Strung Out (Needles and Pins #1) (24 page)

“I thought you were starving?”

“I was. I drank a beer. Now I’m not.”

“You okay?” Would I always have this uneasy feeling when he seemed off? His face looked pale, despite the afternoon by the pool.

“Don’t look at me like that.”

“What?”

“And don’t do that.”

“What!”

“Don’t pretend you’re not thinking it.”

Aggravated with his attitude, whether or not it was innocent, I turned without a word. After fixing my plate, I ate supper alone in front of the super-screen television, watching sitcom reruns. Two shows later, I switched off the television and went upstairs to clear the food if it was still out and untouched.

Music pounded through the house. The hard angry beat sounded more like the piece he was working on for Fire Flight’s studio session, which was coming up fast. It looked as if he’d dished himself up a serving. I put my plate in the sink and followed the sound waves to ask if he wanted seconds before I put the food up.

Gage’s pallor still seemed different. He was twisting back and forth in a castor chair, and the song I was hearing thundered from the speakers. He didn’t turn the volume down when I entered, and I stood right inside the door, enjoying the hard beat. When it ended, Gage’s phone came alive with Colt’s voice.

“Too hot. Thought you were going to drop the bass. And what’s with the delay?”

Gage slumped some in his chair, and seeing the light go out of his expression, I threw up my hands as I advanced into the room whispering. “Was he always such a douche?”

“He’s right.” Gage hit a switch, and the computer screen went dark.

“I’m always right.” From the speakerphone. “Who’s there with you? Scarla?” Gage picked the phone up and twisted it, so the camera would frame me. I pulled a smile when I saw Colt’s eyes on the screen, and he greeted me. “Hi, Scarla. My pool misses you.”

Gage’s face clouded even more, and he angled the camera away from me. I made another silent gesture of my hands, this one more explicit.

“I’ll call you later.” Gage barely waited for an answer before ending the call. “He’s right. I’ve got to fix that.”

“Whatever. He always finds something to bitch about.” Picking up the guitar on the couch, I held it and sat in its place.

“You ready for that lesson?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t really thinking. You know. That I’d be gone in six days.”

“What if I told you, you could learn one song in a few days?”

“You could teach me a whole song?”

He grinned at my doubtful tone and with a challenge-accepted look, crossed to sit beside me. Waving a hand with a flourish toward the guitar I held, he said, “Scarlette, meet Claudine. Claudine meet Scarlette.”

Running a finger down the smooth wood of the neck before relinquishing it to his tuning expertise, I inquired. “Do you have any boy guitars?”

His face contorted into a façade of shock. “Nope. Only ladies up close and personal with my junk.”

The answer confused me, until a moment later when he slipped into the strap and stood, strumming chords while crossing the room. He searched out a container of picks, grabbed one, and turned. “This one should be right for you.”

I nodded, but wasn’t listening. I was too busy noticing the body of the guitar at crotch level, and although I tried, I couldn’t stop a belated giggle.

Claudine
was a lucky lady
…

True to his word
, by the next evening, he had me playing the beginning lick and the chorus of Smoke on the Water. This was an accomplishment, because it was no easy feat to concentrate with him so close. His arms wrapped around me to demonstrate finger placement. His breath fanned my neck when he spoke. His fingers held my eyes captivated as they walked along the instrument.

It was during one of these spellbound moments when I first noticed something was not quite right. His hands seemed shaky. A sheen of perspiration ran along his hairline. And like the evening before, his complexion didn’t seem right. Since asking about his welfare had been disastrous the previous night, I didn’t at first.

“Okay. This next lick, instead of being three, two, three, one, is going to speed up so that it’s three, three, two, two, and then three one, three one. And the strokes are going to be down, down, up, down. Down, up, down, down, up.”

Hearing Gage speak of licks and strokes in his husky sweet voice was a continuous rapturous assault on every nerve.

His hand curved naturally around the wood and the pads of his fingers fit themselves to the strings. The pick fell to the floor, but he ignored it and used his fingers instead to show me the next progression. I almost choked on the drool pooling in my throat.

When it was my turn to follow his lead, I played through what I knew so far. To divert my wayward thoughts, I concentrated on the guitar, taking in the faint scuffmarks, the one nick. For a moment, a skull and lightning bolt manifested. It transformed back into a black Gibson as I finished my lick and Gage pulled the guitar into his lap.

His hands shook worse now, so much so that he couldn’t play what he wanted to demonstrate. “Well, that’s enough for tonight.” He offered it back to me. “You want to keep it with you to practice?”

Lightning stretched across it again and the skull faded in and then out. It wasn’t that I actually saw it; it was a feeling. The same feeling I’d had when seeing my father’s guitar. Sorrow. Grief. Regret.

“No.” I recoiled.

One day this iconic guitar and a legend would be left behind, same as my father’s.

My gaze followed him as he moved across the room, his posture bent like a man forty years older. He rested the guitar in a rack, walked a few more paces, and dropped to a squat, peering into the mini fridge.

