FORGIVENESS, SO SAYS , is a nice thing to do. Then she laughs and laughs and laughs because it’s not always possible. Jamie Vega did something horrible to the one person who loved him most in the world. Many have told me that what he did was unforgiveable. Some suggested I have Iris walk away and never look back. Funny thing about publishing, sometimes you get random suggestions from people. Some is good advice. Others, well...let’s just say it’s eye opening what some folks will demand of a perfect stranger.

The point of this series isn’t simply to tell the story of two broken characters as they stumble in their lives away from each other. The point, if there is one, is that forgiveness comes first to the individual. We all sin and fall and do things that hurt others. We can be greedy. We can be possessive and, yes, we can be manipulative for both good and bad reasons. The bottom line, however, is learning how to forgive yourself before you ask the same of those you’ve hurt. Man, is that hard to do, but forgiveness is never really about the person that got wounded. Many times, it’s about the person delivering the wound. Jamie had to learn that and he isn’t a guy who is good with life lessons. It took him a while to get the message.

I hope what you find in this final God of Rock novel, is an understanding of why Jamie became Dash and how both men got saved by the woman who was always in a league of her own. Thanks for sticking with me during this small journey. It was fun playing a rocker for a little while.

For all my Saints & Sinners, manically supportive readers and bloggers.

You're the real rock stars.

––––––––

Hurt me and never stop

Love me like you do

Mend my wasted soul

It’s yours, this heart for only you.

—Hurt Me by Hawthorne, 1986

PROLOGUE

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, 2009

The hum of noise came at me through the air vent overhead. The sound was low, pulsing in time with the backbeat of a drum, and started in like a quiet murmur that slipped around the crowd and funneled through the stage corridor, right into the dressing room.

“More!” The chant was constant and loud enough that the mirror in front of me rattled.

The crowd ached to be fed. The slipstream of sound filled something inside me, but it did little to make me whole. Not much would.

“They’re restless tonight!” Nico said, squealing like a band geek who just got felt up by the quarterback on prom night. “We’re gonna kill.”

“The fuck we are,” I said, because he was being a dumbass, stupid even by Nico standards. I didn’t bother watching him as I lit my cigarette. “Middle acts are filler. You should know that mierda by now.”

Mick Phillips stepped behind me, shooting Nico a look I’d seen before. It was the same look the guitarist got every time during the past month that I’d make piss-poor predictions about us sucking. But coño, it was the truth.

“Jamie, man...you gotta have some faith,” Mick said, fanning his fingers through his gel-stiff hair, pumping up his fauxhawk.  “It gets old, you saying that shit.”

He didn’t need to complain. I knew what a pendejo I sounded like. It was a good shot, being on this tour, bookended by a band with even less experience than ours—which was saying something—and The Plebes, who were on their way to landing their first Grammy nod.

Still, the bullshit morose attitude was something that had taken root inside me a long time ago. As a kid, my mama made sure I knew how pointless it was to shoot for good things. They’d never come to her, why the hell would they come for her kid?

“Whatever, pai,” I told my guitarist, leaning back in my chair to puff out smoke rings into the air. “Same shit, same set, different fucking day.” He stopped primping long enough to shake his head and fan smoke from his face.  I laughed at his frown, knowing I sounded like an ungrateful bastard, but finding it impossible to care much that I did. “Middle sets are when they grab beers and take pisses. We ain’t nobody special to them.”

“I hope you don’t really think that,” Ronnie Davies said, coming into the dressing room to lean against the table in front of me. As promoter, it was Ronnie’s job to get asses in the chairs and money out of pockets. He’d given me a shot based solely on what he’d heard of my last band, Omen, and set me up with this new group, but it wasn’t the same. We weren’t connecting, which added to my bitter attitude.

“Shit, Jamie,” he started, moving his head toward me after Nico and Mick disappeared from the room. The gray streaks along his temples glinted against the fluorescent light above us. “I hope you don’t think you landed this tour because I needed a bunch of assholes to play music while the crowds piss and buy shit.”

He didn’t seem to like my shrug, and I knew why. My mama may have planted the shitty attitude, but my cousin Isaiah and ex-girlfriend Iris had nurtured it into something thick, something that sprouted deep roots. I couldn’t shake this attitude and doubt that felt dense enough to choke me now.

“You know you’re not here because...”

“So why am I here?” I asked Ronnie, pushing the chair back away from the table. “I’m all that’s left of Omen.”

“Jamie, you were all that mattered in Omen.”

For once, I didn’t have a comeback. Ronnie’s admission deflated a bit of my attitude, and I was left with nothing to do but watch the man’s face. He didn’t smile. He didn’t do anything but nod, telling me with the smallest gesture that he wasn’t feeding me a line.

“You got the goods, man.” He stood, pulling a cigarette from my pack on the table, his thin lips wrinkling when he lit the smoke. “But even the best musicians need to earn their grit. Everybody has to figure out who they want to be on that stage.”

“I know who I am,” I defended, not liking the accusation behind Ronnie’s words.

“Dude, you got no fucking clue.” He smiled at me, those straight teeth marred by the faint yellowing on the enamel from twenty years of smoking and hard road life. The grin made me feel like a clueless asshole, beating his chest because he could. Ronnie seemed to find the glare I gave him funny and went on like some hyena when I hardened my features. “It’s not an insult. I didn’t say you sucked. Your ass wouldn’t be here if you sucked.”

“But I have no fucking clue?”

Ronnie lowered his thin shoulders, holding the burning cigarette in front of his mouth, head tilted toward me like he needed a second to consider his answer. Then the man shrugged, waving the smoke in my direction. “You’re what? Nineteen, maybe twenty?” He took my frown as confirmation and continued. “You got chops. I’ve never seen raw talent like yours. You can write, and you’re comfortable on the stage, but your own shit? Your own mark? You haven’t figured that out yet.”

“Dude what the hell does that even...”

“You’ll know it when—” But Ronnie didn’t elaborate. His dark complexion paled, and his narrow eyes hardened as he went silent, standing from the table to glare at something behind me. “Shit...”

There was something in his tone I recognized. It had been there two weeks earlier when my cousin Isaiah had tried getting back stage in Indy. He’d still sported a scar along his bottom lip from our fight months back, but seemed determined to get my ear. It had been a long time since that tussle over Iris, but I still had no plans of ever talking to his ass again.

Ronnie’s low mutter meant drama none of us had the time for, but as I stood from the table and faced the door, catching sight of the small woman stumbling toward me, I realized that this shitstorm would be tempest-sized.

“Hell, no,” I told her, holding up my hand when she smiled, chin lifted like she was convinced I was a meal ticket she intended to cash.

“Papi,” my mother said, coming to stand in front of me.

She seemed to be shrinking. The last time I’d seen her had been six months before when she banged on my Uncle Hector’s door, trying to see me. The fight in Isaiah’s room where I’d found him and Iris naked on his bed had ended things for me with my cousin and my mama. Hector was the only one I could ever depend on, and he kept my head clear and my ass busy, distracting me from the drama those two pendejos put me in. Since I was cutting ties, I’d made a clean break from everyone except Hector. That night at my uncle’s, with my mother wailing into the darkness like a perra loca, had been the first time in my life that I’d walked away from my mother and stayed gone. She’d spent two hours calling to me from the storefront below Hector’s apartment at 4:00 a.m. My mother had never been good at taking care of herself and hadn’t liked the fact that I’d quit doing it for her.

Next to me, Ronnie let out a low sigh, as though he knew the drama we were heading for. “I’ll get security.”

“No.” I pointed at him when he stepped toward my mother’s slouching, drunken form. Ronnie had taken a chance on me, God knew why. The least I could do was sort out my own shit. “I got this.”

He watched me as I popped my neck, a distraction I told myself I needed to loosen my limbs in case mama decided to take a swing at me.  “Fine,” he said, nodding once, before he jerked his attention to the clock above the dressing table. “I need you on that stage in twenty. Handle this shit, or I will.” He took half a step away from me before he turned. “And Jamie, make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

“Not a problem.”

Ronnie didn’t touch her as he moved out of the door or acknowledge her when she made a weak attempt at grabbing his arm. She looked thin, paler than I’d ever seen her, and pathetic in the tight, black skirt that barely touched her thighs and the black halter loosely tied at the neck and around her waist. She looked just like the person she was—a washed-up addict groupie who hadn’t been told she wasn’t hot and twenty anymore. Though she’d never be ugly, she was still a mess, with wrinkles cornering her big eyes and stretching across her forehead. Her skin was flaky, with a small cluster of pimples on her cheeks. The outfit she wore left nothing to the imagination and emphasized how thin she’d gotten—her collarbones stuck out, and when she turned, rolling her head against the door, her ribs protruded as though she’d gone months without something substantial to eat.

“Papi,” she said, her voice coming out in a gravel-soaked rasp. She sounded congested, tired, and fell against me when I stood in front of her. “Ay nino, I knew you’d see me. I knew you’d take care of your mama.”

But this wasn’t like her forgetting a parent/teacher conference in junior high or sending me to school in dirty jeans with an empty belly and no lunch money. Her being here, following me to Chicago and sneaking backstage, went further than even hocking my Gibson or stealing a hundred bucks from my wallet because she needed to score blow. Now she was threatening the only thing I had left in life—my music.

“No,” I said, pushing her away from me when she tried resting all of her body weight against me—as though just my presence, my solid form, gave her relief. “I’m not taking care of you. Not this time.”

“Jamie, I’m...I’m your mama...” she tried, managing to steady herself with one hand on the doorknob when I held her back, my arms stiff and straight to put distance between us. “It’s your job...you have to...”

“No,” I repeated, not hiding the disgust I knew moved my mouth into a curl when I looked down at her. Those heavy-lidded black eyes blinked slow, as though it took effort for her to keep them open. The whites were yellowed and streaked with red. “My only job is to handle my business out on that stage.” When she started to wobble, I stepped back, pushing down the instinct to reach for her and keep her upright. “I don’t owe you a fucking thing.”

The dulled features went sharp then, transforming into something I recognized as anger. I’d seen that expression more than any other on her face, and now it was back, telling me in seconds that she would lash out—that she was ready for a fight. I didn’t have time for that shit.

“Listen to me, you pendejo...” she hissed.

“No, I don’t think I will.” The crowd beyond that dressing room had gone loud again, the small lull between the first act and the intermission dying a bit more with the stretch of minutes. I didn’t have time for my mother or her anger, and I was well past letting her bully or guilt me. She reached out, attempting to slap me, and I caught her wrist. “And hell no to that, too. I’m not some little punk you get to slap around anymore. I’m not gonna run after you because you’ve fucked up yet another relationship, and you can’t be bothered to handle your own shit. I told you that night at Hector’s, and I’ll tell you again now, I am so fucking done with you. Done, Juanita.”

She made a noise then, something rough and angry. She never did like me calling her by her first name. “Don’t you...”

“Mierda, no. Don’t you. Don’t you come chasing after me while I’m on tour. Don’t you dare expect me to clean up your messes. Don’t you fucking ask for money or a place to crash or bail money. You won’t get shit from me. Not anymore. Not ever again.”

“You’re just as selfish as your father...”

I blinked, surprise making me pause. She’d never once mentioned my father. God only knew who he was, because I was pretty damn sure even my mother didn’t know. But I also knew it was a tactic. She was trying to bait me. She always did when things weren’t going her way.

“Yeah, well,” I started, ignoring her taunt about whoever the bastard was that made me, “if he was anything like the other pendejos you let in your bed, then I’m not surprised.”

“I am your mama, Jamie. You can’t...”

“No. You’re just the woman I got landed with. You were just the warden. I’ve done my time, and now, I’m done with you.”  The crowd was louder still now, the shouts and chants stirring into a frenzy, and I felt my pulse race and my fingertips itch to play. I looked out into the hallway, catching the gaze of one of Ronnie’s security guards, nodding for him to come my way. My mother’s stare was cold—steady—and I could nearly feel it on my skin, like a frozen breath as biting as her tongue, as frigid as her heart.

“You owe me, papi. You can’t deny that.” She sounded sober now, not as weak, and the difference in her tone had me glancing down at her. It only took that glance to make her grin, and it was a sick, venomous gesture that held no warmth. “I’m in your blood, breathing inside your veins. You can’t extract me, no matter who you become.” One long, red nail scratched against my temple when she poked at me. “I go deep and won’t ever leave you, hijo. Trust that.”

Two large guards stood behind my mother as she stared at me. Her expression never changed, even with the promise she made, but I didn’t let her see me upset. She didn’t deserve to know that she could still affect me. Instead, I nodded to the guards, stepping back when the largest one tugged her into the hallway. “No,” I said, arms folded. “Trust that when I say I’m done, I mean it. I’m done with you, mama.” One quick nod and the guards pulled her out of the dressing room.

I walked back to the dressing table, trying to ignore my mother’s rattling screams, cursing me and my father, shrieking promises of vengeance and payback and that she’d never be gone from me completely. She was a battle I had to fight, and sometimes I thought I’d never get a break from the carnage. She wanted me to be a soldier and never stop fighting.

Scrubbing my face, I glanced in the mirror, a little disgusted at how gaunt I looked, how my skin had gone nearly as pale as my mother’s, and I wondered if it was the road or the circumstance of my life the past year that had made me look so different. I wasn’t dark anymore. I wasn’t as fit as I’d been just a year before when I finished up high school. So much of what my mother had given me—the cheekbones, the eyes, the curl of my full mouth—all of it was a reminder of her, the woman who made me and would never stop reminding me that she had.

I lowered my head, gripping the back of the chair in front of me as I inhaled, trying to focus on the crowd out in that auditorium and the energy I felt them radiating.

My mother was right about one thing: she was in my blood. They all were. Isaiah, Hector, Willow Heights and, as much as I hated to admit it, Iris was, too. They made me who I was. They built me like I was brick and mortar. Every lie, every deception, every wasted hope, they stacked them inside me, one by one, until I ended up here, in an empty dressing room, angry that my mother could still get under my skin.

“They ain’t ever gonna leave,” I whispered, head shaking as I tightened my grip onto the chair.

Ronnie had sworn that’s what I needed. Grit. Experience. All the shit leveled at me by my own blood, by the girl who’d owned my soul, it was mine. I needed to own it. I needed to claim it, even though I wanted to forget.  My lungs felt tight when I inhaled, trying to keep my breath level. All I wanted was to erase that shit and become something...someone else...It was then that I realized I was the only one standing in my way.

To my right, The Plebes’s stylist had stashed her large bag with a collection of makeup and shit she used to fix their pockmarks and guy-line their eyes. Above that table was an assortment of posters, all bands who’d showcased at the venue. There was Green Day, and The Pillocks, and, the smallest of all, set off to the right of the mirror, was a modest poster of a man dressed in priest’s robes. Some Swedish band just making waves, but they had theatrics and style that got them attention. The lead wore a cardinal’s hat and face paint that gave him a skeletal feel. An instant glimmer of an idea formed.

I stood in front of the mirror, digging into the makeup bag, slathering white over my face, smearing black around my eyes and down the curve of my cheeks, liking how a few layers of paint gave me the anonymity I wanted. Fingers in the black, I smudged and smeared until I looked wasted, until I looked like a demon from someone’s nightmare. Until someone else stared back in that mirror—someone dark and free of the burden of memory. Someone strong. Someone vicious, void of anything that mattered. Blank and ready to run, cut loose from the past and anything that filled him up inside. I wanted empty. I wanted nothing and liked how this someone made me feel. Like someone else...someone I decided, right then and there, I’d call Dash.

Chapter One

Willow Heights, Christmas Eve, Present day

Whisky remembered.

Didn’t matter who you were, or how you thought you could handle your liquor; one way or another, even the biggest pendejo got his ass handed to him by whisky. It would show itself in the lines on your face the morning after a bender, or that rank, fuzzy hint of heat that still radiated from your mouth no matter how many times you brushed your teeth. Whisky remembered, and it made you remember, too.

At the moment, the pounding, throbbing rumba in my head was memory enough. “Fuck you, Jack Daniels.” It didn’t respond, leaving me as I’d been all night—alone, bitter, and a little stinky.

I’d become a rock and roll cliché. All show, no go, but that was my shtick. It’s what I’d done the last ten years. Show ‘em, wow ‘em, but never let them see the real me. Hadn’t bothered to let a soul see my face. Even the groupies I entertained got Dash Justice in the dark, or Dash with stage paint, or, lamest of all, Dash in shades so big half my face was obscured. No one wanted the real me. No one but her.

The thought had me automatically reaching for the bottle at my side. It was warm, and tasted watered down, likely from how long I’d held it, doing nothing for hours but staring at the ceiling in a drunken stupor that still lingered some five hours later.  

Six months. This had been my life. Looking had gone nowhere. Flowers, letters, cards, all sent to last known addresses when we couldn’t find Iris outside of the venue in Indy. I’d humiliated her, and she took off. Anyone would, but she’d gone off-grid. Vanished from me completely. I’d sent everything I could think of to everywhere I thought she might be: her New York apartment, her cousin’s place in Arizona, even her mother’s downtown cottage here in Willow Heights. I’d even contacted the punk editor at the music blog where she’d last worked. She’d vanished completely despite how hard we looked. And there had been a lot of looking to do. Isaiah, Jose, looked online, and around Indiana. Jose called in favors from his inmate friends and Arizona crew. I even called Clay, the bodyguard she’d been friendly with to see if he’d heard from her. He hadn’t but did have a few lengthy insults and curses to throw my way and a warning to stay clear of her. He wasn’t the only one giving me that warning. But no one knew where Iris had gone, or if they did, they were keeping that shit to themselves.

Six fucking months.

“The thing about losing everything is that you become a little fearless,” she’d promised, telling me honestly how my stupidity, my vain greed, had ruined her, but that had only been a song. Her name off my lips, a line in the song that announced to the world what a good fuck she’d been. But that hadn’t been the worst of it. Not by a long shot.

She’d always been fearless. Hell, she took on Gunnar Blood, a six-foot four-inch Norwegian shock rocker we used to tour with. The guy made me look like the Pope, and everyone knew it. That asshole went after Iris’s young editor, Dean, a few years back. It had been all over the news, this petite woman attacking Gunnar when he beat the smaller guy to nearly a pulp after some stupid argument about a bad review Dean published on his blog. Iris had given Gunnar four stitches, and the jackass lied that he’d fallen off the stage because he’d been piss drunk.

She’d always been real, the realest person I’d ever known, and I destroyed her. I destroyed us, because I didn’t trust her. Because I was weak.

The back of my sofa was slick with sweat when I sat up to rest against it, just enough to get the bottle back to my mouth. Just enough that I only had to move my chin up to keep the whisky in my mouth. It burned all the way down. I shut my eyes against the sting, and like always, these past six months, when I was stupid drunk and wanting to keep twisted on the guilt, I remembered her face the night of that Indy concert. The night I showed ten thousand fans what Iris Daine looked like while I fucked her.

Iris under me, reaching, bucking against my cock, gripping me, head flung back as I grabbed her tits. She met me stroke for stroke, that tight, sweet body all mine again. Mine for the moment. Mine for the camera I hid behind the two candlesticks on the hotel mantel. Iris coming, screaming my name and me...ragged hair obscuring much of my face, eyes shining through the tangled waves, that stupid grin, the greedy smirk, performing even as she promised she loved me.

“Tell Lager to go fuck himself,” I’d told her, so fucking sure she’d been scheming with my birth father, the man we’d both idolized as kids, to save his life. “You can, too.”

I’d ignored the tears, told myself they warmed my chest. Told myself that the slow crawl of dread I felt was nothing because she was nothing to me anymore.

But those tears didn’t hide her horror or humiliation. They didn’t pour over her face because she was embarrassed. Even in my arrogant rage, I saw deep emotion burning behind her eyes. I saw the hurt. I saw betrayal, and it gutted me; even though I tried to ignore it, it gutted me all the same, and then it destroyed me.

“I never touched her.” Isaiah had never lied to me, save that big one. All those years, all that time, he let me believe he and Iris betrayed me. It had fueled my hatred for her. It had kept us apart, but that night, I’d learned the truth. After I humiliated her, after I’d embarrassed myself right on that stage, I’d finally gotten to the truth. My cousin and my girl had pretended to betray me to get me back to what I wanted and who I’d always dreamt of being. They’d saved me from myself.

“Coño.”

The bottle was empty now and rolled from my fingers as I rubbed the heel of my palms into my eyes, doing a piss-poor job of eradicating the memory of the look on Iris’s face. It didn’t work. It hadn’t in six months. I doubted it ever would.

Overhead, the old record player wobbled and skipped, coming to the end of the record, vinyl scratching against the needle as the last song on The Plebes’s first album went silent. I staggered to my feet, vision blurry, head throbbing like a sore tooth, but I managed to get to the player and click off the power button before my stomach rebuked the slow-moving travel from the floor. I barely made it to the bathroom. The floor was hard on my knees, and the impact, after hours of lying around like a corpse, hit me straight in my gut. Everything I’d put down my throat came up, most of it whisky.

Iris’s voice shot through my mind, all those years she fussed at me for being a reckless kid. “Don’t drink so much all at once, Jamie,” and “everything in moderation.” Hell, nothing in my life had been moderate since I walked away from her. Why would now be any different?

“You called me a whore.”

That reminder stung because it was true. All of them were, but that stupid song, the one that brought Iris back to me, the one that led to me humiliating her even more, had started it all.

“1221,” I muttered, through sick, punk-ass moans.

It hurt her to hear me make light of what we’d been. Every time that song played, every time someone mentioned it, the same stung, betrayed look came across her pretty face.  

The heat radiating from the shower didn’t help much, once I’d finished getting rid of all that Jack, but it at least lessened the pounding in my head. I stood under the spray, trying to drown myself, trying like hell to ignore the flash of memory that ran in my head. Every night. Every time I went over and over all the fucked-up things I’d done to her. She’d been the only person who truly knew me. My first fan. My first friend. My only love, and I’d ripped apart everything because I’d been stupid and blind.  

The last time I saw Iris, her skin had gone pale, her hurt real and present on those soft features of hers. I’d spent five hours running around Indy looking for her, trying like hell to somehow make all I’d done right. Five hours, and no sign of her. Then those hours became days. Then weeks. Then months. And I realized Iris didn’t want to be found.

“Fuck me,” I muttered, scrubbing my thick hair harder, as though I could scrub enough to clean up the mess I’d made. Like it could make me forget the shit show I’d made of my career. After that night in Indy, the tour went from bad to worse.

Dash Justice Bombs in Cincinnati. That particular headline was the first of its kind in my ten-year career, but it wasn’t unfair. Iris going dark put me in a tailspin, and I couldn’t get out of it. The shows got worse. My label got nervous. The promoters got pissed, and when some asshole in L.A. asked me about the last time I’d bent Iris over and I jumped him, bypassing my bodyguards and a slew of hungry paparazzi in the process, that was enough. The promoters backed out, and my label canceled the tour.

Then the fans turned on me.

Apparently you can’t jump some asshole for being an asshole, especially when that asshole has close to half a million followers on Twitter. And a music blog.

I finished trying to drown myself in the shower, drying off as I fought to keep the sharp criticism out of my head, but it was never far away. As a distraction, I shoved into a pair of clean Levis and flipped on the TV, not paying attention to anything as I moved through the channels, pausing long enough to see some blonde chica mentioning Wills Lager and the most recent gossip about the penedjo who made me.

“Lager’s management won’t comment on his health, but sources close to the rocker indicate that time is running short. The health issues no one is talking about seem to be taking their toll. Wills was spotted just last week in San Francisco leaving the University of California Medical Center, and witnesses claim he needed assistance getting into his car.” They ran a loop of Lager performing, from ten years before, then images of him from last year’s Grammy awards took up most of the screen.

“Last month when shock rock legend Dash Justice was a no-show for a CNN interview with Justice and Lager, following the former’s confirmation that he fathered Justice, Wills admitted he was trying to settle his affairs, both personal and professional. Just before the interview was scheduled to begin, the Hawthorne fan site In Blue released the full-length video of the explicit encounter between Justice and former girlfriend Iris Dane after Justice’s Cloud account had been hacked. Those close to the shock rocker say the release of the video sent Justice into seclusion and no one has heard from him since.”

“No shit,” I told the TV, throwing the remote onto the bed after I powered off the set. I sure as hell didn’t want to see anyone. Not Isaiah. Not my management team. Damn sure not the label suits who kept trying to get me to pick up my phone.

I fell back against the mattress, hands covering my face as the thoughts swarmed inside my head. Lager wanted a kidney. My label wanted me to pull an ace from my sleeve and I didn’t even have a fucking deck. My fans wanted to get a rise out me, going so far as to compare me to that pariah Gunnar Blood. That bastard made me look like some punk in a boy band for all the lewd and disgusting things he did on stage and off.

The reporter hadn’t been wrong. That leaked video was the last straw. It convinced me I had zero shot at getting Iris back. The world could see what I did to her. There was no coming back from that.  

I lay on that mattress for almost a half-hour as the stupor I’d put myself in seemed to fade and an aching hunger took me over. My stomach rumbled, and my hands shook, so I eased off the mattress and made it into the kitchen, opening the fridge to pull out a two-day old burrito left over from when Landon, my assistant, came to check on me. I grabbed it from the microwave when the timer dinged and sat at the island, thumbing through the stack of mail Landon left while the burrito cooled.

I’d ignored every text and email, each call and sticky note left on my window, since the tussle in L.A. and the leak of the video. It was pure boredom that made me glance at the stack of letters and I guess some self-loathing part of my brain wanted me to see that Iris, once again, hadn’t bothered to respond to any of my letters or cards. But the manila envelope with the Stage Dive logo caught my attention, and I forgot the burrito and the stack of other shit that would take up my attention, and tore into it.

I vaguely remembered Landon mentioning it. Even fuzzier in my head was the call I’d gotten a few months back from the magazine. They wanted clarification, and I’d been too twisted to give them much. But here it was, right in my hands. Iris’s article about me. She’d finished it. Finally.

The spread was large—four full pages in the single most exclusive and respected industry magazine in the nation. They’d used a picture of me in silhouette, smoking a cigarette on an empty stage, for the cover. Nothing special. Nothing planned. Me in my jeans and boots, a black leather jacket with a thousand patches sewn on the sleeves and along the back. My hair pulled back, my beard scruffy. I looked like a roadie, not a rock star, not the man who donned heavy white paint and hid behind it every night, bringing ten thousand fans to simulated orgasm with lyric and melody.

The light threw shadows across my features, and my eyes and nose were almost visible. Iris had taken the picture in Atlanta, before the crew set up, before the fog machines were brought in and the sets were placed. The title was simple, but spoke a lot about what she thought and how she’d navigated the storm I’d made. But it had only been six months. No one could keep my florecita down for long.

Not even me.

My apartment was quiet, the snow falling over Willow Heights, making the night actually feel like Christmas Eve, like a fairytale snapshot of everything opposite of me. Perfect time for that magazine proof to land on my door. It’s not like I had anything else to do.

I opened the thick pages, coming to the piece I’d expected to be honest and biting. Nothing I hadn’t expected. Not a damn thing in it could be refuted.

“We’re sending you the rough draft of Iris Daine’s exclusive on you, per your contract. But, I’d like to verify some claims she made first.” The woman on the other end of the phone had a professional tone, but I’d heard the doubt laced within it. “If I could have a moment of your time.”

“Iris finished her article?” I’d waited three months, since the night of my disastrous Indy show to hear something, anything about her. Three long months where no one knew where she’d disappeared. This fact checker was the first I’d heard anyone say about her.

“She did. We just need to verify the things she wrote. See if there are any discrepancies.”

I didn’t need any explanations and didn’t want to waste perfectly good drinking time talking to anyone at all, especially people I didn’t know. “If Iris says it’s true, then it is. Every fucking word,” I’d told the girl on the phone, hanging up.

I didn’t care what Iris wrote about me. None of it, no matter how true or false, would ever be as bad as what I’d done to her.

They’d made her get head shots, or took a new picture of her to accompany the article. I flipped to the end of the four-page spread to find it. There she was, beautiful, expression blank, but sultry, long hair billowing over her shoulders, waving across her forehead. A pout that could tempt a saint without even the smallest effort. That perfection was natural. The bio was short, likely to prevent anyone from finding her, another reality resulting from my stupidity. Iris Daine is a writer from New York.

But she wasn’t. Not really. She was from here. Her roots ran deep, but her wings flew high. She didn’t want to be part of Willow Heights, just as much as she didn’t want to be part of my life now that I’d wrecked everything.

I got it.

I’m a pendejo.

Flipping back to the front of the spread, I glanced at the other pictures—a show shot, me and Isaiah in full makeup, fog billowing overhead, clouding the crowd. We both looked like idiots, and that was confirmed when I read the first line of the article.

The Unmasking of Dash Justice

By

Iris Daine

DASH Justice smokes two packs of Marlboro Reds a day, but that’s not his worst vice. There are plenty more. 

I wasn’t sure if I could read the entire thing. It would hurt, knowing what she thought of me, knowing those thoughts formed opinions that weren’t likely to change. My cell chimed, and I glanced at it, seeing unknown caller flash on the screen. Likely just another reporter wanting a quote, wanting an interview or explanation for canceling the second leg of my tour. Blotter had a field day with the video, because its existence confirmed some of the bullshit stories they’d made up about me and Iris. None of that shit was true.

Half a minute later the cell rang again, same unknown number, and again I ignored it. I didn’t have the patience for talking to anyone about Iris unless they would tell me where she was. I needed her. I was lost, and nothing I did would lead me back on the straight and narrow. Nothing but her.

A third ring sounded, and I threw the magazine on the island, snatching up my phone with every intention of chucking it out into the snow. I flung the door open, arm pulled back for the toss, but stopped short, stepping back when I came face to face with my father.

“Jamie,” he said, leaning heavily on a cane. His eyes were intense, the curl of his mouth making him look older than he was.

I slipped the phone into my pocket, folding my arms over my chest as I glared back at the old man who’d once been the one person I idolized most in the world. “Sorry, gringo, I can’t help you,” I told him, grabbing the door to slam it shut. “I like my kidneys where they are.”

