Rubbing my shoulder blades, he breathed out loudly. “Yeah. I guess I am.”
We sat in the car and listened to the rain. It reminded me of the day, so recently, where we'd gotten soaked while Sean warned me about Drezden. Clarity rolled up my spine. “You've been angry at him for so long, haven't you?”
Gingerly, my brother eased me off of him. His blue eyes were rimmed in red; I noticed the spider-veins crawling in the whites. How long had those been there? “Drezden messed with my head—with everything—that day.”
That day. He didn't have to say it. Sean was talking about the audition. “Tell me what happened.”
“It wasn't even—lord, I don't know. It's hard to explain.”
Reaching for his hands, I cupped them. “Just try, I want to know.”
His face was pale in the shadows. “I drove all the way upstate when I heard there was an audition.” Sean flexed his fingers in mine. “I showed up, and Lola... I played my damn heart out. I was—” He cut himself off with a bark of cold laughter. “I was so sure I had the position. I was so stoked; how could I not be picked?”
Thunder rattled the sky outside. “And?”
Closing his fists, my brother gave me a sad smile. “And Drezden told me to leave. Just that, to leave. I asked him why. How could I just walk away without understanding why I wasn't good enough?” Gritting his teeth, he resembled a snarling dog. “The asshole told me—get this—he said he knew my type. He said some bullshit like, 'Someone who gets angry and bitter when things aren't handed to them... someone like that doesn't have what it takes.'”
My mouth was hanging open. Not because of what Drezden had told my brother, but because Sean remembered every last word of that sentence. He's been going over that in his head for years. Reliving that day. Holy shit.
“He asked me something, too,” Sean muttered hotly.
My throat was parched. “What?”
His sapphire eyes looked through the window. They stared into the past, seeing that fateful day instead of the grey rain. “He asked me, 'What makes a good guitarist?'”
The hairs on my body stood on end so tight it hurt. “What did you answer?” I asked eagerly, my curiosity turning my stomach in knots.
He fell back in his seat, arching his neck and watching the ceiling. “Talent. I told him that talent was what made a good guitarist.”
My heart was stuffing itself into my throat. “What did he say?”
There, the crooked, cynical smile I knew so well. “He told me I was wrong. He responded, quite eloquently, 'Fuck off.' So I kicked over his amp and then I left.”
The pounding in my skull wouldn't stop. That's what this was all about. A several years long grudge. Drezden had called it. I remembered the night we'd had dinner, my first night spending time with Headstones. Drezden asked me if my brother was still pissed about what had happened. Brenda told him to stop worrying.
Drezden was right all along.
The revelation was too much for me. “You held onto the hate this entire time. Why would you tell me to audition for Four and a Half Headstones if you hated Drezden so much?”
“Because I care about you more,” he said flatly, eyebrows crawling high. “Because I still wanted you to make it big. I guess I just wasn't strong enough to watch it all happen right in my face.”
Wiping my nose with my sleeve, I said, “Asking me to join your band the other day, that wasn't about bringing me on so we could play together, it was about watching him lose me.”
My brother was shaking his head before I finished. “No, no! Fuck, no, Lola. Yeah, okay, a big part of me wanted Drezden to fall apart after... after what he said to me. After what he made me feel about myself, my skills.” His lips pulled back, low and twisted. “But I did want to see us both make it to the top.”
“I'm already at the top,” I whispered cynically.
“I know.” His hand clasped on my shoulder. I expected sarcasm or cruelty, but he clasped me with genuine warmth in his sad smile.
Tears threatened to bubble back up; I pushed them down with a deep breath. “Promise me you won't give up your dream. We can both still be big rock stars... together. Okay?”
That time, it was Sean who started the hug. I wanted it to go on forever, for the two of us