Out of Sync by Vanessa North

Author:Vanessa North
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Vanessa North

II

Ritchie – Now

Chapter Ten

I call Nat on my way home from work Tuesday afternoon—I’ve been on the lunch shift for months now, and Jacks is always gone to his own job when I get home. I hate it—I don’t like being alone, and his absence makes me want to climb the walls with boredom.

“Hey,” she answers immediately. “Is everything okay?” It’s unspoken, but by everything, she means Jacks.

Nat was the one who he called when he needed a ride home from the hospital. Nat was the one who scrubbed his blood off the bathroom floor. Nat was the one who coddled him and made him laugh and gave him a soft spot to land. Of course, she was concerned, and I can’t even be jealous because I’m so goddamn grateful to her.

“He’s fine, but I’m coming out of my skin. Come over?”

“I can’t, I have a meeting with Karina in a few minutes. I’m at the Thorns. You could come to my place later though. Bex is in California. We’ll open a bottle of wine and play Scrabble or something.”

I laugh. Scrabble. Neither one of us has more than a high school degree or much of a vocabulary. It would be a board full of dirty words. “Maybe checkers is more our speed.”

She snorts. “We could work on some new material. Spill some of that angst in your brain out into music.”

I haven’t written a single song since Jacks tried to kill himself, and she knows it. The band had been in trouble—we’d been talking about auditioning someone to replace Nat so she could keep her job at that fancy club where she used to work. Because of that, I shouted at her and I blamed her, even though I knew Jacks’s suicide attempt wasn’t her fault.

Something in my brain snapped off that day and nothing has grown back in its place. Every time I even think about writing, I feel sick and ashamed. I can’t do it anymore.

“I don’t know, Natty.”

She doesn’t speak for a long time, but when she does her voice is stern and serious. “Do it for him. Because he knows you aren’t writing and it’s eating him up inside. I have to go. I’ll be home by six if you want to come over.”

It’s only four now. I let myself into the apartment and lock the door behind me. Jacks has left the bed unmade, so I straighten the sheets and fold it back into a couch. I turn on the water in the shower and strip out of my uniform. I toss everything into the laundry basket and step under the spray of the shower, the steam rising around me.

Before, this was one of my favorite parts of the day. Washing off the smell and stickiness of my shift, a rebirth into the time when I belonged to Jacks and to Vertical Smile, to music and sex and smoke. To Teri and Nat and the crowds that packed Bridgeview and screamed for more.

We have a gig on Thursday, only two days away, but it always seems like an eternity between shows.

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