Chapter 82: Rock Stars Debate with Their Dads

Well, everyone seems to have the same question: Oh Snap, what are Matt and Trace gonna say about all this? It's time to hear from everyone's favorite rock star and see where his head is before he heads into the band meeting....a tiny time rewind of an hour or two here...Row's come through her surgery and Adam has not yet heard Marley's confession about Bodie going to jail and  put out the call for the band meeting.

Trace, In a Dive Bar in Atlanta

I haven't been in a shithole bar like this since I don't know when. Before LA maybe. No...once on tour...two tours ago...that private club in Pennsylvania where Bells took her clothes off and Bodie did body shots off her and Adam got wasted because Mac was in LA making out with Dev in an Indian wedding dress.

I guess this must be a private club, too because the sun is coming up but this place is still serving. Private or no, the guy at the door doesn't bar me. He recognizes me and jerks his head to the right end of the bar, invisible from here. I take two steps forward and I stop.

My father has an nearly empty bottle of scotch in front of him. He has a black eye. He has a girl half his age on his lap—pretty but kind of trashy— and she's applying a bag of ice to his eye. He's got a hand around her waist, and he's rambling to her, gesturing expansively with his cigarette-like there's not a law about smoking in public buildings—dropping ash everywhere.

I can't even.

I turn around and walk out of the shithole. I return to my car—one of the Suburbans we keep at the bandhouse. I sit for awhile, in disbelief.

My other father—Ross— I might expect this from, although to be honest, I've never seen even a hint of another woman all the times he was drunk.

But apparently Matt is an entirely different kind of drunk.

The rock star kind.

I don't want to be here. I want to go back to the hospital, where five hours ago my sister woke up from an emergency surgery—an attempt to repair a severed nerve in her injured hand.

Matt wanted to fly her home to LA or to Boston or to Switzerland—where ever the world's premiere hand specialist was, but the local surgeons down at the hospital in Bum Fuck said there's a window of opportunity to repair nerve damage, and the surgery couldn't wait. They rushed her up to Emory in a ambulance and the specialist did his best, but he said we shouldn't expect much in the coming days and weeks. It will be months, maybe years of therapy before the final result will be known.

Still, Matt couldn't quite believe the doctor. He kept telling Marianne that every thing would be fine. When Row woke up, and stoically announced that she couldn't feel a thing in her middle, ring, and pinky fingers, and while Riley sat by her bed assuring her that's exactly what the doctor said would happen for now—and it meant nothing for the long term use of her hand—Matt went quiet.

That never happens.

Then he did other shit that never happens. He kissed Row on the head and said he had to make some calls about security and transport home to LA, walked right past Marianne without even acknowledging her, and left the hospital.

When he didn't come back after two hours, Marianne called me outside Row's room. "You need to find your father. He'll be drunk somewhere," she said coolly. "Maybe high."

I shook my head. "No. No way."

Matt doesn't completely abstain now, but I've never seen him drunk and absolutely never seen him take any kind of drugs. I know he's been to rehab three times in his younger years. I know he didn't drink even socially for a long stretch of time. I honestly believed that his drinking problems were behind him—in the five or six years I've known him I've never seen him have more than a couple of beers at a time. He says he mostly refrains because Marianne nags him about his high blood pressure, but it's not that. It's a promise to her—a balance thing—the same kind of tight reign Leed keeps on himself for Ashlynn, Matt exercises for his whole family's sake.

"Unfortunately, Trace, you don't know him as well as I do. And as much I love him, I don't have time or energy to deal with his bullshit right now." Marianne slapped my shoulder lightly. "Tag, you're it. Final rite of passage as a del Marco. Go deal with your dumbass dad on a bender."

She turned on her heel and went back into Row's room. I've spent the last three hours tracking him down, hitting every bar in the radius of the hospital. He picked the shittiest one, for sure.

