The Fire Walker (16 page)

I didn't know if it was the fact that I was tired, or on some subconscious level I wanted to spend more time with Jessie, but I pulled over to a roadside motel later that afternoon. We were somewhere between St. Louis and Indianapolis, or at least I thought we were. If we stayed one more night, then tomorrow we'd reach New York in one piece. Maybe. I hadn't looked at the map yet, which was my usual style. Don't worry about it until the moment you get in the car.

When I cut the engine, Jessie didn't say a word. She just got out and stretched her arms back over her head, making her breasts stick out. Instantly, felt myself respond and ran a hand over my face. With a sigh, I pushed open the door and went down to the office to get a room for the night.

The room was the same as they all were. Motel entrepreneurs seemed to have this thing about floral prints from the seventies, but at least it was a decent bed for the night. It was the epitome of cheap and cheerful.

"Are you hungry?" Jessie asked. "There was a take out place down the street. I'll go get something if you want me to."

"Okay," I shrugged, setting my bag down on the end of the bed.

"Chinese?"

"Sure." Anything to get her out of here so I could call Zoe. She had it coming and it was a conversation that didn't need to be overheard.

Once Jessie was gone, the door closing behind her, I pulled out my phone and switched it on. Immediately there were several texts from Zoe and a voicemail from Simone. The voicemail I assumed was about the
Rolling Stone
article. The texts from Zoe were probably asking if I was okay. Reading through them, I groaned.

Where are you? You okay?

You're not dead in a ditch are you?

Do I have to come over there and slap you senseless?

Heeellllllooooooo.

No mention of Jessie, but she was obviously trying to play coy. Hitting her name in my favorites list, I pressed the phone to my ear, listening to each ring, trying to decide what I was going to say. Best to come right out with it.

"So, you are alive," Zoe declared when she picked up.

"Barely."

"How you doing?" She was totally tiptoeing around the thing she knew I wanted to talk about.

"Zoe, why the fuck would you go after Jessie? Did you get hit in the head or something?"

She sighed dramatically. "Took you long enough, Dee Dee."

"
Why
?"

"Because I could see how much it was eating you up."

"Yeah," I said, "but you didn't have to go and persuade her to come find me."

"I did what I thought was right."

"You didn't go there in person did you?"

"Maybe…" she said like she was trying to hide something.

"
Zoe
," I exclaimed, throwing my free hand in the air in exasperation.

"Dee, she was scared."

"She left me."

"I know she did a shit thing." Her voice was short. "She was scared. I get it. I ran too. Maybe not so dramatically, but I ran too."

"What did she tell you?"

"You know it's not my place to blab things she said to me in confidence. It doesn't work that way."

I grunted. Of course I knew it. When she and Will were screwed up, she would have throttled me if I'd spilled. Jessie needed to tell me on her own terms, but the fact was, I knew she wouldn't. She'd made that clear when she ran.

"So, she's road tripping with you?"

"I couldn't leave her in the middle of butt-fuck nowhere." I rubbed my eyes.

"Of course you wouldn't."

"'Cos I'm a fucking good guy."

"It's not a bad thing, Dee. How many times do I have to tell you?" she scolded me.

"I've got a pretty thick skull."

"So thick, I wonder if there's even a brain in there."

Despite myself, I laughed at her stupid joke.

"Has she talked to you about it yet?"

"No. I wasn't exactly thrilled to see her, Zo."

"I hope you weren't an ass."

"I was a big fucking ass. She won't talk to me anyway."

"If she won't tell you, maybe you should ask."

"Maybe I don't wanna know."

Zoe was silent for a while. "Do you have feelings for her?"

"I don't know," I replied truthfully. Back in LA, I would've said yes without blinking. Now, I wasn't so sure the thing that was churning inside me was love, hate or something in between.

"Maybe you should talk to her and figure it out."

"Talk to her about what?" I scoffed. "I don't want to talk about that
thing
." I didn't know what else to call it.

"You don't have to have a deep and meaningful," Zoe laughed. "Start again. Get to know her beyond the Jessie you met in LA. I'm not saying you should forgive her, or start a relationship or anything. I mean you should try and get to know her as a person first. Find out what makes her tick. Then you might understand why she did what she did."

Zoe was so smart sometimes it made me feel inadequate. I told her as much and she laughed.

"You know I'm the brains of this operation, Dee Dee."

"All the way," I said, lying back on the bed. "Thanks, Zo."

"Feel a little better?"

"Yeah, but I wish you didn't go in person. I mean, it fucked up your trip."

"It didn't screw it up," she reassured me. "We're doing the same thing, just backwards."

"You're too good for me, Zo."

"We're perfect for each other."

Jessie came back twenty minutes later with a plastic bag of food in one hand.

"I saw a bar back there a bit," she said, dumping the takeout on the table. "There was a cover band playing. It looked like a rock thing if you're interested."

I thought about what Zoe said on the phone. Had Jessie really run out on me because she was scared? If she had, then wasn't it a big deal she had the guts to come back and face me?

"Sure."

She looked at me like she didn't expect me to agree without an argument and quickly changed her expression. "Okay. Later."

