Chapter 3:

"Where is it? Shit! Shit! Oh, shit!" Munky called from the back of the bus. As Sheena sat at the table, working slowly on an apple, he rushed to the table and began ruffling through a pile of Playboy magazines that had accumulated there over the past couple of weeks. "No," he moaned, carelessly sending the stack tumbling to the ground. He collapsed across from her and buried his head in his hands. She turned away as his fingers ran coarsely through his dreadlocks, but as whimpers escaped him she turned back. Her eyes softened despite herself.

He stood up again and ran to the couch. Cushions and pillows soared across the TV room erratically over his shoulder. She watched in horror as he frantically searched through each crack and crevice. Searched for something.

"Do you need help?" she finally asked after she saw the genuine despair on his face. He turned up to see her, tears flooding his breath-taking eyes. She was shocked, sympathetic. It was an awkward feeling; she felt empathy for him in this time of need; this man who she had thought was so goddamned cold. After a minute of indecision she walked closer to him. Placed a neutral hand on his shoulder as he wiped his eyes and settled his large hands on the sides of his slim waist.

"What are you looking for?"

He avoided her gaze. "I’m looking for my cross. My cross. I can’t find my cross." He patted his chest with two fingers. "It’s silver. I need to find it."

"Okay, well, settle down," she said softly. Then she aided him in his search. Together they looked up and down, through the bathroom and the kitchen. They then moved on into the back, and she searched for his cross among the couches and equipment in the back, where they wrote music for their next album. Next was the cubbies. Without telling him she peeled back the curtain to his cubby and lifted herself in. Her hands ran through the silk sheets that covered him at night, still warm from the night before.

Inside the cubby it was surprisingly warm, comfortable. And large, much more spacious than Sheena’s little

porthole. It smelled of stale cigarette smoke and expensive cologne—such a fine mix of the two that she wasn’t sure whether it was pleasant or repulsive. Her hands fumbled onto a series of tapes, and a couple tattoo and exotic magazines. Searching under his pillow, her hand came across a hard piece of metal. She grabbed it. The cross!

"I found it!" she called over her shoulder. She quickly ran into the back, where he was busy searching around his various guitars and recording equipment. He’d feared the worst: that he’d lost it during the show in Chicago. Or, even worse, that a fan had stolen it right under his nose—

"You did?"

"Yeah." She walked to him with it; handed it to him.

"Where was it?" he asked as he observed it with soft eyes. He was possessed with the sudden impulse to hug and kiss her. His heart thudded in his chest as relief filled him.

He wanted a cigarette.

"It was on the table," she lied. She knew he wouldn’t like the idea that she’d been snooping through his things. She remembered the tattoo magazines. She looked at the tattoo of his nickname as it stained his lower arm. Biting her lip, she told herself not to say anything. He was too busy regarding his cross to notice her, anyway. As she watched he held it to him. He cradled that cross like a baby. Until he realized something.

"How am I gonna wear it? Shit."

Sheena’s remembered the necklace she wore around her neck. It was a good quality necklace; just cheap. She took it off as he examined her with his eyes.

She pretended not to notice the yearning look he couldn’t hide. She hated that look. But somehow it wasn’t so bad on him…

He’s an asshole, Sheena. An asshole, she reminded herself. He had treated those two poor women like shit when he’d found out what he’d done. He made a lot of mistakes; he used women. Stay away from him.

But no, that wasn’t right. Would a man so awful cry over something so trivial? Was he feeling guilty, and had just made a mistake he chose to deal with by not dealing with it? He had a passion for that tiny trinket. Whatever it meant to him, it showed that he cared for something. Something enough that he could push away his pride to cry about it. In order to do that he must have a heart. Otherwise he wouldn’t have let the tears coarse down his face as they did.

"Here," she said. His brown eyes gave nothing away as she laced the cross onto the necklace. She reached her arms around his neck, and slowly connected it. Once it was around him he picked it up and held it between two long fingertips.

"Thank you," was all he could think of to say.

"No problem." In silence they left the back and entered the front room, where David and Fieldy were watching the morning news. David’s pitch-black eyebrows lifted slowly as he saw them coming from the cubbies, Munky close behind her, but he said nothing. It was none of his business. He’d surely hear something about it if it were important enough. Munky always ended up telling them everything he did—he felt the need to tell them of all of his endeavors, whether they wanted to hear it or not. (Though even David had to admit that he DID have some interesting stories).

