A Rocker's Melody (Dust and Bones) (30 page)

And Dylan finally woke up.

The first thing he saw was Melody’s anxious face. She was smiling down at him through her tears. “It’s about time,” she said.

The next person he saw was Jesper, who had a slow, relieved smile spreading across his face. “You had us real worried for a moment, there,” he said.

“How are you feeling?” Melody asked.

“Terrible,” he rasped. His voice sounded dry from disuse.

“What do you remember?” Melody asked. Dylan felt her hand in his. Though his limbs felt numb and heavy, he managed to squeeze her fingers to reassure them both.

“I remember…running away,” Dylan said. Shame nearly consumed him. “Shit, I’m so sorry, Mel.”

“None of that,” she chided, lifting his hand and pressing a kiss to his knuckles. “Don’t worry about anything. You just concentrate on getting better.”

“Do you remember coming back to Los Angeles and…?” Jesper trailed off.

A weight settled upon Dylan’s chest, a strange surety left over from the dream he’d just had. “Snake’s dead, isn’t he?” he asked, as the memories of his last moments began trickling back to him. The drinking, the drugs, the car ride...

A tear rolled down Jesper’s cheek and he nodded jerkily. “I was supposed to keep us together,” he murmured. “What a miserable failure I am.”

Dylan slowly reached out towards Jesper with a shaking hand, and placed it on his best friend’s arm. He summoned his strength, struggling to verbalize the words in his head—he was certain that he’d been given some form of pain medication which had made him groggy and incoherent. “I’m...I’m the one who failed him. ‘Sides, you’re only the de facto band leader, remember? I’m too much of a fuck-up to get it right.” They both laughed a little, watery chuckles that did nothing to lift their spirits. An ache was growing in Dylan’s chest, threatening to consume him. “How long have I been out?” he asked.

“Three days,” Melody said quietly.

“Jesus,” Dylan muttered. How bad had the crash been? He started trying to take stock of his numerous injuries.

After a long and heavy pause, Jesper cleared his throat. “I should go get your sister,” he said. “She’ll kill me if she finds out I didn’t tell her the second you woke up.”

As soon as he left, Dylan looked back at Melody. “Level with me, Mel. How bad is it?”

She scrutinized him, and he could tell she was choosing her words deliberately. “Do you remember the accident? Why you two went out driving?”

Dylan searched his memory, forcing himself to recall things he would rather forget.

“We were out of booze,” he said slowly, the ache in his chest turning into a heavy weight in his gut. “Christ, we finished everything he’d stashed away, then we went out because we wanted to get
more.
Snake was driving, I remember that. How come...?” He couldn’t finish the sentence:
How come I lived, but he had to die?

Melody seemed to sense what he had been thinking. “The car went over an embankment,” she explained. “You were thrown free on the first impact. You had a serious concussion and some internal bleeding; that was what took the longest in surgery. Every time they thought you were out of the woods, something else sprang a leak.”

“The first impact,” Dylan repeated woodenly. Out of everything she’d said, that was all he could focus on.

“The car flipped several times on the way down,” Melody continued. “They think Snake was already dead before…”

“Before...?” Dylan prompted.

“The explosion,” she finished.

“I hate myself even more now.”

“It was a bad decision on both of your parts. But hating yourself won’t help you,” Melody said.

“Well, what the fuck am I supposed to do?” Dylan cried. He felt tears beginning to leak down his cheeks. “I practically poured gasoline all over the place before handing a lit match to an addict. I killed my
brother
.”

“Snake had his own matches,” Melody argued. “You were both stupid and reckless, but it was a lapse of judgment on both your parts, you didn’t kill him.” Her hand stroked the side of his head gently, as if she was afraid to break him if she pressed too hard.

“It’s not fair,” he muttered. “He wouldn’t have even been drinking if I hadn’t—”

“Wouldn’t he?” Melody wondered. “You admitted there was a fair amount of alcohol at the house. Do you really believe that your presence alone shoved Snake off the wagon?”

Dylan thought about it. No, he hadn’t been the only reason Snake had been drunk off his ass, doing lines of cocaine and popping pills as if they were candy...but the fact that he’d been
a
reason was something that would haunt him for the rest of his life.

“I still shouldn’t have been a willing participant,” he insisted. “I even knew it was a bad idea; I didn’t want us to drive, I
told
him it was a bad idea, but I got in the car anyway. I don’t know why. I don’t know why I did that.” Then he sat up, realizing something rather significant.

