My Heart's Bliss (Hard Love & Dark Rock #3) (2 page)

Chapter 3

Trace

Being in a rock band isn't just a career, it's a lifestyle.  It affects every aspect of your daily existence, especially when you're on tour.  And even if the tour is a secret, hush-hush type of deal—like the tour we were currently on—there are aspects of it that you've just got to adapt to if you want to have any hope of making it through in one piece.

Perhaps one of the most basic, but also most dramatic, differences between rock life and regular life is the sleeping schedule.  Most folks make their living in the day and sleep during the night.  For rock musicians, it's the other way around.  Our concerts usually don't start until eight or nine p.m., and we don't get on stage until later than ten.  If we play a full-length set, including one or two encores, we'll be up there until after midnight.  That time period—between ten and midnight—is when we have to be on top of our game, performing at our maximum potential.  We can't be dragging along half-asleep because we've been on our feet all day.  So we get in the habit of waking up late, often just a few hours before the show's set to start.

There's the after-show comedown to think about, too.  Once you've played the show itself, once you've been on stage in front of a crowd of people—sometimes tens of thousands of people at once—and you've poured your heart and your soul into your performance, you’re often so strung out on adrenaline and excitement that it takes hours to calm down enough to even consider trying to sleep.  So you stay up, and you keep partying, and you don't go to bed until the sun is on its way back up, and regular folks are getting ready to start their day.

So, like I said: the difference between rock life and regular life is literally the difference between night and day.

Truthfully, even if you manage to adapt to the nocturnal lifestyle of the rock musician—and even if you find a way to deal with the constant, adrenalized ups and downs of a career based on performing for massive crowds—it can still wear on you.  It's no secret that most rock bands fall apart before they've finished their first decade,
especially
if their audience's interest dries up.  For the Belletrists, we've endured beyond that ten-year mark mainly because the audience is still there, and therefore the money is still there, which means there’s still a whole group of folks dedicated to holding us together and keeping the money machine moving.

And even with that system of support, things can fall apart. When Lucy died, things almost did.

Lucy.  My girlfriend.  Our keyboardist Sara’s sister.  Her death nearly killed the group.  Even the most basic aspects of the rock life, of any life, seemed impossible after she passed away—like getting restful sleep, for example.  A year after Lucy’s death, most days saw me lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking.  Not sleeping.

But that day, for the first time in a year, I'd slept deeply, solidly, without interruption and without the rough edges of medication.

I credit Anne for that.

Ever since the moment I first laid eyes on her, I felt different.  She made me feel more in sync with the world than I'd felt since Lucy died.  And strangely enough, having her by my side even helped me when I
wasn't
awake.  She helped me rest.

But when I woke up that morning, the day after meeting her, I found myself alone in the bed.  Anne was gone.

I opened my eyes, looking at the pillow beside me, which still bore the imprint left by her resting head.  I reached out my hand, touching the spot where she'd lain, as if the sheets would reveal some proof that she'd been there, that she wasn't just a dream.

The sheets felt cold against my hand.  She'd been gone for a while, if she'd ever truly been there.

I felt the coldness seeping into me.  She was gone.  I knew it in my bones, somehow.

I sat up in the bed, looking around the room.  Sunlight seeped in around the edges of the curtains, but it was a fog-filtered light, the marine layer scraping all the warmth and color out of the sunshine.  It just made the room feel colder.

I put my feet on the floor and stood up, looking around the room.  There was no sign of Anne—no note, no forgotten piece of clothing, no piece of furniture moved out of place.  The only object in the room that wasn't an impersonal part of the hotel was my suitcase, waiting near the wall facing the foot of the bed.

I made my way to the bathroom, turned on the shower, and stepped in as soon as the water felt warm.  I stood there for a long time with the water cascading over me, waiting for the warmth to sink into my skin, to drive away the cold.  Finally, I gave up.  The chill I felt came from so deep inside of me, there was no way the water's heat could reach it.

The hotel towels were thick and white.  I grabbed one, dried myself off, and dropped the towel on the floor.  I walked out of the bathroom naked, the air cold and uncomfortable against my skin.  It was like I was moving through a fog, as if the air itself was tinged with sadness and that sadness was seeping in through my pores.

