The Debt (9 page)

“You did it?” Corey wouldn’t look at me, afraid I was strutting around with my cock hanging out and a huge, angry piece of metal sticking from both ends.

“Piece of cake. Didn’t hurt a bit.”

On the way home, we stopped at an overlook off the highway that had a fantastic view of the Pacific shore below.

“I bet you want that drink now,” Corey laughed. “I can’t believe you went through with it.” He spoke over his shoulder, not looking at me while I stripped out of my jeans.

The ride from Bear’s shop had been brutal on my wounded dick. Every pothole felt like a hammer going to town on my shit. My cock throbbed, and not in a good way. I questioned the wisdom of the sadistic act I had allowed Mia to perform on me. Fucking bitch. I didn’t mean that, of course, but just the same. Fucking cock-stabbing bitch.

Now dressed in only my boxers, I sat next to Corey on the bench that overlooked the beach below. It was windy and I was almost naked, but freezing my ass off was still better than going home. The barbell in my tongue clicked against my teeth as I contemplated what awaited me there.

“They say it’s supposed to feel pretty goddamn great when you have sex,” I offered up in my own defense.

At the moment, however, I questioned whether my cock would ever function again. Just the thought of getting a hard-on and trying to stick it inside a tight space, pushing and pulling, was enough to make me nauseated. Life as a monk started to look good.

Corey eyed me with pity.

“Don’t do that,” I warned him.

He didn’t have to say it, so I’d rather he not.

“I’m just saying eventually. At some point.”

He stared at me, which was worse than pity.

“Oh, fuck it.” My fingers ran through my hair and scratched at the back of my neck. “I’m not there yet, okay? It’s been—”

“Two years,” he answered. “You told her to move on, and she did. Maybe you should stop kicking yourself and do the same.”

“That wasn’t moving on,” I grumbled. “That was—I don’t know—punishment. Where the fuck did she even find that guy? For that matter, why would she bring him to the house if it wasn’t to shove him in my face?”

“Those are all good questions. But I think you should stop and consider for a minute that maybe it isn’t about you.”

“Of course it’s about me. It’s about us, what I did to her, and the fact that she’s stuck with me when she’d rather use my skull as a decorative vase.”

“What Hadley said was harsh,” he admitted. “But you know she didn’t mean it. She was pissed. Dude, you were out of hand back there. Seriously, Josh, what got into you? And why the hell would putting a hole in your dick be the answer?”

“I’m in love with her.”

It was the first time I had said the words out loud to anyone except my parents. I had never told her.

“Pretty much always have been.”

“So, you want to tell me the real reason why you two used to be Bonnie and Clyde and now you’re...whatever the fuck you are?”

I locked up, shut down, and retreated back behind the gates. Corey didn’t push the issue, but I knew he was disappointed.

I walked inside the house with my bare feet covered in grime and my jeans in my hand. When I managed to hobble my ass upstairs, Hadley was sitting against my bedroom door.

“What happened to you?” She grimaced at my appearance.

“I let Mia pierce my cock.” I opened the door and stepped around her.

She got to her feet behind me as I went straight for the bathroom and started the faucet in the tub to wash my feet and get some feeling back in my frozen toes.

“You did what?”

“You heard me.”

“Yeah, I heard you, but I don’t believe it.”

I turned around and pulled it out to give her a glimpse of my dick with a gauze cap on it.

“Shit, Josh. I didn’t need to see that.”

I tucked myself back inside my boxers and sat on the edge of the tub while I let the water run over my dirty feet. Hadley reached past me to grab the bottle of body wash and squeezed it under the faucet until bubbles started to erupt around my feet. She sat down next to me, facing the sink behind my back.

“Why did you do this now?”

“Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“Josh.” Hadley sighed in exasperation.

“I don’t know.” Because I hoped if I ever did use my dick again, maybe the sensation of a piece of hardware would chase off the panic attacks. Something, anything different to disrupt the pattern. “Why do I do any of the stupid shit I pull? I’m fucked up.”

