The Girl of Diamonds and Rust (The Half Shell Series Book 3) Read online

  “Will it? I still don’t know what you expect me to do here.”

  “Whatever you want. Anything. Nothing.” He gives me a look that goes straight to my heart. “Just be with me.”

  He lapses back into silence and I study him. I still don’t quite get why Neil wants me here, wants to drag me along in his life, back to Seattle and out on the road. I may have never been out on the road, but I do know a thing or two about musicians.

  Most musicians wouldn’t dream of taking their significant other out on tour with them. Shit gets crazy on the road. Men get crazy on the road. The girls get crazy on the road. It’s a place to do anything, no regrets or explanations, where no one tells and everyone just parties. I’m far from a party girl and I’m not exactly a roll-with-it kind of girl either. I’ve heard stories about the road all my life. The last thing Neil should want is me along with him here. Especially if he loves me…nope, he shouldn’t want me here.

  I stare ahead at the road. Stupid, Chrissie. Stupid. Neil loves you. That is the only thing about your life that’s totally clear and why you left Berkeley with him. You may not know what you feel. You may not know what you are doing here. But you do know, it is a fact, that Neil loves you. No guy would go through the shit he went through with you if he didn’t.

  I ease out of the passenger seat. “I’m going to grab a soda from the cooler. Do you want one?”

  “No. I’m good, Chrissie.”

  As an afterthought, I drop a kiss on his cheek before I make my way to the back of the van. I sink onto my knees on the mattress that covers the floor, close to Josh, and I reach into the ice chest.

  I pop open a diet coke, and sit with my back against the van wall. “What are you working on?”

  Josh looks at me, impatient and irritated by the interruption. “Not shit now.”

  My cheeks cover with a burn. “Sorry. I’ll get out of your way.”

  He runs a hand through his black hair. “No. Don’t bother. I could use a break. I think I’ll sit up front with Neil for a while.”

  I don’t really want to sit on the floor in the back of the van, surrounded by luggage, boxes, instruments and surfboards, but I nod in an it’s OK with me kind of way. Josh crawls past me and up to the front and I remain alone in the back, wondering what I’m supposed to do here. I can’t even see the scenery since there aren’t any windows, pitiful diversion though it was.

  I zip open my black case, pull out a journal, then settle on my stomach, tapping the pen against my lip. I scrawl across the top of a fresh page the date and a notation—Day One on the Road—but when the words start to flow out of me, I’m not really writing about the road.