I lay my head on the steering wheel, thinking about his black eye. Fuck. Drunk belligerent dads are not my strength.

I do something I hardly ever do. I Facetime my brother.

He answers in an airport in Europe. His nearly black hair is tied back on top and his face is all angles and he's grown a goatee. How did his looks turn suddenly older than mine? He's two years younger than me. Must be the beard. Or the European outlook.

Right now, he's searching my face apprehensively, because I hardly ever call him. "What's wrong? I just talked to Mom two hours ago. Something change? Is Row freaking out now? Did she do something stupid like leave the hospital? Talk fast...my flight leaves in ten minutes..."

My brother, for all his dubious qualities, is actually a good big brother to his sisters. Surprisingly more protective in some ways than I am. Let one of them get hurt, and he's all over it.

When Row lost her baby a year and a half ago, he flew home from Florence and stayed three weeks. Low key, just hanging with her, filling the gaps in her time when Riley was working, and telling me constantly to stop acting weird around her.

How could I not act weird? She wasn't exactly a kid, but not far from it—barely twenty—and Riley's definitely not a kid...he's more like Leed's age. I guess I knew in theory that they were sleeping together, but being confronted with the fact my manger, whom I trust in all the ways to be more responsible than anyone I know, knocked my baby sister up accidentally? And to top it all off, she was terrified to tell any family member but somehow felt more comfortable confiding in my drummer?

I was weirded out.

Okay, I mean, yes, of anyone, Bodie could relate in the sense that he got a girl pregnant at fifteen. But he didn't deal with it until he was twenty-nine, so I failed to see Row's attraction to him as a confidante. Mac, I could see. Bodie? Nope.

I was glad for Street being around then-his So-Cal cool and long standing sibling bond that let him be there so naturally for Row. Not so accepting of Bodie and Row's insta-bond.

Still, I can't deny Bodie was real good to her then, making time he didn't have for her, taking her to lunch, meeting for coffee, shopping with her, even taking her surfing a few times. He offered her a cheerful, teasing, friendship that let her reclaim her spunky self. I guess they truly are friends now, the way Ash and I are. But of course, not exactly like that.

Ash is my family...my sister in all but name. Honestly, as much as I love Row and Bridge, I feel that sibling bond more with Ash than I do with Row and Bridge, because of our childhood history. There is no trauma or trouble Ash could find herself in that I couldn't step into as comfortably as Street did Row's miscarriage.

So I guess I will admit Bodie was solid, when it came to being there for Row. As jealous as I might have been, wishing I could bridge that gap and be as completely comfortable with Row and Bridge as I am with Ash, deep down I appreciated his effort. He's a good fucking dude. Big hearted like Leed, loyal like Adam, and more energy for giving of himself to other people that both of them combined, when he's sober.

Now I'm wondering if his is still sober. Or what the fuck's actually been going on with him.

Ever since Marley and Darius came into the picture—no, ever since his descent into heroin, really—Bodie has been living a separate life from the rest of us. On tour last year, he wasn't there about a third of the time physically, and when he was there, it was only on the stage. Socially, emotionally for long hours in between performances, he felt absent.

And it's not the same without him. The tour was a success because we just refused to let it fail, but playing without Bodie is like trying to keep a bonfire going in the rain. Chili never misses a beat but she doesn't bring the same heat.

Of course, Bodie is dealing with a ready made family and that hasn't been easy. He's distracted in the same ways Madam is distracted but unlike Madam, who are building a life from the beginning with a support system of staff, Bodie wants to be everything to Marley and Darius. And he's been building Dharma. Arabella and Evangeline are like having two more kids, in a way.

But there's also some surface dealings with his old gang that are causing waves. Marley's ex, being the cause of that storm.

I also am aware mine and Leed's Atlanta hookup for weed is Sixmob and basically stuck up Bodie's ass all the time. I've told Prez not to come around except when I call him—and Leed has told him too. He disregards; taking his lead from Bodie instead. He is always showing up at the band house to shit talk with Bodie when the gang is all there, and I don't like it.

