Hard As Rock (37 page)

“Yes. To step aside.”

“And you said
no?”
Derek asked incredulously.

“Because I love him.”

He shook his head. “That’s not why you stayed. You stayed because you’re a good person, and it broke your heart to see him like that. You couldn’t stand to be cruel to him and hurt him, not when he’s good and kind and
safe.
Not to mention you’d have to take a chance on me breaking your heart again.”

I wanted to hit him, I wanted to scream… but I couldn’t. He knew me. He knew me too well.

But he didn’t stop there.

“Plus, your mother cheated on your dad and there’s no way you were going to cheat with
me
again – ”

“Why do you always throw that back in my face?!” I snapped.

“Because when you did it, you did it for the right reason: you’re supposed to be with ME. You were supposed to be with me back then, and you’re supposed to be with me right now. And you would be, if I hadn’t fucked up. That’s all I’m asking for, Kaitlyn – forgive me, and let’s go back to the way things are supposed to be.”

I stood there helplessly, not knowing what to say.

“He doesn’t love you, Kaitlyn. Not like I do. I would
never
offer to let you go.”

“You offered to if I would
listen
to you.”

“I said I’d play nice and back off. I’d
never
let you go. I love you too much.”

“That’s the definition of a stalker, not somebody who loves you.”

“Okay, fine – I’ll let you go. I’ll let you go,
if
you can look into my eyes and tell me you don’t want me. Tell me you don’t love me. Tell me – and make me believe it.”

I caught my breath. So much was riding on what I said next –

And did I even want to say it?

Without thinking, I plunged ahead.

“I don’t love you.”

He looked into my eyes and smiled. “You’re getting better at lying… but you’re still pretty bad.”

With that, he opened the door and walked past me into the studio.

Riley was standing right there on the other side. I don’t know how much she had heard – but I was shocked at the frightened look in her eyes, at the look of betrayal she gave me.

Derek passed by her without a word, and the door shut.

When I opened it, Riley was already halfway down the hallway.

“Riley,” I called out, but she never turned around.

She didn’t say anything or look at me for the rest of the day.

The weekend before the Austin City Limits concert, Ryan threw a small party on Friday night.

Derek was conspicuously
disinvited
.

“Do not show up,” Ryan warned him at the recording studio.

“I’m not.”

“No singing on the front lawn, none of that crap.”

“Consider that my solo project.”

“I’m serious. I’m hiring security to make sure you don’t gate-crash.”

“Well, now,
that
sounds like a challenge.”

“Derek – ”

“Fine, I know when I’m not wanted,” Derek said mildly.

“That’s the trouble, I don’t think you do.”

“The trouble is,
you
don’t know that I
am
the one she wants.”

Then he looked at me and winked.

Ryan gritted his teeth and walked out with me on his arm.

That night, lots of local musicians showed up, as well as some famous ones from out of town. It wasn’t the star power that accumulated after one of the arena shows, but that wasn’t what Ryan was going for. It was a casual, laidback evening – friends listening to music and sharing a few drinks.

Except everybody kept asking where Derek was, which irked Ryan to no end.

Halfway through the evening, I ended up sitting down beside Killian out by the goldfish pond. He was in a wicker chair, plinking away at his guitar, sucking on his vaporizer every few minutes. Ryan had expressly forbidden anything that would give off smoke.

As soon as I appeared, he offered me a hit.

“No thanks,” I said.

“Suit yourself, luv.”

We sat there for a moment, not saying anything. I was a little drunk and a little uncomfortable at the lack of conversation. Killian wasn’t; he was perfectly happy so long as he had his guitar to play with. But the silence was getting to me, so I blurted out, “You were right about the whole scorpion and the frog thing.”

He looked over and focused on me blearily. “…what?”

“The scorpion and the frog story. You told it to me in San Francisco?”

Blank look from Killian.

“Where the frog gives the scorpion a ride across the river, and the scorpion stings it, and the frog says, ‘Why’d you do that, now we’ll both drown!’ and the scorpion says, ‘I’m sorry, I couldn’t help it, it’s in my nature.’ Remember?”