“I’m not here about that, you wee shite.” He stuck his boot against the door, pushing it further open when I tried to close it. “I’m here to knock some sense into you. Put on the kettle, arsehole.” 

CHAPTER TWO

I looked nothing like my father. He was white, Irish to the core, and I was a Boricua who was the spitting image of my mother. But Wills Lager wasn’t just the man who’d slept with a pretty groupie a few decades ago; he was the man who changed my life. He’d changed both Iris and my lives forever.

“Do you not have tea?”

Those life-changing details didn’t do a damn thing to cool my anger. That old fucker had ignored me for most of my life.

“I’m Puerto Rican, gringo. Our life’s blood is coffee. Dark. Rich. Alive.” I reached over his head, digging out two Keurig pods from the cabinet. “No tea.”

Lager muttered something that sounded like an insult under his breath, but didn’t argue. He moved slow, dismissing me with a wave as he ambled to the table, cane in hand as he sat. He was an old man now, not the invincible legend I’d always looked up to. Wills Lager being old was something that the star-struck kid in me would have never thought of him. Once, he had been the mythical unicorn Iris and I always sought. The master of our imaginations. The writer of our childhood soundtrack.

He leaned back, sighing as he looked up at the chandelier over the table in my eat-in kitchen. There were more lines on his face, many more than had been there when I’d first met him ten years before. His hair was still thick, like mine, but only the temples and near the base of his neck was still dark. Everywhere else was nearing white, with some salt and pepper. His obvious aging stirred something in my gut I didn’t like feeling: worry.

When I was that star-struck kid meeting Wills Lager, unable to utter anything to him at all, I hadn’t known who he was, really. I hadn’t known what Iris found out before she tracked me down to do the interview: that Wills Lager, Grammy winner, the man I called my musical spirit guide all my life, was my father. Not only that, he knew he was and kept that information to himself. But he’d never done anything to clue me in, and he’d never once tried to find me; he’d known about me, known that I was his, and still hadn’t bothered to let me know.

“Sugar?” I asked, still annoyed that the man had barged into my place. More annoyed at myself that I’d let him. There was a hold he had on me that I didn’t understand. Maybe I kept civil because of who he’d been to me as a kid. Maybe it was because the music his band Hawthorne made had been some sort of chronicle of the childhood I had with Iris. Maybe it was because I’d always loved the musician—the genius—Lager had been. Deep down, though, I suspected the pleasantries came out of me, when they never did for anyone else, on the off chance that Wills Lager knew where I could find Iris. Even when I didn’t know I was doing it, I was still a calculating motherfucker.

Lager shook his head in an answer to my unspoken question, and I hurried to hand over the black mug, the steam from the coffee wafting near his mouth.

For several long seconds we faced each other like mildly civil men: both cautious, maybe a little curious. He wanted something from me; I got that from the admission Iris made about the man needing a kidney. The room filled up with silence, and I glanced at my father over the rim of my mug, feeling mierda I didn’t want to feel at all. Feeling all the anger I’d kept inside me for years; anger at whoever my father had been and the mother who never told me. Then, rage when the truth came out right on the backside of the first time in ten years I’d been with Iris again.

I never could take the silence for very long, and though I still seethed, and that anger kept me warm, I chose not to lay into Lager. Not when he looked as bad as he did—skin blotchy, red, flaky patches on the tops of his hands, eyes that looked sunken in and tired. Not until I could get something out of him about where Iris had disappeared to.

“You don’t like it?” I asked him, nodding toward the untouched mug in front of him on the table.

“It’ll do.”

We went on watching each other; him moving his eyes into small slits that made the bright blue hard to read, glaring at the large shades that covered most of my face. It was habit, hiding behind them, the only real comfort I got lately. While he stared, I drummed my free hand against the wood table as I kept sipping on my coffee. Unconsciously, I guessed, Lager mimicked me, and a rhythm formed just then, in time with the pattering of noise my nail made against the table. Wills followed with a backbeat, a slow strum of sound that echoed mine. We didn’t watch each other, didn’t acknowledge the simultaneous work of music; in fact, I only noticed the sound as an afterthought, one long muddle of noise that slipped through the ebb of my anger and worry that I’d never find Iris at all. We followed the same notes, tunes that weren’t identical, but were complements to one another. It was a strange sensation, playing off the silent collaboration he gave and having Wills Lager of all people following mine as well.

He managed a slip of his gaze, focus lingering on my face, then down to my hand, and he continued with the half song, the quick movement of sound until I remembered the way Iris spoke to the man himself that night months ago right in the next room. How she whispered into her cell because, I suspected, she didn’t want me to know the truth.

“Jamie is coming back to himself,” she’d said, her voice moving around the living room as I stood in the hallway, watching her pace. She couldn’t see me in the darkness, but my gaze moved over her fit frame to the long, muscular legs and the roundness of her ass. I’d spent that night touching every surface of her body, tasting every inch of her dark skin. She’d returned the favor, and as I’d watched her, I still felt the buzz of satisfaction in my limbs from how Iris had taken me. But the warmth in my chest just watching her caused grew dim and frigid as she continued with her explanation to Lager. “He’s being more open, and I’m not going to risk that by dropping the bomb that Wills Lager is his father, and that he needs a kidney. That would ruin everything.”

It had. I’d stepped away from her, gutted, shocked, my head swimming with suspicion, then doubt, then utter rage that she’d betrayed me yet again. I’d hustled into the bedroom, trying to drown out what she told my apparent birth father. All those months, all the time we’d spent together, had been a lie. She was doing Wills Lager a favor, and it had nothing to do with wanting me to make amends for humiliating her with that song.

Something had twisted inside me then. Something dark. Something wild, and all I’d wanted was revenge. Now, though, I wasn’t sure what I wanted from Lager. I only knew it sure as fuck wasn’t a thumb-drumming lesson at my kitchen table.

“Alright, gringo, tell me what you want. Is it just the kidney?”

It took him a minute, one filled with the small shift of disappointment I thought might be tightening his mouth when I balled my hand into a fist to keep from tapping a tune on the table again. But the disappointment didn’t last long, and Wills frowned, his jaw tightening as he moved his teeth together.

“I don’t want your damn kidney, do I?”

“You tell me, acho.”

“I have a cousin getting tested back in Ireland as we speak. I don’t need your kidney, and that’s not why I’m here.”

“Then tell me why you’re at my kitchen table on Christmas Eve night and coño, please don’t tell me it’s because you’ve gotten all sentimental about the bastard kid you made with some groupie back in the day.”

Wills had laid his hand flat against the surface of the table when I started to speak. Now, though, the relaxed hand tightened, and he squeezed his fingers against his palm as though he wanted to keep himself from strumming a tune again. Like father, like...No. Not going there.  

It took him several seconds of quiet contemplation, of setting his features into something that shifted between quick anger to quicker offense, before his mouth relaxed and Lager moved one eyebrow up into an arch. “Don’t think a fat lot of me, do you then?”

“Dios mio, do you honestly care what I think?”

“I...I reckon I don’t. But for now...” Lager sat forward, linking his fingers together in a steeple. “For now,” he repeated, clearing his throat, “I reckon I owe you an apology, though not as big as the one you owe that poor sweet woman, but still one I should have made some time back.”

“How much time back?” I couldn’t help but ask, resentment obvious in my tone, deflecting the conversation I suspected Lager wanted to have about Iris. The producer at CNN had given me a few details in preparation for the interview I skipped out of, but no one had ever said how Lager found out about me or when.

Wills nodded once, a slight movement that almost didn’t register before he sat back, holding my gaze. “You were fifteen.” He didn’t blink at the small noise of surprise that left my mouth. His only reaction at all was the movement of his bottom lip bending behind his front teeth. “I hadn’t been in Indianapolis since that...time with your mother, and she was the only person I knew there. We had three days. She found me. We spent time together.” He relaxed against the chair when I kept my features neutral, watching, probably wondering what my first thought was. “She looked so much older than I remembered. So damaged, and my heart hurt for her, if I’m honest. I pressed her about her life, how she’d been, and she told me then. About you. She...didn’t seem keen to mention you at all, but seemed destitute and needed...”

“Money?” I asked, knowing how my mother had been then. She hadn’t changed by the time I was fifteen. Or twenty or Twenty-five.

Lager nodded and a frown transformed his face, dimpling the long wrinkles along his eyes. “There were...complications.”

“With?”

He waved me off, silently asking for a second as he rubbed his neck, and I got the impression Wills Lager didn’t like admitting when he’d made a mistake. I wasn’t sure then which fuck-up he regretted most: making me or not doing a damn thing about it when he was told the truth.

“I was in love with someone else. Rita, my manager. Had been for ages. It’s no excuse a’tall, but I was scared what having a child with a...well...” He looked at me, frown deepening as though he didn’t know what I’d thought of my mother then or now.

“I know what she was.”

“Yes, well, having a child I didn’t know about, after so long, I reckon I was scared. I was a bloody coward, wasn’t I? I didn’t want Rita to know. I was scared she’d leave me, and so I offered your mother money. A lot of it. For you, mind. For your upkeep.”

I laughed then, head shaking. “The only thing mi mama ever kept up was the tab at the liquor store and amount of pills in her medicine cabinet. I never saw a dime of your money.”

Wills nodded again, rubbing the tips of his fingers into the grain of the wood surface. “I figured as much. I still sent Juanita a small monthly allowance to ease my guilt, but for you, there was a trust. Well, that is to say, there is a trust.”

My coffee had gone cold, but I downed the rest of it, not responding when Wills made his admission. That warmth in my chest shifted then, felt heavy, as though something inside me weighed me down. I slipped another pod into the Keurig, my back to Wills. I knew he watched; felt the constant heat of his stare on the back of my neck as I poured my cup and took a sip.

“Will you not say a thing now?” There was an edge to his tone I recognized— something sharp, something that reminded me of acid.

Instead of answering, I took a sip of coffee, ignoring the sounds of carolers on the street below, moving through the downtown area.

“I don’t want your money.”

“Not much say in it as of yet, but that’ll come.”

His tone was a little pathetic, and for some reason, that sound, those words, got under my skin. I whirled, ready to kick the man out of my place for trying to make me feel bad, but he lifted a hand, seeming to know what that last comment sounded like. He returned my glare with an expression I couldn’t quite make out, but knew wasn’t anger, and just the sight of it lessened my irritation. But I wouldn’t stand there all night waiting for him to test the waters. Whatever the hell he wanted, he needed to tell me. And quick.

“Why are you here? Your woman is gone, and God knows where my mother is.” I slid my mug to the counter behind me, folding my arms over my chest. He’d been pissed at me when I answered the door. The small reprieve from that anger came from his own guilt, maybe from how shitty he felt himself. But I got the feeling that Wills hadn’t forgotten what I’d done or why he was really sitting at my table. I hadn’t either. It was late, and I was still nursing a throbbing hangover. I wanted this done just to get myself out of the company of anything other than my bed.

“You’ve already said you don’t want my kidney so the only thing left is...”

“Iris. Yes,” he continued, head nodding twice. “That poor lamb.”

That look he gave me cut deep. It was half shame, half pity, and I didn’t know who he felt the most for. I may have been his son, but clearly Iris meant something to him. How could she not? There wasn’t a person I knew that could meet her and not fall for her, even a little bit.

Wills’s features went stern, severe for half a second, and I shook my head, scrubbing a hand over my face, trying to work away the irritation. “I’m aware. You don’t need to tell me what a pendejo I am. But there’s not much I can do about what happened. I’ve tried looking for her. Everywhere, I promise. Cards, letters, messages, private investigators, calling her former bosses, her mother, her cousins...nothing...man...” My throat felt raw when I swallowed, head shaking at how the old man’s face didn’t change. “I looked all over the place to find her, but she’s gone...what?” He grinned, an obnoxious gesture that had me standing straight. “What’s that face?”

Wills didn’t drink his coffee, but did move the mug around with his fingers, not looking at the small spill of black liquid when it breached the rim and slid down the side of the mug. Instead he watched me, analyzing, calculating, like he wasn’t sure how long he should wait before he delivered the punch line. I didn’t find a damn thing funny.

Another twirl of his mug and Wills shrugged, the movement slow. “I may know where’s she gone off to.”

Moving forward, I leaned on the back of the chair facing him, my fingers curling around the top as I waited for him to elaborate. For all the things he’d not done for me, for all the neglect and selfishness, and the supposed guilt he felt, my father was doing a piss-poor job of making amends. I knew what I’d done, but fuck, he was enjoying this silent standoff.

The metal backing of the chair cut into my palm as I gripped it, waiting, heart speeding because this was something I’d been waiting to hear for six months. Because I wasn’t sure how much longer I’d have to wait. When Wills moved his hand in his lap, studying his nails, I exhaled, releasing a noise that was half grunt and growl. “You want me to beg?”

“Not your style, is it?” He dropped his hand, leaning on an elbow against the table as he watched me. “From what I can make of you, you don’t ask for anything. But Iris, that sweet girl, has done what she has for me because I asked her to reach out to you.” He moved again, nodding toward my seat, waiting to continue until I sat back down. Like this was his place, not mine. Like he was some innocent old man who hadn’t abandoned me. “The song and all the other things...yes, well. That’s on your head, is it not?”

“You don’t sound like a man with any guilt.”

“Is that so? Well, my boy, neither do you.” He shook his head when I opened my mouth, ready with an excuse that would probably make me look like even more of an asshole. He shot me down, waving off whatever loco thing I might say before I made a sound. Wills relaxed his features, rubbing one long finger across the bridge of his nose.

“I know the mess I’ve made of my life, and the mistakes I’ve made when it comes to you, but Iris, she has done nothing.”

“No,” I said, voice low. “She hasn’t.”

“And yet you treated her like a ...”

“I damn well know what I did.” I hadn’t used the upper register of my voice in months. There hadn’t been anyone around to shout at. There had only been the low muttering of my drunken calls to Landon and Isaiah, and the occasional weak prayer I wasn’t sure anyone heard. So the quick rise of my voice at my father seemed to surprise us both. Seeing Wills’ surprise, and the wide stretch of his mouth when he frowned, had me quieting and grasping at straws that might deflect my behavior. “Not...not that it’s any of your business.”

“Maybe not, but I feel responsible, in a way.” His voice rose too, the insult and anger coming across before he matched my stance, easing back into his chair to stare at me. It seemed my temper and reaction to frustration wasn’t the result of generations of Boricua DNA. This was an Irish trait, I supposed. At least, it was a Lager trait, showing itself in my father’s familiar slip of control. Looked just like mine.

Wills relaxed further, scrubbing his fingers through his thick hair before he rested his elbows on the table, watching me through his long fingers as he linked them in front of his face. Sighing once, he finally took a sip of his coffee, before he pushed it away. “I’m here to make amends. I’m here to help.”

“With?”

“My friend Russell just signed on to produce for your label.” He moved his gaze to my face, squinting when I sat up straighter. “He called after you were a no-show for that interview. He wasn’t the only one calling that night, but he was the only one willing to warn me.”

“About?”

We sat across from each other, calmer, voices softer, but mirroring each other’s stances. My arms were longer, but Wills’ fingers stretched a full inch past mine. We each had our own fingers linked together, leaning on our elbows like this was some business meeting and not the first heart-to-heart I’d ever had with the man who made me. When he continued, the sharpness that colored his tone was missing. “You, and the suits wanting to get you on track or get you out the door.”

It wasn’t unexpected. You can’t fuck up over and over, you can’t insult fans and media types, you can’t get your tours canceled, and not expect kick back. I’d heard the rumors too. So had my cousin, something Isaiah warned me about a few weeks ago. Hearing it from Lager, though, made it seem serious. Why the hell would he be told if it wasn’t serious? “And you think you can help with that?”

“I’d like to try.”

It was the first time since he’d barged into my apartment that Wills didn’t seem angry or irritated. There weren’t any expressions on his face warning me of his anger just then, or glares shooting at me because I’d done something stupid. Wills just watched me, his features softening as though he was worried I’d shoot him down.

“Why?” I asked, because I needed to know.

He didn’t hesitate with an answer that I thought might be sincere. “Because I left you alone with a drug addict, and because Iris was a fan, and I took advantage of her relationship with you. I’ve worn blinders for a long while now. But when you’re sick—sick as I am anyway—you gain perspective.”

There was color in his cheeks now and a smile flirting somewhere around the corner of his mouth. I didn’t know if I should trust it. I didn’t know if I could look past the deadbeat and see my idol again. I didn’t even know if I wanted to try. But Wills was sick. He was dying. The bags under his eyes and the pallid complexion told me that the second I opened the door. Some of the anger inside me cooled, and I watched his face, studying the sharp features to see if there was anything my bullshit warning flagged. There wasn’t anything but that almost smile and the worried eyes of an old man fighting for something he didn’t know if he deserved. I was familiar with the feeling. 

“That perspective tells you to warn me that I’m being bounced from my label?’

“No. It’s telling me that you might need more help than you’ll ever ask for.” Wills grabbed my wrist, a slight graze that shot something warm into my chest. “It’s also telling you that you need to learn to deserve her.”

“And...if...” I cleared my throat, choking on the hope that bubbled hard and high. “If I do?”

“Then I’ll bring her here,” he said, smiling now. “I’ll bring her here to you.”

YOU DON’T LEAVE AN old, dying man out in the cold on Christmas Eve. At least, I couldn’t. Just like I couldn’t make him sleep on the sofa. He and his assistant, Jimmy, a tall, brawny type with no neck who never spoke more than “yep” and “sure” got comfortable, taking over my place around 2:00 a.m. It was then that Jimmy helped Wills, the rock legend who I’d always idolized, fall into my bed, snoring before his head hit the pillow. I left him there while Jimmy used my bathroom then made up a pallet on the floor next to Wills. “Guarding him,” as he said, though I wondered if he was guarding his health more than anything else.

As Jimmy moved around the room, I stared down at my sleeping father in disbelief. I’d spent my childhood dreaming of the moment I’d meet my father, dreaming while Hawthorne played on in the background. Now those worlds were colliding. Now there was a hope I hadn’t let myself have for a long damn time.

Outside the wall of windows that stretched across my living room, Willow Heights was blanketed with snow. It should have been a perfect Christmas morning— something out of a Rockwell painting. Snow banked along the storefronts and layered over the town square. In the distance, Lake Williams was frozen solid and glinted against the Christmas lights strung up on every surface of the buildings that made up downtown. Perfect, except for the loneliness. Except for the seclusion of my own making.

I watched it all with my cell between my fingers, debating the wisdom of making the call to the same number I’d pestered for months. Iris loved Christmas. She loved her mother’s meat pies and fry bread, and the dusting of powdered sugar she’d drizzle over the bread and plate on Christmas morning. She’d start decorating in early November because Thanksgiving had never been a popular holiday in her mother’s household, and when Iris decorated, she did so like an elf on a sugar high.

Those lights around my hometown reminded me of that—of her and the manic way the holiday took her over ...how she made everything feel so magical when nothing in my world was. Except her.

The phone rang four times before the message sounded. Same voice I’d heard for months. Same sweet tone I knew wasn’t meant for me.

Hi! This is Iris. You’ve reached my emergency line. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.

Iris was sixteen when her mother got a cell phone. “Emergencies only,” she’d dictated. A number they could both dial into in case it was needed. Their cousins in Arizona had it, as well. They’d call in to update the Daine women about their lives, about who in their large family had died or given birth, or who was sick. Mostly, the cousins called to ask for help, for money or food when things got tight. The cell got used when no one texted or hopped on live chats. It was a number I knew Iris would never get rid of, and one I believed she’d check with more frequency than the iPhone I’d seen her with on the tour. For the past six months, once a week, I called the number just to hear her voice. Just to see if the words would come to me—the words that meant the most. Words we’d never said to one another.

“It’s Christmas, and Willow Heights is covered in the white stuff.” I kept my tone light, something neutral. “It reminded me of us and that nativity play my mother made us go to when we were seventeen. You remember how Bessie Lucas kept forgetting her lines? She only had two. Giraffe number one at the birth of baby Jesus.” I laughed, the memory making me feel nostalgic before I realized no one would be joining me.

“Anyway, tonight reminds me of something that occurred to me a few months ago.” The wind picked up, snatching a few loose papers from the recycle bin across the street from my apartment, and I watched the slow trajectory of their movement and the funnel the wind stirred them in.

“I sat on the balcony of my room at the Plaza, thinking about Willow Heights and how much it changed me. It changed us both. I watched New York move on below me, people all over the place, walking to get from one point to another, and all I could think of was how there were no points to get to in Willow Heights. I had no destinations. No parts unknown that would keep me busy.”

It was only here on this line that I could be honest. She had never answered when I called. Iris had never returned my calls, and in some ways it gave me freedom to be who I really was with the only person who ever really knew me.

“There was only you and me and Hector’s record shop. There was only those Hawthorne songs and the smell of your hair when you’d lean your head on my shoulder. There was no point to get to because you were always where I wanted to be. You still are. I hope one day you can believe that.” I let the phone slip from my ear, a little caught by the emotion that admission worked up in me. A small cough and I returned the receiver back in place. “I’m sorry I hurt you. I’m sorry I ruined us. I’ll never stop trying to win you back.”

Memory is a funny thing. It can come at you at the most inconvenient times. It comes at you when you know you don’t need it. Memory is like a headache you never expect and spend hours trying to eradicate. But there was no pill to take that would numb the ache memories of Iris gave me.  

And it wasn’t just the memory. It was the sensory reality that came with it. The smell of the air around me the night Iris kissed me back. The way the warmth of her tongue shot wave after wave of erotic emotion through my body. The sensation of flying when I was inside her; how she’d hold on to me like she thought she would float away and never be able to control her body again. If I thought hard enough about it, I’d recall the exact shift of her soft hair against my neck as she kissed me. Those fingertips were sharp but sweet. I could not keep away from her. I swore I’d never let go and in a lot of ways I hadn’t. No matter how far from her, from Willow Heights, I’d gotten, I’d always come back to Iris and the way she haunted me. The way those memories ached.

She’d come to me one night after midnight. It was summer then, just after graduation. Before my world spun out of control. It had to have been over ninety degrees that night, and sweat covered my body. But the cool tingle of her skin against mine worked something inside me enough, I could recall the taste of her skin and the way her fingers scraped against my scalp, how her naked breasts felt against my nipples as she straddled me. How deep inside her I went, how tight she felt around me.

“Coño.”

No, it did no good to remember. It was pointless. I couldn’t remember her and not feel something. Wills believed I might be able to earn seeing her again. He believed I could fight hard enough, fight and mean it, and deserve just a glimpse.

Maybe my birth father thought there was still something good left in me. Maybe he still believed in miracles. Maybe he believed that no one could love Iris like me. I just needed to prove to him I was capable.

There may have never been anything good in my life, or anyone good enough to show me what love was, but there had been Iris. I didn’t have the delusions my father did. I knew it would take a miracle to win her back. But right then I didn’t pray for forgiveness. I prayed for the chance to earn it. Until then, I kept Iris locked inside myself. I kept that hope there and let it sleep. I kept it there because I knew forgiveness wouldn’t come easily even though I knew you can only push love so far. Sometimes even the truest love bends so much it can’t be mended. I decided that night to never stop trying to fix what I broke.

CHAPTER THREE 

Music always felt like spell casting. The lines of lyric, the sway of tunes, all came together, swirled and spun in time to weave magic. It transformed me. It moved me, and I’d never known a greater weaver of musical magic than the man that snored a floor above me. My father. The legend.

“Mierda,” I said through a sigh. The idea was still bouncing around in my head, something I should have squashed months back when I’d overheard Iris talking to Wills on the phone. Plotting, I thought. Scheming, I’d been convinced.

Worse than getting used to the idea that the man I’d idolized most in the world as a kid was, in fact, my father, was the idea that I’d decided he was a bastard and Iris was a bitch before I’d reacted at all. But then, I’d always been an act first, question later kind of pendejo.

The stool under my ass was hard, an old silver metal thing I’d used as a kid while stacking Hector’s records in this run-down shop, and it didn’t make a lot of sense to sit on it while I played. Or, I should say, while I attempted to write songs. That’s all I’d been doing for months now—making attempts. Trying to weave my own magic, but nothing was coming to me.

A few tries at a new chord, the small bundle of notes that sounded just okay, and I hummed, words flitting through my head like a burlesque dancer teasing, giving me a glimpse but nothing worth the effort at looking hard.

Fingers against the strings, I focused on the melody, hearing the small line as it matched the notes, only good I’ve ever known...  coming out from a G chord, my voice low, a little raspy, and just when I started to build on that sound, that line, it left me, floated into the ether.

“Fuck...”

I wanted to smash my guitar, pop the strings or beat that dark oak wood against my head, but the acoustic Gibson in my hands wasn’t new and it meant something to me. It meant more than the song I was fumbling with. An old blues musician called Mix Mandarin gave it to me five years back. Well, “give” was a nice way to say I’d won it during the fifth hand of Texas Hold ‘Em, but the old man laughed about losing her.

“She’ll do you right,” was all he said, passing over that sweet Gibson like a wary daddy handing off his girl on prom night.

Mix hadn’t been wrong. Leia, as I called the pretty Gibson, had been good to me. I’d written my second Grammy-winning album on her, and two number ones. She was my good luck charm. Wasn’t her fault I couldn’t get passed this damn block.

Outside the store window in front of me, Christmas morning activity was heavier than I’d expected. Kids, tucked into their thick coats and mittens, pulled their parents down the sidewalk, hauling them toward the hot cocoa stand at the corner of Main and Dempsey; or weaved in and out of the puddles of melting ice and snow as their parents carried gift bags and large wrapped presents. I’d almost forgotten what this looked like; Christmas in Willow Heights. It reminded me of something out of a Hallmark movie—picturesque and too fucking sweet for words, but the people and their milling activity did something to kill the frustration I felt trying to get more than one line and a few chords to sound remotely like a song.

My fingers seemed to move on their own, strumming, left hand tight on the neck as I watched two kids, brother and sister around six or seven from the look of them as they took turns jumping into a muddy puddle near the entrance to Hawk’s Deli. They turned, laughing at a man I guessed was their papa, wearing gray scrubs and a wool coat as he headed toward them, coming from the direction of the small hospital in the distance.

Mindless now, I thought of nothing really as I played, that line looping in my subconscious as the man picked up his kids and kissed the woman who’d been leaning against Hawk’s front window, sipping coffee as the kids played.

They were a family. Together. There was no pretense in the way the man looked at his people or the look he got back. It felt real, authentic, something I’d only gotten glimpses at but had never really seen for myself. I knew nothing about that kind of honest look. Not really. Mi familia had always been about survival and struggle. Except Iris, but then I’d messed that up beyond the fixing.

“You’ve been messing about with that bloody chord for ages now. Can you not move past it?”

Wills’ voice pulled my attention from the window and I stilled my hands on the Gibson, and a quick rush of awkwardness and a little bit of embarrassment rushed over me until my skin felt hot.

“I wake you?” I asked because I couldn’t think of anything else to say. He didn’t answer. Instead the old man came the rest of the way down the stairs, waving Jimmy away and back up the stairs when the big man tried to help him. There was a folded paper under Wills’ arm and a mug of something steaming in his hand.  One lone tea bag tab bounced against the ceramic surface.

He followed my gaze when I shifted my eyebrows up, staring at the teabag. Wills’ flared nostrils and eye roll made him look like a caricature of the rock legend he was.

“I’ll thank you to not laugh. This rubbish is all the tea you’ve got.” He motioned with the mug, coming to sit on the only other chair in the shop, this one a metal-backed wooden barstool behind the cluttered front counter. Wills took advantage of the spot, making himself comfortable by sweeping at the dust on the counter to set down his mug and toss the paper next to it.

“Now then,” he said, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Do you have another guitar? Mine are at my hotel, and I’m guessin’ the snow will keep us in today.” He pointed with his chin toward the window behind me and I glanced over my shoulder, frowning when a slow drizzle of snow started to dot around the sidewalk. It was coming down fast, already thickening on the sidewalk.

“Coño,” I said, head shaking at how empty the streets had suddenly become. Resting my arms against Leia, I glanced back at Lager, watching as he sipped on what I knew had to be weak tea. “Why do you need a guitar?”

He tilted his head, the mug stilled in front of his mouth as he watched me. Then he blinked, wobbling where he sat as though some rush of weakness came over him. Wills rested an elbow on the counter and held his forehead between his fingers.

“You aright, gringo?” I asked, resting my guitar against the counter as I watched him, frowning at his shaking fingers. “You look pale. Should I get that Jimmy guy? Maybe you need your doctor?”

Wills squeezed his eyes tight, but didn’t answer, seeming irritated at my worry. I got that. Pity was something I couldn’t stomach from anyone. This was a man who set his own rules, who lived by his own law. He earned respect from the amazing things he’d done in his career. You don’t pity a man like Wills Lager, a fact that seemed plain to me when he exhaled, lowering his hand away from his face to lift his chin and glare at me.

That look made me feel stupid and small.

“I need a guitar, you wee arsehole, because it’s clear you’ve yet to master your craft.”

“Master my...” I got what this was—the reaction, the defensive attitude, but that didn’t mean it didn’t piss me off. “The Grammies and multiple gold records on my wall says I’ve mastered it fine...”

“Oh, aye?” He laughed then, as though I was simple and stupid. Wills’ smile was humorless and condescending. “And what have you done since that night you showed your bits and Iris’s to your fans? Been writing much since then, have you? Been a fount of inspiration?”

I kicked off from my stool, walking to the front window. “The fuck do you know about it?”

“Oh, I know enough.”

“This,” I said, pointing to my guitar, “has nothing to do with what I did to her. This is just me being stuck. My band will be here after the New Year. We’ll jam and work this mierda out. It’s the process. It’s what we always do.”

“So you’re saying that you can’t do it on your own?” This time when Wills laughed, it was a dry, humorless sound that I found insulting. “You’re saying you need someone else to get you past your block?”

He’d nailed the problem— the problem I wasn’t admitting to myself. There was a block, and it was hefty. But it was just a fluke, I knew that, and I damn well didn’t need anyone to help me get beyond it. “I...I don’t...”

