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Still, Devin was ultimately the boss here, so I nodded reluctantly and propped Anna against the wall of the sound booth. He announced he'd call for some pizza, then left the studio to head back to his house. Dave, Simon, and Greyson collected their sweatshirts and phones and started to leave when Simon stopped and turned to me, still sitting in the sound booth. Unmoving.
He headed toward the booth and opened the door. “You good, D?” he asked while the others headed out.
“Yeah,” I lied while the image of Lennon fucking someone else was burned into my corneas. “I'm just worn out.”
He nodded. “We've been going pretty hard,” he agreed.
“We've gone harder before,” I muttered, lifting my eyes to his.
“Yeah, but it's been a while,” he reasoned with a shrug. “Maybe we can take a break for the weekend. Go do some shit or something.”
Taking a break seemed counterproductive. Nobody got anything accomplished by doing absolutely nothing. But then again, we had been working nonstop for a week, racking our brains and piecing the songs together from sunset to sundown for the past week. Lennon and the douchebag aside, it might do all of us some good to take a day or two to breathe.
“Yeah,” I finally agreed, conceding with a nod. “We'll talk to Dev.”
“Cool.” Simon clapped his hand against the sound booth door before stepping backward. “You need any help here, or you good?”
“I'm good,” I lied again, thinking about her lips kissing someone else.
“Okay. Give me a call if you're not.”
“Yep,” I muttered, knowing there was nothing he could do about the shit playing out in my head.
***
I was jealous.
There was no other word for it, and it was one I'd never used to describe myself before. Women didn't get under my skin this way. They didn't impact my life; they didn't mean anything.
One incident came to mind from a few years ago—when I’d made out with a woman who, two hours later, slept with one of our old roadies. I'd made a joke about it, and he had apologized profusely, like he'd done something to hurt me or betray my trust. But I couldn't have cared less.
Sex had meant nothing.
Womenhad meant nothing.
Until it did, andshemeant something. She meant so many somethings, and the longer I let my brain linger on all of them, the more I wanted to get my ass to New York. I wanted to remind her that she’d been mine before she was his, and I wanted to demand she never see another man for the rest of her damn life. But before I could call for a car to take me there, I realized how insane it was.
I was turning territorial over a woman who was nevertrulymine. She had every right to talk to or date or fuck other guys if she wanted. Never mind the fact that she might not have been with anybody else to begin with. The douchebag could’ve been a cousin for all I knew, and no amount of staring when I should've been sleeping was going to grant me that knowledge.
So, I strapped my leg on, grabbed my cane, and left the room I was calling home at the Ole Whaler's Inn. It was a little place with only a dozen guest rooms, but it was nice and less intrusive than staying at Devin's house.
I took my time in walking down the carpeted hallway to the foyer, letting my good leg lead the way. I hadn't worn the prosthetic for much of the week I'd been in River Canyon, and although I'd spent months despising the damn thing, now, it felt good to be upright even if I was leaning on the cane more than the leg.
Walking past the elderly dude at the front desk, I nodded in his direction. He informed me that it was a nice night for a stroll around town and hoped I'd enjoy myself, as if he'd known I hadn't done much of anything remotely enjoyable in over four years.
So, I decided to do just that.
I headed down the wooden ramp adjacent to the wraparound porch steps and took the stone path to the sidewalk. There was nothing but quaint, old houses in either direction, nothing to differentiate one side from the other, so I trusted my intuition and turned right.
The old dude was right; it was a nice night for a stroll.
Or maybe it was simply the lifeblood of this town, the closeness of its inhabitants and the feeling that nothing bad happened there within its limits because of that ironclad connection. Every crack in the sidewalk and leaf in the trees said nobody hurt around here, and the whispers of those fluffy, comfortable lies carried along the winds.
I liked it even if it was bullshit.
Everybody suffered, even in the most perfect of places.
A couple holding hands with a small boy passed on the other side of the street. The man—a dude dressed in black and ink—lifted his hand in a friendly wave, and I nodded back. Then, we passed without any further acknowledgment, but that one small gesture hit me in the gut.
