Over the Hills and Far Away (NOLA's Own #1) (11 page)

Gloria looked tired, but she had put together a beautiful brunch for us to enjoy. Connor was particularly quiet and subdued. Da was a horrible grump of a bear, but we plowed through it like soldiers making a mad dash for the trenches.

“Can I come with you guys after?” Connor asked as I brought the dirty dishes into the kitchen.

“No, you bluidy well can’t leave yer family on Christmas!” barked Da from behind us.

“She’s my sister!”

“Yer no’ leavin’!”

Connor glared at him and slunk off to his room to brood.

“Da, quit being an ass,” I said hotly.

We left not long after that.

New Year’s found all of us, even Da and Gloria, at Grandma’s.

Grandma did her best to hold on to her apathy, snipping viciousness at Da at every turn, but he’d finally had enough. He restrained her in his patented Papa Bear Hug in front of everyone and squeezed her tight. He started crying, and she started crying and actually hugged him back.

“Ye auld bitch. How can ye hate me so much? I loved her, too!” he wailed.

I was afraid he might be trying to kill her with his love, squeezing her like that. I couldn’t say I blamed him though, if that was what he was going for.

But she returned his embrace. “Because you’re an asshole, Sigmund!”

Happy fucking New Year.

Time was relentless in its drive to move forward. Back into the swing of things after the holidays, I was busier than ever.

I kept myself very much unavailable between school, study, yoga, and meditation.

Lili would come over just to be around, and I was cool with that. We didn’t need to actually hang out when we were together. After class, she would stay with me in the house, no matter what I was doing, and she’d most definitely stick around for dinner, too. Sometimes, she would just crash over without bothering to notify anyone.

I thought she was worried about me, but she never really said anything. Perhaps she was also trying to stay away from her own home life. Her father’s deep-seated need to control her was only growing stronger the older she got.

Spring break came as a welcome respite.

For the therapist program, there was only a month until graduation. I’d be taking the boards soon, and I would hopefully be certified and ready to find some work before I continued with my education in the fall.

With the completed program and boards, I needed another three years to earn my doctorate, and then afterwards, I’d intern for two years. I’d be finished with all of it before I turned twenty-four years old.

In the middle of the break, Lili ended up pissing off her father on one of her rare visits back home. He flew off the handle, deciding it was necessary to beat some discipline into her. That was the final straw for all of us really. She called me in tears. That was extremely rare because Lili hardly ever cried.

The next day while her father was away at work, Alys—who was home, too—and I headed over to Lili’s. We packed up all her stuff into huge black trash bags and moved her in with Grandma and me.

“Well, she’s over here all the time anyway. It’s not like it’d be much of a difference,” Grandma drawled.

Grandma decided to take the downstairs guest bedroom that had always been Connor’s room.

“He hardly stays over here as it is, and I think it’d be nice to have my own bathroom. You and Lili can reside upstairs and share the bath up there,” she stated.

“Why don’t you take Mom’s old room?” I suggested.

Mom’s old room had once belonged to my grandparents as it was the master bedroom of the house. After he’d died when my mother was nine, Grandma had moved into a guest room. When Mom had become a teenager, Grandma had given her the massive bedroom with its en suite bathroom and badass little balcony overlooking the backyard.

Grandma just shook her head. “I’m getting too old for the stairs anymore.”

I’d caught her in there a few times, just sitting on Mom’s bed and looking over her belongings. Grandma would dust and vacuum in there on occasion. I had the feeling she didn’t really want anyone to go in there and touch Mom’s things. I respected that, but I wasn’t sure if it was really healthy. Grandma still wouldn’t cry in front of us, but I’d heard her doing so behind the closed door to that bedroom.

So, Lili got Grandma’s room, and Grandma had moved into Connor’s old room. Mom’s room remained an eternal shrine to her life.

After I completed the program in May at the top of the class, I was rewarded with NOLA’s Junk’s first official album,
Adopted Son.
The release day found Lili and me outside of the music store the minute they opened. Filled with so much excitement, I might have been in danger of pissing myself.

The album cover was gorgeous—black background with a beautifully executed anatomical heart in reds, blues, and purples, created in a tattoo-esque style with flames surrounding it. The name NOLA’s Junk looked like it had been carved or branded into the organ with
Adopted Son
in hard script beneath it. On the back, I read where they gave credit to Darren Wright as the cover artist.

Badass.