Killian shook his head ‘no.’

“Seriously?!”

“I’m a bit high most of the time,” he said apologetically, as though he were relaying something not widely known.

“Noooo –
really?”

“Out of curiosity,” Killian asked, “why did I tell you that story in the first place?”

“Because I was having problems with Derek, and you said he was the scorpion, and I was the frog, and if he hurt me, it was in his nature.”

“Ah,” he nodded sagely, then made a face like he was slightly impressed. “Not bad for advice I can’t remember.”

I was getting annoyed. “It wasn’t really advice, per se.”

“It wasn’t?”

“It was more of an… observation.”

“I see. Hm. Well. Why did you bring it back up?”

Because I’m buzzed and I was uncomfortable being quiet, and now I’m even MORE uncomfortable, and I wish I hadn’t even sat down here in the first place.

I sighed. “I don’t know… maybe because… I realized I put up with a lot of shit because of my relationship with my father.” I gave a wry, bitter little smile. “I was a frog raised by a scorpion, so it only made sense that I gave a ride to one.”

Killian looked down at his vaporizer, then at me. “You sure you haven’t smoked any?”

“No. I mean, no, I haven’t.”

“Hm. Well, that’s rather profound, then.”

“Is it?”

“But it all turned out all right, now, didn’t it?”

“You mean Ryan?”

He nodded as he took another hit off his vaporizer. “He’s a much more stable fellow, isn’t he.”

“Just slightly,” I deadpanned.

“Right good bloke.”

“Yes.”

“Then why do you wanna fuck Derek behind Ry’s back?” a drunken voice sneered.

I looked around to see Riley stumbling over, Jack Daniels bottle in hand.

“I don’t,” I insisted, horrified.

“Bullshit. You’re a fuckin’ liar. I
heard
you outside the studio, all gushy and – Jesus Christ, it makes me
sick.
”

Now that the shock and surprise was waning, I was getting angry. “I don’t know what you
think
you heard – ”

“I heard enough,” she spat. “I kept callin’ you Yoko as a joke, but you really
are
gonna be the fuckin’ death of this band.”

Before I could say anything else, she lurched off, taking a long pull at her bottle as she headed through the glass sliding doors and into the house.

I turned to Killian. “I don’t – I don’t want to – ”

He patted my arm consolingly. “Don’t let it trouble you.”

“What, Riley?”

“No, lookin’ over your shoulder at the dark.”

I frowned. “…what?”

“There was this book I read once, belonged to a bird datin’ one of me mates. ‘The Secret Language of Birthdays,’ or somethin’ like that. I thought it was going to be shite, but I was actually quite shocked how accurate it was.”

“What does that have to do with looking over your shoulder at the dark?”

“Oh – that was me mate’s description. Said he was drawn to the light, but he was forever lookin’ over his shoulder at the dark. Thought that was a pretty good description. Same with you. Ryan’s a good man, no doubt about it, and I can see you love ‘im… but I can understand you lookin’ over your shoulder at Derek all the same.”

I must have given him a horrified expression, because he patted my arm sympathetically.

“Don’t fret, love. It’s in your nature.”

It’s in your nay-chuh.

“I have to go check on Riley,” I said, and got unsteadily to my feet.

“No worries. Care for a hit before you go?” he asked, offering the vaporizer.

“No, thank you,” I said, and walked off towards the house.

Killian hadn’t driven me away because he was spouting anything offensive.

He had scared me off because he was so dead-on.

I don’t know that it was as simple as Ryan was ‘light’ and Derek was ‘dark,’ but it was close. Ryan was safety, affection, stability, love – and Derek was excitement, danger, unpredictability, passion.

By the way, you know how they call those Easter reenactments about Jesus’ crucifixion ‘passion plays’?

It’s because the original meaning of ‘passion’ was ‘suffering.’

And that’s what Derek had offered me: both overwhelming desire – and suffering.

I was walking along a beach in my everyday life with Ryan, but there was this siren call out amongst the dangerous waves, and I yearned to dive into the surf, to swim out past the breakers, to feel the exhilaration I’d felt before.

