Leaving Amarillo Read online

  He glances over the ledge quickly and winces before propping his elbows on it. He’s always been slightly afraid of heights. But Gavin Garrison has never been the type to let fear stop him from staring the devil straight in the face.

  “Yeah? Well, let me know when you’re ready to lay them down.”

  My eyes travel up his heavily inked arms to his expansive chest. I let them drift up to his masculine neck and around the outline of his strong jaw. Dark tendrils of thick hair curl outward beneath the edges of the gray knit cap he’s wearing. He has an almost imperceptible dimple in his chin that matches the shallow one in his left cheek when he grins. Lord the things that happen to my body when he grins and that dimple shows. My pulse quickens just thinking about it.

  “Um, lay what down?” My mind scrambles to snag a coherent thought. Unfortunately they all scattered upon Gavin’s arrival on the roof.

  When we’re playing, it’s electric. It flows perfectly and we complement each other in every way possible. But take away the music and the noise and my brick-wall barrier of a brother, and I am a mess of epic proportions.

  “The lyrics,” he says slowly, side-eyeing me warily.

  “Oh, right. Yeah, I’ll keep you posted.”

  He sighs loudly from beside me. “Look, I know you’re upset about breaking it off with what’s-his-ass, but trust me, guys like that—”

  “I’m not upset about that. About Jaggerd.”

  The second the words leave my mouth, though, Gavin’s dark eyebrows dip lower, and I kind of wish I’d gone with his incorrect assumption. It’d be a lot easier to explain.

  “Oh. Well, that’s good. You just seemed kind of distracted in there. And your brother was more on edge than usual.”

  “Papa’s had a string of rough nights. And . . . it’s been ten years, Gav,” I say softly. I can tell by the crease in his forehead and the pinch of his lips pulling together that he doesn’t know what I’m talking about. “Our parents. Ten years since they—”

  “Oh God. I didn’t realize . . . I’m an idiot.” He looks so distraught that I forget my own pain in the overwhelming urge to comfort him. He gets the Look, as I’ve begun to think of it. The one that says I’d really like to take your pain away, take you to bed and make it all better with my dick, but your brother would kill me so I’ll just stand here awkwardly while trying to figure out what to do with my arms.

  “It’s okay,” I tell him, to ease his suffering. “Just weighing on me more than usual today.”

  Little does he know, the Look comforts me. Because even though he can’t put his arms around me, can’t whisper sweet comforting words in my ear, or soothe my pain with kisses or more, his eyes tell me that he wants to—or he’s tempted to, at least. And for right now, it’s enough. The knowing. I just don’t know how long it will be enough.

  Gavin pulls a soft pack of Marlboro reds from his pocket and deftly slips out a cigarette. I frown.

  “Thought you quit?”

  His eyes cloud over, his stormy gaze pressing against mine. “I can only deny myself so many things, Bluebird.”

  As irritated as I am at catching him smoking, the nickname he gave me when we were kids still sends a wave of warmth right through me.

  Dallas and Gavin mowed lawns the summer I turned thirteen. Dallas was saving to buy a truck and Gavin was . . . well, I don’t really know exactly. Probably hoping to make enough money to provide for himself so he wouldn’t feel like Nana and Papa’s charity case.

  I was living smack in the middle of the in-between—mind of a child, budding body of a woman. Feeling very much both and neither all at once.

  Nana sent me a few streets over to where they were mowing to let them know supper was ready. Fighting the urge to skip so as not to get all sticky and sweaty and gross in the Texas humidity before sitting across the dinner table from Gavin, I walked as calmly as I could manage, letting my hands dance on the breeze and trying not to get distracted by flowers I was tempted to pick.

  When I arrived at Camilla Baker’s family pond, where the boys were mowing, they were huddled together and staring at the ground. Thinking one of them had been hurt and might be bleeding or possibly could have lost a foot or some toes at the least to the mower, I broke into a sprint until I reached them.

  “Shh,” Dallas said, raising an arm that barred me from stepping on what they were staring at. “I think it’s still alive.”