Part of him couldn’t blame Munky. Sheena had a queer but beautiful blush to her features, offsetting her paleness. She was a bit thin, but a nice body, nonetheless. And there was this aura of intelligence about her. Yet this awful sadness…deep, deep down…

David and Fieldy exchanged a look that told all. A look only developed between two friends who knew everything about each other. Munky was on the move; he had a new target. Definitely a new target.

"Well, the cross is really important to me because my dad gave it to me," Munky said as he lit a cigarette for himself. He watched Sheena as she threw away her apple. It was still green and fresh, but it was warm. She hated warm fruit; she always had to refrigerate it before she ate it. After she had thrown it out she debated whether or not to leave.

As an afterthought she sat across the table from him. She refused his offer of a cigarette. "It’s good that you’re close to your dad."

"Yeah," he answered. His eyes rolled away from her, the sockets suddenly watery. Sheena instantly knew she had said something wrong. She didn’t know what, but she had. He melodramatically stood up after grinding his cigarette cold.

"I used to be. I used to be that close to my dad."

Three hours later…

Time passed with the slow audacity that was boredom, and by the time Sheena felt that she was ready for bed she looked up at the clock and found that it was noon. Standing up, she left the tour bus—where she’d been alone, writing since they’d left—and headed to the arena. She gained access with her VIP pass.

The arena was cold and dark. All the empty seats made Sheena feel queerly insignificant. She could feel them boring into her, watching her in their silent rows. She shivered. Why had she come here? She didn’t know. To get out, maybe. To get away from the confines of her own imagination. As far as her story was concerned she’d run into a hole which she could not escape. After hours of labor, she was faced with the inevitable decision of abandoning it. She knew there was an angle that she could use, but in her current confusion she couldn’t find it. And at that moment she could give a shit if the whole damned thing crashed into the oblivion of her other failures.

Yes, standing near the back fringe of the cement floor that would soon house a bunch of violent moshers was somewhat relaxing. It was then as empty as she wished her mind could be. Her head these days were filled with so many thoughts, all of them disturbing. Nothing relaxed her. Seeing Jon again made her wish she was back

home, but did she want to go back? No fucking way.

She was sick of staring at a white wall, struggling to find inspiration in its blankness as she worked out the plots to a million stories that she would eventually abandon. Sometimes she’d spend the entire day naked—sometimes she’d wear layers and layers of clothing. She had developed queer little habits for her writing, sometimes thinking that it was because her life was so boring that she couldn’t help but be a little strange. Obviously, Renee thought that she was strange.

Munky didn’t.

Or maybe he was so blinded by his idiocy that he just didn’t see it. She didn’t understand his feelings for her. She was no fool; she could read his looks, his gaze that asked so much of her. Her apprehension obviously didn’t sway him. He always looked at her across the room with odd confidence. A coolness that disturbed Sheena even more then what he wanted to do to her. She thought that that thick wall of nonchalance around him could never be penetrated, but she had been wrong. This morning, watching him cry at a little trinket, she knew a different side had surfaced. It wasn’t cool or charming or knowing. It was the confused look of a little boy without his mother in the middle of a crowd.

"Brian, how old is Sheena?" Munky’s voice echoed through the arena as the two guitarists made their way onto the stage. Munky assisted Head in setting the tunings for their guitars. A large, amplified sound filled the arena, so profound that it startled Sheena. She sunk into the shadows. But she didn’t leave.

"She’s 24. Like Jon."

"Really? She looks a little bit younger than that. She single?" Another loud, startling noise echoing off the walls.

"I think so. But I don’t think she’s you’re type. You’re not listening to me, man. She’s only gonna make you wish you hadn’t known her."

Sheena’s frowned simultaneously with Munky. Sheena instantly wondered what the hell he meant by that. "What do you mean, man? I thought you and her were tight."

"Yeah, I know…" Head said, his voice trailing off as Munky waited angrily for an answer. He could think of none. His words had been empty and useless, and that made Munky positively irate. Why was Head being such a fucking asshole, after all the years of reveling in Munky’s sex life?

"If you don’t want me to be around her, then why don’t you just tell me? But you can’t stop me. I can do whatever I want, and if I wanna flirt with her, I will. You can’t decide for me who I can and can’t be with…"

"Whatever! I just don’t want you to hurt her, if you wanna know the truth. That’s the honest truth. Because I know how sensitive she is," Head finally snapped, his hands flying up as he spun to face Munky, the braids he so painstakingly redid every other night swinging out.

The silence in the arena was deafening. Sheena felt as if she’d been stabbed in the back. She took a step forward—to get the hell out of there—but as she did her footstep resonated like a boom throughout the arena. Both of the guitarists heard it clearly and looked into the darkness. They demanded whomever it was to reveal themselves. Reluctantly, Sheena stepped out of the shadows. She waved, pretending not to see the venomous look Munky shot Head.

