Lead (Stage Dive 3)

What a mess. I grabbed a pillow and hugged it to my chest.

There seemed no obvious telltale signs of his screwing around with Liv Anders, no bites on his neck or what have you. Not that it would be screwing around on me, it just felt like it. A faint headache from all the tears lingered behind my sore eyes. We’d started the day out laughing and teasing each other. How sad to have ended it this way.

Jimmy crawled onto the bed, sitting beside me with his back against the headboard. The heating clicked on, just about the only noise in the entire house.

We sat side by side, saying nothing.

I studied him out of the corner of my eye, hands fidgeted in his lap, picking stray bits of lint off his black jeans, smoothing them down. Once he was done with his preening, he crossed his arms over his chest. But his fingers kept stretching out, then curling, over and over again.

“You hurt me,” I said, because one of us needed to be brave and fess up.

His chin jerked upward.

“Don’t do the chin thing, say something.” I waited a moment. My patience was not rewarded. “Why’d you kick my door down?”

He turned toward me, eyes tortured.

“Jimmy?”

“I couldn’t stand it, you locking me out.” The words sounded dragged out of him, kicking and screaming. “You should have answered me. You shouldn’t have … you shouldn’t have done that.”

“Why not?”

His eyes narrowed. “What the f**k do you mean why not?”

“Why should I open my door to you if you’re yelling at me? If you’ve been acted like a complete bastard and hurt my feelings? Stop for just one minute, put yourself in my place and tell me, why should I let you in?”

He made some snarly noise.

“And don’t give me any of the I’m-your-boss, it’s-my-house, I-pay-you shit,” I said. “Yes, it’s all true. No, it doesn’t actually matter in this circumstance, we’re beyond that.”

“But—”

“No.”

His nostrils flared and emotion shone bright in his eyes. “You shouldn’t have locked me out.”

I just looked at him.

“I needed to …” A hand gestured aimlessly in front of him while he searched for words. “I needed to be able to talk to you, face to face, all right?”

For him, that was all. There was nothing else to it.

Words sat on my tongue, desperate to get out. It took me a moment to clear my head, form a coherent sentence. “You needed to talk to me so badly that you kicked my door down.”

Nothing from him.

“Jimmy, does that sound like a normal friendship to you?”

“I know. I f**ked up,” he said, voice rough.

“What did you do?” Fear filled me. Apart from the paleness he seemed okay, pupils normal. Please god let him not have taken anything.

“You.”

“Me?”

“You. Today. I f**ked up. I’m sorry, Lena, I just … I’m sorry. Shit just came out my mouth and I knew it wasn’t right.” He winced. “I’m sorry.”

“Honestly, Jimmy, the words just aren’t cutting it for me right now.”

“What do I do then? Tell me. I don’t know how to do this stuff,” he said. “React right.”

“What did you mean to do?”

“I wanted to fix things, but I just broke them more.” Eyes agitated, he gritted his teeth. “In the band, there was always the music to smooth things over if shit got out of hand. If the music’s going right everything else just falls away. But there’s nothing like that here with you. I don’t know what to do when it gets messed up.”

“You talk to me, Jimmy. You don’t go crazy yelling and you don’t get mean. You just come and you talk to me about it,” I said. “It’s that hard, and that simple.”

He made no reply.

“Why did you flip out when you saw me holding Dean’s hand?”

“I don’t know.” He gave a low growl and drew back, staring me in the face. “Just tell me what to do to apologize. What do you want? I’ll buy you whatever.”

“I don’t want you to buy me anything.”

“Well, what can I do?”

“Nothing,” I said, because asking for him na**d was probably out of the question. Begging him to never again have anything to do with Liv Anders probably ran a close second. “You can fix my door. That would be nice.”

“Of course I’ll fix the door, but you’ve gotta want more than that.” He seemed so adamant, eyes alight with fervor for the idea of making reparations. Problem was, I couldn’t have what I really wanted. We’d already established that.

“Fine,” I said. “Let’s go for a drive in the Barracuda to my favorite ice cream parlor.”

He shrugged. “Sure.”

“But.” My pointy finger of doom hovered in front of his face. “I’m driving.”

His mouth opened.

“Non-negotiable. You just asked how you can make it up to me and I’m telling you how. I’m driving the Barracuda and you’re riding shotgun. You don’t make comments about my driving and you act happy.”

He gave me a snotty look. “Fine. But just to get ice cream.”

“Absolutely, Jimmy.”

# # #

“You think you’re clever, don’t you?”

I smiled and huddled in against his side, using him as a buffer against the wind. His big hard body had to be useful for something. It was so damn cold, my teeth were chattering. “Who me?”

He raised a brow and licked at his waffle cone, topped with pistachio icy goodness. I didn’t stare at his tongue. My gaze just so happened to wander in its general direction is all, not the least bit my fault.

“Isn’t the salty ocean air bracing, Jimmy?”

“Yours is melting.”

“Oh.” I dealt with the triple caramel delight before it could drip off my fingers. “Mm, yum. Best ice cream ever. Didn’t I tell you they had the best ice cream here?”

“Yes you did. Many, many times on the hour and a half drive out here.”

“Hey, I could have taken us to Seattle.” I shrugged down deeper into my coat. “Be thankful. I let you off easy.”

“Right.”

“You’re having fun, aren’t you?”

He gave me a look of much judgment.

“Admit it.”

The faintest of smiles passed over his lips.