Always (22 page)

December 2010

Justine dropped her carry-on bag and fell backwards on the couch. A whole glorious week back home in LA. Months of non-stop travel and performances had left her exhausted, mentally and physically. The solo tour was a hit, but it was exhausting, and her brief hiatus until after Christmas was just what she needed. A week of nothing to do but sleep and recharge. Ian was due to arrive from New York in a few days, so she’d have Christmas and several uninterrupted days with him, too.

Before she could fully relax, though, she was going to track down Dillon and find out what was going on with him. He’d finally answered one of her emails.

Hey, sorry I’ve been out of touch. Just taking a break after all the bullshit. I’ll call soon.

Except that he hadn’t called soon or answered any of her follow-up emails. She understood that he was probably in a bad place after being dropped from the label, and talking to her wasn’t likely to make him feel better about things, since Nightfall was now her label and Jon Verlaine was her A&R man. Still, she just needed to see him and make sure he was okay. Then she’d let him crawl back into his hole for a while and lick his wounds, if that’s what he wanted.

It was too late to call him tonight. She’d flown home immediately after her last appearance, not wanting to spend one more unnecessary night in a hotel, even though home these days was sort of a loose concept. She’d bought the new house on a brief trip back to LA at the end of the summer, when the second single went platinum and she felt secure enough about the money to take the plunge. She and Emily had consulted online about furniture choices and Emily and her mother had come down for a week to set it up and get it livable. She’d come through town twice for brief weekend stays, but that was the full extent of the time she’d spent in her new place. This week would finally give her a chance to settle in.

Shoving off the couch and ignoring the fatigue working its way through her body, she headed into the kitchen to see what she had to drink. She was just popping the top on a beer she found in the fridge—Emily’s favorite kind— when her phone rang. Hoping it was Ian saying he was coming sooner, she frantically dug it out of her bag. She missed the call by seconds and cursed softly. Especially when she saw who it was—Dillon. Finally.

Hitting “redial” she turned to the cabinets to see if Emily had left her any food to go with the beer.

“Justine.” Dillon’s voice hauled her up short.

“Dillon? What’s wrong?”

“It’s Ash. He’s at Cedars-Sinai.”

The blood drained out of her face and she fumbled blindly to the side to set the beer bottle down before she dropped it. “Wh-what happened?”

“He OD’d. It’s… Jesus, Justine, it’s not good.”

She sucked in a deep breath of air, trying to get her heart to beat again, because it felt like it stopped. “Where are you now?”

“Here, with him.”

“I’m on my way.”

“I can’t ask you to leave the tour—”

“I’m in LA. I just got back. I’ll be there in half an hour.”

Dillon’s voice was nothing but a raw whisper when he finally replied. “Thank you.”

Throwing her keys at the valet at Cedars, she sprinted through the entrance marked “Emergency.”

She accosted the first nurse she came across. “My friend is in the waiting room. How do I find him?” The woman’s eyes widened slightly when she recognized Justine, but thankfully she pulled it together quickly.

“The waiting room for the ER is straight down this hallway and on the left. Here, I’ll take you.”

“No, that’s okay,” she shouted over her shoulder as she raced down the hall to find Dillon.

He was there in the waiting room, sitting on the couch, head bowed and hands laced behind his head.

“Dillon.”

He looked up and she knew before he said a word. His haggard face, his empty eyes, said it all. Ash was already gone.

Ash was buried on a Wednesday. LA was as relentlessly sunny and perfect as it always was, taking no notice of the fact that Ash Thoren’s star had just flamed out.

Justine picked up Dillon that morning. He’d pulled himself together a little, shaving, putting on a dark suit, but he looked terrible and she was worried sick about him. JD and Rocky made it back to LA and stood with them at the graveside, awkward, miserable and unspeakably sad. Ash’s mother had come, supported by her Latin lover boyfriend, who was closer to Ash’s age than hers. Dillon avoided her, so Justine did, too. His father wasn’t there, that she could see.