“Because I can help you, can’t I? Christ knows why I should, but I can.”

“I don’t need your help.”

He stood in front of me, staring, his expression softening, eyes less severe. “Son, you do, and you know it, don’t you?”

“I’m not your son.” I clenched my jaw, feeling something old and familiar burn inside my chest. “Don’t call me that.”

“Much as you may not like it, that you are.” Wills only waited long enough for me to step back before he went on, this time bringing back that sarcastic tone. “I’m offering my help. With the song, with your work...with Iris and...other things.”

“What other things?”

He hesitated, fiddling with the rim of the stool as he sat back down. Just then he looked so young. Still tough, still commanding but something in his features reminded me just how old he was. “Your mum.”

“What about her?”

Wills nodded to the chair across from him, but I didn’t take it. He moved his fingers into the back of his neck, massaging but didn’t stop with the explanations. “She’s ill. How can you not know that?”

“I haven’t bothered with her in eight years.”

He nodded, moving his lips together as though he wasn’t sure if he wanted to yell at me before he nodded, releasing a breath. “She’s your mother.”

I finally took a seat, just because I felt like an asshole making the old man crane his neck up to look at me. “You really want to lecture me on family? You?”

For a second, I recognized the hard set of Wills’ expression. I’d seen it a thousand times before looking back at me in the mirror when someone had gotten under my skin or when things weren’t going how I’d planned. My father looked exactly like a guy who wanted to pummel something, and the something that had caught his notice just then was me. I’d come to realize in the brief time he’d been around me that Wills was good at refocusing his mood. He did that just then, taking in a deep breath before the tightness around his shoulders and the anger hardening his features relaxed.

“I am not trying to be your father, lad. But I would like to help where I can. Juanita is sick. Not sick as me, but still sick and on her own.”

“Not my problem.”

“Jamie...”

“No,” I said getting up to move around. I needed something to do with my hands to keep from punching something. Wills had gone too far, stepping over a line he had no right to. Father or not, he had no clue about my mother and me. He’d never taken the chance to find out anything about us. He didn’t get that chance now. “You don’t get to do that. Mierda! You don’t get to barge into my life and point out what a shitty friend and son I’ve been. I know how fucked up I am. I know the mistakes I’ve made, and I’m trying like hell to work that out.”

“By leaving voice messages and sending flowers?”

I took a step, then half of another one, before a voice popped into my head, reminding me this old man wasn’t some asshole heckler booing me off the stage. This was Wills Lager. This was my father, and he had information about Iris I wanted. I’d have to rein in my temper.

“I have to do this my way. I know her better than you do.” Calmer now, I threaded my fingers through my hair, reaching for my shades in the front pocket of my shirt. I didn’t put them on, but needed to feel the comforting curve of the metal in my hand.

“You...just don’t get to come into my house and start dictating what I should and shouldn’t do and then, on top of it all, tell me what a pendejo I’ve been to my mama. Not when you don’t know what she’s done to me or how many times I’ve picked up the pieces she left behind. I stopped counting the number of men that she put before me, or how many of them slapped her around, slapped me around, or tried to hurt Iris.”

I shook my head, trying to push back the faces, so many of them, none I could name with any real certainty. “I can’t tell you how much money she stole from me, or how she shamed me in this town when I was a kid. Or Christ, the amount of money I’ve paid to get her sober or safe or on her damn feet because she is utterly useless by herself.” Wills frowned at me when I looked at him, still twirling the glasses between my fingers. “There comes a time when you’ve done everything you can do for people, and there is nothing left for you to do but walk away.”

Just then, that’s what I wanted. To walk away. To get away. To clear my head in the frozen temperatures outside. I managed a final look at him before I went to the cluttered front counter and pulled on the jacket lying across the surface.

“Where are you going?”

“I need air. Right now, I need to walk away.”

“Jamie, this is your home,” he sighed, seeming to realize he’d pushed too far. “If I overstepped...”

“Save it,” I told him, zipping up the front and pulling a beanie from my front coat pocket. “You may have made me a long time ago, but you aren’t my father. You didn’t bother with me then, stop thinking you can now.” 

CHAPTER FOUR

Everything I needed to reach in Willow Heights, I could do on my feet. It hadn’t always been that way. My mother’s old place had been in a shadier section; just far enough that walking would take too long. Hector’s shop and the apartment I’d help renovate were in the center of town, and all points of interest or necessity I could reach in a ten-minute walk. If I was hungry, I needed only to cross the street and sit at one of Hawk’s counter stools. If I needed groceries, I could fill my canvas bags six shops down at Nettie’s General Store. And if I ever got sick or hurt something that required more than a Band-Aid, I could get myself to Reynolds Memorial Hospital in under seven blocks.

But it was Christmas morning, and the snow was coming in sheets now. The sidewalks were slick and icy, and the wind bit through me like whip as I tugged up my leather coat and pulled my beanie over my eyebrows. The frigid temperatures and wet snow was easier to face than my father and all the advice he had no right giving me.

I leaned against a light pole half way between the hospital and the strip of businesses that made up Main Street. Just a few blocks in front of me, Reynolds Memorial loomed large and bright. The wide stucco and brick building was only three stories, but expanded across nearly five acres and held two ambulance bays and a wide ER doorway. Snow collected on the awning at the front entrance and along the thick, pre-lit garland with white and colored lights that covered the doors, windows and covered walk way columns.

All that snow, all the glittering Christmas accoutrements should have made me feel something similar to the good vibes the smiling, sweet family had just an hour before. It did not. Nothing would, especially not that hospital.

Once, not long ago, Iris had been there. Sick, nearing something that could have killed her. Without thinking, I found myself walking toward the entrance, dusting snow from my shoulders as I made it into the lobby. As habit, I pushed up the large sunglasses that covered my face and tugged up the collar on my coat. I didn’t need the attention I usually got when I went out in town. 

Despite the holiday, the hospital was busy; nurses in gray and green scrubs scurried around the hallways, offering smiles or long looks of recognition, but otherwise didn’t stop to watch. There were groups of families toward the right wing of the hospital, a place I knew was meant for the old folks, those dying or close to it. Off to the back of that wing was the nursery and beyond that the physician’s offices, but I headed toward the right, bypassing a group of girls no more than twelve who giggled when I nodded at them, then stopped walking altogether to whisper about me over the low hum of elevator music.

“Is that him?”

“Has to be. No one else in town dresses like that.”

“He looks tired.”

“Who cares, he’s still hot.”

“My sister said he’s nasty.”

“Yeah, well, your sister is nasty, too.”

It didn’t matter what a bunch of kids thoughts of me. I’d stopped worrying about the Midwestern horde a long damn time ago. In fact, I gave zero fucks about any hordes at all.  People will judge you no matter who you are or what you do. May as well do what you want anyway.

“Can I help you?” a plump nurse with gray hair asked when I approached the nurse’s station on the second floor unit. I was familiar with this place. Juanita had tried it out at least five times before. I’d paid for each go.

“Juanita Vega.”

The woman didn’t have to look at a chart or thumb through folders to find my mother’s room. There was a brief shift of pity that moved across her face before she forced a smile and nodded toward the end of the hallway. 214. Last room on the right, down that hall.

I nodded, wondering what kept at me to worry about her. So many times I’d been at this desk asking the question that stuck in the back of my throat. It felt familiar, being here, wondering if she’d survive. Wondering how much damage this overdose, this round of alcohol poisoning had done to my mother.

The nurse watched me as I took a step back, shoving the sunglasses further up my nose, angling my gaze toward the hallway before I moved. “She’s better today,” the woman offered, lowering her voice. “I’ve been here twenty years. Juanita isn’t a stranger to me.”

I could only nod, wondering if I should just leave. Wondering what walking into that room would do to me. To her. I’d kept away a long time. Had to. She needed to learn how to stand on her own. And no matter what she’d allowed to happen to me or how careless she’d always been, she was still my mama. She was the only one I’d ever have.

“Thanks,” I told the nurse, turning toward the hallway, toward my mother.

The tile was white, sterile but clean as I moved across it, taking slow steps as I came closer to room 214. There were handrails made of some soft-looking plastic in the center of the walls and carts of equipment and lunches, turkey and dressing from the looks of it, were parked between each door and half way in some of the rooms.

It was nearly two in the afternoon. Christmas day. Decorations of red and green, of Santa drawings and drapes of silver garland covered the walls. Holiday cheer had come to the detox floor as though it was normal for addicts and their families to spend Christmas among the rail thin patients with I.V.s protruding from their veins.

I slipped a glance into the rooms as I passed, catching glimpses of those patients, forcing smiles, looking as though it took mammoth effort not to cry or beg to go home. Just two doors from my mother’s room, a young girl lay in her bed, unconscious, her body covered with a thin hospital blanket and a thicker, festive Rudolph throw that a boy around her age tucked under her legs. 

He doted on her, leaning forward with his elbows on her bed and one hand stretched toward her forehead, brushing the hair from her face. I recognized the look he gave her. I understood the worry. Whoever those kids were, they caught my attention, and I stopped in the hallway, leaning against the wall to watch them.

The boy was probably seventeen, might have been eighteen, with scruffy blonde hair and a lanky frame. The girl in the bed looked younger than him but not by much. Her auburn hair fanned out against the white pillow, the contrast vivid and I could just make out the bright red lashes that brushed against her pale skin at her cheeks. She was pretty, pale, thin, very sick by the look of her, but still pretty. And the boy watching over her loved her. It was in the deep line of worry that rested between his eyebrows and the large bags under his eyes. That worry showed itself in the puffiness of his upper lids and shake of his fingers when he touched her. He was scared. He was lost and I remembered exactly how that felt.

Thirteen years ago, in this hospital, I sat next to Iris’s bed, worried, watching, thinking I might lose my best friend.

“Pneumonia,” I’d heard the principal, Mr. Mellings, tell Mrs. Rogers outside my fifth period Civics class. “Poor Iris is in the hospital, and her mother is beside herself. They’re not sure how long she’ll be there.”

The man had barely gotten the explanation out of his mouth before I ditched the rest of fifth period and walked the two miles to the hospital. It had been snowing then too, but it was Valentine’s Day, not Christmas, and the decorations were all pink hearts and balloons.

Iris had looked nearly as thin and pale as the girl in the room I stood just outside of, but her skin was naturally darker and her thick, dark hair had been in a long braid and fell to her elbow on the mattress.

“Can you hear me?” I’d whispered, my voice cracking because I’d never seen her that silent or that still. “Florecita?”

But Iris hadn’t answered. She lay there still as the grave, and something wild and desperate took hold of my chest clamping like a vice around my heart. No one had ever meant more to me. No one had ever believed in me like Iris had. And in that hospital room, with the IV dripping fluids into her veins and the heart monitor dinging a steady beep telling me she was still with me, fear took hold.

It had a tight grip and didn’t relent its hold of me, sometimes I thought it still had hold of me, but back then, on that cold Valentine’s Day, I understood where that fear came from.

“Iris?”

There was nothing for me to do but lean next to her, just like the boy worrying over his girl. I stroked Iris’s face, frowning when I felt the heat from her fevered skin.

“I hope you can hear me. I hope this reaches you.”

Then I kept my voice low and held her hot cheek in my palm, singing to her, something obscure, but full of meaning even I didn’t understand. Hawthorne, of course.

I am lost without you

Drifting near empty shores

Anchor me, keep me

Lady, take what’s yours

It was a moment I’d never forget: Iris’s skin under my touch and that swell of fear that kept me focused, that made me understand what this meant. What she did.

There was no one in that room but me and my florecita. We existed for that moment in our own space—; a universe of our own, where no one else could touch us.

“Mami, I need you.” I’d held my breath, scared of everything falling apart if I breathed too loud or moved too much. And then, with my eyes burning, blurring, I leaned in and kissed Iris Daine right on the mouth. Because I loved her. Right then I knew, I loved only her.

“Jamie?”

For a second, I’d thought she woke, like some loco fairytale, that my kiss had brought her from the fever and illness that kept her still, but I sat up, hurrying to wipe my eyes and Mrs. Daine walked into the room, looking worn and exhausted.

“I’m sorry,” I said immediately, though I wasn’t. “I just... ay Dios mío ...I...”

I moved from the bed, holding up my hands to show Iris’s mother that I was only kissing her, that I wasn’t some pervert.

“I know,” she promised, touching my face to dry my wet cheeks. “I know you worry about her. It’s okay.”

I’d never said more than ten words to Iris’ mother since I’d met her and I’d never seen her look so tired, so weak. Iris loved her mother something fierce. They were close, and sometimes I thought I had to work hard just to keep up with them. Strong women were something I had to get used to, but once I did I’d discovered I’d liked them a lot. But Mrs. Daine looked between me and Iris on the bed, and I thought, for the first time, that she seemed so small and the fear that had crept up inside me the second I’d walked into that room, transformed into something fierce and uncontrollable.

“How can I help?”

She looked at me, easing next to Iris on the bed, but tilted her head, eyes squinting as she watched me. “What?”

“You hungry? Or thirsty? There’s supposed to be a freeze tonight. Did you drain your outside faucet lines and cover the nozzles?”

A small grin twitched her bottom lip before Mrs. Daine nodded. “We’re good on fire wood and the pipes are fine, but I haven’t eaten since last night.”

“Burger? From the cafeteria?” She nodded, that grin stretching into a wide smile. “I’ll be back in a bit.”

I was nearly to the door when Mrs. Daine called me, brought my glance around to her as she watched me. “You know, she needs you too.” It was a brief shift in the attitude Iris’ mother usually had for me. She’d never quite warmed up to me or been very open, but the look she gave me then was enough to thaw the coldness I’d always felt from her. I’d take the small victories when they came.

I’d spent the next half-hour feeding the woman and listening as the doctors updated her on Iris’ prognosis, which had started to improve. Three hours after I’d ditched school to check on Iris, I’d left the hospital, bundling up tight in my thin denim jacket as I headed toward the bus stop. I’d felt good, hopeful that she’d get better, sure that I’d dented a bit of the wall Mrs. Daine kept around herself and I knew that I’d have my friend back soon.

I also knew that I loved her. I knew then that nothing could change how I felt about her and then, just ten feet from the hospital entrance, the loud boom of my mother’s ’78 Pinto backfired, breaking the quiet of the cold night as she slammed on her brakes in front of the hospital.

“Ay, you little shit!” she’d shouted, jumping from the driver’s side of the car, her lips trembling as she stood to glare at me. She wore only a thin sweater, threadbare around the hem and at the elbows, and a pair of knee high black boots over her faded jeans. “Get in this car right now!”

There were two old men smoking near the bus stop, and a girl I recognized from gym was waiting next to the largest man. They all stopped in mid-conversation at my mother’s loud screech and pretended not to notice me as I jogged toward the Pinto, ignoring the death glare my mother gave me.

Her fussing didn’t end when I got into the car, and as we drove away from the hospital, the insults got meaner, and her voice more piercing. “Skipping school...estupido! I swear, te voy a dar una galleta!

“Mama, stop!” I tried, raising an arm to deflect her slap. “I had to check on her. She’s sick.”

“Oh, I know. That gringo teacher told me where you went. Ay bendito, you idiota, how many times do I have to tell you? Leave that chica alone. She’s not for you.”

“What do you know?”

My mother slowed the car to the curb just in front of our house and I curled my fingers around the doorknob, eager to get away from her. She jerked on my elbow, pointing a finger in my face.

“I know she’s smart. Si? I know she’s too smart for this town or for you.” Her features softened then, as though she actually cared. As though everything that left her mouth wasn’t a verbal gut punch. “She will outgrow you and leave you behind. People like that, mijo, they don’t stay with us. They leave. They always leave.”

“You’re wrong, mama. Iris loves me and I...she’s all I have. ”

“Then you don’t have anything.”

I’d left the car, ignoring her as she called after me. It didn’t matter what she thought of me or how I felt. Those predictions hadn’t mattered, but as I pushed off the wall and stared at the end of the hallway, gaze sharp as I glanced at the precise embossed letters on room 214’s door, I realized one of my mother’s promises had come true. Iris had left me behind, but I’d pushed her to do it.

I stared at that door for another full minute before I turned away from it, leaving down the hallway and away from the woman who’d cursed me all those years ago.

CHAPTER FIVE

We spent Boxing Day downstairs in Hector’s dirty shop. There were still crates and containers covering nearly the entire surface of the floor, most filled to the brim with old vinyls Hector never got around to organizing and labeling for sale. Some he promised were worth money. Those could fill a vault, but Hector never got around to doing much after his first heart attack. I’d left Willow Heights after a year working out my mierda, and Hector got left alone more and more frequently. I’d claimed I was busy writing and recording and touring. I had been, but I could have made time for him. Especially since his daughter stopped visiting as much, mainly because most teenagers are selfish pricks, and that’s what they do. After Maria neglected him, just as I had, Hector got careless. He’d stopped looking after himself. Then he’d stopped caring about the shop.

Maria died years back, and when she did, I got left with the shop and the apartment and the ghosts that haunted both. There wasn’t the normal post-Christmas chaos around the old shop that morning. There was only those old records, piles of paperwork and old posters, and me and Wills Lager playing music.

Well, Wills played and I listened, despite that still-buzzing resentment I felt toward the man. No matter how many times I reminded myself that this pendejo was my father, no matter how often he told me I was a crap son to my mama and a worse man to Iris, he was still the guy I’d always idolized. My musical Yoda, despite this Yoda being a cocky, refusing-to-leave-knocking-on-death’s-door-pendejo. And coño was he bossy.

“You’re not listening.” He’d said that at least twice in the past hour, any time the second progression on the chord I tried to perfect sounded off to him. To be fair, it sounded off to me too, but I damn sure wouldn’t tell him that. “Jaysus, man, I’ve said it over and over. Listen. Like this.” Then my father played the chord again, slower this time, as though I was some thick music student and particularly slow on the uptake. “It’s a blues progression, slow-like, but still gritty...” Then he played it again, and then once more, until I watched closely, focusing on the unreal slip of his fingertips on the frets, and the slow slide of his hand along the neck. Impossible. Magic. This was what Wills Lager did best: make his guitar sing all on its own.

“I can’t do that, mierda.”

He looked at me then, like I’d disappointed him—eyebrows lowering, frown exaggerating the hard lines around his face. I swear, I thought he’d go full Yoda and say something like “shit you can do,” but my father only shook his head, moving his bottom lip between his teeth, seeming thoughtful. Maybe he was trying to figure out how to teach me some secret Old Rock God trick. Maybe he was plotting my death. Either way, Wills went still and quiet for just a handful of seconds before he put a different expression his face, this one neutral and less severe than the frown.

He stretched out his long legs in front of him, holding my borrowed Fender across his small lap. “I didn’t write ‘Heartache in Blue.’”

I sat up, moving my head to hear him better. “That can’t be true.” I nodded toward the back of the shop where I kept Hector’s oldest record player and a personal stash of Hawthorne’s best. It was where I kept the old, small pressing of the song I’d dug out of thrift store in Atlanta when I was a kid. Right here in this shop, Iris and I listened to that track and almost had our first kiss.

“I memorized those liner notes.”

“And no writer was listed, was there now?” It took a minute to go back to the stores of half-forgotten tidbits in my head before I remembered the credits. He was right, and Wills must have taken my open mouth as answer. He at least smiled at the expression and then moved the guitar from his lap and leaned it against a plastic container with a busted latch. “It was on purpose. Crash Nelson wrote that song on the fly, as it were, back in 1976, backstage of The Troubadour.” My mouth dropped open wide enough then that my father laughed. “I was there when he wrote it.”

I crossed my arms, scooting to the edge of my stool to watch him, a little star-struck over the idea that Wills had not only met Crash Nelson, but had seen him write. Nelson had been a pioneer in southern rock and would have changed the world if that asshole fan hadn’t stalked him outside his London flat and left two bullets in his head.  

“I’d never seen the like of that moment. Nelson lost to himself, like there wasn’t a shed load of people around him drinking and carrying on. He just found himself a corner, pulled on a set of headphones and sang to himself over and over. I took my time watching him, getting close enough that I could overhear the lyrics and melody, thinking I was some clever lad, all of nineteen and sneaking a listen to one of the greatest songwriters this world’s ever known.”

Wills’ voice went soft then, and he closed his eyes, only for a second, long enough that he let a slow smile twitch around his top lip, like the memory was a sweet one. One he never wanted to lose.

“He spends a good half-hour in that corner, playing, writing, not scribbling a thing down, and when he’s all done and sorted, that arsehole turns to me and says, ‘well, mate, what do you think? Is it complete rubbish?’ I thought I’d piss myself.”  I laughed right along with him, caught up in the story, in the amazing notion that this was my father’s life, that his stories were made up of people that had always seemed like characters in one badass fairytale.

“I tell you this, you see, because that was the greatest lesson anyone a’tall could have given me. Watching. Listening. Crash Nelson played that song at least a half a dozen times that night, but only once did I hear the whole thing. I spent the next eight years trying to remember it. He was killed the next winter and never recorded it.”

Wills stood from his seat, running a hand along the back of his neck as he looked out the front window. The snow had begun to melt, and the streets were being swept. They were clear now. When I’d returned home the night before from my almost-visit with my mother, Wills hadn’t said more than a handful of sentences to me, and then it was only to inform me that he wanted to stay a while, though he never mentioned how long ‘a while’ would be. When he found me down here in the shop a few hours before, he’d continued to keep tight-lipped, walking into the shop to sit in front of me, picking up the Fender I’d pulled out of my closet. We spent an hour doing nothing more than playing together, speaking things we couldn’t—likely wouldn’t—ever say to each other. Now though, I supposed it was time for words.

“Why did you tell me that?” I asked him, folding my arms as I glanced in his direction.

“Because,” he started, eyes still on the street. “Listening, practicing, being willing to learn, that shouldn’t ever change. We aren’t plumbers. We don’t learn a trade and think all we must know is jotted off, never to be improved.” Wills returned to his stool and picked up the Fender, but he didn’t play. “We never stop learning, no matter what’s in our bank accounts or how many arseholes feed our egos with gold records and awards that mean shite. We never stop learning. We never stop bloody improving.”

The point was clear then, and for the first time since that night in Indy, I decided to forget how angry at my father I was. I decided to just listen.

“Play it for me, one more time.”

“I LEARNED SOMETHING new from my...from Wills today.” Wasn’t sure why I whispered. My houseguests crashed a half an hour before, and no one was listening to me. There was a faint echo on the other end of the receiver, likely because I’d come back into the shop while Wills slept. The back office was nearly as empty as the front shop was full, with only a metal desk and poster of Led Zeppelin dulling the sound of my voice. It didn’t matter. Iris would likely never listen to my message.

“He told me that he never wrote “Heartache in Blue.” He told me why he recorded it on that live album, and it had nothing to do with a woman.” I held my breath, remembering the first time I’d heard that song. Remembering how it seeped inside me as much as the girl I’d heard it with had. “Turns out I can still learn. Even at twenty-eight, I can learn.” I leaned back in my chair staring up at the ceiling. The wheels squeaked on against the tile floor, and there were dark, round spots disturbing the popcorn ceiling from a leak that had flooded the upstairs bathroom fifteen years ago.

“After all this time, all the mierda they try to tell me about my music, all the things I believed about myself for so long, I realized today I’m just a fucking kid. Compared to him, I know nothing. But then, I guess you know that. Isn’t that what you told me on the tour? That night on bus? You were trying to tell me the same thing Wills did. You were trying to remind me to find the magic.”

I wasn’t sure if I believed I was as pathetic as Iris thought I was, but I was beginning to understand that there was room to improve. “I spent the day in Hector’s shop, playing music with the man we idolized. He played Heartache, Iris, and it was better than anything we heard on vinyl. He’s helping me; we’re writing together, and I’m realizing I don’t want to be who they want. I’m tired of the makeup and the persona and all the mierda that keeps me from the magic. I so...I wish...” It probably wasn’t smart, saying the things I did to her. Not after...everything. She didn’t want me, not yet, but that didn’t mean I would stop trying. Inside me, way down deep, Iris was the only woman for me. I had to keep trying. 

“I wish you could have been here.  I wish you knew how happy that would make me.” And then, like I had every other time I’d messaged her, I spoke the words that were the truest. “I’m sorry I hurt you. I’m sorry I ruined us. I’ll never stop trying to win you back.”

That night when I played the tune that had been haunting me, the same one Wills had tried to get me to play his way, the melody changed, and the lines seemed clearer. There were still words and beats that were missing, things that didn’t quite slip together fluidly, but the progression was stronger, and the tune felt better, and then, just like that, I sang a few lyrics before they slipped from me. Deep inside me/ Deepest part/ Only good I’ve ever known/ Sharpest crack in my wasted heart.

For a second I stopped playing, digging out my phone to find my voice app. I needed to keep track of the way the song was going, and so I continued, stopping only once when my cell chirped with a text from my cousin Isaiah, mentioning he and the band, and their “friends” wanted to stop by to see me soon.  I’d missed him.  I’d missed my band. They’d spent six months vacationing without me; all of them needed a break from me. I got that, so I got a little excited that they were interested in seeing me at all. Didn’t even bother me that they’d have company. They could bring all the women in Indy so long as they showed up. Iris wasn’t the only person who I owed an apology.

My Gibson felt warm in my hand, and I keyed up the app, starting the song again letting the music swirl around me as I played. The air twisted just then as the sound came into me, and I looked around the room, to the mess of boxes and containers, right to the back of the shop, in the corner. That was where I’d let Iris hear the best of my father’s music. This place was bringing it all back: the sensation and memory I’d tried to so hard to forget for so long. The memories had always burned inside me, and their sting was vicious. But now I let them seep inside as I played, and the more they surrounded me, the longer the notes got and the sweeter the lyrics became.

All that sensation—memory and melody—worked something inside me I hadn’t been able to forget. Something that was long buried but too raw, too tempting, to ever erase from my mind completely.

The longer I played, the clearer the memory became, and with the music pouring from me, I saw the night so long ago as though I was in the middle of it. Coño, it hurt to remember, but damn if I didn’t love the pain.

It was nearing midnight when the bell over the shop door sounded. Hector had wanted me to finish inventory that afternoon, but I’d gone to Iris’s house instead, touching her, kissing her, tasting her—in a mad race to please her before her mother got home. It had been sweet and swift, and I was a half-hour late for my shift at the record store. My uncle had made me work over, unpaid, and when that bell sounded I thought it was just him coming to make sure I hadn’t skipped out early.

“I’m still working, cabrón, you slave driver,” I shouted over my shoulder, as I busied myself with an open box of Korn T-shirts and a price gun. “You didn’t need to check up on me.”

“Someone’s checking up on you?” Iris asked, her voice low.

“Mami?” Those ugly black tees hit the floor when I walked toward her, a frown pulling down my mouth as I spotted the oversized coat she wore. “What are you doing here?” I shot a glance out of the storefront window and that frown deepened. “You walked here? Alone?”

Her only answer was a slow nod. She moved forward, stepping over boxes until she stood in front of me, moving her long arms around my shoulder.

“You shouldn’t be out this late. Coming here.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Iris said, but the smile she gave me took the threat from her words. “I do what I want.”

I loved her like this; fierce. Stubborn. Eager.

“And what do you want tonight?” Playing along earned me another smile and the slow, sweet glide of her soft hands up my neck; the press of her body rubbing against mine. “Mami...” I tried, sounding winded, and that got me her mouth, wet, soft and over mine. Then my sweet florecita took over, pushing me back until I stumbled, until I went to my knees in front of her.

She was beautiful, always, but just then the overhead light surrounded her like a halo as Iris lowered her hands over that supple body, fingering the tie of her coat, smile satisfied when I helped her tug the fabric apart.

“Ay carajo.” It was the only words that my mouth seemed able to form. Iris stood in front of me, that oversized coat hanging from her shoulders, a pair of knee-high leather boots and a purple thong...and nothing else. No bra. No sleep shirt. Not a thing but that thong.

“Umhmm.” There was something wicked in her smile then and I couldn’t think of one reason to worry about it. Iris seemed unreal, like something out of those unbelievable 80s space movies Hector always liked to watch. But my girlfriend wasn’t made up by some cheesy script writer. She was real and right there and utterly mine at that moment.

“Mami...what do you...?”

“Lay back,” she said, nodding toward the floor. “Lay back and let me see you.”

I liked the way she soaked up every inch of skin I showed her. My shirt came up, and then my belt got unbuckled. Iris licked her bottom lip, moving her long fingers over her stomach to cup one breast.

“You like watching me, Mami?”

“I like you, baby.” She stepped in front of me, shrugging off the coat and tugging at the thong before I helped her to slip it down her thighs and off her legs. She shuddered when I grazed the curve of her hipbone with my mouth. “What...what I didn’t like was not getting more of you today.” She pushed me back, leaning over me to reach into my back pocket and grab my wallet. “I don’t like quickies.”

“No?” I laughed, taking my wallet from her when she couldn’t find the condom. “You want this?” Iris shook her head when I waved the rubber between my fingers.

“I want you.”

And then, my girlfriend kissed me, pushing me onto my back as she moved her my body like a breeze, touching every sweat-slick spot of skin she came to; her thick, luscious hair grazed my face, down against my neck as she licked my chest and raked her nails into my sides, pulling off my shorts. The sharp points of her nipples shot sensation over my chest, chilling my skin as she brought her mouth to my stomach, sucking the skin at my hip between her teeth.

“Mami...please...”

She liked it when I begged; I think it made her feel strong, powerful to keep me weak and aching for the smallest touch. That small “please” stirred something in her, and Iris moved slow, but certain, tongue against skin, hands tracing the curve of my thigh then the weight of my cock. It throbbed, felt sore and sweet and painful as she stroked me. She put me into her warm mouth, moaning as she tasted me, and I hissed, loving the texture of her tongue and sweet dent of her teeth as she worked me in and out, over and over again.

Iris pushed my hands into her hair, expecting me to grip it, and I did, curling the long strands between my fingers as she sucked me off.

“Mami...please. Please, I want to be inside you.”

