September Rain Bk 2, Savor The Days Series (35 page)

I’m fine. I’m fine.
I repeated it until I believed it.

+++

I searched the crowd for Jake. The
bands’ van was in the back lot, unattended and empty. The stage was
full of equipment belonging to various bands. AC’s was among them.
I would know Max’s drum set anywhere. Andrew’s stack amp stuck out
from on one end of a pile of amps. The Sonic Youth sticker on the
side was a dead giveaway.

House music was pumping through the
area, raising the voices of people in various conversations. Two
guys who looked like roadies crossed the stage. Right behind them,
a slender woman followed, carrying a fluorescent green guitar
strap.

My stomach dropped. No one had to tell
me. I knew it was her. The girl that wanted into the band,
Angelica.

“She’s
really
pretty.” Avery stated the
obvious. “Like, could-turn-a-chick-gay pretty.”

My eyes followed the woman with large,
dark eyes framed by long black lashes and hair with perfectly
placed purple streaks down each side. She was wearing all
black—thigh-high laced Doc Martens over leggings, and a small vest
in silken black, under that she wore a tight AC/DC tee with the
sleeves chopped off. She took to the stage like she owned it,
strutting towards a black and white Les Paul. She set the neon
green strap over the guitar pegs and hooked it around her
shoulders. After giving a long look at the near-empty club, at
Avery and me, she took a pic from between her perfectly plump,
burgundy lips and strummed.

Her chords were light and airy, bluesy
almost. She gave a quick toe-tap at an enormous pedal board on the
floor and the chords changed. It doubled the sound of each strum.
She tapped another place on the board and the chords became heavy,
distorted. Smooth tones ran rough. She tilted her head down,
pressed her hips into the guitar and really started playing. We
both stared at her fingers as they worked up and down the frets,
lightning quick. She stopped to adjust the string tension and then
began again.

“Max said she was badass.”

“Yeah.” She sounded freaking
fantastic, like she had ten fingers on each hand. And she was only
warming up.

Jake had merely said she
was
good
. What an
understatement! He told me she was
pretty
, but she was absolutely,
freakishly stunning. He also said she was
cool.
But if everything he’d told me
had been so downplayed . . . “I’m gonna find Jake.”

Almost immediately I spotted him in
the back lounge, a roped off area behind the bar. He waved when he
saw me and held out two fingers. He was talking to someone. A guy
in a corduroy jacket with very neat hair had his back to me. Max
and Andrew were there, too, but no one else was talking. They were
listening to the man in the jacket. All at once, the group
collectively smiled and each one shook hands with the man. Jake
walked towards me with a business card and wild eyes.

When he reached me, I spoke first.
“I’m worried.” I confessed, even though I knew the club wasn’t the
place for this. “I feel you pulling away. And she’s more than
pretty, Jake. She’s . . .” I couldn’t even say it.

He sighed, raking his hands over his
head as if he wished he could pull at the hair that used to be
there. “I warned you.” He looked around at the people passing and
spoke lower. “I can’t have this conversation now.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat.
“When?”

He looked like he wanted to smile for
just a second. Then a flicker of something passed in his eyes. It
was gone before I caught it. “Not now.”

I took a guess. “Are you
mad?”

He nodded and the flash was back. His
lips thinned as he muttered, “Fucking furious.”

“At me?”

His mouth became one angry line. He
said nothing. It was his pointed stare that told me I’d guessed
right.

“But I didn’t do anything!”

Jakes scoffed, opening his mouth as if
to speak. The moments passed as I waited, watching the calm he’d
been holding disappear, leaving clear, unveiled rage. Still, he
kept quiet.

“Jake?”

“Don’t push me, Angel! Not
now.”

“But I don’t—”

Jakes hands were suddenly gripping my
arms. He jerked me so close, our noses were touching. “You made me
look like a fucking idiot!” He whispered, but it was so harsh,
people passing by stared. Jake dropped his hands and took a deep
breath. Sounding much more controlled, he said, “We’ll talk later.
Everyone’s running behind. We still have sound check, another
interview. The show. I’m too busy for this.”

I couldn’t let it go. “You know I
can’t take it when you’re upset. Tell me. Please. Why are you so
mad at me?”

He shook his head. “You don’t want me
to answer that now. Trust me. I need to calm down.”

“What does that mean?” I reached for
him, but he stepped back, turned and walked off.

He left me standing there.

Turned away like he hadn’t heard
me.

Like he didn’t care.

Like I didn’t matter.

Avery was at my side
talking, but I couldn’t hear. The blood pounding in my ears was too
loud. I felt myself curling up, wanting to dissolve and vaguely
aware of Avery leading me to a small table and sitting me down. I
didn’t know what to do. Jake had never been so upset with me and I
had no idea why. And that girl—I knew wherever Jake was walking off
to, she would be there. She could talk to him and I couldn’t. She
could stand beside him while I was shunned. The thought made me
sick. He hadn’t given me any answers, only more questions.
Was
‘not yet’
an
inevitability? Had he changed his mind about me? About us? Was he
leaving me behind already?

A bulging pulse beat up my neck and I
knew I had to decompress or I was going to get a migraine. So, I
replayed the conversation in my head and changed it, pushed the bad
parts away, filled it with the sweet words and promises Jake had
made the night before. Over and over. Jake loved me. He promised he
would never leave me behind. I was the one he wanted. For life. So,
whatever he was mad about was nothing. It had to be nothing,
because I didn’t do anything.

