Page 77 of Mic Drop

I sip the beer, wondering why I’m sharing all this shit with Luke. Inevertalk about anything remotely close to these truths. With anyone. Except Jenna. Look where that got me.

He takes his time placing the steaks onto a platter, then brings everything over to the table. Out of ingrained manners, I sit and place some food onto my dish. Not that I have an appetite. Or manners.

Luke cuts the steak and savors the morsel. “You know,” he begins. “I was there from the beginning. I remember when you did thatcrazy-ass jump that landed you in need of a physical therapist in the first place. I practically had to beg you to see Jenna for treatment. You were adamant about not going.”

I play with the label on my beer bottle. “I remember. The doctor said if I wanted to keep my commitments to UC, I had to get physical therapy, so I had no choice. Jenna was the logical person to help.”

“Right.” He deposits a forkful of potato salad into his mouth. “Because she dated Darren.”

There he is. The ever-present band member who we can’t allow to cross over to the other side. “She did.” I play with my fork.

“Who was an ass.”

His statement hangs like a broken guitar string. “He was the driving force behind UC,” I contradict him. “Darren invited me to join the band when I was still in high school. He got our bookings, before we met you. He was many things, but an ass isn’t one of them.”

Luke puts his silverware down. “His over-the-top lifestyle was getting old before he hurt his wrist. Afterward, he got addicted. He didn’t seek out help. He lied to all of us, including Jenna. He was a great keyboardist and contributed to some of UC’s greatest hits. But he still was an ass.”

I adjust my weight in the chair. “He did do all those things, but it doesn’t make him an ass. It makes him an addict, a disease shared with so many other people.”

“That’s true. But we could’ve helped him. You want to know why he didn’t tell us?” When I don’t reply, he answers, “Because he didn’t want to come clean. He was fighting his own demons like all of us. His were big but not insurmountable. When he found drugs, he used them to self-medicate and take himself away.”

Luke lets this sink into my brain. I consider it from all angles and have to agree with him about Darren’s personality. Plus the fact he wanted to relieve his pain. Don’t we all?

“Do you know why I’m telling you this, B?”

He picks up his knife and fork and cuts another piece of steak. I touch my silverware and make a tentative cut into mine. A perfectmedium rare. My lips close around the first bite of food I’ve eaten since Jenna slapped me with her announcement. “I’ll bite. Why?”

“Because I don’t want you to become an ass, too. I can’t lose another friend.”

Friend.

My silverware clatters onto my plate. I don’t do friends. True, I asked him to be my best man—at Jenna’s urging, might I add—but that doesn’t bestow the title of “friend” on him.

Or does it?

I choose the easy route. “I’m not a drug addict.”

“True. Not yet, anyway. But alcohol is an addiction as well.”

As he says this, I’m finishing my second beer. I haven’t been here more than an hour. “I don’t drink to excess. Often.”

“So far. Tell me you didn’t want to drown your sorrows in a bottle?”

I remember, or don’t as the case may be, the past few days. Which I spent alternating between texting and leaving Jenna voicemails, and drinking myself into oblivion. “The past few days excepted, I don’t drown my problems.”

“That’s right.” He cracks his knuckles. “You’re the resident sex addict.”

“What?!” I pop up so fast my chair flies backward. “I am not.”

He remains seated, chewing on his dinner. “In the past, when UC’s scored number one on the charts, what did you do?”

Pacing, I think back to all of our number one hits. All the women I took into various places—buses, beds, closets—and fucked their brains out to celebrate. I stare at the table. “I had sex.”

“And when UC won the Grammy’s?”

“Sex.”

“How about when the band came up with a new song?”

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