"Hi, guys. Just thought I’d stop by."

Head sighed. He opened his mouth to say something, but at Munky’s insistence shut up. Sheena made her way slowly to the stage. Lifted herself onto it. She felt as oppressed as Rosa Parks at a KKK convention, as out of place. But she was determined not to let it get her down.

Munky’s large guitar fit his body as if it were a glove. He looked so natural on stage. The light reflected pleasantly off of his black dreadlocks; twinkled in his beautiful brown eyes. He was looking at her, wondering within him if she’d heard their conversation.

"Can you still play the drums?" was all that Head could think of to say as she headed to the drum set already set up for David. She only shrugged in response. She didn’t know; but she wanted to find out. She told them that she’d taken up the keyboard since, that she was good at that, and that she should still be good at the drums…who knew? The three of them found a pair of drumsticks before Sheena settled her small body reserved for David’s muscular one.

Turned out she could still bang out a tune if she wanted to. As she sat down she prayed silently to herself that she wouldn’t fuck anything up. Not only for the sake of embarrassing herself in front of an old friend…but also so that she wouldn’t embarrass herself in front of the cold man whom she was fighting herself so desperately over. Half of her was telling her to just let him be. The other half wanted more.

The thing was she didn’t even know what she wanted from him. She just knew she wanted something. He had shown her something this morning, a side of him locked into the little cross he couldn’t live without; the last thing she needed was to mess up now.

She was slowly finding reasons to validate her feelings. But it was like skating on ice with tennis shoes.

Lucky for her, she didn’t fuck up. Far from it, in fact. She banged out a tune that she’d remembered learning when she was about ten years old. She didn’t quite recall why she played that, but once she did she smiled in satisfaction at Head. She was reluctant to see what Munky’s reaction was, for fear that he wasn’t—for some reason beyond her—impressed.

No, she didn’t look to him. Which was why she was so startled when the amplified sound of his guitar filled the arena. He knew that song, and played it as expertly as she played the drums. When he had finished the first round of the riff, she joined in again with the drums. She watched him play, pretending not to notice the smirk underlying his calm face. She laughed as soon as they were done, and stopped. She sang the chorus with a silvery voice that bounced off the walls and came back to them in rivulets of wonderful sound.

"Damn, I hardly even remember that song," Munky admitted as he suavely sauntered to the side of the stage to rest his guitar against a humongous amp. He stuck his hands in his pockets somewhat sheepishly as he walked to the drum set. "But I remember playing the song. Weird, huh?"

Before Sheena even opened her mouth to speak she ran out of words to say. His velvet, deep voice had hearkened her like a caress. She was flying on air, and for a reason she couldn’t quite put a finger on.

You see, she hadn’t had these feelings since high school.

It had been a long time, but she still knew what it felt like. Still knew that the beating of her heart matched his and her sweaty palms—fiercely gripping her drumsticks—were as moist as his own. She was in love.

But Sheena also believed that the term "love" was used way too loosely these days. When someone says "love", they mean infatuation. Jerry Springer guests are perfect examples, what with their "I love her even though I slept with her lover" attitude. So yes, this wasn’t love. She had never known real, true love. This was infatuation, in its purest form.

She saw it in his twinkling eyes as he moved closer to her. As he sat nearer to her, even nearer than Head as they both settled on the chair behind the drum set. He bent his long fingers in half to crack them nervously—an unhealthy tic he’d had for years—and sat in silence. There was something oddly sensitive about the way he sat. He wasn’t slouching or sitting upright. He was somewhere in between, his shoulders nearly folded into his own body.

She thought in an instant that he looked kinda cute like that. Not knowing that he thought the very same way about her.

Silence had penetrated the room. To break it Head brought up a subject Sheena wasn’t really ready to talk about: the past.

"Remember when I came over your house and me and me, you, Jon and Rebekkah made that—"

"Yeah," Sheena said, interrupting him before he could finish. Head didn’t notice; he took a swig of the vodka he kept in the large back pocket of his Jncos and continued. "Me and Bekkah still have that."

Munky was confused. "Have what?"

"Oh, it’s" he said, starting to explain. Why was Head doing this to her? Sheena could just imagine the mortified look on his face as Head told them of the naughty video they’d made those many years ago. Or maybe—even worse—the knowing grin that sometimes stretched across his face. That I’m gonna get you someday grin that made Sheena shiver in a mixture of delight and disgust.

She kindly told Head that she had to leave and stunned them both silent by saying that she’d never kiss another girl again.

