Love Will

  love will

  by Lori L. Otto

  Copyright 2016 © Lori L. Otto

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Lori L. Otto Publications

  Visit our website at: www.loriotto.com

  First Edition: March 2016

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Printed in the United States of America

  Dedication

  to the relentless dreamers who will stop at nothing in pursuit of what they love

  Chapter 1

  We’ve been on tour for three hours, and already I know it’s the best fucking decision I’ve ever made. Not because we’re playing in front of a pulsing crowd. We’re not. Not because I’m helping Peron with a complicated chord progression. He’s sleeping. Not because I’m watching Damon and Tavo make fools of themselves after having too much Jack and Coke. That already happened. Not because there’s a naked woman lying next to me on my bottom bunk. I question whether or not there’s even enough room for that.

  No.

  It’s because I’ve finally found another thing that keeps my mind distracted: the patterns of neon lights as we pass them speeding down the highway on the tour bus. It’s even better when I blur my eyes a little to muddy the vision more. It’s mesmerizing. Like an abstract painting. I’m hoping it will lull me to sleep. If I close my eyes and try to force myself into dreamland, then I’ll find myself awake once more, doing more calculations. Trying to solve more problems. Working out equations. Being angry with my older brother. Worrying about my younger one.

  Look at the lights.

  It’s too late. Now that I’ve started thinking about Jon and Max, I close my eyes, roll onto my back, and let my brain do what it does best: examine and evaluate.

  I’d left my day job behind as an astrophysicist for the opportunity to tour with my best friend. Since I was a child, the sun, moon and stars have fascinated me. Growing up, I devoured science and math problems like most kids ate candy. School nourished me when my parents didn’t. I grew up smart. I grew up fast. I grew up a little bit emotionally damaged.

  There, I said it. I’m pretty sure I can hear Jon singing “I told you so!” in the recesses of my brain–if there are any. Shut the fuck up, Jon.

  I graduated from high school at the top of my class. Sure, it wasn’t a great high school, but let’s just say the salutatorian had no chance in hell of beating me. She stopped trying after our junior year. It took me four and a half years to get out of NYU with my Bachelor of Science and Masters Degree in Physics. They tell me it’s rare for that to happen, but it wasn’t even a challenge for me. It’s easy when you can eat, breathe and sleep the curriculum, and are rewarded with a few nights of good music with friends and no-strings-attached sex every week.

  The curriculum turned into work after graduation. I got a job with a private research firm in Manhattan. It was the best of half-a-dozen offers.

  Everything else stayed the same in my life. As unpredictable as my behavior could be to people on the outside, it was an inevitable routine for me. The gigs and the women helped silence my overactive brain. Without them, I knew I’d go insane. The term “mad scientist” had to come from somewhere. I’m pretty sure there was someone else in the past just like me who it described perfectly.

  But the fact of the matter is that people on the outside have a hard time accepting the revolving door of women that come in and out of my bedroom a couple times a week. Few make it until the morning and even less make it back a second time. It’s not that there aren’t worthy girls among them. I’ve met plenty of women that would be good girlfriend material. Quite a few have been caring and nurturing; they’ve tried to get through to me. They want to know about my past. About my family. My ex-girlfriends (but there’s only one that counts). My life.

  It’s not what I want.

  At least it’s never been what I’ve wanted before.

  I blame this change all on my sister-in-law, Livvy. I smile when I think about her, and our last conversation before I left. It was just after my older brother, Jon–her husband–had stormed away from me, angry and disappointed with me yet again. She looked after him and even called out to him, summoning him back, but he didn’t come. She’d grimaced back at me apologetically.

  “Will… he loves you,” she’d said assuredly, following me onto the bus.

  “I know he does. Not a moment of my life has gone by when I’ve questioned that,” I’d responded to her, and I meant it. As mad as I was at him–and him, at me–I knew deep down he thought he was doing the right thing.

