Page 37 of Dirty Rock

“You don’t like the stubble?”

“No. It hides your handsome face too much. Gosh, your skin is pale, Rhett. Your eyes…” Her thumbs pulled down on the bags. “Look up for me.”

“Jesus, Ma.”

“I said look up.”

I glanced up at the ceiling, sighing heavily.

“They’re so bloodshot, and you smell like an ashtray. Your lungs will be rotten if you keep that up. Have you been smoking all tour?”

“Yeah.”

“And drinking, too?”

“It’s tour, Ma. I did a lot of things.” I smirked, wiggling my eyebrows.

She let me go instantly and covered her ears. “Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. The papers make enough stuff up as it is. Those horrible, horrible women, always telling lies about you to get on the front page of the newspapers.”

I didn’t want to tell her they weren’talllies.

“Those women are the worst.” I huffed out a small laugh and finally shrugged off the backpack to drop it on the floor. “Want to give your son a real hug now? Or am I too diseased and tainted for you to bear holding?” I held my arms out and watched as my mum’s worry drifted away and her shoulders softened.

“You could be a thief and a murderer, son, and I’d still love every rotten inch of you.” She stepped into my arms and pressed her head to my chest.

“Thanks, Ma.”

“You need a bath,” she muttered weakly. “You absolutely stink.”

I laughed again—a throaty laugh that time. Maybe being back home for a few days wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe it would clear my head and make me forget the things I couldn’t seem to rid myself of, no matter how hard I tried.

* * *

It wasn’t bad.

It was utterly shit.

After the first night with Ma, and a trip to my stepfather’s allotment to show him I was indeed back, I became fucking bored. Sleep was the only thing to do around here, so I caught up as much as I could, but I missed the sound of life all around me. I missed the music. I missed the boys, who were no doubt back home, fitting right back into their old lives like they belonged there. I missed Dicky and his shitty, scowling face. I missed the crew. I missed the women. I missed…

“Julia,” I sighed to myself as I laid on the top of my bed, staring up at the ceiling. I’d taped a poster there when I was fourteen years old. It was of some blonde-haired, blue-eyed, bosom beauty. Her nipples and fake titties had been many a fantasy of mine growing up. Now, she looked dated. She looked like someone I wouldn’t even consider fucking, given the amount I had willing to crawl into bed with me. She’d once been the dream. Now she looked like a Candy kind of nightmare.

I wasn’t sure how that made me feel.

If there was a thing as getting too high on life, maybe I’d gone there. Maybe now, everything else just looked too beige and boring.

Except the things I couldn’t have.

“Julia,” I growled again, groaning as I rolled over onto my front and pressed my face into the pillow. A string of expletives fell free, and the pillow caught them, muffling the noise and my cries of frustration until I threw myself back onto my back, reached inside my pocket for my phone and pulled it out to study it.

“Just call her,” I said to myself. “Once you hear her voice, you’ll get over it.”

It took another ten minutes of those shitty pep talks for me to swing my feet off the bed, drop them to the floor, and hit call over Julia’s name.

I put it on speaker and waited it out.

There was no way she was going to answer. No way she was going to—

“Rhett?” Her raspy voice said my name like she was whispering it in my ear.

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