I went to the suitcase, zipped it open and dragged out a change of clothes—black jeans, black shirt, black sweater.

Anne had come into my life like a ray of sun cutting through a hole in the clouds.  For a moment I'd stood in her light, bathing in her warmth.  And now she was gone, and I felt even colder than I'd felt before.

I opened the small pocket of my suitcase, pulled out the antidepressants, gulped down my morning dose without even bothering to wash them down with a drink.  The pills caught in my throat, nearly choking me.

Despite the hopelessness crushing down on me, growing heavier and heavier with every beat of my heart, I made myself wander down the hall toward the party suite.  It had cleared out except for Micah in the living room, spinning his fucking knife.

"Micah, have you seen Anne?"

"Who's Anne?"

"The girl I was with last night.  Short, pretty brunette, with big brown eyes."

"The fat girl?"

I nearly winced at that, despite the apathy flowing through my blood from the pills digesting in my stomach.

"I wouldn’t call her fat," I said.  "Maybe curvy."

"Whatever," he said, spinning that knife again.  "Yeah, I saw her.  Couple hours ago, right here in this room."

For a moment I wondered how long he'd been sitting in that chair, spinning that knife.  And then I decided I'd probably rather not know.

"Did you talk with her?" I asked.  "Did she say anything about where she was going?"

"She asked where her dorm-mate Becca was.  I told her to check the front room."  He gave the knife another spin.  "To tell the truth, she didn't looked very happy.  Kind of freaked out, if anything.  Like someone had walked over her grave."

Another little twinge of pain cut through the fog, making me wince.  I'd known it in my heart—there was something wrong with me, something toxic—but it still hurt to have that knowledge verified.

"Shit," I said.

Micah watched me a moment longer.  Suddenly I didn't want to be around him, to be around anybody.  But I couldn't quite find the motivation to turn around and go back to my room, either.  I couldn't find the motivation to do anything.

He glanced over to the kitchenette, then looked back at me.

"It's nine o'clock," he said.  "Bernstein's got a Lear jet chartered for five, but he's not gonna collect us until three.  Maybe you should go back to bed, Trace.  Get some more sleep."

I nodded my head.

"Yeah," I said.  "Sure."

I took a deep breath, turned around and shuffled toward the door.  Slowly, I made my way down the hall, back toward my room.

The sheets were rumpled and unmade.  I didn't try to straighten them, didn't even bother to take my clothes or my shoes off.  I just laid down on the bed and rolled onto my side in a fetal position.

But this time, without Anne, I couldn't sleep.

Chapter 4

Anne

If downtown felt empty, the campus felt utterly deserted.  There were a few groundskeepers strolling through the main quad—picking up litter, laughing at some private joke—but other than that not a single soul.  I made my way to the far side, where the dormitory buildings huddled in a quiet corner away from the main grounds.  My keycard let me in, and I took the elevator up to level four.

The elevator doors opened, and I came face to face with the display board for our floor.  The R.A. changed the theme every few weeks.  Usually it was some educational service announcement about the dangers of drugs or of excessive alcohol consumption.  This time it was about sexually transmitted infections.

Halfway out of the elevator, I froze.  Posted right at eye-level was a photo of a girl's face, digitally altered to illustrate the ravages of a whole host of STIs.  Her eyes looked bloodshot and sore, sunken into her head so that her face looked like a skull.  Her skin looked sallow, her open mouth was ringed with weeping sores, her exposed tongue covered in a fuzzy white fungus.

Above the picture, in huge paper letters that stretched from wall to wall of the fourth floor lobby, were the words: "Don't get sick.  Bag that dick!!!"  A box spilling over with free condoms was on a table in front of the display.

My stomach went sour, and the room seemed to spin.  Suddenly, I was worried that I'd throw up or pass out, or both.

And then the elevator let out a ding, and the doors closed in to bang against my shoulders.

I ran to my room, grabbed my towel and my shower slippers, and then went straight to the showers.  Someone was in a shower stall already—the water hissing against the tiles, the steam thickening the air.  I found an open stall, turned the water up as hot as it would go, and waited.  When the steam was billowing up I jumped into the scalding spray, and proceeded to scrub myself raw and pink.  After I'd taken a loofah to every square inch of myself, I stood under the water's rush, letting it wash over me, wishing it could clear the worry out of my mind.