  “I think he loves you more than me sometimes,” Livvy had said.

  “No, I know you’re wrong there,” I’d said, then laughed. Even though they’d been married less than a year, Jon and Livvy had been engaged for eight, and friends for about ten years before that. My brother had always loved her.

  “Regardless,” she’d continued, “I know he just wants you to be happy. For you to find some normalcy and order and calm and stability. He thinks it would do you some good.” I’d turned around to see her shrug, looking a little hopeless.

  “I don’t think he’s wrong. And I know it may not look like it, but it’s what I’m trying to find,” I’d told her, putting my hands on her shoulders. “He may think quitting my job and going on tour is the exact opposite way of finding it, but I think music is the only way I’m going to. It’s the only other thing that settles my mind. I’m just hoping if I can devote enough time to it, I’ll find some balance.”

  “I believe in you, Will. We all do.”

  “Well, everyone but Jon,” I’d reminded her.

  “He’ll come around. I’ll make sure of it.”

  When she’d pulled me into a hug and kissed me on the cheek, I knew that she would make sure of it. If my brother couldn’t see his mistakes on his own, she’d find a subtle way to point them out to him. She would let him know in a loving way. She had been trying to do that since it all began a few months ago, and she’d never taken sides, which is one of the many reasons why I look up to her the way I do.

  And I want someone like that in my life. I know in this situation, I’m as right as a ninety-degree angle, but if I wasn’t, I’d want someone to take me aside and show me the error of my ways. I’d want a kind and gentle–yet strong and confident–woman to feel comfortable enough to approach my brother and say, “Hey, Will’s trying. He’s stubborn as fuck, but he’s trying. Don’t give up on him.”

  If Jon didn’t have her, I’d have no way of knowing he hadn’t given up on me entirely.

  I was fine. I was set in my ways before they moved back from Brazil earlier this year. But seeing them together, living their married life, and then raising their newborn daughter… something changed me. Suddenly the women I brought home weren’t enough. They were fine in the moment. They satisfied the immediate need–they silenced my mind temporarily–but one day I woke up alone, and I wanted more than that.

  I haven’t wanted more than that since I was a lovesick sixteen-year-old kid. And pursuing more than that then only got my heart obliterated by a cute girl who let me be her first fuck, but dumped me right after that for my best friend. It was an honor, Laila. I can’t help but laugh now. Never in the history of the world has a wall been built so fast as it was around my heart. And not since then has anyone seen or felt what I’m capable of.

  Even I’m not sure what that is anymore.

  “Will!” Tavo yells from the front
of the bus.

  I peek out through the curtains that keep the light from my sleeping quarters and give our drummer a warning glare, pointing at the bunk across from mine to remind him that Peron is sleeping.

  “I don’t give a fuck!” he laughs. “Get up here!”

  Just to keep him from yelling and bothering our bassist anymore, I climb out of my bed wearing some light cotton pants I’d wondered if I’d even be able to sleep in anyway, having been used to wearing my boxers–at most–to bed when I’m at home. Not that I can sleep well in the first place.

  Smoothing my hair down with both hands and stretching in the process, I join Tavo, Damon and our manager, who’s driving, in the front section of our bus. “What?”

  Tavo steps aside and pushes me into the passenger seat, then waves his hand toward me like I’m a can of dog food in one of those guess-the-price games on the Price is Right. I look out the window to see whom he’s presenting me to. I’m met with an attractive blonde standing out of a limo, bearing her tits at me. She’s joined by two other women seconds later, and one of them motions to us to roll down the window. Damon wastes no time.

  “Are you Damon Littlefield?” one of the two brunettes asks, and I think they must be twins, but I honestly can’t pry my eyes away from their breasts long enough to make sure.

  “Yeah,” he answers.

  “Who’s the hottie with you?”

  Tavo elbows me in the back. “Will Rosser,” I yell to them. “Guitarist for Damon.”