Kat knows I recreate— occasionally we'll smoke together in LA, and once she even went to the dispensary to pick up our order, but that's different. It's legal there. I don't like her seeing the other end—that on this side of the country, I'm making illegal deals with a drug dealer in her parent's neighborhood who has speedballs under his seat that he might be selling to the middle schooler she used to babysit.

I like Prez, but I can't help wondering if he's ever shot that gun tucked between his wife beater and his Gucci button-up. When I look at him—even though he looks nothing like Bodie—I remember those thug expressions and mannerisms in Bodie back in the UGA days. By the time I met Bodie he had faded them from his everyday manner. He had more a reggae stoner vibe.

But let a fight break out in a bar, or some asshole get disrespectful to Mac after a show? Bodie was full on thug, every time.

I thought Prez and Bodie was a hero-worship thing, or maybe Bodie was trying to get him out of the gang life.

After last night, I can't help but wonder how deep Bodie's shit with Sixmob still runs. Last year, Riley was all freaked out about Bodie's rather large expenditures that didn't seem to fit with his Dharma acquisition. There was some talk about an audit, but it mysteriously went away, and nothing more was said about it.

Surely to fuck he's not got money in his old gang, right?

I don't know, because Leed and Adam didn't get a full accounting of the shit storm they rolled up in last night. When Varrick came barging into my suite when he should have been deep in his wedding night, demanding to know the number of our petty weed dealer Preston, I knew something was seriously wrong.

Leed says at the scene last night the Feds were tight lipped and mostly played it off like a typical turf war between rival gangs. But since when does Atlanta have a middle aged Irish gang—with actual Irish? And since when do street gangs own three million dollar private jets?

Leed also wasn't buying the Feds explanation. He said the airport scene, the foreigners, the jet screamed of a big drug deal gone bad. He said the most he could figure was that Bodie was simply guilty by former association with his gang, and the Irish targeted him and Row, since she's often seen in the tabloids with him, for some kind of ransom to recoup a loss from Bodie's gang or something.

Honestly I don't know what to think. Bodie promised me a long fucking time ago, he was out of the thug and drug business. I'm hoping Leed's right, and Bodie was a victim, not a participant in that shit.

Actually, I'm trying to compartmentalize Bodie in my mind right now. Marley says healthy people compartmentalize difficult shit in order to space off the time to process it and make a plan for coping with it.

So right now, I'm all about my del Marco family, and I will deal with Bodie later.

"Trace!" Street yells through my phone. He's giving me an exasperated look, because I'm zone out, thinking.

Shit, so much for compartmentalizing. I'm all over the place. I focus on Street and give him a quick run-down.

"Row is the same. She's surprisingly calm. I don't know why—I would be a wreck, if it were my playing hand. But she's...cheerful. Riley and Marianne are with her. That's not why I'm calling. I'm calling because...Dad is drunk. He's in a bar, drinking and...carousing..." I don't mention the girl. "What do I do?"

Street groans and looks off camera. "He been in a fight yet?"

"Looks like."

"Get him out of there before some chic starts giving him too much sympathy."

"Too late."

"Cougar?"

"No, thank god. A young chic. He wouldn't--"

"No he wouldn't. But a cougar he can put off easier. Eventually he'll start a drunken ramble about Mom being the GOAT for putting up with his shit and a cougar will pick up what he's throwing down and gracefully ease away with a few selfies.

"The problem with the young ones that are ballsy enough to cozy up to him? They always have a bad-ass jealous boyfriend. Half his age, twice his muscle, and they show up before he gets to his Marianne del Marco Greatest of All Time Speech. Get him out of there before the boyfriend comes."

"How...often does this happen? Him falling off the wagon and flirting in bars?"

