There had to be an easier way to handle the mess in his head than what he’d been doing. What he really should have done was stay back at the pub and ask one of the cops to run his prints for him. So fucking what if he ended up back at the Munsters’ loony bin. At least he’d have answers. Frowning, Damien strained through the memories he’d dug out of the fog in his brain, trying to remember if he’d ever been arrested. Hoping he’d at least trashed one local hotel room to have been printed, he shook his head at the young man.
“Nope.” Damien reached for his cowboy hat, but the man’s hand was quicker, and his fingers closed over Damie’s wrist. Looking down, he moved to pry off the man’s grasp, but he tightened his grip. “Dude, you’ve got about three seconds before I start breaking your hand.”
“No, I know you.” The young man leaned forward, close enough for Damien to smell the peppermint gum he’d been chewing. “Don’t you play in front of Finnegan’s? The pub down by one of the piers?”
“Yeah, sometimes.” Damien pulled himself free, rubbing at the red marks left by the man’s fingers.
He’d snagged his hat and almost had it on his head when the man piped up loud enough for the entire car to hear. “I knew I recognized you. I remember because the first time I saw you I thought, holy shit, Damien Mitchell is fucking alive.”
“FUCKING son of a bitch.” Sionn slammed down the shot glass he’d just drained.
His evening was ending as it started, Rafe Andrade at his side, but instead of coffee, they’d polished off a good bit of some of Finnegan’s best whiskey. The Connemara probably wasn’t something he should have yanked off the bar’s top shelf, but Sionn wanted something strong to brace himself with. Its vanilla-cream, peaty taste seemed to hit the spot. Then after a few, he no longer was sure he had any spots left.
Just a numbness growing inside of him that had nothing to do with one of Ireland’s amber imports.
“Here, pass that shit over.” Rafe snagged the bottle, taking it out of Sionn’s reach. “You’re getting drunk over some twink who ran off on you. That isn’t worth a sixty-dollar bottle of whiskey. Laura! You wanna bring your boss over some Old Crow or something?”
“He’s not my boss, Andrade. Leigh is,” a blonde woman at the bar called back to him. “He just owns the business. You all can come up and get your own shit.”
“Your employees are shitty to customers,” Rafe grumbled at his friend.
“I’m not a customer.” He puffed his cheeks out, tasting the whiskey still on his breath. “You aren’t either.”
“How about some coffee?” One of the waiters appeared at Rafe’s side, juggling a pair of bright white mugs and a steaming coffeepot. He set them down, poured out the pitch-black brew, and smiled widely at Rafe. “I can get you some… sugar and cream. If you want.”
Sionn rolled his eyes and kicked his friend under the table. Grabbing one of the cups, he muttered at the slender young man standing next to them. “Go get me something to sweeten this shit up, and quit flirting with him. He’s no good for you. Fuck, he’s no good for anyone.”
“You’re a great best friend there, Murphy.” Rafe stopped Sionn from reaching for the bottle. “None for you, man. You’re drinking your coffee American style, not Irish.”
The creamer and sugar appeared on their table, and the waiter hung there for a split second, barely long enough to drop off a pair of spoons and napkins. The clink of metal on the table fascinated Sionn, and he picked up one of the spoons and dropped it from a few inches up.
“The sound changes, you know.” He wrinkled his nose at his friend. “It kind of sounds like Dee when he’s broken a string. Those fecking things draw blood, you know? On his electric. It’s like watching a cobra strike. Scary fucking thing.”
“Yeah, I know.” Rafe held up his hand. A spray of tiny starburst scars dappled his skin, and Sionn frowned, leaning forward to take a closer look. “Try playing bass. The strings are thicker. So, Dee… your guitarist… you know where he lives? So you can check up on him?”
“Nope.” Sionn shook his head, then put his hand up to his forehead. It felt like his brain was sloshing about in his skull, and he needed to make it stop. “I just found out the git’s last name today, and Brownie was the one who told me.”
“Shit, is he still around?”
“Who? Dee?” Rafe seemed to waver in front of him, and Sionn struggled to focus. “No. I just told you he took off.”
“No, Brownie. Hell, I haven’t thought about him in years. Not since he busted us for stealing that car.”
“You stole the car. I just rode in it,” he pointed out. “And yeah, he’s still around.”
“He still has the mustache he stole from that walrus?”
“Yeah, all he’s missing is a blue bucket.” Sionn burped, tasting the whiskey on his breath. “He… Brownie… wants me to run Dee down for him.”
“Do you wanna run him down?” Rafe asked, shoving Sionn’s cup back into his hands.
“No… yes. Fecking shite damn, I don’t know.” The swirls in his coffee were making him dizzy, and he followed a bubble on a crest until it popped. “It’s stupid for me to get hammered over this. So he fucking ran? Not like we had anything. He played outside of my pub. That’s it.”