I clicked a message he’d sent to me. It was a photo of him and Alex goofing around before they went on stage, maybe before their first gig. They both looked so young.
But it was messages to Alex I wanted to find. Or messages to someone else talking about the songs. Anything like that.
The first twenty or so messages were boring things like reminders from Mum to buy milk on his way home or arranging rehearsal times. Then there was one to a girl called Regina. That made me curious. I’d never heard of anyone called Regina at home. Who was she?
I opened the message and a photo loaded. It took a minute then I dropped the phone.
“Oh fuck, oh fuck. I did not want to see that,” I said out loud. I clutched my chest like an old church lady clutching her pearls, in absolute outrage.
It wasn’t that I was against dick pics in principle, if the recipient wanted to see them but, sweet mother of God, that was my brother’s cock. I never wanted to see that. I didn’t want to think about him having one even. He should be like a Ken doll and just have a plastic mound.
I picked the phone up and tried to get out of the message without seeing that photo again. There was a reply back from Regina, with a photo attached. I sure as hell was not going to open that.
More messages – Helena, Bae, Other Bae, back door chick – ewww, I did not even want to think about that! They all had photos attached. I deleted them all without opening. The list of chicks went on. And a whole heap that didn’t even have names, just numbers. That was worse. The message could be important but I didn’t want to see more dicks.
Most of the emails to Alex were about rehearsal times or gigs. A whole bunch of them from Alex asking where Jake was, saying he was running late. I smiled. That would make Alex so mad. He hated people not being punctual.
There were a few mentioning songs, but not by name. “I’m working on the song,” or “the song is nearly finished, I’ll play it for you tonight.” That didn’t help. I kept scrolling through.
There was a message to some guy called Richo, a few weeks’ before he died. That might say something helpful.
Jake: you holding?
Richo: Yeah, whatya want?
Jake: the usual, 2gs.
It took me a while for me to work out what that message meant. Drugs? He was talking about drugs? Maybe he’d sent the message for someone else?
I read the rest of the messages. More of the same. Then more messages to other people. He’d not been too careful about spelling out what he wanted either. Even the day that he’d died, he’d messaged someone, wanting to get hold of some coke.
Jake? Jake, my brother, was like that? I’d never seen him do drugs.
Pete’d not said anything after Alex had warned him off but surely he’d tell me if this was true or not. I grabbed my stuff and headed to Trouble.
I walked blindly to the club, not really sure what I was doing. The whole image I had of Jake had shattered. What other things didn’t I know? Hell, he could be a complete stranger to me. Maybe everyone in town knew. Everyone but me.
Pete was working downstairs when I arrived. I pushed through the crowded bar, so much noise, so many people. Definitely not the right situation for talking about private matters. I should’ve thought of that. Most times when I’d been in there, it’d been quiet.
I saw Sally and waved to her. She rushed to me.
“You look a mess,” she said. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” But the words came out as a sob and she put her arm around me.
“What’s that bastard done to you now?”
I shook my head. “Not Alex.”
“My office is behind the bar. Oh, you know that. Well, we can go in there.”
I think there was a bit of a barb hidden in that “oh, you know” but I went with her. For all Sally said that she’d be okay if I got with Alex, I knew she’d actually hate it a lot.
“Drew, get Dee a drink. Something strong.”
When I got to her office, I told her everything. All about Jake. She put her arm around me and patted my back.
“Why did Alex keep that from me?” I asked. “It doesn’t make what he did any better? He was still driving the car. It just makes me look like an idiot for not knowing.”