“Me, too. Coors, that is. Not the light ones.”
“It’s weird, but I find it comforting when I’m traveling a lot. They keep wanting to foist Cristal on me. Yes, I hear how that sounds.”
“No, I get it. Good beer tastes great, but cheap beer tastes like I’m about to lose my virginity to Deborah Bellacino at a kegger. And that’s a damn good flavor.”
Jasper gave a short, tense laugh. “I’m going to steal that line for a song, Caldera.”
“Knock yourself out.”
There was a little silence.
“You know what I’m doing here?” Gabe said idly after a moment.
Jasper didn’t say anything for quite a long time.
That was fine. Gabe wasn’t going anywhere. Besides, this was an unbelievably comfortable sofa.
Townes finally leaned toward him a little. “I once thought I was tough, Caldera. I mean, and sure, maybe I am tough. I mean, you batter pretty much anything enough and it gets a tough outer shell, right? Calluses? And so forth? I’ve stared down any number of tattoo needles.”
“Heh. Yeah. I have the internet. I know your sad origin story.”
“I can deal with bad reviews, hecklers, distorted stories in the press, angry women... I don’t love it, but it comes with the territory, and I’ve learned how to deal with it.”
“Your point?”
“Tough...” Jasper gulped some of the Coors. “...ain’t the same as brave.”
Gabe took this in. Jasper was clearly getting around to the point in the way of a storyteller.
“Oh, I don’t know. I think standing in front of thousands of people in that getup is pretty brave.”
“Hey, I’m working these pants, man.” Jasper wasn’t the least offended. His jeans looked as though they’d been dragged behind a semitruck on a bad highway for about forty miles. “But back to my point, Caldera, and I do realize I’m taking a while to get to it... you’re a brave guy, right? I mean, you’ve been shot at. Probably. I’m guessing.”
“Sure. I was doing my job.”
Jasper gave an exasperated laugh and shook his head. “Oh,c’mon,” Jasper said irritably, “cut the noble shit. That’s how everyone defines ‘brave.’ Willingly getting shot or blown up. Defending people. Rushing into burning buildings. There has to be danger for someone to be brave, right? Doing the right thing, even when it’s hard, even when you really don’t want to or when you’re afraid you’re going to fuck it up. And so forth. That’s what brave is. And I don’t like knowing it, but I know definitively I am not that guy. I am not brave. Tonight was the culmination of me recognizing the magnitude of something I’d gotten myself into with Annelise and chickening out. She’s going to want things from me. Like... consistency. And follow-through. I’m going to have to think about what I do and say because it’ll get back to her, and I’ve never had to do that before. And I want her tolikeme. Even love me. Her family hates me. And I...” He sank back against the sofa and pressed his lips together again.
Gabe was familiar with the tactic of easily accepting blame. It could disarm an argument pretty fast.
Townes was not going to get off easy.
“First,” Gabe said easily, “I meant what I said. It’s a job. I was fit for it and I did it. Just like your job is to get up there and make people go ‘woooooo!’ and then go home and tattoo quotes from your songs on their bodies and regret it in a decade when they try to get grown-up jobs. Mine was to occasionally come close to getting killed. Also, to make sure no other members of my team were killed. An oversimplification, but when you have a job to do, and you have an affinity for it, you do it well. I was good at it. Just like I’m good at being a school principal now. I can manage and read circumstances and people. And... you do what you do. Extraordinarily well. Other things—things that have no precedent in your life, things that are entirely new—take practice.”
“Okay, Caldera, I get what you’re saying. Here’s the problem with that. You know how when you were a kid, and you’re mouthing off to your mom and you make a face and Mom would tell you your face would freeze that way?”
“Sure.”
“Getting through my childhood—totally rootless, didn’t have a dad, my mom wasn’t cuddly—I had to be completely self-focused and you know what? I’ve mostly been great with it. I have no real ties holding me down. I’ve been pretty fucking awfully cavalier with the feelings of women and the excuse I always use is ‘that’s just how I am.’” He used air quotes and hunched, palms upward, parodying himself. “I’ve never been proud of that, but it’s just kind of... the groove I’ve worn through life, and I keep sliding along in that groove. Or maybe it’s a rut. Anyway. It’s also not working for me anymore. Hasn’t been for some time. I swear on...” He threw his arms out in a gesture like a conjurer, encompassing the trailer, the arena, the guitars, ostensibly, his entire life as a rock star. “...all of this that I do want to be part of Annelise’s life. I want to be better. It just... it just started to snowball on me, man. I realized that this one little person is going to want me to do what I say I’m going to do, and... I promised something I realized I couldn’t deliver and... I just...”
He lifted up both hands and splayed his fingers. “I freaked. I lost my nerve. I’m a balls-out coward.”
Gabe nodded thoughtfully. Then leaned back. “Okay, Townes. Like I said, I know your life story. But here’s the thing. When a kid—your kid—is involved, how you got the way you are doesn’t factor. That’s between you and your shrink. Right now you’re not a rock god or some poor fatherless kid. Right now you’re just the asshole who broke a little girl’s heart when he could have so easily been a hero.”
Jasper froze. His hand tightened on the can of beer.
“And to my knowledge it’s never been broken before, so you know, there’s a dubious milestone for you. She trusts adults. She’s innocent that way. Annelise is the most precious thing in the world to Eden, and she took the risk of allowing you into her life because that’s what you wanted. Do you have any idea how tough that decision was for her? For her to share her amazing little girl with you? Do you really get it? When you broke Annelise’s heart, you broke her mother’s heart. And I’ll bedamnedif I let anything hurt her mother if I can do anything about it.”
Gabe’s voice sounded reasonable, but it gathered the tension and threat and the resonance of a vow.