The graveside was packed with people. None of them had been there with Ash at the end of his life, but they all knew and mourned him now. There was a lurid fascination with his story— the beautiful, gifted rock star who couldn’t handle the fame and set fire to himself trying. Now all these people wanted to stand around and weep for the tragedy of it all when none of them had been there trying to stop him. Justine kept her eyes on Dillon to avoid getting angry. After all, it wasn’t a new story in Hollywood. It had happened before and would happen again, which was cold comfort.

Ian had offered to move his flight up and come, but she didn’t want the first time she introduced him to Dillon as her boyfriend to be at Ash’s funeral. He’d arrive at the end of the week as originally planned, and she was oddly grateful to have this day alone with the remaining Outlaw Rovers. It felt right. Well, as right as anything could on such a wrong day.

The service was like bad theatre, lines read from a script that had nothing to do with real life. How could all those trite sentiments about a life cut short have anything to do with Ash, with the manic, troublesome enigma he was? The minister had never met him, so he couldn’t know about Ash’s intense magnetism, the way he made you fall in love with him even as you hated him. He’d never seen Ash strut across a stage holding the beating hearts of thirty thousand people in the palm of his hand. He hadn’t been there to see Ash attack a song the same way he attacked his life, with all the passion and energy he possessed. All he knew was this glossy steel box and the cautionary tale it contained. When it was over, everyone came to shake hands with the band and then they disappeared to discuss the tragedy in rapt tones over brunch, deconstructing Ash for an afternoon’s entertainment.

Finally, they were alone. Rocky slid an arm around Justine’s shoulders and squeezed. “This wasn’t the way to say goodbye to him. What do you say we hit a bar and raise a glass?”

JD shrugged. “It’s what Ash would have done.”

“It’s what Ash
did
do,” Dillon said.

They found themselves at a crummy dive bar on Hollywood Boulevard called The Frolic Room, not far from Justine’s old apartment. It didn’t look like anyone had frolicked in The Frolic Room since around 1965. Nobody raised an eyebrow at the four of them, dressed in black, lined up at the bar with shots of whiskey at 2 p.m.

Rocky raised a glass first. “Ash was one brilliant motherfucker. Equal parts brilliant and motherfucker.”

“Amen,” JD said and they all slammed it back. Dillon snagged the bottle, which they’d asked the bartender to leave behind, and refilled their glasses.

“The world has never seen someone like Ash,” Justine said, “And never will again.” The boys murmured their assent and downed another drink.

“He was good people.” JD said. “When you could find him underneath all the other bullshit.”

Another shot of whiskey disappeared.

Dillon refilled, his glass nearly sloshing over. His eyes were blank, his face slack and emotionless. “He was my brother,” he murmured. Justine swallowed what felt like endless tears and raised her glass.

Hours later, Rocky and JD were gone and she was helping Dillon out of a cab and into his house on her own. Justine was still buzzed, but Dillon was way worse off than her, since he’d kept drinking long after she’d stopped.

He’d never gotten around to fully furnishing his house. There was still only a couch in the living room and a lamp on the floor. She used to find it kind of charming, the idea of Dillon too overwhelmed by fame to manage buying furniture on his own. Now she thought about Emily and her mother, helping her pick things and coming to turn her house into a home when she was too busy to do it herself, and her heart hurt for Dillon. He didn’t have anyone in his life to do that for him. He really was so alone. And now Ash…she could barely stand to think about it.

Dillon headed straight to the kitchen, snatching a half-empty bottle of scotch off the counter and wrenching the cap off. He took a long swig straight from the bottle and winced as it went down.

“Dillon, slow down.”

He cast her a wary glance out of the corner of his eye. “Justine,” he said evenly. “I plan on getting so drunk I can’t see, feel, think or remember. If you don’t want to see it, you should go home now.”

“This isn’t the way to deal with this.”

He stopped, gripping the edge of the counter and dropping his head. “I know that. I know it. But right now…Jesus, I can’t. I can’t face it. I need to… not be here. I need to not know this for a night. I swear I’ll be better tomorrow. But tonight, I can’t.”

Everything about him was so wrecked, so defeated, so fragile, she couldn’t say a thing. Who was she to judge how he dealt with this? She couldn’t imagine what she’d do if anything ever happened to Emily. She’d probably want to erase herself for a while, too.

