Hard As Rock (11 page)

“Oh, fine… just visiting with Riley, plus finishing up my internship at the hospital and getting ready for D.C.”

“I heard about Georgetown – congratulations!”

“Thank you – but I couldn’t have done it without Riley.”

“Bullshit, Meg – you totally did it ALL on your own. All I ever did was write a few checks.”

I was struck by the fierce pride Riley had for her sister. The same pride I’d heard when we talked outside the skeezy no-tell motel in Seattle.

The type of pride she was totally lacking in her own accomplishments.

Megan dissented, and Riley insisted, and Ryan brought it back to the here-and-now. They chatted for a few minutes about what Riley and Megan had been doing, which surprisingly included a couple of Broadway shows.

“Oh my GOD, Ry, kill me now. PLEASE,”
Riley gagged.

Ryan laughed, then turned a bit serious. “Hey… you haven’t seen or talked to Derek, have you?”

“No, why?”

“He’s supposedly in New York.”

“Thank GOD – somebody to drink and chase tail with. Oh – except he ‘n Blondie probably patched that shit up by now, I’ll bet. Is that why he’s in town, cuz she lives here?”

Riley knew about the fight in Vegas?

It made sense; she hadn’t left yet when the confrontation between me and Derek went down.

“That’s why he’s there,” Ryan said. “But
she’s
not.”

“What? How do you know that?”

He glanced at me; I raised my eyebrows like,
Is it safe?
and he nodded.

“Because I’m right here,” I said as I pulled my chair next to Ryan’s.

The expression on Riley’s face was absolutely priceless. First there was shock, then confusion, then glee.

“HOLY SHIT! Blondie, what the fuck’re YOU doing there?!”

There was a young woman sitting next to Riley, and the contrast between them couldn’t have been more striking. Whereas Riley was outrageous – even just hanging out and doing nothing, she had a full-on spiked mohawk going, now dyed shocking pink – her sister was absolutely normal. Megan had a full head of reddish-brown hair with bangs, clunky plastic-rimmed glasses, and a flowery shirt conservative enough to wear to a hospital internship. She was more plain than cute, but there was real kindness in her features and intelligence in her eyes. There wasn’t any physical resemblance between them, but that made sense, since Megan was Riley’s foster sister. They hadn’t actually met until Riley was a teenager.

“Hey, Riley. Is that your sister?”

“Oh, yeah – hey, Megan, this is that journalist chick for Rolling Stone I was telling you about!”

Wow!
I thought. I was very pleasantly surprised to be introduced like that. After all, it was Riley we were talking about. I was expecting something a lot less respectful and a lot more salacious, like –

“She’s the one banging Derek on the side,”
Riley continued.
“Or WAS, anyway.”

There it was.

“Riley!”
Megan scolded.

“Well, it’s the truth!”
Riley said, again like a five-year-old justifying herself.

“Hi, Megan. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“Hi, Kaitlyn – a pleasure to meet you, too. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

I groaned. “From her last comment, I can only imagine what.”

She laughed.
“Don’t worry, most of it was good. The rest of it I probably shouldn’t repeat – although I’m sure you know by now that my sister has a huge crush on you.”

“MEGAAAAAN!”
Riley yelled – and then, wonder of wonders, she blushed.

I never thought I would live to see the day when Riley Wojtalik – hard-drinking, skirt-chasing, ‘I don’t give a fuck about nothin’,’ punk-rock drummer – actually blushed.

And on my account.

I joined Megan in laughing. “I wouldn’t call it a crush, but that’s good to know.”

Riley was totally abashed and not saying anything. Megan elbowed her good-naturedly, to which Riley reacted by grumpily pushing her away.

“Well, I hate to say ‘hi’ and then ‘bye,’ but I have to run to the hospital,”
Megan said.
“It was a pleasure to meet you.”

“Same here.”

“Bye, Ryan!”

“Bye, Megan. Talk to you later.”

“Gimme a kiss,”
Megan said to Riley, who was pouting with her arms crossed.
“C’mere, gimme a kiss – ”

Megan planted a kiss on Riley’s cheek, and the little drummer girl went
blech!
like a kindergarten boy getting touched by a girl.
“Ugh! Go on, get out of here! Tryin’ to embarrass my ass all over the internet…”

Megan laughed and ruffled Riley’s hair affectionately.

