My Rock #4 (The Rock Star Romance Series - Book #4) by Alycia Taylor Page A

of it. I ran the hot water then to
wash it down and I washed off the mirror. I wondered if it was true about all
drains leading to the ocean. If it was, there’d be some happy fish later on.
    The straws went into the trash and then I opened the
box. There were papers and a baggie with enough weed for another two or three
joints. Personally, I didn’t consider marijuana to actually be a drug, but I’d
been down that road before. At rehab, they were going to extoll it’s evils to
me and talk about how it led to other, harder drugs. With a heavy sigh, I took
it into the bathroom and flushed it down the toilet. I threw the papers away
and washed out the box. It was all gone. I wondered if tobacco was a bad thing.
Maybe I’d buy a pack of smokes before I got locked away in no-drug land.
    I cleaned up my bedroom and the living room,
throwing away the bong. The crack pipe was already taken care of. I’d broken it
to pieces the day I kicked it across the room. I carried a load of clothes down
to the laundry room. Mrs. Stromboli was on her way out. She hadn’t made
eye-contact with me once since the day she saw me naked in the hall. I tried
smiling at her and saying hello, but she just walked quickly by like I was
going to rape her old fat ass. I really didn’t give a shit if she liked me or
not. It was easier that way; if people don’t like you, they don’t bother you. I
remember how many people used to pretend they liked me, when I still had a
little money and my name still meant something. I sure didn’t see those
bastards around anymore.
    I put a load in the washing machine and went back
upstairs. It was weird, opening the door to a clean apartment that actually
smelled decent, too. I had to use the broom on the carpet in the living room—I
didn’t own a vacuum. That resulted in a huge pile of crap that I swept into the
dustpan and threw away. Then I had to clean the kitchen floor again because I’d
swept everything in there.
    I saved the bathroom for last. It was so disgusting
that they wouldn’t have even allowed it at the Chevron station down the street.
I scrubbed for quite a while, finally giving up and telling myself it was going
to take some bleach to get all the stains out. I didn’t have any bleach, so I’d
have to come back to it. When that was done, I went into my room and got my
guitar and the notepad I use to write my songs. I sat down on the couch and
strummed the guitar a few times. I was spending so much time alone that I was
running out of inspiration for new music. I thought about all the songs that
other artists, like Elton John and the Eagles and the like had written and
performed and made a billion fucking dollars off about drugs. I wondered how
well one by me would be received. Maybe something good would come out of all of
it.
    I picked up the pen and started writing. I wrote and
scratched out and changed the whole thing about ten times, and when I was
satisfied that I was on the right track, the song I was writing turned out to
be about addiction…and how it affected your whole life. It was pretty
depressing, but it was a good song and it was true. So kind of cathartic.
    I got a good start on that and felt like I was
satisfied with it so far when I realized it was getting late in the day. I
needed to start working on my music for round seven. I got that music book out
and started marking the changes I wanted the musicians to make. As I worked on
it, I played it myself on the guitar to see what it sounded like and sang it
through a couple of times. I made changes here and there as I went, and just
about the time I was really jamming on it, someone was banging on my fucking
door.
    Pissed at the interruption, I slammed the guitar
down and went over and pulled open the door. Shit! It was my landlord.
    “Hi, Tristan,” he said. He had a neat little stapled
pile of papers in his hand. It looked like legal paperwork and I was already
pretty sure that I knew what it was.
    “Hey, Buck, what’s