Take Me for Granted

Chapter 25: Grant

The week of Thanksgiving, Ari left to visit her family in Boston. I spent the time with my guitar.

Music lifted me up, tore me open, infused others with my very being, and then healed all our wounds. It had been for a very long time what made my world tick

But I’d never been a particularly good lyricist. I knew what I wanted to say, but that would never translate to what I actually wrote. When Miller wrote songs, they had a life force, a beating heart, an inherent energy. Yet, when I sat down to try to make that happen, I would end up tossing out more pieces of paper than were left in the notebook.

All of a sudden, I couldn’t shut my brain off. The voices were there, incessantly calling for me to give them meaning. Every time I ignored them, they would come back full force until it was all I could do to get the words down.

When I handed the sheets of paper to Miller on our first day back to rehearsal, he looked at me like I was mental.

“Who’d you steal this from?”

“Your mother.”

“And here I thought you reserved Mom jokes for Vin.”

“I’m happy Grant is banging someone else’s Mom for once,” Vin chimed in.

“You know, I always give preference to Italian pussy.” I smacked Vin on the arm and retreated to my guitar stand.

“Sounds like you’re only giving preference to a certain pussy lately,” Vin said.

I shrugged and slung my baby over my head. “And?”

“And…” Vin glanced at Miller and McAvoy for support.

Miller just ignored him, and McAvoy looked half-baked in the back of the garage.

“Bro, you’re a fucking king, a fucking legend. You’ve bagged more chicks than anyone else. Your reputation is fucking off the charts. What the fuck are people going to say if you give all that up for some bitch?”

“Vin,” Miller warned.

I didn’t know what happened. I just reacted. I grabbed Vin by the front of his shirt and threw him into the nearest wall. “I’m going to fucking tell them to mind their own fucking business.”

Miller and McAvoy were there in a split second. I hadn’t even realized that McAvoy could move that fast in his state. Soon, they had my arms behind my back and were hauling me away from Vin. My own brother, and I had been ready to fucking destroy him over one dipshit comment.

I shrugged the guys off of me and ran a hand back through my hair. I needed to fucking get my shit under control.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Vin yelled.

“Why the fuck are you provoking him?” Miller asked. “You’ve known he’s been with the same chick for a while.”

“Stay out of this, Miller,” Vin snapped. Vin took a step forward and got in my face. “You think she’s changed you? I’ve known you since you were twelve fucking years old. You’ve been scamming girls into fucking your dumbass for nearly as long. And now, you’re getting up in my face for pointing that shit out?”

I wanted to punch him. I wanted to fucking lay him on his guido ass. I wanted to bury him with his words. He lived in my fucking house. He played in my fucking band. He could learn how to fucking treat a brother.

“I don’t need to hear this shit.” I turned and walked toward the door.

“You’re just going to fucking back down and walk away?” Vin taunted me.

“I’m going to fucking get out of here before I beat the shit out of you.”

“All of this over one chick?”

I stopped with my hand on the doorknob. “Just think, Vin, more pussy for you.”

Shit was still tense between Vin and me backstage at the next ContraBand show. We’d rehearsed during the last week, but there had been no chance of us trying my new song when neither of us could see eye-to-eye on anything. It was our last show before the Poconos music festival, and we couldn’t even agree on a set for tonight.

A part of me refused to see reason in what Vin had said. I could do whatever the fuck I wanted with whoever I wanted. If that meant I was spending all my time with Aribel and not fucking dumb useless chicks, then I was entitled to that choice. But the other part of me saw exactly what Vin had spouted. Could someone do a one-eighty in a couple of months? I hadn’t gotten my dick wet because of her. Is it even worth that?

It was fucking Ari. I wanted to say yes. I’d told her she was worth waiting for. But just hearing Vin talk about it had made me second-guess everything I’d offered her at the beach. I was some uneducated jackass with no future and more than a few skeletons in my past. My reputation was warranted because the line of girls I’d fucked stretched from one end of the state to the other. Had I actually changed? Or did I just want to believe I had for her?

And just thinking about all of that fucked with my mind.

I should have been preparing myself to go onstage for our show. Instead, I was drinking like a fish backstage, trying not to think about how much of a fuck-up I was. I’d gone onstage wasted before, but my heart had been into it. Right now, the only thing my heart was into was the bottle in my hands.

“Hey, babe, you got a light?” I asked a chick standing near me.

Her big brown eyes stared up at me with reverence, and all I saw were her tits.

She fished in her purse and produced a lighter. “Let me do that for you.” She cupped her hand around the cigarette hanging between my lips and then flicked the Zippo to light it.

“Thanks, darlin’.”

I pulled a drag on the cigarette and then breathed the smoke out into her face. I preferred to smoke weed, but I hadn’t gone to see my guy in, like, a fucking month, so this would have to do.

“Anytime,” she said.

She wasn’t even offended that I’d just fucking blown smoke into her face. She was actually leaning into me. Damn, chicks are so easy.

“What are you doing later?” she asked.

Not her—that’s for damn sure. “You know, you have a familiar face.”

The girl scrunched up her nose. “I’ve been to all your shows.”

“Oh, yeah?” I breathed in and puffed out the smoke into her familiar face again.

She nodded slowly and placed her hand on my chest. Yeah, so not happening. There was brown hair where there should have been blonde, and brown eyes where there should have been hurricane blue.

“Huh. You know Aribel Graham by any chance?”

The girl straightened, flustered. “Aribel?” she snapped. “I think we have classes together,” she said with a shrug. “Blonde, kind of weird, always with some guy. Benjamin, I think?”

I stumbled a step backward. What the fuck? No way. No fucking way. Not my Ari. A pang of jealousy shot through my chest. I hadn’t been with anyone else since fucking September, and Ari had still been seeing her ex-boyfriend? I thought I’d gotten rid of Benny on day one.

“Are you okay?” she asked, her tits pressing into my arm.

“Fine. Just got a show tonight,” I said, passing her my beer without thinking.

I walked away to find Miller. Ari wasn’t supposed to be at the show until we started performing, so I couldn’t even fucking ask her what was going on. That wasn’t something I could do through a text message.

“You ready to go?” Miller asked when I finally found him outside.

“Yeah.”

“You look completely fucked-up. Are you even going to be able to play?” He sounded furious.

“Bro, lay off. I can fucking play this set blindfolded, high as a kite.”

Miller shook his head. “Well, you can’t sing with this in your mouth.” He took the cigarette from me and stubbed it out under his foot. “And if you don’t get your head out of your ass about the shit Vin said, then I’m going to fucking cancel tonight.”

“You can’t fucking cancel!”

“I can do whatever the fuck I want! I book the shows. I write the songs. I keep your dumbasses in line. You have feelings for Aribel. She’s fucking knocked some humanity into you. Don’t let Vin convince you that’s a bad thing. That would make you even more of a fucking idiot than you already are, and I don’t want to see what that would do to my best friend.”

“I think she’s seeing someone else,” I confided.

“Fuck. You sure? You talked to her about this?”

“Nah, man.”

Miller glared at me. “You fuck this up for no good reason, and you’ll regret it. Play our set, and then talk to your fucking girl.”