  I’m writing about things dark and heavy in my heart, a forgotten snippet from another journal from years ago—parts of me have been quieted, new parts of me stirred awake, parts of me I leave behind, and parts of me I take. A part of me I don’t want anymore. A part of me I’d hoped to leave behind in Berkeley.

  ~~~

  I open my eyes and sit up in alarm. The van is still and empty and morning sunlight is streaming through the windshield. My journal and pen lie beside my pillow and someone, most probably Neil, pulled an unzipped sleeping bag over me.

  Where the heck are we? Why is it so quiet? And how long have I been asleep in here?

  I brush the tangled hair from my face and scooch on my knees to the door and slide it open. I stare. I’m surrounded by trees, dirt and nothing. A sound makes me lean out of the van.

  “Morning,” says Josh.

  I frown. He’s sitting on a redwood picnic table beside a small portable stove of some kind, with a pot I can only assume is coffee sitting on the flame.

  I climb out of the van. “Where are we?”

  “Harris Beach State Park, Oregon.” Something on my face makes him laugh. “Haven’t you ever been camping before?”

  I shrug. “Nope. Haven’t been to Oregon either.”

  He takes a sip of his coffee. “Get used to both. Neil loves camping and Neil loves the beach here. Decided last night not to push through to Seattle and cut over to the coast while I was asleep. I was as surprised as you when I woke up here.”

  I laugh and Josh gives a smile, albeit a small sort of reluctant one, but it’s a smile. A definite improvement over yesterday.

  I sink down to sit on the table next to him, and settle my feet on the bench. Through the thicket of trees encircling what I can now tell is a campsite, I can see the beach ahead.

  He reaches for the pot on the stove. “Do you want some coffee?”

  “I’d love some.” After he hands me a cup I take in more details of my surroundings. Jeez, I’ve never been camping before. There has got to be a bathroom somewhere.

  I feel the pressure of eyes on me and turn to find Josh studying me. Something in how he is looking at me makes my fingers tighten around my cup and my cheeks flush.

  He says, “You fucked with my boy’s head pretty good. He was a mess when he came back to Seattle in December. Did you know that? A fucking mess in Seattle. A fucking mess on the road. If all you’re going to do is give him more shit why don’t you bail on the tour before we head out on the road in Seattle?”

  The color on my face turns into a burn. He looks away, staring out at the ocean, his jaw tense. I don’t know what to say to that. A part of me is humiliated, a part of me pissed off because Josh has gotten more than a few things wrong, and a part sort of respects what a loyal friend he is to Neil—but it leaves me not knowing what to say, so I say nothing.

  His eyes lock on me again. “Neil isn’t like the rest of us assholes. He’s a good guy. He never screwed around on you once. Not once in four years and I’d know it. Pussy gets shoved in his face 24/7 while we’re on the road, and he doesn’t fuck around. And then you mess with his head. You dump him just to prove you can or some other shitty rich-girl mind-fuck game. Then when he’s got it together again, you take him back so you can fuck with his head again. Don’t fucking do it. Leave him alone if that’s your game here.”

  I’m breathing so heavily I’m nearly hyperventilating. I want to run as quickly and as far from Josh as I can, but that definitely deserves a response, and if I don’t respond Josh is going to think he’s right about everything and treat me worse on from here.

  I stand up, meeting Josh’s hostile, waiting gaze directly. “I didn’t fuck with his head. We had problems. We fixed them. It’s none of your business what we do. Stay out of it.”

  I meet him stare for stare.

  Josh breaks off first, tossing his coffee onto the ground. “No problem. I just wanted to make sure you know where I stand here. The band is finally going somewhere. I don’t want you to fuck up everything for everyone by fucking with him again.”

  I lift my chin. “That’s not going to happen, Josh. Neil wants me here and I’m going on the road with him, whether you like it or not.”

  He shakes his head and looks away.

  “Do you know where Neil is?”

  He points at a path. “Down there you’ll find Neil on the beach.”

  I toss Josh a stiff smile and head down the path toward the beach. I cut through brush and trees and then realize I could have taken the road here. It hugs the edge of the forest I’m cutting through. Jeez, what a prick Josh can be, sending me this way.

  I walk down the road, into the parking lot that hugs the beach. The view is gorgeous, an unspoiled expanse of sand and an relenting, roiling current as the waves hit the shore and the giant rocks that rear from the water. The shoreline is practically deserted.

  Shading my eyes with my hand, I search the beach for Neil. He is sitting in the sand, legs bent and arms around them, staring at the water. The image he makes is peaceful and intense at once, and brings sharply to my mind the way Jack sits and stares at the ocean, a quietness and a troubled air covering their flesh simultaneously.

