Page 121 of If the World Was Ending

Hunter would rather go back to bartending at Range than take a selfie the day after his mother’s funeral, but there was no way to explain it to this guy without sharing his loss with a stranger and also risking him being offended. So he just nodded. After the dude got out of the car and took a selfie with Hunter, who probably looked like he was grimacing, not smiling, he pulled away from the curb. Hunter watched Colby disappear, not knowing when he’d see him again.

Chapter 40

Keep plugging away, kid

SEVEN MONTHS LATER…

It was almost midnight when it hit. Colby was in his garage, which he’d turned into a studio. He was tinkering with the bridge on his latest creation. A song he called “Hunter’s Song,” though he knew he’d have to change it before he presented it for the album.

His first solo album.

Tidal hadn’t imploded entirely, but his bandmate Trevor had. They’d found him after the club incident with Marley. Turned out he’d left her before she OD’d to go home with some random woman he’d met in the VIP area bathroom. Tidal finished recording that second album, and they even started touring again two months later, but Trevor had been found by Romaine in his hotel room on the morning after their fifth show, unresponsive and face down in a pile of vomit after having crashed through a glass coffee table. Remarkably, he was revived and only had minor cuts to his body and face.

He was in a treatment facility now, which meant the group was on a break. Kenner was trying to get back into acting, his first love. He’d filmed a guest-starring bit on a network show this week. Colby was writing solo material and enjoying his house. He’d ended up buying the historic mid-century modern on Brier, and he loved it. It made him feel like he had stepped back in time, and Don Henley or Joni Mitchell would be walking through his orange front door any minute. Both Kenner and Colby were advised by the label to avoid events and industry parties so they could avoid questions about Trevor. There was no way to win in that situation, Burke had explained. If they went on publicly with their lives, it looked like they didn’t care about their bandmate, no matter what kind words they expressed in interviews. And if they were at these events and caught drinking, it would be twisted into “the whole band has a problem” clickbait.

The only exception would be the upcoming Grammys. Tidal was up for seven awards, so someone would have to show up. In the meantime, Colby considered the downtime a blessing. If he wasn’t at events, he wouldn’t run into Hunter. They hadn’t seen each other in person or even texted or spoken since Colby crawled into the back of that Uber the day after Hunter’s mom’s funeral. Colby busied himself with band stuff and hanging out with Briar when he could, and he’d even seen his mom twice. She’d come to Los Angeles to see his new house and even brought him a housewarming gift, along with all the stuff she’d been storing for him that he’d left behind. He had gone home once, for her birthday, which was when he found out his dad had moved out. Apparently he’d gone to see Atlas in Texas. His brother had been called up from the minors and was pitching on a big league team now. His mom had told him, while he was there, that he should stay because she wasn’t going to let him back in the house. So Andy Keaton had stayed in Texas. The day before Bonnie Keaton’s birthday, movers had shown up to pack his belongings, and that was apparently that. She had explained the whole thing with the same simple whimsy she used when she explained why a limoncello spritz was superior to an Aperol spritz. Colby didn’t fully trust his mom’s motives around suddenly coming to her senses, but he was trying to give her the benefit of the doubt. Brodie, too, although much more cautiously. Oh, and he was an uncle now. Atlas and Gina had a son named Dallas that Colby never expected to meet, but his mom sent photos. He didn’t miss his dad, or Atlas, or a nephew he’d never meet, but he did miss Hunter.

Still, he was trying to move on. He’d downloaded Grindr but did nothing but browse because it was too risky to do anything else. His profile had a fake everything—name, location, headless photo of a chest that wasn’t even his but was a reasonable facsimile. He’d gotten a few dick pics, but that was all. Using the unexpected band hiatus to focus on writing stuff he might be able to pitch the label for a solo project was keeping his focus off Hunter, which was good. He’d deleted social media from his phone too, so he couldn’t doomscroll everything and anything about Hunter as well.

