“Aren’t we going to wait for Andre?”
Luka shrugged. “He’ll be back when he gets back, and in the meantime, we need to get back to work.”
“Right.” Dmitri hid a grimace, but he put his phone away. His hands were pretty much tied at this point, and he didn’t like the feeling.
They’d only been working for about thirty minutes when Andre slipped back in. Dmitri felt almost overwhelmingly relieved, and even if Andre still seemed distracted, there seemed to be less tension in his shoulders, and his expression wasn’t as bleak as it had been. Hopefully, whatever was going on, Andre could handle it, since all Dmitri could do at the moment was wait and hope that if he continued to hold out a hand, someday Andre would actually reach out to take it.
CHAPTER 3
Going to practice had been hard, but Andre felt he had no choice. First and foremost, he didn’t want to let his bandmates down, especially since they would be going into the studio on Monday to start recording, but also because he didn’t want to raise any questions as to his whereabouts. Fortunately, Luka was accepting of the excuse that he wasn’t feeling well to excuse his distraction, but he knew that if he hadn’t shown up at all, there was a good chance Dmitri would have come pounding on his door looking for answers. Unfortunately, answers were in short supply, which wasn’t doing much to make Andre feel any more in control of his life at the moment.
He’d spent the entire night after reading the letter pacing around his small apartment, wondering what he should do — what hecoulddo — to deal with the situation. It had been at least five years since he’d last heard anything about Ray Kramer, the ‘R’ of the letter. If he were being perfectly honest with himself, he’d secretly hoped never to hear of Ray again.
They’d grown up in the same neighborhood, in a rundown, slum-infested section of LA. It was shocking how mere blocks had separated the glamour and sophistication of places likeHollywood and Beverly Hills from entire neighborhoods of poverty, neglect, and despair. Andre, Petey, Cal, Esteban, and Ray had spent years together, starting from when they’d been about twelve, and formed a natural sort of buffer against the more violent elements among the older boys in the area who seemed to thrive on the lawlessness and chaos around them. They all lived in the same shitty apartment building, full of vermin and moldy walls, fronting on a street where the tents and cardboard boxes of the homeless were a constant hazard, and streetwalkers and drug dealers had blatantly solicited customers in passing cars. All of them came from broken homes or from single mothers who were trying their best to raise their children amid the crime and poverty around them. They’d all known the complete lack of hope that came with that kind of life, and Andre had known both hunger and despair from the time he’d been very young.
It wasn’t exactly friendship; it was a necessity for survival. Loners didn’t tend to do well without someone to watch their backs. It was safer to travel in a group, and since the other kids in school tended to shun them for their crappy clothes and shoes, they were left with only one another for company. Andre didn’t even have the money needed to be in the school band, instead raising what money he could by performing on the streets with his friends. He and Cal had taught themselves to drum on old cans and buckets, while the others popped and locked and did any tricks they could to encourage the passing crowds in nicer areas to hand out a few dollars. It was work of a sort as long as they did what they could to avoid the cops, who would make them move along. Sometimes the few bucks they got were the difference between a meal and an empty belly.
Andre didn’t like to think of that period of his life, and he knew he’d been lucky to escape it when his maternal uncle had gotten them out, taking Andre and his four younger sisters,along with their mother, to live in San Diego. He supposed it showed how brittle the bond between their little group had been, since Andre had never been tempted once to visit the old neighborhood or even to think too much about the people he left behind. He’d been too relieved to be escaping that place, afraid it was just a dream. But too much had happened during those dark days, and now he was going to have to face things he’d not thought about in years. And it was obvious that Ray was still as miserable a bastard as he’d been ten years before if he could resort to blackmail.
Now the question was, should he pay up? Or could he trust that since Ray would be in just as deep shit as Andre would be, it was really just a bluff? Did he dare take that risk? A few thousand bucks seemed like a small enough price to pay to make the problem go away — if it went away.
Big if.
He looked at the pile of fifties and hundreds sitting on his counter — the real errand he’d gone to run at lunchtime, when he’d been sure the best course of action was just to pay Ray off and make the problem go away. He’d hurried to his bank and made the withdrawal, feeling almost relieved that he could take some kind of action in the face of his feeling of helplessness, even if it was probably foolish. But now he wasn’t as sure. How did he know it was even Ray? It could be a hoax, some scammer. Maybe even someone Ray had said something to someone in juvie or perhaps even in prison, if he’d continued the way he had been going. Someone who had decided Andre Lucena would be an easy mark. Sure, there was the picture of him and Ray together, but that didn’t mean Ray was the one who had sent the letter. It could be someone else from the old neighborhood who knew their history, especially since Ray had always used the ‘R’ with the sunburst around it when tagging. It had been his signature mark, and certainly, everyone who lived there at thetime had known about it. There were a lot of possibilities, and not all of them meant the situation was as dire as it seemed.
Should he ignore the letter, pretending he never received it? If he did, would the problem go away? Whoever it was didn’t seem to know where he lived, after all. Perhaps he was just jumping at shadows.
He wasn’t aware of how much time had passed with him pacing around his apartment or staring unseeingly out his windows until his phone rang. A glance at the caller ID made him groan, and he sank down on the sofa.
“Sibila,” he said. “God, I’m sorry. I was distracted by something, and time got away from me.”
“Sure.” The woman’s voice on the other end was sarcastic. “The busy man, so big and important, aren’t you, Mr. Rock Star? So busy you don’t even think about your responsibilities when they aren’t staring you in the face?”
Andre winced as her words struck home. Guilt and regret were emotions with which he was intimately acquainted, but that didn’t mean he liked them. “I really don’t want to fight.”
“Yeah.” The anger in her tone faded into resignation. “Just so you know, you may forget him, but he never forgets you. That’s why I called, because I sure as hell don’t want to talk to you myself.”
Surprise made Andre sit up straighter. “He’s still up?”
“Yeah. Here.”
There was a pause, then a voice came on the line that made Andre melt with love and guilt and regret and shame and a thousand other feelings. Yet the strongest was definitely love. A voice that reached inside him, wrapping around his heart and squeezing hard. The most important voice in the world, speaking the word that meant more to Andre than anything else.
“Daddy!”
CHAPTER 4
“And that’s a wrap! We’re in the can, people, congratulations!”
Dmitri grinned at Brent’s pronouncement, signalling the last take — at least for now — for the F-Holes’ new album,Second String. The name had been Luka’s idea; his thought from the beginning was to feature more of Dmitri in the spotlight. Not only was Dmitri flattered and grateful to be given the focus, but he also liked the less angry and more sophisticated songs on this album as well. It was still a complicated mix of hard rock and metal, but Luka, Jett, and Kris, who were their primary composers and songwriters, had come up with some gems that were thematically more mature and left room for Dmitri to do some improvisation on his part, while Luka provided a strong backing line. Personally, he thought it was even better than their first album, and he was eagerly anticipating their upcoming tour.
Everyone was removing their headphones and putting their instruments away, and he moved to do the same. Then the door to the sound booth opened, and Greg stepped inside, grinning.
“Great work, guys!” he said. “And I have even better news to top it off.”
“We got invited to the AMAs?” Kit asked, grinning at Luka, who snorted in amusement. It was a running joke between them that “Fuck Off,” the hardest and most intense piece of music from the F-Holes’ first album, would get a nomination for Favorite Pop Song.
Dmitri laughed as Greg rolled his eyes. It just went to show how far Kit and Luka’s relationship had come, given that the song had been written by Luka about Kit back when Luka had hated Kit’s guts. Fortunately, it was obvious that Luka loved even more intensely than he had hated, and now he and Kit were virtually inseparable.
