Page 8 of Dead Rockstar

“Why not?”

The doorbell rang.

“Saved by the bell. I'll get it.” Sloan stood up. “You stay there and have another drink. I'll need you to figure out my life when I get back.”

I did as I was told. So much for not drinking tonight. Sloan had shown up with a bottle of my favorite wine and I'd barely even resisted. I drained the glass as she reached the front door, peered through the peephole, muttered, and opened it. “Weird.” I could see her from my vantage point at the table as she poked her head out, then walked out onto the porch, her hand over her eyes. It was after seven and already dark. “Weird,” she said again, walking down the steps and into the yard.

“Nobody there?” I asked when she returned.

“Not a soul.” She came back inside, shut the door and locked both the deadbolt and the lock on the handle. “I heard that knock as clear as day, didn't you?”

“Yeah, definitely.”

“Probably some stupid kid overeager for Halloween,” she said, sitting down and digging into the guac again.

“Out here? I've only got the one neighbor and he's old as dust. No kids.”

“Teenagers roam,” she said. “But I'll stay over, just in case. You need looking after. You've been a hot mess lately.”

“Oh, shut the fuck up.” I laughed. “I have not. And Blinken could take better care of me than you could.” The cat, sleeping in his kitty bed in the corner, gave one sassy swish of his tail. “So-you were starting to tell me why you're salty.”

“Oh, it's nothing. Nothing good, anyway,” she said with a grin. “No gossip. I'm just...I dunno. I guess I keep wondering how long I'm going to do this.”

“Do what?”

She looked at me, one eyebrow raised.

“Oh, no, Sloan.” I groaned. “Don't tell me you've gone back to him.”

For the past two years, Sloan had been having an on-and-off-again, very casual affair with a guy who was quite a bit her senior. I didn't know how much older, but I figured it must be a lot, judging by how cagey Sloan was about him. One thing I did know: he was married. From what little Sloan had told me, they'd met when she'd taken a second job tending bar at Beachy Keen, one of our local crawls. He'd flirted and she was unimpressed, telling him he was far too old for her. Then he'd tipped her a hundred bucks for one Miller Lite and she'd reconsidered. I didn't even know his real name – she called him Gus, but it was a nickname, I knew, taken from Disney's Cinderella – when I asked her, she laughed and said it was because he wore t-shirts to bed, but no pants. As disgusting a mental image as that was (and I suspected she was trolling me, hoping to gross me out so I wouldn't ask more questions), I'd never pressed her further.

She was my best friend and we shared everything, but she would not budge one inch when it came to Gus. She was ashamed of the affair, ashamed that she couldn't break it off. All I knew was that they'd go weeks or even months without speaking, and then, out of the blue, she'd be seeing him again every night, hot and heavy, until he inevitably got cold feet again and ended things. Any time I brought him up, Sloan started fidgeting and curling into herself and acting uncharacteristically shamed, and I didn't enjoy seeing her like that. Like a snail without a shell, covered in salt.

As funny as it was to think of my best friend as a slug, the entire situation left me with a case of the squicks, and I didn't like it one bit. Surely Sloan didn't love him, but even so, it messed with her head. Nobody's self-esteem could weather such hot-and-cold head games. And whatever money he threw her way wasn't enough to get her out of poverty, so to my thinking, he just wasn't fucking worth it.

Sloan told me everything and always had, so her silence on Gus told me all I needed to know.

“It's only been a couple of times lately,” she said, peering into her wine glass like she'd lost something in it. “And now that I'm seeing Dan, I'm really tempted to just end it for good.”

“You should.”

“I know.”

I had another sip of wine and wisely said nothing.

“I'll do that,” she said with finality, looking up at me with a smile. But I could tell by the way her eyes shifted to the right that she was full of shit.

When I got up the next morning, Sloan had made coffee and was sitting at the kitchen table, holding a cigarette in her hand. “I'm not smoking it,” she rushed to explain when she saw me. “I know the rule. I'll go outside.”

“I wish you wouldn't smoke at all,” I lectured her.

“Yeah, yeah. One of these days I'll quit.”

“Good,” I said, walking over to the fridge to grab the creamer. “What time is it?”

“8:30. Shit, Stormy, you look like hell.”

“Well, thanks, and fuck you very much, too.”

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