"You motherfucker!" I shout, trying to wrest my arm away. "What's fucking wrong with you? That's mine!"
Liam just laughs, still holding the burning book.
"Finders keep- fuck," he says, dropping it onto the ground, shaking his hand.
"Move!" A female voice bellows, and seconds later someone's there with a fire extinguisher, dousing Contemporary Issues in American Asylum Law, the pillow, and Liam, spraying Gavin and I some in the process.
I'm just staring at my book, half-burnt and doused in white foam. Tears are pricking at my eyeballs, and I think I've got about three seconds before I start sobbing from pure rage.
Liam's still laughing.
"Iss joost some-"
"FUCK YOU!" I scream.
"Marisol, I'm-" Gavin starts.
"FUCK YOU TOO!" I shout. I turn in a circle, taking in all the wide eyes and alarmed faces. "Fuck all of you! FUCK!"
I storm away, across the parking lot. Someone shouts after me and I ignore them, sobbing by the time I reach the street.
No one comes after me.
7
Gavin
"FUCK!" Marisol shouts, tears glittering in her eyes, and before I can do or say anything, she's hightailing it through the parking lot.
Liam shouts after her.
"It's a sodding book, you posh cu-"
I grab his shirt and heave him backwards, up against the side of the equipment van he stole, silencing him mid-sentence. The modified lighter drops to the ground, his head bounces off the sheet metal, and he just laughs.
I guess I should have done this in the first place.
"What the fuck is wrong with you?" I shout in his face. "You can't do this, crash cars and burn people's things-"
"You can't have a band without me!" he shouts, our faces inches apart. "This was supposed to be us, not you and three American wankers!"
His speech is slurred, his accent thick as mud though I can still understand it. He reeks of cheap tequila, the stuff practically oozing from his pores, and his pupils are pinpricks. Alcohol, coke, and God only knows what else.
"You think this'll get you back? Showing up at a gig with a stolen van and a bleeding homemade flamethrower?"
"Least I'm still living a little," he says, his eyes focusing and unfocusing on my face. "Better than being some stupid boring twat who goes home and puts his feet up by the fireplace every night."
"And who's the stupid twat when I'm alive and you're dead in the gutter, Liam?" I shout.
I slam him against the van again, his head bobbing slightly like it's come loose. I want to rip it off his neck, partly because of what he did and partly because he's bloody right, this was supposed to be us.
But only one of us got clean enough to carry on, and it wasn't him.
"Is that what you want, both of us rotting in our graves by thirty?" I yell. "Because that's the end you're coming to, you-"
Sirens wail, and I stop shouting. Blue lights flash across the parking lots as we both turn our heads and see two black and white cop cars screech to a halt, officers running out, leaving the doors open.
I unhand Liam. He stumbles, nearly falls, then rolls his eyes and puts his hands over his head as the cops shout for him to get on the ground.
I back away and nearly trip over the burned wreckage of Contemporary Issues in American Asylum Law.
Shit. Marisol.
I turn and push past a security guard, standing there with his mouth open, then jog through the parking lot in the direction she went, the night air cool against my skin.
What if she's gone, I think. She can't have gone far, and I need to-
Well, that part I don't know since it's fucking unclear how I could possibly improve this situation. I take a guess and jog left when I get to the sidewalk, scanning the busy Sunset Strip for someone in black and white, carrying a briefcase.
Nothing. No one. I stop at a corner, wondering if I should have gone the other direction, trying to pick out one form from the hundreds along the street.
Then I spot her. She's across the street, sitting on a bus bench, glaring at me.
There's a bus a block away. Of course.
I wave at her. Marisol looks away, and even in the light of the street lamps I can see her face is pink and puffy. The traffic on Sunset right now is heavy and fast, all the drivers probably half-drunk and texting while also shouting at their mates and fiddling with the radio.
There's a very small break in traffic. I step out, tentatively, as the bus pulls up wheezing. I'm on the double yellow line in the middle of Sunset, cars hurtling past me on both sides, honking and flashing their lights but not a single one slows.
I hate Los Angeles drivers, I think.
