The Fire Walker (The Devil's Tattoo)

  When I cut the engine, Jessie didn't say a word. She just got out and stretched her arms back over her head, making her breasts stick out. Instantly, felt myself respond and ran a hand over my face. With a sigh, I pushed open the door and went down to the office to get a room for the night.

  The room was the same as they all were. Motel entrepreneurs seemed to have this thing about floral prints from the seventies, but at least it was a decent bed for the night. It was the epitome of cheap and cheerful.

  "Are you hungry?" Jessie asked. "There was a take out place down the street. I'll go get something if you want me to."

  "Okay," I shrugged, setting my bag down on the end of the bed.

  "Chinese?"

  "Sure." Anything to get her out of here so I could call Zoe. She had it coming and it was a conversation that didn't need to be overheard.

  Once Jessie was gone, the door closing behind her, I pulled out my phone and switched it on. Immediately there were several texts from Zoe and a voicemail from Simone. The voicemail I assumed was about the Rolling Stone article. The texts from Zoe were probably asking if I was okay. Reading through them, I groaned.

  Where are you? You okay?

  You're not dead in a ditch are you?

  Do I have to come over there and slap you senseless?

  Heeellllllooooooo.

  No mention of Jessie, but she was obviously trying to play coy. Hitting her name in my favorites list, I pressed the phone to my ear, listening to each ring, trying to decide what I was going to say. Best to come right out with it.

  "So, you are alive," Zoe declared when she picked up.

  "Barely."

  "How you doing?" She was totally tiptoeing around the thing she knew I wanted to talk about.

  "Zoe, why the fuck would you go after Jessie? Did you get hit in the head or something?"

  She sighed dramatically. "Took you long enough, Dee Dee."

  "Why?"

  "Because I could see how much it was eating you up."

  "Yeah," I said, "but you didn't have to go and persuade her to come find me."

  "I did what I thought was right."

  "You didn't go there in person did you?"

  "Maybe…" she said like she was trying to hide something.

  "Zoe," I exclaimed, throwing my free hand in the air in exasperation.

  "Dee, she was scared."

  "She left me."

  "I know she did a shit thing." Her voice was short. "She was scared. I get it. I ran too. Maybe not so dramatically, but I ran too."

  "What did she tell you?"

  "You know it's not my place to blab things she said to me in confidence. It doesn't work that way."

  I grunted. Of course I knew it. When she and Will were screwed up, she would have throttled me if I'd spilled. Jessie needed to tell me on her own terms, but the fact was, I knew she wouldn't. She'd made that clear when she ran.

  "So, she's road tripping with you?"

  "I couldn't leave her in the middle of butt-fuck nowhere." I rubbed my eyes.

  "Of course you wouldn't."

  "'Cos I'm a fucking good guy."

  "It's not a bad thing, Dee. How many times do I have to tell you?" she scolded me.

  "I've got a pretty thick skull."

  "So thick, I wonder if there's even a brain in there."

  Despite myself, I laughed at her stupid joke.

  "Has she talked to you about it yet?"

  "No. I wasn't exactly thrilled to see her, Zo."

  "I hope you weren't an ass."

  "I was a big fucking ass. She won't talk to me anyway."

  "If she won't tell you, maybe you should ask."

  "Maybe I don't wanna know."

  Zoe was silent for a while. "Do you have feelings for her?"

  "I don't know," I replied truthfully. Back in LA, I would've said yes without blinking. Now, I wasn't so sure the thing that was churning inside me was love, hate or something in between.

  "Maybe you should talk to her and figure it out."

  "Talk to her about what?" I scoffed. "I don't want to talk about that thing." I didn't know what else to call it.

  "You don't have to have a deep and meaningful," Zoe laughed. "Start again. Get to know her beyond the Jessie you met in LA. I'm not saying you should forgive her, or start a relationship or anything. I mean you should try and get to know her as a person first. Find out what makes her tick. Then you might understand why she did what she did."

  Zoe was so smart sometimes it made me feel inadequate. I told her as much and she laughed.

  "You know I'm the brains of this operation, Dee Dee."