“What’s the matter?” Melody asked, noticing his change in demeanor. She was still stroking the side of his face, trying to soothe him.

“I remember why I went with him,” he said. “I was hoping…” He shook his head. “For some reason, I thought that if I was there, I could keep something bad from happening. And for a while it almost worked. I was talking to him, keeping him alert, you know? Then one of our songs came on the radio. He was honking the horn and swerving because one of our fucking songs was on the radio and he just…misjudged the curve, I think. Can you believe how stupid that is?” Dylan barked out an angry laugh.

“Accidents happen for stupid reasons every day,” Melody conceded. “I’m so sorry, baby,” she whispered. She’d been crying off and on since he had opened his eyes, but now she was really starting to sob.

“What do I do now?” he asked, echoing the question from his dream. His own tears were beginning to flow freely; he wept for Snake, for the childhood they’d both missed out on, the dark and lonely roads they’d traveled as men, and because of the hopeless feeling that it was all just going to keep happening.

“You break the cycle,” she said quietly. “You do it for Snake, because he’ll never get the chance to do it, and you do it for yourself, because you are better than this. I can’t watch you take chances with your life, Dylan. I won’t let you turn into your father.”

Dylan winced. “I don’t want to be anything like him, but—”

“No buts,” she said. “You don’t want to be like him, so you won’t be. You can make your own choices. Besides, you’ve got something he never had.”

“What’s that?” Dylan said, feeling exhausted and worn to the bone as he choked back another round of tears.

“Me, silly. I’m here for you. I always have been. And I hope that now you know that I’m not better off without you.”

He allowed himself a little smile. “I don’t deserve it, Melody. I don’t.”

“You do,” she whispered. “And do you know why? It turns out that I’m in love with you.”

There was a moment of silence, Dylan allowing the words to sink in. He couldn’t quite believe his luck, nor did he fully understand the emotions coursing through him. A warm feeling swelled within his heart, and he recognized it as the same sort of feeling he’d had when Emma had been born. It was hope.

The words he had longed to say were on the tip of his tongue, but still, even now, he couldn’t say them. Instead, he used all the strength he had to pull Melody’s mouth down to his, to kiss her.

“I’m sorry I hurt you,” he murmured against her lips.

“Just promise never to do it again,” she replied softly, stroking his cheek with her fingers. He smiled sadly and closed his eyes. He didn’t want to say anything to ruin the moment...but he knew that he couldn’t make that promise to her.

The four of them sat around the round table in the loft, staring at Snake’s empty seat. An untouched bottle of Scotch sat before them, surrounded by five shot glasses. They were dressed in better clothes than they had worn to the Grammy’s. At the awards show, they’d showed up in artfully ripped jeans and T-shirts to present the image that they were above all the bullshit. Today, they had donned what Dylan’s grandmother would have referred to as their ‘Sunday best’:
black suits, dress shoes, and conservative ties. Their publicist had warned them it was important to be respectful.

Tank tugged on the collar of his starched white shirt. “I can’t believe we’re really doing this.”

Rip barked out a laugh. “It feels like this is just some fucked-up dream. I keep thinking I’m going to wake up.”

“Well, you’re not,” Jesper said flatly. “This is reality. We spent years avoiding it, and now it’s caught up with us.”

“I’m sorry,” Dylan whispered, staring down at his hands.

“We all have to share in the blame,” Jesper said. “We ignored the signs and kept the party going.”

“You didn’t,” Rip pointed out, nodding toward Jesper. “You stepped back a year ago.”

“I felt like it was time to grow up,” Jesper admitted. “I didn’t want…”

Dylan knew exactly what his friend hadn’t wanted. “You didn’t want this to happen,” he said, indicating the empty chair. “We can’t even take a drink in his honor—all things considered, it’s in bad taste.”

“I’m not sure I’ll ever take another drink,” Tank confessed.

“I won’t,” Dylan said.

“Don’t be so melodramatic,” Rip muttered. “I know Snake had a problem, but that doesn’t mean we all do.”

“True,” Dylan agreed. “But I actually do have a problem. I can’t keep crawling into a bottle every time something bad happens. I saw what I’ll become if I keep going on like that.” An image of his father, shuffling around that decrepit, barren house, crossed his mind briefly.

