Gavin Holder Series

Chapter 9

Chapter 9

By the time I got home to the bottle of Grey Goose waiting on my coffee table, it was raining outside. I couldn't see the moon, but it wasn't dark out there. Long sheets of slanting rain glittered yellow beneath the streetlights. I loosened my tie as I stared out the window and kicked off my shoes. Across the street from my third-floor apartment, a tree bent low in the wind in front of the Vietnamese restaurant with its red neon Pho! sign. Someone walked past in a long gray raincoat, the straps flapping behind them as they tried and failed to hold it closed.

I thought of watching some Netflix but decided against it. None of the shows I was watching right then matched the mood that was hovering over me, the memories that were floating up inside me. I had been trying to keep these thoughts away from me for too many years, and they just wouldn’t stay quiet anymore. Jackie Cole's brown eyes, both sad and mischievous, hinting at something mysterious and wonderful, tragic and humorous at the same time. Her short dark pixie hair, her soft olive skin. Her teasing half-smile. The taste of blood in my mouth and the sound of panic, someone screaming a name over and over, demanding somebody do something. There was no way to separate those two memories. They were tied together by a Gordian knot.

I turned away from the window and went over to the kitchen, a room so narrow I had to turn sideways to walk into it. Reached up to the cabinet and opened the door, felt around for the square tumbler, took it down. Turned awkwardly to the freezer for an ice cube, then back to the living room where the Grey Goose waited. I knew better than to use vodka to get a handle on my emotions, but that wasn’t going to stop me. It never had.

The vodka splashed down over the single ice cube, jumped up as it hit the bottom, settled down. I set the glass down on the coffee table with a little click, put the bottle down beside it and booted up my laptop.

The light from the little screen flickered blue in my dark apartment. I no longer owned any of my old punk albums, but that didn't matter. You can find anything on the Internet, even your own past. Everything I used to love and had long forgotten. Black Flag from before Rollins had even joined the band, Darby Crash crawling around on stage with a confused look on his face, obscure British stuff like the UK Subs and 999. Youtube playlists of my lost and almost forgotten life, conveniently arranged with occasional advertizing.

I clicked on Play All and leaned back on the couch, picked up my glass, and closed my eyes. The music came crashing in and so did the memories. Lying around on the floor of Kelley’s living room listening to the same songs, the same now-forgotten bands. We never used to drink Grey Goose back then, of course. Popov or maybe Smirnoff on a good day, and we didn't drink it from a glass. But my life had changed beyond any hope of recognition, and I doubted I could even stomach the stuff we used to drink. This glass of high-end vodka was the closest I could get, a more palatable version of my own past self. I leaned back into the noise, back into the river of my own memories. This wasn't going to be easy.