“Who’d ever think that would be coming out of one of our mouths,” Damie snorted. “And no, it’s cream soda. Twist them open. I’ll spread out the food.”
“These don’t twist.” Miki held up a bottle after fighting with it for a few seconds.
Damie dug out Sionn’s car keys from his pocket. “Here, Sionn’s got a church key.”
“Shit, how much does he drink that he’s got one of these?” He made a face at Damie. “Owns a pub. Yeah, forgot.”
They switched off, passing over a soda for a helping of food, and Miki made a face at Damie’s drenching a pile of fries with rooster sauce. After breaking off a piece from a strip of deep-fried, panko-coated cod, Miki dropped the bite-sized piece onto the paper and blew on his fingers to cool them off.
“You never could wait,” Damien said wistfully.
They felt right sitting there—together—their knees touching and blocking the wind from chilling their hot fish and chips with their legs. Miki’s eyes drifted to the right, where another bench sat waiting for another pair of men who’d never sit there again, and he blinked, wiping away the sting of tears forming in his eyes.
If he listened carefully, Miki could almost hear Dave’s soft, rolling laugh and Johnny teasing the Southern man about the merits of mashed potatoes over grits. They’d both stuck to the fish, even when Felix got his hands on Dungeness crab to make into cakes. Damien’d sworn they were the best he’d ever tasted, but Johnny refused to put anything that came out of a shell into his mouth. Dave just said he was a purist, sticking to what Jesus gave the masses to eat.
Until Damien pointed out draft beer wasn’t on the Jesus menu, and Dave retorted wine was a * drink.
They were stupid, teasing arguments—gone over and over again until Miki could recite them from memory.
And memory was all they had left now—held together with a melancholy joy of Damie sitting across of him.
As if able to read Miki’s thoughts—a definite possibility considering all they’d gone through—Damie held up his soda bottle and murmured, “To Dave and Johnny. God, I miss those fucking sons of bitches.”
“To Dave and Johnny,” Miki echoed. “God help the fucking angels above.”
This time the tears came in full force, and he let them fall. The men he’d shared a stage and a life with deserved them. Hell, Damie deserved them too, and God knew he’d cried his fucking soul out when he’d found out Damie was alive.
He’d spent too many moments looking around for the other two members of the band since Damie’d come back. Time slipped away from him, throwing Miki back with its long, shadowy fingers, and he’d come to almost expect to hear Dave singing totally off-key as he made the morning coffee or Johnny yelling through their tiny two-room apartment because he was trapped in the bathroom and needed toilet paper.
Now the smell of brewing java came with a rolling Irish accent and warm hands rubbing up the length of his body to gently break in the morning.
Although sometimes gentle wasn’t exactly the word of the day and he’d found himself on the floor more than once, wondering if he’d ever walk again after Kane was done with him.
“Hey, Sinjun, it’ll be okay.” Damie set the food on the next bench and grabbed him, dragging Miki into a hug. “I’m here, dude.”
“Yeah, I know….” He sniffed and reached for a napkin to wipe his face with. “Just… fucking life, you know?”
“Yeah, it sucks,” Damie agreed. “You know what sucks too?”
“What?” Miki pulled away, scrubbing his face clean, but the wind coming off the water found the remains of his tears to freeze the damp to his skin.
“I miss playing. On stage. Fuck, I just miss playing,” Damie mumbled. “And I feel like I’m cheating on the guys, you know?”
Miki did know. Damie wasn’t the only one missing the feel of boards under his feet and the burn of amplifiers in his ears. But they were missing half of their body. Death amputated some of their limbs, and now they stumbled, unable to walk straight or grab at things properly because neither one of them could grasp the loss of their bandmates.
The music still whispered to him. Sometimes in snippets. Other times in full-blown nuclear blasts. But their drum and bass lines remained silent when he played out what came to his head. He knew the notes—heard the underlying throb of his melody—but the hands he’d come to count on—the ones who brought his brain vomit to life—were gone.
“I miss them,” Miki admitted. “Hard.”
“You know what I’m glad about—through all this shit?”
“What?” He cocked his head, then stole a fry from Damie’s hot-sauce spiked mound. It was instant regret, but the narrowing of his brother’s eyes was worth the pain on his tongue. “Do not judge me.”
“Fucker.” The curse was without any heat and tempered by Damie’s smile.