“You guys are no fun,” said Rip. He cast a glare at the empty seat. “Why’d you have to fucking die, huh?” His voice was strained, tears clogging his throat. While they had all lost a brother, Rip had known Snake the longest. Arguably, his was the heaviest burden to bear—though Dylan, with all of his guilt, could certainly give him a run for his money.

“This is wrong,” Jesper said suddenly, staring around at them.

“No argument there,” Dylan said, “but it’s too late to back out now. We’ve put this one off long enough as it is.” It had been nearly three weeks since Snake’s death. He’d been cremated immediately following the autopsy, but the band had begged the McCreedys to postpone the actual funeral until Dylan was well enough to attend. They had only agreed after Jesper had assured them the band would cover all the costs. Dylan wondered if he and his bandmates would have bonded so well if their families hadn’t all been so shitty.

“Not the funeral,” Jesper said. “These suits. Snake would piss himself laughing if he saw us dressed this way.”

“Yeah. Fuck respectable,” Rip agreed. “Today is supposed to be about Snake, right?”

“Hell yeah,” Tank crowed, slamming the tabletop with one of his huge hands. “Let’s give everyone something to talk about.”

“Within reason,” Dylan said, shocked to suddenly find himself the lone advocate of restraint. “This is about Snake, but it’s also about his family. I’m not saying we need to recite Psalms,” he added hastily, when he saw the looks his bandmates were giving him. “I’d just like to find a balance between Snake’s fantasy wake and the service his parents have planned.”

“Snake’s fantasy wake would probably involve plane tickets to Vegas,” Tank snickered.

“And at least two hookers,” Jesper added.

“Jesus, how did I end up the sane one?” Dylan muttered.

Jesper smiled. “You’re one of the few of us with something real, D.”

“Something worth holding onto,” Tank added, a melancholy tone creeping into his voice.

That was all true. Melody was the best thing that had ever happened to Dylan, and he had done everything in his power to push her away. But for some reason—perhaps she was mentally ill, or a masochist—she had stayed with him every step of the way. Part of him was still convinced that she was only sticking around until the funeral was over, when he would be less likely to relapse into his old habits if she left.

Suddenly, Dylan realized what Jesper had just said. He dragged himself out of his dark thoughts and narrowed his eyes at his old friend. “Wait a minute. Aren’t
you
supposed to have a real girlfriend, too? One you’re crazy about?”

Jesper sighed. “It’s complicated.”

Tank chuckled. “If it’s easy, it ain’t love.”

Dylan snorted. “That might be the wisest thing you’ve ever said, bro.” Being with Melody was as easy as breathing, but being good enough for her was the hardest thing he’d ever done.

“Sometimes it ain’t easy and it still isn’t love,” Jesper said regretfully. Dylan opened his mouth, but Jesper held up a hand to forestall any further discussion on the subject. “We can talk about it later. Today is Snake’s day.”

Dylan picked up an empty shot glass and held it aloft in a silent toast. Then he resolutely flipped it upside down and placed it back on the table. One by one, the others followed suit, until four of the five shot glasses were sitting upside down before them. They left the fifth one untouched. Snake would never have passed up the opportunity for a drink—and he surely would have been furious with them for choosing to do so—but Dylan was determined that the four remaining members of Dust and Bones would do what he couldn’t.

The suits, however, were going to have to go.

**

They had debated over who would speak at the memorial. Dylan had been reluctant to take the responsibility; given the circumstances of Snake’s death and his involvement in the crash, he was sure it would only create another media circus. And now that the media was
finally
easing up on their story, the last thing they wanted to do was draw more attention to themselves. Rip admitted that he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to make it through the whole thing without losing it. That left only Tank and Jesper.

“You’re always the one who cleans up our messes,” Tank had told Jesper. “I’ll do it this time. I’ll figure out…something to do.”

Jesper had refused. “This isn’t a mess—this is Snake, and Snake’s memorial. And I know exactly what we should do.”

The four of them arrived at the funeral home dressed in well-worn blue jeans and dark, long-sleeved T-shirts. Just as they had when they’d honored Emma, they each carried something of significance to Snake. Tank had Snake’s lucky guitar pick; Jesper had tied Snake’s favorite bandanna around his wrist; Rip wore the silver snake ring that had somehow survived the car accident; and Dylan had a folded piece of paper in his pocket. On it was the last song that Snake had ever written. He’d come up with the lyrics during his stint in rehab, and had shared it with Dylan in their final hours together despite their drunken stupor.