Over his shoulder he asked, “Want anything?”

Ignoring his offer, I asked, “What’s wrong? What has you shaking like that? What has you looking so bad?”

Using the shelving unit the fridge was encased in, he hauled himself up and then wrestled with the cap on the beer bottle. An unsteady twist finally popped it off, and it landed at his feet, where it went ignored like the guitar picks. Only it wasn’t a pick. It was trash. It wasn’t normal, especially for this room.

“Nothing. I’m fine, okay?” Whatever he read in my face softened his expression. “I won’t make you worry again.” The promise rang with humble sincerity, and then his voice changed a bit. “You going?” Another chugalug of the beer. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Nonplussed, I stared, and then realized I was being dismissed. In the nicest of ways—but dismissed, nevertheless. It seemed a well-used phrase coming from his lips. In a different element, he was a man who was accustomed to speaking and getting what he wanted—or sending away what he didn’t. For a moment, I saw Gage Remington-Superstar—sprawled on not only this couch, but backstage couches all over the world—and he looked so alone.

I stood, regarding him for a few more seconds, and then left the room. Upstairs, I readied for bed, unable to believe we’d gone from the incredible closeness of the morning, and the affinity since, to this moment now. It wasn’t ‘fine.’ No matter what he said.

Slipping on a pair of shorts, I ignored my bed and raced down the hallway, down the stairs, back to the studio. The main lights were off but a blue light from an equalizer lent a dim glow.

The beer bottle was on its side, pooling into a wet spot on the oriental looking rug that covered the tile in this room. Gage was still on the couch, fully reclined now, on his side, curled almost into a ball.

“Gage?”

He groaned.

“Seriously. What’s wrong?” Avoiding the beer puddle, I stopped beside him.

“Fuck I hate this. I hate this part so much…”

I touched my hand to his head, finding cold clammy skin. Yet without touching him anywhere else, I could feel the intense heat radiating off the rest of him.

Suddenly I felt like an idiot. The shakes. The shivers. The vows of never worrying me again…

“Withdrawals? Are you in the middle of withdrawals? How many days?”

Croaking out another swear, he coughed, his entire body jolting with the motion. “The morning after last time. After you left. That morning.”

Now I was the one to swear. Straightening, I crossed the shadowy room. The fridge light blinked on when I pulled it open and grabbed a bottle of water.

Carrying it with me, I returned to his side and knelt to his level. “Drink this. You need water. Not beer.”

“Beer takes the edge off.”

“And dehydrates you, making the symptoms ten times worse right after you’re done drinking it!” I managed to get him sitting up enough to tip the rim of the bottle to his lips. “Where’s your smoke?”

I pulled open the indicated drawer and found it littered with paraphernalia I had no idea how to use. Rooting through it, I picked up a prescription type container containing pre-rolled joints. I shook one out and took it and a lighter to the couch.

He moved his legs aside and I took a seat. Sparking the lighter, I held it to the tip of the rolled paper, inhaled, and leaned in close enough so our lips barely brushed as I let the hit out. Pinching it backward between my lips, I leaned in again, expelling another breath while he sucked it in.

Within a minute or so, he sat up and accepted the transfer of the joint from my fingers to his. After taking in a few more hits himself, he gave me a sideways look. “Where’d you learn to do that?”

Knowing he was speaking of the hits I’d shared with him, I shrugged, not up to stories of my past ruining the weirdly comfortable moment.

His half smile quirked enough to see his dimple, but his posture still seemed pained. “I would’ve beat up whatever little punk taught you that. Still will—just tell me who.”

I laughed, letting him think it was one of my school-aged boyfriends.
Because how many teen girls had been
taught to ‘shotgun’ by one of their mom’s rocker boyfriends?

H
e listened to her amused giggle and basked in the moment of making her laugh. He wondered what relationship he and Scarlette would have today if there had been no divorce between their parents. If he had been there to watch over her through high school, through college. If she had been a teenaged girl without a druggie, promiscuous mother.

If he would have been around to make things better for her, would he be sitting here right now as her big brother? Or the man who had just inconspicuously adjusted the boner her shotgun hits had given him?

“You can’t just quit cold turkey.” She broke the silence. “It’s dangerous.”

“I think I can. I had already done the detox part in rehab. And I didn’t go back to using every day when I left.” He took one last hit and dropped the smoke onto a glass coaster. He could sense her mind churning. “I’ll go into rehab if I have to. But… And I know this is a lot to ask… You can help me, right? If you tell me what to do, what to take, whatever it is you studied, I could stay home, right? I can beat this thing in my own house. And not somewhere where every other junkie looking at me knows who I am.” The light beneath the pool surface created an alien-like glow on the windows and he watched it for a bit when she didn’t answer. “I know you don’t want to be in L.A. for the twentieth thing. Just… We could do this, right? I can text you or call you with questions. We can Skype. Whatever it takes.”

At this point, he felt as if he was pleading for more than her help in home detox. He felt like he was begging her to stay in touch.

“I’ll help you. You know I will.”