“The waves are way better on the north shore. I can take you sometime. My truck has space for your board.”
“Why didn’t they rent me a truck? Who the fuck ordered me a mom car?”
“That was me,” she confesses with a guilty look. “I assumed you’d be some stick-up-the-ass rich white boy. I didn’t think you’d be so….”
“So what?”
“So cool.”
I hold my arm out to stop her from crossing the street as a huge truck comes barreling toward us. Once the street is clear, we race across Kahakai Road.
I instantly forget what Sam said about me being cool as my mind wanders to the night I almost ran Claire over with my truck. She was so pissed at me; she almost refused to let me drive her home. I’m here for her and nothing else. Once the startup phase is complete, I can go home to Claire and say goodbye to my dad’s bullshit.
We arrive at the wooden fence surrounding the front yard of the rental house and she salutes me like a soldier. “See you at oh-eight-hundred.”
I shake my head as she scoots off down the street. What an odd girl, yet there’s something about her I find strangely interesting. I think it’s the way she doesn’t seem to have any interest in me. She didn’t look at me the way most girls look at me when I first meet them. Maybe it is possible for guys and girls to just be friends. Maybe I really have nothing to worry about with Claire and Chris.
Chapter Fifteen
Chris
THE PHONE RINGS IN MY ear as I wait for Claire to pick up. I try to remind myself to stay calm, but this feeling that I’m being lied to makes this very fucking difficult.
“Hello,” she says and just the sound of her voice catches me off guard.
Suddenly, I can’t remember why I called.
“Chris?”
Then it comes back to me. “I thought you told me you didn’t have the money to pay your bill. My assistant just called to pay it and they said your bill was paid this afternoon.”
She’s silent for a moment, probably trying to come up with another lie. “Adam paid it for me.”
I want to throw the phone at the wall. I’m so sick of hearing his fucking name.
“Good,” I reply as I grit my teeth to bite back an angry retort. “Can you talk right now? About Abigail?”
“Yeah,” she whispers so low I can barely hear her.
What is it about hearing a name that can provoke such a strong emotional reaction? I hear the name Adam and I want to pummel something. Claire hears the name Abigail and she immediately shuts down. Maybe I shouldn’t talk to her about this stuff. She needs a clear head to do well in her classes.
“Are you sure you’re okay talking about this?” I ask.
“Yes. I’m fine. I need to talk about it, too.”
I take the stairs down to the first floor and head for the kitchen. I have an apartment in L.A. that’s been empty for months while I’ve been on tour. This Home Sweet Home tour is the last leg for this year. It’s over in the end of September. I’m headed back to L.A. in October to record for a few weeks then I’ll be back before Christmas.
“I need to get you up to speed on the details of the agreement and I need to give you my schedule for the next few months so you can try to handle some of this stuff alone while I’m gone, if necessary.”
“I can’t do this alone.”
I open the refrigerator and grab a bottle of water. When I close the refrigerator door, I notice a new picture my mom must have dug up and stuck on the fridge before she left for work this morning. It’s a picture of me playing at one of my first paid gigs when I was sixteen. A small piece of the back of Claire’s head is visible in the bottom-left corner of the photo. This picture was taken just a few months after I met Claire, when we were still “just friends.” So much has changed. Claire and I will never be “just friends” again.
“You won’t be alone. You’ll be working with Tasha. I’ll be gone for less than four weeks and I’ll be just a phone call away.”
“Don’t you think that’s going to look bad? Leaving to L.A. when we’re so close to coming to an agreement with her parents? They’re already nervous about your… lifestyle.”
I laugh as I take a seat on a barstool. “My lifestyle? What the fuck does that mean?”
“I don’t know,” she replies, probably afraid she’ll offend me if she elaborates.
“Come on, Claire, you can be honest with me. What the fuck do you think I do when I’m not sitting in my mom’s kitchen talking to you?”
“It doesn’t matter what I think. It matters what Abigail’s parents think.”
“It matters to me what you think.”
There’s a long pause followed by a sigh. “I have to study. Feel free to give Tasha my phone number so she can fill me in on the details. Bye, Chris.”
She hangs up before I can get in another word. When I pull the phone away from my ear I see two text message notifications. The first message is from Amira, a girl I made the mistake of giving my phone number to when we fucked two months ago after a show in Houston. She texts me every now and then to tell me about shows she went to in Houston, like I give a fuck. I think she’s waiting for me to tell her the next time I’ll be there for a show.
I delete her text then open the next.
Tasha: Got a cryptic message from adoptive mother. She wants to meet me alone tomorrow without her husband. Will keep you posted.
My stomach twists inside me as I imagine what this could mean. Does she want to call the whole thing off or is she going to allow us to visit Abigail without her husband knowing? Maybe she just needs someone to talk to. I hate the idea that this whole agreement might be causing turmoil in their marriage, but I want to see my daughter. Abigail and Claire are the missing pieces of my heart. Even if I only get to hold Abigail once, I think I can live with that.
