We play Detroit and then two shows in Chicago before we have a day off, and every time Lucky and I cross paths, my heart lodges in my throat and I can’t breathe. I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with me and I need to figure it out before I start self-destructing, so I take my free day to fly to my place in Austin and try to pull my shit together. It’s been a while since I’ve been here, but of all my places, this is the one that feels most like home.
The cab drops me on the curb outside an old green Victorian and I trudge up the stairs to the attic apartment. I unlock the door and push through, then tug off my hoodie and look around the dusty place.
It’s small and in a rundown neighborhood, but it was the first apartment that was all mine. I started renting it when we finally began getting steady work. I bought the whole building from the owner two years later when we signed with our label and the real money started rolling in. In the great room, just inside the door, the ceilings taper from ten feet at the peak in the middle of the house to four feet near the walls, and the windows are dormered. The kitchen is along the wall to the right, just a long counter with a stove and sink in it, and a wooden table splits the kitchen from the rest of the room, where I’ve got an old leather couch I picked up at a yard sale and a newer TV and sound system bolted to the wall next to my overflowing CD and DVD racks. Beyond the TV in the back is my bedroom, where I’m sure the queen bed sheets are still in the tangle I left them in a few months back, last time I was here. Next to the bedroom door is the bathroom.
All my old shit is here, including my Harley, parked in the garage. I grab the keys off the hook over the kitchen counter and pull my skull cap down from the rack, then lope back down the stairs.
I yank on my helmet as I duck into the garage. A second later, I’m rocketing down the street. I take the straightest line out of the city, skirt past Lake Travis at the outskirts of civilization, then wind it out. I keep my head down and just go. Speed sharpens everything, and right now I need to think. I’m used to living outside the lines and pissing people off, but I just keep fucking this Lucky thing up.
So, I’m going to do what I told her in Toronto. I’m going to back off.
But the scene at the bus that night keeps playing on a loop in my head—Lucky pinned between the bus and Max as he kissed her. Oily black jealousy threads through my insides at the image, so I max my Harley and keep going. I’m halfway to Dallas before I turn back for Austin.
I make it back to the apartment in one piece and stow my bike in the garage. When I turn the corner at the landing to the third floor, I see there’s a blonde in skimpy denim shorts and a black bikini top sitting on the step near my door.
A slow smile spreads over her face when she sees me. “Hey.”
“How ya been, Kate?” I say with a nod.
“Good.” She stands and runs her palms over her hips, all sweet Texas molasses. “I thought I heard someone up here, and then your Harley goes screaming out of the garage and I knew.”
I make my way up the last few steps toward her. “Just here for tonight. Got a show in Minneapolis tomorrow.”
Her smile grows. “Well, then, lucky me for catching you.”
I reach the top stair and she steps into my arms. She feels right there; the only woman who ever has. Which is a little fucked up since she’s the only woman to ever be there that I haven’t fucked. That’s partly because she’s the only real friend I have and I don’t want to screw it up. But mostly it’s because Emmy, her grandmother who has rented the apartment below me since the dawn of time and raised Kate there, owns a rifle and will fill my sorry ass full of buckshot if I touch Kate.
“How have you been?” she asks into my neck.
I take a deep breath and pull away. “Fucked up.”
She starts down the stairs and grabs my hand on the way, pulling me behind her. “Then good thing I’m here to straighten you out. Drinks are on you.”
She’s straightened me out more than once, and literally saved my life in the process. It was after we’d cut our first studio CD, but before our label picked us up that my old man found me here. He never said how he tracked me down and, in the end, I guess it doesn’t matter. What does matter is what happened when he got here. He said he’d kill me if he ever found me.
He wasn’t joking.
We jump back on my bike and head to the food trucks on Rainey Street before ending up at our favorite bar. The bartender drops two beers in front of us and looks at me a second before sliding a bar napkin in front of me with a pen. “Wasn’t gonna be a dick and do this, but my girlfriend will shit if I get her your autograph.”
I sign the napkin and slide it back to him without a word.
“There’s no girlfriend,” Kate says, scowling after him. “That’s going to show up on eBay tomorrow along with the shot he just took from his phone of you signing it.”
Nothing gets by Kate, which is part of the reason I trust her. She reads people, including me, better than anyone I’ve ever met.
She props her elbows on the bar and rests her chin in her hand. “So tell me the whole, sad story.”
“I can’t stop making an ass out of myself. You got a cure for that, doc?”
She smiles. “You’ve made millions making an ass out of yourself.”