She slowed, sucking hard and deep one last time before she let go of me and pushed the condom over my cock, smile gone, but her eyes fierce, lit with something wicked and sweet that made me want her more.

I could only lay there, helpless, as she moved up my body. Coming off her knees to hover on the flats of her feet, steadying herself against my shoulders, I guided her down, hands on her hips, and slipped right inside her.

“Coño...ay Dios...”

She went slow, tortuously slow, eyes steady, focused as she squatted over me, moving like she owned me, like the smallest twist of her hips or squeeze of her pussy against my cock could give her complete control over me. It could. She knew that.  As Iris bounced on top of me, owning every cell of my body, pussy squeezing as I lifted my hips to meet her, as I squeezed her hips, overcome by the feel of her. She leaned back on one arm to stretch and take me in deeper, harder, I realized it wasn’t just my body she owned.

“There,” she cried, movements unsteady now, but still controlling, still sweet. “Right there, Jamie!” And then, my sweet florecita fell apart over me, crashing, and I turned us, moving on top of her as her orgasm went on and on.

“Jamie...God...oh, God, how I love you.”

I watched her, knowing she couldn’t see me. Her face was flushed, cheeks red as she came down from the edge, eyes squinted tight, and I knew only one thing—she loved me. In that moment, Iris became my addiction, and I never wanted to be sober.

CHAPTER SIX

My first memory was something terrible. Most of my early memories were. That’s what happens when you live in poverty. That’s what happens when addiction sinks its teeth into the soul of the one person who is supposed to love you the most. But my mama only loved the high she got from something in her vein or the thrill some pendejo could give her.

That first memory wasn’t the worst, but it taught me not to expect much. It taught me the hard truth of living in this world—we don’t all get to be happy.

“I told you no,” my mama had hissed to five-year-old me when I asked for a second time for a buck and a half comic. There were large, bright red letters across the front and a giant man with green skin bulging from his ripped jeans. He looked like a diablo. Mostly, to the kid I’d been, he looked like he could protect me.

“Mama. Por favor? Mama!” I tried again, but that only made her angry. It made my mother clench her teeth and grab me by the arm hard enough that I remember the sting from her fingernails. Hard enough that my scream echoed around the Dollar Store, and we caught the attention of half-a-dozen onlookers.

She didn’t care. She still slapped me across the face when I screamed then jerked me out of the store when I cried. “I told you no, and I meant it, !” 

Mama shuffled me to the bus stop, tugging me by the wrist as though I were a ragdoll, as though she couldn’t hear the loud sobs coming from my small body.

“Shut up!” she said, pushing me to sit on the bench next to an old black man who was moving a ball cap between his fingers. I still sniffled, dirtying the hem of my sleeve against my wet nose as I hiccupped, feeling the hot streak of a slap across my face throb.

“Hey now, young man,” the old man said, giving me a crooked-tooth smile. “Bet your daddy don’t want you giving your mama a hard time. You be good now.” I could only watch the man: the easy smile, the bright black eyes that looked on the verge of remembering something funny.

I didn’t think it then, but I knew I had been good. I always tried to be good. Mama would yell and curse at me when I wasn’t. But that day, after weeks of being good, she’d promised to buy me a treat. She swore she would. That was before she tugged me along and stopped to see her friend Mannie in a nasty apartment. There had been rats running up the stairwell and some old woman sleeping in front of the building who smelled like mama did when one of her boyfriends left all mad and fussing at her.

Mama had left that dirty building crying, her hands shaking, and hadn’t stopped all that shaking until we were inside the store.

The old man smiled at me again, watching me, watching my mama like he thought she was going to tell him what had me so mad, but she went on shaking, cursing at me like she always did, but soft so no one could hear her.

“Here,” the man said, waving a dollar between his fingers. “Can I give this to him?” he asked mama, shrugging when she ignored him. “You take this and buy you some candy, if your mama and daddy say it’s okay.”

“He doesn’t have one of those,” Mama said, pulling me off the bench when the bus came near us.

“What’s that?” the man asked, frowning at her.

“A papa. Father. My kid doesn’t have one of those.” She jerked me onto the bus, grabbing the dollar from the old man as he waved at me. “He never will.”

But that hadn’t been true. It had taken years, but, better or worse, I did have a papa. He was old. He was bossy, and he was currently pissing me the hell off.

“Stay? How long?”

I didn’t mind the company, but the reason behind Lager wanting to hang out at my apartment, why he wanted to stay in Willow Heights, was a little ego-crushing.

“As long as it takes,” he admitted, rummaging through the groceries Jimmy had picked up that morning, none of it I was sure his doctor’s would approve of. He handed me a jar of chunky peanut butter, and I took it, like it was completely normal to have a rock legend in my kitchen telling me where shit should go. Wills nodded to the cabinet to my left and like the jackass I was, I put the jar inside it.

“You, my boy, still haven’t seen your mother.”

He leaned against the island, and I caught the small flutter of his eyes. He hadn’t been here long, but I had noticed Wills and Jimmy going MIA every day, a couple of hours and he’d come back exhausted. I figured this had something to do with his illness, but whatever he got up to, my father wasn’t sharing with me. Wills thought he was slick, keeping his business from me, but I miss nothing. Still, I figured he’d share his treatment schedule when he wanted me to know.

He waited for my response, eyes narrowed as he watched me, and I took the bait. “How the hell do you know that?”

“You’d be surprised what rolling your tongue whilst calling a nurse ‘love’ and ‘sweet darlin’ will get you. American women are helpless for accents.” He folded his arms, cocking a grin at me like he knew how smooth he was. “Lynette, God love her, said you showed, but never made it into the room.”  

Clearly, my father didn’t miss much either.

“You need to see her,” he went on, that grin lowering when the Facetime ring tone sounded on his cell. “’Lo, love...ah...” he glanced at me, holding up a finger to excuse himself and then moved out of the kitchen and into the bedroom.

Wills had taken a few calls right with me in the room. Several from his manager and two from his agent, none of which he seemed to have a problem with me overhearing. So this quick exit from my kitchen ticked up my Spidey senses, and I wait a full two minutes, giving my father enough time to get comfortable with his conversation before I ambled into the hall.

“Yes, love. I’m fine. Right as rain,” he said, sitting on the arm chair next to my bed, his back to me.

Something in my gut rumbled, and my chest went tight, my heart thundering hard when I inched closer toward the door, angling the side of my face to look inside the room. The iPhone had a large screen and though the room was dark, I’d have made out that face, those eyes anywhere.

Iris was on the screen, and I thought my heart would race right out of my chest.

“You look so thin, Wills.”

“Watching my weight, aren’t I? Planning a new tour next year.”

She ignored him, breathing out as though that exhale would calm her. “Are you taking your medicine? You should get to a warner climate and get the hell out of Indiana. How long will you be...there?”

I could only stand there, resting against the wall, head back as I listened to her. Her voice was deeper somehow, and she sounded sleepy, maybe a little tired. I knew each inflection of her tone. I knew what every cadence meant. She was worried, that much I could tell. She was probably a little scared at how Wills was deflecting her question.

“Listen, love, it’s all going well here. Honest.”

“Wills...it’s not good for you to be around him. He’s so...toxic.”

I felt numb. Something had electrocuted me, and I took the pain like the medicine it was. Those words cut deep, and when Iris spoke them she didn’t sound like the woman I’d known for half my life. I did know her tones, and that one was plain: she fucking hated me. Of course she did. I would too.

“Fuck,” I muttered, scrubbing my face before I left the hall, not caring if she heard me. Wills was in my house, in my life, and he held all the cards. I had nothing but my guilt and my anger. I didn’t have her. I didn’t have anyone.

Shit, what a whiny punk I had become.

Outside the wall of windows that stretched across my apartment, Willow Heights was melting. Puddles of water filled the cracks in the pavement and mud cornered around the bare patches of grass in the medians. I stood there, leaning my palms against the glass as I watched a busted-up Ford with a rusted hood brake for an old woman to cross at the intersection that divided downtown and Main Street.  

Iris and I spent our high school years running up and down these streets. Two blocks away, around the alley that separated the library and the abandoned Baptist church, we snuck our first cigarettes. Half a block beyond that, I scored a secondhand black leather jacket, and Iris grabbed a vintage Led Zeppelin tee at Daisy’s Thrift Store. She cut off the sleeves from her tee and sewed in old Nirvana and Beatles patches on the shoulders of my jacket so we’d look cool at our first Hawthorne concert.

If I thought about it, every place in this town had a memory I associated with Iris. Maybe that’s why I’d always loved it so much. We’d dreamt big dreams as kids, wanting to put this nowhere town in our rearview mirror, and she hadn’t returned. But I always came back because it was the place I’d found her. This was us— every road, every leaning light pole. No matter how far I went, how different I became, I could come back here and be myself in this town. But without Iris, with her so far from me in every way possible, I was not home.

“Will you not ask me then?” Wills said, coming into the room. I knew he wanted to tease me a bit, maybe offer up what he knew about where Iris was hiding to get me to do something I didn’t want. That was what my father did best, I was discovering—bargain, deal, manipulate. No wonder my mother had been attracted to him.

“You’re not going to tell me even if I ask, gringo. Why bother?”

“I might.” He stood next to me, his elbow grazing my arm. “I may well be persuaded should you be interested in a wee agreement.”

“Knew it,” I said, through a sigh.

“How’s that?” Wills leaned against the glass, looking somehow more rested, as though he didn’t have a chronic illness tearing up his insides.

“You heard me, old man.” I faced him, head shaking. “What do I have to do?” At this point, I wasn’t sure if there was much that would keep me from getting to Iris. Wills could tell me to streak in the middle of Soldier Field, and I’d do it in a second. No clue what I’d say to her once I found her, but I had to try.

“You’re desperate, are you not?” He looked amazed, as though until that moment he hadn’t believed that I missed her, that I loved her at all. He damn sure didn’t believe I deserved her, but then, neither did I. When I nodded, not offering a fight, my father rubbed his chin, scrubbing the stubble there. “Jaysus, boy, you are utterly lost, aren’t you?”

“For her? Always.”

“And you’ll do whatever it is I say to see her?” When I nodded, Wills stepped back, leaning an elbow against the sill. “If I asked for your kidney?”

“It’s yours.” I rolled my eyes when he frowned. “That’s how all this shit started. Why are you surprised?”

He ignored my question, moving away from the window to sit on the sofa across the room. Wills threaded his fingers together as he watched me, nodding toward the chair across from his spot. He waited until I sat before he went on, still looking amazed, astonished. “And if I tell you I don’t want it?”

“You already told me that. First night you were here and it’s kind of shitty that you did, gringo. All the fuss you made, all the lying and scheming and you just decide you don’t need my kidney.”

“Want. Not need.”

I waved him off, disregarding the clarification. “Is that what you want? The kidney?”

He waited, considering me, and any humor that had been in his features went blank. “No, mate. I don’t. But I do want you to go and visit your mum. She’s desperate to see you.”

Iris was worth pushing back my anger. She was worth a hell of a lot more than that. But Wills’ insistence that I see my mother made little sense. He’d come into my home uninvited. He’d disrupted what had been a lengthy drunk that left me smelling ripe and oblivious to everything but the burn of whisky as it went down my throat. He’d barged into my life, promising to kick my ass into gear. So far, he’d showed me a few cool chords, invited himself and his practically mute bodyguard to stay indefinitely, and was manipulating me into visiting the woman who’d loved her highs and hits more than her kid.

It had been eight years since I’d seen her. Even after kicking her out of that dressing room on my first tour, she’d still wiggled back into my life. Then, I’d truly had my fill. The last time I spoke to her, she’d spoken with a raspy voice, sounding pathetic as she explained why she’d returned back to the guy who’d put her in the hospital more than once. I stopped taking her calls after that.

If Wills Lager was trying to play daddy, it was too late. If he was trying to be the superhero, I didn’t appreciate it. I didn’t believe in heroes anymore.

“I don’t get why you care.” If he wanted me jumping through hoops, and I would, then he’d have to explain himself. “She was a junky groupie you fucked decades ago. She’s just older now. Why does it matter if I see her?”

“It’s not for her, son.”

Wills saying that like it was natural, normal, bothered me. “I don’t need this,” I said, standing from my chair to make a beeline for the back door.

“You need it more than you know.”

Wills was behind me when I jerked around, and I could see the challenge in his expression. He wanted me to debate him. He wanted me to understand something I probably never would. But he held the cards—all the fucking cards— and even if I didn’t like it, I had to play along.

“I’ll be back later,” I told him, pausing only long enough to grab my wool coat and throw it on.

“You’re off to see her then?” he asked, frown making him look older than he was. I cocked an eyebrow and turned to leave.

MACON STREET WAS A small lane that forked outside of the downtown district. There were rows of neat little houses on half-acre lots, all with gates and flower boxes that lined the sidewalk during spring. But it wasn’t spring. It was the dead of winter, early January, and snow had killed all the bluebells that filled those boxes.  

I wouldn’t have noticed the smallest house at the end of the street if I hadn’t been procrastinating, taking extra steps as I tried to convince myself that seeing my mother was a good idea. It wasn’t, but it would get my father to spill his secrets. It would get me to Iris.

The last house on the right was tiny by Willow Heights standards. Cedar siding covered the front of the house, and warm beige trim framed the exterior. There were small trees lit up with white lights, and red bows on either side of the front porch steps,   and a large green wreath with red berries on the front door. The whole place reminded me of a Christmas postcard: simple, elegant, and utterly unlike anything my mama had ever put out on our front steps during the holidays.

On a ladder in front of the highest pitch of the house, a tall, thin woman looped a string of white lights around her arm, cursing to herself when one section of lights got stuck behind a shingle.

“Stupid thing...move...” she started, then her fussing turned into a scream as the ladder bounced against the side of the house when she jerked on the wire. Mrs. Daine wobbled and began to fall.

“Coño!”

She was a foot from the ground when I reached her, catching her as the lights flew from the curl around her arm.

“Oh, Lord...thank you...”

There had been a smile on her face when I caught her. A pretty, half-smile that lightening the red blush on her cheeks, but when Iris’s mother looked up at me, gaze shifting over my face, most of it obscured by the large sunglasses I wore, that brief smile disappeared, and she jerked out of my hold.

“Mrs. Daine...” I tried but she curled her top lip, nostrils flaring.

“You’ve got a lot of nerve, Jamie Vega.” She hurried to put space between us, then quickly jogged up her steps, as though I had something she might catch—like an ego or the ability to completely fuck myself over and everyone else I knew—but just as the older woman made it to her front door, she paused, jerking around as though the fog just cleared from her head.

“Please, Mrs. Daine. I want to...”

“I don’t care what you want, young man.” She dropped down to the steps, arms folded tight, and I didn’t think it was some defensive stance. I thought, more likely, she curled her arms tight to her chest to keep from throttling me. “I’m going to go inside my house and pretend that you are not in my town.”

“It’s my town, too,” I said, before I could stop myself, and the comment only made her nostrils flare wider. “Sorry...I’m...” It was no good, trying to make excuses or give apologizes. Her rage was righteous. She was well within her rights to scream her head off at me, and because I knew she was, because it was the least I could give her, I let the lady do just that.

It was like a salve, seeing the combination of red blotches coloring her pretty face as she berated me, and the snippets of phrases I caught, most of them words in Sioux I didn’t understand, some clearer, like “rotten piece of narcissistic shit,” and one truly impressive “have your privates cut from your body and shipped to a more deserving, less arrogant eunuch...”

I could only take the punishment, standing in front of her, face front, jerking off my glasses so she could see my face. I didn’t do that often. It was my own defense mechanism that not many people got to see lowered. But Mrs. Daine had seen me as a kid. I’d never had to hide from anything in her house, except maybe her disappointment that Iris had lowered herself to fall for me.

“And if you ever try to speak to my daughter...”

“I can’t, can I?” It was the wrong thing to say, and it was rude. I should have kept my mouth shut. I should have let her go on yelling at me because I deserved it, but I really was an asshole, and when you call an asshole on his shit, he tends to be defensive. I cleared my throat, trying to keep my gaze on her face, trying to discern if her cheeks were reddening from the cold or from her anger at me.

Finally, when she only glared, I exhaled, glancing at the fallen lights on the ground. I picked them up, curled them around my arm and climbed up the ladder.

“Don’t do me any favors.”

“I got it,” I said, unsurprised when the woman’s frown only hardened the softness of her features. “You can go on yelling at me, but I’m not a complete bastard. The ladder is old and if I can get this for you...”

“I said—”

“Mrs. Daine, keep going. I know that’s not all you have to say to me.”

But she didn’t yell after that. In fact, all the woman did was watch as I unhooked the string of lights from the trim, then moved down the ladder to the next section. When the silence got too much, I started babbling.

“You got anyone to take care of that?” I asked, nodding toward the broken railing at the edge of the porch. I’d noticed the loose railing and the missing pavers near the sidewalk as Mrs. Daine screamed at me. If she was anything like she had been when we were kids, Iris’s mother probably didn’t take a lot of time tending to her yard. The lights, the Christmas decorations, probably only made an appearance because the town’s homeowner’s association expected it. But she was getting older, though she still looked fit enough to handle herself. Still, if I could help, I would.  

“I don’t need your help.” She stood from the steps when I finished with the lights, jerking the string from me before I could finish tying them off. “I don’t want your help.”

“I kinda got that impression from all the yelling.” She didn’t laugh at my weak attempt at a joke, and I lowered my shoulders, folding up the ladder. When I lifted it, she turned on her heel, grumbling as she led me to the back of the property and into the back shed.

There was a small sedan parked inside, and I frowned at the tires. No winter weather tires and only a half-full bag of salt in the corner of the shed. I made a mental note to check out the other jobs that she might need done despite her protest. I’d avoid the woman’s ire, but that didn’t mean I’d walk away when it was obvious she needed a hand here and there.

She watched me walk toward the sidewalk, and I felt every flick of her gaze on me. She hated me; I knew that. I deserved that, but she had to know I was trying. I’d always been trying to be enough for this woman’s daughter.

Because I seemed unable to stop myself, I stopped, turning to face her as she glared at me. “When we were kids,” I said, pulling my shades from my coat pocket. “You and Iris, the pair of you, were the first time I’d ever seen what real love was.” Something shifted in her features then, and the hard edges of her frown and the lines that dented between her eyes softened. I stepped forward, fingering the rim of my glasses. “Until I saw you two together, I didn’t know a parent could be...nice or sweet or, I don’t know, take care of their kid. You did. You looked after her, and you fed her, fed me too sometimes, and it sort of opened my eyes.” She didn’t stop frowning but she did uncurl her arms, letting them hang at her sides. I took another step, coming to just a few feet from the woman. “Until I saw you with Iris, it just never occurred to me that a mama would care for her kid. That they weren’t supposed to be the one to be looked after.” I inhaled, looking Iris’s mother square in the eyes. “You never thought I was good enough for her. You thought I’d hold her back.”

“I wasn’t wrong.”

It stung more that she wasn’t exaggerating. “Maybe not,” I said, nodding when she lifted her chin, a slow movement that defied me to argue. I couldn’t “Maybe I wasn’t good enough for her. God knows I’m not now, but you can’t say I didn’t love her.”

Mrs. Daine stood in front of me, and there was little left of her anger. It was missing in her features now and showed itself in only a hint of her clipped tone when she spoke. “Loving my daughter was never the problem, Jamie. You were useless at loving yourself.” I couldn’t disagree, and couldn’t take looking at the sadness in her eyes then. I nodded, agreeing in silence, then slipped on my glasses. Mrs. Daine grabbed my wrist, and pulled them back off. “The thing you never got, the thing you still don’t seem to get, is that if you don’t respect yourself, if you don’t love yourself, how the hell can you expect anyone else to do it for you?”

She didn’t tell me goodbye, and I didn’t offer one. But when I got to the gate that led out of her yard, I turned to face her, shooting a hand through my hair because that woman still had the glare of a viper, no matter what wisdom she’d just imparted.

“Can you...will you tell her...” The frowned returned, and I released a low sound of frustration I hoped she couldn’t hear. “Please,” I finally said. “I just want her to know I’m sorry. I want her to know if I could take it all back, everything...if I could...”

“Real love means sacrificing what you want. Real love is selfless.”

I tilted my head, moving my eyebrows together, waiting to see if she’d finish her thought. When she didn’t, I took a step, stopping when she shook her head. “You don’t think I really love her, do you?”

Mrs. Daine shook her head, arms crossed over her chest once again. “You’re too blind to know what she really wants from you.”

I held my breath, frowning when she turned away and started toward the shed. “What does she want from me?” I called, and I swore my heart stopped beating until she spoke again.

“My daughter wants you to leave her alone.”

And just then I realized Mrs. Daine was right. I was blind.  Very blind.

CHAPTER SEVEN

There was a slip in my dream; some shift of light and sound that took me from Iris. She held me, fingers running through my hair as I rested my head in her lap. In the distance, there was that white noise, something familiar, something that made my chest tighten, but it felt too good to be with her again. The smell of her hair, this time like gardenias, moved into my sinuses, and I inhaled deep, grabbing her hip to move my face against her stomach. Her round, pregnant stomach. It was different from all the other dreams I’d had of her over the years. It was no memory. Nothing that would bring back a day and time. This was new. This was hope. Iris with me, in this apartment, and that aching sound in the distance growing fainter and fainter.

“Mami,” I whispered, smiling, when the vibration of her moan moved over me like a blanket. “This is perfect.”

“It is. But I need you to help me.”

That noise got clearer, and I sat up, watching Iris’s face, heart thumping hard when I saw her frown. “Florecita, what is it?”

“Help me. Please. I need your help.”

The noise was louder now, and more desperate, coming at me through the deep garbled grunt of a man. I knew that voice, and it wasn’t Iris’s. Sleep left me quick, as though I’d been doused with a shot of cold water, and I sat up on my sofa, rubbing my eyes, stilling to hear what I was sure was some imagined cry.

“Hey, man, I need your help!” Jimmy called, and I shot up from the tumble of thick blankets and darted toward my bedroom, following the single light coming from the master bath.

Jimmy struggled to hold Wills upright. My father was doubled over near the toilet, and vomit covered the seat. There was a mess on the floor, and when Jimmy tried getting him around the middle to get a tighter hold on him, Wills cried out.

“Jaysus, don’t!”

I stepped in, grabbing a towel that I handed to my father’s man when he slipped on some of the sick near the toilet. “What the hell happened?” I asked Jimmy.

“He started throwing up about a half-hour ago, and when I tried to help him, he pushed me off.” He held the old man by the arm, moving it to his shoulder, then wincing when Wills cried out again.

“Get him down on the floor,” I told the man, hurrying to dampen a towel to clean my father’s face. I knelt in front of him, and one glance at his expression—all scared and wide-eyed—twisted something in my gut. Something that made me feel mierda I hadn’t let inside my head for years: fear. “Be still now,” I told him, rubbing his mouth and face clean.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Vega, I am, but I’m a bodyguard. I don’t...I don’t have medical training.”

I glanced over my shoulder, watching the big man’s face as he screwed up his features. He was worried, I could tell, and clearly sorry. It must have frustrated him to be such a big guy and be helpless when it came to taking care of someone who couldn’t do it themselves.

“Mr. Lager’s been my boss for a long time, but this...”

“You wanna check out, it’s no problem.” I faced my father again, frowning when he tried sitting up.

“I...I don’t wanna go. I just—”

“It’s fine. I took care of my mama for years. It all comes back.” Jimmy was big, but I was wider, and Wills had gotten so thin that he was nothing to carry. I put one arm around his shoulders, the other under his knees and picked him up, avoiding touching his stomach, which seemed to be the spot that hurt him the most.

“I can’t...what can I do?”

“Get the car and grab me a blanket. It’s cold out, and he needs to get to the hospital. I got no skills on helping someone with kidney failure.”

The man nodded once, and I put Wills on the bed, stepping into my closet to grab a thick flannel and some jogging pants. Behind me I heard Wills’ low mutter as he called Jimmy over to him.

“Text her. She’ll want to know.” But who he wanted didn’t register. Jimmy left the room, and I dressed my father, picking him back up and heading out of the apartment when his man honked the horn.

“Ah, son. I’m dreadful sorry,” he whispered as I got him into the backseat of the Cadillac. He patted my face, pulling me close to look me in the eyes. “You’re a good boy,” he said before he passed out.

The hospital was only blocks away, but Wills didn’t stay knocked out long. Once he was admitted and had fluids pumping into his veins, his temper returned, and he started complaining.

“Jaysus, Mary, and Joseph, let me go, will you not?” he shouted, his loud brogue echoing into the hallway. He was a bad patient, but calmed down once the doctor got some pain meds inside him.

And then the man lowered the hammer.

“He needs surgery.” I could only stare at the doctor, blinking. I’d taken care of my mother a hundred times when she was high or aching for a fix. I cleaned her up when she shit herself or passed out in her own vomit, but she’d never been sick like this, and she’d never needed surgery. I was out of my element, and I think the doctor understood that. “Mr. Vega, there is an infection in the lining of your father’s stomach. That can happen sometimes with patients on dialysis.” When I shot my eyebrows up, likely looking as surprised as I was, the man elaborated. “He’s been on daily dialysis for a week here. I take it he never informed you?” I shook my head, trying to push back the wave of irritation I felt. Wills had been keeping something from me for a while, I knew that. But I was pissed at myself for being stupid enough not to ask where he took off to, or at least been worried enough to research what a diabetic with kidney failure needed to survive.

“What do you need from me?” I asked the doctor, turning away, putting my back to the hallway when two nurses slowed to glance at me. I didn’t need curious attention. Not now.

“There’s a private room you can wait in.” He nodded toward a door marked “Reserved” just down the hall. “We’ll take good care of him.”

“Yeah, thanks,” I said, feeling a little helpless.

Two more women in scrubs passed me, but other than a quick glance, they didn’t gawk. Still, I hurried to move down the hall, nodding a greeting at the large woman with a volunteer badge pinned to her collar who manned the small waiting room desk.

“You can go on in, Mr. Vega. Dr. Campbell says there shouldn’t be anyone there to disturb you this time of night.” For once, I was grateful for the small bit of preferential treatment that came my way.

“Thanks,” I said, digging out my phone when it alerted me to a text. Jimmy had returned to my apartment to clean up the mess, the only thing he promised he was good at when it came to Wills’ sickness. I settled into the room, falling into a small leather chair near the window.

There were tables around the room, and two long couches that divided a row of wood cabinets, a counter with a microwave, and a French-door fridge. On the other side of the room there was another door with a sign that read “Doctors Only,” and I understood that this was likely the doctor’s lounge, and that room was probably the on-call room. But no one seemed to be around, and so I climbed across the long couch, resting my feet on the end, and covered my eyes with my arm, trying like hell not to worry too much about how sick my father really was.

I MIGHT HAVE SLEPT for days, but the sun shined across my closed eyelids and the sound of a woman yelling a complaint woke me. There were two guys in scrubs eating their breakfast, taking turns glancing from their phones, to each other and back up at the television and some broadcast on The Weather Channel as I jerked awake.

A quick glance at the clock told me it was nearing 10:00 a.m., which meant Wills’ surgery had long since finished up, and no one had bothered to give me an update. But when the shouting started up again, I forgot everything but the loud refrain of her voice and how impossible that it was she was on the other side of that door.

“He wanted me here,” Iris said, and I caught the irritation in her tone. “Just tell me how he is.”

“As I mentioned before, ma’am, I can only release information about a patient to family, and, unfortunately, you are not related to Mr. Lager.”

“For shit’s sake...”

“I’ll thank you not to curse at me,” the older woman snapped, and I jumped off the couch, ignoring the looks I got from the two doctors at the table as I slid my shades out of my pocket and over my face. When I opened the door, I spotted a volunteer, this one older than the woman who’d staffed the desk the night before, standing in front of her chair, her face red and blotchy. “If you want information on Mr. Lager’s condition, I suggest you ask his son.”

Iris followed the woman’s finger as she pointed at me, though I had no idea how this woman knew who I was. My focus went to Iris then, and it felt like everything in that moment slowed into seconds and then milliseconds when she turned to face me. I held my breath, watching her, feet frozen where I stood, even as one of the doctor’s moved to my side to leave the room behind me. It was only when Iris’s expression shifted from anger to fury that I made a move.  I felt stupid, awkward waving my arm, the movement really half an attempt to defend myself if she decided to punch me. I couldn’t go on gawking at her, mouth dropped open like she was some sort of angel come to life.

And she was. Hair still thick, shiny, and black like a raven’s feather. Her face was lit with a pink color, and her eyes were bright, shining with what I guessed was that constant fury, usually directed at me.

“Iris...” I tried, my shoulder moving as the last doctor left the breakroom and brushed my arm.

It must have taken all her control, all the wells of patience I knew she had, to walk across that hall and stand in front of me. But she didn’t scream at me like her mother had. She didn’t call me filthy names or curse my life. What Iris did was worse: she smiled, brushing her hair off her shoulder like I was some stranger she had to pretend to like.

“How is he?” she asked, stepping to the side of the nurse’s station as an orderly moved down the hall, pushing a gurney.

“He caught an infection,” I heard myself saying. My mouth moved, the information came out, but my shaded gaze stuck to her features, soaking in the smooth, perfect arch of her cheeks and that tempting full pout of her mouth. God I wanted to touch her. I wanted to hug her and hold her and kiss her all over.

“And?” she tried, some of that forced sweetness breaking.

“Ah,” I swallowed, stretching my neck. “He had surgery early this morning, but I haven’t gotten an update. They had to get rid of the infected tissue.” If I looked over her head, to the activity behind her, I wouldn’t get caught in the vortex of her face. I’d be able to speak and function like a normal man and not some lovestruck pendejo. “The doctor said it can happen sometimes with dialysis. But that’s all I know.”

She watched me then, arms folded, the fringe from the long shawl she wore bouncing against her leg as she tapped her foot. “And they haven’t told you how the surgery went?” I shook my head, unable to keep my thoughts straight when she looked at me like that. “Lord...” she said through a sigh. “Take those stupid glasses off so I can see you.”

“Ah...” I shot a glance around the hall then froze when Iris tilted her head, reaching for my shades, but I stepped back, pulling them off my face before she touched me.