  I feel a sharp prick in my heart. Why do all the men in my life—Alan, Jack, Neil—have a deeply buried troubled soul that they will not share
with me? What I am seeing is familiar to me, eerily so, and a touch disturbing.

  For some reason, I hold back and simply watch Neil for a while. He tosses a rock to skim across water, then he stills and stares. He is simmering with something internally, though the picture he makes to a casual observer would be one of contentment. But I can feel it and I am suddenly alarmed by it. Maybe he is regretting bringing me along with him to Seattle?

  I plod through the sand until I’m near him and he gives me a smile over his shoulder. It’s a lazy and content kind of look, deliberately so, and I’m not fooled by any of it.

  I sink on my knees behind him, laying my cheek against his back.

  “What are you thinking about?” I ask.

  Neil shrugs. “Nothing. Just thinking. There won’t be any quiet once we get back to Seattle and then on the road. No time to think.”

  No time to think. Sounds like heaven to me.

  “Do you want to hear something silly?” I ask him and Neil makes a small laugh. “I’ve never been camping before. Does this count as camping?”

  Neil laughs harder. “Sort of. God, you have been raised a completely deprived girl.”

  I look over his shoulder and make a face at him. “Pretty much. Why do you want a deprived girl?”

  He kisses me lightly. “Because I love you.”

  My vision clouds from the power of emotion with which he says that.

  “We’re going to be OK, Chrissie,” he whispers.

  I place my lips on his back where my cheek had been. I don’t know who Neil is trying to convince; himself or me?

  “I know,” I murmur. “We’re both going to be OK.”

  He springs to his feet and holds out his hand to me. As we near Josh, I lean into Neil and whisper, “I’m going to hate that van before this is through. All you guys in there at once. With only Josh it’s a nightmare.”

  Josh picks up the stove from the table. “Don’t worry, Chrissie. We’ve already decided we’re going to draw up straws each night to see who gets to share the bed with you.”

  Shit, he heard me.

  Neil gives him a tap on the chest. “Don’t fuck with my girlfriend.” Josh laughs. Neil looks down at me. “We’re doing ten months on the road opening for Scream. The US leg of their world tour. An arena tour, Chrissie. No van. Tour bus. Road crew. Everything.”

  My brows hitch up and my eyes widen. I knew things were going well for Neil, but I didn’t know how well. And God, why didn’t I ask him? I’m ashamed that in our month in Berkeley, I hadn’t really asked him anything about the band or his life in Seattle. We’d been too consumed with my shit.

  “Chrissie, we haven’t done touring in the van for a year,” Josh says, tossing the stove inside and then closing the cargo doors. “Neil just drives this thing because he fucking likes it. Don’t think you’re going to get him to get rid of it. He won’t.”

  “Fuck you, Josh. I like the van. It was more fun when we toured in the van.”

  “The only one who liked the van was you, Neil,” Josh counters. “I’m with Chrissie. I hate that fucking thing.”

  Neil laughs and opens the side door. “I’m going to get an hour’s sleep, Josh. Then we can head off on the road again.”

  I let Neil pull me up into the van with him and I notice how tired he looks. Maybe he didn’t sleep last night. He settles on the mattress, pulling me into the tuck of his body.

  He kisses my cheek. “Don’t let me sleep more than an hour, Chrissie.”

  “OK.”

  I lie against him, wide awake, but in a couple of minutes Neil is sound asleep. In the quiet of the van everything suddenly feels different, inside me, inside him, and all around us. There is a strange sense that life is about to change in some unknown way for the both of us, and in the air there is that feeling of companionable sadness and despondent hope in me and in Neil.

  A vision of him sitting on the beach rises in my head. I know where the deeply buried sadness within me comes from, each moment of my life that makes it an unrelenting part of me. But after nearly four years I don’t know its source in Neil.

  It should feel different, not good, when I touch him and feel what it is in me in him as well. Neil is still-water, in most moments of his life, an alluring at-peace soul, but for a moment I felt me in him.

  I wish I understood what it is I’m feeling in him. I wish I understood why he loves me. I wish I understood why in this companionable sadness we sometimes share we always feel our best to me.

  We feel good together. Right. Almost enough. But not quite.

  It’s not Neil’s fault. He’s a wonderful guy. It’s me. I’m lost in a void. Going somewhere. Going nowhere. Having everything a girl should want. Having nothing completely fill me. Thinking of a whispering voice saying Chrissie as I let Neil hold me and sleep.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Something pulls me from sleep, and I slowly give myself over to waking, when I don’t really want to. Our first five days in Seattle have been exhausting. We take off on tour in two days. If the grind is anything like this, I won’t ever survive ten months on the road with Neil.

