Page 23 of Rock Bottom

Instead, I sighed. “Look, the guy didn’t do anything wrong. He’s just acting like every fan does when they meet me. I just wasn’t expecting it, is all. I’m kind of…off right now.”

“What’s wrong? Are you hurt? Sick?” He started checking me over, taking my chin between his fingers and turning my face one way and then the other.

“I’m sober,” I said, pulling away. “That’s not usually the case when I meet people for the first time. It’s kind of a novelty for me.” I wiped my hand over my face and went back to digging in the fridge. "I’ll be fine.”

“I thought you liked people.”

“I do. I’m an extrovert. I love people.” I pulled out a Tupperware container labeled MASH and popped the lid open. Apparently, MASH was shorthand for mashed potatoes. I grabbed a spoon from the drawer and shoved a scoop of cold mashed potatoes into my mouth.

Church jerked the container away. “If you love people, why do you need to drink to talk to them?” He shoved the container in the microwave and pushed a few buttons.

I stared at the Tupperware going around and around in the microwave, trying to formulate an answer, but there wasn’t one. No one had ever asked me that before. Hell, I’d never even thought there was a correlation between my drinking and talking to people, but maybe there was.

I shot a glance back into the living room where Oscar was working, worried he might overhear what I was about to say, but he’d put on a pair of headphones and moved to the other side of the room.

“The first time I played in a sold-out arena, we almost had to cancel the show,” I said eventually. “I was nervous during the rehearsals, but everyone said that’d get better. That I’d be able to ignore all the screaming, the flashing lights, all the pyrotechnics and shit. But when I looked out there and saw all those people…” I shook my head and looked down at my hands. My palms had gone all splotchy, and the rest of me was alternating between burning and freezing. “I couldn’t do it. I looked out there and I fucking froze.”

“Stage fright?” Church asked.

“Maybe. I don’t know. I just knew that I was terrified of screwing this up. This was my one chance to make it, and everybody was going to be looking at me. It’s one thing to record in a studio where you can back up and replay a few bars if you fuck it up, but in front of thousands of people? You sing one wrong note, trip over a cord, come in a bar too late…One screw up and it’s over.”

“That’s a lot of pressure.”

I closed my eyes and nodded slowly. “But what was I going to do? Back out? That’d piss people off. No, I had to go out there.”

“So you took a few shots of liquid courage and faced the music.”

“Literally,” I agreed. “And then again for the after party. Then for meet and greets. Then there was something every day, and it was just easier to stay that way. Drunk Dante didn’t have to worry about saying or doing the wrong thing because if he did, I could just wave my hand and say I’d had too much to drink. That wasn’t me. I thought I’d found the ultimate escape. Instead, I built myself a prison with every drink.”

“And now?” he asked.

I shrugged. “You spend long enough in a prison, you forget how to live outside it.”

The microwave dinged, but neither of us moved to pull out the potatoes. I usually didn’t like talking about that shit. It was one of the reasons AA and rehab didn’t work for me. The shrinks they made me talk to didn’t care about me. They were there for the paycheck, and to get material for their biographies once they retired.

But Church could get his paycheck whether he listened to me whine or not. He didn’t have to pretend to care.

He grabbed a hot pad and pulled the potatoes from the microwave, stirring them with a new spoon before putting them on the table.

“Thanks.” I pulled out a chair and sat.

When Church sat down across from me, I froze halfway through blowing the steam off the giant spoonful I’d scooped up. We’d been having dinner together regularly, but never lunch. Never anything else.

He folded his hands on the tabletop. “Before I worked for the Junkyard Dogs, I was in the SAS.”

I lowered my spoon. “SAS?”

“Special Air Service. We carried out dangerous, highly classified missions overseas, generally counter-terrorism operations in the Middle East.”

I blinked in surprise. I’d figured he was some kind of military badass, but the special forces? “Damn. I bet that was some hard work.”

“It was difficult at times, but the work itself was rewarding. I thought it would be my whole life.”

“What happened?”

He stared at his hands in silence for a beat before answering. “My unit was sent to apprehend a known terrorist leader at the Lebanon-Syrian border, but it was a trap. We were captured and held in a Syrian prison camp for five hundred eighty days before the crown negotiated our release.”

“Holy shit.” I’d heard some of what went on over there, and it wasn’t pretty. Torture, beheadings, gassing…I didn’t even want to think about all the shit he’d been through. I almost couldn’t believe it. He seemed so…well adjusted.

---