . .” Her face right now, hell. Sonia is never one to backpedal from an argument. She sighs and shakes her head. “Am I ever going to figure out how to not piss you off?” she says.

“Maybe I’m just a pissed-off guy, in general,” I say. “Ever think of that?”

“No,” she says, and Goddamn she is a glorious pain in my ass, her jaw set, her eyes unflinching. “Because you’re not. You just don’t stand for bullshit. It’s one of things I lov—it’s why we get along, I think.”

When
we get along, I think, but I have to hand it to her because with that slip of the tongue she has me smiling again.

We start our set on nice, full stomachs thanks to Tara. Tonight, Travis is the only one who so much as cracks a beer. The rest of us are drinking Cokes on the house. We have a small crowd and Sunny sits off to the side. I don’t think I’ll ever get over the look on Sunny’s face when she watches us play. As much as I’ll miss playing with Soft like I’d miss saying my own name, I wonder if I’ll miss watching Sunny from the stage more.

Emmy’s mouth opens on the first line of “Daylight” and my attention is pulled right into the moment, the hugeness of the song booming through the PA speakers. We get into the first chorus and now the room we’re in is no longer a well-lit café with tables and a coffee bar. Tara has dimmed all the lights and Crown flips a switch so we’re ringed with strands and strands of blue Christmas lights strung from the tops of our cabinets to the floor in front of us. It feels like we’ve boarded some kind of spaceship to another planet and we all launch this rocket together, us and the small but appreciative crowd of people who come out to see live, unknown bands on a Tuesday night in Tennessee. After thirty minutes, Wyatt tries to shut us down, saying we have to finish. Emmy looks up and the crowd demands we play more, so she gives Wyatt a big grin and we launch into another ten minutes’ worth of tunes, and finish with the crowd lining up at the merchandise table and asking how soon we’ll be back.

I wish the answer for me wasn’t “never.”

***

After our set I’m a whole different man. Calm, confident. Even cocky. Nothing can shake me now. Fuck, I love playing a good set. Crown starts to play and I go to find Sonia sitting at the merch table with Emmy.

“Can I borrow you for a minute?” I ask her. “Or the whole rest of the night?”

The way she looks at me is everything.

I take her out to the parking lot and we lean against Wyatt’s car—a sparkling blue 1978 El Camino in mint condition with white racing stripes. I’m in such a good mood, I pick Sonia up, right off her feet, and sit her down on the hood of the car. She laughs, and the sound of it makes me feel like I can float.

She looks amazing tonight. We’re in dire need of a laundromat, so instead of one of her dresses, she’s actually wearing a Soft T-shirt with the sleeves rolled all the way up, along with this moss-green miniskirt, her pink cardigan wrapped around her waist, and her Doc Martens, and she is so punk rock right now I can’t stand it. She’s wearing hot-as-fuck red lipstick, which she must have put on sometime between when we ended our set and when I brought her out here. Her eyes are rimmed in black eyeliner, making the blue of them pop like they’re lit from behind, striking against all that thick, shiny black hair of hers, pulled back into a messy ponytail, strands of it falling around her face. Gone is the meticulously primped, carefully presented Sonia Grant from Hopewell, and in her place is this perfectly seasoned, badass rock-and-roll siren. Damn, I wish I had a camera. I’d love to take a photo of her sitting on this car and keep it with me so I never forget her just like this.

“Cole, what is it?” she asks.

“Huh?”

“The way you’re looking at me.” She looks down at herself, then folds her arms in front of her. “Am I . . .”

“Drop-dead gorgeous?” I say. “Hell yeah, you are. I can’t take my eyes off of you.”

She makes a face like she’s about to laugh, then covers her mouth with her hand.

“Well, then I guess now’s a good time to tell you,” she says, her face slightly pinched.

“Tell me what?”

“Tell you that I want to . . . you know, while I’m of sound body and mind . . .” She trails off.

“You want to what?”

“Come on, Cole,” she says, rolling her eyes at me. “I’m trying to comply with your terms here. The least you could do is take the damn hint.”

“My terms?” Not the best time for me to be thickheaded, but when it finally does dawn on me what she’s trying to say, swear to God my dick twitches. “Oh, yes, that’s right—my terms. I’m sorry, but you’ll have to state clearly, for the record, in your own words, your clear-minded and sober intention to ride my dick. Actually, let me go get a witness, just to be on the safe side . . .”

“Cole!” She turns bright red, laughing. My God, you’d think this poor girl was raised by a Methodist preacher. I put my arms around her, pulling her close.

“Come on, you can’t blame me for wanting to be sure, can you? I know I look better through beer goggles, but still.”

“You don’t look better through beer goggles,” she says. “The problem is you look way too fine without them. You’re like a damn demigod.”

“Wait, just a demigod? I was shooting for Zeus.”

“Ask me after we . . . you know.”

“After you see my thunderbolt?”

“Jesus Christ, you’re impossible.”

Yes, I know, but damn does it feel good to make her laugh. Especially when I’m holding her like this, catching the scent of her hair. I breathe it in, gaze down at her arm, and start to absently trace the cage of her tattoo.

“You know, most guys wouldn’t give a crap if I was too drunk to see straight. They’d see that as a bonus.”

“What, you have a lot of experience with guys like that?” I ask.

“Enough,” she says.

My chest knots when I think about who the hell may have tapped her while she was blitzed. I want names. Addresses. But being as amped up as I am on my postshow high, I think better of getting specifics out of her on that topic. For now.

“I don’t even like to drink that much,” she says.

“Coulda fooled me,” I say.

“No, really, it’s just that . . . oh God, this is embarrassing.”

“What is?”

She takes a deep breath. I give her a little space and sit down next to her on the hood of the El Camino. We’re both facing the Red Rose, watching Crown play through the big glass windows, hearing the low rumble and din as the music leaks through the cracks in the facade. I take her hand in mine, start playing with the ring on her right hand—a small, silver cow skull she picked up at a rest area gift shop on the interstate.

“Did you know that I was only four foot ten my senior year?” she says out of the blue. “I had a growth disorder. I didn’t even start my period until I was seventeen. Can you imagine? All the guys in school called me Pediatric. That was my nickname at PDS.”

She looks like she expects me to laugh, but there’s no way I could laugh at her. She bites her lips in a sort of mum face, her eyes darting to the side away from me. I feel the return of rage in the pit of my belly and do what I can to swallow it down.

“That’s fucked,” I say. “What kind of an asshole would do that?”

“It’s so embarrassing,” she says and tries to laugh it off. “I had this crush senior year, Martin Gladwell, and everyone on the soccer team started calling him ‘pedophile’ every time he would even talk to me. So I just stopped talking to him. I didn’t even go to senior prom. God, this is so stupid.”

“It’s not stupid,” I say, but she doesn’t look like she feels any better and all I want is to find some way to remind her that this is me, Cole. I’m not some guy she just met, I’m not those assholes back at school, and I’m not going to tease her now or anything like that. I’d never do that.