Page 41 of All Right No
“Hey, you can at least hear me out before you go dismissing it. I know you’re pissed off, Ash. I get it, the world has screwed you over, but sitting around moping isn’t going to fix things. You want to play guitar and resume your old position in Black Halo when they tour, then you have to work to make that happen. No one is going to come along and wave a wand and fix you. The only person who can fix this is you with hard work and determination.”
“What do you think I’ve been doing?”
She was on her feet. “I think we went through this the other day. Time’s short, Ash. They’re going to hire someone else if you’re not fit within a matter of weeks.”
Yeah, sadly he did remember that speech. He stared at her open-mouthed for a moment, before all his rage returned triple fold. He held it back though, trapped behind his gritted teeth. It made his nose sting and his eyes get all ticklish in the corners. “Performing stupid exercises isn’t going to do squat, Ginny.”
“How do you know? Have you tried them? Given them a chance? Or did you just dismiss them in the way you did the drugs, because they didn’t fit in with your view of reality?”
“I did them all back in the hospital. None of it worked, I still came out broken. Iain’s taken everything.”
Ginny’s shoulders dropped, and instead of yelling back at him, she moved the laptop from his knee to the coffee table, then straddled his lap. “Bollocks. That’s what I have to say to that. Most of what you love is still right here if you’d just open your eyes and recognise it.” She took hold of his bad hand and gave it a squeeze. “The exercises are as dull as fuck. No one would choose to do them, which is why I’ve livened them up. I thought we could do them together.”
“To what end?”
She touched his face. “You know what end. So you can play guitar again and continue being a shit hot rock star whom I like to fuck, and who makes all the girlies scream.” He couldn’t help but smile at the memories. “I’ll let you curse as much as you like while we’re doing them, but I’m not letting you wriggle out of this. You’re too damn good for me to allow you to fade away.”
“Ginny, I don’t wanna—”
She silenced him with a kiss. “Just say, ‘Yes, Ginny.’ And go along with me for today. We can review the situation at nightfall, if you still think it’s of no benefit.”
He rolled his eyes, ’cause…Duh! They both already knew what the outcome would be.
Ginny hooked one hand around the back of his neck, and placed the other on his jaw so that he was forced to look at her. “I’m not going to drop this. I am prepared to offer incentives: chocolate, caffeine, Danger Mouse, beer and fucking. They don’t have to be in that order, but that’s on top of the fact you’ll be able to lick with the best of them again by the time we’re through.”
“Just ’cause you will it, doesn’t make it true, Gin.”
She clucked, and shook her head. “I thought you knew me better than that. Failure is not an option, Mr. Gore. Also, I’m prepared to take a rather more flexible approach to the task than any of the medical professionals. We won’t be doing endless repetitions of boring activities. They’ll all be fun, and we’ll keep mixing them up so that none of them get dull. Everything gets old if you do it too often.”
“Not everything,” he disagreed, doing his best to be roused by her impassioned speech. “Wanking never gets old.” Not that he was in a position to put that theory to the test as doing it left-handed felt all wrong, and the only privacy he got was in the shower. It was pretty hard to jerk off when you were sharing a room with your girlfriend.
“Fine, I’ll add that to the program.”
“What?”
“It involves the use of your hand, and I’ll probably enjoy watching.”
Heat rose up his neck, until he knew he was blushing at the thought. Yeah, she probably would. She’d certainly enjoyed listening to him that time on the tour bus over the phone. “All right, show me the chart.”
She shimmied off his lap to do so.
The chart didn’t tell him a lot. It was divided into days of the week and a series of tasks with relatively meaningless titles.
“Complete the tasks and you get one of these.” She handed him a plastic wallet containing an assortment of stickers: Danger Mouse, some interesting girlie pin-up designs, and a variety of ‘You’re Awesome’ type slogans. None of them said, ‘Chocolate reward,’ or ‘Blowjob’ or ‘Fuck until you go blind.’ He chucked the wallet onto the table and slouched back against the sofa cushions again.
“Stickers! Gin, I’m not five. You can’t inspire me with stickers and a promise that I can stay up for an extra fifteen minutes on Friday night if I’m a good boy. My mam used to con my brother and me with this sort of crap when we were small.”
“The stickers are merely to keep track of what tasks you’ve completed. We’ll be using age appropriate rewards like I already said.”
“Really?” he drawled, refusing to temper his scepticism. “So what tasks are we talking about that are going to incentivise me to earn my good boy stickers?” He peeled several off one of the sheets and stuck them to the front of his T-shirt.
Ginny sucked in her cheeks. He knew she was biting back a retort, but he was dead tired of being treated like a naughty child that had to be appeased and cajoled and coddled. None of them were prepared to say what they were thinking to his face. Like he couldn’t tell that they all just wanted him to piss off and get on with his pity party somewhere else. That’s why he was stuck here and they’d gone elsewhere to perform without him.
“Hey,” she snapped her fingers in front of his face. “Come back here. I don’t like this tuning out thing you keep doing. When I’m talking, I expect you to listen.”
“I’m listening,” he sighed.
“Ash, you’re really not the only one who has lost something, you know.”
