Chapter 5: Drummer Boys Seek Professional Help

Bodie, Present Day

Back On Tour After The Labor Day Party In Martha's Vineyard

I lie in bed, listening to Arabella's whimperings.

You'd think after two Xanax I would be able to sleep, but I can't.

I can't ever sleep when she starts sleep-talking.

"No, please. I don't like it. No...don't. Daddy..." she mumbles.

That's it.

My feet hit the floor and I'm pulling on jeans and padding out to the patio to before she says some shit that will force me to wake her up.

I used to wake her up whenever she started sleep-talking. Try to ask her about her dream.

She went crazy every time.

Finally I realized they weren't just bad dreams.

She won't ever talk about it, though. I don't know exactly what she's been through, but I know the dreams are getting worse.

I think I know why.

Because her dad has called her three times this week, asking for money.

He called before the show last night and upset her so bad that she messed up a few times during the performance. She's not Mac, but she's usually a competent keyboardist, so she was pretty pissed at herself after the show. Trace and Adam didn't help, lecturing her about not drinking too much before we take the stage.

She wasn't drunk.

She was shook.

I finally found my balls to confront her about her dad when we got back to the suite. Despite the party going on in the main room, I took her in the bathroom and I asked her why she lived with her Uncle and his wife growing up. She said it was "a bad scene" at home.

"I had to get out of there," was all she would say.

I asked her bluntly if her dad did something to her and she denied it, screaming and cursing and throwing shit at me. That pretty much ended the suite party. Then she washed four pills down with tequila and passed out.

She scared the fuck out of me. I've been up all night, holding her, making sure she was breathing. When she started sleep-talking, I knew she was coming out from under the deep drug coma she was in.

No, please. I don't like it. No...don't. Daddy...

Thinking about her pleading dreams and what kind of "bad scene" she might have been in as a little girl, my gut churns. I vomit in a plant on the patio, and I sit there with my head between my knees.

Eventually I stumble back into the suite and she's awake, standing naked in the kitchen in front of the open refrigerator door, downing a water. I breathe a sigh of relief that she's alert. Maybe I can get some sleep now.

"What the fuck were you doing?" she hisses at me, her face drawn into an angry scowl, her eyes ringed like a raccoon's because she didn't take her stage makeup off. "You woke me up, crashing around." She leaves the refrigerator door open and leans on the marble kitchen counter. She's shaking, but I don't know if it's from cold or coming down off the pills or just from whatever she was dreaming about.

I close the refrigerator door. "Sorry," I move behind her, reaching out to pull her against me and give her a little heat, but her skin is slick with sweat and she slaps at me in irritation.

"Get off me. Is fucking all you ever think about?"

Despite the fact that she is naked, sex was very far off my radar right now. I just wanted to give her a little comfort, but I wince in sympathy for her prickly feelings. I back away from her at once. She's a beautiful girl and to the world she fronts like a completely sexually liberal siren, but the truth is she's all over the place in her attitudes toward sex.

I know everybody has sexy and unsexy moods, but Bells swings around rapidly. When we first got together she was crazy for it—and occasionally she still is, but mostly now she's completely ambivalent to sex. She'd rather party hard and pass out before things get romantic. Then there are times like these—when she acts like sex is the most disgusting thing in the world and that I'm just a douchebag that only wants to one thing from her.

I'm beginning to understand her nasty mood swings, though.

They coincide with the dreams.

"No. I was thinking you were cold, but I guess not." I offer her another bottled water and she slaps that out of my hand too.

"Get the fuck out," she snaps.

"Bells, it's my suite," I say wearily. She's always doing this when she has bad dreams—trying to kick me out.

"It's my suite too and I said get the fuck out!!!" she screams, shoving me.

This particular hotel in podunk wherever the fuck we are doesn't have suites with two bedrooms. When I tell her I'll sleep on the couch if she wants some space, she starts throwing shit at me.

"Fine, I'll go!!" But I stride into the bedroom and grab her candy stash. She does NOT need to be taking any more pills if I'm not here to watch out for her.

"What the fuck are you doing?" she yells, grabbing at my hands, trying to take it back. We grapple a little bit, and the way she's hitting me starts to really piss me off.

"Fucking stop, Bells!!!" I shove her a little just to get her off me.