"When I was a real little kid? It happened all the time. Since I was about ten—it only happens when shit goes really sideways. Last time it happened? Boss Hawkin's son stepped on a land mind in Afghanistan and lost his leg. My mom tracked him down that time. Before that? Row's miscarriage, but it didn't happen right away. A couple of weeks after Row lost the baby, Jax's first grandkid was born...I guess it hit him. I found him at the Frolic Room. There was coke on the table, but I don't think he got that far. He seemed drunk not amped..."

Fuck me. I had no idea.

"So twice in the last eighteen months?"

"Three now, right?"

"Why has no one told me about his benders?"

Street is quiet for a long time. "Why do you think, Trace? You have one drunk dad. You shouldn't have to deal with another."

"Well, I have to deal with him now. Your mom is fucking pissed. She tagged out. And like you say, I'm not good with drunk dads..."

Street is walking in the airport. He ducks into an empty VIP lounge and props his phone on a table. I can see him rubbing down the length of his pants. He winces, then shrugs.

"I know we don't talk about your shit, and that's cool. But don't freak about Dad right now, okay? I've been where you are right now. I have physically taken  him out of a bars a couple of times. He's not a violent drunk. But he can say some pretty stupid shit. Don't take it personally. Alcoholism is a disease, Trace. Today is just...not a good day. Tomorrow he'll be stronger. He'll be...Dad."

I'm sort of surprised at Street's tolerant attitude. He and our Dad don't always have the best relationship, but I guess things are better between them lately than I realized.

He's been in Florence for a long time, but occasionally I'll hear through the girls that he and dad are on a weekend trip somewhere together. He's probably seen more of him than I have this year. Soundcrush has been on the road all fucking year.

"Okay. Yeah. I hear ya. I'll stay chill. Thanks, brother."

"I'll see you later today."

I consider calling Kat, but I've talked to her a dozen times last night, and the last time, she and Ashlynn and Mac were going to bed, since they had been up all night, keeping a vigil at the band house, waiting for updates.

After moment of indecision, I make one other call, just in case I need backup. Then I crunch through the parking lot in the frosty morning air.

I sit down at the bar beside Matt and put several hundred dollars in front of the girl on his lap.

"Your nursing services have been greatly appreciated. I got him, now."

Matt squints at me. "You're not as pretty as she is." She laughs and keeps her arms possessively locked around him.

"Neither are you. Adultery is surprisingly unattractive on you."

He scowls at me. "Jesus, Trace. Don't be so...dramatic. This is just..." he struggles for words, "fan engagement."

He laughs, proud of himself for coming up with words, I suppose. Jesus, this is the guy that was so on Leed's ass a couple years back when he was on a bender? Unbelievable. He's the exact same kind of drunk. Arrogant, dismissive, needy for love, thinks he's funny.

"Fan engagement? Bullshit is what it is."

"I say this with love, son." He pours himself and the girl another shot, clinks glasses with her and thrusts the bottle at me, "If you came to drink, join us. Otherwise...fuck off."

The girl snorts, nearly slides off his lap. He catches her. "Don't fall, Darlin'," he chuckles.

That's when I realize, he's drunk her under the table.

"Jesus," I rap on the bar. "Will you call her an Uber?"

"We don't do that. She's got a phone," the bartender says.

What kind of shithole is this that they won't call a drunk girl a cab? I toss him a Benji. "Do me a favor, just this once?"

"I don't wanna go," she whines to Matt, grabbing his face, trying to kiss him. "I thought we were gonna have fun."

He ignores her lips missing their mark as he focuses on pouring two more shots. "This is fun, isn't it?"

"Mmmmm-hhmmm," she says, picking up one shot and holding it at boob level. Matt looks at the shot and then her rack, and it's hard to tell which one holds his attention. He reaches for his own serving, giving the bar a sloshing.

At the smell of the scotch spilling, some revulsion rises. Scotch was Ross's drink, too. Dark bile rushes up my throat and pours out of my mouth. "Were you this drunk when you knocked up my mom? Was she?"