If my reaction to the guitar playing
goddess was the reason Jake was so angry, I could understand why
he’d been nervous about my seeing her. I hadn’t even spoken to her
and I wanted her gone. It didn’t matter how good she was or how
much she could bring to the band. As a matter of fact, that was the
reason she needed to be eighty-sixed. I didn’t want Jake anywhere
near her, because any girl that beautiful had to be a terrible
person. She was probably a monumental bitch.

“Nothing happened.” I told Avery when
she returned with a bottle of water and asked, again, about my
conversation with Jake. “It was nothing.”

+ + +

38

—
Avery

Angel asked me to leave her alone. Not
an unusual request for most people, but from her, it was
alarming.

I asked her what was wrong and she
said, “I’m fine.”

A lie.

She must have told Jake she didn’t
want to marry him. And because he’s a controlling, manipulative
dick, he was probably mad. He looked mad when he left. I wondered
what he’d said, because Angel looked devastated. But she wouldn’t
talk to me, so I walked away, too.

Not long after giving Angel the water
bottle I snaked from one of the back rooms, Analog did their sound
check. Angel stayed at that back table where I left her, staring at
the floor. I thought she’d be all over sound check, considering
that girl was right next to Jake. The two talked a few times. I
kept my ears up and spied every exchange. There didn’t seem to be
anything between them. Every time the girl stepped in to talk to
him, he stepped back. Jake looked to Angel several times—checking
for her reaction, I guessed. His face kept shifting between
irritation and concern—but they didn’t communicate.

After, Jake reappeared with the rest
of the band back in the VIP lounge. It was a roped off section
right behind the regular bar. Not just anyone was allowed to use
the pool table or sit on one of the scruffy, puffy chairs—or heaven
forbid—the long leather couches.

Max was there, sitting beside Andrew.
They looked too cool with their I-just-rolled-out-of-bed hair
styles and I’m-too-hip-to-wash-clothes-or-use-an-ashtray
attitudes.

Jake was seated beside his band mates
at the end of the couch, directly across from a man in a plaid
shirt and bulky framed eyeglasses. There was a tripod beside him.
The camera on it was being run by another guy in a Jack Daniels tee
and nasty jeans. Jake and Plaid Shirt shook hands, and suddenly
everyone sat up a little straighter.

Angel came up beside me, wrapping an
arm over my shoulder. Her eyes cast longingly on Jake. “It’s the
last interview.”

“I think they started, already.” I
pressed my shoulder against Angels’. “If you want to watch you
better go, or you’ll miss it. I’m getting a drink.”

Angels’ eyes were soft, but she had
one hand pressed against the back of her neck under her hair. Her
posture was sort of hunched, her arms set tightly against her sides
like she wanted to disappear from the room.

“You alright?”

“It’s all so exciting.” She sounded
like she was trying not to fall asleep.

“Are you getting another
migraine?”

Angel didn’t shake her head, but set a
hand on her cheek and rested against it. “I’m fine, and I don’t
want to miss this.”

Angel should have been much more than
fine. She should have been dancing on a glory cloud. My irritation
with Jake was getting stronger by the second.

“Playing Doctor is about to go on, so
the interview will be short.” Angel practically whispered, then
headed over towards the rope at the edge of the lounge.

I snatched an empty stool at the end
of the bar, searching the printed t-shirts of patrons milling
around the place. There were several people wearing Analog
Controller tees. The bartender looked at my wrists, noticing I had
no orange wristband that said my ID had been checked at the door.
It meant I was not twenty-one and was not supposed to occupy the
space at his bar because he couldn’t make money off me.

“I just want water.”

He was kind of old with heavy eyelids.
“Two dollars.”

“It’s for me.” A girly voice chirped
from behind me.

When I looked, it was that wannabe
band chick in heavy makeup. She took the last few steps to sidle up
on the neighboring stool. She had short, black fingernails, four
silver rings on each hand, leather bands on her wrists, and no
orange bracelet.

“Don’t send minors to the bar for your
shit.” Heavy Lids pulled a water bottle from somewhere near his
knees and set it in front of her.

“And a beer, please.”

She got the beer, too.

“Thanks, Bernie.”

“Yeah, sure.” He wiped his hands and
moved down the counter to serve someone else.

I still had no water. Until Band Chick
slid her bottle over to me.

“It’s the planets’ most plentiful
resource and he’s charging.” She had a sarcastic tone, but it was
subtle.

“Thanks.”

“I mean, global warming. The ice caps
are melting. The planets drenched in the shit. We should be
charging to breathe.”

I shook my head, remembering that Jake
said the girl was from San Diego.

“I saw you with Jake earlier. Are you
two friends?”

Maybe it was an innocent question, but
there was a gleam in her eye that I didn’t like. So, I changed the
subject, because screw her. “I saw you playing earlier.” I shifted
my gaze and nodded at the band just getting up from the sofa. “Are
you in the band?”

“Yeah. Well, not officially, but yeah.
I’m playing tonight,” she pointed across the bar at Jake, “as you
know, and he is singing.”

“I’m Avery.”

“Angelica,” she tipped her head and I
had to do a double-take when I saw the strange color of her
eyes.

“Are you wearing contacts?” I asked,
scooting closer. She could not possibly have purple
eyes.

“No.” Her forehead creased.

“But your eyes are purple.”

“Oh, no, they’re not. But yeah,” She
shook her head and pointed to the purple streaks that framed her
face. “They’re really light blue and reflect the color I’m
wearing.” She shrugged. “I mostly wear black, though, so I keep the
streaks in my hair.”

I nodded as if this weren’t some
freakish anomaly.

“Nice talking to you, Avery.” She took
her beer, her freaky eyes, and her perfect figure into the VIP
lounge, following after her soon-to-be band mates as they headed to
places no one else could go.

+ + +

39

—Angel