  “What’s still alive?” I whispered, entranced by the stillness of two boys who I knew firsthand hardly remained still or reserved this type of reverence for much of anything.

  “Look,” Gavin said, nodding to the ground. “Its chest is moving. It’s still breathing.”

  A thrill shot through me as I realized it might be a snake or something wildly unappealing, but I looked anyway. And there beside a patch of pond grass, monkey grass Nana called it, was a small, mostly round bird with midmorning-sky-blue feathers breathing rapidly but not moving. Instinctively I reached down to retrieve it.

  “No,” Gavin practically shouted at me. “Don’t. You can’t touch it.”

  “Why not? It needs help.”

  He shook his head and then looked at me with this hollow expression that haunted me for years afterward. “Because if it’s a baby and too young to fend for itself, the mother won’t have anything to do with it if she can smell your scent on it. She’ll abandon it and it won’t survive on its own.”

  Funny, the things we remember. I remember that we all debated for a long time, though I couldn’t recall the words of our three-sided argument if my life depended on it. But I remember that look, I remember realizing for the first time, finally comprehending just how different Gavin’s life was from mine and Dallas’s.

  We were orphans, sure. We’d gone from a cushy life in the suburbs to a much more meager existence. But after long summer days with Gavin, Dallas and I went home to love. To meals and music and hugs and warm, clean beds. Sometimes he stayed over and sometimes he didn’t.

  Even now I don’t know exactly what Gavin went home to when he left us. But I knew then that it was vastly different from where I lived.

  Finally, Dallas picked the bird up and cradled it close to his chest on the walk back to our house. The three of us hypothesized the many possible causes of the bird’s state of distress.

  Once we’d arrived home, Dallas moved his hand from his chest to allow us a peek at our wounded patient.

  It was so small. And so very still.

  A sob threated to roll out of my throat and I nearly choked holding it in. Life was hard, Dallas constantly reminded me. You couldn’t go crying at every little thing.

  But the unfairness of it, of a small, harmless feathered creature’s life ending with no rhyme or reason to it, hit my thirteen-year-old self hard. It was a reminder of death, of the inevitable and unpredictable ending that had stolen my parents and that loomed over us like a cloudy Texas sky. Just as tears formed in my eyes, the tiny bird opened his and shrieked out a loud, piercing chirp. Maybe a thank-you or maybe a startled cry of shock at finding itself captive in human hands. Before either of us said a word, it flew away, leaving us staring up at the sky after it. I felt like I’d witnessed a miracle.

  Nana hollered for us to get in the house and we told her a story I suspect she probably thought the three of us concocted out of boredom.

  After dinner, during my nightly piano lesson, I tried my hand at whistling like the bluebird had. I wasn’t great at it. The boys mocked me profusely. Well, Dallas mostly. Gavin just smiled at his best friend’s antics. When I’d finished my lesson and my attempts at whistling, we ate ice cream from paper bowls on the front porch. Once we were finished, Gavin stood to leave. And because I’d seen his face, seen the hurt that flashed behind his eyes when he’d spoke of the bird’s mother abandoning it, I didn’t want him to go.

  It was growing darker so Papa offered to drive him home. I stood there, trying to think of a way to make him stay. Once Nana had forced my brother inside to bathe and Papa
had gone to grab the truck keys, I reached out for the boy standing solemnly on the porch and staring at the night sky. He stood just out of my reach, as he always tended to do.

  “Don’t go. Just . . . stay,” I whispered, feeling my face heat with the words. “You could stay here.” I meant forever, but I never asked if he understood the full implication of my offer.

  He glanced over at me with sad eyes, but then he winked. “I’ll be okay, Bluebird. You don’t have to worry about me.”

  But I did. I still do.

  Just like he stills calls me Bluebird. But only in private, and never in front of my brother.

  Snapping back to the present, I snatch the unlit cigarette from his fingers and flick it over the edge of the rooftop. “Yeah, well, I think you can deny yourself cancer.”

  “What the hell?” He gapes at me and I shrug.

  “Band wouldn’t be the same without a drummer. Probably take us a little while to replace you.”