While waiting for Lili to finish poking around in the bargain bins, I snapped through the poster displays.

They had a poster, too. It was a fantastic photo of the four of them, looking all hardcore and cool. Phil’s face had an angry look that only he could pull off so well, the one that had the power to melt my crotch.

For the first time in nine months, I felt something. Standing in line at the register, I became fully aware that I was still very much alive. It probably wouldn’t last, but it gave me hope that, one day, I would be a real human being again.

The poster ended up framed and hung on the opposite wall from my bed. While I lay back and relaxed, I could stare and fantasize about Phil like the lovesick teenage loser I was. I would sometimes pretend he was all angry with me for moving on with my life—
as if
—while he pined for me.

“You’re such a dork,” said Lili, poking her head into my room.

“I know,” I sighed, staring at Phil.

Lili and I sat in Gretchen late one evening, smoking some of Jimi’s sweetest cheebah. Hoping Grandma wouldn’t bust us, we listened to
Adopted Son
as loudly as we felt was safe. I adored this album. I had actually gone back to the music store and bought a second CD specifically to keep in the car. There was not one song on it that was
not
a favorite of mine. But there was one that had ended up being my all-time favorite, and it wasn’t for its musical brilliance—track number seven, “A Madman’s Love Letter.”

Seriously raw and erotic, audio-pornographically intense, there was absolutely no way it would ever get any radio play. It was
that
graphic.

It started out with Phil breathing heavily, moaning a bit, like he was wonderfully turned on and possibly jacking off or maybe getting a blow job in the sound box while recording. Either way, it was totally inspiring in a base, sexually deviant manner.

I can’t stop thinkin’ about you.

I want to feel my fists in your hair, pullin’ back your head…

Makin’ you beg.

I can’t help myself.

I see my hand around your throat, my dick in your mouth.

Pushin’ in…pullin’ out.

Ah, shit!

(Some seriously fucking hot groaning.)

I wanna throw you on the floor.

Smack your ass.

Fuck you ’til we’re both achin’ ’n’ sore.

I wanna hold you down while you scream…

(More sex moans. Fuck, it was hot.)

As I fill you full of me.

I can’t help it.

I can’t stop thinkin’ about you.

With a slow and heavy beat on the drums and bass, the guitar sounded like Jason Jones was on an acid trip, and Phil wasn’t so much singing as he was just talking and groaning and moaning into the microphone. The guys went hellishly apeshit at the close of the track, the instruments purposely screaming out of tune, and Phil whispered something at the very end that we couldn’t quite catch.

“It’s driving me crazy,” Lili huffed with exasperation. “I have to know what he says!”

She pushed the skip button, and we listened to the ending two more times.

On the third time—
fuck it
—we cranked up the volume.

“I can’t help it. / I can’t stop thinkin’ of you…”

In between was bass, drums, guitar.

“…Baby Girl.”

For about ten seconds, we simply stared at one another in complete shock. Then, we totally lost our shit.

“Did you fucking hear
that?” she screamed.

“I fucking heard that!” I shouted back.

“Holy fucking shit!” she shrieked.

“Holy motherfucking shit! Did we actually hear that right?” I screamed back.

“Kenna, he said ‘
Baby Girl
,
’
He wrote that about you!”

My hand covered my mouth to help me from screaming my head off.

Seriously? Seriously! Could Phil fucking Deveraux be thinking of me after all this time?

Oh, holy fucking shit!

I wanted so badly to believe it—so, so badly. I felt it—something inside me rising up, sniffing the fresh air of hope.

Then, I squashed that bitch back down, stomping on that excitement, until my pulse forced itself into a normal steady rhythm. Sucking in a mind-clearing breath, I said, “I don’t believe it.”

“What? What!” she said in outrage. “Believe it, bitch, ’cause I heard that, too! He’s been thinking about you this whole fucking time!”

I shook my head. “No, let’s be rational about this, okay? It’s entirely possible he calls all women
baby girl
. It could be about
any
woman—or
all
women. We don’t know.”

“Listen to me, Kenna. That night, I watched that man fall so hard for you that I thought we’d have to scrape his massive ass off the fucking floor. He totally eye-fucked you while he was up on the stage, too. I totally witnessed that. You can’t tell me that didn’t happen! When we were sitting next to the bar, I watched him stare at you for a full five minutes before he came over to talk to you. He wrote that about
you
. He’s
still
thinking about
you
. Trust me. You’re his
only
Baby Girl.”