Page 78 of Guitars and Cages

Alexia blew a straw wrapper at me. “You would think of go-karts.”

“Well, yeah, the track is right next to the arcade, and I’ve got rolls of quarters.”

That got her laughing. I ordered a Piggy Special for Rory and me, and I even slipped a spoonful of the ice cream into Alexia’s cottage cheese and pineapples, figuring she wouldn’t notice the difference. She did, but by then it was too late. She got me back by slipping cottage cheese in my ice cream while I was taking Rory to the bathroom. That stuff is horrible, even covered in whipped cream.

We were almost done with lunch when my phone went off. I’d finally managed to find it the night before, stuffed in the pocket of one of my flannel shirts. I flipped it open and froze.

Asher, I need to talk to you. It’s very important. Please don’t ignore this message like you did all the rest. Call me back. Eve

I hesitated, my finger poised over the reply button. I’d never returned a single one of her calls, but she’d never sent me one quite like that. I wondered what could be so important. I wondered if I even wanted to know. In the end, I shoved the phone back in my pocket and dug into my burger, hoping like hell she’d go back to leaving me alone.

After lunch, we headed to the arcade beside the track, wanting Rory’s food to settle before the go-karts and bumper cars. We played games for tickets and gave them all to Rory when we won. By the time we ran out of quarters he had a stuffed Tasmanian Devil for his prize. He held it on his lap while he was racing Alexia and me, and wouldn’t you know it, the kid beat us both; prolly ’cause we spent half the second lap trying to take one another out. He lapped us while we ran each other into bales of hay and complained that neither of us deserved to have a license.

When we were done my head was spinning and I was beginning to think that go-karts hadn’t been such a good idea. We took Rory to the park and let him play while Alexia and I sat on the bench, her watching Rory, me with my hair in front of my eyes and my eyes closed, wishing like hell my headache would go away. Finally, Rory climbed into Alexia’s lap and laid his head on her shoulder. She carried him back to the car while I trailed behind, my phone going off again.

Asher, it’s Eve, I hope you see this message. I really need for you to call me, please. There’s something I need to tell you, call me back when you get this.

Yeah, sure, the last time she needed to tell me something was when she told me she was pregnant. At least this time I didn’t have to worry about that being an issue. Whatever the hell it was, I wished she would explain in a text and be done with it; there was no reason for us to talk on the phone. I sighed and deleted the message, and then noticed I had five missed calls and twelve additional messages from before I’d even gotten up that morning. I checked the numbers; they were all from Eve.

I deleted them without reading or listening, figuring they were the same as the ones I’d received. Holy shit, the bitch must want money, I thought as I deleted them. That was the only thing I could think of to make her so damned persistent.

Two more texts came in while I was working; the same bullshit as the previous ones I’d read. It must not have been so damned important, since she never did say what it was. I was getting pretty fucking annoyed with her bullshit by then, and seriously considered texting her back and telling her to fuck off. I wished like hell Kimber would stop giving her my cell phone numbers; I’d asked her not to more times than I could count, but she never listened.

I was stacking chairs so Morgan could mop the floor when my phone went off again. Cursing, I yanked it out of my pocket and contemplated hurling it across the room. Replacing cell phones was getting pretty expensive, though, even if it was the little pre-paid ones, so instead, I opened it up to the message.

You’re a bastard, Asher, you know that, and I hope you burn in hell. Gage was in an accident this morning, for some dumb reason I thought you’d want to know. They don’t think he’s gonna make it.

I read it again, hoping I’d misread the words, but the message was still the same, even after the third time I’d read it. I didn’t realize I was shaking until the phone fell from my hand and clattered against the wooden floor. I stood there, too numb to pick it up.

“Hey, you wanna stack those last two tables so we can get a move on?” Morgan called out from across the room. I looked over, not really seeing him, and shook my head, walking away from the tables and my phone, heading for the door.

“Hey, where are you going, we ain’t done yet!”

I whirled, and it was hard to see him through blurry eyes. “Stack ’em yourself!”

I was shaking. I could feel the tears hot against my cheeks as I turned back around and ran out the door. All I could think about was the message, and the image of Gage bloody, broken, and dying made me wanna scream and hit something. I ran through the streets without any thought as to where I was going; the feel of the rain soaking me didn’t slow me down one bit. Gage was dying. I heard it in my head over and over. I saw him the way I’d seen him last, in a heap, battered and bloody at his father’s feet. He’d never deserved that, never done one single thing to deserve me betraying him. Now he was dying, and I felt like a part of me was dying, too. Gage wasn’t the one who deserved death. It was me; it had always been me.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Iran through the storm without direction, the rain pelting me, the wind whipping my soaked hair into my eyes. It wasn’t until the weight of the cast on my hand began to lessen that I paused to see that the sodden plaster was beginning to fall off. The rain poured over me as I peeled the chunks away, watching them fall into puddles on the street, until I’d stripped the hand clean of the cast and padding and allowed the rain to wash the traces from my skin. My hand throbbed after the effort, but I found it impossible to care. I tipped my head back and let the rain beat against my face, wishing it could wash away the past, ’cause then there would be nothing to keep me from running to see Gage, even if it was only to sit there at his side until the end.

