“Like a bitch in heat,” Killian agreed.
“Killian!” I shouted, both mortified and shocked.
“What? I meant Riley, not you.”
I gave him a sidelong look, then winced at Ryan. “…was it that bad?”
He scrunched up his face. “Naaah.”
Killian wasn’t as diplomatic. “You were louder than the coyotes, luv.”
“Oh GOD,” I moaned, and buried my face in my hands again.
“Sounded a lot like that, actually – just more repetitive,” Killian observed.
I threw my half-eaten pastry at him.
“Hey! Hey! Mind the guitar!” he complained as the muffin exploded into a dozen crumbling pieces off his head. “And the joint!”
Ryan just laughed his ass off.
71
After I got over my bout of mortification, we talked for a little bit.
“What did you think of the mushrooms?” Killian asked.
“Did not care for them,” I answered, and proceeded to list all the messed-up phenomena I’d experienced – from the feelings of unreality, to the obsessively looping thoughts, to the complete inability to distinguish time.
“Oh my,” Killian said sympathetically. “I’m sorry about that. That sounds bloody awful.”
“The first hour was good, at least.”
And the last couple were mind-blowing, I thought, though I didn’t say it out loud.
“I had something similar the second time I came here,” Killian said.
Ryan started laughing uproariously.
I stared at him. “What’s so funny?”
“Because he knows what’s comin’ next.”
“I’d forgotten about that story,” Ryan guffawed.
“What story?”
“Well, I decided I wanted to be completely free. Just free of everything. I had this overwhelming urge to unburden myself of all the trappings of the civilized world… so I threw my wallet and my keys out into the desert, and then I took off all my clothes and spent the rest of the day walkin’ around starkers.”
“Naked?!” I asked, dumbfounded.
“Got a bugger of a sunburn,” Killian confirmed. “Especially on my arse.”
I joined in laughing with Ryan.
“Took the better part of the next day to find all my stuff, too,” Killian said.
“But the best part was, he had the outline of the guitar on the front of his body!” Ryan hooted.
“He showed you?!”
“Well, of course,” Killian said. “It’s not every day you get a sunburn in the shape of a guitar.”
“Actually, it was a sunburn everywhere but the shape of the guitar,” Ryan said, wiping tears away from his eyes.
“Either way, it was bloody awful.”
“Why did you throw everything else away but the guitar?” I asked. “Why not the guitar, too?”
Killian looked at me like what I’d just said was outlandish in the extreme. “I’d never do that.”
“It’s like a baby,” Ryan said. “Even stoned out of his gourd, he’d never hurt a baby.”
“But other rock stars smash their guitars as part of their acts,” I pointed out.
By the looks they gave me, you would think I had just advocated actual infanticide.
“What?” I asked, alarmed at their expressions.
“A guitar is a beautiful piece of art,” Killian said quite seriously, like he was an adult imparting a valuable life lesson to an ignorant youngster. “You don’t go around destroying art.”
“But what about those other rock stars?”
“Bloody uncouth bastards.”
I looked over at Ryan, who still looked horrified. “What about you?” I asked.
“What about me?”
“You wouldn’t ever smash a guitar on stage?”
“No.”
“Ever?”
“HELL no.”
“Okay, now I know you’re serious, because you said ‘hell,’” I teased him.
“Ha ha,” he said, not laughing at all.
“What about Derek?”
“What about him?”
“Would he do it?”
“Of course he would, because he’s a bloody uncouth bastard,” Killian sniffed.
“And exactly why am I a bloody uncouth bastard?” Derek asked as he suddenly walked in the door, sleepy and disheveled and looking sexy as hell.
“You’d break a guitar onstage as part of the act,” Ryan explained.
“Of course,” he said as he snatched up a muffin and wolfed it down. “The best all did it. Pete Townsend, Kurt Cobain, Jimmy Hendrix – but only if he set it on fire first – ”
“Which is why we don’t let Derek near our guitars,” Ryan told me.
“I think we should start smashing lead singers on stage,” Killian said. “But only if we set them on fire first.”