“Stop it.” She grabbed my bicep, twisting me until I looked at her. “You can’t use that excuse with me. Honestly, I’m sick and tired of hearing it. Tell me the truth.”

I glared at her, those accusatory eyes that saw right through me.

“The same reason I asked you to draw this.” I pointed at the raven on my chest. “The same reason I got the fucking tattoo. The same reason I pulled that sweaty dipshit off of you. What magic truth do you think there is?”

Hadley bowed her head, exhaling as she closed her eyes, and took her hand from my arm. “You should go back to therapy.”

“Pass.”

“I mean it.”

“You first.”

That had escalated quickly, as was typical. Any time we tried to make up and play nice after an argument, it just turned into a worse fight. We taunted each other, picking at the scabs that only we knew how to find. It was our pattern, and the same reason why we had never—probably would never—get to the part where we talked about the night I’d left her.

I couldn’t fathom a day that I’d ever be able to look her in the eyes and give her the real reason. For that matter, I think her patience with hearing a reasonable excuse had long since evaporated. I’d missed my window of opportunity a long time ago.

“I’m sorry I slapped you, Josh.”

“I deserved it.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Oh, yeah, I did. Because I’m sorry I hurt you and made you feel embarrassed in your own home.” I looked up, meeting her eyes. “I deserved it, because I’m not sorry about him. I’d do it again. That’s just the truth.”

“It still bothers you that much?”

Watching some guy screw the girl I loved? “Yeah. It really fucking bothers me.”

There. That was honesty. That was opening up. And it made me nauseated.

“And you won’t go back to therapy?”

“Not a goddamn chance.”

“Then maybe it’s time you try.”

Hadley slid her hand to the back of my neck and rubbed her thumb back and forth under my ear. There was an odd expression on her face that I couldn’t read. It was sort of solemn and hopeful all at the same time. My heart started to pound against my chest, because for just a second, I thought she might kiss me.

Just like that? All could be forgiven, and she’d just take me back if I stopped acting like a jackass all the time?

“How?” I asked.

I’d do anything if we could sweep it all under the rug and pretend it had never happened. Fuck, if she took me back, I guess I could consider going back to therapy if only so I could make love to her without wanting to tear my skin off. I couldn’t go through that with her again. I couldn’t put her through that.

“Open yourself. Meet someone. You deserve to be happy. Don’t let
him
keep that from you forever. Maybe if you tried, you could find a way to get past whatever it is that you’re afraid of.”

She got up, squeezed my shoulder, and walked out. I stared after her for a while before it sank in. Hadley wasn’t offering me a way back to her; she was pointing the way out. I would have preferred she slap me again.

So that’s how it happened. Hadley set me loose. After the four months it took my dick to heal, I started trying to find anything compatible in any other woman that would take my mind off her. But my heart wasn’t in it. Instead, I found a parade of coeds willing to engage in hollow sex while I tried to put back together the fractured pieces of myself.

There was no desire in me to go to class today. After sitting through another self-aggrandizing lecture from Dr. Richardson, I was just fucking bored by the idea. Besides, I needed to head over to Vaughn’s shop to pick up the new pedal I’d ordered and the drumheads that Corey had been waiting on. So I blew off the rest of the day. My pocket buzzed as I crossed the lawn toward the parking lot. It was a text from Hadley.

I’m over it for the day. Lunch?

Sometimes that girl could read my mind.

Me too. Meet at the car.

When Punky arrived, I was waiting in the car with the radio on and the engine running. She tossed her bag in the backseat, collapsed into the passenger side with a huff, and slammed the door behind her. I watched, careful not to laugh at her, while she wrestled with the seat belt. She was in rare form, and I worried for the well-being of whomever had pissed her off today.

“You okay?” I turned down the radio, looking her over to figure out what kind of angry this was.

