In Tune: The Road to Rocktoberfest 2022, page 6
Dean had many, many faults, and Luka was aware of them all. But Dean was also sweet, funny, and caring. Dean almost cared too much. He was the person you wanted in your corner, in your life. Dean was the one who’d dreamed up Lost Apostles, and he was the one who had insisted Luka come along for the ride.
“We’re gonna need a guitar tech. And I don’t want any old hack, I want you,” he’d insisted.
If Luka had chosen to continue fantasizing that when Dean said “want,” he meant for something more than knowing how to tune and treat guitars, that was Luka’s fault. Not Dean’s.
While he waited in line at the ferry terminal, Luka texted his dad, asking if he’d please turn on the heat at the cottage Luka had purchased a few years ago. Another thing Dean had made happen.
Back then, Luka had received email notifications whenever a property was listed for sale on Piedras. This particular cottage located on the southwest side of the island was his ultimate dream. He’d gasped aloud when he’d realized what he was looking at and sighed when he saw the asking price.
“What?” Dean had asked before just being nosy and looking over Luka’s shoulder. “Oh, it’s that place you showed me. The one on the cliff. It’s for sale?”
Luka nodded. “Yeah, I hope whoever buys it doesn’t tear it down. It’s–”
“One of the last original cottages left on the island,” Dean finished for him with a grin.
The thing was, Luka may have been part of the band but the money for a tech was nothing like what Dean and the rest of them took home. His dream of the cottage on the cliff would just keep being a dream.
Two days later, Luka had been home in his tiny LA rental house, the AC hardly working while he vaguely watching Roswell, when there was a knock on the door. Opening it, Luka discovered Dean standing on the other side.
“Can I come in?” He shifted from one foot to the other as if nervous.
Luka opened the door and waved Dean inside.
“What’s up?” Luka had asked as he shut the door.
Dean continued shifting his feet and looking sheepish, then took a breath and thrust the paper bag he was holding out toward Luka.
“For you. For the house.”
The bag was heavy but Luka couldn’t tell what was inside.
“What house?” he’d asked.
“Just open the damn bag.”
Luka opened it and found himself staring down at stacks of wrapped bills.
“What the fuck is this?”
“The down payment.”
“Excuse me?”
“For your house,” Dean had clarified, a belligerent don’t-argue-about-this expression on his face.
The ferry’s horn blared, jarring Luka from the memory. Just as he was starting to inch the car forward, a message popped up on his phone.
Dad: Sure thing, see you soon.
FIVE
Dean
Dean tried to work up the energy to be mad that Luka had taken Frank with him. But mostly he was glad because it meant he had a reason to travel up to Piedras Island when he finally gathered up the courage to face his best friend. Luka hadn’t told anyone where he was headed, he hadn’t had to. Dean didn’t have to be a genius—thank goodness—to know his final destination.
And besides, Frank was probably living his best life right now. LA was too hot for a Husky most of the year.
He was pissed Luka had destroyed his phone, but obviously he couldn’t text him to yell about it because he didn’t have a phone. But Luka probably had saved him from drunk-texting, so maybe he shouldn’t complain. He seemed to remember trying to compose a message to Cassidy. Ugh. He was an idiot.
Once he and Jerome could both stand without feeling queasy, and the sunlight didn’t make them feel like vampires, they slunk back to LA. The weather was disgustingly nice. Dean wanted a heavy fog or a torrential downpour to suit his mood.
Without Cassidy, Dean was alone again, and it was depressing. He hated being alone with just his thoughts circling in his brain. But without Luka, Dean’s life felt like it had no purpose. They’d been friends since Dean’s first day on Piedras. His cousin Ben’s mother had a much more lax policy than most parents, and they’d been allowed to roam the island at will as long as they were back by dinner time. After that first day, Dean was almost always with Luka. And even then, until they were eighteen, it had just been in the summers. Fall through spring was spent waiting for summer vacation and messing around with his buddies, wishing Luka were there too.