  “Where are you headed?” the blonde asks.

  The three of us look at one another, clueless.

  “State College, P-A.” Our manager, Ben, is the only one privy to the itinerary–not that he didn’t go over it with us. None of us cared. Peron listened, but he’s sleeping, and wouldn’t be interested in these shenanigans anyway, with a girlfriend back in Manhattan. “Ask them how many girls are with them.”

  Tavo pushes in between me and Damon. “State College!” he hollers. “How many chicks you got in there?”

  “Classy, Tavo,” I mutter to him, putting my head down. “Real classy.”

  “How many do you need?” she asks.

  “There’s five of us.”

  “Four,” I correct him. “Peron won’t have anything to do with this.”

  “I’ll take his,” Damon says.

  “Oh, Jesus. And where are we going to make this happen?” I ask, starting to think of logistics. I look behind me at Ben. “You said no hotels for at least the first half of this tour, right?”

  “I did say that. We have to see how much we make on merchandise.”

  “Guys, this is crazy.”

  “We have a whole bus!” Tavo says.

  “No,” I say. “Peron will quit the band, and I’m not sure I won’t walk right behind him.”

  “Why would you leave if we get you pussy every night?”

  “A. I can get my own woman every night. I don’t need you guys to do that for me.”

  “Watch it,” Damon says. “You get it because you play for me.”

  “You bring the women to me, Damon, but I’d do fine on my own and you know it. There’s a reason you dragged me out of bed to the front of this bus. Obviously Tavo alone wasn’t helping your cause.”

  They’re both quiet, so I know I’m right.

  “B. I don’t want this to become a mobile orgy. Fuck. I think I got the herps just thinking about it.”

  “Uh, guys?”

  “Yeah?” we all say to Ben together.

  “Don’t need to worry about it tonight. Our dates just got pulled over.”

  “Shit!” Tavo says, pushing me to the dashboard and crawling in the seat so he can peer out the window.

  “Watch it, dick!” I shove his shoulder hard on the way back to my bunk. “No mobile orgy!”

  “We’re voting on that tomorrow!” Damon yells back at me.

  “If you really want to find two new band members the day of your first gig, that’s fine by me.”

  “No mobile orgy,” Ben confirms. “I don’t have time to find new guitarists. Damon, you have no sound with just you and a drum kit. Sorry.”

  “Mobile orgy?” Peron asks from behind his curtains.

  “I took care of it. Go back to sleep for a little longer.”

  “Thanks.”

  I lie back down in my cubby, affixing the heavy fabric to keep out the light. The curtains reek of stale cigarettes from the last people who owned it. Ben said it belonged to a good band who made it big and upgraded to something nicer. Let’s hope their mojo lingers like the musty odors do.

  With the three half-naked women still on my mind, I glance down at my pants, which have now become their own campsite with ample sleeping quarters under the tent. How the hell am I supposed to take care of this on a bus with four other guys? I’m used to having sex with women multiple times a week. Yeah, I went on this tour to make changes, and hooking up with the women in the limo would have been the exact opposite of what I had in mind, but I didn’t see myself being completely chaste for seven fucking months. I feel a twitch, then an ache, as if it’s reminding me it needs attention.

  The shower.

  Oh, God, no.

  If the other four guys haven’t come to this realization yet, they will soon, and that means that tiny shower stall is about to become the most used traveling masturbatorium in the States, also known as the dirtiest, nastiest place I’m forced to clean myself daily.

  “Ohhh,” I say aloud. “Aurghhh!” I squint my eyes, trying to rid my brain of the sight my imagination has conceived. At least it got rid of my current problem. “Fuck.”

  “You’re not petting Big Willy down there, are you?” One of Damon’s feet touches my arms from under the curtain.

  “Is he?” Tavo asks, laughing.

  I throw open the curtains and look up at my bandmates. “Is this how it’s gonna be every night?”

