Fast Lane - Kristen Ashley Page 0,31

a disaster. Tim’s were not much better. Jesse had lost his dad and his mom had her hands full. Dave’s parents were hippies unaware that the free love era was dead. I never was around them when they weren’t baked.

Tom was their only moral compass and Tom was a former marine.

[Laughs softly, shaking head]

But Preacher, he had uncanny abilities.

He was into minutia. He could keep track of so many little things, it boggled my mind.

But he could also see the big picture.

He had a gift with that too.

We had just been reunited and Jesse’s girl was there with Jess.

What Josh told that reporter about Preacher, Jesse and me could have put a number of things that were very important to Preacher in jeopardy.

My being with him.

Jesse’s happiness.

Not to mention Preacher’s.

Jesse and Preacher’s friendship.

Was it right for Preacher to teach that as a physical lesson?

I know my answer.

He was twenty-five and he didn’t know any better.

If I had talked about it then, that would have been my answer.

And it still is.

[Off tape]

Do you feel you became the moral compass for the band?

Oh yes.

Was that a burden?

Not once.

I woke up in bed alone and a little confused where I was.

I turned my head and saw a tube of toothpaste and a new toothbrush in its wrapper resting in the indent of the pillow where Preacher had slept.

Next to it was a piece of paper.

I rolled to my side, got up on an elbow and reached out to nab the paper.

Down at breakfast with the guys. Don’t come down. I’ll have coffee with them and we’ll get room service when I come back up.

I don’t want to share you this morning.

- Preach

I smiled, thinking I didn’t want to be shared, then I realized I didn’t know how long he’d been gone, which meant he could be back at any second, so I caught up the toothpaste and brush and rolled out of bed.

When I was done in the bathroom, I did not go to the window to check the view in the daytime.

I fell back into bed.

Mostly because it smelled of Preacher.

To take this in as much as possible, I grabbed his pillow and hugged it to me, burying my face in it.

We had again slept on top of the covers fully clothed except we’d taken off our shoes.

I liked it that we did the same thing this time as the last.

And it gave me shivers, thinking about what might go on from there.

I had talked to him about Mom.

I had talked to him about Dad.

I had talked to him about Gram, Gramps, Sonia, Julia.

We’d moved from couch to bed to get more comfortable.

But, like that first night, that magical night, that night I was enormously glad I was not wrong about, when I gave him my bad stuff and he’d gifted me with trusting me with his own (much, much worse) stuff, we’d tangled up together and took no more room than when we were on the couch.

And holding his pillow to me, his scent, our second night together behind us, a night which started out rockier than the first, but ended up just as beautiful, I didn’t know.

I really didn’t.

I didn’t know what this was.

I was a pop music girl.

Yes, I believed the children were our future and the only nasty thing I liked was a nasty groove.

Janet Jackson. Cyndi Lauper. Madonna. Whitney Houston.

Okay, so I nearly wore out my Purple Rain album, and there were some major guitar riffs on that.

And when I went to college, my musical repertoire expanded to include The Cure. The Smiths. Depeche Mode. Kate Bush. Peter Gabriel. U2.

I’d graduated from Wham!

I was hip.

But Preacher’s music?

I scrunched my nose against the pillow.

One could say, now that a new day had dawned and things were much different than the day before, I could look back to watching him onstage, singing a number of songs that I knew were about me that weren’t real nice (except “The Back of You,” that one was incredibly sweet, and I knew then, it was a major reason why I was right then lying in that bed in Chicago) that there was definitely something hot about that.

But mostly it was hot because Preacher was hot.

I was not a rock girl.

I’d seen precisely two concerts in my life, outside the one I saw last night.

Patti Labelle and Sha Na Na.

So, what was I doing?

The outer door opened, and I pushed up, keeping hold of the pillow, and looked to the opened double doors