“Watch the hair, watch the hair!”
Riley complained, and shooed her off. But she watched her go with a grin on her face. When a door closed in the distance, Riley turned back to the camera.
“She’s great, isn’t she?”

“She’s awesome,” I agreed.

“Oh, and Blondie – fuck that whole ‘crush’ thing. You know I just wanted to tap dat ass.”

“Thank you for clearing that up, Riley,” I said with mock appreciation.

“Why the fuck are you there with Ry?”

I paused. “How much do you know about Derek’s and my fight?”

She shrugged.
“Not much. He came to the penthouse lookin’ for you, said you flipped out and he couldn’t find you. That was about it. Then I left and caught my flight.”

I grimaced. “I caught him cheating on me.”

“OHHHHH SHIT,”
she said, and I appreciated the look of shock that played across her face.
“Fuck.”

“Yeah.”

Then she grew angry.
“Fucker didn’t tell me THAT.”

“Yeah, I figured.”

“So you two are quits?”

“Yup.”

“GOOD. Good fuckin’ riddance. For you, I mean. He’s a dipshit.”

I really appreciated her support. Again, she had surprised me.

Then she went back to being Riley.

“Offer to bang’s still on the table, by the way, now that you’re single again,”
she said impishly – and then realized something.
“Or ARE you still single?!”
She looked at Ryan.
“You dog, you – you been hittin’ that Georgia peach ass out there in Cowtown?”

“NO!” I yelped, a little louder than necessary.

Ryan rolled his eyes. “No, Riley, we’re just friends.”

“No wonder you haven’t been fuckin’ any sheep – ”

“Riley,” Ryan warned.

“Fine, FINE. I am-a so happy-a for-a you both-a,”
she said in a fake Italian accent. God knows why. Maybe that was her mocking way of being ‘fancy’ or ‘upscale’ or something. Then she grew serious.
“Does Douchebag Numero Uno know she’s hangin’ out with you?”

“No, and we’d like to keep it that way,” Ryan said. “Can we count on you to keep it quiet?”

“Yeah, yeah, of course!”

I crossed my arms. “Derek’s not ‘Douchebag Numero Uno.’”

“Oh GOD, she’s still in love with him,”
Riley groaned.

“I am NOT,” I said, protesting too loudly once again.

“Did he cheat on you?”

“…yes,” I said, grumpy to have to admit it.

“Then he’s Douchebag Numero Uno, and don’t you forget it.”
Suddenly Riley grew
really
serious.
“Ry… you two can’t hook up, you KNOW that, right? Or if you do, you got to keep that shit on the DOWN-LOW, man.”

“We’re not hooking up!” I protested again, louder than ever.

“She’s just staying here,” Ryan agreed. “Nothing funny’s going on.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,”
Riley said dismissively with a wave of her hand.
“But if Derek finds out, that’s IT. That’s the end of the fuckin’ band. You know that, right?”

“But we haven’t been
doing
anything,” I insisted.

Riley looked at me like,
Get REAL, bitch.

“Whatever. The point is, he’s gonna flip his fuckin’ lid – you KNOW that, right?”

“That’s why he’s never going to find out,” Ryan said.

An ominous feeling came over me. Not just because what we were doing was innocent… not just because lying by omission felt like we were covering something up…

…but because Ryan’s last statement sounded like famous last words.

Two days passed after we talked to Riley – and suddenly Derek stopped.

Stopped texting me.

Stopped calling me.

Completely.

It was devastating.

He had been driving me absolutely insane since I let him know that I was okay. Text after text, voicemail after voicemail, swinging from anguish to rage to self-pity to pleading – sometimes within the same message.

When he wasn’t infuriating me, he was breaking my heart. During his constant stream of recriminations and lovelorn pleading, I almost broke down a couple of times and nearly gave in, but then I would remember Riley’s words:

Did he cheat on you?… Then he’s Douchebag Numero Uno, and don’t you forget it.