“Thanks,” Dean said when Jerome pulled to a stop in front of Dean’s house a few hours later.
“What? Did you think I was going to leave you at the motel?”
“Maybe. I would’ve deserved it.” Dean gave him a wan smile, still feeling sheepish. “Thank you for keeping an eye on me last night.”
“Oooh, that,” teased Jerome. “You won’t thank me when you see your credit card bill.”
“As long as we didn’t hit a strip club, it’s all good.” Horror had his heart racing. “Did we?”
Gah, he needed to take it easy for a while.
“Nah, we just drank while you rambled.”
Dean wasn’t sure that actually made him feel better, but he thanked Jerome again before extracting his abused body from the car and heading to his front door. His key was in the lock when someone opened it from the inside.
“Dean! There you are!” his mother exclaimed.
A groan escaped him. What was his mother doing in his house? All he wanted was peace and quiet so he could mope.
“Mom, what are you doing here?”
He’d given Charlotte a key and the alarm code for when he was touring, something he was now regretting. He had just wanted to get home, order a new phone, take a nap, and wallow. Now he was going to have to talk to his mother.
“You look terrible, Dean.”
“Thanks so much for those kind words, Mom. You really know how to make a guy feel special.”
His sister appeared from wherever she’d been skulking, a plastic smile fixed on her lips.
“Channing,” he said, closing the door, “what are both of you doing here?”
His house was nice enough; it had cost plenty so it should be nice. Charlotte had helped him pick the house out, and at the time he hadn’t cared, he’d just wanted a place to be when they weren’t playing. And space to store his guitars. But Dean never felt comfortable in it, and he and Frank usually ended up hanging out with Luka if at all possible. Maybe Jerome had a point about the Luka thing.
“Did you forget something, honey?” Charlotte asked, her tone saccharine.
“Not as far as I know,” he grunted, pushing past Charlotte and heading to the privacy of his bedroom. And, more importantly, a shower followed by fresh clothes. He’d have to retrieve his shit from the bus later.
He and the band had been staying in hotels for what felt like forever. When Lost Apostles weren’t booked in a hotel, he’d either crashed with her or Luka and Frank. More than anything, he just wanted to be alone right now.
He made his way through the living room and past the formal dining room that he hardly ever used. Mostly because he didn’t entertain that way. And because Charlotte had taken it upon herself to decorate it. She’d hinted he’d become some swag millionaire, wining and dining Hollywood peeps. As he moved toward the back of the house and the sanctuary of his room with its picture window overlooking Laurel Canyon, he slowed down and then came to a stop. Something was niggling at him and he turned back around, nearly slamming into his mother right behind him.
Stepping around her, he retraced his steps, paying more attention this time.
Many, many colorful shopping bags were stashed around the living and dining room. He recognized a Gucci one, and others looked like they came from small smaller and probably even more expensive exclusive boutiques. This was LA, after all. There were also what appeared to be moving boxes tucked underneath the dining room table. A fluffy pink sweater was draped across a chair and he spotted dishes in the sink when he glanced in the kitchen.
Realization dawned. “Are you guys living here?”
His mom twined her fingers together, a sure tell she was nervous, and her lips parted, but Dean beat her to it.
“You are living in my house and you still have the balls to ask me for money? What the actual fuck?” Some part of him was not at all surprised—okay, maybe a small, naive part of him was, but most of him had finally had enough.
“Language, Dean.”
His mom had assumed the I-just-sucked-on-a-lemon expression that seemed to be reserved only for him since Channing’s first beauty pageant.
“This is my house and if I want to say fucking, I fucking will.”
He watched carefully while she tried to come up with a good answer to his question.
“We just got into a tight spot and… well, you weren’t here, so we didn’t think you’d mind. You did give me a key after all.”
“That was to check on the house, not move in.” He’d given her the key in a weak moment.
Luka had just shaken his head at him and narrowed his eyes when Dean confessed what he’d done. “Chris would’ve found somebody to watch the mansion,” he’d pointed out.
But Dean wanted to trust his own mother, was that too much to ask?