“I’m down,” Derek said with a completely deadpan expression.
“Let’s save it for Bigger’s final performance, though,” Ryan said sardonically.
“Of course. The very last encore, ever.”
“Let me know beforehand, so I can insure you for a couple mil,” Killian said.
“What, for my family?”
“No, for me. Got to fund my retirement somehow.”
72
Finally, after mushrooms and orange juice, and Santa Claus lookalikes and doggie angels, and treks through the desert and psychedelic sex… we finally made it to Joshua Tree National Park.
After the drama of the previous 24 hours, the rest of the trip was boring by comparison. We just spent several hours driving around the park (fully sober, by the way – except for Killian, who was never sober). It was beautiful, in an otherworldly, Star Trek planet meets John Wayne western kind of way.
Joshua trees look like God took tree bark and twisted it every which way like pipe cleaners, then added green spiky cacti at the ends of all the branches. The trees are interspersed throughout a landscape filled with odd rock formations. Almost completely spherical stones… natural arches, probably carved by water over a hundred million years ago… and fifty-foot-tall piles of boulders.
It was one of the weirdest and most beautiful places I’d ever seen.
But my enjoyment was hampered by the fuzziness of my head. I mostly just relaxed in Derek’s arms as we reclined in the back seat. Ryan drove and Killian rode shotgun, plinking his guitar and smoking his herb.
Three hours later, after a few short hikes (and a few stolen kisses with my new boyfriend), Ryan turned to Killian. “We good?”
“We good,” he answered, and we rode out of the park and back towards San Diego.
73
The first thing I did when I got back to Derek’s hotel room was take a long, hot bath to wash away the sweat and the dust. (There might have been a certain rock star in the water with me, and a little bit of sex, too.)
The second thing was to return phone calls.
The first call, I was looking forward to.
Shanna picked up immediately.
“What up, superstar celebrity journalist! Any big scoops?”
“Is that Shanna?” Derek asked as he got ready for a band meeting.
“Holy shit, is that the rock god himself? Put me on speaker!”
I sighed, knowing where this was probably headed… but I did it anyway.
“Shanna?” Derek said.
“DEREK! Oh my God! How have you been?!”
“Famous,” he quipped, and she laughed. “How have you been?”
“Horny.”
“Same as always, I see.”
“The more things change… so, D, you tapped that ass yet?”
“Repeatedly.”
I swatted him for that one.
Shanna about lost her mind.
“WHAAAAT?! Hahahaha! YES! How long did you hold out, Kaitlyn?”
I blushed crimson. “Two days.”
“Not even,” Derek grinned. “You got into town, what, Friday afternoon? Saturday night, so… 36 hours, tops.”
“Hahaha – you SLUT!” Shanna cackled. “You really ARE embedded with the band! Get it? Em-bed– ”
“I got it, I got it,” I snapped.
“Come on, now, that one was clever. I was saving it up for when you finally put out. Sooooo, how was he? Enquiring minds are dying to know.”
I looked over at Derek, who was grinning like the Cheshire Cat.
“Enh,” I said to the cell phone.
“You little – ” he laughed, and tickled me until I shrieked.
“Hey! Knock off the foreplay, you’re making me jealous!”
“Shanna, you should totally fly out and see one of our shows,” Derek said.
“Hell-ooooo, why do you think I called? First, you totally promised me that four years ago – ”
“Oh yeeeaaah,” Derek recalled. “Backstage passes, right?”
“Hell yeah. Plus, it’s the least you can do, seeing as how I hooked you up with a prime piece of ass.”
He frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“WHAT?! She didn’t tell you?!”
“Tell me what?”
“I’m the one who hooked her up with Rolling Stone!”
“What?! Really?”
“Yes! Kaitlyn?!” she said in a ‘scolding Mama’ tone of voice.
“I forgot…” I protested meekly.
“Bitch! Stealin’ my byline, not givin’ credit where credit is due – ”
“I’m sorry… there was a lot going on…”