My shot hits home. He winces. The liquor stops halfway to his lips. Then he fires back.

"Way past drunk. Gina had a taste for coke. That's how the week got away from us."

I rear back, feeling eight years old and just as slapped as if Ross had delivered the blow.

"All that shit about her being special was just bullshit, then?"

"She was special. She was especially good at being fun in a time when Annie had cut me out of her life. Gina was not tough love, like Annie. Gina was... easy."

"Fuck you," I rise to leave. I can't do this. This is worse than Ross's blows. This is brutal.

"Trace..." he growls, when I am halfway to the door. "I'm sorry. Wait...just...shit...I'm really fucking sorry...I didn't mean that. Not like that."

I turn, gesturing at liquor in his hand and the girl on his lap. "You don't look fucking sorry!"

He slides the girl to her feet, gestures for the bouncer.

"Dear..."

"Della..." she supplies.

He takes her hand, looking at it carefully, turning it over and then back again. "Dear Della, this has been a night I will never forget." He's definitely talking about Row's hand, not Della's attributes, but she has no idea. "Thank you for the sweet comfort. And the ice pack." He gives her the stage smile and kisses her hand. "That's all the kiss I can afford a beautiful girl these days. The rest of my kisses belong to my Annie, and my beautiful daughters."

"That's so sweet!" She leans on me. "Isn't he sweet?"

"Yeah, sweet like antifreeze."

Matt laughs. She blinks. "What?"

The bouncer scoops up the money I tossed at the girl and puts it in her purse. "This is yours, Del. For breakfast. Aren't you ready for breakfast? Let's go."

"Yasssssss!" she latches onto him. "Breakfast!" He pulls the money I tossed at the bartender and gives him a glare. "I got her," he nods to me. "She's a regular."

"Thanks."

Matt is staring at his hands, planted flat on the bar.

"Coffee, maybe? Fresh?" I say with irritation to the bartender.

"We closed four hours ago, you know," he snaps, throwing his bar rag down and dumping the pot.

Ah. Well. That explains his attitude. "Sorry. I'll...make it worth your while."

"He already did. Doesn't change the fact I have another job to go to in two hours," he mutters.

"You're a real pain in the ass," Matt says to him mildly.

"The only pain in the ass here is you," I retort.

We sit in silence a long time. The bartender puts two mugs and the freshly brewed coffee pot in front of us. To my surprise, Matt pours unsteadily and sips. No argument in him now, but I can feel the shame pouring off him.

Shame is an emotion I can see and smell and taste.

After one cup, he says, "I shouldn't have said that about your mom."

"No," I agree.

"I can't take it back."

"No. It doesn't matter. I knew all your words about an amazing week with my mom were bullshit anyway."

He grips the bar. "She is an amazing woman and being with her was a week I always remembered. I won't apologize for loving my wife and only my wife."

"I didn't fucking ask you to. Just maybe don't get drunk and talk about my mom like she was a whore?"

"Fuck..." Matt mutters. "I never said that. Don't put words in my mouth. Being with your mother was a good thing. It was not a love affair because we both loved other people, but it was a happy week for both of us. A comfort, a companionship. We talked. We laughed. We enjoyed each other. There were drugs after the shows, yeah, but you're a fucking rock star. You know how that is. It gets out of hand, sometimes."

"I left behind that shit at twenty-one, after one tour. You were nearly thirty when you were with my mom."

He nods. "That's true. I was a fuck-up. I still am. If I weren't, you wouldn't be here. Then or now. So I can't exactly apologize for being a fuck up, can I? I'm glad you are here." He chews his lip. "Then. Not so much now..."

I sip my coffee. His logic is drunken, but it makes perfect sense to me. He means he's glad I exist; he regrets I'm seeing him like this.

More silence. He's still staring at his hands.