Throwing his head back, he stared up at the ceiling for answers. Much like earlier at the motel, the ceiling didn’t provide any. All he really knew was that he was not living the life he wanted. He wasn’t engaged. His best friend in the entire world had taken his dog and left town. And his mother and sister were still leeching off him. And yeah, he didn’t need any ceiling’s input to figure out that something needed to change.
Something had to change. And since it clearly wasn’t going to be his mother or his sister, it was going to have to be him. He had to stop trying to be everything to everyone—it was exhausting. Getting married would only make his mother happy if she picked out his fiancé. He wasn’t going to stop writing music and performing to become a fucked-up Hollywood producer either, so there went that option. And he never had figured out what would have made his dad come back.
“I’m not doing this anymore.”
“Dean…”
“Dean what? Dean, can you give me more money? Dean, can you buy me a car? Dean, can you pay for this plane ticket to Marseilles? For a nose job? You know what? No.”
Charlotte’s face first turned ashen, then spots of color flared on her cheekbones.
“I have tried my best since—”
Dean turned away from her words and stalked into the kitchen. He needed coffee and he needed it now. Opening the cabinet next to the sink, he found a box of coffee pods at the back. Luka had been disgusted when he bought the pods in the first place, but Dean had insisted they were for emergency situations only, like a zombie apocalypse. Well, this was one hell of an emergency.
With his back to Charlotte, he set a mug underneath the dispenser and pressed the largest cup size, fighting a smile as he remembered Luka’s response to his argument, that zombies were the only acceptable reason for crap coffee and they’d better be fast ones.
Unfortunately, his mother was still talking. “Don’t you walk away from me when I am talking to you.”
Dean sucked in a lungful of air and blew it out slowly before turning back to face Charlotte.
“In case you failed to notice, Mother dearest”—her eyes narrowed at the veiled reference to her terrible parenting—“I am an adult in my own house, so pretty much I think I can speak to you however I want, especially if it’s the truth.”
As if to agree with him, the coffee maker finished gurgling, and Dean snatched up the cup to take a careful sip since there was no Luka around to remind him to let it cool a few minutes. The hot liquid was a welcome burn down his throat.
“Are you just going to throw us out on the street?” she demanded.
Of course he wasn’t going to throw his sister and mother out, but he also couldn’t live here with them. He took another sip, staring over Charlotte’s shoulder at the wall calendar still set on August. It was a super cheesy Forgotten Places Around the World one that Luka had given to him last Christmas as a joke, and August had featured a rest stop off an interstate that could be anywhere—the US, Canada, somewhere in Europe. He’d left it there because for one, it drove Luka crazy to have the wrong month displayed, and for two, they’d actually stopped at this one and it was as nondescript in real life as it was in the photo.
A solution struck him like a lightning bolt out of nowhere. He stared around at the shopping bags, the all-white walls, the matching dishware he’d never used.
He could live anywhere he wanted. All Dean needed was to be in LA when they were recording and even then, the band had been talking about moving to a studio in Boise. The possibilities rolled out in his mind like the long red carpet at the Oscars. Why stay in LA when he didn’t have to? Or want to?
Did he want to be where Luka wasn’t? No.
It was that simple. So why hadn’t he asked himself that before? He looked at his mom and over at his sister. If he never saw them again, he’d probably feel sad about it, but he wouldn’t be devastated. Kind of a shitty thing to realize about his mother but the bone-deep truth. They were related, but they weren’t family.
Luka was family.
Fuck, even the band was more like family to him than Charlotte and Channing.
Anger he’d been hiding from himself burst free as the words spewed from his lips. “You know what? I’ll deed the fucking house to you. I don’t even like it. I’ll even throw in another five thousand dollars since that seems to be your usual request. But this is the last time. Right now, I’m taking a shower and then I’ll arrange to have my instruments stored. After that, I’m packing my shit and I’m out of here. Don’t consider asking me for anything ever again.”