  "All the way," I said, lying back on the bed. "Thanks, Zo."

  "Feel a little better?"

  "Yeah, but I wish you didn't go in person. I mean, it fucked up your trip."

  "It didn't screw it up," she reassured me. "We're doing the same thing, just backwards."

  "You're too good for me, Zo."

  "We're perfect for each other."

  Jessie came back twenty minutes later with a plastic bag of food in one hand.

  "I saw a bar back there a bit," she said, dumping the takeout on the table. "There was a cover band playing. It looked like a rock thing if you're interested."

  I thought about what Zoe said on the phone. Had Jessie really run out on me because she was scared? If she had, then wasn't it a big deal she had the guts to come back and face me?

  "Sure."

  She looked at me like she didn't expect me to agree without an argument and quickly changed her expression. "Okay. Later."

  We ate in silence, neither of us knowing what to say to one another, and I found myself wanting a drink to take the edge off.

  "Well," she said a moment later. "If we're going out, I'm going to have a quick shower and get changed." She dusted off her hands and collected her rubbish, dumping it in the plastic bag. Rifling through her bag, she pulled out some clean clothes and disappeared into the bathroom.

  Once the door was closed, my mind instantly went to the conversation I'd had with Zoe. I thought about that first tour we'd been on with The Stabs. Zoe had been so hell bent against letting Will get under her skin that she needed a talking to. I'd paired up with him to try and convince her to take a chance.

  Zoe was my best friend, but fuck she could be stubborn. We'd been standing together in the elevator one day after breakfast and I'd said the most profound thing I'd probably ever say in my entire life. Sometimes you've gotta take a chance, no matter how broken you've been in the past. Did I really say that to her? What kind of person was I if I couldn't take my own advice?

  This time, Zoe was the one who was dishing out the home truths. Get to know her. I think I'd used that one on her at some point, too. With a sigh, I cleaned up the remains of dinner and changed my shirt, pulling on my denim jacket. When girls say they're going to take a quick shower, it usually means forty-five minutes at a minimum. I flicked on the television and found a rerun of The Simpsons to bide my time.

  I could hear the water running in the adjoining bathroom and the splashes as she moved around. All I could think about was the fact that she was naked in the next room. It was a typical guy thing to do, but I sat on the end of the bed, my hands jammed underneath my legs, my focus totally shot.

  When she finally emerged in a waft of steam, I looked up and my heart stopped. Black skinny jeans hugged her ass, a loose fitting blue singlet hung around her breasts just so and she had her beat up biker boots on. One hundred percent of the things that turned me on about her on show. Why the hell did she have to look so fucking gorgeous? I mean, she could wear a garbage bag and I'd still be hard.

  "Did you want the shower?" she asked and my eyes snapped back up to her face.

  Unable to remember how to speak, I shook my head.

  "Did you want to go then? I can drive if you wanna have a drink. I remember where the place was."

  Nodding, I grabbed the car keys from my pocket and held them out. I didn't want to be attracted
to her, I couldn't handle it, but the image still flashed through my mind of us just staying in and peeling off those tight jeans. When her fingers brushed against mine, it would've been so easy to pull her on top of me and pull that singlet over her head and… But, I couldn't trust her. Not yet or maybe not ever.

  Jessie drove us the ten or so minutes to the bar she'd seen and pulled into the car park, which was already crammed. Seemed like it was a popular place, but maybe that was because it seemed to be the only place. Utes, beat up trucks and other assorted bombs were parked haphazardly on the gravel, which was a glaring indicator of the clientele. So, I'd probably fit right in.

  The bar itself was a small, dark, hole in the wall. At one end was a stage, set about half a meter above the floor and packed tight with the house band's gear. They had a half decent drum kit and their amps weren't half bad either. Marshall with Orange heads. The music nerd inside me wanted to go up and have a closer look, but my eyes settled on the bar and it was probably a good idea to go there first.

  The music that was blaring out of the sound system was pretty good, too. Rock mixed with some indie and punk. When a NoFx song came on, Jessie started to nod her head next to me, her eyes scanning the crowd.