“Okay,” she finally said. “Do you want me to stay?”

He turned his head slightly, managing a small smile that never reached his eyes. “I don’t want you to see me like this.”

“Dillon—”

He pushed off the bar and came towards her. Pulling her into a tight hug, he pressed a kiss to her hair. “Just give me tonight. I have to— I gotta say goodbye to him in my own way.”

She nodded.

He held onto her for another moment, breathing into the crook of her neck, one hand stroking her hair. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“Don’t think about it because it’s not going to happen. I’m leaving now, but I’ll call. And I’ll be back. Okay?”

He nodded. “I know you will.”

January, 2011

Justine pounded on the door four more times. Still nothing from inside. Calling him on the phone was pointless. She’d been doing that ever since last night, when she played The Greek and he’d failed to come backstage after the show like they’d arranged. At first she’d been hurt. Then she got mad. Now she was worried, but mad was still waiting in the wings, ready to take over again when he proved to be alive.

Half a dozen more blows to the door and she was officially scared. Where was he? Why wasn’t he answering the phone or coming to the door? She knew he’d been in a bad place since Ash died. He rarely answered his phone, but the few times he did, he told her he was “managing.” She suspected he was placating her, but now suspicion was growing that things were worse than he’d let on.

“Dillon!” she shouted up at the bedroom windows. Well, she thought they were the bedroom windows. She’d never actually made it as far as Dillon’s bedroom, but she thought that’s where it was. “Your car is here so I know you’re home! Come answer the door!”

Finally, she heard a thump from somewhere deep in the house. There was only silence after that, and she was on the verge of dialing 911 when she heard muffled thuds, maybe footsteps on the stairs. A moment later, the door swung open and Dillon, completely wrecked and disheveled, squinted at the bright midday sun. Her momentary relief at finding him alive fled when she registered how awful he looked. His hair was too long, tangled and unwashed. His t-shirt was once white, but was now yellowed with wear and smudged with dirt. He hadn’t shaved in days, maybe weeks. And there was a large red scrape stretching from his temple to the hollow under his cheekbone on one side of his face. It was scabbed over and starting to bruise in the center.

“Justine,” he rasped. “What’s wrong?”

She reared back and stared at him. “What’s
wrong
?” she finally said. “Well, we can start with you standing me up at The Greek last night.”

Dillon closed his eyes and groaned, muttering under his breath. “Shit.”

“Yeah, let’s continue with shit, because that’s what you look like. What the hell is going on with you, Dillon? What happened to your face?”

Absently, he reached up to touch it and winced. “I, um… I fell.”

She blew out a disgusted huff and shoved him back into the house. He staggered back and she followed him in, slamming the door behind her. He winced again. When she walked up to him, she caught the smell of stale liquor, strong enough to turn her stomach.

“You’re hung over. Or are you still drunk? When was the last time you remember being conscious?”

He shook his head. “Can we do this some other time? I have the flu.”

Junkies lie.
Dillon told her that before her last conversation with Ash, but it was turning out to be true of all addicts.

“Bullshit,” she hissed. “Is this what you’ve been doing since Ash’s funeral? You said you needed a day to forget. Did you take the whole month? Have you even sobered up since that day?”

“Back off, Justine! I’m not doing this with you today!” His outburst seemed to cost him all the strength he could muster and he sagged against the kitchen counter, closing his eyes.

“No, but I’m doing this with
you
. I will not stand by and watch this happen all over again.”

“Relax. I’m not that bad. I have this under control.”

She gave him a bitter smile. “That’s exactly what Ash said.”

“Leave him out of this.”

“Why? It’s all about him, isn’t it? Dillon,” she moved forward and grabbed his hand. His knuckles were scraped raw. “This is me. Please talk to me.”

He kept his eyes closed for a long time, a muscle in his jaw working as he gritted his teeth. Just when she thought he’d shut down and refuse, he opened his eyes and looked at her. The desolation of his expression nearly stopped her heart.

“It’s my fault,” he whispered. “I can’t stand myself. I’m going crazy. It’s all my fault.”