  I’d forgotten the pace of life here, so different than in Berkeley. Neil and I are hardly ever alone. The days pass in long hours with the guys jamming in the rehearsal space or just hanging out in the apartment together. The nights are filled with parties and music. Life here exists in a never-ending torrent of creative fervor and camaraderie, a nocturnal existence of hungry musicians and artistic obsession. The center of the music world is in Seattle, and the entire city pulses from it.

  I feel around in the bed for Neil. Gone. I look at the clock on the nightstand. 2 a.m. Why would Neil go out in the middle of the night? Why would he want to?

  Every part of my body is limp. We went to bed early and fucked a long time. There has been something feral and frantic in both of us, a strange internal chaos that has been building and building since we arrived in Seattle. We were both crazy in our bodies last night and by the time we ended the fucking everything inside me was quieted for the first time in a very long time. Neil was passed out on his pillow the minute the sex ended.

  Why isn’t he here with me, still asleep? We fucked ourselves into quiet.

  I sit up in bed and notice the light coming from the living room. I pick up my panties and Neil’s shirt from the floor, pull them into place, and exit the bedroom.

  My eyes widen. Neil is sitting on the sofa, fully dressed, lacing up those hideous black army surplus boots so popular up here.

  “Where are you going?” I ask, crossing the room to him.

  Neil shrugs and doesn’t look up. “Just out for a walk. I’m kind of restless.”

  I become aware he is tense and agitated.

  “Do you want me to dress and come with you?”

  “You don’t have to do that. I’d rather go out alone. I need to be alone sometimes, Chrissie.”

  Coldness prickles my cheeks from the edge in his voice and how he nearly snapped at me. I stare at him.

  Neil closes his eyes and exhales slowly. “It’s not you, Chrissie.”

  I sink down on the sofa beside him. “I didn’t ask if it was me. Why were you so quick to say it wasn’t?”

  He shakes his head, brushing his messy chestnut waves back from his face, and then smiles. “Because I know how you think. You don’t need to say it for me to know what you are thinking.” He leans in and drops a fast kiss on my lips. “I won’t be long. I’m just going to walk for a while.”

  “OK.” My eyes follow him to the door, but this feels strange to me and I don’t know why.

  At the door, Neil pauses. “Go back to sleep, Chrissie. I won’t be long.”

  The door shuts and I sit, staring at it. That was odd. Really odd. But then, there has been a lot of oddness since we got to Seattle. Being in Seattle has always affected Neil strangely, he hasn’t explained why to me, but I shouldn’t be surprised by the brief flashes of weird Neil while we’re here.

  I try to dismiss my
sense of unease. It is illogical and Neil would never do anything to me that should make him wanting to walk at night alone something I should be suspicious of. Neil is not a slip-out-to-cheat kind of guy. He’d be honest with me. He would confess. He wouldn’t be able not to.

  I consider going back to bed, and then sink deeper back into the sofa. I’m wide awake now. I click on the TV and turn the volume down low, since I’m not sure if Josh or Les Wilson are asleep in their bedrooms.

  My gaze roams the mess and junk everywhere. It’s a good thing I’d forgotten how awful this apartment was before I decided to join Neil here. Three guys living in a run-down flop house; that’s what this place looks like. Still, it’s kind of fun living with Neil in this hideous apartment. We are all sort of like a rowdy family here and there is a sense that something bordering on exciting is always happening.

  I’m never bored here, and it is never quiet, too quiet, like it is in Jack’s house.

  The guys bicker. They laugh. They bullshit and tell stories; stories about the road, stories about girls, stories about anything, and stories about nothing. They create music. They play music. They party. They fuck. Yep, that’s pretty much guy world. Guy world, it seems, is the same everywhere.

  I turn off the TV and move to the bookcase. Lots of pictures here. Some of them make me cringe. The guys with girls from the road. The guys performing. The guys misbehaving. Shit…I pick up a picture…I wonder if Les Wilson’s girlfriend has seen this?

  Lame, Chrissie, lame. She must have. There is no way to be in the living room and miss these darn photos. I set it back and continue to study the rest of the pictures. There’s only one here I could give Neil shit over, him downing shooters from between some girl’s tits at what looks like an after-party. But that’s it. Just one. And since I don’t know when it was taken, it could have been when we were broken up, so there isn’t any point to giving him shit over this.

  I smile as I stare at the photo, though I suppose I shouldn’t be smiling. It’s just he looks kind of shy even grabbing an alcohol shot with his lips from a girl’s breasts.