Rock & Roll Nights: The Lila and Rivers Edit

31. Rivers

31

RIVERS

I woke up the next morning like I was going to war, my hands in fists and my blood rushing with adrenaline. I sat up quickly and nearly jumped out of bed, positive that there was somewhere I had to be or something I had to do—or run from. Once I glanced around the room, though, trying to figure out where the danger was, I started to calm down.

This was a hotel room. I recognized the ugly couch in the corner as the one I’d almost crashed on last night, and the equally ugly quilt scrunched up around my feet right now. The window in the corner letting in too much sunlight. The glimpse of the standard hotel bathroom through the other door. White counter. White floor. Stand-up shower.

No bathtub.

Not that I cared about that sort of thing. I definitely didn’t take baths when I felt stressed and in need of some water therapy.

Either way, hotel room. Not the room I’d been dreaming about.

I didn’t know what had brought on the dream. Maybe a smell or the feel of scratchy, cheap hotel sheets. Maybe the section of the country we were in.

A sudden dinging started, and I nearly ducked for cover right then, shocked into even more anxiety by the sound.

“Right,” I breathed, staring toward the window. That was what had given me the dream. We’d pulled into this town late last night, and I hadn’t had a chance to do anything more than grab the key to my room and head up to start drinking. But when I got up and slid my fingers through the blinds on the window, I saw a train station right across the street.

Honestly, I was surprised it had taken until this morning for the sounds to wake me up. Maybe this was a small enough town that they didn’t have many trains come through here. Or maybe it was one of those places where the trains didn’t generally blow their horns to warn pedestrians that they were coming through. I’d seen that before; small towns where the trains only passed through and didn’t stop. Bare-faced signs that said trains were coming and to keep the hell off the tracks.

The town where I’d spent time living next to a train station had had one of those signs.

I’d thrown rocks at it when I was locked out of the house and didn’t have any place to go. I’d also thrown rocks at it when the house was open, and I didn’t want to go into it because I knew what I’d find there: a man who liked to hit the kids who stayed with them and a woman who liked to look the other way because it kept her from getting hit. I didn’t know how the hell those people had been approved as foster parents, but over time I’d come to think it was probably that the people who oversaw the system itself hadn’t had the time or capacity to care about such things. Their job was to make sure kids cycled out of the group home for a certain number of months every year. Lived in a real house. Got a taste of family life.

The problem was, kids who cycled into some houses didn’t get anything like a normal family life. They got the people who were playing foster parent only for the check it brought in and didn’t give a single fuck about the kids themselves. Worse, they were people who actively wanted kids they could beat up on or abuse. Or use as servants.

Or sell to their friends for purposes I’d never experienced personally but had heard about.

Our drummer Noah had been through that. And he’d told me about it precisely once, one night when we’d had way too much to drink and had started talking about the worst families we’d ever seen. He’d been handed over to a single mom who seemed to have a good history—she’d had multiple kids, and they always came back to the group home healthy—but he’d learned pretty quick that her record wasn’t as clean as it looked. It was just that the kids she’d hosted had been too scared and damaged to tell the people who ran the place what went on in her house. They’d been starved and beaten, and when they complained about it, they found out that things could get even worse. She had neighbors who paid to have access to kids.

It didn’t matter how old they were.

I hadn’t known Noah at the time, but he said he’d come back wanting to kill the world. And he’d never lost that chip on his shoulder. He was the angriest person I’d ever met, and he didn’t bother to hide it unless our favorite roadie, Molly, was around to calm him down. She’d grown up with us—on the girls’ side of the home, of course—and had somehow wormed her way into Noah’s heart early. He’d never truly let her go.

His story, though…

The train rushed by the window, breaking through my thoughts, and I shook my head. I didn’t want to be thinking about these things. I didn’t want to remember anything about the places where I’d grown up.

The problem was, my brain seemed to know that I was within miles of Missouri. And my subconscious was intent on reminding me that this was where it had all started.

* * *

I spread two pads of paper out on the table in front of me, moved the two guitars I’d brought with me closer, and then reached out and unscrewed the bottle of whiskey I ordered from Room Service.

Yes, it was only noon and therefore a little bit early for a bottle of whiskey. But I’d always done my best writing with a little bit of alcohol, and today I needed good writing. I’d been miserable for a week. We had a free day, and I had no commitments. As far as I could see, it was the perfect time to sit in my hotel room and get some writing done. This had always been my happy place, and I could definitely use a little bit of happy right now.

Writing was my escape, and the best use for my emotions. No matter what I was feeling, if I could get it down into words on a piece of paper, it cleared it out of my head and made the voices easier to handle. It didn’t always quiet them completely, but it made them a little less obnoxious. A little less hurtful.

That also sounded good right now, because my subconscious was doing its level best to kill me, and I needed to shut it the fuck up before it succeeded.

I poured a glass of whiskey and exhaled, trying to clear my head and get into the right space for writing. The words were all there—as were the notes—but I had to get into a specific place for it all to come together. Block out all the noise, focus inward, forget about whatever was going on outside this hotel room…

A loud knock sounded at the door, jarring me right out of the headspace I’d been so carefully cultivating, and I glared at the thing like it had just insulted my mother.

Wait, strike that. It had just insulted my band. Or my friends. Or Lila.

“What?” I shouted. Had I put the Do Not Disturb placard on the doorknob? I thought I had, but now I couldn’t remember. If I had, why the fuck was anyone knocking? I’d clearly labeled the door as belonging to someone who did not want to be disturbed.

“Rivers!” a voice shouted back. “I know you’re in there. Open up!”

I ground my teeth. Right. I probably had put that placard on there, but Matt Lawson was both too stubborn and too stupid to pay attention to things like that. He’d probably seen it and then intentionally ignored it. Because as far as he was concerned, everyone should always be happy to see him. Even when they wanted to be alone.

“Go away, Matt!” I shouted back. “I’m writing!”

“No, you’re not! If you were, you wouldn’t have answered me!”

Dammit. He was right, but I hated that he knew me that well.

I stood up and stomped toward the door, half angry and half amused because it was mostly impossible to actually stay angry at a guy who was always so happy. And so oblivious. I threw open the door doing my best to scowl, though, because if nothing else, Matt needed to learn to pay attention to signs that said people didn’t want to be disturbed.

“What?” I snapped.

Then I saw who was standing behind him.

Matt gave me a sly and entirely too-proud-of-himself smile. “Oh, nothing. Just figured you’d be in here moping around and thinking about writing. And I remembered that you always do your best writing with a partner.”

He stepped aside to reveal Lila Potter looking awfully country in a jean skirt and cowboy boots, her top white and flowy. She cocked one perfect eyebrow at me and then looked past me into the room. Moments later she was brushing past me and strolling in like she’d been invited. She sat down, poured herself a glass of whiskey, and grabbed one of the guitars.

When she glanced up again, she looked like she had every right to be there.

“So,” she said. “What are we writing?”