  His mouth quirks up but he narrows his eyes in what could pass for anger to an unknowing bystander. I can tell he’s trying to be all broody and impenetrable, but that version of Gavin is for the public. The random girls who throw their red lace panties at him. But to me, he’s Gav. The boy I’ve known most of my life. The one whose mom was so cracked out or high on whatever the hell most of the time, she couldn’t be bothered to raise her son. Raise is too lofty a word for Katrina Garrison. More like she couldn’t be bothered to keep him alive. But thankfully Gavin is scrappy and tough and sure as shit never needed anyone like her.

  When we were growing up, he was the one always keeping her alive, reminding her to eat and bathe. And she was too busy securing the means for her next hit to do the same for him. The Gavin I know has nearly fallen apart in front of us on multiple occasions when his worthless excuse for a mother nearly overdosed. So his tough-guy act is wasted on me.

  “All right. You win.” He reaches the hand holding the pack behind him as if to tuck them back into his pocket, but I hold mine out.

  I twitch my fingers twice in a “gimme” motion and he scoffs at me.

  “Jesus Christ, Dix. I won’t smoke around you, okay? This pack cost me six bucks.”

  I raise my eyebrows, silently challenging him to keep arguing with me. It’s pointless and his efforts to continue this are futile, which he should know by now.

  After a minute-long stare-down, he rolls his eyes toward the sky in exasperation and places the pack in my outstretched palm. I promptly fling it over the side of the building.

  “Well now you’re just littering.”

  “Better than standing here getting secondhand cancer while watching you take years off your own life.” I glare right back at him, because that’s the thing about Gavin. The thing that infuriates me to no end. He will drop everything to take care of his deadbeat, drug-addicted mother. And if Dallas or I needed a kidney or something, he’d be first in line to donate. But when it comes to taking care of himself? The boy lives like he’s trying to express-lane his own funeral sometimes.

  “Aww, would you miss me?”

  And just when I’m feeling good and sorry for him, he patronizes and antagonizes me. So sometimes I want to kick him in the shin. But then I’d be the one to drop to my knees and check to make sure he wasn’t hurt. If I actually got on my knees in front of Gavin Garrison, there’s no telling what kind of trouble I’d get into while I was down there. So I resist the urge to kick him for both our sakes.

  “Yeah, I’d miss you, Gav,” I answer through gritted teeth. “Because I’d be wondering where that giant pain in my a—”

  “Ah, ah, ah. Language, sweet girl. What would your brother say if he heard you out here talking dirty to me?”

  His eyes drop to my lips and I can feel what discussing dirty talk is doing to him. It’s doing something to me, too. A couple of somethings.

  “Okay,” I relent, stepping even closer. “Tell you what. You keep your mouth clean, and I’ll try to do the same. Deal?”

  “Hm, I don’t know. There is something awfully sexy about ugly words coming from such a pretty mouth.”

  I can’t help but smirk. “The truth finally comes out. You think I’m sexy.”

  “You have no idea what I think.” He winks but his tone is low, a warning. He turns to the side, resting his back and elbows on the ledge so that he’s no longer facing me. I hate that I can’t read his expression. The muscle in his jaw pops and his body is still rigid. He can’t make up his mind about us. We’ve always had something. A connection. But the older we get, the more complicated it becomes.

  “Whatever you say, Gav.” I lift one shoulder noncommittally, as if I couldn’t care less. But this close to him, my bravado melts and I’m seconds from becoming a quivering mess and begging him to tell me what he thinks about me. About us. Before my secret desire can get the best of me, I turn to walk back inside the building. But I am me and me is stubborn and I hate being the one to break first. So I turn and give him something to think about.

  “Oh, and Gav?”

  “Yeah?”

  I make eye contact, making sure he hears me, that he feels the full weight of my words. “For the record, I don’t make my decisions based on what my brother would say.”

  He cocks his head to the side and crosses both mouthwatering forearms over his chest. “That so?”

  Yes. Unlike you.

  The words are right there on the tip of my tongue, begging to be released. But I clench my teeth, trapping them inside.

