Purple Hearts(58)

“Hey, whoa,” Cassie said, standing. “It was just a suggestion.”

“Just say the word and I’ll do it.”

“Uh, okay.” She picked up the pillow from where it had landed on the floor and tossed it next to me. “I’m not your boss, or your mother, or whoever. I was just trying to point out that something seems to be off.”

Her gaze burned. Everything I wanted to say was cycling at once, up and down, like the hills in my dream, and I couldn’t figure out which one to take hold of. I kept going toward anger because it was the easiest. But it wasn’t the only thing I was feeling. Everything else was buried under my nightmare.

Jake, with Hailey and JJ, lying on the blanket. Why hadn’t Jake called me? What if Johnno had showed up in Buda again? Is that why Jake wasn’t calling again?

Running. No, wheeling. Limping.

The gunshot in my ear, sounding real. Frankie’s boots on the splattered ground.

“I don’t want to talk about this right now.”

“Rad,” she called over her shoulder. “I’m gonna go in my room and not sleep. Thanks.”

“Fuck,” I said, burying my face in my hands. The closest I’d get to another apology. I needed to condense everything into one thing. I wanted cloud head, but the stabbing pain had subsided. Technically I didn’t need the pills.

I reached for them anyway.





Cassie


“Okay, like, when George Harrison was with Pattie Boyd, he wrote ‘Something,’ he wrote ‘If Not for You,’?” I was saying to Nora as I sat behind my piano in her unfinished basement, holding my hand out for the joint. Toby was sitting next to me on a milk crate.

She passed it to me, shaking her head while she held in the toke. “Nope, nope,” she corrected, “?‘If Not for You’ was written by Bob Dylan. George just covered it.”

“Nora’s right,” Toby said.

“Of course I’m right,” Nora said, not looking at him.

I sucked in, watching the fringe on Nora’s vest sway as she got up to get her guitar. It was Fleetwood Friday, but Toby and I had both forgotten. So there she was, in all her glory, and I was wearing Toby’s Longhorns sweatshirt. I’d never forgotten Fleetwood Friday, even before Toby was in the band.

I was realizing it was no coincidence that Nora had suddenly brought up the idea of musicians being sucked in by their relationships, ruining their art.

One forgotten Fleetwood Friday did not make Toby a Yoko. And besides, I wanted to remind Nora, Yoko didn’t give enough of a shit about The Beatles to break them up. Yoko had just wanted to make badass conceptual art about clouds and scream into microphones. Toby and I both gave too much of a shit about this band to let our relationship get in the way.

And, damn, the real sucker of my life force was Luke. The fight we’d had last night stayed with me. Waking up to his screams. The rage behind every word. I knew not all of it was about what I had done. But I shouldn’t have to take the brunt of it. I didn’t say a single word to him before I left for practice. Which took skill, considering I was literally propping him up as he limped to the bathroom.

Toby reached for my thigh, giving it a squeeze.

“It was a collaboration between George and Dylan,” I called to her, coughing. “And anyway, the point is the creativity. The creativity was unchanged.”

“Especially if the artist’s, uh”—Toby cleared his throat—“partner is in the same band. They work to make each other better. You know?”

“Show me a woman,” Nora said, sitting back down on her amp. “Show me a female musician who didn’t get swallowed by her relationship. Look what happened to Joanna Newsom when she dated what’s-his-face. Or, okay, not musicians, but Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.”

I thought, while I stared at the Patti Smith poster on the concrete wall, the only decoration we allowed in our rehearsal space, Luke’s the goddamn problem. Not Toby. And Luke is my fault. It was on the tip of my tongue, but I held it.

“What about Kathleen Hanna and Adam Horovitz?” Toby chimed. “Bikini Kill only grew stronger even though she was living with a member of the Beastie Boys.”

“Some might even say in spite of.” Nora turned her heavy-lined eyes toward Toby.

“Let’s play ‘Rhiannon,’?” I said, hoping this discussion was over.

“Okay, I’ll say one more thing,” Nora said, holding up one of her ringed fingers. “Artists with other artists is a proven disaster, especially when the woman is more talented than the man. He will try to . . .” She made a choking motion. “Lock her down and make her into his manic pixie dream girl.”

The tension in the room swelled. “Are you saying we’re more talented than Toby?” I finally asked.

Nora’s voice got louder. “I’m saying that The Loyal was ours first. . . .” She stopped. “And now that we’ve got a good thing going on, you had to complicate it.” She looked at Toby. “I just wish that you never asked her out.”

Toby looked back at Nora, an apologetic smile on his face. “We can’t help that we like each other.”

“No offense, Toby,” Nora said, meaning all offense. “You can like each other all you want, but if you break up and we can’t play the most important show of our lives, I’m going to kill both of you.”