"She's never going to play again," he says. "Not like you and me."

So in Matt's drunken mind, we are off the subject of my mom and onto Row. Just as well, I don't want to hear anymore about my cocaine fueled conception.

I've been thinking the same thing about my sister. Row is an excellent guitarist. Better than Matt, maybe. Maybe not so good as me. Playing guitar at the expert level takes a lot of dexterity and hand strength. Reading between the lines of the doctor's cautions, it seems doubtful Row will get her full sensation and function back.

She might learn to switch her playing hand with practice and pick with the thumb and forefinger of her damaged hand, but her fingering skill will never equal what is was in her dominant hand, even if she has the heart and the patience to relearn.

"Probably not."

"It hasn't hit her yet."

"No, I don't think so."

He looks at me. "That's not really why I'm drinking."

"Why, then?"

"Because I can't deal with this like I want to deal with this."

"How do you want to deal with this?"

His fists grip. "I want to destroy the man that did this to her."

"He's dead."

He shakes his head slowly, looking at his fists. Then he looks at me. "He's not," he whispers with ferocity.

Bodie, he means.

I sigh. Compartmentalizing is not going to work.

"We don't have all the facts."

"I have enough. He's fucking dangerous and he's irresponsible. He encouraged a press romance with Row, knowing he had bad ties."

"He didn't encourage it. He can't control fake news."

"I fucking can!!!!" Matt explodes. "He should have come to me. He should have asked me to shut it down!"

That I can't deny.

"Look, what do you want me to do?" I'm thinking maybe they need a face to face when Matt is sober. A say what you gotta say kind of thing.

"Cut him loose."

I hear the words, but it doesn't stop me from saying, "What?"

"Cut.Him.Loose."

My laughter is high, tight, strange to my ears. "You're asking me to break up my band?"

He stares at me, bleary eyed and gray. For the first time ever, I have the thought that he looks his age.

"I'm asking you to protect your family. All of it. Next time it could be Kat or Ashlynn that gets caught in the cross-fire."

The old rebellion rises in me out of nowhere, drawing me up, sending the barstool tumbling backwards.

"You know what, Old Man? Why don't you ask me this shit again when you are sober?"

I walk out, not a giving a fuck. Sunglasses and attitude on.

Only to be confronted with the harsh light of day and my other fucking father waiting in the parking lot, sitting on the hood of my Suburban, twirling his phone in his hands.

Shit. I forgot I called him and left him that message, telling him I was in the parking lot of Rhino's about to confront Drunk Dad #2, asking for advice.

"What the fuck are you doing here? I asked for advice, not back-up."

He shrugs. "I don't know the man. Can't give you advice. But your mom, on the other hand, was actually more helpful. She says he told her he's worked the program before. Was completely sober for six years, but in the last four or five years, he's been drinking socially again."

I blink. "Really?" I didn't know that.

"Yeah. This is what happens, sometimes. Do you know how may times I quit cold turkey, worked the program when you were little?"

"No." I'm surprised. I knew there were times he was on the wagon, but I didn't know he was doing AA.

"You think you have a handle on it. You quit going to meetings. Social drinking is fine for awhile. Then you go on a bender. Then they get more frequent."

"Street said this is his third bender in eighteen months."

Ross nods. "Sounds about right for an imminent relapse. I can talk to him if you want. Offer to take him to a meeting."

"Good luck with that. He's a bastard when he's drunk."

"Aren't we all?" His grimace is much more full of regret than humor.

I hop up on the truck and take my sunglasses off. "This is fucking weird. You sober. Him drunk."

He pulls out a five year chip from his pocket and show it to me. "I've been sober a long time, Trace."

I nod. "I know. And I know it's not fair, that I still think of you as perpetually drunk."

"It's not unfair. How many times did you come home expecting me to take you to soccer practice and find broken dishes and me drunk in the basement? But that's not this. You can't transfer our problems to your relationship with Matt and vice versa. It's not the same."