“God, you look like shit,” she said, the sweetness of her fake greeting gone now. “I hope you’ve been taking better care of Wills than you have yourself.” She glanced at the volunteer, then down the hallway, straightening when a group of doctors came around the corner. “Is Wills’ doctor any of those guys?”

I stepped next to her, moving my head to look down the hallway. “The Indian guy in the green scrubs.”

“Come on,” she said, grabbing at my sleeve before she moved ahead of me and straight at the doctor.

WHEN IRIS WANTED SOMETHING, she got it, plain and simple, and at the moment what she wanted was information. All the information. The poor doctor looked a little flustered as she kept at him, holding her cell in one hand, while she glanced down at the article she read and back up at him.

“And the infection was caused by...”

“Could be a number of factors, actually,” he said, holding Wills’ chart between his hands.

“But he’s been under your care while getting dialysis. Was there a problem with the injection site?”

“Iris...”

“Ma’am, I’m sure you have a lot of questions, as does Mr. Vega.” The doctor stepped to the side as a nurse wheeled a cart of clean linens and dressings into Wills’ room. My father was passed out on the bed, still sleeping off the anesthesia from the surgery. “Right now we’re trying to get the fever down and to normalize his blood pressure. The surgery was a success, and if everything goes right, Mr. Lager will probably be discharged tomorrow morning.”

“But won’t he be...”

“Excuse me,” the doctor said when someone at the nurse’s station called him over.

“This is bullshit,” Iris said, stepping to the window of my father’s room. “He looks worse than he did when I saw him last.”

“When was that?” I asked, standing at her side, not surprised when she didn’t answer.

“And you,” she grunted, turning to glare at me. “He needs a damn transplant. Why won’t you give him your kidney?”

“You think I haven’t tried? That gringo won’t take it.” My skin felt electrified with how intensely she stared at me, but I played it off, turning to watch the nurse inside Wills’ room tending to him.

“Stubborn ass men...” she mumbled, and I didn’t bother hiding my smile, wondering if she’d return it. She didn’t. Instead Iris rubbed her shoulders, eyes wide, worried, and I watched her, my chest burning, my fingers aching to touch her.

She was starlight, bright and brilliant and out of my fucking reach. There was a hardness to those beautiful features now, a glint of something distant I’d never be able to take from her face.

Didn’t mean I wouldn’t try.

“You good, mami?”

The endearment bothered her, had Iris jerking a glare my way, and I couldn’t decide if I loved or hated it.

“Don’t.” It was all she said, all that seemed able to move beyond the anger and bitterness that had tightened the muscles around her mouth. I did that. I’d caused all that rage, all that venom. I should take it for the medicine it was; gulp it down because I deserved it. But Iris was my past, the sweetest and best part of who I hoped like hell I could be again. More than that, she was my end game, my forever more. I’d do anything to have her back, anything at all to deserve her again.

I took two steps—slow, careful, like she was a landmine easily triggered by the wrong words, the wrong look from me. The closer I came, the straighter her back went, and I knew not to push. She hated me, and I understood why. I got that I’d done something unforgiveable.

“If saying sorry was enough, it’d be the first thing I’d utter every time I opened my mouth.”

She kept silent, looking between Wills and the nurses as they shuffled around their reception area, thumbing through files, answering phones. I could only watch her, profile sharp, face tense, but none of that lessened the beautiful lines of her face or the sweet swell of precise features that gave her the look of a statue—something formed with love and care, something far too beautiful for this ugly world.

Coño, I sounded like a pendejo.

Blinking brought images straight to my mind of Iris and me, her laughter, her smile, and how many times I’d put it there; how often it was my words, my music, my jokes that kept her face lit up and happy. But that had been a long damn time ago, and I hadn’t been the cause of anything remotely similar to those expressions lately.

“Sorry means nothing,” she started, focusing still on the activity around us. “Especially when it comes alone.” She nodded once, and her voice was tight, the inflection shaking with what felt like anger to me. “Words are just words, sounds and syllables that fade to nothing. Actions. Deeds. Those are the things that matter.”

“Tell me what to do,” I said, moving closer than I should have, making Iris step away from me. “Please.”

Iris inhaled, wetting her lips with her tongue before she shot one sharp, furious glare at me. “Forget you know me, and for God’s sake, Jamie, leave me the hell alone.”

The click of her boots sounded like slaps against my face as she moved down the hallway, further and further away, and I fought the urge to chase after her. Her hair was longer now, sliding against her back, grazing her waist as she moved. I wanted to tangle all that hair between my fingers. I wanted to know if that honeysuckle scent still hung in her hair.

“Sorry,” I told her, knowing she was too far away to hear me. “You can’t forget the only good you’ve ever known, mami.” I walked forward, scrubbing my face as I watched her. “Forgetting you is the last thing I can do.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

The fever kept Wills in a bad mood and in the hospital for two more days, all of which was spent listening to him berate the doctors for being “complete eejits” and me for hanging around and not being at my own place working on songs that would encourage my label not to give me the boot.

“What am I paying Jimmy for, if the wanker can’t stomach a little sickness? Jaysus!”

“Caught a cold,” I told him, sitting up in the chair next to his bed, pulling a deck of cards from my pocket. “The doctor won’t let him around you until he’s not sneezing his head off and your fever is gone.”

“Bleeding ridiculous.” Wills waved me off, seeming uninterested in another round of poker when I offered him the deck. “It’s due to his desert temperament,” Wills scoffed, elbowing the pillow behind him then frowning when I got up to fix it.

“Desert temperament?” I ignored the frown, used to his bad mood already. It hadn’t even been a month since my father invaded my life, and already I knew his moods.

“He’s from New Mexico, you see. All this,” he pointed out of the window to the fresh layer of snow that coated the ground, “is a detriment to his western sensibilities.”  I sat back down, nodding to let him know I caught his meaning and did a piss poor job of hiding the yawn that moved over my mouth. “You need rest,” he said, leaning against his pillow as he watched me. “And bloody time out of this place.”

“De nada,” I told my father, stretching out my legs next to his bed. “I’ve got nothing better to do.”

“Bollocks,” Wills said, folding his arms tight. “You’ve got a song to finish, and don’t you have a show to do? In a month or so?”

I cracked open an eye, watching my father’s face as he pouted and glared. “Nearly three months...”

“It’s for me, is it not? I’ll not have my own flesh and blood embarrassing me by sounding like he hasn’t performed in an age.”

“I’ll be ready...” I protested, but he wouldn’t let me lay the excuses thick and heavy. Fact was, my manager had phoned three days ago to tell me that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was inducting Hawthorne, and they wanted me to perform at the tribute. When Wills learned about this, his first reaction was to refuse it.

“I’ll not be around those tossers...” and then I blocked what other foul things he had to say about his band. Like me, Wills had alienated his bandmates, though I didn’t have half his excuse. I was a pendejo who played a video of me and Iris having sex during one of our shows, just to humiliate her more than I already had. Wills was dying and didn’t want his bands’ pity. It was me reminding him of the real reason he didn’t want them around that had changed his mind.

“Fine, but I won’t be propped up like some half-dead arsehole in that balcony. You’ll make sure of it?”

“Of course.”

My father leaned up on his elbow, pointing a finger at me, the IV moving as he gestured. “You see that you’re in top form. Show those arseholes at your label that you’ve got a shed load more inside you.” He relaxed, looking exhausted. “Show them that you’re more than the bloody stage paint and filthy insults.”

Truth was, I didn’t know if I was more than that. I wasn’t sure if I could get on that stage and stand in front of all those people, pretending I was nothing more than a fan. At my core, that’s who I was to Wills. A fan. An admirer. It didn’t matter that he’d made me. It didn’t even matter that I’d followed in his footsteps. Even if Wills had never spoken a word to me, he sang my childhood. He’d never known it, but he’d shaped and molded the musician I was. How could I lay down the mantle, the veil I wrapped myself in every time I hit the stage, and sing for my father? I’d never measure up and didn’t want to try.

The room had gone quiet, and I relaxed again when Wills started snoring. I couldn’t sleep, though I was bone tired. I couldn’t do much else but worry—about the induction, about Isaiah bringing the band to see me at the end of the week, about Iris. Mainly, I worried that she’d left Willow Heights without saying a word. I worried that she’d made an appearance to check on Wills and then had taken off, ready to put this town and me behind her. Couldn’t blame her.

The door swung open slowly, the small creak of the hinges barely making a sound, but growing loud enough that it pulled my attention from the ceiling where I kept staring without blinking. Iris’s gaze went straight to Wills, and at spotting her, I jerked up from my seat, holding the door wider to let her in.

“Fever down?” she asked, not looking away from his bed.

“Some,” I finished, moving my jacket off the back of the chair so she could sit. “But they just gave him another IV. They’re hoping it won’t be long now.” I didn’t know what to do with my hands or where to fucking look. Iris walked further in, dropping her large bag to the floor next to the chair and leaned over Wills, touching his forehead before she squeezed his hand.

“He’s out,” I told her, stepping the bed to watch her across the mattress. “When he starts snoring, there’s no getting him up. Trust me, I’ve been hearing it for a month. Dude’s a hard sleeper.”

Still, she didn’t look at me, deciding, it seemed, to fall back into the chair and pull her legs up against her chest. “I can stay for a while. I know you’ve been here all night and day.”

“How do you know?” I asked, tilting my head when she pulled out her laptop and started powering it up. “I haven’t...”

“I called Jimmy to check up on Wills.”

“Jimmy.”

There must have been something in my voice that sounded off. It did at least to me. But Iris finally looked up at me, face twisted up in confusion. “What?”

“I just...” There was nothing I could say, no way of saying it that wouldn’t make me sound like a jealous, irrational prick, but my pride got the better of me. “Why didn’t you call me to ask about him?”

“You?” She looked genuinely confused, as though the question was the most ridiculous thing I could have uttered. When I shrugged, she sat up straight, adjusting herself in the chair before she dismissed me, looking back at her laptop. “Jimmy has been my point of contact for almost a year. Since Paris. Why wouldn’t I call him?”

“He’s...my father.”

That had Iris stilling, hands frozen on the keyboard as she blinked, but again she didn’t look at me when she spoke. “I realize that, but Jimmy has been...closer to Wills for longer.”

My father grunted in his sleep, and I looked at him, something in the small noises he made making my stomach feel heavy. He looked so thin, so pale and small lying in this big bed. At my side, I swore I felt Iris’s scrutinizing gaze, how she watched me, likely judged me when I touched Wills’ forehead and shot a look at the monitor.

“You’re...getting along with him.” It wasn’t a question, and it made me think Iris’s rage at me wasn’t as sharp as I thought. She hadn’t forgiven me, but at least she was curious. Of course that was likely wishful thinking. She loved Wills, I knew that from the things he’d mentioned to me. They’d gotten close, especially after the Indy concert when I humiliated Iris. Wills had gone to her. He’d protected her. He’d been better to her than any father she’d known. Than any father I’d known.

“Yeah, well, the shock has worn off, and he refuses to leave. Didn’t give me much choice.”

Her exhale was long and slow, and I cursed myself for being the cause of how irritated it made her sound. But Iris didn’t bother asking me anything about my father and what we’d been up to, or why I seemed to be accepting him so quickly.

“You can go. I’ll stay with him.”

But I was a little lost just then. Jimmy was back at my place, sick and snoring on my sofa, and Iris was in this room watching over my father. Neither needed me with them, and for the first time in a long time, I wasn’t sure what to do with myself. I could write, work on the song that was teasing my muse, but Wills not being there to give me his small brand of instruction would only distract me.

I glanced from Wills to the door, frown tensing my face when I thought of the other thing I could do, though I could list about a million other activities I’d jump at doing first.

“What is it?” When she spoke, Iris’s voice was soft, a little curious and it reminded me of how it used to be between us. It made me think for just half a second she was lowering her guard.

“Wills has been after me to see Juanita.”

“Here?” Iris asked, voice sharp and surprised. I nodded, glancing at her, eyebrows lifting when I caught her expression. She didn’t glare. She didn’t frown. Iris looked, in fact, a little worried. “She sick?”

“I...think she might be, but she’s on the rehab floor.” I threw a nod at Wills. “He’s been on me to visit, and I almost made it once, but then...” I didn’t have to explain anything to Iris about my relationship with my mother. She’d seen the worst of it, and despite what had gone down between us, all the damage I’d done, she was still able to read me, to catch my meaning and know what got under my skin with just a glance at my face.

She did that just then, watching, features shifting from confusion to understanding, then quickly back to something that looked like indifference.

“You should go,” she said, brushing the hair off her shoulder before she sat back, pulling her laptop close. “Like I said, I’ll be here for a while, and I’m sure Wills would want you visiting her.”

I nodded once, though she didn’t see me, sparing a final look at my father, then to Iris before I inhaled and moved out of the room.

NO ONE EVER SPEAKS in the hallways of a hospital. There are different expressions on different faces, but there always seems to be the same emotions: worry, regret, fear. Those don’t change, and for some reason, for different reasons, it’s the emotions that keep people silent as you pass them in the hall.

Maybe it’s that we’re all in some sad fraternity—the loved ones and relatives of people who are doing the living and dying and parts in between that makes the world move forward. People die. People are born, and in the middle of all that is the struggle through the fight life can be.

It was those expressions, that silence, that greeted me when I got off the elevator on the second floor. I passed the open doors on my way to room 214, noticing that the kids who’d been in one of the rooms just a few weeks before were gone. I hoped the girl had gotten better, and they’d moved out of this place. I tried squashing the doubt that came on me when reality reared its ugly head.

“214” the door read, in large, taunting numbers and the knob felt cold as I held it, telling myself I wouldn’t stay, reminding myself to not let her manipulate me.

“Don’t buy the mierda.” Because if I knew one truth about my mother, it was that mierda followed her. Always.

The first thing I saw when I opened the door was her profile. She was still a pretty woman—older, worn around the edges, with lines forming along her eyes and mouth, but still very pretty. She wore her hair longer than I’d ever seen it, pulled away from her face with a sweeping of bangs just touching below her eyebrows.

When the door clicked shut and I stood there watching her, my mother jerked her gaze toward me, the small surprise on her face transforming to quick pleasure.

“Mijo.” The endearment came out in an amazed whisper, and she held out her hand, reaching for me, calling me over, then slowly dropped it when I stood at the foot of her bed. “Jamie. I hoped you’d come, mi niño dulce.” She moved her feet up, tugging the blanket with it to make space for me on her bed, not letting the small look of disappointment linger on her face when I sat in the chair next to her.

I fingered the IV tube hanging next to the stand. “Liver damage?”

“Si,” she said, waving off the answer like her illness didn’t matter.

“What are they doing for you?”

The pleased smile fell from her face, and she lowered her shoulders, as though she didn’t want to talk about what had landed her in the hospital. “Beta blockers, antivirals, all the things that should make me better.”

“You don’t need a transplant?”

“Ay Dios, no, mijo. I’m not that bad off.”

She didn’t slur when she spoke, and I glanced down at her hands, amazed that there was no constant shake in her fingers. My mother was sober, something I hadn’t seen in twenty years.

“Why are you still here then?” I asked, telling myself not to be hopeful. She’d tried before to get sober and always failed at it.

“Detox...”

“For weeks?”

My mama looped her arms around her knees as she watched me. “I promised Wills. He got me into this place one last time, but I had to promise I wanted to really get healthy. I’m not leaving until I’m sure I can stay sober. That...that time hasn’t come yet.”

I watched her close, wondering which version of my mother I’d get. Wondering if she was pretending, if all this was for some desperate attempt to grab my attention or my cash. She’d tried so often in the past eight years to get in touch with me, but I’d washed my hands, so tired of how dirty she made them. Now, it seemed like Wills was the target.

“He’s sick.” I bounced my foot, nervous for some reason to lay the bait. I wondered how quickly it would be before she took it. “Not nice to burden a dying man with your problems, Juanita.”

“He found me, mijo.” She lifted her chin, watching me in a way that no one else could. She always did that, even when she was loaded—that long, cool look that seemed to read through whatever walls I put around myself. Even the face hiding shades.

“It was just after that...video...”

“Ah.” I didn’t need to hear a lecture from her, and I felt it rising like a virus in my gut. Juanita didn’t say anything when I leaned back in my chair. “He found you after the Indy show.” She nodded, but didn’t speak. “And what reason did he give for looking you up?”

She shrugged, moving a corner of her blanket between her fingers. “Maybe he felt guilty. Maybe being sick made him think about the things he did, mijo, I can’t tell you why he came to me, but he did. I was out in Iverville. I...had means...” She shook her head, sitting up straighter when I frowned. “Not like that. I didn’t have a man, and I was too sick to do more than drink. No H, nothing hard at all.”

“Then how? If you were on your own...”

“Jose,” she said, looking shy. “Jose and Isaiah. They both sent me a little money— oh, but Jamie, don’t tell them I told you. They wouldn’t want you knowing.”

It took a few seconds to organize my thoughts and figure out what I wanted to say and what was a more pressing need. Finally, when my mother looked like she couldn’t take my scrutiny, I waved a hand, dismissing the worry that had cornered in her eyes. “It’s their money.”

“Si. It is, and they’ve been good to me.”  Mama dropped the blanket and reached to the bedside table to grab a small candy. It was chocolate and mint with a green metallic wrapper, and in one smooth flick of her thumb, the candy was in her mouth. “I want you to know...the last time...” She inhaled, eyes tight as though the memory weighed her down. “I know why you cut me out of your life. I...I was the worst mama, mijo. I used you. I used everyone, and I’m so sorry.”

“Mama,” I started, hating the way her voice cracked, how she couldn’t meet my eyes when she spoke. My guard was still up, but this was something I’d never seen from her. Guilt felt heavy in that room, and I wasn’t convinced it came only from my mother.

“Jamie, I love you. I may have never shown you that, but I always loved you, as much as I knew how, and I know that you think I’m sick and need money or something else.” She looked up when I sat next to her. My mother reached toward me, but didn’t touch me. Instead she fiddled with the ends of my hair, and then dusted something I couldn’t see, something that was likely nothing at all, from my shoulder. “I know I can’t ever make up for the things I’ve done...”

“No,” I said, looking at my hands to keep them in my lap. “I suppose you can’t.” For the first time in my life, I understood my mother. I knew what this was—the apologies, the guilt. It filled me from the inside every day for the past seven months. It’s what I’d surrounded myself in, the second Isaiah told me the truth about him and Iris and the affair that never happened.

“Mijo,” she said, slipping her fingers over my wrist. “Do you think, maybe, you will let me try? Will you let me try to prove I’m sorry?”

She had been the worst person I remembered from my childhood. It was Mama’s life— her choices and the people she let near us— that had destroyed any illusions I had about having a happy life. Iris was the one that had brought that back for me. There I sat, next to the one person in the world I thought I could never understand, completely familiar to the guilt she felt. My mother had passed along the bad choice gene, and now she wanted to be rid of it. If anyone knew about mistakes, it was me, so I did what I could. I did what I hoped would be done for me one day.

I needed to put the past to bed.

“Yeah, mama. I’ll do that for you.”

CHAPTER NINE

The reunion didn’t last. Not much good ever did where my mama was concerned, but this time it was my own insecurities and a persistent nurse’s aide that broke up the good that had been our conversation.

“Oh, Mr. Vega, I’m such a big fan,” the girl had started, tugging on her stethoscope like it was a distraction. She didn’t even have a chart on hand and still she interrupted. “Would you mind if I got a picture? Your mother has told us so much about you.”

“Did she?” I asked, pushing my shades further up my nose as I stood from my mother’s side.

“Si, mijo, but I’m so proud. You’ve done so well.” For once, when I stared at her, my mother’s smile was genuine, real, and it might have been the first time in my life that she was in a good mood not caused by a man or something that fucked with her brain or body.

I stood for the aide, leaned close to her as she held up her cell, but didn’t smile, not when she lowered her hand onto my ass or when she insisted on a second picture.

“Without your glasses? Would you mind?”

“Yeah,” I’d told her. “I would, actually.” I glanced at my mother, shooting her a wink. “I gotta jet. Check on Wills. I’ll be back...later.”

But one peek inside my father’s room, where he sat laughing with Iris, playing dominoes, looking completely fine without my presence, and I just wanted out of that hospital.

The snow had stopped, and the frigid wind had warmed to a balmy thirty-five. I took advantage of the temperature and the distraction Wills had caused and made for that small Macon Street cottage. I had no plan to go there, no real purpose, other than keeping myself busy and eradicating the hook in my head, making lyrics fit into the tune that had me stuck.

If Iris’s mother was home, she didn’t acknowledge me as I went to the back shed and dug out her tool set. The hand tools were all green and purple and old; there was silver paint among the purple, a looping scroll of Iris’s name she must have added to the hammer when she was a kid.

I found an old mason jar filled with nails of different shapes and lengths and took that glittered hammer to the front of the yard, pinching the nails between my teeth as I lined up the loosened pickets on the gate. There were at least a dozen or more that were broken or loose, and I went to work fixing each one with that tune running through my head on repeat.

“The lights are always on / This is the place I come to,” I said to myself, not sure if the lines meant anything at all or if they’d work together. There wasn’t too much thought to give to the mindless task of straightening, cutting and nailing, and when the pickets were mended and looked uniform again, I moved my attention to the front porch, seeing several loose boards toward the middle.

My cell vibrated against my back pocket when the text alert rang, and I nudged the hammer through one of my belt loops to grab it.

Going back to the hospital to relieve Iris. Mr. Lager to be released in the morning, Jimmy

Something ticked inside my head, a realization that made me feel small and insignificant. Iris had called Jimmy to relieve her, likely at Wills’ insistence. The idea that he had, that my father had depended on someone other than me, bothered me more than it should have. I didn’t need Wills’ praise. I didn’t want anything from him at all. Coño, I hadn’t even been all that nice to him and still it bothered me.

Worse yet, Iris hadn’t needed me either.

I sat on the porch, cell in my hand, staring at Jimmy’s message, wondering when the hell I’d started caring about anything other than myself. Once, that had been the norm for me. Once, putting others first, caring what they thought, had simply been who I was. But I wasn’t that guy anymore. Maybe I couldn’t ever be again. I was venom and fire. I was smoke and mirrors. I was Dash Justice.

So why was I sitting on my ex-girlfriend’s mom’s porch, eyes burning as I stared down at a text, wondering why my father hadn’t asked for my help.

“Fuck me.”

“Ahem.”

I turned, staring behind me at Mrs. Daine, who was hurrying back into her house, the warmth of the fire inside coming at me like a wave. She didn’t thank me for mending her fence or fixing her porch. Instead, the woman left a Thermos on the steps above where I sat. It was likely all I’d get from her, but for now, I’d take it.

The coffee was rich, heavy with cream, and I liked the dark roast bite. Half a cup down, I put my cell away and picked up the board on the ground, figuring there was no point worrying about who needed me and who didn’t.

“We fall to ashes / We float away,” I sang, stopping when the note and lyric came together, and I spent the rest of the afternoon and late into the night fixing that porch and writing the second verse, sipping gratitude from the lid of a Thermos.

CHAPTER TEN

Jimmy, it turns out, couldn’t be bought. Not when there was vomit and IVs and general illness things related to his duties. He quit the day after Wills got released from the hospital, and all that punk-ass internal whining I did when Wills had Jimmy stay with him got shot out the window. I was now his chauffer, his cook, his valet and his groomer. Much as I didn’t ask to be any of those things, I got paid in opinions. And coño, did Wills have opinions about everything—my life, my set lists, my wardrobe, my lyrics, politics, my hair, my apartment, politics again, and, most of all, Iris, and how I didn’t deserve her.

“I’m trying,” I’d told him when a particularly rough round of dialysis put my father in a foul mood.

“Are you now? Spoken to her, have you?”

He knew I hadn’t. Despite being at her mother’s place nearly once a week, despite her mother’s frigid attitude toward me cooling to something that resembled lukewarm, Iris still had yet to say more than ten words to me, and those words were directly related to my father’s life, health or business.

Now, though, there was a more pressing need to get her to talk to me. Fuck, I didn’t want to ask.

“Dash!” I heard on the line when I answered my cell, cringing the second I recognized Winston Daily’s voice. He was the A&R guy at Riptide, my label. “Dude, it’s been months. I hope you’ve been busy.”

Truth was, I had been, but I wasn’t sure why that mattered to Winston, especially if the rumors my father had heard were true.

“I got some stuff,” I said, leaning on the island in my kitchen as I tried to keep my voice calm. My guitar lay on the sofa in the next room, and my bedroom door was open in case Wills woke from his nap. “Nothing I’m really ready for anyone to have a listen to yet.”

Fact was, I owed them one more album, and then my contract was up for renewal. This album could go two ways: be an utter failure and go unreleased, my future as a signed artist over, or it could kill, and I could write my own ticket with any label I wanted. Even one I created for myself.

I just didn’t know one way or another how things would end up. Until I did, I had to play nice. “But,” I said, interrupting the quiet grumble I heard from on the line. “I got something sweet I think you’re gonna like.”

“You lay it down yet?” Winston asked, and I scrambled, peeking into the bedroom to see Wills still passed out before I jogged down the back stairs and into the shop.

“No, man, but I can remedy that.”

There was no studio here. The closest one I knew of was in Indy and I wasn’t exactly popular in the city.

“Come up here and we’ll get you some studio time.”

“It’s one song, man.”

Winston cleared his throat, and the background noise of him dismissing his assistant sounded against the movement he made. My guess was he had something to say and either needed quiet or needed to be comfortable. Or, both.

“One song will satisfy them. Tide them over. Listen, man, I gotta be real here. That shit with the video is good for the persona and will hype ticket sales, but you gotta come correct with this next album. You tussling with nobodies and bailing out on your dying father makes you look like an asshole, not a badass. There are whispers...”

I didn’t need him telling me about those whispers. I’d heard them nearly a month before, when Wills had invaded my life. Sometimes biting your tongue hurt like hell, but sometimes, you had to suck down the pain and take it. I did just then.

“Let me take care of a few things here, and I’ll be there Sunday morning. That cool?”

“Perfect. I’ll book you after noon on Sunday. Looking forward to it, man. Later.”

I was glad someone was.

MY MOTHER HAD WANTED to see Wills before she left for a halfway house out in Madison, and so I brought my father back to the hospital, leaving them alone while I did the thing I knew I had to but really had no stomach for. I had to ask Mrs. Daine for a favor.

The early February weather was still cold, but the small cottage on Macon Street looked neat. I’d like to claim responsibility for how neat and well-kept the place looked, but Iris’s mother had taken care of her yard, and, from what I noticed as I drove past two days before, both she and Iris were doing their part to keep the sidewalk and drive to the cottage clear.

It had been a couple of weeks, and Iris hadn’t left, telling Wills that she had an idea for a book and wanted his help with it. My father hadn’t given me any other details, and I didn’t ask. Instead I went to Mrs. Daine’s house and worked on clearing the dead leaves and grass from her beds and restocking the salt bags in her shed. There always seemed like a task was needed, and I did it, without asking, because I liked the distraction.

I hadn’t lied to Winston. One song was down, but it wasn’t “the” song—the one that would give me an idea, an elemental necessity. I still needed that muse song, and I hadn’t found it yet. But as I walked up the drive to Mrs. Daine’s house and knocked on the door, I took in the streets around this small place. Simple. Real. Honest. All things I’d learned to be growing up here. All things I hadn’t been in a long time. Months back, I’d told Iris that I wanted to write about Willow Heights. She hadn’t understood that. But then, Iris was always too New York for our small town. Maybe she always would be.

“Jamie?” I heard, jerking a glance over my shoulder when the door opened, and Iris stood on the other side.

“Oh,” I said, pushing up my shades to avoid her seeing how wide my eyes had gotten. “Um...is your mom here?”

Iris frowned, moving her head in a slow shake. “No. She’s in Chicago for the weekend.”

“Coño.” I’d have to reschedule, that’s all there was to it, and because Iris hadn’t spoken much to me, I didn’t expect her to stick around or wait for me to tell her what business I had with her mother. “All right. Thanks, florecita...I’ll...” She coughed, interrupting me, and I tilted my head, hurrying to think about what cardinal sin I committed to put that look on her face. Oh...damn. “I’m sorry.” I smoothed a hand through my hair, head shaking at her hard expression. “Old habits...”

“What did you need with my mom?” she asked, leaning against the doorjamb.

Wills liked Iris a lot. Probably more than he liked me. Who wouldn’t? But could she handle him for an entire day and night? There was a lot to do, and though he wasn’t helpless, he was weak.  Would it be rude to ask her?

“Jamie?”

“I...ah...my label. Wills told me a while back they’re talking about dropping me.” Iris stepped beyond the threshold and frowned, staring up at me, giving me the same look I’d seen from her a hundred times. It was there when one of my mother’s boyfriends nearly caught the house on fire. It was there when Nathan Black called me a dirty spic, and I got suspended for punching him out cold. That look was etched in worry, concern and just for me.

Unless, of course, she was just bored, and that look meant “hurry it along, asshole.”

“Why would they drop you?” she finally asked, eyebrows pushed together as she watched me. “Are they crazy?”

“Them? I dunno. Maybe. Everyone in the music business is crazy, but, well, as you know, chica, I’ve been a pendejo and amping up my rep is one thing...” I couldn’t look at her, knowing that I had glossed over mentioning how that video had boosted up my rep. “But being a dick and fighting with people, staying drunk for months at a time, producing nothing at all but trouble... well, they aren’t impressed. I’ve got to bring my “A” game, and Winston, my A&R guy, wants me in the studio in New York on Sunday.” Iris nodded, stepping back to stand in the doorway. I figured she was ready to slam the door in my face.

But Iris didn’t shut the door. She did what she’d always done. She listened.

“Anyway,” I said, leaning my back against the side of the house. “I was going to ask your mom if she would mind looking after Wills on Sunday while I’m in the city, but I’ll reschedule. They’ll have to understand.” I waved to her, sure she wouldn’t stop me, but turned, nodded at her when she called my name.

“Why didn’t you just call and ask me?”