She helped me stay strong.

Then, suddenly, all the messages stopped. Dead. I wondered if he had been hurt – maybe
he
was in the hospital, or lying in a ditch somewhere – but then I figured it made more sense that this was some sort of new tactic, some reverse psychology ploy to get me to text him.

Or maybe he’d lost his phone.

Or maybe he’d just forgotten to plug it in.

Or maybe… he had moved on.

The first option – that he was hurt – was hard to take. I actually spent a bad couple of hours worrying about him.

The second option – that he was faking – was easy enough to verify. If I didn’t hear from him by tomorrow, I could get Riley to check up on him under some pretense, like wanting to go drinking while he was in New York.

The third and fourth options, that he had lost the phone or forgotten to charge it, were possible… but I got the sense that he had been glued to the thing for the last couple of weeks. That made it unlikely he had lost it. Besides, he would just go out and buy another one (or bum one off of somebody).

As for the charging theory, he hadn’t had a problem so far. Even if he’d run it down, he could immediately plug it in and call, so that excuse didn’t hold water.

The last option – that he had moved on – was the most plausible.

And it was the one broke that my heart.

Actually, when I first thought of it, it felt more like all my insides had been torn out.

We were in a sick, twisted cycle. I knew that. He had betrayed me, so I was cold-shouldering him. Which made him obsessed with me. Suddenly he was giving me all the single-minded attention I had been craving weeks and weeks ago, when he had grown more distant. And now that he was withdrawing that attention, I was like an addict jonesing for a fix, willing to give in so he would start texting me again… just so I could feel like he still loved me.

Like I said, fucked
UP.

But it still hurt like hell to think he was gone for good.

And yet, I kept coming back to Riley’s words:

Did he cheat on you?… Then he’s Douchebag Numero Uno, and don’t you forget it.

So I didn’t text him.

I just suffered in silence and cried into my pillow, then went out to Ryan with a smile on my face.

I didn’t know at the time that none of my theories were correct.

There was a sixth option I hadn’t even considered:

A surprise attack.

Two nights after we talked to Riley, it was raining cats and dogs. In the two weeks I had been at the ranch, there had been occasional showers, but this was the worst I’d ever seen. This was a full-on storm like I was used to during summers in Savannah, Georgia.

We were lounging inside the house after a wonderful dinner. The lights were low, with only a single lamp in the corner as illumination. We talked and listened to the rainfall. Ryan was playing soft chords at the piano, and I was on my third glass of wine. Despite my earlier heartbreak over Derek’s radio silence, the alcohol had numbed me, and Ryan’s presence had lifted my spirits. Life was pretty good, considering.

“Are we going to be able to ride tomorrow?” I asked.

“Depends. It’s going to be messy. We might want to give it a day to dry out some – ”

Suddenly a pair of headlights flared up through the front windows of the house, casting a moving pattern of light across the wall.

I looked over at Ryan, who was frowning. Apparently we both had the same thought:

Who would come all the way out here, especially on a night like tonight?

I got my answer as soon as we heard the car door slam.

“KAITLYN!” a familiar voice bellowed.

My heart took flight and my stomach dropped through the floor, all in the same instant.

Derek.

He had found me.

“KAITLYN!” he roared again, his rumbling voice filled with agony. Like Marlon Brando yelling “Stellaaaa!” in
A Streetcar Named Desire.

Ryan stood up calmly from the piano and strode to the front door. I ran after him, but he cautioned, “Stay behind me. We don’t know what kind of state he’s in.”

From the sound of his voice, it wasn’t even remotely pleasant.

“KAITLYN!”

Ryan flicked a light switch, opened the front door, and walked out onto the porch.

I stepped right up next to him. My heart was nearly breaking my ribs, it was pounding so hard.

The rain poured down in torrents, and the water cascading off the porch roof was like a beaded curtain in front of us. The lights Ryan had turned on were floodlights; they illuminated the entire front lawn, including the dirt road that ran between the main house and the MacCruders’.           

Out between the two houses was a car with its high beams on. A ‘Taxi’ sign glowed dimly on its roof, and a pale-faced little man was hunched behind the wheel.