“Dr. Shaw called my charcoal collection plebeian and pedantic. I’m not even sure those two things can happen at the same time. It’s fucking charcoal. I’m not using a lightsaber to carve statues, for fuck’s sake. But maybe I should have put a bigger set of tits on the trees in my landscape. Maybe then he’d appreciate the view. Oh, but Natalie is a genius, because she wears short skirts, flashes her baby cave, and leans over her drawing desk with her enormous tits hanging out!” Hadley punched the dashboard. “Damn it!” She grabbed her fist, curling her entire body around it.

“Easy there, Thundercat.” I pried her hand away, holding it in both of mine while I inspected her knuckles and fingers. “You might want to think twice about doing that again. You’re not much of an artist without your dominant hand.”

“Same goes for musicians.”

“Touché.”

I kept rubbing her hand between mine. She didn’t try to pull away, and I didn’t offer to surrender her appendage.

“So why did you call it quits for the day?” she asked.

“Professor Monroe called my jazz composition plebeian and pedantic?”

Punky scowled and stuck her tongue out at me.

“Bored. And trying to write my jazz composition for the final gave me a headache.”

“How’s your set coming?”

“It isn’t.”

“How come?”

I shrugged, watching my fingers trace over hers. “I guess I just suck at it.”

“Wish I could suck that well at anything.”

I looked up, raising an eyebrow to Hadley’s choice of words.

She rolled her eyes, pulling her hand back from mine. “Shut up, stupidhead. I want Thai food.”

“Perfect.”

Hadley turned up the radio. Jack White blared just for her like the universe had aligned to help alleviate her bad mood. I gunned the engine and tore ass out of the parking lot as the breeze filled the car. Punky bobbed her head, chanting along with the lyrics. Watching her out of the corner of my eye, I felt my own irritation subside.

Jupiter sat in a small strip mall, sandwiched between a Thai restaurant and a sketchy massage parlor. Vaughn, a weathered roadie who had toured with almost every major rock act since the end of disco, was the only man I trusted to work on my guitars.

Vaughn had sold me my prized Gibson Les Paul. The same one he’d taught me to play on. My dad had brought me in here almost every Sunday for lessons as a kid. At first, Vaughn had terrified me, a big man covered in tattoos. I was afraid of most men back then. But I grew to trust him. It was a bit like therapy, which perhaps had been my father’s intent all along.

The door chimed as Hadley and I entered. She didn’t wait for a word from me before she took off toward the back of the store to browse on her own. Jupiter carried everything. The front of the store held guitars, drums, and the usual suspects. In the back were the makings of a full symphony orchestra. If Vaughn didn’t have it, he’d find it for you.

At the front counter, his seven-year-old grandson, Kyle, sat flipping through a copy of
Rolling Stone
. Every inch of wood was covered in scrawl and Sharpie graffiti. My name was on there somewhere, along with Hadley’s and a drawing she’d done of us as cartoon lobsters when we were ten.

“Hey, little man.” I gave Kyle a high five as I leaned against the front counter. “What’s the good word?”

“I can play ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit,’ but my mom says I’m too loud.” Kyle reached up and pushed his curly black hair out of his eyes as he fingered the callus builder in his palm. “She says I’m not allowed to sing that song.”

“Why not?”

“She says
libidio
is a bad word.”

“You mean
libido
?”

“Yeah. That.”

I laughed, looking up at Vaughn as he pulled my new pedal out of the packaging. He was a huge man with long gray hair pulled back into a ponytail—but bald on top—and a beard to match. Faded old-school tattoos covered his hairy arms, the black ink having turned green some time during the Clinton administration.

“What does
libido
mean?” Kyle asked.

“Uh-uh, MacKay.” Vaughn pointed one thick finger at me. “You fill his head with this shit, and then I have to hear about it from his mom. Lock it up.”

“Sure, but you say
shit
in front of him.”

Kyle was a damn guitar phenom. His grandpa couldn’t have been prouder. Vaughn’s only child, however, was less than thrilled. The metalhead was cursed with a daughter who was more Beyoncé than Joan Jett. Such a shame.