I wanted to laugh. I wanted to remind Iris that I’d been doing that for months now. I wanted to remind her that I’d chased and apologized and made a damn fool out of myself, wanting her forgiveness. Begging for it with flowers and cards and messages she likely never heard. But there was something soft and sweet in her features then, something that reminded me of the girl I sat next to at that general assembly freshman year. The same girl who believed in me when no one else did. The girl who kept me lifted when life dragged me down.

“Well chica,” I started, swallowing to clear away the lump in my throat. “You, ah, haven’t answered my calls in seven months.”

“Oh.” Iris bit back a smile, but couldn’t hide the low blush that colored her cheeks. “Well, it’s Wills. That’s...well, that’s different. Of course I’ll stay with Wills.”

Iris looked over my head, shrugging one shoulder and keeping her expression blank. I knew that look, knew what it meant when she tried to play like she was indifferent. That small glimpse of her pretending not to be bothered meant more than I guessed she wanted to show me. If she didn’t care about me at all, I’d get a full glance, right in my face, and maybe a smile. There’d be no pretending because I wouldn’t even register.

“You sure?”

Another shrug and this time Iris rubbed the tip of her boot against the welcome mat, still not looking at me. “Yeah, it’s no big deal.”

I climbed up the step, moving closer to her, but still kept my distance, thinking of the things my father had never let anyone but me or Jimmy see. “He can get real cranky after his dialysis.”

“Okay.” Iris moved her hair behind her ear, holding my gaze for just a second before she straightened.

“And if you can’t pick him up or help him if he falls, call 911.”

“Jamie, it’s fine.” She waved at me, brushing off my worry. “It’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”

Iris was strong. She was smart, smarter than I’d ever be. The worry was there, but misplaced, and I decided to calm down. They’d be okay together, and I told myself that worry would only distract me.

I took her quick nod as a dismissal, but couldn’t bring myself to leave. Instead, I took another step, my moth pulled inextricably closer to her flame, damn the burning. She didn’t tense or turn her back on me. In fact, Iris didn’t do anything at all but watch me bend my head, a lame attempt to seem somewhere close to my old self. “Thank you. Really.”

There was a new freckle on her left cheek and the whiff of honeysuckle in her hair. I closed my eyes, grateful she couldn’t see that long blink behind my shades, and then I turned away from her, taking the steps two at a time.

“Jamie?” Those two syllables stopped me, had me turning toward her with something that felt like misplaced hope in my chest. “Don’t you dare let them treat you like shit. You’ve got more talent than anyone on their roster. You remind them of that.”

That hope blossomed just a bit, and I didn’t bother hiding my smile from her. “Yeah, okay, mami. I will.”

It was the wrong time to call her that. Too soon to remind her of the endearment, but I was too happy just then to get offended when she frowned, mumbling something rude under her breath before she turned around and slammed the door behind her.

It didn’t matter. My first fan, my first love, had just told me there was still something to believe in: myself.

CHAPTER ELEVEN 

Kenny Redman founded Riptide Records when he was twenty-five with fifty grand he got after taking out a second mortgage on his suburban New Jersey home. It had been passed down to him by his mother, a woman who’d used her dead husband’s pension to buy the place back in the fifties when not many women could afford to do something scandalous like buy their own property. Kenny’s mother, so he claimed, had been a good woman, hardworking, no nonsense, who didn’t believe in gambling, but he took that fifty grand, rented a nine hundred square foot space in the Bronx, and built a studio. The gamble paid off, and he gave his mother’s home to his kid sister and moved himself and his label to Manhattan when his first artist’s debut album went gold.

Kenny hadn’t signed me. He’d given that task to his kid, Ralphie Redman, but it was Kenny who sat across a massive mahogany desk nodding his head as he listened to the single I’d laid down the night before.

When the bridge started, and my voice sang out the chorus, repeating the first line of lyric with only a small alternation, Kenny nodded, signaling his assistant to cut the track.

Next to me, Winston leaned forward, elbows on his thighs as he looked up, watching his boss’s reaction. His brown gaze moved to me, and then the man shrugged. It seemed Kenny Redman, no matter how old, still hadn’t lost that poker face. He was still a fucking gambler.

“Lydia, I want a smoke” he said, moving his chair back as the woman leaned over to lift the lock from the old pre-war window behind her boss’s desk. They moved like they were dancing, him resting back against the plush cushion of his chair, her slipping a hand-rolled cigarette from the filigreed gold case, him inhaling deep as she lit it and dusted an ash from his jacket.

Despite the stench of smoke and the wrinkles covering his face, Kenny was still professional, still someone who could command attention and hold it. And if he didn’t like you, he could be one intimidating fucker. I got that’s what he was trying to do now: ignoring me, cutting off the track before it was finished in favor of sitting there, smoking, a huge plume of smoke half going around the office, half leaving through the open window.

I didn’t have time to cater to label bosses. My plane was leaving in an hour, and I needed to get back to Willow Heights.

“That magazine,” Kenny started, gaze unblinking as he drew in another drag from his smoke. “Which is it?” He moved his head toward Lydia, not bothering to shift his attention.

“Stage Dive,” the woman answered, deftly moving the ashtray closer to her boss’s flaking cigarette.

“That’s it.” He turned, snuffing out the smoke in the tray as he finally looked at me, returning to his desk. “That chick, the one in the video, she wrote that piece on you. Got it from a girl in Stage Dive’s office.” Kenny held out his hand when Lydia opened a manila folder, handing him a mockup of the issue in question.

This was the same mockup I’d read, but it wouldn’t be the final version of the article. Wills had told me as much before I left Willow Heights. The entire thing had been held back, just as soon as the hall of fame announcement was made. Iris never mentioned anything about updating the article, but when the editors heard the gossip that I was looking after my father as his health failed him, that I’d been asked to sing at the induction, they saw a chance to make the article even bigger. Unmasking Dash Justice to see the son, or whatever bullshit they were planning. I had no idea, since Iris still wasn’t saying much to me.

Kenny waved it in my direction, and I just caught the cover: my face, white, chipping stage paint and a half-smoked blunt in the corner of my mouth. Iris had taken that one after the Nashville show, but I’d been too blitzed to ask to see the proof. I looked like a real rock star—haggard, rough, like I didn’t care what anyone thought of me. Mainly, I looked like an asshole.

“I read it,” Kenny said, pushing the magazine toward me. “She’s a good writer, this girl you’ve been fucking with.”

Winston nudged my foot when some deep, unrestrained sound left my throat, and I took his warning. Kenny wasn’t exaggerating. I’d been fucking with Iris for years, until all that mierda came back on me. “That’s over now,” I told the man, moving back to rest against the chair. “I’m not interested in fucking with anyone.”

“Clearly.” When I tilted my head, lifting it off the back of the chair to look at Kenny, the man frowned, like I was some amateur. Like I hadn’t done anything to make him a fuck-ton of money

“Your meaning?”

“Look, I get that shit hasn’t gone the way you wanted with the girl.” He nodded to Winston, and the man grinned back at him. “This whole shock rock thing, it’s good. It’s what your fans expect, and it’s what made you a lot of money. But I think this thing with the girl and your pop...” at the mention of Wills, Kenny frowned, moving his hand as though the small wave was some sign of respect, “well, I get that things have changed for you, but you writing love songs about your hometown and some woman...” Kenny pinched the bridge of his nose and let out a long sigh, “I gotta be honest, man. I’m not impressed, and I don’t think your fans will be either.”

“And if I don’t care?” I asked him, because it was the only honest thing I could think of at the time.

Another nudge from Winston and I shook my head. “Look, I get that things are different. I get that you expect me to be a certain way, but I can only give you what I have. I create when I’m inspired, and this,” I waved toward the speaker next to Kenny’s laptop, meaning my single, “is what I was inspired to write.”

“Maybe,” Winston said, holding up his finger, in some attempt to ask his boss for permission. “And this is something Kenny’s been talking to me about, but maybe, Dash, if you got around some of your old crew, maybe did a few shows for a specific audience...”

“What audience?” I said, looking between Winston and Kenny.

“Savage Freaks,” the older man said, looking at me through his clasped fingers as he rested his elbows on his chair’s armrests. “Gunnar wants you on the tour, and I think it would do you some good. Get you out of this funk. They’re doing shows in Chicago at the beginning of May. With you performing at the induction ceremony, would be a nice boon for the tour, and with the article,” he nodded at the magazine on his desk, “that would set you up for some nice PR.”

I hadn’t done a Savage Freaks tour in five years and for good reason. There weren’t many real musicians on the tour, and the fans, well... They frequented the shows to party and break shit, something Gunnar, the headliner, encouraged. The guy was disgusting, and coming from Dash Justice, that was saying something.

“Isn’t he doing time for assault?” I looked between Kenny and Winston, then to Lydia when I got no answer. “Well?”

“He’ll be out in two weeks,” Lydia supplied, handing over a sheet of paper to her boss.

“This is the line-up and dates. Tell me what you think, if you can get your band ready by then, and we’ll set everything up.”

Gunnar Bloody had attacked one of the kids at his shows two summers ago. For the fourth time. He’d been accused of assault on nearly every tour he did and liked to set up a guillotine on his stage when he performed, finding it hilarious to threaten fans by bringing them on stage, putting them in the contraption and then jerking them out of the way just as the fake blade came down. He drank too much, had too many baby mamas, plus four ex-wives, and had been banned from at least five venues on the east coast alone. All that on top of what he’d done to Iris’s old editor.

Wills was still sick and likely to only get sicker. And Iris. Well, I didn’t know what would happen with Iris, but I did know I wouldn’t be winning any brownie points by using the release of the article to help promote a tour with Gunnar and the other freak shock rock bands on the tour.

“I’m not ready to tour, not with Lager living with me.” I pushed back the sheet, covering the magazine with it. “Besides, I’m working on music and don’t have enough to record. I need to write the new album.”

Kenny watched me, then shifted his gaze to Winston, moving back in his chair to rest his folded hands over his stomach.

“The thing is,” Winston started, patting my shoulder like I was a kid being told I was being held behind in third grade. “Kenny isn’t asking you to do the tour. He’s— well, Dash, he’s telling you need to get in line.”

I hadn’t noticed, but Lydia had closed the window and left the office with a soft click of the door. Kenny watched me, eyes moving into a squint as though he couldn’t quite see me but needed to examine my reaction. He was probably expecting me to yell or lash out. I thought Winston did as well, with how his hold on my shoulder tightened.

But I was past anger or disappointment. Too much had happened for those things to weigh me down. “Are you saying that if I don’t do the tour...”

“I’m saying,” Kenny said, “that what I heard today doesn’t encourage me.” He leaned forward, holding a gold Zippo lighter between his fingers. “I’m saying that I can hold your contract until I get the Dash Justice record I want. I don’t think you’re capable of giving that to me but...with this tour...”

“I can’t do the tour,” I said, brushing off Winston’s hand. “My father is dying.”

“And he’ll be dying whether you tour or not.” The forced sympathy Kenny had given me just minutes ago when he mentioned Wills’ name was missing from his tone. “Do the tour or lose your contract. Plain and simple.” He laughed at the frown I gave him. “Unless you want to hand over way more than you probably have to buy yourself out.”

I stood, ready to walk away and forget about Riptide or Redman or anything I’d done here in the past ten years.

“Dash, come on, man, it’s one tour,” Winston said, but I didn’t watch him. Instead I stepped away from the desk, from the assholes who didn’t get who I was now, or what I tried to do with that single. But Kenny called after me, his tone soft, a little sinister.

“You leave this label, and I still get anything you record until that last album stipulation is satisfied. And in case you forgot, you break the contract, and I get your masters. All your masters. That copyright doesn’t revert. I’ll sell your best songs to hemorrhoid companies and furniture stores.”

Everything I’d worked for could end right then. Every line. Every beat. Every award, every single fan that sang along to my music in their car, or while I sang on a stage. Kenny would fuck me, and none of that would mean anything anymore. I’d be a joke, worse than what I already was.

“I don’t know how to be Dash Justice anymore. I lost him because he’s not...who I want to be anymore,” I told them, hoping they could at least respect who I was trying to become. But men in suits who risk their family’s hard-earned legacy don’t care about growing up and getting better. Men like Kenny and Winston only cared about the unchanged and how it keeps the money rolling into their pockets.

“Then you better fucking find him,” Kenny said, tossing the magazine proof at me. “That asshole owes me an album.”

NO ONE BOTHERED ME on the plane, and I didn’t engage. First class was filled with businessmen—guys in Armani suits with Bluetooth devices nestled in their ears. There was a scattering of women, not including the flight attendants, but no one came near me, except the leggy redhead with dimples who stared at me as though she might know who I was under those ridiculous shades.

I tried to push the tone in Kenny’s voice out of my head and focus on what waited for me at home. Iris’s text to me had been short and to the point.

Wills is fine and sucks at dominoes.

A year ago, I would have never bothered to check on people back home. A year ago, I’d have probably taken Kenny up on the Savage Freaks tour without thinking, but then, a year ago, that tour wouldn’t have been necessary for me.

We headed over Philadelphia and the clouds engulfed the plane. There were labyrinth grids below us in patchwork colors and I rested back, rubbing the pad of my thumb against the stupid magazine proof that Kenny had thrown at me. My own face stared up at me, eyes narrowed, likely bloodshot. The black and white shot made the lines fracturing the whites of my eyes invisible.

“The Unmasking of Dash Justice” spread just under my chin in a thick, red font, with a subtitle that made me want to toss the magazine across the cab: What’s America’s God of Rock Hiding About Himself and His Legendary Father? The Story from the Woman Who Knows Him Best.

She did know me best, but she probably still hated me the most. No matter what looks Iris shot my way when I was feeling bad for myself or when her heart had gone soft because she saw how sick and weak Wills was growing, the fact remained that I had done something unforgiveable. I’d done a lot of unforgiveable things to her and would pay for them for the rest of my life.

I’d only half-read the piece when the editor sent it over, glossing over the behind the stage photos and quotes from people who pretended to know me, but I hadn’t read the whole thing. God knew what she had written about me, or what she’d add to the piece now that she’d landed the extension. I hadn’t paid attention when they first asked for my confirmation; the drunken stupor and heavy guilt had me passing along my blessing without thought or hesitation.

Coño.

Iris’s article might have contributed to the threat Kenny had just given me. And because I seem to relish pain, because, like my mother, I craved it, I did the only thing left to me at that moment. I finally read what Iris really thought of me.

DASH Justice smokes two packs of Marlboro Reds a day, but that’s not his worst vice. There are plenty more. Excess is something that may well be essential on tour. Do rock stars list ‘extravagance’ along with the brand of water or the air conditioning temperature they want in their dressing rooms? Touring with Justice makes you a witness to that excess and how it is traded like a commodity, and if there is something more than cigarettes and liquor that Justice depends on to keep his persona well padded, it is the finely constructed walls he’s placed around himself. There are large, imposing men surrounding him and his band as he leaves the stage through the thick smoke and orgasmic euphoric screams of the crowd, a set that has been constructed of props that evoke the sensationalism of a macabre orgy. The fans love it, and Justice clearly gets off on that adoration, but like the token guards that provide the buffer from that sated crowd, freshly figuratively fucked by Dash Justice, there is something in the way. The real face of a musician.

She hadn’t held back. She hadn’t hidden what she thought or what had been shown to her during the tour. The pages were thick, glossed to a shine, and I skimmed more paragraphs, catching full insults in some of the emphasized sections, lines that had been bolded and made larger to draw the readers’ attention.

He hides the pain of a broken childhood, lived in a home that never felt safe.

That much was true, and Iris knew it. She saw it firsthand. Each line tells as much about the writer as it does the subject. She is here, among the insults and criticism, reliving the past in every phrase of “when I knew him” or “the boy he used to be.” In some sections she sounded insulted, and she would have been when she wrote this, that was a given. But her hurt is clearer than the brutality that she uses to shoot me through an unfiltered lens.

I take each line of doubt and disgust like a lash that is self-earned and wonder when each insult was written—how far removed from that show and the final humiliation she had thought of it and committed it to paper. I wondered how much more she’d write or if what she saw of me and my father would paint a different view of the man I was trying hard to become.

Iris always knew me best. She was the only person I trusted to tell me the truth, but I hadn’t always heard her. Sometimes it took more than her words to convince me I was wrong, to remind me what I needed.

The last paragraph stabs like a broken rib, but I own it.

The kid I knew loved magic and melody and how both could come together to change a life and catapult a dream into something real. Now the dreamer has become a caricature of who he wanted to be, hiding behind white war paint, a self-proclaimed warrior who battles the world and anyone who threatens the loud, boisterous chaos that riots beneath his spiked boots. It makes me wonder: who is Dash Justice fighting more? The past or himself?

Once, she would have never had to ask that question; there would haven’t been a need. I’d spent years remembering every promise she broke, every whisper she swore was mine alone. Then I spent months on that tour with Iris finally at my side again, rebuilding something I let get broken when I was a kid.

What a pendejo I’d been. What an idiot.

But, God, was I really as horrible as all that? Did I hide? Was there nothing good left of the myth I created? I’d told her I was tired of Dash. I wanted to walk away, but sometimes when I thought of what a monumental job that would be, it leveled me. Starting over? Walking away completely? Coño, I just didn’t know if I had the sack to do it.

All I’d ever wanted was to make that magic and for Iris to live her dream, and that tour had been the beginning to something she’d reminded me I wanted.

The night before the Indy show, the night she let me love her again, had felt like coming home. She directed. She commanded, and I did what she wanted, so caught up in the need to touch her again. One slow smile, one honest request, and Iris was mine again.

“Mami, bésame,” I’d told her, overcome by her warm breath against my cheek and the sweet noises she made when I held her face. “Stay with me. One night, for old times. One night because we loved each other so much. One night to remember.”

I’d begged. I’d tasted, and to feel her on my tongue again had made me realize the taste of everyone who hadn’t been Iris had been bitter and plain. She opened for me, spread wide that sweet, soft pussy, so hot against my tongue, her thick, tight walls pulsing against my fingers as I touched her. I loved the sight of her sweet body arching toward me, moving closer because it felt so good to be tortured by my mouth after so long apart.

Then she’d moved to her knees directing, guiding me. “Get behind me,” she demanded, and it took all my self-control not to wither to nothing right then and there.

I slipped inside Iris then because it had been my place once. I returned to what had been mine, where we’d always be the happiest, the freest. She’d pressed and touched and took like she had all the times before, like she would again. Like I would stop hurting her. Like her secrets with my father wouldn’t get told to me in half understanding. Like I would forget that I was selfish and vain, that I had never let my guard down for anyone. Like I wouldn’t spend the next day planning to record us one last time and then force Landon into editing the video so that when the humiliation came again, it would cut deeper than any wound I’d inflicted before.

“I’m an idiot,” I told myself, throwing the magazine to the floor as I leaned back in my seat, closing my eyes against the grid of landscape below and the biting truth Iris had written about the man I’d become.

CHAPTER TWELVE

It was 1:00 a.m. when the Uber driver dropped me off, and I slipped into the apartment, making it to my bedroom first. Wills slept in the middle of my bed with Iris at the foot, a dog-eared book in her hands.

There was a small curve to her mouth, almost like a sleeping smile, and small noises moved from her nose when she breathed. The sight pulled me inside that room, and I knelt down, tracing the arch of her mouth and the sharp, severe lines of her cheeks as she slept. Would she wake up if I kissed her on the forehead? I’d done that a lot as a kid, when I was awkward and stupid and too damn scared to kiss her like I wanted. Now what I wanted didn’t matter. What I needed clearly didn’t either.

“Savage Freaks,” I whispered, and just the sound of the words off my tongue felt thick and bitter like acid.

Wills released a loud snore, and the spell was broken, sending me out of the room and down the back stairs to the shop below. Sometimes when Wills slept hard, when the snoring was very loud, I’d come down here and remember what it had been to discover my father. It seemed everything about my life came in segments: times before I had destroyed my career, my love, and my family with irrational cruelty, and after. When I thought about after too much, those memories of how good it had been to want Iris brought a sweetness that was caught up in hope and possibility. I craved the times we’d unearth new songs, sitting in this shop. Hours and hours we’d spend in the back of Hector’s shop, our heads together, sharing earbuds and closing our eyes against the vibration of the speakers on the hardwood floor.

Sometimes I missed that more than Iris, more than the taste and touch of her—I missed the thrill of a first song, a first dream. There weren’t any more of those to have.  

I didn’t crave anything now like I did then—no whisky, no weed; no woman would sate me like the thrill of hearing those songs and sharing those first listens with my best friend.

Hector’s office was nestled behind the counter and three rows of bookshelves that had once housed stacks of vinyl records. The linoleum was brown and dingy now, and the metal desk had a broken leg that made the whole thing wobble when you sat behind it.

I stuffed an old telephone book under the desk and dug out a nearly empty bottle of Jack, not bothering with a cup as I walked out of the office and stood in front of the record player I kept away from the front window. The player sat on top of a cedar cabinet of Hector’s that he’d scored at a thrift shop in Madison back when I was a kid and the record shop was in its prime.

The turntable wobbled when I clicked on the power. I steadied the needle, finding the slight indention in the vinyl, grooves set into those black lines from how often the record had been played. It never got old. It never failed to seep inside me and latch on tight. But I could never stop myself from listening. Even with everything Wills had told me about Crash and the birth of this song, to me it still belonged to Hawthorne, and more than that, it belonged to me and Iris.

Take a shot of me

Swallow me whole

I am bitter and dark

But yours to control

The Jack went down easy, a first for me. Maybe I’d gotten used to the bitterness. Maybe I didn’t know pain when it came to me. The music went on. A crackle, a pop, and the lyric entered my chest, the sound of my father’s guitar wailing like a temptress, and I welcomed the spell.

“Jamie...”

It wasn’t an invitation, my name spoken like that, and Iris didn’t expect me to turn to her, dropping the bottle so I could offer her my hand. There was surprise pushing up her eyebrows and dropping her mouth open.

But she didn’t turn away. She didn’t leave me alone in that shop.

It made no sense for her to let me hold her. I’d been the cruelest sort of friend to her. I’d hurt her the most, but we spoke a language that was older than we were. Despite everything, I thought we could still speak that language. Every look, every frown, every unspoken fear, all moved between us in silent expressions and quiet pleas. That night, I made one, and Iris answered it, stepping into the circle of my arms as the music went on wailing, ripping apart the tension that had grown heavy between us for years.

For just a few moments, I didn’t think about my guilt and her offense. I didn’t think about the damage my father had done to his own body or the healing my mother was trying to do. I didn’t think about how weak Iris had made me out to be in that article or the deal with the devil Kenny wanted me to make.

I didn’t think at all. I just held Iris, moving her against me as we danced, as my father’s voice rose in the dark record shop where we had fallen in love a hundred years ago.

I am gray

You are too

We share the night

And this heartache in blue

Iris fit against me like a whisper—soft, sweet, something that was precious. Something I was scared could easily slip through my fingers, but I’d never felt anything as sure, nothing that seemed so wholly mine as her.

Her breath moved against my chest, and I got wrapped up in that honeysuckle smell and the slow stroke of her long fingers against my neck. Long tendrils of hair fanned between us, and I slipped my hand up her back, keeping her still, counting each beat, each note as it went away, wishing I could make that moment last.

As the music faded and the soft crackle of vinyl took over, Iris stop moving but didn’t push me away. She went still, and kept her palm against my neck, her fingers at the ends of my hair.

I could only inhale, committing every curve of her body and slip of skin to my memory. I’d never bet to do this again. Not with her and I’d never get another chance like this one.

“I’d do anything,” I told her, tightening my eyes as I spoke. “To take it all back. Whatever you want.”

I wanted to stop her as she pulled away. I wanted to keep Iris in front of me, keep her arms against my back and her fingers in my hair, but she took a step away, her face flushed, eyes blinking quick. “It’s not that simple, and I’m not that forgiving.”

Iris didn’t flinch from me when I touched her face, and I swore there was something glinting in her eyes against the low lamp light behind us. Chances like this don’t happen twice. I had no plans to squander it. “Please let me try.”

“No,” she said, moving my hand from her face. “With you I’d always be looking over my shoulder.”

“Looking for what?”

That glinting shine went out of her eyes then and Iris took another step away from me, though I swore she fought the frown that hardened her features. “Looking to see if you’re trying to get your arms around me just enough to put a knife in my back.”

There was nothing aimed at her back, but just then, I swore I felt something sink deep into my chest. It felt a lot like loss.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“We could set up a sound booth in the old office, primo, and put up a wall between the front of the building and the counter. It could be bueno.” My cousin waited for a response, watching my face as I looked around the now-empty shop. Isaiah was always planning, always thinking ahead, and once I’d informed him about Kenny wanting us on Savage Freaks, my little cousin got busy planning for the day I’d sack up and walk away from my label. If I could.

Doubt still clouded my head, mixed with a little fear, but I listened to Isaiah when he offered suggestions. He hated Gunnar almost as much as Iris did, but then, the big Norwegian had stolen a girl Isaiah had cared a lot about. He’d never gotten over it and told me point blank he wouldn’t back me up on the tour if I said yes to Gunnar. 

“Maybe,” I told him, falling onto a stool while Kyle and Lou, my drummer and bass player, packed away their equipment. One glance around the old record shop when they walked through the door, and my band refused to play. Isaiah led the charge, barking orders to our bandmates and their women as we cleaned.

When the shop floor was visible, and they all took their time fawning over Wills, and he was too tired to keep center court, then we got busy playing. We played for six hours. We played old school music and stuff that didn’t have titles or were only half-realized melodies. My band and I got back to where we came from, starting from the beginning and exorcising the mierda that had led to our seven-month hiatus.

`Before all that though, I had to apologize.

“There’s no excuse,” I told them, pushing up my shades when one of the girls I didn’t know moved near the open door to Hector’s office, where I’d assembled my band. When the girl joined her friends, walking out of earshot, Lou reached over and shut the door. “What I did,” I continued, “it was low. I know that. I’m sorry to get you mixed up in my mierda."

“So,” Kyle had started, finally looking up at me for the first time since they’d shown up at the shop door. “We’ve all been a little stupid on the road, sleeping with girls who are willing, being immature, but dude, you gonna pull shit like that video again? Because, I gotta say, I got a daughter. I got sisters. Hell, my mom has a wife, and that shit ain’t cool.” He stretched his back, replacing the usual good-natured, always amused smile with something angry and hella scary. “Even if I didn’t have all those women in my life, that shit still wouldn’t be cool. I got zero time for assholes who insult women.”

“Trust me, neither do I.” When Kyle kept staring, seeming unconvinced I held up my hands. “On my life, I’m done being a pendejo.”

“Coño,” Isaiah had said. “You’ll never be done being a pendejo.” He slapped my shoulder, laughing with our bandmates. “That’s genetic code we can’t get rid of.”

My cousin was right. We came from a long line of assholes, but I was true to my word. I didn’t think I could go back to being who I was, and I damn sure wasn’t going to humiliate anyone again.

“It’s got potential,” I finally told Isaiah, waving at Lou as he and two of the girls left through the door. The small blonde that came with Kyle’s wife, the same one who kept throwing looks my way, was being obvious, something I tried to ignore. “The shop, I mean.” My cousin watched me looking over the area, thinking about dimensions and what it might cost me, all this. If I walked away from Riptide and took my band with me, it would likely break me financially. But hell, I’d be free to write what I wanted and get back to the magic that used to matter so much to me.

“Speaking of potential,” Isaiah said, lowering his voice. “Think you can skip out for a night?”

“Why?”

He threw a glance across the room, winking at the redhead he’d brought with him as the blonde whispered in her ear. Then my cousin gave me a smile that reminded me of our early tours, when I was lost and drunk and hated everyone in the world, myself most of all.

“Because, primo, it’s been a while, I know it has.” He turned so that only I could see his face, lowering his voice. “Willow Heights ain’t exactly a hot bed of activity if you’re lonely, and I know you and Iris aren’t...” He stopped, still not comfortable talking about Iris after years of pretending he’d taken her from me. I knew the truth, but that didn’t mean I’d eradicated the image of them together on his bed from my mind. Isaiah knew that too, and he hurried to deflect from his mention of Iris.

“The blonde. She’s sweet. She’s not a groupie, and she likes you.” He pulled on his jacket as he watched me. “Nothing wrong with having a good time.”

As habit, I moved my gaze across the room to the girl with the sweet smile. Her face was heart-shaped, and her eyes were brown, like melted chocolate. She was young—very young from the look of her—but she had curves of a woman and a smile that promised things she was probably too young to know. It would be easy to walk away from this place, from my sleeping father and the responsibilities I’d taken on, if only for a night. And coño, I was lonely. My body craved and wanted, and there was only so much you can do with your own hands.

But the morning would come, and I’d be in bed with a girl whose name I’d likely never ask. I’d smell of her until I came home, until I stood under my showerhead and washed away the traces of her from my body. Until the guilt came on me because I’d spent another wasted night taking something that should never be mine, and, like Iris had told me all those years ago, the girl would never compare.

“The woman who comes after me, all the women who come after me, are discount value,” she’d promised. “They can’t have you like I did.”

She made that promise fighting back tears, her face screwed up in rage. It was a curse that stayed with me. It was a promise that came to light. It was always Iris for me. It always would be.

“No, pai,” I told Isaiah. “I’m good. You have fun, and I’ll see you next week for rehearsal.”

He waited before he walked away, gaze moving over my features, focused on my eyes as though he expected me to change my mind. Finally, my cousin nodded, giving me a one-armed hug that I took without thinking.

The blonde took her time leaving, looking disappointed when Isaiah ushered them out of the shop. She glanced over at me, flipping that long, wavy ponytail off her shoulder, and I watched her move her hips, swinging with each step like teasing and seduction was hers from birth. I looked. I’m sprung, not dead, and when they’d cleared the door, I locked up after them, shutting off the outside light before I moved back into the room. My guitar lay against the stool and I picked it up, slipping off my glasses to see the strings and fret board in the low light of the room.

The song was done, but I still couldn’t figure out the second chorus. It seemed manufactured and a little too poppy, something my father had agreed with when I’d played it for him before my band arrived. Weak though he was from his dialysis, he still liked playing, offering unsolicited opinions and suggestions on chords.