  I hold his gaze, fighting to remain grounded instead of tumbling headfirst into a stare that heats my blood hotter every time I see it.

  “See you inside,” I say softly before making my escape.

  Okay, man. Yeah. Got it. And seriously, thanks. I mean it. There’s anything I can do for you, holler. All right?”

  Dallas disconnects the call and his shining blue eyes flicker first to me, where I’m standing applying rosin to my bow, then over to where Gavin has just joined us.

  “That was Levi Eaton,” he says without giving either of us time to inquire about the phone call that has him grinning almost maniacally. “His band is backing out of Austin MusicFest. His keyboard player slept with the lead singer’s wife. Needless to say, they’re taking a breather.”

  “Nice,” Gavin says with a touch of sarcastic awe in his voice.

  “Yeah,” my brother says nodding as the door closes behind him; he looks like he’s announcing lottery winnings. “I mean, not that the dude nailed the guy’s wife. But that means there’s performance space available at the festival.”

  Austin MusicFest is a five-day music festival on Sixth Street, second in size only to South by Southwest. It doesn’t pay much, but the exposure alone is worth more than we’d make in a year. Maybe even more than that.

  We’ve signed up to be considered every year since we started playing seriously. But so far we haven’t been able to get onto the lineup.

  “So you think we can just show up and pretend to be Levi’s band?” I set the rosin aside and join in the conversation.

  “No.” Dallas laughs as if I’ve said something funny. “We’re in. As us. Levi even gave us his hotel room. Thank goodness, because otherwise we’d be sleeping in the van all week.”

  The air vacates my lungs as if Dallas popped them with his words. Maybe someone heard my rooftop prayer after all.

  Up until now, we’ve mostly performed gigs close to home. Sure we’ve slept in the van from time to time when playing out of town, but never for more than one night at a time. And the boys always stay safely in the front seats and I crash on the bench seat in the back. When on the road we sleep in shifts and take turns driving the hunk of junk we lovingly named Emmylou after my infatuation with Emmylou Harris.

  This will be different. Much different.

  “There are over one hundred managers attending and at least as many booking agents and record label execs. This is it. This is our shot. Finally.” My brother beams at us. “We’ll leave tomorrow
night.” His eyes widen as they meet mine. “We’re in. Holy shit, we’re in.”

  The guys are fist-bumping and celebrating while I try to process what this means. My mouth is dry when my gaze makes its way over to the tattooed, tortured soul grinning from behind his drum kit.

  I’ve done the best I can to keep my distance, to behave myself and not open my mouth and let my heart fall out. It would ruin everything.

  One week. One hotel room. Our shot at finally making it.

  I don’t know if I can do this.

  I just know that I have to.

  Chapter 3

  THE DRIVE TO AUSTIN TAKES A LITTLE OVER SEVEN HOURS. I SLEEP as much as one can in a moving vehicle in the backseat for most of the ride. During the few stretches where the three of us are all conscious at the same time, we discuss possible changes to the set list, ideas for reworking a few songs, and rough spots that need to be smoothed out in one of our newer ones.

  When we pull into the parking lot at the Days Inn where Levi had booked the room he’s letting us use, we’re all a little road weary and yet keyed up with excitement and nerves.

  Once we’ve checked in and been given access cards for our room, we head up to the third floor on an elevator that smells faintly of urine and stale beer. It’s not the nicest hotel, but it’s relatively affordable. Many of the musicians playing in the festival will likely be staying here as well.

  As soon as we drop our bags in the small room with two beds and a cot, Dallas and Gavin begin unloading our belongings.

  I lower myself onto the bed by the window and watch them.

  Dallas frowns at the two beds and then moves the cot into the narrow space between them. “I’ll take the cot.”

  Gavin stops drumming his sticks on the small table in the corner beside me. “I can take the cot. I’ve slept on worse.”

  My hearts lurches forward, yanking my stomach along with it. Trying to blink back the image of little boy Gavin sleeping on a filthy floor God knows where, I see my brother give Gavin a meaningful look that ends the conversation abruptly.