  “I was gonna ask you the same thing. It’s barely midnight, and you lamefucks have been in bed for hours.”

  “It was a long day. I’m sunburned. Side effects of a sunburn: dehydration and fatigue. Look it up.” I glance at the two empty water bottles in my bed. “That’s probably why you two assholes got so drunk off so little earlier.”

  “But man… we’re on tour! Where’s the adrenaline, huh?” Damon asks. “The excitement? Aren’t you excited?”

  “Of course I am. But we kicked it off spending the afternoon at the Jersey shore with our friends and then at a beach doing a concert–that after a night of packing up all the shit in our apartment for storage.

  “Plus, this fight with my brother’s been on my mind a lot.”

  “Oh, wait.” He walks to the kitchen area and picks up a pad of paper and a pen. “Feelings. Write ‘em down. This could be a song.” He bites his lip to stave off the laughter.

  “Fuck you, man,” I say, smiling back at him and shoving the stationery supplies in his chest.

  “Jon’s been a dick. You’re rid of him for seven months. We’re your brothers now. No judgment here. You wanna sleep with those honeys in the limo? You go right ahead.”

  “You know I’m trying not to sleep with the honeys.”

  “You don’t have to sleep with all of them. You said you were going to slow it down,” he reminds me of what I’d talked myself into. “It’s a good goal. Fucking stupid, but you say it’s what you want.”

  “So fucking stupid,” Tavo says. “Shit, I say take advantage of what you got while you have it, man. If women want to throw themselves at your feet, let ‘em. Someday, you’ll get old and ugly, and they’ll stop coming around. Then what’re you gonna do?”

  That’s kind of the point. I’d like to find a woman who’ll like me now, and later, too, when I’m old and ugly. “I guess then I’ll find someone more attractive to hang around, and take their leftovers,” I answer our drummer. “That’s what you do, right?”

  Peron laughs from his bunk first, surprising us all that he’s been listening all this time, and Da
mon joins in seconds later. Tavo shoots me the bird before he walks to the living area where the TV is, turning it on and grabbing a wireless controller for the Xbox.

  Poor Tavo wasn’t really blessed with looks or brains, but he can keep tempo better than a metronome. I do okay on my own, but he’s like a robot when it comes to rhythm. And he can’t be distracted, either.

  I think he’s the only person I’ve met who can somewhat relate to the issues I experience with my brain. He says he’s sometimes driven to madness when he listens to music and can hear how the beat drags, or is rushed by just a nanosecond. Sometimes it even bothers him in the cadence of people’s speech, how he expects them to enunciate a word or put emphasis on words in a sentence. Even though that doesn’t make complete sense to me, I can relate. When I see things in patterns, I notice when something’s not at a perfect angle or just slightly out of line. Looking away doesn’t settle the discomfort I feel. I want to fix it, but in most cases, I can’t. I always have to distract myself with something else, and it’s normally another equation or theorem or hypothetical situation that I decide I need to work though.

  Honestly, it’s not fair for me to say Tavo has no brains. He’s got a curious mind and retains knowledge. I think he just had an unfortunate upbringing. He came from a dysfunctional family, not too different from mine. His mom was an alcoholic, like mine was, and his dad was absent. While mine was in jail most of my childhood, his dad had died young from a heart attack. Tavo had a few step fathers who saw no potential in him, and Tavo was the oldest of three kids. He wasn’t lucky like me.

  I had Jon. My older brother was actually my half-brother. His dad was a genius, and Jon must’ve inherited all of his father’s intellectual capacity and discipline. He was a sponge–soaked it all in, and he loved to learn. When he wasn’t at home watching us, he was either at the local art school, perfecting his talent, or at the library, reading.

  But more often than not, he was at home watching me and Max. The three of us grew up in a fatherless home. While Jon’s dad was a decent man, he was lacking in the love and affection department, and had no idea how to raise a child. He left that responsibility up to our mom, even though she was drowning in her alcoholism.