I slide off the barstool and make my way into the living room where I grab my acoustic guitar, Betty, off the ottoman then sit down on the hardwood floor. Betty was a gift from Claire for my eighteenth birthday. I have at least six better sounding acoustic guitars, but this vintage guitar with the initials she carved into the wood is still my favorite.
I trace my finger over the “CC” carved into the curve of the body then tune her up. Tristan and Jake aren’t coming over to practice for another hour so I have some time to work on a song I began writing in my head while lying in bed last night. I play the opening exactly as I heard it in my head last night, but the transition to the melody of the first verse is all wrong. I start from the beginning again a few more times before I finally get it right and the first verse comes to me.
“This ain’t our last goodbye. It’s our last hello. I can feel it in my shattered heart; all through my weary bones. You’re the missing piece, the final scrap. Someday we’ll fit together; someday I’ll bring you back.” I type the lyrics into the notes app on my phone before I continue working on the chorus. “These pieces of you are promises, whispering endless possibilities. My pieces of you are haunted, just echoes of shattered memories.”
I’ll have to work on this later; these are just the bones. The only song I ever wrote that I never changed a word—and it shows—is “Relentless.” I wrote it in a hotel room in L.A. when we were almost done recording the album. When I played it for the producer he insisted we add it to the album and make it the title track. It took less than an hour to get down the lyrics and the basic melody for “Relentless” and it’s still the one song that gets me the most love from the fans. Maybe people prefer their art a little raw.
As soon as Jake and Rachel arrive, we get to work on an upbeat track that’s supposed to be the first single released from the next album, tentatively titled Chris Knight. Jake and Rachel wrote the lyrics for this song—“Highway 99”—about falling for the wrong girl and how exciting it is to go to their secret hideaway off Highway 99. Now that I’m in this fucked up situation with Claire, I hate this song.
“Is Tristan ever going to show the fuck up?” I ask.
As much as I love Tristan, he’s unreliable as hell. His sex life always gets him in some kind of drama that keeps him from showing up to practice sessions. Technically, Tristan is easily replaceable now that I’m considered a solo act, and the shit that happened with Claire’s boyfriend hasn’t made things better. But so many of our old fans, the ones who followed Blue Knights from the beginning, go to the shows just to see him. And he’s still my oldest friend.
“I’ll text him,” Jake says, grabbing his phone off the coffee table.
Since my mom refuses to allow Jake to set up a drum set in her house—the way we used to have it before I went solo—Jake is just here to hang out and watch. Without Tristan here, this practice session is a big fucking waste of time.
Tristan never responds to Jake’s text and finally, after my eighth time quitting at the bridge, Jake groans.
“What the fuck is going on with you?” he asks. “The bridge starts on C7.”
I shake my head as I drop the guitar onto the wood floor and one of the pins pops out. “Fuck this song.”
Rachel glares at me through her icy blue eyes, which are partially obscured by her bangs. “Did something happen with Claire?”
I storm into the kitchen and grab the key for my bike off the hook. “I don’t want a fucking lecture.”
“You’d better not drink if you’re taking the bike. Don’t be a fucking asshole!” she yells as I open the door to the attached garage.
I slam the door behind me then hit the button for the door opener. The garage door rolls open and I’m pleased to see the sun has almost set. I hop onto my bike and kick the stand back. I’m already pulling my bike out of the cul-de-sac by the time Jake makes it out to the driveway.
Chapter Sixteen
Claire
THE BUZZING NOISE BREAKS ME out of my trance and it takes a moment before I realize it’s my phone vibrating on my nightstand. I reach for the phone and see I have four missed calls. I must have been really out of it this time. Until now, I hadn’t meditated since yesterday morning.
All the missed calls are from an unknown number with a Raleigh area code. I debate ignoring the calls to continue my meditation, but the number of missed calls gives me an uneasy feeling.
“Who is it?” Senia asks from where she’s lying on her bed studying for a biochem exam.
I shrug then call the number. Someone picks up right away.
“Claire?”
It’s Jackie and she sounds frantic.
“Jackie? What’s wrong?”
“Oh, my Lord. I left my phone at the shop. I’ve been calling you from Rachel’s phone. I didn’t think you would ever call back.”
“Jackie, what’s happened?”
“Claire, honey, I’m at the hospital. Chris had an accident.”
“An accident? What kind of accident?” My heart pounds as that uneasy feeling transforms into panic.
“Who had an accident?” Senia whispers.
“On his bike,” Jackie replies. “We’re at WakeMed.”
Just hearing the word WakeMed makes me want to vomit. I haven’t been there since I had Abigail five months ago. Jackie doesn’t know anything about Abigail.
“Claire? Are you still there?”
“Yes. I’m here. I’ll… I’ll be there in an hour.”
I’m shaking so hard as I pull on a pair of jeans and a clean shirt.
Senia grabs my hand as I reach for my car keys on the nightstand. “I’ll drive.”
“Drive fast, please.”
The whole forty-minute drive there, I keep imagining all the worst scenarios: he’s missing a leg, he’s in a coma, he’s on life support… or worse. Senia attempts to distract me with music, but I can’t stop my mind from wandering to the darkest places.