Page 47 of Pistol Whipped

“And whiskey isn’t?” I ask, spinning slightly to finally face my girl.

She grimaces and looks down at the still full glass in her hand. “I’m not drinking it though, am I?”

“You’re thinking about it.”

“Thinking about something and actually doing it are two very different things, Dutch,” she states matter-of-factly before once again setting the glass back on the bar.

“You’re telling me,” I confirm, and take another sip. I get the sense we’re tip-toeing our way to the edge of something. To the truth, maybe. To confessions on both our parts that are long overdue. Only we’re interrupted by a loud, yet familiar whining sound followed by an even more familiar cracking and popping sound.

Both Rain and I whip our heads in the direction of the noise. There, on stage, both a mic and a stool have appeared as if from nowhere.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” comes the frustrated voice from Rainy. “I swear to God, I’m being haunted by bad karaoke.”

Though I have no clue what she is talking about, a couple of minutes later, it becomes very, very clear that she was right. The guy starts singing a Giggle Pigs song and his rendition is so awful, like truly terrible, that I’m convinced their lead singer, Dwayne Harker, would kill him on sight for the attempt.

In the brief seconds I watch the chump on stage, something shifts in Rain’s posture. Her spine sags and curves towards the bar. It’s as if she’s shrinking in on herself. Her eyes no longer lift in my direction. She stops looking anywhere except into the bottom of her glass. Her hand shakes as she picks it up again, raising it towards her mouth.My Rainy is lost in thought, so lost she seems to have forgotten that I’m right here beside her. Before the whiskey quite reaches her lips, she mumbles out loud, “What’s the point in running from it when rock bottom finds me anyway?”

She’s giving up on what, or who, or why; I have no fucking idea because this frustrating, beautiful creature refuses to let me in. Something inside me shifts too. Straight to anger. I’m angry at Rain for this bullshit in front of me. I’m ready to shake her for giving up when I’m right fucking here!

But I can’t be angry at her alone when I’ve not even had the balls to say the damn words. I’ve spent years hoping that my actions would be enough to prove to her what kind of man I am, what kind of man I would be for her. Somehow, I always thought she would just magically figure it out. It dawns on me all at once that I’ve expected Rain to be a mind-reader and then blamed her when she wasn’t.

My body moves before my mind fully catches up. My hand wraps around her wrist, freezing her before she takes a sip.

“Don’t,” is all I manage at first. “Just don’t. Not yet,” I say desperately, “Let me say something first.”

She stalls. Those violet eyes of hers appear almost black in this shitty lighting. Somehow, that makes it easier to see the vulnerable soul that she tries her best to hide from the world. That vulnerable soul that I love so much. That I know is worthy of being loved, even if she doesn’t think so.

Sure, I could tell her that. It’s a nice sentence, and maybe she’d listen, but one simple spoken sentence isn’t enough for her to really hear me. There’s only one sure-fire way to make her understand. I take the glass from her and place it back on the bar as the last notes of the Giggle Pigs’ biggest hit, ‘Do You Have the Time’, finish.

“Just wait. Just listen,” I plead as I stand. Satisfied when her chin dips just a tiny amount, I take my pint with me and head for the stage. There’s an ancient and busted-looking guitar set in the corner near one of the speakers. I pick it up by the neck and give the sound guy a questioning look, who probably doesn’t know his input from his aux.

He mouths, Whatever, man, and though I lack my brother’s ear, I shrug the thing over my shoulders and strum the strings to assess how in tune, or in this case, not at all in tune, it is.

I’ve spent enough time around guitars of all kinds to be able to give it a basic tuning. Enough that I won’t offend the entire bar with a single chord. Once the thing sounds about as good as it’s ever going to, I approach the mic, collect my beer from the stool where I’d set it down and raise it in the air.

“A toast. To long overdue confessions.”

The crowd returns my toast. Not my girl though. As I’d asked, she leaves her glass on the bar. In fact, it seems all but forgotten. It’s my turn for shaking hands, as I set the beer aside. My throat goes dry, my palms are sweatier than the first time The Pistols ever performed live. I swallow and let my whole world narrow to the girl that’s at it’s very heart and offer up the truth. “So, uhhh, a long time ago I wrote this thing for a girl, and um, I think it’s finally time she heard it.”

For years, I’ve made up excuse after excuse to keep quiet, to not say the damn thing, but music has a way of succeeding where words often fail.

Chapter 24

With Me

Rain

“This is a song called ‘Places We’ve Been’,” Dutch says so casually to the shell-shocked bar. Except there’s no one in here more surprised than me.

I have never really heard Dutch sing beyond a few odd lines of one of our songs, even though he does have a beautiful voice. But I definitely had no idea he wrote music or that he played guitar. Turns out the man’s been keeping nearly as many secrets as I have, although his aren’t the really fucked up kind.

He strums a few chords. The song is slow, but it builds. When his voice joins the music, I’m spellbound. First, there’s a straining edge to his baritone, as if he’s begging people to hear him. And second, it’s the words themselves.

He sings about parks and playgrounds. He sings about stolen street signs. He sings about jail cells and a garden shed. He sings about us. The Preaching Pistols, long before we ever carried that name. But when he builds to the first bridge, the song changes as he sings,

“These notes are a map

of the places we’ve been