Page 29 of Filthy Rock Stars

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SHADOW

It’s the first warm day in March, and I haven’t been back to Bearhead since the holidays, so I decide to take a ride. Visiting my family and hometown in Eastern Washington is complicated, but a few hours on the bike helps clear my head.

Not that I can really think about anything, lately, except for Prince.

The way he trembles when I get him alone. How good he looks with a cock in his mouth.

I love knowing that he’s going about his life, whatever he does, totally normal, but counting down the minutes until we see each other again.

Fantasizing like I am.

Needing it.

And even more than that, I catch myself wrapped up in the memory of his voice, or some off-handed joke he made. Little things that I normally wouldn’t notice about another person, like the way his breath gets shallow when he’s nervous, but because it’s Prince, it all fascinates me.

I fight the distracting fantasies away as I round a corner, not far from town.

It’s better with my family if I don’t call ahead. If they know I’m coming, there will be ten people waiting at the house when I arrive.

It’s fucking obnoxious.

Ron, my dad—who has always insisted I call him Ron—lives on one side of Bearhead, and my mom Rhonda lives on the other, both in houses I had built for them. They got divorced right when I hit it big. If I met someone with basically the same first name as mine, I never would have gotten married in the first place, but that’s just me.

At least they fight slightly less now that they don’t live together. That’s something. I like to think that, if nothing else, my wealth can buy us a little more peace when we’re all in the same room.

The way you’re stuck caring about your family can feel really damn annoying sometimes.

Mom’s usually bothering one of her sisters in the middle of the afternoon, so I head straight to Ron’s. Bearhead is a small town on a wide, lazy river, surrounded by mountains, farms, and not much else. Ron’s house is up a hill on the far side of town, where the wilderness starts.

I roll up to the McMansion. Ron’s bought himself a big orange truck that’s probably overpriced garbage, and he’s out front, not polishing it or anything, but just kind of looking at it.

He stands there in his jeans and hoodie, his hands shoved in his pockets as he watches me roll down the driveway.

“Ronnie Junior!” he bellows, then laughs loudly, knowing how much I hate it when he calls me that. “Shadow, son. Get over here. Didn’t expect to see you!”

I slide off my bike and remove my helmet. “Yeah. I found a day off.”

He slaps my back, his version of a hug. “Adrian isn’t going to be mad at you for taking off, is he?”

On the drive, I promised myself I wasn’t going to get immediately annoyed with my family this time, but here I am.

“Yeah, Ron,” I tell him. “Adrian and Elle will probably kick me out of the band. Do you think I could move back in with you?”

He scowls. “Don’t get sensitive. It’s just that I know how important you are to that band, son. There wouldn’t a Forbidden Destiny without you, not a damn song.”

I close my eyes, already knowing this routine by heart. “It’s fine, Ron. I can take a day off to see my family, right?”

When I open my eyes, I see that he’s somehow materialized a bottle of beer, which he gulps. Although I’m loath to admit it, my dad and I look alike. It’s just that he’s this droopy version of me with a red face from booze and a permanent scowl.

I catch my own sour face and force a smile.

Fuck, smiling is hard. How does Prince pull it off all the time?

“Hey,” Ron says abruptly. “Let me show you something I just got installed in the cave yesterday.”

I wish the cave were just a regular man cave. If my dad had a basement with overkill speakers and fridges in the couches and beer advertisements on the wall, whatever. But he had to go next level.

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