"Fuck you! Give them back!" She starts to cry, wracking sobs as she clutches at her long brown hair.

"Baby, it's okay, come here," I try to hold her, but she shoves me so hard I trip backwards and bust my ass on the floor. The pills scatter and I just sit there, gathering them up while she grabs the bottle of tequila. There's not much left in it, so I leave her that, but I pour three fuller bottles of liquor leftover down the sink.

After I dispose of the liquor,  I find her in the bathroom, watching herself cry as she drinks from the only remaining bottle. Of all the abnormal things she does, I think this is one of the weirdest and saddest—the way she looks at herself when she cries. I wonder what she's seeing.

I stand behind her, and try one more time. "Arabella, let's just go back to bed. Come on."

She screams and throws the bottle at my head. I barely have time to jerk my head to the side. It misses me by inches and shatters on the tile wall of the shower.

"Goddammit, girl!!!" I scream at her. "Are you fucking crazy!?!?!"

"Get.The.Fuck.Out!!!"

I get the fuck out.

I leave the suite with her pills and my pipe, but the pipe is cashed and the large sack of weed is no where to be found.

Well, that's what I get when I party with strangers instead of SCIC.

I go downstairs to the desk to get another room and to my surprise, Adam is there, shirtless just like me. He's gotta a sack of something on the counter. He's bullshitting the clerk.

I put on my happy face—the one I almost always wear and grin at him as I put my elbows on the counter. "Mac kick you out, too?"

He scratches his beard as he shakes his head... "Naw. Just getting some food." He gestures to the recessed "convenience store" off to the left of the desk.

"At 4am?"

He shrugs and leans into my ear while the clerk answers the phone. "The baby moving woke Mac up. She's hungry, and room service doesn't start for another two hours...so obviously I'm gonna feed my Cakes—Short and Baby," he grins.

I snicker. "You love this shit, don't you? You even like playing dutiful daddy at 4am."

"Yeah, I do," he admits, hanging his head a little sheepishly.

"You're gonna make a great dad, man," I slap his shoulder. "You were born for it."

He nods, then gives me a long look of sympathy. "You and Bells have another fight?"

"Yeah, you could say that," I watch the mirror behind the desk, avoiding Adam's gaze. I haven't said anything to anyone about Bell's dreams or my suspicions. It's just too serious to talk about casually and besides, it's Bell's business and I ain't spreading it around.

"Bodie...I know she's sometimes fun to be around and she's a pretty little thing, but I don't know, man...sometimes people get together and they just aren't good for each other."

I stiffen. What Adam really means is Arabella is no good. I hate the way he calls her a succubus. Like he didn't put up with Mac's crazy for fucking years before she grew up a little and worked through some of her shit. I turn to him and tap the counter in front of him. "Calling your bullshit, brother. You didn't see me or Trace trying to waive you off Mac—and that crazy shit y'all slung for years could have really hurt the band. So return the favor and step off my fucking business, yeah?"

He holds up a hand in surrender and pulls me away from the desk, into a quiet corner of the lobby. "Alright. You're right. I'm being a fucking hypocrite, and I'm not trying to tell you who to fuck or date or whatever. But Bodes, man...the drugs getting out of hand again. You know that, right? You don't want to take this girl down that road. She might not bounce back from it like you always do..."

"I got it," I say through gritted teeth. "I'm keeping her even."

Adam nods, looking past me like he's thinking. Then he rubs his jaw again. "Listen, have you maybe thought about...talking to someone about all the drama with Bells? It helps. Maybe Marley..."

The laughter erupts from me and rings out across the lobby. Jesus Christ, the fucking irony.

Adam has no idea that "Marley" isn't "Marley" to me. She's Jaz. I haven't seen her or talked to her since she ditched the last day of the Call-Out, but I've can't shake her. It's funny how I didn't recognize "Marley" but now I can't get Jaz out of my mind.

I wonder if she's seen Daemon since he got out of jail. I wonder where the hell she's living, down in the A. Somewhere up on the North side, well away from him? Or downtown, where she would be hard to find in the urban crowds? Or is she still South—where he could have dozens of guys keeping tabs on her, harassing her even? Occasionally I wonder if she lied to me, about not wanting to be with him anymore.

I wonder if she's in his bed right now. I wonder if he's brought the Jasmine back out—the one that's locked inside the Marley.