“He hears worse than that at school. Save the vocabulary lesson for puberty, okay?”

I winked at Kyle, taking a moment to inspect the pedal. Vaughn set it back in the box and put everything in a bag for me.

“You still looking for a replacement in your band?” Vaughn asked.

“Why, is Kyle ready to start gigging? I’m not sure I can afford him.”

“Can I? That would be awesome!”

“You can’t play in bars until you’re thirteen,” Vaughn answered.

I bit back a laugh as Kyle deflated.

“Why aren’t you in school, little man?”

“Dentist appointment. Mom let me skip the rest of the day to hang out with Grandpa.”

“You busy supervising, or you want to jam for a while?”

Kyle’s eyes lit up.

“Whatever you want,” Vaughn told him. “Pick something off the wall.”

Kyle knew what he wanted. He went straight for the baby blue Fender Mustang, the same kind Kurt Cobain had often played. This kid had been born in the wrong decade. I pulled down the Jag hanging next to it. Together, we found a spot in the amp room and plugged in, sitting on a pair of stools. By ear, Kyle tuned his guitar until it sang in perfect pitch. Then he cranked up the distortion.

“You take lead,” I told him. “I’ll do rhythm.”

He propped one foot on the rung of the stool and counted us off. It amazed me to watch him. He never looked at his fingers, knew where they were at all times. They slid so effortlessly over the strings.

I sang as we played together. It felt good, jamming for the fun of it with a kid who was still just discovering the music and learning about himself as a musician. He had that awe about him. Everything was still fascinating and new. I envied that. It was the way I had felt when I was first discovering the piano.

“I wish I could sing like you,” he told me. “I don’t sound that good.”

“Practice. In rock, you don’t have to have a good voice, just an interesting one. Besides, your voice is going to change as you get older.”

He plucked at the strings, looking around the room. “She’s pretty,” Kyle said, and nodded over my shoulder.

“Yes, she is.”

Hadley had a blue bass guitar in her lap, the same one she always messed around with when we came in here. Her dark hair was tossed over one shoulder, her bottom lip between her teeth. She was beautiful. My fantasy incarnate.

“What’s her name?”

“Hadley.”

“Is Hadley your girlfriend?”

“No. She’s my...We live together.”

“But you like her.”

I narrowed my eyes at the kid. “We’re friends.”

“So she’s your girl...friend.” He gave me goofy smile.

“What about you?”

“I’ll let her be my girlfriend.”

Clever fucker.

“She’s too old for you.” I set the guitar down and used the opportunity to steal another glance at Hadley while she wasn’t looking. “And I think you might be too young to start dating.”

“I think she likes you.”

“Oh, yeah? And why should I take the word of a little kid?”

“Because she keeps looking at you and smiling,” he said. “Or she’s smiling at me and wants to be my girlfriend.”

“You’re a piece of work, you know that?”

Kyle laughed, pushing his hair back over his forehead. “You totally libido her.”

On a stool in the garage, I sat staring at utter shitfuckery scrawled across the loose pages. When we’d gotten home from Jupiter, I had felt less irritable and disjointed. Something as simple as jamming with the kid, and a nice meal with Punky, had settled me somewhat. When I’d sequestered myself in here to work, I had every intention of making headway on my jazz composition for class. However, my headache returned with a vengeance, my eyes couldn’t focus on the page, and the only music occupying my mind was the elusive tune I couldn’t pin down.

Nothing. Hours of staring at black marks on straight lines, and I had nothing. Worse than nothing. At one point, I wrote sixteen bars of “Cocaine Blues” before it dawned on me that I was not Bob Dylan. Eighteen bars of some Thom Yorke song.

Was it possible that I had exhausted my supply of talent? Was there a finite number of notational combinations that my consciousness could produce?

In the 1850s, Robert Schumann believed he was transcribing dictation from Schubert’s ghost. He called the result
Variations on a Theme
. At night, he heard choirs and the orchestrations of Beethoven.

