“I want to play.” He hated saying it, but Miki burned with the need to make music. He missed it as much as he used to miss Damien. Nearly as much as he missed Johnny and Dave. “I love Kane, but—”
“Sinjun, you live, eat, and breathe music. Hell, maybe even more than me, and I can’t even wake up in the morning without thinking Sionn is snoring in an open A5.”
“Yeah, Kane’s more of a B5. And only if he’s really fucking dead tired.”
“I think we should start another band.”
Miki heard only a little bit of a buzzing noise as Damien continued to talk. The shock reverberating through his brain was too loud for him to do anything but shake his head, hoping Damie would give him a moment, but finally he had to hold up his hand to get his friend to stop talking.
“Hold up. Did you just say start a band? Really?” He leaned back, exhaling all of the dead air from his lungs. “Dude, how the fuck can we? Are you serious? I just—”
“If you were dead, would you want me to start another band?” Damien pushed his black hair out of his eyes. “And don’t give me that look. Think about it. What would you want from me?”
“I’d be fucking pissed off,” Miki blurted out. “But I’d be fucking pissier if you sat around and jerked off on your guitar while I was taking a dirt nap. You’re too good for that shit. You’re too good to wallow.”
“You wallowed,” Damien pointed out in a soft voice. “That’s what I’m saying here. Without Kane, you’d be drowning in it.”
“I was drowning, D.” He looked away. He had to look away. Sometimes the truth burned him, and staring directly at it was like dropping into hot lava. “I didn’t want to be around this crap anymore. I couldn’t take breathing anymore. If Dude hadn’t walked into the open door that day—”
“I’d have beaten your ass so fucking raw once I got home they’d be selling it for ground-up chicken.” Damie reached up, clenched Miki’s shoulders to give him a gentle shake. “Don’t ever do that to me. Don’t ever leave me like that, okay? Don’t do that to me. Don’t do that to Kane. I know shit gets dark sometimes, but dude, not that. Never that, Sinjun.”
“No, I get it. I do,” Miki murmured, unable to look Damien in the face. “Life just got too… big. Too heavy. I get it now.”
“There’s always someone to lift it up for you,” Damie whispered. “Kane, for instance. If I’m not around, of course.”
Miki picked at his fries, hunting for hard, overdone bits amid the vinegar-drenched potatoes. “You feel that way about Sionn? Like he can lift you out of the shit?”
“Lift me out?” Damien leaned back, tilting his face toward the watery San Francisco sun. “Sinjun, Sionn can wash it off of me. That’s how you should look at Kane. Like he’s got his hand on a fire hose and can blast off everything crappy clinging to you.”
“Heh, you said hose,” Miki snorted. This time, he let Damie’s playful punch land, knocking him slightly to the side.
“You’re a fucking dick sometimes, Sinjun.”
“Like you wouldn’t have said the same thing.”
“Yeah,” Damie laughed. “Probably.”
The fish-and-chip shop must have started a new batch of fries, because Miki caught the sound of crackling coming from the take-out window punched through the front of the building, and the starchy perfume of cooking potatoes momentarily masked the scent of seagull shit and baked concrete. Just beyond them, the bay crinkled and flashed, its gray-blue waters catching a silvery sheen from the sun. The day was a bit of a stew, his conflicting emotions fighting to rise to the surface while newer, happier times bobbed along merrily in Miki’s brain.
“Whatcha thinking about?” Damie said through a mouthful of fries. “Talk to me, Sinjun.”
Nothing much had changed. Here they were, sitting on the bay, and Damie was more interested in picking apart Miki’s brain than eating their lunch.
“Fish, dude. And chips,” Miki reminded him. “Eating.”
“You can eat and talk at the same time, dude.” Damien nodded. “I know. I’ve watched most of your meals go down your throat. No lies. Just talk. It’s only you and me here.”
“I was thinking I was really drowning before Kane.” He turned, focusing on the man. It was scary to say what he felt out loud—to talk about how he’d considered downing every single pain pill the doctors had given him because he hurt so damned much inside. “Dude broke that open—that crap inside of me spilled out—but Kane? He healed it. Healed me.