She says she knows he's a bad guy, but I'm not sure she really does. He's a gangster, a killer, a corrupter of kids on both sides of the drug deal...but he also maybe loved her, at least as much as a dude like that can love. And she must have loved him, to do the things she did for him.

"Why is that so funny? The idea of you talking to Marley?" Adam says evenly, a glint in his eyes. "What really happened at Labor Day between you and Marley?"

"Nothing," That's a fucking lie. So much shit happened, but I'm not telling Adam about Jasmine Jones. Adam is the kind of guy you can spill your guts to, and if I start telling tales right now, floating like I am right now on Xan and liquor, I might tell the whole story.

How I fell for her, how she lied to me, how she was my gang leader's girl, how she went to prison for him just like I did, and how she had a baby there that she gave up for adoption. How she doesn't even know that I know about the kid. How my boy TJ told me about the baby and her deciding to give it up.

Yeah, I can't go there. I don't trust myself to talk about that shit. There's too much on the down-low to start stirring it up.

"Bodie," Adam says my name like he doesn't believe me.

I slap him hard on the arm. "Nothing happened. I did not sleep with your side-piece at Labor Day, Adam. I wouldn't do you like that," I grin.

He shakes the sack of snacks at me. "That's not fucking funny, man. You need to deep-six that side-piece shit. Mac hears you say that and—"

"I know, I know. I'm just busting your balls. I know the Maneater is more than enough woman for you," I tease him.

"She is most definitely more than enough woman for me, especially since she's growing a mini-Maneater, too," he grins. "But about Marley...I'm trying to bring that situation to some...better ground. Marley is real important to Trace. For that reason alone, I don't want to ice her out of SCIC. Mac's not thrilled with my stand on that, but we're trying to deal with it like grown-ups, you know. For Trace's sake. She's the only counselor he feels comfortable with."

"What are you trying to tell me, Adam?" I say, suddenly weary. I need to catch some fucking sleep.

"I'm asking you to call Marley," he says. "Whatever went down with you two...smooth it over, please. She keeps asking about you."

"She does?"

"Yeah. Says she's worried about you."

"She's worried about me?" I snort. "That's ass-backwards."

Adam narrows his eyes. "What does that mean?"

Shit. "Nothing."

"Bodie—"

"Goddammit, Adam. I'll call her, okay? I'll call her and make nice so we can keep our boy good. You're right. I'll do anything for Trace, just like you would."

He puts a hand on my shoulder and squeezes. "Thank you. Look, I gotta get this food to Mac--" he stops, looking past me. "Hey," he says abruptly, giving the chin tip to someone obviously coming into the lobby. I swing around and Leed is walking in, looking shit cool and supremely satisfied.

"Where you been?" I ask.

"Doing yoga." His shrug is hiding something.

"At 4am?"

He breaks into confession with a chuckle. "Naw at 1 am. On the beach. In Florida," he pulls his long hair up into a ponytail and waggles his eyebrows.

"You flew to Florida after the show to see Ashlynn at rehab?" Adam laughs.

"It's not the first time," I remind him. Adam nods agreement.

"Well, it's the last. She's finished. She graduated her six month program yesterday." He flashes a happy smile. "This morning she'll be flying to LA and she and Kat are going apartment hunting." He snags Adam's bag of snacks. "Ooooh...hummus."

"Get your own fucking hummus. Mac's gonna eat my arm if I come back empty-handed." Adam swipes the bag back and heads to the stairs.

Leed's big lips push forward in a near pout. "What are you doing down here? Afterparty go all night?"

"Naw. Bells is in a bad mood."

"What else is new, brother." Leed slings an arm around me as we slink into the elevator. "You can crash in my room. We don't have to roll out til ten. Let's go catch some winks and fade these beautiful women who frustrate us."

I put my hands on my hips and shake my head. My dreads wap around me. "How the fuck did we end up here, Leed? Where are the fangirls? Why are we doing this?"

Leed is shrugging, pulling a joint from his cigarette pack and lighting up. I laugh. Ballsy dude probably strolled right on and off commercial flights like that. A brother with a little color thinks twice about trying that on.

His voice is tight as he passes it over. "The fangirls are all the same lately, have you noticed?"

