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“Like all of them. Keith would be better off going solo, but it’s hard to tour as a solo artist. You need a band behind you, and if you’re a one-man singer, you can’t afford to pay session musicians.”
She wrinkles her nose. “The music business is complicated.”
“That’s the truth. Which is why we should tell Davis what’s going on. There’s no sense in putting up false barriers. We’re a family, Landry. We don’t keep secrets from family or we’re going to end up like TA.”
“Every argument in your arsenal is that you’re going to end up like TA. Or your dad’s band.”
I drag a hand through my hair. The pieces aren’t all fitting together for me. There’s a discordant measure here. I think back and try to unravel the strings. Is it Marrow? She hasn’t seemed jumpy at all lately. So what exactly is her hang-up regarding her brother knowing about us? It’s not like I plan to use her and discard her. I want her to be part of my life.
Since I can’t figure it out on my own, I flat-out ask her, “What’s the real problem here? I don’t believe it’s the sex, so what is it?”
She twists around the side of the bus to make sure we’re alone, then returns her gaze to me. “Did Davis tell you about his first band?”
“A few things. He said he played in college with some buddies and that
after they graduated, they tried to keep the group together but everyone splintered. Some got jobs and others lost the hunger for it.”
Her green eyes dull as sadness fills them. “Davis got a job at CloudDox, but the reason that he quit the band was because of me. Marrow had been stalking me for about six months before I reported it. He’d leave notes by my computer and sometimes in my backpack. I wasn’t really afraid of him until I found a note in my bedroom.”
“In your bedroom?”
She nods. “On my dresser, between my phone charger and my hairbrush. I lived with May and she wouldn’t have let anyone up, so we didn’t know how he got in. Anyway, I reported it to the building manager and then I let it go. No more notes for a while. One of the lawyers who worked on the sale of Peep asked me out. Davis had been bugging me about getting out more, and I figured, why not? He seemed nice but ended up being a jerk.”
“I don’t want any details,” I tell her.
“Nothing to tell.” She pulls her legs up. “Anyway, we’d been going out for a couple of months when I got this knock on the door one night. I thought it was Carl.”
“Wait.” I hold up a hand. “You dated a lawyer named Carl? There’s no way a lawyer named Carl knows the first thing about making a woman like you happy.”
She smirks. “I thought you didn’t want to know the details.”
“Good point.” I wave my hand for her to continue. “So there’s a knock on the door and it’s Marrow, right?”
Her smile fades immediately. “He pushed his way inside. He ranted about how I was betraying him and how he’d been so patient with me and that he was tired of all these low-energy guys getting attention when he had put so much effort into me.”
“What happened?”
“He tried to drag me out of the apartment, but I wasn’t having it.” The corner of her mouth lifts. “I fought him. He grabbed a coffee mug on the table and swung it at me, I guess trying to knock me out. It hit me here.” She strokes a finger down the side of her face where a small white line snakes down along her right ear.
“But you got away.”
“Yeah, I did. A neighbor heard me cry out and banged on the door. Marrow panicked and tried to run out. He wasn’t real bright.” She grimaces, as if she feels bad for insulting the pencil dick who attacked her. “Anyway, when Davis heard about it, he went over and beat Marrow up.” She flexes her left hand, the one that Davis uses to work the fret. “He broke three bones and got an Oxy prescription. It was weird. Both he and Marrow were going through the same legal process. Arraignment, decisions to plead, sentencing. Marrow went to prison supposedly for eighteen months and Davis went to county jail for three. The whole process ate at Davis, but I couldn’t see past the end of my own nose. I was in therapy. My parents were freaking out. We forgot about Davis. I forgot about him.”
Guilt drips from every word. She was caught up in her own trauma and kicks herself for not seeing Davis’s spiral.
“When did you figure it out?”
“He took my ATM card and withdrew the max limit for an entire week. I didn’t notice, but my accountant did.” She reaches up to rub the sides of her neck, as if the memory still causes her pain. “I didn’t care about the money. Like, I would’ve given it to him if he’d asked.”
“Only not for drugs,” I guess.
“Right. Not for drugs.” Sad eyed, she tilts her head. “It’s kind of ironic, but the jail time saved him. He couldn’t get oxy in jail and he dried out. Don’t say anything,” she hurries to add. “He’s not proud of what happened and he obviously doesn’t want you to know.” She gives me a worried look. “He turned his life around. Got a job.”
I smooth a hand over her hair in what I hope is a reassuring manner. “Not saying a word.” The awkward tension that would spring up between the two suddenly made sense. She was watching Davis for signs of relapse, and he was tired of repeatedly proving himself to her.
She nods miserably. “I don’t want to see Davis like that again. It was awful when he got out of jail. He was a shadow of himself, but Nothing would be worth it.” She meets my eyes. “Not even us.”
Her words are a punch in the gut. I want to understand and, in some part of my brain, I get it. But the selfish part wants me to shake her until she admits that without me she’s lost. Because that’s where I am—lost without her.
