Page 133 of Rock Giant
He, of course, hadn’t seen Jodi since they’d left Bergen, though she was in his thoughts pretty much constantly.
“The rest of the Ghosties have been around plenty, but not her.”
“Do you know if she’s okay?”
Xane sighed and scrubbed a hand over his face, before finding himself a perch on the bench on the opposite side of the kitchen table.“I’ve not specifically heard anything to say she isn’t.”
Paul wasn’t sure that meant much.And given that he wasn’t sure what anyone knew, it was impossible to gauge what they might or might not tell him.
“How are you?”he asked, changing the subject.
Xane tilted his head, while his lips became pursed.“Elspeth remind you?”
“Yeah.”Today would have been their former drummer’s birthday.Paul didn’t routinely make a big fuss over birthdays, especially the birthdays of people who were no longer around to celebrate them, but this one tended to have a melancholy pull on at least two of the people he knew.He’d had a short Zoom chat with Elspeth a few hours ago.She’d been subdued but was holding up better than she’d done the previous October seventeenth.Not that that guaranteed future improvements.That wasn’t how grief worked.There weren’t any neatly delineated stages you could work through and emerge fixed.Rather it was a constant rollercoaster.You could drift along fine for years, then wham—loop the loop—and you were mired in the raw loss again exactly as if it’d just happened.
“I’m okay.Okay enough.Have to be.Are we going to talk about what happened?”
“I had a hangover and lost my rag.”
Black hair swished against his bare shoulders as Xane shook his head.“I’ll rephrase.Are we going to talk about why it happened?”
Paul followed the ends of Xane’s hair to the bars through his nipples.Funnily enough he’d never fancied piercing that part of his anatomy.“I didn’t need anyone in my business.”
“Yeah, I guess that explains you trying to choke the living daylights out of Ronnie.”
“Is he okay?”
Xane took a long sip of his brew, then he sucked on his lip ring, making it rotate.“A bit hoarse.Bit subdued, which isn’t such a bad thing.He told me a rather garbled story about the pair of you exchanging bodily fluids at Equinox.”
Well, he guessed it had been inevitable it’d come out.Stuff always did.
“Sounds like he read into it more than he should’ve.”
“Not gay,” Paul muttered.He and Ronnie were never destined to become a thing.He was a cool friend, but it was never going to be more than that.
“Nor’s Ronnie.”
“I like tits and arse, Xane, and even if I’d been remotely interested in it becoming something more than a one off, which I’ll point out I categorically stated wasn’t the case at the time, I’m definitely not interested now I’m hitched.”
Xane’s dually-pierced eyebrow arched impressively, then eventually sank back to normality.“Ronnie hasn’t known you as long as the rest of us.I don’t think he’s got any real understanding of what makes you tick.That, and he gets fixated on stuff.It was me.Now it’s you.”
“Yay!”he groaned, loading his voice with insincerity.On top of everything else, he’d screwed up a really good friendship at a time when he needed to be hanging on to his friends.He’d have to attempt to straighten things out with Ronnie for the sake of the band, and because his own code of ethics demanded it.Hopefully, they could bounce back from the current upset.“Are you planning on holding a vigil tonight?”
Xane sighed.“Constantly changing the subject isn’t going to distract me.But to answer you, I might take myself up to the roof with a bottle of something for a bit, but I’m not looking to sit around sharing stories.”
“Fair enough.”The roof was the only quiet location on the bus, and for the most part, you could only get away with sitting up there in the dead of night while you were parked up somewhere quiet, otherwise, people wound up gawping at you, or commenting, or getting pissy about the health and safety aspects of it and calling the police.
“You know if you want to talk—”
“I don’t, Xane.There’s nothing to say.Do you want to?”
They both knew that if he did, he wouldn’t be cosying up to him.Maybe he’d talk to one of his partners, but more likely, Xane and Spook would have one of their weird telepathic conversations and then go and screw their respective loved ones.Paul didn’t exactly get it, but he missed having someone around he was that comfortable with.Ash had done his best, bless him, on their road trip, to help him work through his shit, but outside of a love of music and a few common references, they weren’t anything alike.He missed Elspeth.He missed the D’Amon clan.And Jack and Gloria, his parents’ pygmy goats, who always had the answers to everything, which was to chew on it.Hell, he missed his mam and dad, mad buggers that they were.
They’d understand all this.They wouldn’t just tell him he was an oaf for interfering with an established relationship.They’d get the significance of cosmic signs and the handfasting.They understood oaths.Had sworn lifelong ones of their own that they’d stuck to through countless ups and downs.Were determinedly sticking to them now in a way he wished they wouldn’t.He understood.Christ, he understood.Still, did they have to take the until death us do part bit quite so literally?
“Paul?”
Xane had slid out from where he’d been sitting and was now crouched down to the side of him so that they were on a level.“Are you going to be okay for the show tomorrow night?”
