“Fine.” She sighed. “You leave me no choice. Stew? On your knees.”
“Huh?” he replied in bewilderment but neither of us was paying him any mind.
“You wouldn’t dare.” I stared her down as I stepped between my best friend and her significant other.
“Watch me,” she challenged, before addressing her man. “Stew!”
This time Stewart obediently dropped to his knees, allowing Shannon access to straddle his shoulders.
“What exactly are we doing here?” he asked.
“We’re getting Samantha’s shag buddy back.”
26
Keith: Reunion
The sound of the roadie tumbling off the side of the stage drew our attention. Lassen and I were just making our way to the family area of the stadium when his body tumbled head over heels and landed in a clump by our feet.
“Dude!” I jumped to help, but he was on his feet in a flash.
“I’m okay. Happens all the time,” he said, dusting himself off before hurrying away to rejoin his crew. An issue with the sound system had delayed the start of the benefit concert Jake was about to perform, and pandemonium among the crew had ensued. So frenzied was the atmosphere, Lassen had suggested an escape, and I’d taken him up on it. That stress was Kyle’s problem now, although to be fair, I doubted my little brother did much more than follow Jake around like a puppy dog all day.
“Slinky is one of the new guys,” Lassen announced gruffly. “I can’t say exactly what he suffers from, but I’m sure it’s hard to pronounce.”
I let out an amused chuckle. That was Lassen – never a nice thing to say about anyone. If you had told me a year ago that I’d be palling around with the likes of this guy, I would have scoffed in your face; but times had changed, and ol’ Grumpy Pants had unexpectedly become my friend. Jake had been right about Lassen. He was loyal to those he deemed worthy, and somehow, I’d made the cut.
“And yet, despite his obvious issues,” I said, “the human Slinky is an improvement over me.”
“How do you figure?”
“Well, he hasn’t screwed himself out of a job yet.”
Lassen grunted. “That’s true, I suppose, but your contribution to the tour will live on forever.”
“Oh, yeah? Tell me, what’s my contribution again?”
“You introduced Jake to his Yogis.”
I tossed my head back laughing. “Oh, shit. Yes, I did. Does he still have a steady stream of them coming and going?”
“It’s stabilized. For a while there you could practically smell the syphilis.”
His dry humor doubled me over. The mental image of poor Lassen banished to his camp chair outside the tour bus as Jake entertained a bevy of beautiful women was enough to keep me in stitches.
“If you tell your brother I said that…” He shook his bag of sunflower seeds. “I’ll cut you off.”
In my hands, I rattled an identical packet of seeds. It was like our ex-junky handshake. After I’d completed rehab nearly eight months ago, Lassen had stepped up for me in a big way, taking on the role as my AA mentor. Part of his duties, he’d claimed, was keeping me in a steady supply of sunflower seeds, his tried and true remedy for preventing a relapse. And although I’d never been a fan of the kernels myself, the dude had been sober for ten years, so who was I to question his methods? Soon I was carrying around my own emergency stash everywhere I went.
Not that I really needed it. After a rough decade of self-destruction, I’d finally made peace with the insecurities that had plagued me and was now ready for anything that came my way. It wasn’t just post-rehab euphoria either. Drugs were my past, not my future. So convinced was I that not even the familiar smell of weed wafting through the stadium was enough to tempt my senses. I couldn’t afford to waste any more brain cells on that stuff.
And with that in mind, I’d used the precious few I had left to earn a high school diploma. The milestone was huge for me, signaling the start of a new chapter in my life. More landmark moments followed – me enrolling in junior college. Me landing a job at a cellular store and quickly rising to the ranks of manager – not that it was much of a feat, considering the decision was between me and a greasy-haired guy with a really bad work place habit. I mean, just because your finger fits in your nose doesn’t mean you should put it there.
Everything was in preparation for a future that was close enough for me to taste. If all went as planned, in a few months, Jake and I would be the proud owners of a surf and skate shop. Ever since we were kids, that had been our dream… well, that and Jake’s little fantasy of becoming a rock star. And now that I was in a good place, taking business classes to supplement my education, and Jake had the overflowing capital to fund it, our vision was in reach. Finally, I was on my way to becoming someone I could be proud of.
“KEITH! KEITH MCKALLISTER!”
I spat the sunflower seeds out and looked around. All I could see were hordes of revelers packed inside the open-air stadium of the county fairgrounds. After Jake agreed to perform at the benefit concert, tickets to the event sold out within minutes, and the excitement around town was palatable. It was a chance to see their hometown boy perform, and since his fame had only intensified over the past year, this was a special happening in the community.
