Page 61 of The Fire Walker
With a groan, I pulled my bag along the floor and back into the main part of the room. I didn’t want a shower, but I knew it would help my aching muscles better than sitting in a car for six hoursstraight.
Pulling everything out of my bag, my hands connected with my notebook that had been buried and forgotten at the bottom for the past two weeks. It was full of words and scribbles, its pages torn and dog-eared. It was full of songs and lyrics and pieces of mysoul.
Pulling it out, I ran my fingers along the cover. I’d given Zoe one back when we’d started the band as a way to help her air her feelings a little. She’d been so closed back then, living in a world of denial, that I thought it would do her some kind ofgood.
Lying back on the bed, I flipped through the pages, reading bits and pieces of songs that I’d started, ones that I’d finished, and chord progressions I’d been working on. They were all pre-Jessie Dee. Full of carefree longing and hope. I’d wanted to fall in love so badly before. I’d wanted a connection with someone like I needed air to breathe. The last two weeks had only shown me that dream wasfoolish.
Resting the notebook on my chest, I closed my tired eyes, listening to the sounds of the motel. A slamming door, the sound of a television, the shower running in the next room, and it wasn’t long before I fellasleep.
Ididn’t knowhow long I’d been comatose, but when my eyes cracked open, it was still light out. Or that might have been the security light outside. It was hard totell.
Jessie was sitting in the armchair, reading a magazine, a brown paper bag of food on the table beside her. She must have felt my gaze on her because she looked up and gave me a smallsmile.
“Feel better?” sheasked.
“What time is it?” I groaned, rollingover.
“Sixthirty.”
“Sorry.” I don’t know what good it did, sleeping all day and night, but I felt weird having slept in myclothes.
“Don’t worry about it. You needed torest.”
“Thefood…”
“When I said I was getting breakfast, it was really lunch,” she said. “Just sandwiches, so yours is still good if you wantit.”
I sat up, resting my back against the headboard, and Jessie sat next to me, taking out a sandwich from the bag. We sat together like that for a while, our legs outstretched on the mattress while I ate, another awkward silence hanging in the air betweenus.
When I was done, she didn’t move, picking up her magazine and flipping through the pages. Looked like some kind of hipster fashion thing. I grabbed my notebook again and ignored her, opening up to a new page. Working on some of the shit that was stuck in my head seemed better than just sitting there insilence.
“What are you writing?” she asked after a while of nothing but pen scratches on paper. Her curiosity obviously got the better of her, and I wondered if that was a good or a bad thing where she wasconcerned.
“I’m trying to write somelyrics.”
“Can I see?” Her voice was so hopeful I shrugged and let her lean over my shoulder. It wasn’t exactly groundbreaking, soul-bearing stuff I waswriting.
“This is great,” she exclaimed after aminute.
“It’s a load ofshit.”
“Better than I coulddo.”
I watched her out the corner of my eye as she scanned the page again, trying to decipher my messyhandwriting.
“It’sibeforee.” She pointed to the wordpiecesthat I’d misspelled. “And you need a commathere.”
“Who the motherfucking hell cares where I put the letteri,” I cursed. “If it’s a good story, then who the fuckcares.”
“Just offering someadvice.”
“It’s the imperfections that make things better. People aren’t perfect. I can’t spell for shit? Who the fuckcares?”
She shifted next to me and said, “I could say something aboutthat.”
Cue blood boiling. The expression on my face must have been enough because she promptly droppedit.
Flinging the notebook back into my open bag, I slid off the bed and declared, “I’m having ashower.”