Marisol gets on the bus, and through the windows I watch her pay her fare and then walk down the aisle, not looking at me again. Another tiny break in traffic and I sprint across three lanes, the bus already lumbering away even as I'm waving my hands for it to stop.
The driver just honks. I pound on the door as it passes me only for him to ignore me as the bus slides past with all the grace of a skier in the mud.
I look at the windows, searching for Marisol, and for a fleeting second, there she is: head against the window, staring into space. She doesn't even see me.
"Fuck!" I shout, and kick the ugly green bench, an advertisement for a real estate agent smiling back.
I rub my eyes. I pace back and forth, trying to get a handle on things, trying to figure out why I'm so upset about this one book, this one girl who's had a bad night.
Beautiful as hell with an arse made for grabbing, yeah, but that's not it.
She's the first person in weeks, months maybe, who's interested me. Who I want to talk to again, even if I never get to see her naked. Marisol's woken up some part of me that I thought was dead, snuffed out by booze and smack and an endless supply of women.
I take a deep breath. I shake my head, and I turn to walk back to the corner and cross Sunset properly when I realize there's a line of people standing there, staring at me, half of them with their phones out.
I pause a moment, staring back at them. It's not as if I was doing something shameful or wrong, but I feel like I've been caught in a private moment, one I'd prefer not to share with the gossip-hungry world.
"Cheers," I say, and half wave.
Then I walk to the traffic light and wait patiently for it to change.
The police take Liam off to jail on charges of driving under the influence, reckless driving, attempted arson, public drunkenness, and probably ten other things. They hang around for a bit, but it's not as if there's some great mystery to unravel: a good twenty people saw everything that happened.
As I'm standing around, waiting to be questioned, I get out my phone and find Contemporary Issues in American Asylum Law on Amazon.
It's two hundred dollars. Christ, no wonder Marisol was upset.
I put the book in my cart and email Larry to get her address, the least I can do. Then I sit there, on the steps into the Whiskey Room's back door.
Liam's headed to jail again, probably pissing himself in the back of a cop car right now, no doubt to have a miserable night in a holding cell. Darcy and Trent are going to be angry at me again when they find out what's happened here, and when video of me trying to chase down some girl surfaces tomorrow, because no doubt it'll have some asinine caption like BACK TO SMACK? GAVIN LOCKWOOD SIGHTED IN HOLLYWOOD CHASING THE DRAGON!
Maybe I ought to fake-date Daisy Fields, I think. There are far worse punishments than trying to talk to a vapid young starlet for an hour once a week.
God, the thought makes me shudder. It's not me. I don't date young starlets and smile for cameras, I'm some bloke from so far north in England it's almost Scotland who played the guitar a lot and got lucky.
But I don't think I can lose Darcy and Trent, or even Eddie. Liam's already out of the band, and since I'm clean and he's not, it's nearly impossible for me to be around him.
It feels as if I've gotten divorced, my family split in half, and I ought to bite the bullet and take Daisy out, but I desperately don't want to.
Then I have an idea.
It's probably not a good one. It's not likely to work, but it does make me smile and that's got to be worth something, yeah?
I pull out my phone and dial up Valerie, because I know she's still awake near one a.m. on Friday night, probably telling someone else how they ought to behave.
"What's wrong?" she answers her phone.
Lots, but I don't go into that with her.
"Nothing, I've had a thought," I say, watching a tow truck pull the crashed van away.
There's a moment of silence while she waits.
"And?" she finally responds.
"What if I pretended to date someone besides Daisy Fields?"
Valerie sighs into the phone. I can hear noise and thumping bass behind her. She's probably out somewhere, bossing around another famous person.
"Do you have someone in mind?" she asks.
"I do," I say.
8
Marisol
"Next!" calls the lady behind the register. The girl in front of me heads up, handing over a physics textbook practically the size of a cinderblock.
I tighten my grip on Contemporary Issues in American Asylum Law, Second Edition. It showed up at my door mid-day Saturday, and after I gawked at it for a full minute, like it was a rainbow unicorn offering me a box full of rubies, I cried with relief.
And then I felt guilty.