Page 15 of Ring My Bell

Glaring, I pushed to my feet and grabbed my laptop. I intended to take it to the bedroom or kitchen or anywhere else in the tiny apartment to get away from him. “Not every thought, no. I’m keeping one to myself right now, but I’m sure you can figure it out.”

“Nice. Way to convince me this trip is a good idea. Start off by being a tool bag.”

“Tool bag? Seriously? Holy shit, what kind of insult is that?”

Growling, Mathis scrubbed his hands through his hair, then rose to tower over me. “It’s not supposed to be one! I don’t want to insult you! I just… I…”

He petered out, closing his eyes an dropping his chin. “I’m sorry. I’m being a dick. I’ve been angry for a very long time, and I shouldn’t take it out on you. Even if you do remind me of Raymond and what he did to me, how he fucked me over.”

Setting my computer down, I tentatively touched his arm. He jerked but didn’t pull away. “Mathis, I’m not expecting us to be besties here, but we’ve got a pain in common and a goal in common.”

“Do you want to know something fucked up?” he asked quietly, finally raising his eyes to meet mine again.

“Um, this isn’t where you tell me you’re making a skin suit, and I’d make a great addition?”

“No, I’m saving that for the trip back home. No, the fucked-up thing is… I never wanted to be famous. Ever.” His laugh was a little wild, a little tired. He turned, pacing back and forth across his tiny den. “I went to the Bremen Town Festival out of boredom, back when you could just show up and get in line for the open mic stage. Before it became a celebrity ‘see and be seen’ thing, like fucking South by Southwest and shit. I was feeling kind of desperate to get my music heard, not necessarily get some huge deal out of it. I’d been playing every club I could between Maine and California. After my set, Raymond found me and laid it on thick. I was dumb and lonely and…” He trailed off. “Well. Fuck me, right? Fell into the trap.”

I shook my head. “No, Mathis… It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t any of our faults. He’s a predator. A user. He wants to be famous and wealthy and king of shit mountain. And he used us to add to his story. Well, you know what? Fuck him. He doesn’t get the rest of our stories, okay?” Mathis scrunched his brow, and I waved him off. “I’m not great with the metaphors. You’re the songwriter. You figure it out.”

He stared at me. Then his face softened, and he almost smiled. “Yeah… Yeah, I’ll figure it out.”

My phone chirped, telling me it was almost time for our video call. “You wanna do this?”

He nodded, no hesitation. “Let’s do it.”

Chapter Six

MATHIS

Iggy was not as bad of a road-trip partner as I’d assumed. He didn’t fuck with the presets, he didn’t eat messy snacks, and he kept his damn feet off the dash. What he did not do, however, was stop talking.

At. All.

From San Francisco to Sacramento, where we met his friend Gerald and split into two cars—me and Iggy in mine, Gerald and Paige in Gerald’s—he kept up a monologue about tide pools and which were better, Northern California’s or Southern California’s. Then he segued into how to tell if an octopus was angry, which somehow became a one-sided discussion about which was better, Stargate: Atlantis or seaQuest: DSV.

“You realize you’re arguing with yourself, right?” I asked during a lull.

He nodded. “Yep. Because this,” he nodded towards the window, “is terrifying. I hate mountains. Hate. And apparently, every state west of Texas has a laissez-faire attitude towards guardrails, which doesn’t help.”

“Seriously?” I darted a glance his way. We were only in the foothills, not even up on the serious mountain passes we’d need to go over to get out of California, and he was already a very unpleasant shade of green-gray. “Need me to pull over?”

His laugh was desperate and high. “Where? That two-inch margin or the two-hundred-foot drop?”

“It’s only seventy or so.”

“Okay, that makes it better.” He closed his eyes. “If you’re not going to let me ramble and pretend I’m not about to die, then I’d very much like to curl up in the fetal position on the floorboard until we get to the hotel in Nevada.”

“You can talk. It’s fine. I didn’t know…”

“I hate this. So much. When people find out, they ask how I can live in California and hate driving in the mountains, since this whole damn state is either mountains or desert. Well, surprise, I’m from Oklahoma, bitches! Flat as a pancake except the Arbuckles, and those are easy to avoid!”

“I’m from Bangor, Maine,” I offered. “Originally. I lived there till I was thirteen and my parents split up. Then I moved with my dad to Nebraska. Stayed for a few years and got the wanderlust.”

“Got the wanderlust,” he huffed shakily. “That sounds very romantic.”

“I thought it was,” I laughed ruefully. “I imagined myself playing in clubs, meeting interesting people, pick up songwriting gigs here and there. I thought I’d work my way to New York, get on playing piano at some smoky bar with bad lighting, find an old tenement apartment in the city.”

He smiled thinly. “Let me guess. You wore hats a lot, didn’t you? And had a leather jacket.”

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