Page 45 of Drive
After his mind would take him down this low and shadowed road, he’d second guess himself. Maybe she really was sick, and while he was nursing his wounded pride, she’d caught pneumonia from her sister and had no one to take care of her. And then he would feel a tug of urgency to drive over to her house and make sure she wasokay.
But even someone with pneumonia could respond to a text,right?
So, he’d go from worry back to anger again, and then he’d want to drive over to her house to yell at her or silence them both with a kiss; he never knewwhich.
And then he’d think of hisfather.
Xand Gilchrist had made a fool of himself over Jacques’s mother long before he’d climbed drunk behind the wheel of his Tacoma and plowed through two people. He’d chased her years before she actually ran. Because she was never reallythereto begin with. Jacques’s earliest memories were of his dad bending over backward for her. Writing songs to vie for her attention. Buying flowers on a Tuesday to keep her from feeling bored. Cleaning the house and doing the laundry so she wouldn’t cry about being chaineddown.
But she’d ignored him. And she had gotten bored. And she’d criedanyway.
When she finally left, Jacques had felt scared and sad and angry at first. But then he’d felt relieved. He’d grown up waiting for the other shoe to drop — fearing it silently as he read the tense and watchful look that never left his father’s eyes — so when she was gone and life carried on, he didn’t have to fear her leaving anymore. Losing his mother, he’d quickly learned, was not the worst thing in theworld.
The worst thing in the world was watching his father ruin lives because ofit.
Jacques had never completely forgiven him for that. So as much as he wanted to go to Rainey, he would not allow himself the lapse in control. Instead, he wrotesongs.
He wrote songs about a girl with rain in her name. He wrote songs about picking over his father’s vinyl stash. He wrote songs about kissing in acourtyard.
Because Rainey Reeves wouldn’t call him back, Heroine’s repertoire doubled in the span of aweek.
Chapter 12
Heroine was playingFestival.
Rainey knew this because she’d started following the band on Facebook and Instagram two days after their show at Artmosphere. She’d started following them because she couldn’t return Jacques’s calls, but she needed to hear abouthim.
That first day after she’d left the show, Rainey had stuck to her guns and hidden her phone in the drawer of her nightstand. She could almost sense it as an omniscient presence in the house as she’d moved around and did chores all day. It was taunting her, waiting until she had to look atit.
Her stomach had seized, and her skin prickled that night when she finally saw the three missed calls and four texts he’d left her. He wanted to talk to her. He wanted to be with her, and she’d behaved like it didn’tmatter.
But itdid.
So, she read every one of his texts and listened to both of his voicemails. More thanonce.
And she could hear the frustration in his voice and read the worry in his messages, and both left her scalded in shame, but she still didn’t respond. What would she have said?“I don’t want to see you again?”That wasn’t true. She did want to see him. Again and again. And that was part of theproblem.
She also couldn’t tell him the truth.“One day, soon, you’ll leave, and that’ll hurt like hell.”Saying that would either freak him out — because why was she thinking so far ahead when they’d only just met — or force him to give her false assurances. No, it was better just to go dark. Rainey had known he’d eventually stop reaching out, and hedid.
But he’d told her enough in his messages to let her know that something special was happening for Heroine. No surprise. The YouTube video — which she’d watched seven times — had gone viral. Every post on their social media pages earned hundreds of likes, and the buzz about their upcoming spot at Festival was reaching a feverpitch.
The week of Festival, Rainey had every intention of going to Heroine’s show. She wasn’t planning to let Jacques know, of course, but the crowd would be big enough for her to blend in and see him in actionagain.
But the day before the Festival Courir, Holi spiked a fever again. This time it was strep. With her white blood cell count so low, her immune system was almost nonexistent, and the most common infections became deadly. Even though she’d taken a medical leave of absence from work to seek treatment and avoid exposure to germs, nothing so far had proven to boost her blood cell count levels, and she was still getting sick. Even before this latest illness, Holi’s doctor had wanted to start looking at stem cell treatment, and they’d tested Rainey days earlier to see if she was a match, but the results weren’t backyet.
So, Saturday morning, while Jacques was playing to a crowd that likely numbered in the thousands, Rainey was sitting in a hospital room with her sister. But she tuned into the KRVS live feed of the Festival and waited for the band tostart.
Holi slept beside her, the IV drip of antibiotics her second dose that month. The hematologist was due to come on rounds soon, and they’d talk about what would come next, but for a few minutes, Rainey welcomed the escape her ear buds offered her as she listened to the opening of theirset.
“Happy Festival, y’all!” A raspy female voice called to the crowd. This must have been Kate, the short, sultry-voiced alto in the band. Cheers followed her greeting. “Thanks for coming out here to see us this early on a Saturday. Since we’re here for the Courir, let’s open with something new. It’s called ‘Run.’”
The band broke into a high energy rhythm, and the lyrics started on the eight-count.
Why didyou open forme
Only toclose?
Why did you let mein