We ate in silence, neither of us knowing what to say to one another, and I found myself wanting a drink to take the edge off.

"Well," she said a moment later. "If we're going out, I'm going to have a quick shower and get changed." She dusted off her hands and collected her rubbish, dumping it in the plastic bag. Rifling through her bag, she pulled out some clean clothes and disappeared into the bathroom.

Once the door was closed, my mind instantly went to the conversation I'd had with Zoe. I thought about that first tour we'd been on with The Stabs. Zoe had been so hell bent against letting Will get under her skin that she needed a talking to. I'd paired up with him to try and convince her to take a chance.

Zoe was my best friend, but fuck she could be stubborn. We'd been standing together in the elevator one day after breakfast and I'd said the most profound thing I'd probably ever say in my entire life.
Sometimes you've gotta take a chance, no matter how broken you've been in the past
. Did I really say that to her? What kind of person was I if I couldn't take my own advice?

This time, Zoe was the one who was dishing out the home truths.
Get to know her
. I think I'd used that one on her at some point, too. With a sigh, I cleaned up the remains of dinner and changed my shirt, pulling on my denim jacket. When girls say they're going to take a quick shower, it usually means forty-five minutes at a minimum. I flicked on the television and found a rerun of
The Simpsons
to bide my time.

I could hear the water running in the adjoining bathroom and the splashes as she moved around. All I could think about was the fact that she was naked in the next room. It was a typical guy thing to do, but I sat on the end of the bed, my hands jammed underneath my legs, my focus totally shot.

When she finally emerged in a waft of steam, I looked up and my heart stopped. Black skinny jeans hugged her ass, a loose fitting blue singlet hung around her breasts just so and she had her beat up biker boots on. One hundred percent of the things that turned me on about her on show. Why the hell did she have to look so fucking gorgeous? I mean, she could wear a garbage bag and I'd still be hard.

"Did you want the shower?" she asked and my eyes snapped back up to her face.

Unable to remember how to speak, I shook my head.

"Did you want to go then? I can drive if you wanna have a drink. I remember where the place was."

Nodding, I grabbed the car keys from my pocket and held them out. I didn't want to be attracted to her, I couldn't handle it, but the image still flashed through my mind of us just staying in and peeling off those tight jeans. When her fingers brushed against mine, it would've been so easy to pull her on top of me and pull that singlet over her head and… But, I couldn't trust her. Not yet or maybe not ever.

Jessie drove us the ten or so minutes to the bar she'd seen and pulled into the car park, which was already crammed. Seemed like it was a popular place, but maybe that was because it seemed to be the only place. Utes, beat up trucks and other assorted bombs were parked haphazardly on the gravel, which was a glaring indicator of the clientele. So, I'd probably fit right in.

The bar itself was a small, dark, hole in the wall. At one end was a stage, set about half a meter above the floor and packed tight with the house band's gear. They had a half decent drum kit and their amps weren't half bad either. Marshall with Orange heads. The music nerd inside me wanted to go up and have a closer look, but my eyes settled on the bar and it was probably a good idea to go there first.

The music that was blaring out of the sound system was pretty good, too. Rock mixed with some indie and punk. When a NoFx song came on, Jessie started to nod her head next to me, her eyes scanning the crowd.

"You're into punk?" I asked, surprised. I took her for an indie girl, not this hardcore stuff.

"Yeah," she shrugged, looking up at me. "The American stuff, though." When it came to punk, there was a distinct difference between the British and American bands. "But, I like lots of different things," she continued. "Indie. Rock. Electro."

"I'd never have picked it."

"I was a rebellious punk rocker."

"I was the class clown."

"I believe that," she smiled.

The bartender came along then and broke our conversation and took our order. A moment later, when I felt the slow burn of scotch down the back of my throat, my nerves began to settle along with my libido. I downed the rest in one go and slammed the glass back down on the bar. I didn't know what else to say to her, so I just walked off across the bar, weaving through the crowd that had started to thicken even more and found myself side of stage.

Curious, I began looking over the band's gear, seeing what stuff they had rigged. There was a lot more to music than just playing. I mean, there's so many things you can do with sound that just makes the thing you're playing so much richer. The effects, reverb, distortion.

"Hey," a voice said beside me.

Looking up, I saw a guy watching me. "'Sup, mate. This your stuff?"

"Yeah, I'm the guitarist." I wondered with the kind of people that were filling up the bar if he was worried that I was going to swipe something.

"Just checking out the gear you use," I said.

The guy scratched his head. "Yeah, not the top of the line shit, but we get a decent sound outta it."

"Orange are great," I said pointing to the heads over their amps. "I have a lot of mates who use 'em and swear by 'em."

"Do you play?"

"Yeah. Guitar."

"What's your rig?"

"Similar, though I have a more recent model Marshall and my head's Marshall as well."

"Sweet." The guy was all and truly hooked with the amp talk. "What pedals do you use?"

"I made my own," I said. "I had some old stuff lying around and I got a mate to help me with it."

"Shit, that's a bit complicated for me, hey. I got mine off eBay for dirt."