Total pages in book: 45
Estimated words: 43920 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 220(@200wpm)___ 176(@250wpm)___ 146(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 43920 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 220(@200wpm)___ 176(@250wpm)___ 146(@300wpm)
“Christopher!”
Turning at the sound of my name, I saw Ben Jackson, drummer for the Dregs, charging up the sidewalk toward me.
“Holy shit,” I called over to him, smiling. “Lookit you all clean and shiny.”
“In every way,” he promised as he did the same thing I had and got out onto the actual street, jogging to reach me alongside the parked cars.
Not a tall man, shorter than me, but at six two, a lot of men were. He lunged when he was close enough, and I wrapped him in my arms.
“Jesus, Benny, you’ve really been working out, huh? I’ve never seen you with this much muscle on you.”
He really hugged me, tight, hard, so I knew his missing me was real. The last time I’d seen him, much like Dawson, he’d been thinner, wasting away, the rock-and-roll lifestyle not something he was suited to. But now there was new muscle on the man, and his color was back, the ruddy complexion having returned.
“I lost so much weight with the drugs and all,” he said hesitantly. “You remember when you saw me in LA.”
“I do,” I said, as he released me and I took a step back.
“Later, I went to rehab, twice, and there’s nothing to do there but eat, and talk about your problems, and work and talk about your problems, and finally I started running and swimming and lifting weights just to have a break from listening to myself share.”
“You say share like it’s a bad thing.”
“You do it three times a day in a group and one-on-one, and we’ll see how much you enjoy that shit.”
“And yet,” I said, gesturing at him. “You can’t argue with the results.”
“Yeah.”
He had stuck to a schedule, that was easy to see. “You look really good.”
I was surprised then because he stepped in close again, apparently compelled to hug me a second time. Then, before I could tease him, or ask if he was all right, he gave me a last squeeze, and shoved me out to arm’s length. Staring at my face a moment, he finally clapped me on the shoulder.
All of them, the whole band, had looked like absolute hell when I’d seen them that last time in Los Angeles. And it wasn’t because of the long, unkempt manes, the ungroomed facial hair, the new tats, piercings, or anything else. It had been how run-down they all looked, road weary, burned out, and just utterly spent. They had played in my club for a year, night after night, and never looked so beat.
But now Ben, who had always been heavy-set, looked like guys I saw at the gym, bulked up and strong. His hair was styled, shorter than mine, shaved on the sides and back and longer on top. There was one earring, nothing else on his face, and he was wearing a polo, for heaven’s sake. The change was mind-blowing in the best way.
I smiled at him. “Explain.”
He shrugged. “Basically, Angie got pregnant a year ago when I was home between tour dates, and then suddenly she shows up in Rome where we’re doing a concert, and she fuckin’ gives me this hard-core, now-or-never, take-it-or-leave-it ultimatum, and I go from telling Daw he’s crazy, that sure as shit we can go on without Lu or Enoch or Carlos, to taking it all back and saying, fuck ya, man, let’s go to rehab.”
“The others left? It was only you two in the band?”
He nodded. “Oh yeah. Luther was out before we went on the road to promote the third album. He split and went and did the studio-musician thing in LA.”
“I had no idea. I didn’t follow the band.”
“Why would you? I wouldn’t have.”
I grinned at him. “How was rehab, buddy?”
He shook his head. “Chris, man, that was the worst. The worst! I hated that shit. Detoxing sucks. Cold sweats suck. Shaking and barfing and being covered in snot, and my favorite—shitting myself. I wanted to die; I swear to God.”
I took hold of his shoulder, and he clapped my hand once, nodding.
“I’m guessing it got better.”
“Once you flush all the poison out of your system, including the nicotine, can I just say, tasting food and smelling the rain, that will blow your mind.”
His words made me smile.
“But even the cigarettes had to go, right? I can’t smoke around a kid.”
“No.”
“You know me, I’m a two-pack-a-day guy, but where Daw and I went, they’re not fuckin’ around. They don’t do anything to make it easy.”
“That can be dangerous, can’t it?”
“Yeah, but we were, like, basically new to it. When we were playing in your club, and then on the road before we hit Nashville, we were poor. We couldn’t afford drugs or alcohol. We had to eat and pay for hotel rooms and buy water. None of us were drug addicts until we hit it big.”