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And Mom wanted me to put it on the back burner to get a dress fitted.
“Look,” I said as I grabbed another T-shirt from my dresser and pulled it over my head. “I know this is important. I’ll be there, I swear.”
“For the whole weekend,” Mom said. It was a demand, not a question.
“Mom—”
“Juliet, please. This wedding has to be perfect. Tina will be there.” Tina was Mom’s boss, a CEO of her own software company. To Mom, no one on earth surpassed Tina. “I want to make a good impression. I want my girls to get along.”
“I’ll do my best.” What if the Road Kings had rehearsals that weekend? What if we had a gig planned? “I haven’t checked the schedule.”
“I don’t understand,” Mom said, probably for the thousandth time in my life. “It’s just a band.”
And that was the problem right there, why we would never see eye to eye. To me, the wedding was just a wedding. To Mom, the band was just a band. I tried not to let it hurt, like it had so many times over the years, an aching pain like an old bruise that wouldn’t heal. Still, I felt the throb yet again.
I didn’t want to go to this wedding anymore. I had thought it would be a small formality, but now it was an event, with a hotel block and a rented space. The guest list included Mom’s boss and a bunch of other bridesmaids I didn’t know. It also included Finn Wiley. He was the best man.
I hadn’t seen Finn since that night we’d met in his kitchen, even though his brother and my sister had dated the whole time since. I only saw Mom and Vicki at occasional Christmas visits, and though Alistair was usually present for those, Finn wasn’t. I had become very, very good at pretending that Finn Wiley didn’t exist.
I heard snippets of news about him, usually against my will. The music he’d put out after “Ice Cream Girlfriend” hadn’t done well, and after a few years, he’d dropped out of the music industry. His and Alistair’s father had died of cancer three years ago. The last I heard of Finn, he was living in the house he’d bought in the country outside of Seattle, where he’d lived with his dad for the last years of his dad’s life.
Musically, he was a has-been. Every other year, a “Where Are They Now?” article would pop up, and everyone would remember Finn, the cute teenage pop star with the stupid hit song that had gone out of style. They’d take a moment to feel bad that Finn had become such a joke, and then they’d forget about him again.
I would have felt the same way if I hadn’t met him. But every time I heard his name, I remembered that awful night when we’d met while my then-boyfriend was fucking another girl down the hall. I remembered the guarded kindness in his gray-blue eyes, the tousled hair he’d jammed under a baseball cap, the tired shadows crossing his face. He hadn’t looked, to me, like a joke that night or a has-been. He had looked like a boy who was barely a man, carrying the world on his shoulders. Every time I remembered his face that night, I wondered against my will how he was. I wondered if he ever thought of me, if he even remembered me.
He hadn’t gotten married in the years since I met him. I hated that I knew that, but I did.
And he would be at Alistair’s wedding, so I couldn’t ignore him anymore. The thought made my stomach drop.
“I’ll try to be there,” I said to Mom again. “I promise. I really have to go, Mom. I’m late.”
In my car, I turned on the Road Kings’ first album, Sidewinder. I had done a crash course in Road Kings music for the last three months, learning the bass lines. It wasn’t a hardship, because the music was really fucking good. I had seen the Road Kings live twice in my life, though I hadn’t told them that. I didn’t want them to think I liked them too much.
I cranked the music, letting the heady beat, the roaring guitars, and Denver Gilchrist’s otherworldly vocals take me away. By the time I got to the studio, I had stopped hurting, and the only thing I heard in my head was music again.
THREE
Finn
The rain was coming down hard, and my boots were muddy when I crossed the porch to my side door. My dog, Gary, tracked his muddy prints alongside mine. I paused at the screen door and turned to look at the driveway.
Parked alongside my Mercedes in the drive was a silver minivan, gleaming cozily under the rainy sky. Alistair was here.
I opened the screen door, but before I opened the inner door, I looked down into Gary’s doggy face. He was lean and rangy and good-natured, of no particular breed. A trash dog. He had a couple of gray hairs on his nose now, and every time I looked at them I thought, I would die for this dog.
“You know what this means,” I told him calmly. “You’re muddy. I can take my boots off, but you can’t. You’ll have to use the towel.”
Gary grinned up at me. He knew exactly what I was saying. He loved the towel.
“Don’t shake first,” I told him. “Step into the towel like a gentleman.”
That grin again. Again, he knew exactly what I was saying. He was not agreeing to obey.
I sighed and opened the door. Gary rushed past me into the laundry room, then stood, waiting. When I took too long unlacing my boots, he gave an impatient bark. He wanted the towel.
“Hold on,” I said. “I?—”
Bracing himself, Gary lowered his head and shook. Water sprayed off his coat.