The deluge drowned out the sounds of the city and blurred the lights. It seemed like everyone had fled the path of the storm, leaving the streets deserted. I stood, uncertain of where I was, unable to move, unable to think of anything except Gage, pale and dying against the stark white hospital sheets the way my mother had. I closed my eyes, shivering until a wave of water washed over me, drenching me even more. I opened my eyes to see taillights disappearing in the distance, the bright red quickly swallowed up by the driving rain.

With a sigh, I headed down the street. Memories of the past welled up in brilliant colors so warm I almost forgot the cold of the storm. Gage and I fishing on the riverbank, sucking down the beers we’d stolen from his dad. He’d laughed at the faces I made when I took my first sip, and I’d nearly rolled into the river laughing when he’d tried to be all badass and take a gulp only to end up sputtering and choking so bad that beer had fizzed out of his nose.

When I was ten I’d gotten it into my head to run away, and like a true friend Gage had decided to come with me so I wouldn’t be alone. We’d packed backpacks full of snacks and soda, T-shirts and jeans, forgetting that nights in the mountains got cold. With a battered tent, a couple sleeping bags, and our horses, we’d headed for the hills. We thought we were so brave, until the sun went down and the critters started scratching around our campsite, scaring the hell outta us. Cold, we’d huddled in our sleeping bags in the middle of the tent, holding on to one another like scared little kids when a mountain lion screamed and made our hair stand on end. In the morning we’d ridden home, defeated and tired, to accept our punishments. He’d been grounded for a month for scaring his parents half to death, while no one had even noticed that I’d been gone. Later, I’d taken him a whole mess of comics while his parents were in town, despite getting in trouble with my brother Mike for stealing them from his room.

When we were thirteen, we were watching over heifers that were due to calf when his father’s barn was struck by lightning. Scared as we were, we tried to get all the animals out, the smoke thick and choking; then a beam fell and pinned his legs. I’d followed his shouts and yells through the flames to find him, burning bits of the roof falling down all around me. I remembered the cuts and the splinters in my hands from lifting the beam, so scared that I wouldn’t be strong enough to move it. It had moved enough for him to wiggle free, and we’d grabbed hold of each other, clinging as we struggled through the choking darkness to the door. His mother and father had kissed and hugged me for what I’d done, calling me a hero. Too bad that hero grew up to be a coward.

When we were fourteen he returned the favor, braving the fury of an angry swarm of hornets to drag me to safety when I’d collapsed after getting stung. I learned that day that I was allergic to the little bastards, ’cause the doctors at the hospital had gone on and on about how lucky I was that Gage had gotten me away from them in time. He always said that he had mastered driving a stick shift that day, somewhere on the back roads between home and the hospital, with me in the passenger seat, pale and wheezing, my face and arms swollen from all those stings. Chase and Cole had been the ones to thank him for saving me, and I’d spent the rest of that summer paranoid that I’d get stung again. I still jump when I hear insects buzzing.

The first time we kissed was at his old man’s hunting cabin on South Bluff Mountain. We’d been allowed to go up on our own for a whole week of ice fishing, deer hunting, snowmobiling, and having a good time. We’d just finished tussling in the living room; the impromptu match kicked off after he’d beaten me at arm wrestling for the hundredth time. Somehow or another I’d managed to pin him—or maybe he’d let me; he always refused to say. Either way, I was staring down at him, and then I did it, shocking myself more than I’d shocked him. As kisses go, it was rushed and sloppy, and I jerked away as soon as my brain registered what I was doing. I’d expected to get hit, or at the very least to get shoved halfway across the room and threatened with bodily harm if I ever did it again. He did neither.

What he did shocked the hell out of me, though sometimes I wish he had slugged me or threatened me. Instead of hate and violence, he’d sat up enough to grab my shirt and stop me from retreating any farther.

“Is that all I get?” he had asked, pulling me closer and kissing me good and proper. There was nothing awkward or rushed that time, just him taking his time and me letting go of my fears and kissing back.

We never talked about it, never put a label on what we became; it was just another layer of the friendship, understood and never questioned, until I’d started dragging Eve along. That had changed things between us, even when he claimed to understand why I was doing it. It’s where the lies began, where I lost myself to the web I had spun and became someone I couldn’t even recognize anymore. It’s where the fights started, too; him loud and angry, and me casting furtive glances all around, even in the middle of nowhere, worried that someone might hear. It’s where the frenzied make-up sessions began, the wild moments we stole to try and make up for the time I was spending with Eve. We were making up the day my old man caught us.

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