  "You're into punk?" I asked, surprised. I took her for an indie girl, not this hardcore stuff.

  "Yeah," she shrugged, looking up at me. "The American stuff, though." When it came to punk, there was a distinct difference between the British and American bands. "But, I like lots of different things," she continued. "Indie. Rock. Electro."

  "I'd never have picked it."

  "I was a rebellious punk rocker."

  "I was the class clown."

  "I believe that," she smiled.

  The bartender came along then and broke our conversation and took our order. A moment later, when I felt the slow burn of scotch down the back of my throat, my nerves began to settle along with my libido. I downed the rest in one go and slammed the glass back down on the bar. I didn't know what else to say to her, so I just walked off across the bar, weaving through the crowd that had started to thicken even more and found myself side of stage.

  Curious, I began looking over the band's gear, seeing what stuff they had rigged. There was a lot more to music than just playing. I mean, there's so many things you can do with sound that just makes the thing you're playing so much richer. The effects, reverb, distortion.

  "Hey," a voice said beside me.

  Looking up, I saw a guy watching me. "'Sup, mate. This your stuff?"

  "Yeah, I'm the guitarist." I wondered with the kind of people that were filling up the bar if he was worried that I was going to swipe something.

  "Just checking out the gear you use," I said.

  The guy scratched his head. "Yeah, not the top of the line shit, but we get a decent sound outta it."

  "Orange are great," I said pointing to the heads over their amps. "I have a lot of mates who use 'em and swear by 'em."

  "Do you play?"

  "Yeah. Guitar."

  "What's your rig?"

  "Similar, though I have a more recent model Marshall and my head's Marshall as well."

  "Sweet." The guy was all and truly hooked with the amp talk. "What pedals do you use?"

  "I made my own," I said. "I had some old stuff lying around and I got a mate to help me with it."

  "Shit, that's a bit complicated for me, hey. I got mine off eBay for dirt."

  "Nothin' wrong with that."

  "Dave," he said, holding out his hand.

  "Dee," I replied, shaking it.

  Another guy came up beside us and looked me up and down.

  "Hey, this is Stu, our drummer," Dave said, elbowing his friend.

  "Hey, mate."

  "Hey, Australian?" Stu asked, narrowing his eyes at me.

  "Yep."

  "Then I'm positive it's you."

  I frowned.

  "Yeah," he said. "Rolling Stone."

  I grimaced. "Yeah, that's probably it."

  "You're in that new Aussie band that's been kicking about. The Devil's Tattoo. I was reading that article today and when I saw you come in with your girl, I thought I recognized you."

  I was in another country in the middle of nowhere and some guy had just recognized me. I probably should have been all over it, and on an ordinary day I would've, but I wasn't feeling it.

  "What are you doing here of all places?"

  "Holiday."

  "And who's the girl? She your other half?" Dave nodded towards the bar.

  I glanced over at Jessie. She was leaning across the bar, giving her order to the bartender and my eyes skimmed over her ass. "Na, I'm just giving her a lift."

  "You just picked her up?" he scoffed. "Where do I find one?"

  "Oh, no, I know her. It's just... complicated."

  "Man, she wants you." Stu clapped me on the shoulder.

  I shrugged.

  When they wandered off to get ready for their set, Jessie sidled up to me, handing me a beer. "Making friends?" she asked with a smile. Her too perfect fucking smile.

  "You know what I'm like."

  "Not really," she frowned. "But, I can imagine."

  With a shrug, I turned around and watched the guys I'd just met plugging in their guitars. A third guy had joined them, picking up a bass. As soon as Dave tapped on his mic to test it, the crowd seemed to mellow and press towards the stage. They must be well known around here, because people seemed to be amped to hear them play. This place was a tiny pimple on the ass of the world, so any band must be a good band when there weren't any others.

  When they started playing, I kinda ate my words a little. They were pretty good. They played a few old school rock songs from The Rolling Stones and Deep Purple and some newer stuff like Nirvana and even The Killers. A bit of a mix of styles, but they seemed to know enough to pull it off. Jessie moved about next to me, swaying to the music, sipping on her beer and I was aware of every little thing she did. Her lips around the glass of the beer bottle, the scent of her trademark vanilla perfume, the way her eyes closed as she listened to the music.