It helped. He was moving on. Mostly. But it wasn’t always smooth sailing. Like this week, he’d written a new song that was definitely his favorite thing ever, and he stayed up into the wee hours of the morning working on it. He’d played a bit of it for Ford over Zoom, and Ford loved it. Colby had told him it was untitled when he’d asked, but the truth was, in his head, he called it Hunter’s Song. It was every messy thing he had never found a way to say to Hunter. A regretful, soulful tune with words about needing more and wanting less and never letting go, even after he had already let go. He still couldn’t get through it without choking up. Which is why he was blinking back tears when the earthquake hit. It was a slow rumble, gentle almost. But that shifted so abruptly, and with such force, Colby was lurched off the stool he was perched on. His ass and his guitar hit the floor at the same time. The walls of the garage shook with a vengeance. One cracked. Colby was immediately swallowed by fear, and he crawled under the equipment table as his framed posters and awards fell off the walls.

This was it. The end. There were endless news articles about how the overpopulated, overdeveloped Hollywood Hills would most definitely slide into ruin with a big enough quake. This felt insanely big, the kind of big that had your heart in your throat and your eyes glued shut. Something cracked outside. Loud and ominous, and fuck, suddenly the garage’s roof was coming apart in pieces all around him. Oh my God.

Hunter had fallen asleep on a lounger in his backyard under an umbrella at about 5:30 thanks to jet lag and being overworked. When the earth shook him awake abruptly, he was shocked to find the world was dark. It deepened the panic, sharpened the disorientation. He scrambled off the lounge chair as a string of the fairy lights he’d hung from the avocado tree dropped, along with a branch that clipped the edge of his hot tub.

He ran to the house, kicking his long-forgotten iced coffee. The run would be hilarious if someone was there to see him, because the ground was jerking back and forth so violently it was like trying to run a straight line on a funhouse vibrating walkway. He made it to the back door, crashing through the screen, tearing it, and not even caring.

The back door entered the kitchen. An entire rack of mugs above his coffee station had crashed, and brightly colored pieces of porcelain littered the countertop and floor. The shelf swung violently from the one screw that hadn’t given way.

He scrambled into the powder room because it was small, with no objects that could fall or shatter. He plastered himself to the wall, his left hip bumping the vanity. His mind went to Colby. Oh my God, Colby. Where was he? Would he see him again? Was he okay? What if he wasn’t? What if this never ended? What if California fell into the ocean like everyone always said it might? What if tonight was the end and he never got to tell Colby…

When the quake finally stopped, it was so abrupt that Colby thought maybe he’d died. Everything stilled all at once. Even the shingles stopped tumbling from the hole the tree put in the roof of the garage. But then, as he started to hear more than the thumping of his heart, he heard the snap of another tree somewhere far off and the wail of a siren even farther away.

Colby carefully found his way to the door and onto the driveway. The world was dark. No streetlights glittering, no houses lit up. Nothing. He looked at his car, which sat in front of the garage. This quake was bigger than the one that brought Hunter and Colby together in that Trader Joe’s bathroom. There would be more damage around the city. There could still be aftershocks big enough to take him out or anyone else.

He looked back at his partly caved-in garage as he dug in his pocket for his car keys. It was dangerous and possibly stupid to drive anywhere right now because who knew what condition the rest of Los Angeles was in. There could be sinkholes, downed power lines, crumbled buildings, and fallen trees. And there was always a risk of robberies in situations like this, and his guitars and equipment were exposed to anyone who wandered up here and wanted to take them. But for the first time in his life, Colby realized he had something that mattered more than music. And if the world was ending, he didn’t want to be surrounded by guitars. There was only one person he wanted to be near.

He pulled his phone from his back pocket. No service. He jumped in the car. He had no idea where Hunter was, but he knew where he needed to be. He needed to be somewhere that felt safe and like Hunter was with him, even if he wasn’t.

The world had lost interest in their former friendship. No one was writing fan fiction about them anymore. Articles had begun to focus on their work again. Hunter’s superhero movie debuted this month, smashing box office records. He’d taken Mikayla to the premiere, and people were buzzing about that. And when one reporter dared to ask about his long-lost friendship with Colby Keaton, Hunter had acted like he almost forgot who Colby was. “He was a fun guy. Probably still is, but we never hang out anymore.” And they didn’t. And Colby knew Hunter was a good actor because it didn’t sound like he cared about that at all.