Even though I was pretty sure it would kill me.

Drawn toward the light, but forever looking over your shoulder at the dark.

It’s in your nature.

Isn’t that why I wanted to write and travel the world when I was young? The siren call to do something wild, something extraordinary?

But I was so acclimated to the normal shackles of the bourgeois life: do well in school, go to college, get a job, follow the crowd, keep your nose to the grindstone, wait for your break, even when it means writing $40 articles about craft beers for crappy little indie papers.

No wonder I grabbed my surfboard and paddled out into the monster surf when the wild man of rock ‘n roll called out to me.

But the sirens had led me out too far, and I’d almost died.

Which one did I want – the well-lit, well-trod path?

Or the exhilarating descent into the dangerous unknown?

Did I want a simple life of simple pleasures, full of love and light?

Or did I want the wild ride, the rollercoaster, the blast-off into space?

Who
wouldn’t
want the excitement? The pulse-quickening, heart-pounding thrill of being
alive,
totally and completely?

Except I’d experienced it – and the flip side to riding the wave is that sometimes it crushes you. Rakes your heart across the reef until it’s nothing but bloody ribbons.

That had happened to me.

I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to keep to the safety of the beach out of love of the warmth and the sun and the sand, or out of fear.

All I knew is that I wanted to ride the waves again, but I didn’t want to get hurt.

And you don’t get one without risking the other.

Enough of drunk philosophy and surfing metaphors. I had a punk rock drummer to find.

In my addled state, I felt I had to justify myself… and make sure she didn’t go telling Ryan a distorted version of events.

Okay, that’s not entirely true, or at least not the
whole
truth. She’d made me feel super fucking guilty, and I was going after her as much to assuage my conscience as I was to supposedly clear up any misunderstandings.

In retrospect, it wasn’t a very bright idea. Riley wasn’t exactly the most open-minded person. If she had made up her mind about what she’d seen, there was no way I was going to change it. Not to mention she had a pretty good bullshit detector, and I would have said something sooner or later that would have set it off. And if she hadn’t told Ryan already, she probably wasn’t going to go do so now.

But none of that entered my mind, because I was buzzed and not exactly reasoning properly.

That probably saved her life.

I picked my way through the bottom floor of the house, threading my way through tattooed girls and long-haired dudes, looking for a platinum blonde mohawk. Didn’t see it.

I started asking people. “Have you seen Riley?”

Somebody pointed up the stairs, so I went up there.

Ryan wasn’t into the idea of having his spare bedrooms turned into love shacks, so he’d put up a rope at the top of the stairs with a sign that said ‘Upstairs Off Limits.’

Riley would have totally ignored the sign – obviously – so I stepped over the rope and continued looking.

“Riley?” I called out, opening door after closed door.

Nobody in the business study. Nobody in the ‘blue room’ – the spare bedroom done all in shades of blue. Nobody in the master suite.

I checked the bathroom, but she wasn’t in there worshipping the porcelain goddess.

Next up was the ‘knickknack room,’ the spare bedroom with all the things Ryan had bought on tour – some ironic, some beautiful. A velvet Elvis painting, a Navajo bowl, a pretty bamboo carving of a village he’d bought in the Far East.

I opened the door and was immediately assaulted by the vanilla-tinged fumes of whiskey.

Bingo.

She was lying on the bed in the darkness, face up, her hand dangling off the side of the mattress. The bottle of Jack had fallen out of her limp hand and was lying on its side on the carpet. The shaft of light from the open door showed a dark brown wet spot all around it.

“Riley – Jesus, Ryan’s going to kill you!” I snapped as I walked over and grabbed the bottle off the floor. “If you wanted to take a nap, you could’ve just… Riley?”

She was incredibly still. No reaction at all to my voice.

The room was dark, but there was enough light from the doorway to pick out details.

Something dark was trailing down the sides of her cheeks.

I snapped on the light and immediately gasped.

She looked like she had thrown up – mostly liquid, but it had filled up her mouth.

Her skin was pale, and her eyes were blank.