  When the crowd thickened down front, I angled myself partially behind her, pressing against her back. She said nothing and just kept on moving with the music, rubbing against me, driving me totally bat shit crazy. It made me wonder if this was a part of her plan to make things up to me. Or rather, get back into my bed, but my head was too fuzzy to even think about that coherently.

  When the song finished and people around us began clapping, I leaned in and whispered in her ear, "I'm going to the bathroom, I'll be right back."

  She looked up at me over her shoulder with her big fucking Bambi eyes and nodded.

  Standing in front of the mirror in the men's room, I looked at my reflection. My face was flushed and I cursed the fucking day Jessie Ware had walked into that recording studio. It would be so easy just to take her home and fuck senseless, because that's the only thing my body wanted, but I knew she wanted more. If I did that and then dumped her at her door tomorrow, then I wouldn't be any better than she’d been.

  Fuck, she hadn't even explained to me why she did it. Wasn't that why she came all this way? To apologize and try to win me back? I assumed so, because why would someone fly cross-country to say they were fucking sorry? Either that, or she was scared I would get her fired from Galaxy.

  It couldn't work between us. We lived worlds apart and I couldn't get over that thing. Her fuck and run. That had scarred me deep enough that I could never forget it.

  Looking at myself in the mirror I thought, Get a fucking grip, Cosgrove. Don't fall for it. That was the game, wasn't it? Planting a seed of doubt, cracking the ice and whatever other fucking metaphors applied.

  Waiting another minute, I went back out into the bar and looked out across the crowd and instantly found Jessie where I'd left her. How could I not notice her in a sea of people? She was like magnetic north in a fucking blizzard. But, when my eyes fell onto her delicate body, my blood began to boil. r />
  A guy stood beside her, talking in her ear and she was shaking her head, moving away. I could almost read his lips. Trying to buy her a drink, trying to pick her up, trying to convince her to go for a round out back behind a dumpster like a dirty fuck. She was having none of it, her expression was calm, but she was saying no. Trying to be polite about it when she should’ve slapped him one.

  I began to move forward, weaving through the crowd, trying to keep my temper from boiling over. Every now and then I'd lose sight of her, this overwhelming pool of jealousy simmering in my gut. When I finally made it back, what I saw almost made me snap.

  He was a fucking red neck hick, all up in her personal space, probably rubbing his disgusting cock against her leg and it made me sick. Sick that a pervert could have the fucking gall to pressure himself on a woman like that.

  "I said no," Jessie exclaimed, trying to push him off, her voice beginning to sound panicked.

  "C'mon," they guy said, his hand fumbling for her breast.

  A synapse must have snapped in my brain, because I strode forward and pushed him off her with a violent shove. Before he had a chance to recover, my fist connected with his face, jarring through my bones. He fell backwards on his ass, parting the crowd like fucking Moses at the Red Sea.

  "She fucking said no," I said, stepping forward to pull the asshole up but hands were on my arms, pulling me back. It took me a moment to realize that the hillbilly fuck had a couple of mates, but by that time, the guy was on his feet, sinking a punch into my gut.

  Doubling over with a groan, I wrestled my way free and launched myself forward. I landed on top of the guy and started punching, blind with anger, the sound of flesh cutting into flesh ripping through the alarmed cries of the punters around us.

  "Dee," Jessie shrieked at me, but I didn't listen.

  The other guys hauled me off their stupid fuck of a friend and I was on my back, a boot sinking into my side. Then a fist to the face and the coppery tang of blood in my mouth as my lip split against my teeth.

  I vaguely heard Jessie yelling at me, then silence as the band stopped playing. Dave and Stu were pulling the three hicks off me, but not before the one that had tried to feel up Jessie grabbed the front of my shirt and lifted me half off the floor, getting in another punch. This time, right over my left eye. I fell backwards on the beer soaked floor, spots dancing in my line of vision, but I was too angry to give a fuck. When a woman said no, it fucking meant no.