Justine Davis - Always a Hero

“You can have whatever job you want, Wyatt,” he’d finally said. “If you promise that when the time comes that you want more, you’ll come to me.”

He doubted that time would ever come. He’d had enough, he didn’t want challenge. He wanted numbness. No more life-altering decisions, no more explosive situations.

The thought of things explosive brought back what he’d been trying to avoid thinking about all evening; his abrasive encounter with the high-spirited and strong-willed proprietor of Play On. If stereotypes held a kernel of truth, then she lived up to the hair.

And she’d been more restrained than many would have been under the circumstances. He’d come in firing, and looking back, he wouldn’t have blamed her if she’d thrown him out, or called those cops. Of course, if she was up to something nefarious that drew those kids he was trying to keep Jordan away from, it wasn’t likely she’d be calling the cops for anything.

It occurred to him he should do some homework of his own, something he should have done before he’d charged into Play On. He supposed it was a measure of his progress in the last year that what would have been second nature in the past had only occurred to him so belatedly.

He didn’t want to move, had been seriously considering trying to sleep right here in this chair. But he also knew he didn’t dare risk Jordan finding out he was checking up on his girl idol, so he’d better do it now.

He got up wearily and walked to the desk in the den. He hadn’t powered the computer down after he’d finished his work, so a touch on the mouse brought it back to life.

He began to build the picture.

She was a couple of months shy of thirty. She’d seemed younger to him, but everyone did lately. Born in the heartland, although her parents, solid, level-headed folks, had moved to the West Coast early on in her life. Ordinary childhood, it seemed. She’d been listed as a flower girl in two family weddings before she was five. Then nothing until some speculation in middle school, after a district tournament in which she had apparently smoked the competition, that she might have a future playing tennis. That surprised him; how did you go from potential tennis player to a rock band?

He found the answer in a quote from her, upon the release of Relative Fusion’s first CD. “Tennis didn’t make my blood sing,” she’d said. “Music does.”

The history of the band was easy enough to trace; there were those who still mourned the end even now, years later. They were praised for deep songwriting, the powerful voice of lead singer Christopher “Kit” Hudson, and the innovative arrangements and playing credited to Kai Reynolds. Some canny internet promotion, also credited to Reynolds, plus rabidly loyal fans who adored their “Kit and Kai”—a bit cute, he thought—had brought them to the attention of a small, independent label. Their first CD release had done well enough to encourage a bigger sales campaign on the second.

“Kai’s the brains,” one label representative was quoted as saying. “She’s got a knack for the business. If she ever quits performing, we’d hire her in a minute.”

So perhaps it wasn’t such a reach that she’d ended up running a small-town music store, that she’d gone from winding up venues full of appreciative fans to selling instruments to the local high school band program.

From electric guitars to tubas, he thought wryly.

But she hadn’t, by all accounts, wanted to quit performing. It had been taken out of her hands. One writer, on a popular blog chronicling the music scene in the Northwest, had told the story in bleak detail; the death of lead singer Kit Hudson, and the resulting departure of lead guitarist Kai Reynolds, had spelled the end for the inventive, talented and rising band.

“The fiery couple were the nucleus of Relative Fusion,” the man wrote. “Onstage and off. When Hudson died tragically of an accidental overdose at twenty-six, it took the heart, and the music, out of Reynolds, and she quit the band shortly thereafter. Without that nucleus the rest of the band disintegrated quickly, going their separate ways.”

… took the heart, and the music, out of Reynolds.

It only took a couple of minutes to find what apparently was the only public statement she’d ever made on her lover’s death.

“Kit’s death is the biggest waste I’m ever likely to see in my life. I loved him, but he wouldn’t, couldn’t stop. I can’t be a part of a world that will remind me every day that he was just the latest in a long line that will continue endlessly.”

He read the words again, and then a third time. Including the reference at the bottom of the article that as Hudson’s executor, she had funneled his entire take from the music into funding a rehab clinic in his hometown.

He could almost feel his view of her shift. And he suddenly doubted she was either doing, enabling or selling drugs in the back of her store.

The blogger may have been right, death may have taken the heart out of her, but she had also apparently seen it for what it was, another in a long line of deaths chalked up to not just the drugs but their prevalence in her world.

So she’d walked away.

She’d left behind a career she probably loved, doing what kids all over the world dreamed of doing, and having achieved some amount of success at it. She probably could have stayed, played with another band, but she’d left before it swallowed her up, too.

And he found himself admiring her for having the wisdom and courage to walk away from a soul-eating existence.

And to do it a lot sooner than he had.

Kai knew who it was the moment she heard the back door open. Only one person came in that way when there was still parking out front. She wasn’t sure why, or why it faintly annoyed her.

“Hello, Max.”

“Hey, sweet thing.”

She tried not to wince at the overdone effort at charm. Max was barely into his twenties, fairly good-looking with thick, medium-brown hair, flashing dark eyes and a killer grin, but he walked and talked with a smug swagger she instinctively disliked. She’d seen it before, and in her experience there was rarely anything of substance beneath all the bravado.

But at least he was alone, this time. When he came in with his two followers, he was a different guy, the bravado taking on an ugly edge. Part of maintaining his leadership in his small posse, she supposed. But whatever it was, she didn’t like it, and she was wary whenever the three of them came in together.

And he was a customer, a regular one. Not for instruments; he spent his time in either the sound system corner, or the small CD section in the opposite corner of the store. The big box store in the next town drew people for the big sellers, so she focused on the stuff they didn’t, the smaller, local groups, Americana, the indies, alternative and the more eclectic, off-the-beaten-path stuff.

Things it was hard to find even to download, not in any coherent manner. It didn’t make a huge profit, but most quarters she broke even on it. And since he was a not-insignificant contributor to that, she kept wearing her best service-oriented smile.

But today he wasn’t looking at CDs; instead he leaned forward and rested his elbows on the counter.

“Remember that sound system we were talking about?”

“I think we were drooling more than talking, but yes,” she said, her smile more genuine as she remembered Max’s very real enthusiasm for the very expensive equipment.

Max laughed, and he seemed to drop the swagger. “I want it,” he said.

“Don’t we all. You could blast music all the way to Seattle.”

“No, I mean I want to order them.”

She blinked. “The price hasn’t changed in two weeks, Max.”