"No it's not the same. He's going to fuck me up in an entirely different way than you did."

"What?"

"He blames Bodie for what happened to Row. He just asked me to...to fire Bodie. Like I can even do that. He's our backbeat. He's my brother. If he goes...maybe the whole vibe crashes. Maybe we aren't Soundcrush anymore. But I don't know what choice I have."

"You're just going to do what Matt says? Fire Bodie? That does not sound like the Trace I know..."

"You don't understand. You don't...not do what Matt says, if you are a del Marco."

Ross checks the sky and rubs his chin. "Seems to me like your last name was still Gallant, the last time I saw it in print."

I give an embarrassed laugh. "Don't think I haven't thought of changing it."

"I'm sure you have. But you didn't."

I meet his gaze. "No, I didn't. For good or bad, mostly what I am is because of this," I gesture between the two of us. "And mom, of course."

"Okay, so you're a del Marco but you're also a Gallant. So what do you want to do about this Bodie-Matt stand-off?"

"I don't fucking know. I haven't even had a chance to hear the whole story. All I know is Bodie and Marley and Darius got jacked and then Marley's ex kidnapped Row and somehow they all ended up at the same place. Something to do with his old gang. It set off some kind of shoot-out and a Row got stabbed and Marley's ex is dead and so are a bunch of other cats I don't know."

I grip my hand. "But I also know my sister is never going to be the guitar legend she was going to be. I know her place in her band will change. She can still front of course, but she'll have to add a new guitarist—Sadie doesn't have the chops for lead guitar—and that's going to be a big fucking problem to address, bringing in a new dominant member over the founding members. Everything will change for Strut, for Row, if they even stay together. None of that would be the case if Bodie hadn't become my sister's BFF and let the media speculate on the nature of their relationship."

"You can't base your decision on what might happen in the future with your sister's hand or band. You have to base your decision in the reality of right now. Your bandmember's relationships to each other, and your relationship to Matt. And the truth is...if the man is truly your father, you don't have to risk the former to keep the latter."

I crack my neck. "Sound real good. But my thing we've Matt? Never really been tested. This is...this is a big fucking deal."

Ross's hand hovers above my shoulder but then he moves away. We haven't touched each other since I slammed him into the wall a year and a half ago, at my mother's apartment in LA.

"It is a big fucking deal. And I have no doubt you will find a way to negotiate it. You took your band from a college outfit to the top of the world. And then you hit a slide with your third album and you worked hard all last year to climb back up from that. You're a fighter, Trace. Fiercer than most people can even conceive. You will fight every fight when it comes to your band, and you will find a way to win. You are a rock star, right?"

Soundcrush ain't on top of the world anymore, but he's right, I climbed back up from self-pity and we had a very successful tour, even in the face of our drummer not being there for a third of the shows.I'm a survivor but I haven't felt like an invincible rock star in a long damn time. Well with two exceptions. I'm always a rock star on the stage and in Kat's bed.

"Right," I smile at him, searching for the conviction he has in me. "I forgot for a second."

"I never forget. I'm proud of you, son."

"Thank you, Dad." It's so rare that I call him that without the sarcasm and irony I've pumped into the word in the last few years. But this time, it just...is. He's Dad, like he was growing up, on a good day.

Ross is giving me a thoughtful smile as Matt appears at the door of the bar. He stumbles slightly as he trips on the sidewalk and hits the gravel parking lot, yet he manages to slide on his sunglasses and stroll over with swagger. He reeks of scotch and vomit. I guess he finally got his fill.

"He called you?" Matt is obviously looking at my dad, but keeping the oh-so-useful-rock-star-sunglass-barrier. Introductions aren't really necessary. They've never met, but they are very aware of each other.

"For advice. But I'm sure we both know second hand advice is pretty ineffective."

Matt is drunk, but he's still sharp enough to catch my dad's meaning—that his second hand advice on how to deal with Bodie isn't the best approach.

