Sinner

“Jeremy,” repeated Chad. “What’s it going to be?”

Jeremy tucked a bit of hair behind his ear. He sighed. His eyes were on his bass and on my car.

I interrupted. “Stay here.” I hadn’t even realized I was going to say it until I said it. And then even after I said it, I couldn’t believe that I had. It didn’t sound like something I would say.

Every face in the garage turned to me.

I plunged on. “I’m not going to screw you over, Jeremy. If this toolbag won’t take you back just because I need you now, I’ll figure something out today without you. I’ll catch you on the next one. No big deal.”

I felt so virtuous and so awful. If this was the right way, I didn’t like it. I needed to make a note to never do it again.

Jeremy nodded. He didn’t say anything for a moment.

Neither did Chad. He didn’t seem to understand what had just happened.

Cole St. Clair had failed to be an ass**le — that was what had just happened.

It continued to feel terrible. It felt exactly like that first night, when Isabel had told me to drop dead, and when I had realized that I wanted desperately to become a wolf and could not anymore. No, would not anymore.

I told myself now that I’d feel great later. Noble.

Then Jeremy said, slow and serene and Southern, “Sorry, Chad, but I think I’m going to go with Cole. I might come back, if you ask me, but I would have to give a lot of thought to the emotional manipulation you brought into the conversation today. You know that’s not how I like to work. Give me a moment, Cole. I need to get my sandals.”

He had picked me. I hadn’t asked, and he’d still picked me.

This feeling was almost worse than feeling shitty. Really, it was the difference between the two emotions that was hard to navigate. The sudden lift from crap to joy.

“You bastard,” Chad said. It was unclear if he meant me or Jeremy. He clarified, “You no-talent boy-band wannabe.”

I saluted at him with two fingers.

Jeremy joined me with his bass case. We performed a lengthy handshake, which helped ease my tremendous, painful joy. In a rather perfunctory way, I hooked my foot into the garden hose and twisted the sprinkler round. Artificial rain blasted into the garage’s interior. Now the guitarist and drummer made some noises.

Chad knew a lot of swearwords.

I turned with Jeremy and headed back to the Saturn to where Leyla waited. T was filming everything. I imagined the shot framed gloriously, soaking wet musicians in the background like a car explosion in an action movie.

“That was nearly reasonable of you,” Jeremy said. He added confidently, “They’ll call me.”

A drumstick hurtled by my head. It rattled on the concrete as it landed.

Jeremy leaned to pick it up. “But probably not you.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

· cole ·

After we’d done the episode but before Isabel was off work, I hung out with Jeremy in his old beat-up pickup truck, parked in the middle of a beach lot. It was just the two of us. I’d sent Leyla back with the Saturn because I didn’t want to see either of them ever again.

The sounds were traffic and someone else’s boom box and the surf and the slap of arms on a volleyball. I lay in the truck bed on a dry, crinkly tarp, and Jeremy sat on a tire, looking at me and the ocean. Overhead, the sun pierced the jet trails, baking cracks into the asphalt down below. I was still wound up from performing and now would’ve been a good time for a beer.

Jeremy offered me some unsweetened iced tea.

“I don’t want your witches’ brew,” I told him, but I took it anyway and set the jar down by my head. For several long companionable minutes we did nothing together. Jeremy leaned his head back and watched the sky, looking like a wizened Australian guy in the full sun. I closed my eyes and let the heat bake my eyelids. Here with Jeremy, it would be easy to pretend the last three years of my life hadn’t happened, and I could restart without any of my sins. Only then I wouldn’t have met Isabel, and I wouldn’t be here in California. I wondered if there had ever been a more direct route to this place. Maybe I’d been on it and ruined it. Maybe if I’d just stayed on the straight and narrow all along, I would’ve met Isabel at a show.

No, because she didn’t like concerts, and neither did I.

I thought of those three topless girls in my apartment and how they would never be Isabel and Isabel would have never been them.

I couldn’t keep my eyes closed because my brain was moving faster and faster instead of slower and slower. I opened them and said, “All of the girls look old now. When did that start? All I can see when I look at them is what they’re going to look like when they’re forty. It’s like the worst superpower ever.”

Thoughtfully, Jeremy replied, “Really? I always see people as kids. Since I was in, like, middle school. It doesn’t matter how they’re acting or how old they are, I can’t not imagine them as kids.”

“How awful. How can you possibly flip someone off if you’re imagining them as a toddler?”

“Exactly,” Jeremy said.

“Tell me. Why is Leyla so unacceptable?”

“You know I don’t like to judge people.”

“We all do things we don’t like.”

He picked a nub of rubber off the tire and flicked it onto my chest. “She’s not really our thing. Style-wise.”

“Musically or ethically?”

Jeremy said, “I’d rather not perjure myself.”

“Do you even know what perjure means?” I wasn’t 100

percent

on it myself. I had a very specialized knowledge base. “I want to fire her. I really do. But what’s the alternative?”

I regretted saying it as soon as it was out of my mouth.

Because the alternative was dead, and I didn’t want to talk about it. Don’t say anything, Jeremy. Don’t say his name.

So you ready to do this thing?

— What?

NARKOTIKA.

I didn’t give Jeremy time to answer. “You wouldn’t be with me if it wasn’t about the music, right? I mean, you wouldn’t be doing this with me if it was just about me jerking off on camera as a loser, right?”

“Is this about what Chad said?”

“Who’s Chad?” I asked, as if I couldn’t remember.

“Oh, him. No. I was just thinking because of . . . maybe.

Possibly. I’m on a road of self-evaluation. This is one of the side streets.”