Page 48 of Knot Just A Fan

I kick at a stray piece of litter than I feel shitty so I turn back and pick it up—a beer can—and dump it in a bin along the water. People pass me in groups and families out late with kids, but it’s not tourist season so it’s quieter than the last time I was here.

I think back to that trip. It was me and Grayson, back when he was like the surrogate brother I needed. Enzo hadn’t joinedthe band officially yet, though we were messing around with him in the studio.

Gray and I booked a last-minute train trip around Europe, when it was easy to get a train pass and whizz through six countries in a week. It was a blast. We hiked in in the Alps, cruised on Lake Como, took a funicular to a perfect view of the Matterhorn from Zermatt, and partied in Geneva. But here, we just had a quiet walk up the top of the hill at the east end of the promenade, took some shitty photos we thought were brilliant at the time, ate and drank and just hung out. Like brothers. Like the pack mates we became shortly after.

So much has changed, but it happened at a snail’s pace, over years. The LA years. The City of Angels was both kind and welcoming, and a devil’s anus of a place to stay true to yourself and each other.

The main drag along the beach is looking busier as I keep my hands jammed in my pockets. I wonder if the gig’s let out and that’s the reason for the thicker crowds.

Not everything is about us, though.

I start to pass more people coming the other way, and more than once someone does a double-take but I pretend to be fascinated by something on my phone. After a few more minutes, I spy a larger group along the water, all sitting on the cold ground and laughing in a good-natured, sober way that appeals to me right now.

I could drink, but that wouldn’t help anything. Sometimes I think Enzo’s on to something with the swearing it off.

I aim toward the group but far enough away that I don’t look like a creep. Their harmless vibe and jovial laughter draw me in. I sit in the sand, knees bent in front of me, crouched over my phone, popped collar hiding my face. As best as I can, anyhow. It’s pretty dark.

The group’s native and all speaking French. They just seem like friends in their fifties and sixties who maybe just wanted out of the house for the evening, maybe had dinner at one of the restaurants across the road then wandered over here to chill and vibe and chat. And it makes me miss how Echo used to be. But it makes me miss my family even more.

It’s like breaking up with them again—breaking up with the band. We haven’t yet, but I sense it. My fingers clench the cuff of my jacket and I wrap my arm around my knees. The day Mum and Dad died, I was up in my room, third floor attic, just above Finn’s room. He was nearly nineteen. I was still seventeen. Almost a man.

But still boy enough that hearing a lorry tried to overtake and ended up driving straight into that red Ford Fiesta broke me in half.

The sand beneath me is numbing but I barely feel it. All I can really think of is my seven brothers and sisters, within three days, deciding to sell the house they had mostly moved out of—but that I was still a child in.

You’re grown up enough, lad.

You’ll get over it. We can’t hang on to it. We’ve got our own lives. Why would we pay to keep it? We can split the cash. Eight ways. It’s all we’ll really get, after all. Their business was clutching at lifeboats, anyhow.

But my best memories. My sacred fights, my drunkest nights. Everyone around that cracked dining table for parties, get-togethers. Christmas.

Then the very next Christmas, only eight weeks later, I packed up, and headed to London. Barely anything to my name, still waiting for paperwork and solicitors before the house could be put on the market. Kyren dropped me at the airport.

You’re the youngest, I’m the eldest. As I see it, I’m the closest thing you have to Mum and Dad. And I hear you. I heard you,that day we decided. I wanted it too, but we were outnumbered, you know?He punched me on the arm and I nodded, but inside I was bowled over. No idea he’d wanted to keep the house, too. He lived with his wife ten minutes away. But he said, they’d left it to us, to choose. To keep as a landing pad, or sell as a push forward.

I guess Kyren and Katy didn’t need to be pushed. They were already well ahead of the rest of us, him with his medical career and she with a posh lecturer post at Glasgow, where they’d soon be moving. So to him it didn’t seem like he was missing out on money to keep it. But I wished he’d told me at the time.

But as I got out of the car, he handed me a small parcel, and I’ll never forget shoving it in my checked luggage.

Don’t open it till you reach your new place, all right?

And I did. I pull it out now, and click the well-worn Zippo open. It makes that familiarsnickand feels so smooth in my hand, like a worn-down pebble beneath a rushing stream.

When I reached my hotel in London, I opened the parcel and with it was a note.

Don’t smoke, mate. I’ve had this for years. I almost burnt the house down with it. So keep it and remember that. We have the power to save or to destroy, and it takes one little click to do either.

I click it a few times now, then stow it in my jacket pocket.

Remember how warm our house was at one time. Light it up. Light a candle, a bonfire on a beach somewhere. I’m with you. And you can always fill it up again when you need to, Ro.

CHAPTER 22

Grayson

“What the fuck is this?You guys can’t even finish a show?”

Willow’s voice is shrill in a way I’ve never heard before. It’s not a pretty sound.

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