"You got something to say, Gallant, say it."

"I have nothing to say about your conflict with Soundcrush's drummer. I have something to say about this current situation. I know he wants to help you, but Trace is not equipped to deal with your bender. It's a trigger for him and this will most likely dissolve into something bad between you. If you want help, I can take you to a meeting. There's a good one not far from here starting in forty five minutes. We can grab breakfast on the way."

Matt shoves his hands into his pockets. "What kind of fucking bullshit is this? You beat on my kid when he was little, and now you come around here to sponsor me?"

His words lack his normal strength of personality. Maybe because he's drunk, or maybe because he's completely frontin' the conviction.

"No. I came because today, you're beating on him emotionally and breaking open the wounds I caused. I'm more to blame than you are, but at the same time I can't ignore him when he asks for my help. Which he plainly did, for the first time in about a decade. What kind of recovering alcoholic father would I be if I weren't here running this interference right now?"

Matt takes his sunglasses off and looks at me with bloodshot eyes, then at the ground. "You really called him for help? Christ, I thought you hated him. I thought you wanted to leave him behind."

"That's what I say," I admit. "And there's no one I can tell that lie to as easy as you. But it's still a lie. I can't leave him behind anymore than I can walk away from you. But I can't deal with another dysfunctional dad relationship. What you did for me last year, when you threw me in the pool. I'll never forget. That's the Matt del Marco I respect. That's the mentor and father I need. Let Ross help you find your way back to him."

Matt rubs his face. "That guy you need? That everyone needs? He gets tired of being everything to everyone."

"Matt, come on," I say gently. "You're just sick shit sad and drunk right now. You don't mean that. You love being that guy. You are that guy. And Row needs you right now. And what the hell am I supposed to tell Marianne? She made me responsible for you, and I don't know how to fucking do this. I couldn't help Ashlynn. I couldn't help my own dad. All I know is how to be angry and frustrated and...powerless in the face of this kind of shit."

Ross does lay a hand gently on my shoulder now. "Matt knows how to help himself, Trace. It's not on you."

"It's not," Matt says. "And I never want you to think it is. I'll go to the meeting. I want to go." He finally meets Ross's gaze. "It's time you and I got to know each other anyway. Us pulling at him from opposite poles is not doing him good, and obviously we are more alike than either of us want to admit."

"Agreed." Ross gestures a hand toward his car.

Matt turns, sways, rights himself on the hood the Suburban. "Son, my drinking is a separate issue and I have to deal with that, but Bodie is a problem we have to figure out together."

""Bodie is a person, not a problem. And he's a part of my band. So the way I see it, Soundcrush has a serious situation with a band member, and Soundcrush has to figure it out. Like we always do. With a vote."

"It is your band, Trace. And your call. But think about this, because I've seen it too many times: bands that run on an open table debate never last. What you think is a working democracy when you are first starting out turns into divisive chaos over time, as different members move to different life places. Bands that last are run by a strong leader that have a vision and keep everyone aligned with that vision. Soundcrush will live or die by your will, not by a vote," Matt warns, as he stumbles away, throwing himself into Ross's car.

Ross looks at me over the top of his car. "He's maybe not wrong, but remember...it's your vision, and not Matt's, that matters in Soundcrush."

My two fathers drive away, leaving me with a heavy heart and even heavier shoulders.

Well, folks, thoughts on this chapter?

Anyone surprised by Matt's bender, considering his backstory and incidence of Skid Marc's inferred partying on the reunion tour? (I'm not...)

How did the Matt/Ross meeting strike you? I loved it, but that's only because I like turning characters and tropes all around like a Rubix cube and examining all their sides...

Given all the advice from his dad and Trace's monologue in this chapter, and they way he tried to stick up for Bodie to Matt,  what reaction do you think he's going to have to hearing of Bodie's drug muling?