Page 20 of For Eva

EIGHT

Danny

January 1988

Four perfect fucking days.

With the perfect fucking girl.

I’d laid down the last fifteen bucks I had at Denny’s, so I’d spent several hours the next day tuning and restringing guitars at my buddy’s uncle’s music shop. Between that, being his fucking errand boy, and the measly amount the band saw after clubs and promoters took their cut of ticket sales from our shows, I usually managed to pay rent and eat. I never worried too much about it because I wasn’t ever out to impress anyone.

But with Eva, it was different. And though she didn’t care how much money I had, I at least wanted to be able to buy her dinner somewhere pancakes weren’t the featured item on the menu—even though she seemed thrilled to wander around the city, eating cheap tacos and drinking cheap tequila, before falling into my bed at the end of each day looking so fucking sexy I was sure I would lose my mind before I even touched her.

That’s how Eva was. How she’d always been. Howwe’dalways been together, at least before she’d lost her mom. Buttime had passed, and I could tell she was her old self again. Things were simple. Fun. Easy.

So fucking easy I almost forgot she was going back to Chicago in less than two days.

“Oh my God, he lives!”

I looked up from my guitar and saw Will smiling at me as he hauled several pieces of his drum kit into the warehouse that served as a rehearsal space we shared with a couple of other bands. His girlfriend, Angela, followed behind him, a case of cymbals in one hand and a case of beer in the other.

“Yeah, what’s this I hear about you and your new lover?” she asked, sweeping her long red hair over her shoulder and setting the cymbals and beer on the floor.

She settled her eyes and sideways grin on me as Will added “you mean hisoldlover” before heading back out to his car.

“So where is this chick?” she asked, flopping beside me on the sunken-in sofa and poking my arm with a pointy pink nail. “I gotta leave in a few, but I really wanted to meet the girl Danny Kincaid isactuallyserious about.”

I laughed and explained that Eva was coming by later when Eric breezed into the room, barely looking in our direction as he set his mic stand on the concrete floor. He placed a bottle of Jack Daniels on top of an old plastic crate while shrugging off his black leather jacket.

“He’s not serious about her,” he said, exchanging the jacket for the Jack. “He’s just fucking her till she goes back to wherever the fuck she came from. Which, hopefully, is soon.”

My jaw immediately tensed.

“Oh, that’s nice, Eric.” Angela narrowed her eyes at him. “I’m alwayssoglad when you show up with all of your unwanted commentary.”

“And I’m alwayssoglad when you get a night off from dancing naked for money.” Eric’s lips twisted with sarcasm ashe screwed the top off the fifth of Jack and took a swig. “I know that’s super challenging work and all.”

“Oh, fuck off, Eric,” I said, tossing my guitar pick at him.

“It’s fine, Danny.” Angela settled back into the cushions and crossed her legs. “He’s just pissed because I have money…an apartment…a car…friends. You know, a life in general.”

Eric smirked and walked over to the sofa, nudging her shoulder before perching on the armrest. She smiled and elbowed him in the thigh, hard enough that he winced.

“What are we talking about?” Matt shuffled in, his bass and amp in hand, doing a doubletake when he looked over at me. “Danny, holy shit, you’re alive.”

I threw my hands in the air. “Jesus, do you fuckers have to know where I am twenty-four seven? I just saw you all, like, three days ago.”

“Four, dude,” Eric corrected me, taking a long swallow of whiskey. “And we really needed to get a practice in before now, but nobody could get a hold of you.”

“Don’t worry about it, Danny.” A cigarette dangled from Will’s lips as he assembled his kit. “That Troubadour show was killer. Gina said that guy from Pitfall called her again, asking about setting up another meeting.”

“She did?” I shifted in my seat, uneasiness spreading through me like an inkblot across a piece of paper. Gina was our de facto manager and usually calledmewith news about potential meetings and deals. I silently berated myself. She’d probably tried, but I hadn’t checked my machine in days.

“Yeah, she did.” Eric pushed himself up from the sofa. “So, we should probably get our shit together. Which meansyoushould probably stop acting like you don’t give a fuck about this band anymore.”

I leaned my guitar against the front of the couch. “Dude, I was fuckingworking.” Not a total lie. “You know that thing youdo when you don’t have some bored Beverly Hills housewife funding your entire existence?”

Eric snickered. “I can’t help it if I fuck her better than her husband does.”

---