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“Want to get a few beers and talk about shit?” I ask Jem.
Jem’s eyes widen and he smirks. “Oh, yeah?”
“You and me. Old times.” He opens his mouth to reply. “Just not the girls—you and me. St Davids you and me. Been a while.”
Jem’s face softens into a memory. “Sure, I’m not drinking the shitty cider though.”
We smirk at each other; the biggest link between us for months reforged.
We get back to Jem’s suite and I flop into the armchair. He disappears into the bathroom and I wait amongst the chaos of his room. He hasn’t rock and roll trashed the place, but if I didn’t know Jem, I’d be alarmed somebody robbed him. Empty bottles and overflowing ashtrays adorn every surface—Jem never cared about the hotels’ no smoking policy.
I attempt to call Sky a couple of times but there’s no answer. Then I remember it’s 5am in the UK and give up. In response, I pick up a half-empty bottle of whisky and tip the contents into a glass. Two glasses later, Jem appears from the bathroom in grey track pants, shirtless. Wet hair curls in tendrils around his pale face and I can see his eyes more clearly. For once, they’re not as glazed.
Room service knocks and Jem goes to the door. I hear a brief exchange and a giggle, groaning inwardly that Jem might invite her in. A sneaky groupie?
Thankfully, all Jem wheels in is the trolley of junk food. Pizza. Instantly, Sky enters my mind. How she’s not only thousands of miles away, but also a life away. There are chips too and Jem grabs a plate, stuffing a handful into his mouth.
“Fuck, she was hot. Didn’t have a friend though, so thought there’s no point asking her in.” He grabs the remote and flicks on the TV.
“There’s no point because I’m not screwing a random chick, Jem.”
“Sky isn’t here. She won’t know.”
Jem shovels more chips into his mouth and I watch him incredulously. He still doesn’t understand what’s between Sky and me.
“What’re you going to do?” he asks, leaving the TV on a music channel and tossing the remote to one side.
“Get very, very drunk.”
“Nah. About the other shit?”
“What can I do? I’ll have to face shit and return to England, if I want to see Sky.”
“So, get arrested?”
“Wouldn’t be the first time.” I chuckle, relieved the world retreats as numbness spreads through me.
Jem grins back. “Yeah. Never this, though. Lily’s lost her shit. She won’t win.”
“Don’t want to talk about this crap, man.” I don’t want to think about anything—just wipe myself out and then tomorrow I’ll deal.
As the alcohol fills our bodies, we rewind to old times, discussing everything from teachers we hated at school to early days of the band and stupid crap that we did when we were teens. Jem loosens up, and for the first time in over a year, I feel a glimmer of the closeness we once had.
“You’re into this chick big?” asks Jem when we’re half way through our second bottle.
Sky swims across my drunken mind. “Sky. Not just ‘this chick’. Fucking love her, Jem. You don’t understand.”
He studies my face. “Yeah, I get it now. Maybe I didn’t. Thought she was playing with you.”
I swig from the bottle, tiredness creeping over me. “You and Liv? Never saw you with a girl longer than a week before her. Not for a lot of years, anyway.”
Jem’s mouth pulls straight. “She was cool. Special. Dunno, maybe vulnerable is why. I wanted to take care of Liv and look what I did. I fucking killed her.”
“You didn’t kill her.”
“They were my drugs, Dylan,” he says quietly, speaking to his bare feet. “We had a fight. I left and she took too much. So yeah, it was me.”
He told the police about the fight, but no drugs were found at the scene or on Jem and they couldn’t arrest him. Unease creeps along my spine.