Jaz's face flashes in my brain—the expressive way her emotions show as she reads. "Yeah, I've noticed." Then I think of Bells probably crying herself to sleep. "Bells is definitely not generic."

"Nope," Leed croaks, taking another draw. "She's a hot mess."

"Not fair, man. She's young, and she's had a hard life."

"Ash is young. She's had it rough, too. But she ain't like Bells."

He straws down the hall in a cloud of smoke. "That's some bullshit right there. We've both seen hot-mess Ash more times than I can count," I remind him.

"That's over," he waves confidently, taking a final toke and giving me the last draw. I puff hard, finishing it off.

We hold our tokes as we soar in the room. After a long exhale, I say, "Maybe Bells deserves a chance to get her shit together like Ash. Any of you jerks so quick to criticize her ever think of that?"

Leed is pulling off his shirt, stripping down to his boxers, already heading to his bed. He turns and nods vigorously. "Absolutely she does. No question. All I'm saying is...in this Ashlynn-Arabella comparison...are you playing the role of Trace, or are you me—the man who is gonna make her dreams come true?"

I grin at him. "There's only one you, you arrogant asshole."

He gives me the cocky, lopsided grin and a raised finger. "Tru dat." He falls on the bed and covers his head with a pillow.

I lie on the couch, still not able to sleep. I keep thinking about Marley and Arabella. Finally I close Leed's bedroom door, and settle back on the couch to dial my phone.

The voice I thought I had forgotten for good answers on the fourth ring.

"Bodie!?!?! What's wrong?"

I chuckle. She sounds just like my mom when I call her too late or too early.

"Nothing. Everything's fine."

"You sure?"

"Yeah, Marley. I'm okay. Are you okay?"

"Yeah, fine."

"Good."

"Bodie?"

"Yeah?"

"Is there a reason you are calling me at 4:30 in the morning?"

"Yeah, actually there is. I need a professional opinion."

"I already told you. You're insane," she murmurs sleepily, and I laugh.

"Maybe. You're pretty fucking crazy, too. You know that right? Not too many people have an actual alter ego. You're like catwoman-crazy, girl."

"Oh my god, it's creepy you say that. I've actually thought the same fucking thing," she whispers.

"Great minds think alike, Jasmine," I tell her. I've decided to call her whatever the fuck I please, when I please. There will always be a little Jaz in her, to me.

"I don't know about that. What I do know is...I probably became a therapist trying to diagnose myself." I think maybe there is some seriousness in her joke.

"I'm just playin', girl. I don't think you are crazy. You were just...messed up, and we've all been there. It was a head trip, learning you were adopted. Then you got mixed up with Dae before you could stop spinnin'."

"Yeah. That is true, for sure."

"Is he out?"

"Yeah."

"He bothering you?"

"Bothering me? No."

I have to ask. "Is that because you are back with him?"

"No, I already told you, that's never going to happen."

"So you haven't seen him."

Silence. Finally. "I've seen him. We had a discussion. He knows where I stand. He's not bothering me. He's...busy, anyway."

"Busy callin' in all the crews, re-estabilishing himself as a drug lord on the outside?" I say bitterly.

"Probably. I don't know what he's doing," her voice is harsh, irritated. "Look, did you really call me to ask about Daemon?"

"No. I was serious. I need a counselor."

"I can't do that, Bodie. It's not ethical."

"I know that, I just need to bounce something off you. In confidence."

"Well, everything you tell me is in confidence now. After the Call-Out, Adam asked me to sign an NDA because Mac was concerned about her private information. Riley had one drawn up that includes all my band interactions."

"Okay. I'm sorry about the way Mac acted, by the way. She's under a lot of stress."

"I know."

She waits patiently.

"Okay, so this things I want to ask you about...it has to do with Arabella." I say. It's a little hard to say it out loud. "So what should I do if I think...I think maybe...I think Arabella was...sexually abused."

"You mean...while in New York and you were at the Call-Out?"

I wince and clear my throat. "No. I mean a long time ago. I mean...a long time ago. Like...as a little girl."

"She shared that?"

"No. She won't talk about it. But she has bad dreams. She sleep-talks and she's always begging somebody to stop touching her. Whenever her father calls, she freaks the fuck out and practically OD's. Her attitudes toward sex..." I don't like talking about this part, "well it's nothing like I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot."