But when I got back to my room again, I almost cried.  The room felt cold and lonely, the walls concrete, the floor covered just by a carpet so thin it seemed miserly.  I looked over at Becca's unmade bed, my eyes stinging, and wished she were in it.  I wished somebody, anybody, was there.  The idea of being alone was almost unbearable.

The clock by my bed said 7:10 a.m.  I didn't have my first class until nine.  I was so tired that my brain felt raw, my nerves frayed, and I considered trying to catch a little more sleep.  It didn't seem likely, but I figured I'd give it a try.

But when I got in the bed, and put my head in the pillow, I found myself looking up into Trace LeBeau's eyes.  Well, a picture with his eyes in it, anyway—the poster of the Belletrists that I'd had hanging on the wall above my bed since the day I moved in.  Trace in the middle of the group, his eyes framed by his dark eyelashes, his wrist marked with that vivid tattoo: Bleed Blessings.

I'd seen that tattoo just a few hours ago, but it didn't look the same anymore.  The end of each word, the "d" and the "s", had been severed by a ghostly scar from when Trace had tried to kill himself by cutting his own wrists.  The image of that scar came to me, blotting out everything else.

I closed my eyes, feeling a crazy whirling starting in my head.  Just a few hours ago I'd been laying in bed with Trace above me, his dark eyes looking into mine.  Now I was back in my own bed, and Trace was still above me, looking down.  In the hotel I'd wanted nothing else but to get lost in his dark eyes.  Now they made me feel even more panicked, like something I wanted to escape.

I rolled over onto my side, pulling my knees up in a fetal position, and covered my head with my blanket.

-

My alarm woke me up, blaring, at 8:45 a.m.  I looked over at Becca's bed.  She still wasn't home.  I wondered where she was, what she was doing.

Sergio and Angel, probably.

I threw on some jeans and a big hooded sweater, pulling the hood up, hiding under it.  And then I ran down the stairwell—not waiting for the elevator—and hurried through the now crowded campus to my class.

Political Science had never been my favorite subject, but I normally made an effort to pay attention anyway.  I figured if I was going to be taking on the crippling debt of school loans, which were likely hang over me for the next twenty years, then I'd better take
all
of my classes seriously, even the general education requirements that have nothing to do with my actual major or interests.

But that day, for the life of me, I couldn't focus.  The image of Trace kept appearing in front of me like a ghost.  I kept thinking of the way his dark eyes had looked at me.  I kept remembering how it felt when he had touched me, kissed me, licked me.  I kept thinking of how it had felt to touch and taste and lick him, to bring him to orgasm with my mouth, to swallow him down like a sacrament.

And then the thought of that ghostly scar on Trace's wrist, and of the Belletrists’ keyboardist Sara Sounding telling me about Trace waking up next to his dead girlfriend, and then trying to kill himself.

It went on like that through the whole lecture, my thoughts turning either erotic or macabre, my emotions trending toward arousal or terror, my recent memories so vivid that I felt almost as if I were still living those experiences, and not actually sitting in the class at all.  I couldn’t stop fidgeting and squirming in my seat, unable to focus.  I didn't even notice the girl who sat down in front of me—I girl I felt friendly toward and sometimes compared notes with—until she took her jacket off and my eyes fell on the words printed across the back of her shirt:

My life and my love, I give them both

This is my heart's blood oath

Lyrics from one of the Belletrists' first hits, "A Heart's-Blood Oath."  I hadn't even realized she liked the band.

Then again, a ton of people liked the band.  They'd been at the top of the charts for nearly a decade, after all.

The memory of Trace performing that song—at the Hemlock Club the night before—came to me so clearly that I could practically see it.  The passion he'd sang those words with, it had shown from his eyes like twin searchlights.

And he'd had that same look of passion and focus when he'd been alone with me, in that hotel room at the Fairmont.  And he'd made me feel that passion and focus, myself.  And not just last night.  Ever since I was a kid.

I closed my eyes and pressed the heels of my hands against them so hard it ached.  I needed to calm down, to get a grip.  I needed to get Trace LeBeau out of my head.

But how could I do that when his music and his lyrics were a part of who I was?