There were tree limbs and rocks, some big and scary, on Laurel Canyon, but nothing he couldn’t drive around, so he did. And at the gas station where Laurel Canyon turned into Crescent Heights, there were shattered windows and a police cruiser with lights swirling. But he wasn’t the only car on the road, so no one bothered him except a fire truck blocking Sunset a few blocks east and making him turn a block before Hayworth. Residents of all the apartment buildings gathered on the sidewalks, so he drove slowly.

He parked in the spot, tucked into the back of the old apartment building that was reserved for their old unit. The squat, neglected building was still standing with no damage he could see… until he opened the gate.

Hunter knew walking anywhere after a quake was crazier than driving, so he drove. It was only two blocks west and one block south. His heart was still beating like a butterfly, all erratic and fluttery in his chest, and he had to white-knuckle the steering wheel to keep his hands from shaking. He thanked his lucky stars his dad and Zeus weren’t here. They were coming in a week. Dad had been keeping Manuel for him while Hunter worked on the sequel to Platonic Planet, and then, immediately after that, on an adaptation of a romance book that was filmed in New Zealand. That shoot had created the jet lag he was currently battling.

Where the sequel to Platonic Planet had been a good experience, like the first one, the romance movie had been an uncomfortable one. Not because of the ample sex scenes either, but because the actress he was working with had a jealous jerk off of a boyfriend who was on set way too much. He was a total asshole to Hunter. He really didn’t get the concept of acting being pretend. It was like he thought Hunter was having actual sex with his girlfriend. The producers had to sit the actress down and talk with her about keeping him off set. She’d pitched a fit and delayed shooting that day, but he showed up less as they finished the film, thankfully.

As he drove now, he thought about all the good and the bad of this life, this career he’d dreamed of. It was a rollercoaster, but he did, when it came down to it, still love it. He couldn’t imagine doing anything else. Only one thing was missing. Colby. And until he woke up with the world thrashing, he’d thought he could manage that loss. Well, actually, he could, but tucked up in that bathroom as his house shook around him, he realized he’d been managing because deep down he believed in one day. One day he’d get to try again with Colby. One day they’d pick up where they left off. One day the industry would change, or he’d be on the backside of his career when no one cared what he was doing when he wasn’t on a screen, and he could be with Colby again. But as the house shook it finally occurred to him there might not be a later. His brain filled with images of his dad’s anguished face and his tortured voice that day after his mom’s funeral. “I lost so many years that I could have been with your mother. So fucking many.”

That’s why Hunter was now pulling into the long driveway that ran the length of his old apartment building, which looked unscathed. He needed to be somewhere that reminded him of Colby. Somewhere that was them, in essence. But when he tried to turn into the spot that came with his unit, a truck was there. A vintage flatbed Ford. In cherry red. Hunter’s heart punched at his ribcage, and hope began to swell in his gut. He only knew one person who would park in their spot, and that person would most definitely drive this kind of vehicle.

He didn’t actually know what kind of car Colby drove. It could simply be some other tenant taking advantage of a spot where they rarely saw a car. But…Colby was obsessed with Laurel Canyon and the artists that had once made it famous. And there was a line from an Eagles song Colby used to play, for fun, when he was fooling around on his acoustic guitar, and that song had a line about a flatbed Ford.

So Hunter double-parked behind the truck, jumped out of his Range Rover, and jogged toward the front of the building. He hoped against hope he’d find Colby in their apartment, but he never got that far. The courtyard was filled with people. The manager, Bob, and every other tenant crowded around. He stepped into the group and looked toward the pool like they were.

The towering palm that had been by the pool was now in the pool. Well, the top half of it. Palm fronds and debris were everywhere, the fence that bordered the pool was crushed like it had been made of tin foil, not iron. “Holy shit.”