His mom must’ve realized he was serious—or she just didn’t want him changing his mind about gifting her a paid-off house in Laurel Canyon and five grand—because she snapped her lips shut, not protesting his language or the plan.
It was amazing what money could buy, and Dean had a lot of the stuff. The single talent he had other than playing guitar was managing money, and he’d never been foolish with his earnings except when it came to his sister and mother. By the time darkness fell, he’d arranged temperature-controlled secure storage for the guitars and packed the clothes he wanted. The rest would also go into storage for the time being. And he’d set up a meeting with his lawyer for the next day in order to transfer the house deed to Charlotte. Then he went to bed and slept for twelve hours straight, his bedroom door locked behind him.
By midafternoon the next day, Dean had gotten his new phone. After reloading his contacts, he briefly considered texting Luka but eventually decided against it. That way he could look Luka in the eye before deciding if he should risk The Conversation. Dean snorted when he realized he had inherited one trait of Charlotte’s after all.
The Conversation. What if Jerome, Nick, and Chris were all wrong and Luka rejected him? What if Dean’s Big Realization changed his life for nothing?
Dean wasn’t sure he could handle that rejection. It was bad enough he’d made Luka mad enough to yell at him, steal his dog, and drive thirteen hundred miles to get away from him.
After staring at his contacts long enough that his phone went to sleep several times, Dean pressed Call. He counted six rings before Milo answered.
“Dean, it’s been a while. How’s it going?”
Milo Zajac had quit the band over a year ago and moved back to Hollyridge, where they’d both grown up. Other than Luka, Milo was—or had been—one of Dean’s closest friends. It wasn’t until Dean heard Milo’s voice for the first time in months that Dean realized just how much he’d missed him. Funnily enough, Luka and Milo were second cousins or something like that. Dean had been blown away when he’d found that out. Like, two of his favorite people were related. Weird.
“I don’t even know, do you have several days to listen?”
“Absolutely. The tour’s done, right? Come and stay with Davey and me for a few days. Relax, recharge, whatever you need.”
He’d meant it as a joke but the instant Milo offered, Dean realized that’s where he needed to go before heading to the island. They’d been friends since the third grade, and he knew Milo would have perspective Dean didn’t.
“Are you sure? Because I’m either buying a plane ticket or a car the minute I hang up.”
“Fly up here and then buy a car. What about Frank, though?”
Frank and Milo’s dog Elvis were litter mates. Trust Milo to worry about his dog’s brother.
“Long story, but he’s fine, I’m sure.”
“Intriguing, but as long as you’re sure he’s okay. We have a ton of space here and what with Davey being the animal whisperer, Frank would fit in just fine.”
“Nah, he’s with Luka.”
“Ah… Luka,” Milo said knowingly.
Dean frowned. He could almost hear the dumb grin on Milo’s face. “Luka and I are just friends.”
Why did he have to keep saying that?
“I didn’t say anything!” Milo pointed out.
Milo had though, there’d been a certain tone to his voice. Maybe it was the remnants of his hangover, but Dean felt out of sorts and there was a weird ache in his lungs. He rubbed at his chest, wanting the feeling to go away. A memory from the night Luka left flitted from the depths of his brain.
“For the record, I do love you, Dean, even if you rip my fucking heart out every day.”
Shit. Had Luka told him he loved him? The possible memory made the ache worse, not better.
“Whatever. I’m gonna see about a plane ticket and let you know.”
“Sure thing.”
Twenty minutes later, Dean’s phone chimed when the confirmation for his flights to Hollyridge came through. He had a plan, the beginning of one anyway. For what exactly, he wasn’t entirely sure.
For the rest of that day, Dean packed. Channing occupied the living room couch, texting her cronies, and Charlotte made a dramatic show of wringing her hands and following him around while he grabbed last-minute items, like the photograph of him and Luka by the Hollywood sign when they first arrived in LA and his box of collector’s edition vinyl. Charlotte likely had no idea how much those records were worth, but he wasn’t going to risk his mother deciding to get herself on eBay and make some fast cash.