Didn’t David Berkowitz claim that he received orders to carry out his murders from the demon that possessed his neighbor’s dog? What was the difference between listening for the song stuck in your head and a psychiatric hallucination?

A .44 Bulldog revolver, apparently.

Fuck it.

I abandoned the music and walked back inside the house. From the kitchen, I grabbed a glass of water and popped a couple Advil for my headache. Still my vision was blurry around the edges. The shapes and colors in my periphery bled together in liquid waves. Maybe it was the Thai food, but my stomach fought me to keep my lunch down.

It was after 7:00. Hadley would normally have started pulling dinner together by now. Thinking that maybe she was in her own creative cocoon, I headed toward the stairs to check on her. Passing through the foyer, I glanced out the window and saw an unfamiliar pickup truck in the driveway.

“Andre, don’t.”

My attention jerked behind me to the hallway at the back of the house. It led to my dad’s study, the master bedroom, and the music room. My breathing stopped as I listened for confirmation. I had learned this lesson once before: Thou shalt not barge into rooms at the sound of Hadley’s voice. Thing was, sound carried in this house.

“I mean it. Don’t.”

I headed down the hallway.

“What’s the big deal?”

“Please get up. We should—”

My feet stopped at the open door to the music room when I heard middle C ring out of my Bösendorfer piano. There he sat, the new Punkyfucker perched on the bench where my mother had died. I hadn’t set foot inside this room, hadn’t even looked inside, since that day.

Hadley’s large brown eyes found mine like a startled deer. “Josh.”

“Get out.”

Andre turned around, looking me over. “Hey. I hope you—”

“Andre,” Hadley warned. “Don’t.” Her eyes remained locked with mine, a tinge of knowing fear in her expression.

“Get out,” I repeated. “Now.”

“He didn’t know.”

Hadley stepped toward me, but I backed away.

“I just wanted to show him my—”

“No.” I snapped my eyes shut and took a deep breath. My chest tightened. “What right do you think you have to be in here? This is my goddamn house.”

“I’m sorry. I only wanted—”

“She was my mother, Hadley. Do you get that?”

“What’s your problem, man? Take it easy.”

I ignored Andre, leveling my glare at Hadley’s shell-shocked eyes.

“You live here,” I told her. “But this doesn’t belong to you. You’re just my tenant until you get your shit together and move on.”

“Calm the fuck down.” Andre stood, walking through Hadley’s attempt to stay him. “She didn’t do anything wrong.”

“You play house with me, but this isn’t your family,” I said. “You cook and clean and pretend you’re her, but you’re not. Get over yourself, and get your dipshit fuck buddy out of my house.”

“Listen, asshole—”

“Andre, no.” Hadley turned her back to me and pressed both hands against Andre’s chest. “I’m sorry, but you need to go.”

“What? You’re shitting me. No. Come on. I’ll take you to Tom’s.”

“No,” she said. “Please, just go. Please.”

Andre scowled as he looked at me over her shoulder; then he stormed out. I waited until I heard the front door slam behind him.

“Stay out of here,” I warned her. “And keep your toys in your own room.”

During the hour-long drive into the city, I seethed with unresolved rage. I should have just hit the asshole. By restraining myself, I had exacerbated the symptoms. Without an outlet—the three orders of Jameson hadn’t done shit besides dulling my headache—I was a walking bad decision in need of a trigger.

In the greenroom at the Nest, I held a fistful of her hair in one hand. With my back pressed to the drywall covered in posters and graffiti, and my jeans open around my hips, I closed my eyes while the blonde sucked me off.

There was no part of me that thought this was a good idea. I knew better. And yet…sometimes destruction begs destruction. Because Hadley knew what she’d done, she just didn’t expect to get caught. Perhaps she’d been going in there for years without me knowing. And that was fine, so long as I didn’t see it. But inviting an outsider to sit at Carmen’s piano…How was that not a blatant slap in the face? I had never gone so far out of my way to hurt her. Well…except maybe every day for the past four years I hadn’t told her the truth.