“And now you do? Because of St. John?”
“Yeah, I do,” he replied softly. “People like my mom and Miki are like kites. They need the sky. They need the wind. Me and my dad? We’re the people holding the string. We’re their anchors to the earth. Miki and I can feel each other through the connection.”
“Huh, how does that work out? You’re… wait, you’re not the string. You’re holding the string.”
“Yeah, dude. I’m holding the string.” Kane laughed at Kel’s confused look. “I can feel the power of the wind catching Miki, lifting him up and dropping him down. He can feel the world beneath me, and he knows… he trusts me not to let go… not to let him drift off into the sky. And when he gets too tired of flying, he knows I’ll reel him in and take care of him. Just like my dad does with my mom.”
“And what do you get out of that? Huh?” Kel asked pointedly. “What the fuck happens to you when he flies off?”
“I have to trust him not to.” Kane smiled at his skeptical partner. “Trust has to go both ways. I love him, Kel. I love his singing to himself as he scribbles in the damned notebooks he leaves everywhere. I love kissing the ink stains on his fingers and the flush he gets when he’s had half a beer. I know him, Kel.”
“He’s fucked up, Kane.” Sanchez shook his head, worry creasing his forehead. “You’ve gotta see that. Hell, I was in that room with him for what? An hour? Hour and a half? And I could tell he’s messed in the head.”
“It’s what I was dealt, dude.” He shrugged. “It’s what he was dealt. We’ve got to deal with it. Vega and Shing? They’re the least of it. He’s missing part of his soul, Kel. When Damien died, Miki’s music died too. He writes lyrics and leaves the other side of the page blank because that’s where Damien used to score their music. Miki knows how to love and, damn, he knows how it feels when he’s lost it.”
“He and Damien Mitchell were together, then?” Kel made a face. “Shit, man. You’re screwed.”
“They weren’t lovers, Sanchez. You aren’t listening, man. They were… brothers. Hell, closer than brothers,” Kane said. “They got one another. I can respect that. Hell, I wish I could take that kind of pain away from him, but that’s going to haunt Miki for the rest of his life. But I’ve got his heart and soul, even the shredded pieces where his best friend used to be.”
“You, my friend,” his partner pronounced. “You are stupid in love.”
“Yeah.” Kane knew the grin on his face was silly, and it hurt to stretch his cheeks out that much, but he liked how he felt, even as Kel shook his head in mock disgust. “Kel, I’m lucky he lets me love him, and I’m going to take care of what he’s given me. I have to, Kel. Or I’ll be as dead inside as Miki used to be.”
“Sounds like you’re getting the raw end of the deal there, man,” Kel sighed, picking at his fries with a fork.
“Not if you never thought you could fly,” Kane murmured. “With Miki, I can feel the wind. He lets me have a taste of the sky every time I kiss him. That’s not something I even thought of before, and now I can’t imagine my life without it.”
“YOU’RE doing what?” Edie’s voice screeched out of Miki’s phone, and he pulled it away from his ear, shooting the taxi driver an apologetic glance. “Are you insane? Turn the cab around!”
“No.” Keeping the phone angled away from his face, he spoke quietly into the headset. “I kind of have to do this, Edie. It just feels right to do.”
“Right to do? You thought it would be okay to have chickens on the tour bus because you wanted scrambled eggs! You think this is the right thing to do, and I can’t get you to see a therapist to talk about your messed up head?” She ranted for a moment, and Miki spent the time tracing the snippets of a song in his mind. After he circled round to the chorus for the third time, he took advantage of Edie’s need to breathe.
He loved Edie. In a very real way, she’d been the only family he had left after the accident, but as she inhaled quickly and continued to disparage his decision to see the Vega house one last time, Miki remembered why it’d been so important to come back home to San Francisco instead of living in Los Angeles where she could watch him.
“Hanging up on her would be bad, right?” Miki leaned forward to whisper into the driver’s ear. “I mean, really bad, right?”
“Is she your wife?” the older Russian man asked. “Because if she is your wife, yes. If she is your girlfriend, maybe a little bad, but you can make that better. If a wife, then no. You listen and shut up.”
“No, she’s my manager,” Miki said, wincing as another round of berating began. “Kind of like an aunt.”