Har-de-har-har.

"Do it again…please."

"Alright. Anything for you, baby."

The melody to Aerosmith’s "I Don’t Wanna Miss A Thang" serenaded Sheena as Munky worked the chord progression into the melody of the song for the millionth time that night. She was sitting on the couch in the TV room, him kneeling before her. It had all come down to this: he was on his knees with an acoustic guitar singing an off-tune rendition of an annoying song.

But Sheena seemed impressed all the same, and by the time he had finished she nearly fainted with desire for him. He took her hand and kissed it, which sent her instead into a fit of giggles.

"I love you," he said, and this time he buried himself in her arms. Her soft lips held no hesitation when he pried them open with his own, and tasted for the first time their love. Before he knew it, she removed her clothing, showing him a body fairer than he’d ever imagined. He said no at first, that it was too soon, but when she told him that she loved him and that she wanted to marry him, that was enough. He made love to her repeatedly, over and over. She cried out his name, her moans penetrating the darkness as together they made him whole…

Munky’s eyes popped open. He buried his head into the pillow and moaned as he realized where he was: in a small cubby again, somewhere in Washington state. Eight more shows, and the tour was over. Eight more shows, and Sheena was gone, maybe for forever.

He released the firm grip he had on his painfully tight crotch and sat up. Sheena was ignoring him now. After the encounter they’d had in the auditorium, she’d been avoiding him. Whenever he tried to talk to her, she’d leave or make an excuse. He knew she saw his longing gaze from across the room, that when he dreamed he saw her face happily smiling in his arms. Desire. A desire he’d never guessed at before now tortured him.

He needed to see her.

Quietly, he snuck to the small cubby where she slept. Pulling back the curtain, her beautiful face was exposed to him. This face—the face that he’d dreamt about for so long. He wanted to kiss every inch of it, absorbing its magnificence with his lips. He’d be ever so gentle; she’d beg him never to stop. He knew he could show her things no man had before; give her pleasure she’d only dreamed of.

But she needed time. She needed so much time. She needed so much that there was none left. When he held her against him in his dreams he knew bliss. In two weeks, he’d be sleeping alone in a large, lonely house. The thought brought that heart murmur of his back, which only preached of pain and loss:

Chink.

He jumped when she stirred. He almost closed the curtain, for fear she’d find him watching her. But she didn’t awaken. A minute later, she giggled, and grinned in her sleep. Her legs moved together as Munky watched, resisting the urge to touch her. Her grin faded into a moaning smirk. Eyebrows furrowed and lips slightly parted, she called his name. Munky was shocked at first.

But then of course, he knew she liked him. He’d known it all along, in fact, he discovered with a start. All these days, she’d longed for him as he’d longed for her. And yet . . .and yet she refused him—resented him, in fact—when he offered with his eyes to make their dreams come true.

High School. Head kept referring to "what happened in high school," as if what had happened during that time was too awful to recall. What could’ve possibly happened to her that was so awful? Her mom or dad dying, maybe? No. There was more to it than that, although Munky couldn’t think of anything more awful himself. Whatever it was, Munky knew it was serious; if Head refused to joke about something, then it was for a pretty good fucking reason.

He watched her sleep until her face once again churned into a deep, endless oblivion and her dreams stopped. Five minutes later, she turned away from him. He closed the curtain with a sigh, and headed to the kitchen for a beer.

In the dark, he silently pushed through the tiny aisle that separated the cubbies from the far wall. He grabbed a beer from the fridge, and sat down at the table. When he was done, he grabbed another and another, until the world spun around him and even Sheena wasn’t important. Nothing was. Except for that damned song:

"I don’t wanna close my eyes/I don’t wanna fall asleep . . ." he sang until his tears choked his words. Hand gripped tightly on his twelfth beer, he fainted.

Jon, only a couple feet away on the couch, stirred.

The next morning Sheena greeted her day drowsily. It’s almost too late, Sheena, almost too late. In fact, she was positive now it was too late. He’d never forgive her for the way she’d treated him those past few days. Sorrow and regret overwhelmed her, and she wandered to her

cubby—the only private place she had to herself in that small bus—and let tears fall before applying the little make-up she regularly wore. At about nine in the morning, she made her way into the kitchen. Her heart dropped into her stomach when she saw that Munky had passed out onto the table, beer bottles surrounding him. A burnt-out Marlboro rested cold, between his clenched fingers.

Instead of feeding Jon, Sheena left the room. She could no better stand to see Jon’s glazed expression than witness Munky’s gaze that, even in sleep, pleaded for her heart.