"I can imagine," Marley says dryly.

"Look I'm just saying...she's really unstable, in that arena. She's either crazy or very very disconnected. Like she's either trying to be a porn star or hating it. And then there's the drugs...she's not doing them for fun. Not like we do...the band, I mean. I feel like she's doing them to cope with whatever she's dreaming about."

Marley is silent, processing. "Everything you've said is consistent with the idea that she could possibly be suffering trauma from abuse. But unless she talks to you about it, there's really no way to know for sure."

"She won't talk to me about it. I've tried."

"Well...you guys haven't been together very long, have you? If she has been sexually abused, she probably needs a lot of trust in a person to be able to share that."

"So you are saying...I should let it ride? Cope with her crazy until she opens up? Cause she's pretty crazy, sometimes. She threw a bottle of tequila at my head tonight. Hard. It would have given me a goddamn concussion if I hadn't ducked."

Marley sighs. "I can't tell you what lengths you should try to go to to help her. Only you can decide that. I can tell you, you definitely shouldn't stay in a situation where there is violence."

"I left the suite after that."

"Good. Look, if you are going to continue the same patterns you have with Arabella for the rest of the tour, the best things you can do are learn her triggers and try to avoid situations that end in violence. You said her father calling freaks her out?"

"Yeah. But I can't control him calling her."

"She's accepting his calls? Talking to him?"

"Yeah, but then she gets super upset."

More silence. "Bodie...in terms of a family member sexually abusing a child...the abuse doesn't always stop because the child grows up. Sometimes it changes into what the victim might perceive as a consensual relationship. If the victim does manage to stop the abuse, it's more common that they end all contact with the abuser."

If it weren't for the weed, I'm sure I would puking in another potted plant right now, because even behind the forced calm of the weed, I feel sick as shit over this.

"Jesus, Marley. Are you saying...are you saying she's probably sleeping with her father?"

"No, I'm not saying that at all. There are no hard and fast rules. Every case of abuse is unique. I'm saying that if he has abused her and the abuse has stopped, the best ways for her to take steps toward healing probably don't include maintaining a relationship with him."

"Ok. Ok. I hear that." I hear it all right. I just don't know what to do with it.

After a long silence in which she just sits with me as I think, finally she says, "Bodie, it's 6am. I have to get ready to go to work...I have an early morning group at 7..."

"Yeah, okay. I'm sorry I cut your sleep short," I tell her.

"It's fine. I'm...I'm glad you called. I'm glad I can...be here for you. We were friends once, you know?"

Yes, were friends once. For about three months a very long time ago, but the whole time I was getting in deep with this girl.

"Yeah, we were." I finally manage to say.

"I know you will do your best to try to help Arabella. I don't know you well anymore, but I knew you once. You had the biggest heart of any person I've ever met. I doubt that's changed, Bodie. You're a good person."

I fight the urge to laugh, because Marley has no idea what she's saying. I have a big heart?

Maybe, but it doesn't work right anymore.

Not since Jaz fucked with it.

A player plays because a girl like Jaz stabbed his heart to death in the cradle before he ever really learned to use it.

But then again, I'm not exactly innocent in all the shit that went down. If Marley knew that I made the end play between us...I don't she would be glad I called.

"Thank you, Marley. Thanks for saying that, and thanks for...listening."

"You're welcome, Bodie. Good night."

"No—good morning," I grin into the phone.

She makes the sweet, sexy, snort. "Right. Good morning."

I lay on the couch as the sun rises, thinking over everything Marley said. She's right, I can't force Arabella to open up about whatever is going on with her. But she's also right, her dad calling is a big trigger that's causing very bad shit to go down between us.

I can't force Arabella to deal, but I can maybe enforce a boundary.

I call Riley before seven and he sounds as chipper as ever. "Been to bed yet, Bodie?"

"Nope, I'll sleep on the bus," I say. "Listen, just want to let you know I'm going to take a little sidetrip after tonight's show, but it's not some spiral. I swear I'll be back before you even miss me."

"Why not?" he says dryly. "The Lion lopes off all the time now."

"Thanks, man."

My next call is to TJ Turner.

"Figured I'd be hearing from you." His voice is grim. "You talked to Jaz?"