But with the label and what Kenny wanted, Wills didn’t offer any advice at all.

“There are things, my lad, that you’ll have to sort out for yourself,” he’d said, tapping his fingers against his crossed legs as he watched me.

“That’s not very helpful.”

“The big decisions, Jamie, are the ones we can only make for ourselves.” He’d waved me off when I stood to help him up the stairs. “I’m right as rain. Just tired is all.” He’d made it halfway to the stairs, hand on the railing before he’d stopped, tossing a weak smile over his shoulder. “It comes to love, doesn’t it then?”

“What does?”

“Your decision, son.” Wills looked so tired then, exhausted by the day and the time that grew shorter with every breath. “You’ve got to decide whose love is more important to you. Your fans or your family. Your life or your career.”

My father never made anything easy. He came in like a hurricane, wrecking the perfect stupor I was building, bringing with him complication and illness, and now, after months of wanting to see Iris, she’d become a constant fixture. Because, again, Wills wanted it that way.

“She’s writing my biography,” he’d told me that morning, and I hadn’t missed the smug grin he wore. “But don’t get excited. She’s here for me.”

“You’re full of it,” I told him, head shaking when he frowned. “Seems to me you’re making good on that promise.”

“And what promise is that?”

“That you’d bring her here when I proved I was worthy.”

Wills’ laughter was loud and a lot insulting, but I didn’t bite like I knew he wanted. I kept on making his tea and finishing his breakfast. “Jamie, my lad, you are worthy, but not of her, not yet you aren’t.”

The truth was a biting ache, but my father gave it to me anyway. He did it laughing, too. With his remark and the lingering echo of what Iris had written in her article, I was starting to believe that there were lessons I’d convinced myself I didn’t need to learn.

The nob on the amp moved with a click when I lowered it, pulling in my Fender to see if the chord would sound different on the electric. The reverb and moaning vibration from it gave the tune a grittier vibe, and I worked through the intro, lyrics coming to me as they had before, while I played. This was her song, and it was the one that mattered most to me; a love letter I’d hoped would show Iris what she still meant to me.

We fall to ashes

We float away

Forget about the past

And the love we betray

My fingers moved, everything coming into sharp focus as I continued, and it was almost there; the melody and lines, the surrender that generally came when I wrote music. But then I heard the rustle of moving feet upstairs and I lowered my fingers from the guitar, listening for Wills’ call. It didn’t come, but there were footsteps, light, a little hurried moving down the steps and then Iris emerged from the shadows, her features tight, her eyes glistening.

“What’s wrong?” I stood, almost throwing my Fender into the floor mount. Fear took hold when she looked up at me and then my heart froze when she grabbed my hand. “Did he fall?”

“No,” she said, unable to keep the panic from her voice.

“Mami, you’re shaking.” She seemed too upset to glare at me for the slip. Instead, Iris let me move her, sit her down in the old office. The worn leather chair was split at the corners, but was the only seat not metal and uncomfortable that I had to put her in. “Tell me. Please, you’re scaring me.”

She pulled out of my touch, cupping her face in her hands, and I knelt down, holding each arm of the chair to keep from pulling her against me. She might be upset, but that didn’t mean she’d take just anyone’s comfort.

“I am so mad at him.” Then she slugged me in the chest. “And you. This is your fault—all this bullshit.” Iris wiped her face, and my jaw clenched as I moved my teeth together, expecting her to scream at me. “I was fine on my own, not knowing anything about music and Hawthorne and you...then you come busting in, and you play those records, and that music changed everything, Jamie.” Her words were clearer now, though none of the anger had left her. “I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for those records, or Wills, or you making me love them so much. I became obsessed with him—with music—because of the stories those records told and you...” Iris glanced at me through her shaking fingers, bottom lip trembling. “You should have just left me alone. You should have never talked to me that day at assembly.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, though I wasn’t. I’d never be sorry for that day.

“But you did, and I fell in love with that music and that man, and I chased that music, all the music, and found him and talked to him and loved him as much as his songs, even more and now I’m writing his story because I can’t just...” She didn’t pull away when I moved the hair from her face. “I can’t tell him no because I love him. He’s not my—he’s your father, but I still love him.”

“Florecita, you’re not making any sense.” I let her go on crying, wiping the tears away when they came, enjoying just the smallest thrill that came from helping her even as small as this was. “Please, mami, tell me what’s got you so upset.”

“His cousin.” She sniffed, looking irritated at her own tears as she shook her head. “He told me earlier; his cousin isn’t a match. There’s no match, Jamie.”

The dread came in quick, like Iris had slapped me, and there was no fight in me to defend myself. It wasn’t what she needed, but I sat back, on my knees, trying to get the sick feeling in my gut to settle.

“Coño...” I muttered, uselessly, close to joining Iris in her fear and worry. My father had only been with me a little more than a month, but he was still important to me. Losing him would hurt more than I’d have ever guessed.

“You have to try, okay? Try harder to get him to agree to you donating.” I blinked, head shaking as she grabbed me. The sweet scent of honeysuckles swept into my nose, and I also caught the scent of bourbon, heavy and thick on her breath. “I don’t care what you have to do, just please, I’m begging you, make him say yes.”

“I will.” It had been my plan for weeks now. I just never knew how to ask him about it. Anytime I tried, Wills would think of some question to ask me—things that didn’t matter, like the first time I rode a roller coaster or how my mother liked her new part time job at the library in Madison. Even while they cleaned his blood during dialysis, Wills would bring the conversation away from his illness, away from anything that made him seem weak or needy.

But I couldn’t make a promise to Iris and break it. Not now. Not anymore. Hadn’t I just told Isaiah I was done being a pendejo? I had to try harder.

“Jamie, are you sure you’ll try?” she asked me, her breath more even, her hands still shaking against my neck as she held onto my collar. “Please don’t say you will and then let something else distract you. This is too important...”

“Mami, I swear, nothing in the world is more important to me than mi familia. Nothing.”

I couldn’t tell Iris about Kenny and Gunnar Bloody. I couldn’t talk to her about my decision, and how it would change everything in my life. Not when she cried on my shoulder. Not when her heart was breaking for the short time my father had left.

She seemed to believe, and, better still, didn’t pull away from me when I kept her in my arms, moving my fingers into her hair as I whispered things I hoped made her feel better.

“He matters to me,” she admitted. “He’s important.”

“Florecita, he matters to me too.” I held her face, holding my hand against her cheek as I caught her attention. “He’s my blood. Mi familia. For once, that means more than anything to me. Almost as much as...”

She watched me then, eyes still wet and shining, but soft, searching as she shifted her gaze over my face. That sticky-sweet breath warmed my skin, tickled against my nose as we stared at each other, and I didn’t move, too wrapped up in her stare, in how moving away from me seemed impossible for her.

My breath went still, held in my lungs when Iris moved, chin trembling, eyes slipping closed as she moved toward me, landing a soft, sweet kiss against my mouth. There were tears pressing against my face and salting my bottom lip, but I didn’t move or react or do anything but pray for that moment to pause—not stop, not reverse, but pause without any chance of ending. I wanted her to stay there, pressed against me, taking whatever she wanted from me.

“Jamie,” she said, like I wasn’t in the room, a soft whisper of sound that might have been a promise, maybe a curse, but I took it anyway. Then Iris inhaled, jerking away from me, and I lowered my hands from her, knowing that clarity had returned and the flash of memory, of all my sins had broken through the conscious thought that had been clouded by her worry and fear.

She didn’t apologize for kissing me. She didn’t frown or make some excuse. Iris simply nodded, face flaming red as she dried her face with the back of her hand. She glanced away before she got up, leaving me sitting there in front of the empty leather chair, wondering how in the hell I could keep an impossible promise or whether that kiss would be the last Iris ever gave me.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I slept for a week with the memory of Iris’ breath against my mouth. Dreams are a funny thing, really. Part illusion, all fantasy, but somewhere in the middle of all of that is a hint of memory. Something bitter, something sweet, something we wish we could recall and keep in the palm of our hands. Then there are some that we want to pull from our minds, like a string frayed in the hem of an old sweater. Pull on it and it tears. Clip it and it goes away. That’s what memory had done to me, made worse by the constant recall that Iris had come to me, had wanted my comfort, even if it didn’t last.

We had the same worry. We were both caught by the same fear. The difference between me and Iris, though, was that she wasn’t a liar. I’d tried again to ask Wills about using my kidney, this time just as they’d begun dialysis a day after Iris came to me in the shop. Like usual, he waved me off, asking if I’d made a decision before he gave me a side-eyed glare. That look was all the lecture I needed.

“Fine,” I’d told him, “but this conversation isn’t over.” I ignored his low, “Tis,” and left the man be as they cleared the junk from his body.

Now the old man sat on my recliner, attention flitting from the national news and whatever ridiculous thing the politicians were trying to do now and his own acoustic Gibson in his hands as he strummed songs and chords I couldn’t quite place. Iris stood across from me at the island, chopping cucumbers for the salad she made as I seasoned the salmon for the cooktop. She hadn’t looked at me directly, likely still embarrassed by the kiss she gave me when her emotions had gotten the best of her. Clearly, that had been a slip she hadn’t meant, not if she could barely look at me.

But that didn’t mean she had forgotten about the promise I made. “Did you ask him again?” she whispered, shooting a glance at my father, I assumed to make sure he hadn’t heard her.

“I tried.” Her low grunt told me well enough that she didn’t believe. “Hey,” I said, tilting my head to catch her gaze, “I told you nothing matters more than family. I meant that. That’s the only thing on my mind right now.”

I needed to stop making promises to her. After all the lies and betrayal, all the hurt that kept those walls between us, you’d think that was a lesson I should have learned. But something about Iris made me want to be better. I wanted her to be happy and have the things she needed. I wanted to deserve her. Funny thing was, sometimes I didn’t have control when it came to giving her what she wanted.

Wills had been strumming something fast, something that drowned out the noise of the news and the slip of the professional, smart-looking anchors discussing politics and international issues that scared the shit out of me. Now they’d moved on to the mundane, pointless celebrity fodder. We were caught in our own tasks, and Wills was lost to his music. Ten minutes in, as the white noise of stories went on, the three of us stopped still, attention on the television when my name was announced.

“For all you die-hard shock rock lovers out there who have wondered when Dash Justice would surface after that scandalous sex tape story, your wait is over. According to his label, Riptide, Justice and his band have signed on to do the reunion of the Savage Freaks tour, set to launch this summer.  This tour promises to be a riot with the return of its founder, Gunnar Bloody, just to be released from his stint in Rikers Island for assault.”

The clang of the plate I held as it hit the floor was deafening. “Son of...”

“What?” Iris cried, dropping the knife. “You’re touring while Wills...”

“No!” I shook my head, looking between Iris and my father. “I never said...”

“You’ve decided then?” my father said, leaning back in the recliner. There was a definite disappointed scowl he tried and failed to hold off his face.

“Decided what?” Iris threw down the cucumber in her hand, and it rolled onto the floor. “And with that asshole? What happened to ‘nothing else matters but mi familia?’ Was that just some bullshit you said to get me to stop crying?”

“You made her cry?” Wills moved the guitar to rest against the recliner and tried to get up, stumbling once before I caught him.

“No. I didn’t.” The noise of Gunnar’s latest release boomed through the speakers, and I grabbed the remote from the side table and clicked off the set. “I didn’t make her cry,” I told my father before I watched Iris, shoulders lowering when she pulled a dish towel from the counter and wiped her hands dry. She already had her bag over her shoulder before I could stop her from leaving the kitchen.

“Well, go on then. Go after her, mate,” Wills said, steadying himself against the island, and I heeded his words, trailing behind Iris before she hit the bottom step.

“Will you hang on a second?”

Iris turned, but she wouldn’t look at me, deciding instead to watch the alleyway and then the full moon over head.

“I didn’t agree to anything. Kenny wants me on the tour if I want to stay on with them. If not, I’ll have to buy out my contract.” I scrubbed my face, my fingers already stinging against the cold in the air. “I’ll be broke if I do that, so it’s complicated.”

“Money.” Iris shook her head, her nose turning red at the end as her breath fanned and fogged from her mouth. “Fame. Tours...God, Jamie, you haven’t changed, have you?”

I stepped back, feeling like I’d been slapped. I may haven’t made the most of myself in the past seven months, but I had changed. “Haven’t changed...” Why couldn’t she see it?

“Don’t act all hurt, Jamie. Shit, you won’t even walk around this town without your shades on.” Iris’s voice lowered, and when she spoke, each word felt like an accusation I didn’t deserve. “You’re still hiding. You always hide from the world...” She exhaled as though she was too exhausted to fight with me. As though all the energy had gone out of her. “I keep asking myself what I’m doing here. If it’s just for Wills. I told my mother...” She waved her hand, deciding to keep whatever she was going to say to herself. “She thinks you’re trying, but you know, no amount of fixed pickets and mended porch boards is going to change the fact that you have no clue what’s really important.”

“I know what’s important,” I yelled, pointing toward my apartment behind me. “My father...”

“You keep saying that and then you let something like this get announced. All those people who believed you hated Wills when you bailed on the interview are going to be proved right if you do that tour, especially with that disgusting piece of shit.” She backed away, tugging her coat closed before she turned, hands stuffed in her front pockets. “Are you ever going to stop disappointing me?”

Iris didn’t wait for an answer. She turned, leaving me on my own as she disappeared down the alleyway, away from me and all my meaningless excuses.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Wills wanted to celebrate making it another year. Sixty-one was a monumental feat, considering the life he’d led. Or so he promised.

“Never thought I’d make it to thirty, if I’m honest. Every decade after that is surplus.”

We were celebrating that surplus on a frigid, Saturday night in early February, with steaks, wine and the awkwardness that could only be provided by my mother, my ex-girlfriend, and her mother, who still wasn’t so sure she’d forgiven me for being a jackass, no matter how many chores I did around her property.

Luckily, my band filled in the lows of conversation, and Isaiah especially squashed the awkward silences when someone who didn’t know them asked my parents how they’d met or when they’d divorced.

“Never been married, mija,” my mother provided when Kyle’s wife sat next to my mama. “Too wild for marriage.”

On the tip of my tongue was “or a kid,” but I held that back, trying like hell to remind myself that we were all starting over, though Iris, at first, seemed to ignore that fact. She wasn’t as livid at me as she had been the week before, after the announcement, but I think her good mood had more to do with the wine she drank than with any ideas about starting over.

My father worked some serious magic, and Mrs. Daine, it turned out, was impressed by him, even laughed at his obvious flirting. To Iris, of course, Wills could do no wrong.

But it was my mother who brought the most calm, something that was out of character for her. She kept smiling at me, touching my arm, patting my face, and moved around my apartment, refilling drinks, making sure anyone who was hungry had a full plate. A couple of times, when someone commented on how generous she was, or how sweet, I’d catch Iris’s eye or Isaiah’s, and we’d shake our heads, or shrug. This new Juanita was nothing like the woman who made me. She was helpful; she listened, and advised even with the most mundane things. And, it turns out, she could be sentimental.

“I’d like to raise a glass to Wills,” she’d started, grabbing the attention of the loud crowd, and, as habit, my face flushed and I stood back, near the corner of the kitchen, waiting for whatever embarrassing thing would come out of her mouth.

She looked beautiful, dressed more conservatively than I’d ever seen her, in a modest pair of jeans and purple cardigan. Her hair fell around her waist and was straight and clean. Her makeup wasn’t overdone, and in her glass was pineapple juice, and nothing else. I’d been the one to make the drink for her.

“To the man who blessed my life. You may have brought the world together with your talent and music, but you brought the world to me with my son. Thank you, mi querido. I will forever be grateful.” She wiped her eyes, smile wide and brilliant. “To Wills.” Everyone echoed the toast, and my mother looked at me, winking. Iris came next to me, holding a full glass of red.

“I don’t understand how you could forgive her so quickly.”

We stood arm to arm, watching as Juanita hugged my father, as he rested his hand against her waist and whispered something that made her laugh. They had both destroyed me, in their own ways, but I couldn’t hate them. That took too much energy.

“She’s my mama. I’m not going to get another one.” I downed the rest of my bourbon, setting the empty glass on the counter in front of me. “Besides, you didn’t ask me why I forgave Wills so quickly.”

“Wills neglected you; he didn’t abuse you.”

“Semantics.” I turned to her, my fingers itching to touch her. “It’s a lot of work keeping up with the list of people who’ve wronged me. I’m tired of doing it. Especially since I know my name is at the top of so many similar lists.”

Iris turned from the crowd, watching me close. Something familiar caught in her eyes then, a glint of memory, a flash of light that reminded me of the way she used to see me. Before I destroyed everything.

“You get that from them.”

“What do I get?” I said, stepping closer. She didn’t retreat. She didn’t stiffen or frown, like our argument the other night had never happened. I wasn’t going to remind her of it and I wasn’t going to question why she looked at me the way she was.

“That charm, and the insufferable way you can smile or tell a joke or bite your damn lip, and every bad thing you’ve done are somehow erased from memory. Or at least, forgotten for a moment.”

“Am I charming you now?” I engaged that smile, because coño she was in a good mood, and I liked how her grin lit up her entire face. She was probably a little buzzed, and her anger only simmered instead of boiling up to the brim just then. That might change, but right then I took advantage of her mood.

“Well...” Iris laughed when I leaned toward her, and she pushed on my chest like she didn’t really want me so close but couldn’t find the fight to tell me to leave her alone.

“You’re drunk, florecita.”

“A little,” she admitted, moving the tips of her fingers over my arm.

“Then let me get you some coffee.”

She sighed, resting back against the stool next to the island as I walked to the other side of the room where Isaiah had set up a makeshift bar.

The crowd was getting louder, and someone cranked up the volume on the stereo, an old Crash Nelson song that made Wills bob his head and smile wide. It was a good night—the laughter and the buzz of conversation stirred something sweet inside me that I didn’t want to let go of. It was nice to feel connected again, to see people I loved and remember the good, to let go of the bad that seemed so constant in my life the past few years

The feeling was intoxicating, but even as I fixed Iris’s coffee, no sugar, two creams, I felt that sweetness dim. The hair on the back of my neck rose, and something unsettled and restless turned inside my guts as a loud voice shouted over the crowd across the room.

“Shit,” I said, forgetting the coffee as Winston and Gunnar walked through the door, and the crowd went quiet.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“Look at this motherfucker right here.” Gunnar shot the insult at me with a smile. It wasn’t something I hadn’t heard from him before. The man was rude. He was loud; the kind of guy that invaded your personal space just to have a conversation and didn’t back away no matter how many times you asked him to.

Gunnar was an asshole from Norway that had invaded the states at fifteen, living off an elderly aunt until she died and then spent the next five years as a street kid in L.A., having nothing left of the old lady’s estate after he’d shot up, snorted, and drank all of it. He’d been Asbjørn back then and lucked up when Ronnie discovered him singing on the corner of Hollywood and Vine for pocket change.

The tall, wannabe Viking walked toward me, arms wide open like I was supposed to run to him, welcoming him like he was an old friend and not just some jackass I used to party with when I was young and stupid, fucking or drinking anything that would put the memory of Iris in my rearview.

“Dude,” I said, holding a smile on my face that shook. I had no clue why Winston had brought Gunnar here, or what either of them expected from me by showing up. Still, he was the sort to cause a scene, and in Willow Heights, that was more noise than I wanted to make. I didn’t need this jackass raising hell and leaving me to clean up the mess I was sure he’d make. “Pai, how’s it going?”

“How’s it going? Ah, motherfucker, I’m out and ready to party.” He tightened an arm around my neck, hugging me as he pounded a fist against the back of my shoulder. “You asshole, yeah? What are you doing having a party and not inviting me over? I’m out now. I could use a party.”

He turned then, ignoring Isaiah when my cousin glared at him, and Gunnar took Isaiah’s bottle of Patron and guzzled down half of it before I could extract it from his hand.

“Easy, acho. Chill.” I waved off my cousin when he stepped forward, ushering Gunnar to the sofa and away from my band with Winston at my elbow. “What the fuck are you doing, bringing this pendejo to my home?” I asked the man, voice low. “I don’t need the headache he’ll cause in my hometown.”

“Relax. Kenny just thought Gunnar could encourage you to sign up for the tour.” The big man eyeballed one of the girls who’d joined Kyle’s wife and the other girlfriends, licking his lips when he caught sight of someone who must have met with his approval. To Gunnar, Winston passed a joint, and the Norwegian lit it up, right there in the middle of my living room, ignoring the frown he got from my mother when he blew smoke in her direction.  

“Kenny’s already telling people I’ve signed up. Without giving me a heads-up.” To my right, Gunnar inhaled the joint, laughing when my mother told him he was rude for smoking that “thing” in the middle of her son’s party.

“Mama,” I cautioned, eager to keep the peace, and she shook her head, moving from the sofa to sit next to Wills on the recliner. I didn’t care if Gunnar or Winston got offended by anyone telling them to leave. I was more worried about the shitstorm Gunnar could make. I’d seen firsthand a few years back what he was capable of, and it wasn’t pretty. It had taken his manager six months to settle the chaos that jackass left in hotel after hotel, when Gunnar set off on a three-week bender that ended with a fire, a pregnant minor, and the girl’s father, who went after the Norwegian with a shotgun.  

The memory reminded me of Gunnar’s antics, and how nothing could make him remorseful. Even two years at Riker’s. Thinking of that, I jerked a look over at Iris, frowning when I spotted her expression. Gunnar was the last person she wanted to see, I knew that. He’d spent months locked up for hurting someone she cared about, all because he didn’t know how to take no for an answer.

“Hang on a sec,” I told Winston, heading straight toward Iris, bypassing the looks I got as I crossed through the crowd. When I reached her, Iris already had a slow twitch pulsing under her right eye and I knew something vicious was itching to leave her mouth. “Mami...”

“You invited that asshole here?”

“You know I didn’t.”

She kept her gaze focused, razor sharp as she watched him, and I pulled her aside, drawing her away from the crowd to look down at her. “Please don’t read anything into this. Winston just showed. I didn’t know...”

She didn’t slur when she spoke, and the glare she shot at Gunnar was steady. His appearance seemed to sober her, and it took the teasing light from her earlier expression. “Old habits, Jamie,” she said, her voice low, as though she hadn’t meant for me to hear her. Then, Iris looked at me, the tension I’d seen from her when she first came to the hospital to see Wills, back to harden her features.  “They never die.”

“What?”

She didn’t look mad. Iris looked, in fact, a little defeated, beyond any surprise or expectation and I hated that look. It didn’t belong on her face. “You left me messages telling me how you wanted to be who you were. You said the life you led, the music you made, and the company you kept wasn’t enough anymore.  You told me it would never be enough for you.”

I stepped back, my chest feeling tight at Iris’s confession. “You listened to them?” I asked, wanting to touch her right then. Wanting to kiss her and swear I’d meant every word I’d told her in those messages.

But she closed her eyes, folding her arms like she’d gotten cold in just those few seconds talking to me.  Like her small revelation wasn’t important. “You’re not finished with Dash yet, are you?”

“It’s...not that simple,” I told her, because it wasn’t. I wanted to work. I wanted to avoid losing everything I had because I refused to do one tour. “Sometimes we have to give the devil his due.”

“That devil almost killed my friend.” Her voice rose over the crowd, and I could feel the stares and judgement of the people I loved on my back. It wasn’t a good feeling.

“Iris...please,” I said, reaching for her, trying to hide the disappointment I felt when she jerked out of my grasp.  “It’s one tour and then I can walk away. Completely.”

“It’s always one more tour, one more record. It’s always another excuse for why you have to put yourself first.  Another reason to hide who you are from the world.”

“Fuck, Iris, isn’t this what you wanted for me?” I leaned closer, so only she could hear me. “Isn’t this life why you and Isaiah lied to me about being together? Because you wanted me to live the life I wanted, and now...you think I should give all that up and go back to what I was before? You think I want to be poor and destitute, depending on other people for food and shelter?  Shit, what do you want from me, really?”

There was no noise in the room then. There was only the silence left by our argument and the clink of glasses and ice behind me. Iris watched me close, expression empty, and I hated that she wasn’t mad. I hated that she seemed to feel nothing at all.

“I want what I’ve told you I wanted for seven months. I want you to leave me alone.”

Then I realized, right then, I’d never make up for what I’d done. I’d never be trusted. Not with Wills, and not with her. No matter what I did, it wouldn’t be enough. I could try. I could work and sacrifice and spend the rest of my life trying to prove I wasn’t the monster she’d made me out to be, and still, it would be there. In the back of her mind, she’d only expect the worst.

I didn’t stop her when she left, and I didn’t turn to face anyone behind me. I followed behind far enough that Mrs. Daine passed me by, and I watched both women get in Iris’s car and drive away. Then I went into the record shop, ignoring the party. Forgetting the pendejos who’d ruined the night. I went into that shop and finished the song I’d been writing for her.

I’d walked away once and thought it might break me. I could probably do it again. I didn’t want to, but as I sat on that metal stool, in that frigid shop, with darkness surrounding me, I realized Mrs. Daine had always been right. I’d never measure up. Hurt kept coming from me, and it always landed on Iris. It was time I redirected where that hurt landed.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The noise of the dispersing party faded a half-hour ago. There were lights from the cars and the crunch of wheels on gravel that went on for twenty minutes before the building was quiet except for the electric sound of my amp humming and my mother and Wills’ mumbled conversation in the apartment above.

The strings vibrated under my fingertips, and I closed my eyes, funneling everything I felt into the strum of notes; I wrote something deep that night, something that cried from my soul because my splintered heart could not be brought back together again. Mrs. Daine had told me when I loved someone, truly loved them, then I’d sacrifice my own desire for what they needed. And just then, recalling the look on my florecita’s face and the disappointment I knew colored her pale skin, I realized I’d never loved her, not until now. Not until this moment. We’d spent years wanting the same things, dreaming the same dreams, but I’d always wanted for her what I’d hoped for myself. Not once did I realize loving Iris meant being willing to let her go.

Now I did, and the understanding of that soul-quaking reality spilled into each chord I played and lifted from the cry of my guitar.

“Jamie.” My father’s voice was quiet, a deep resonance I heard clearly though it was little more than a whisper.

Wills had never let on that I disappointed him. Not in the weeks he’d been with me. He’d been angry. He’d been proud, but he’d never let me know when I’d let him down. Now he did, and I couldn’t tell if it was because I’d decided to let her go or because I’d finished the song he’d helped me build. We’d been constructing something new, something filled with our DNA, bits of who we were and who we wanted to be, and I’d moved ahead of him. I’d finished it first.

I didn’t stop playing as my father came into the room, but I moved my head in his direction, eyes still closed as the song moved forward.

“It’s good, lad.” It wasn’t the compliment that stopped my playing. I’d made a promise to Iris, one I intended to keep. One I’d held inside for myself too.

“Do you think I’m beyond redemption?” I asked him, resting my hands on my guitar as I watched my father slip into the leather seat in front of me. It was still stiff and split at the corners, but at least we’d pulled it out of the old office.

“No,” he said, leaning forward to lay his palm against my arm. “O’course I don’t.”

Wills had avoided this subject for almost two months. Deflecting, rejecting, all because, I guessed, he didn’t want to seem weak. Because he’d felt guilty about using Iris’s past relationship with me to save his life. Now there was little time left. Now saving my father was the last good thing I could do.

“I don’t think you are either.” He held my gaze, and the grip on my arm tightened. “I don’t say this to many people, but you mean a lot to me, Wills.” He went still then, eyes sharp and I continued, bringing in a lungful of air before I looked at his squarely in the face. “We missed a lot for a long time, and you’ve become someone I make exceptions for. You’re a big exception to my hard and fast rule of keeping people at a distance.”

Wills smiled, one side of his mouth going up. “Well, lad, I love you, too, don’t I?”

“Do you really?” He nodded, eyes soft now and shining against the lamp light. I moved on my stool, shifting close enough to my father that our knees almost touched. “Then let me save your life.”

“No...son...”

“Please,” I said, simply and something in my tone stopped my father cold. “I don’t have much left, not many exceptions at all. Let me do one good thing.”

Wills Lager was a tough man. He’d survived loss and struggle. He survived every day in his failing body, and he’d one day leave behind a legacy that no one would ever be able to touch. Kids for generations would hear his music and know that Wills was an original not to be duplicated. He was my father, stubborn to the last, but something in his features just then told me he’d stop turning me down.

“Fine,” he finally said, leaning against the arm rest. “I’ll do it...for you.”

“Good.” I put down my guitar, linking my fingers together to look at him. I didn’t want to blink or give him any ideas about me not being sincere when I made my request. “Just promise me one thing.”

“Name it.”

“Iris isn’t to know that I was the one who donated a kidney.”

He waited, frown instant, wrinkles deepening as he went on watching me. “You don’t want her to know you were selfless?”

“She should be allowed go the rest of her life thinking the worst of me. It’s all she’s ever seen from me.”

“Jamie...”

“It’s the only stipulation I have—that and a few days to take care of some business in New York. Then my kidney is yours.”

Wills nodded, and the wrinkles crowding his face relaxed. “She deserves to know.”

“No,” I told my father, nodding toward the guitar next to his chair before I picked up my Fender again. “What she deserves is to be free. I’m finally giving her that.”

My father didn’t argue anymore. He played behind the notes I’d constructed, matching me, backing me up, and for a long time there was nothing in that room but the music we made together and the hope that our melodies were just beginning.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

I expected the mailbox to be full, but Iris never let that happen. Her cousins needed her, and she’d occasionally clear out the emergency number messages to make sure no one got missed should they decide to call.

But I wasn’t her family leaving a message for Iris or her mother. I was calling the number to say goodbye one last time.

“Mr. Mellings told me to sit by you. Did you know that? The Midwestern horde didn’t know what to make of me, even from day one, and so that man spotted me, saw I wasn’t blonde or blue-eyed, that I fit better with you than any of the white kids who always stared at us when we walked down the hallways together. I never thanked that white man for telling me about you, but every night that I pray— and yeah, I still do sometimes— I thank God for the other brown kid in that assembly.

“You make me think and breathe and love. You kept me sane. You were my first fan and my biggest support. You were my beginning and my end, and I know that I hurt you. I know that I keep hurting you, probably because we always hurt the best part of ourselves. Make no mistake, Florecita, I am nothing, will never be any good to anyone because you aren’t here. I go on, I work, I live, but I will never be home again. Not without you. You are braver than I could ever be, and you deserve to have everything you want, even if you want those things without me.

“So here goes, the biggest words I’ve ever spoken. The only selfless thing I’ve ever done in my life. I love you, mami. More than music, more than myself. The only magic I ever really made was the love I had with you. But it’s time for me to let you go. I’m sorry I hurt you. I’m sorry I ruined us. I’ll never stop loving you.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The Plebes had taken the first songs. They were old and sacred, the honest stories my father and his band told to the world when they were just kids. But that first group who’d set me on my own journey got to start Hawthorne’s induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. There were artists I knew well, that sang one song after another, coaxing the crowd to their feet as each familiar tune incited them to move and dance and remember.

Then, the lights went dim, and there was only the slow, inconsistent hum of whispering voices, and my band behind me, moving like shadows in the darkness. I stepped to the mic and released the first note.

It wasn’t a Hawthorne song. It was Crash’s, but “Heartache in Blue” was the only way to honor the man who changed me. The spotlight started on my feet and shifted higher as I sang, the catcalls and whistles like a backbeat of sound. 

Take a shot of me

Swallow me whole

I am bitter and dark

But yours to control

The soft noise of conversation rose around with the lift of light and sound, and I went on, head down, eyes shut tight as I sang, long hair covering my face. that the murmur of voices amped up in direct correlation to the rising light.

Then, the second verse arrived, and I looked up, pushing my hair off my forehead, letting the light soak into my naked skin. No paint. No smears to mask me. No shades. For the first time in my professional career, the world saw me just as I was.

Dash Justice was unmasked.

The gasps were audible, but I ignored them. The stage lights rose, and I finished the tune, belting out each note, relishing the sweet buzz of surprise that waved over me.

I am gray

You are too

We share the night

And this heartache in blue

They clapped and cheered, and went a little wild when the song ended, and I still held onto the mic, grinning and moving my gaze over the crowd of shocked faces.

“If you’ll indulge us,” I started, waving a hand to calm the noise of voices, “my father would like us to play something new. Something the two of us wrote together.”

The cheers were deafening now as Isaiah and the rest of my band made room for the members of Hawthorne on the stage. Wills walked toward me, looking plumper than I’d seen him, his face fuller and complexion tanned from the eight-week rest he’d gotten in Belize after the transplant surgery. There was a scar I’d wear next to my ribs and a twinge in my side that still hadn’t quite gone away, but it didn’t matter. I’d trade a thousand scars, a million aches, to have Wills at my side, strapping on a guitar, ready to play the song we’d written together.

“This is ‘Florecita,’” I said, wondering where Iris was in the crowd. Then Wills started the intro, catching my gaze when I looked away from the tables and faces in front of us. He nodded, pulling my attention to the right side of the auditorium, to the round table where my mother sat with Iris and Mrs. Daine.

I managed one glance at her, but didn’t linger. This was for her. This was my goodbye and I wanted the world to hear it. I wanted them all to know that Iris Daine was nothing like I’d made her out to be.

No one could touch her. Not even me.

There’s a broken curb on Main Street

And a crooked pole downtown

But the leaves are red

And the lights are always on

This is the place I come to

When I wanna watch the dawn

The crowd was hushed, awed, and Wills stood at my side, eyes shut tight, smile stretching wide as he took over.

We fall to ashes

We float away

Forget about the past

And the love we betray

But you’re deep inside me

The deepest part 

Only good I’ve ever known

Sharpest crack in my wasted heart

I couldn’t help myself. No matter that I felt exposed, open to the world as I picked up the song. The mic didn’t hide me, and I sought a friendly face, or at least one that would get me to some semblance of calm. But when I spotted her, Iris’s expression was unreadable and blank. So, I shut my eyes again, pulling forward the memory of that sweet girl in the freshman assembly, of the beautiful woman who lifted me up when I thought my world was crumbling, time and time again. I sang to my florecita, to the girl who lived in my memory unscathed by the person I’d become.

Here’s the place I found you

Here’s the streets we’d roam

This place is my town

But you’ll always be my home.

My father helped me with the chorus, and our voices slipped together just octaves apart. We looked nothing alike, but our voices were similar, and the presence we had on the stage echoed each other. I was his son, that much the world could see just watching us perform together.

You’re deep inside me

The deepest part

Woman who healed me

Brought back together my damaged heart

I opened my eyes, gaze focused on Iris as I sang, and the music went low, a lull in the melody to emphasize the words, one last goodbye that I wanted her to hear from me alone.

And I would do anything

To win back my friend

Do the hardest, give you up

But keep you inside this wasted heart ‘til my story ends.

When the last note sounded, and the music went quiet, the crowd reacted in a fury of wild, chaotic cheers and thunderous applause. My father pulled me in, and I lowered my head toward him, taking the kiss he placed on my temple.

The crowd stood, applauding and whooping their praise like their hands were on fire. Wills took the accolades, moving to the center of the stage as his bandmates met him, all five men bowing, patting each other on the backs. I hung back, hands in my pockets with Kyle and Lou beside me, watching as Hawthorne walked to the center stage to be inducted into the Hall of Fame. From backstage I watched my father smile, laughing, thanking everyone who’d meant something to his career, praising those of us he now called family.

“Thank you to Iris, my sweet friend, and the strength she gave me,” he said, smile soft as he watched her leaning on her elbows, long fingers covering her face as she cried. Then Wills shot a look at me, squinting, until I waved at him from the shadows of long curtains. “And to Jamie, my boy, who brought me back to life.”

They bowed out, got caught up in the flurry of congratulations and celebration, and I watched Iris among the crowd as I stayed away from the action, avoiding anyone who wanted to pull the focus from my father and the others who were receiving the accolades they’d worked decades to deserve.

“Come to the bar, primo,” Isaiah said, arm around the same redhead he’d first brought to Willow Heights. “If you want company...”

“Nah. I’m good.” I didn’t look at him when I spoke. My attention was on Iris and how my father showed her and her mother around the room.

She stood next to Wills as he introduced her to Lily Davies, one of the editors of Middle 8, an upstart magazine Winston had mentioned to me last autumn before the start of the tour. We’d been at a party, and the Lily woman wanted an interview. I’d been a jackass to her, blew her off. But Iris was impressing her, making the woman laugh. She was in her element here, as though the past year hadn’t happened. As though I hadn’t humiliated her in the least.

“Motherfucker, look at you,” I heard behind me, and I nodded at Isaiah, one quick movement that sent him and his redhead away as Gunnar approached. The big Norwegian slapped me on the back, and I inhaled, downed the last of my drink before I returned it to the empty tray of a waitress as she passed.

“What do you want?” I asked Gunnar, not returning the smile he gave me because he looked like an asshole, already drunk, eyes bloodshot.

That wide grin faltered as he looked around, likely checking to see if anyone else had caught on to my attitude. “Dash...thought I’d check again, get you to reconsider.”

“No,” I told him, waving off a waitress when she offered me another drink. “I paid out my contract. I’ve severed ties with Kenny and his shitshow.”

“You know,” Gunnar said, that stupid smile missing now. “That shitshow did a lot for you, yeah? For a long time. Where’s your loyalty?”

“With myself.” I shifted my gaze across the crowd, nodding at Wills when he caught my attention. My father smiled, but it was a forced expression, maybe a little worried. He knew there was no love lost between me and Gunnar or anyone with Riptide.

“Kenny told me. You’re broke now. My tour will make you some bank.”

Iris smiled at Wills when he led her toward the center of the room, right into the thick of his bandmates, who probably wanted to have another word with the woman they knew was writing Wills’ story. He’d spent much of his recovery with her, telling her stories, correcting a few things when needed, before I returned to the beach with him and Iris went back to New York to write. I hadn’t seen her in nearly two months, and just the sight of her tonight did something cruel and painful to my heart.

“My finances are none of your business,” I told the Norwegian, waving at Isaiah before I headed to the exit. “And I’m not interested in making money with you.”

“What does that mean? With me?” Gunnar stepped in front of my path, face twisted into something wicked, something that told me prison had aged him, and the results weren’t good. “What’s wrong with how I make money?”

I lowered my shoulders, suddenly tired. The incision still ached a little, and my body needed a rest. Mostly my mind was exhausted, and my heart, coño, I didn’t even know how to describe the state of my heart. I only knew that I’d sung for Iris a final goodbye, and I got to wish my father and his band congratulations for accomplishing something monumental. Now I only wanted to go back home and figure out what to do with the rest of my life.

But the man blocking my way out of the door was insistent, and the glare on his face was one I’d seen before. It was a warning. One I decided I wouldn’t take. I rubbed the bridge of my nose before I smiled at him, uncaring about his anger or why he was insulted by my refusal. “Gunnar, grow the hell up and stop being a pendejo. That shit is old, and you’re a joke.”

His glare got harder, and the insult hit home. He charged, but I deflected, stepping aside in time so that when he took a swing at me and missed, Gunnar landed ass first on the ground. The laughter around us came quick, and he scrambled to his feet, getting in my face, but not striking. Probably had something to do with the three security guards that stood to my left. “You think you’re better than me because now you got a daddy? You think anyone will ever forget who you are?”

“Not remotely better, acho, and the other mierda, I couldn’t care less about.”

Gunnar watched me, taking a step back as though he’d only just caught on that he couldn’t intimidate me. “You’re stupid, man. Who the hell wants to start from the bottom like you’re doing?”

I shrugged, not bothering to argue. No sane person wanted to start over, not in this business, but then, I never once claimed to be completely sane. “Sometimes, the bottom is the strongest place to stand when you’re trying to get on your feet again.”

Gunnar didn’t follow me when I moved around him, coming to the edge of the room before I hit the hallway that led to the exits. I stopped for one last look at Iris in that crowd, not meaning to catch her gaze. She didn’t frown. She didn’t have any judgement at all in her expression as she glanced from Gunnar to me.

There was a flower in her dark hair and small diamonds in her ears. She wore black, and her eyes were smoky dark. I only noticed her mouth: the thick pout and red lips, and how they twitched only slightly before they curved, almost forming a smile. It was a sweet expression, and I pretended it was meant solely for me. It was the last thing I committed to my memory before I walked away from the crowd and left Dash Justice behind.

CHAPTER TWENTY

The rainstorm came from nowhere. April wasn’t usually this wet in Willow Heights, but tonight something set on the wind that had been there the entire day. I told myself it was only the quiet in my apartment, and how the entire building had seemed asleep since my band had gone back to their homes to write and settle a few things before they came back to record new songs. Of course, things were a little boring since Wills had gone off to Dublin to visit his cousins. I’d been counting down the days until May, when I’d fly up to see him and meet the family who’d only found out about me when the rest of the world did, too.

The rain battered the ceiling above as I played a new song I’d been messing with since I got back from Cleveland and the induction ceremony a week ago. The chord was slick, something that rocked but still held a little grit, and I worked through the progression, slipping my fingers over the fret board again and again until the tune was as close to the melody in my head as I could get it. Five times, ten more, I went through it, until the tips of my fingers ached and a clap of lightning cracked across the sky. The transformer near the back of the building popped and sparked and then the entire place went dark.

“Fucking wonderful,” I told myself, moving my guitar to the mount as I held up my hands, feeling my way to what had been Hector’s old office and now was the storage room. There was a large row of cabinets across one side of the wall, and I opened the first drawer at the bottom, moving pens and erasers among the yellow legal pads until I felt the flashlight roll under my fingers.

The light was dim, flickering a couple of times, and I shook the thing pointlessly. I got as far as the back of the building, cracking open the door that led into the alleyway to see that the top of the transformer was black, but not burning. 

The metal box on the back wall was large, and I could barely make out the list of circuits connected to the appliances and electrical lines I had replaced when we returned from Belize. The shop had been reconfigured and now held a top of the line studio, lounge, engineer’s booth, kitchen, a few rooms in the back for storage, equipment, and guest rooms if rehearsals and recordings ran late.

Gunnar hadn’t been far off when he said I was broke. It took most of my assets and holdings to buy out my contract. I’d been left with a little less than a hundred grand, and that I used to rehab the shop and set up my studio. I had no plans to take on any other artists, but for now Vega Studios was our new label, and my band and I had plans to write and produce the music we wanted.

If the building didn’t blow up first.

The sharp screech of my cell ringing startled me as I tried looking through the circuit list, and I jerked it out of my back pocket, answering with a hasty “’Lo?” as I flipped the breaker again and again, trying to see if there was any juice at all left in the line.

“Jamie, it’s Carol from Hawk’s? You hear that pop?”

Carol was older, Hawk’s widow, who had taken to bringing over breakfast or dinner for me since Wills had left for Dublin. Said she always had leftovers, and with my mama back in Madison most weeks, now full-time at the library, I’d welcomed the older woman’s meals.

“I heard it, Carol. From the looks of it, it’s the transformer.”

“I figured.” She cleared her throat, moving the receiver around as though she was walking through her place. “I’ve already called Cliff with County Electric. They’ll be out in a little bit to see what can be done.” She moved again, and the swing of a door sounded against my ear. “You need anything? You got candles?”

“I think so,” I told her, moving through the shop to head back to the storage room, opening two cabinets before I found three fat, white candles and a long-reach lighter. “Yeah, got ‘em. Thanks. I appreciate the heads-up.”

“Think nothing of it.”

I held one candle in the crook of my elbow, the two others in each hand, placing one on the wooden coffee table in the lounge and one by the front door in case Cliff knocked for me to let him in, since the alley was dark and wet.

The last candle I brought with me into the main room for when the flashlight gave out. I grabbed my acoustic, intent on bringing it back into the lounge to play while I waited on Cliff, but a rattle against the front door stopped me. I put down my Gibson and walked toward the sound and the curtain-covered front door.

Rain came down in sheets now and more lightning struck against the darkness of the sky I could make out from storefront window that we hadn’t yet covered with tempered privacy glass. I moved a little quicker, thinking of Cliff and all that rain, jerking the door open to usher him in, but stopped short of welcoming the big man when I spotted the small frame silhouetted against the streaks of light and water pouring around outside.

“I—” It was all that I managed to say. Something inside my chest rattled and strummed, and I could only stare wide-eyed at Iris out there on the sidewalk, her hair sticking to her face and back, her wide, wild eyes rounded as she blinked up at me.

We opened our mouths at the same time to speak, but Iris beat me to the punch, nearly screaming, “You don’t deserve me!”

“What?” My scream matched hers over the rumble of rain, and I pulled her inside, feeling stupid for just standing there, watching her get soaked. “Ah, mami, look at you.”

Iris let me pull her inside. I had tugged off her drenched sweater and sat her on the sofa in the lounge before she wiped her face dry with the back of her hand. Her eyes were still wild and wide, and she wore a look on her face that told me she knew what she wanted to say. But she went on staring, watching me as I slipped into the adjoining bathroom and grabbed a towel, drying her face, her arms, then squeezing the rainwater from her long hair before she stopped me, taking the towel out of my hands to wipe her face dry.

“You don’t deserve me,” she said again, her voice lower. Iris swallowed and squared her shoulders, like she’d only just remembered the speech she likely prepared on the drive over here. “You...”

“I know I don’t,” I said, hoping to save her the hassle of telling me something I’d known for a long time.

“Let me finish.”

I felt my jaw tense as I watched her, but I didn’t speak. Iris seemed to need to have her say, something I didn’t give her before I told her goodbye. Before I let her go. I’d do that now. I owed it to her.

She went on watching me, knuckles tight as she held onto that damp towel, and I backed away, sitting on the coffee table next to the infamous issue of Stage Dive magazine, the one with her cover story. She’d finished the article around the time that Wills had told her about the surgery, though he’d sworn he hadn’t broken his promise. Far as I knew, she had no idea I was the one who gave my father his kidney.

The cover had changed from the proof copy I’d gotten all those months back. I’d made sure of it. It was only fitting, I rationalized. Joan Wein was happy when I called her asking for a reshoot. She’d wanted something with me and Wills, to commemorate Hawthorne’s induction. But my father had refused, saying that this article was about me showing the world who I really was. I’d wanted an image to go with the truth Iris had written about me, so I called in Van Structure, a photographer buddy of mine from my first headlining tour. He’d shot the best bands and artists in the business for twenty years. Van took my picture in his New York studio. There was no makeup, no sunglasses to obscure my face. Just me, bare to the world like I’d been at the induction ceremony. My face open—raw—staring at the lens, inviting the reader inside to hear my truth.

Iris held the towel between her fingers, twisting the wet fabric as she looked at the magazine, head shaking. Then, those black doe-eyes shifted, and her gaze came to me.

“You don’t deserve me. Maybe you never did.” I wanted to agree, but Iris gave me a sideways glance, something I took to mean I shouldn’t interrupt. “I don’t know if my mother was right. I don’t think Isaiah and I were right for doing that to you, even if we had your best interests at heart...” I looked down, not willing to watch her as she explained. My cousin and Iris had no real reason to feel guilty because what they’d done was meant to help. But that didn’t mean I’d ever be able to think of them and not see them together, not recall that blinding agony again.

She went on, lowering her voice. “Maybe if we hadn’t done that to you, nothing would have happened the way it did...not how you became or what you did to me. Maybe...” When I looked at her, hoping she could see the small plea in my eyes, Iris nodded, deciding, it seemed, to hurry with what she had to say.

“I hurt you. You hurt me. Over and over and...” I held my breath, watching her face as she shook her head, watching to analyze each expression, trying like hell to figure out what she thought before she spoke. “You don’t deserve me, but maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to be.”

“Florecita...” Hope was a dangerous thing. It filled you up. It made you believe in things you might never have but could not give up on. I’d left hope behind that night in my apartment, when Iris walked away from me and the partying crowd. I knew I might not ever earn her forgiveness, no matter what I did. Hope that she’d want me again, that there would be another chance for us, was just too much of a pipe dream. Now, though, Iris teased me with possibility, and I held my breath, wondering if this was something cruel she did just to watch me fall apart when she walked away again.

“Maybe when you love someone, neither one of you are supposed to be worthy of the other. Maybe that’s what you’re supposed to do—spend your life earning that love. Maybe we’re supposed to work at being worthy.”

She stood, throwing the towel onto the table at my side, half-obscuring the image of my face staring out of the cover under the Stage Dive logo.

“You kept a promise to me; I know you did.” She took a step, standing in front of me, but didn’t touch me. “You don’t have to tell me if I’m right or wrong. He wouldn’t.” Iris knelt down, still keeping a foot between us. “All I know is that he’s alive and getting healthy, and I think that’s because of you.” She reached across my leg and grabbed the corner of the magazine, a half-smile on her face as she looked at the cover. I could smell the rich scent of honeysuckle from her hair and the earthy hint of rainwater. Both were intoxicating— tempting—but I held my fingers together tight to keep from reaching for her.

“You stopped hiding.” Iris stared up at me, gaze shifting to look me over as though she was only just seeing me, and she liked what she saw. “You unmasked yourself in front of the world.” I nodded, not able to look at her for too long. She was too much of a temptation.

Then Iris tilted my face toward her, resting one palm against my cheek. “There he is,” she said.

“Mami...” I kept still, wanting us to stay just like this, so close, feeling the warmth of each other’s breath on our faces, being closer to her than I had in what felt like a lifetime.

“I’m tired of missing you, Jamie. I’m tired of wondering if things will ever be different.” She frowned then, stilling herself, eyes closed in a slow blink before she looked at me again. “Maybe we should start over, be friends and...” I hadn’t meant to make the low, mildly desperate noise, but it came out anyway, and I swore I saw her laugh. But then Iris bit her lip, breath so close now that I could make out the mocha scent from the coffee I was sure she’d picked up tonight.

“Did you find the magic again?” she asked, nodding to my Gibson.

“I told you. You were the magic. Always.”

Iris nodded, dropping her hand from my face before she stood. “Maybe this should go slow. Maybe you and I will be better at this if there isn’t any...” she shrugged, waggling her eyebrows. “You know.”

I hated the sound of that, but still nodded. I’d wait a lifetime. Two, if that’s what she wanted.

“Well,” she said, stepping back, looking ready to run from the shop. She got as far as the threshold of the door and kept her back to me. Water still dripped from the ends of her hair, and I could see the outline of her bra and the black tattoo on her shoulder through the thin damp shirt she wore.

I couldn’t watch her walk away and stood, hands balled into fists as she hovered between the door and looking as though she might turn to face me. Ten seconds went by— I counted— and Iris nodded to herself, head moving to the exit and back over her shoulder before she groaned and turned to face me.

“The thing is, I miss you, as my friend. You were my best friend.” She took a step, close enough that I’d only have to make one myself in order to touch her. “Best friend I ever had and I’m supposed to want nothing from you because, God, Jamie, you ruined me and wrecked me and...” Iris shook her head, squeezing her eyes shut as though she needed to eradicate whatever the voice in her head was telling her to do. Finally she made another step toward me, and when she spoke again, her voice was steadier, her chin uplifted. “I hated you for what you did, and I’m supposed to go on hating you, I know I am, but I just...I can’t make my heart listen to my head. I want you. I want to touch you and have you and claim you and be yours always, Jamie. But if you don’t...”

I was tired of the debates. Exhausted by the force it took not to speak or touch or take what would always be mine. Iris went silent when that noise left my throat again and then she released a small, mewing squeal when I threaded her wet hair between my fingers and pulled her against my mouth.

I’d decided to taste and take and devour, but the second our lips touched, and Iris let go of her surprise and wrapped her arms around my shoulder, possession went out the door.

She felt like music against me, that slow, sweet melody I’d been chasing for months made whole and tangible and real. Iris’s tongue melted against mine, and we met each other, touch for touch.

“Jamie,” she cried, rubbing against me, her wet breasts dampening my shirt, her hair sticking to my arms and against my neck as she kissed me. She started at my neck, teeth and mouth meeting my skin. That slow, sizzling drag of her hot tongue sliding against me, her fingernails scratching over my chest, felt amazing, unreal. She moved against me like she could not keep from touching me even for a second.

“Mami, Dios mío, mi amor. I’m so sorry...” I picked her up, moving her legs around my waist, turning us so we hit the sofa, falling onto the leather in a heap of wet bodies, damp clothes and greedy, desperate touches. “I’ll never stop trying to make it up. Every second we were apart. Every...”

“No, Jamie,” she told me, stilling my frenzied touches and holding my face. “No living in the past. Right now, you and me, from this second forward, there’s only tomorrow.”

She lay under me, looking like an angel, spread out like the most delectable meal, and I wanted to take what she offered, tasting until I was full.

“Florecita,” I whispered, hard against her, breath uneven as I leaned up, steadying my weight on one arm. “Can I have you? Can I have all of you?”

“For now?” she asked, looking nervous.

“Forever.”

She nodded, a smile teasing across her lips. “I love you.”

Iris pulled me down, the tips of her fingers against my neck as I dived over her mouth, then down to her neck and onto her shoulder as I lifted up her shirt. That wet bra was gone in a flash, and I had her bare below me, those perfect, round nipples light against my brown skin. The nipple pebbled against my thumb, and Iris pitched and turned below me, taking my hand to rest between her thighs.

“I need you here. Right here.”

I followed, unzipping her jeans, sliding them over her hip, tracing my tongue against the protruding bone and the soft, round curve of her ass until her thong strap was between my teeth, and I tugged her free.

Her pussy was pretty: the hair perfectly trimmed, the lips soft, wet, as I licked her, pushing her apart to slip my tongue deep inside, nearly coming just from the taste of her after so long.

“Fuck, mami, I love the way you taste.”

“Sit up,” she said, voice desperate, breath panting, and I obeyed, smiling at the sight of her naked in front of me, at the hurried, desperate gropes and grabs she made as she unbuttoned my jeans, stripping my shirt off, tugging at my wallet. I knew she needed me, needed to be connected.

Iris always knew what she wanted. She knew how to get it, and I was no exception. There would be time, years in fact, forever, to tease and play and spend our time relearning each other’s body, recalling what we’d like or discovering what else there was to explore. Now, though, she seemed desperate for me, and so I did what I always did with Iris. I gave her everything she wanted.

Before I could pull my hand away from putting on the condom, Iris straddled me, slipping a hand to the underside of my sack, massaging, stroking up my cock. “Help me,” she said, arms shaking, and I steadied her, licking my fingers before I slipped them inside her, wetting her pussy.

She lowered, slipping slowly onto my cock, and I let my head fall against the back of the sofa, hands on her hips as Iris rode me. “Coño,” I said, sounding awed, amazed, shaking just from the sight of her soft, sweet lips riding up and down my cock. “Ah, mami, yes...”

“Guide me,” she said, shaking harder, clamping against me, her movements erratic, but so, so good.

“Se siente rico, mi amor. My sweet florecita. You’re so beautiful, and te amo. I want this, you and me and this magic right here.”

“Jamie!” she cried, nails digging into my shoulders. I loved the sharp pain, but nothing compared to the image of her riding me, her hair in a tumble around her face, her beautiful body bouncing against me, her warm, sweet pussy clamping around me as she came.

Iris was beautiful, my forever girl, and I’d never get tired of seeing that expression on her face, seeing the light crossing her eyes when she fell apart. It was sensual and seductive, and twisted something deep inside me, made me reach for her, pull her close as I lifted up into her over and over, until I followed her over the edge.

She fell against me, spent, her breath calm now, her hair nearly dry, and I held her, wondering how long it would take before I woke from this dream. I decided right there, with Iris still wrapped around me, that if I was dreaming, I never wanted to wake up.

EPILOGUE

“Tell us, Wills, about how different your life is compared to two years ago, when you first discovered you needed a transplant.”  

“Oh, very, I’d say. For starters, I had no relationship with my son, did I? And my career was in shambles. I was ready to walk right out on my brothers, the band I had loved for half my life.”

“Why is that?”

Wills shrugged, seeming to take a minute to consider his answer. The reporter sitting across from him waited as my father shifted his gaze to the right, smile instant as he looked to me and Iris. “I suppose I was scared. I reckon I didn’t want to seem weak, and until I took the time to think on the bad decisions I’d made, I supposed I got a little desperate.”

“But that changed?”

“Aye, it did, in fact. It changed when I saw my son struggle with his own decisions.” Wills looked smug then, and I shook my head, laughing under my breath. “O’course, I knew then I had to go in and rescue him, sort him to rights.”

“Gringo, you’re full of mierda.”

The reporter turned, smiling when Wills laughed at my answer. “Let’s take a break guys,” he told his crew, looking back at my father. “I’d like to work up to the new album in the next segment. That okay?” Wills nodded then the reporter called over his assistant, showing the woman something written on his notepad. “This afternoon let’s get some footage of the studio, maybe shoot Wills in the sound booth.” He looked over at me, nodding. “That okay with you, Mr. Justice?”

“Whatever you need.”

“It’s your label, lad. Your business,” Wills called over the reporter’s head. My father looked good, smooth, in all black with his white hair pulled away from his face. The paleness of his complexion was gone, and if you didn’t know he’d been sick not that long ago, you’d think he was just an old man with a twinkle in his eye.

“And you invested, gringo. Do whatever you want.” I stood then, Iris yelping as I picked her up. “If you’ll excuse me, we’re still honeymooning. I’m going to take my wife away from this mierda before she abandons me for her beloved job writing about rock stars she’s not married to.”

The laughter behind trailed away, and I carried Iris through the building and up to the second story apartment we still used when Wills was in town recording. It had been a while since we stayed in Hector’s revamped apartment, but the documentary crew’s appearance called for all hands on deck. No way would I let my old man handle the interviews on his own. Well, unless I could steal an hour away with my wife.

“Honeymooning,” Iris said through a laugh, slapping my hand away when I tried divesting her of her shirt. Seemed I took too long, and she chucked off her clothing in three fast swipes before she pushed me onto the bed. “Think we’ll ever stop honeymooning?”

“Coño, I hope not.” I grabbed her waist, pulling her on top of me once I was stripped down to my shorts. “Fuck mami, I like this,” I said, tugging at the red thong she wore. Iris moaned when I brushed my hands over her smooth skin, fingering the black lace around the cup of her bra. Then I jerked to a sitting position, kissing up her neck and down her chest, pulling that pretty bra away from where I wanted to be. “But, it’ll look better on the floor.”

Iris shook in my arms, limbs trembling when I spread her wide, slipping inside her, showing her how good that lingerie looked on the floor.

“Ay carajo, this is good. To be raw with you, to feel everything.”

“Just for you, baby,” she said, squeezing against my cock. “All this is yours.”

And with my wife moving against me, clamping tight, I took what was mine and gave her everything I had.

Later, when we were spent, Iris curled around me, my fingers moving up and down her arm, I kissed the top of her head, closing my eyes to take in the smell of her skin and the sweetness of her hair, reveling in my mami, my florecita, resting against me where she belonged.

“You were mine that night, at the first Hawthorne concert back in Indy.” Iris rubbed her cheek against my chest, moving her fingers into the small patch of hair that trailed over my chest. “I was fifteen, and I figured out you were my Know.”

“Your Know?” I asked, stilling my fingers.

“The one person that was made for me. The person I couldn’t be without.” She leaned up, resting on her elbow to look down at me. “When did you know?”

“That you were made for me?” She nodded and pushed back the hair from her face. The answer came quick because I didn’t have to think about it. “Mami, I knew the second I saw you.”

“How?”

I shrugged, pulling my mouth into a slow smile. “Same way you know how to get home after you’ve been away a long time. Your head guides you; your heart recognizes it.”

“You knew then? Even after everything, you knew that first time?”

I nodded, pulling her back down onto my chest. “You’ve always been my home.”

Iris purred against my chest when I rubbed her back, and I felt the slow spread of her smile when I started humming her song.

“I love it when you sing to me,” she said, nestling even closer.

“Well then, florecita, I promise I’ll never stop.”

The End