"Yeeeeah," I hesitate, wondering where this is going. "She said Daemon isn't bothering her since she got out of jail. You got a different tale to tell me?"

His silence is a little to telling. "Naw. Lemme ask you this, though. What's your involvement with Jaz?"

"That's not really any of your business, is it? Your business is that Baby Mama and kid." I pop back. "What I can't figure out is why Jaz is still hanging around with you?"

"Fuck you."

"I didn't mean it like that, Dawg. You're good people, but Jaz...that was never really Marley, was it? That was a girl Daemon painted on her. Marley has a different life. A phD. A career. Why the hell is she still even in your world?"

Silence. Finally. "You ask her that?"

I rub my eyes. Jesus, I am so fucking tired. "Look, I didn't call to talk about Marley. Or Daemon. I called to ask for a favor. An official favor. One brother to another."

"Oh we still brothers now? You blew up rock star and you didn't stay real with your hood and you think you can still call in favors?" he laughs.

"I didn't get beat out. In fact I got beat the fuck up quite a few times while I was doing my time for the gang. So...fuck yeah, I think that shit. At least for something as small as this."

"Fine. I don't know how the leadership is going to see it, but whatever. What is it you want?"

"A crew. Maybe three guys. To meet me in Nashville tomorrow."

"For what?"

"Look, the truth is, Marley and I just recently ran into each other and she's actually, sort of, more friends with my boy Adam than me. Like actual friends. Not friends with benefits. Me...I gotta girl, sort of..."

"Yeah, Arabella Burns, right? Saw y'all all over the internet."

"Yeah, her. Thing is, Arabella's dad is a piece of shit tweeker that lives up in a trailer in some backwoods above Nashville. He calls her, talking a bunch of shit and asking for money. It upsets her. A lot. Imma roll up on him and suggest he not call anymore."

"Yeah, I can see how the suggestion might seem stronger with a crew making it," TJ laughs.

"Now we are thinking the same," I laugh, too. It feels good, to be on the same page as TJ.

"Okay, I'll take the request up to the pool hall tonight. But Bodie...I'm way out of influence. I'm hardly more in the gang than you are. This will have to go through Daemon. And he's not as generous as he used to be. Prison changed him. He doesn't do favors for free anymore."

"He's gonna do this one from free, because he owes me. He owes me three years of my life I lost."

"We'll see. I'll hit you back by 8."

"Make sure you do, cause I go to work at 8:30."

He snickers. "You call beating a drum for an hour and half work?"

"You call ripping people off selling 'em wrecked and rebuilt cars work?"

We are both holding back laughs now. Of all the people I left behind, I only miss this guy.

Well, and Jaz. But that's way different.

"It's good work if you can get it," he replies. "I'll hit you back."

"Later, Dawg."

Now the sun is up and I can't sleep for shit. It's probably better just to push on through. Maybe I'll grab a workout before I go check on Bell's. I pull her stash out and pick through it...popping a couple of Adderall to amp me up.

I rummage through Leed's clothes and borrow a pair of running shorts.

By the time I get back from fives miles, I'm on a runner's high. Okay, maybe it's the speed I popped.

Either way, I feel better. I can't change Arabella's trauma and what she has to work through, but I can make damn sure her dad leaves her alone, by scaring the fuck out of him.

Unlike TJ, I'm sure Daemon will send me some boys. He always liked me, and it's nothing for a couple of bangers to drive up to Nashville and roll up on some redneck for a little chat.

Yeah, this is gonna work. This deal with Arabella is rough, but I'm gonna make it a little smoother. At least while we have to stay fake-committed to one another.

Because the truth is...ever since I kissed Marley on the beach at the Vineyard, I realize, Arabella and I...we aren't gonna go the distance. I don't know about me and Marley, but I do remember what real is like now.

Bells and I aren't real. But I am going to help her, because how can I not?

Hmmmm. Well. We see now that some of Arabella's horrible behaviors perhaps stem from personal trauma. Do you think Bodie's suspicions are right?

How do we feel about Bodie's love triangle? Does it make more sense now why Bodie seems to be so loyal to Arabella?

At this point in the story, we see Bodie taking a lot of pills to "keep himself going" while he deals with Arabella's shifting moods. We know from Urgent that he moves past pills into heroin at some point in the next couple of months. How do you think that happens?