[Pause]
It walloped me.
And we were young, but we weren’t stupid.
We knew.
No excuses, we knew.
Janis. Jimmi. Jim Morrison. John Bonham. Keith Moon.
Work hard. Play hard. Get stoned. Drink until you feel it and then drink some more, that needing to be more and more as your body gets used to it.
Hey, that’s rock ’n’ roll.
Right?
[Expression loses focus]
Wrong.
It wasn’t that we were young, and we felt immortal.
Especially me.
I’d learned I was not immortal.
Even in the beginning, the first time you put that pill on your tongue, you think, “Is this wise?”
But then you gulp it down because your man has a press conference the next morning, this being after you get on a plane, land, hit the venue, and he wants you there because he always wants you at his side, and you have to be bright. There are going to be photographers, so you have to look gorgeous. All of this not for you, but because you love him, and this means something to him, and you can’t let him down.
So, you have to sleep that night.
And wake up and be on the next day.
Then you close your mind to it. That little voice that’s there to make you think twice. You shut it down.
For me it wasn’t about thinking I could stop at any time.
I was thinking I had to keep going.
This thing you’re doing, this book…
[Dips head to phone that’s recording]
If I want people to get something out of it, anything, what I’d want them to get is that nothing for anybody is effortless.
That was a rep I got.
Everyone said, “That Lyla, the woman behind the Roadmasters, she was so cool. She just had it. She had that something. And it was so effortless.”
Well at first, I was just living my life, being with my man.
And from the very beginning, as you’ve heard, none of that was effortless.
Jealousy and even hate starts when you think that about someone. You think, “Look at them. Look what they’ve got. It came so easy.”
Only the wise know that nothing comes easy for anyone.
And if it does, it’s about to get hard.
You know, when I heard Prince died, my first thought was, “Oh God, no.”
And then I knew how it happened.
I’d never met the man.
But I knew precisely how it happened.
My mind was cluttered for a variety of reasons, most especially trying to figure out what was going on with Preacher.
This as I came out of the bathroom after packing my stuff when I saw Preacher toss the pills in his mouth then take a glug of water.
But before they disappeared, I saw how many pills were in his hand.
He usually took two.
That was four.
When did he start taking four?
He didn’t look at me as he set the glass aside, took up the prescription bottle, threw it in his carryon bag that was on the bed—the bag he kept with him, the bag it was not okay to let out of his sight in case someone lost it—and turned his back to me to zip it shut.
I walked his way, set my makeup tote aside and moved in behind him, sliding my arms around to the front.
I rested my cheek on his back and asked, “You okay?”
“Yup,” he answered, and I heard the zip close.
“You sure?” I pressed.
“Yup,” he repeated and straightened in a way I knew he wanted me to let him go.
Yes.
I needed to figure out what was going on with Preacher.
I held on and told him, “You know, if something’s on your mind, you can always talk to me.”
“I know, and if somethin’ was on my mind, I’d talk to you about it. But seein’ as nothin’s on my mind, I just told you I was fine, I don’t know why you’re sayin’ that shit to me.”
All right, from that response, I knew even more than I already knew that I needed to do this.
Right now.
So, I waded in.
“It’s just that, last night…”
He turned in my arms so abruptly, I had to lean back, or he’d slam into my face.
Then he stared down his nose at me.
“What about last night?” he demanded curtly.
What about last night?
Well, what about it was that, last night, and the night before, and the night before that, you made love to me and you did it by rote. Like you were performing a duty, not having sex with the woman you love.
And then you rolled over, and because you were drunk, and whatever else you were on wore off, you passed out.
You didn’t hold me.
That was what about last night.
I stared up at him, having these thoughts, and I knew by the closed-down but still pissed-off look on his face that I could not tell him any of that.
I could not tell a man, or at least not this man, that for the last few nights, I’d had to work for my own orgasm.
And last night, for the first time ever, he didn’t bother giving me one.
But he knew that.
That was why he was staring at me, closed-down because he did that to me and pissed-off because I was bringing it up.
And now he was taking four pills instead of two to face the day and that tweaked me right the fuck out.
“Lyla,” he gritted.
I wasn’t speaking because I didn’t know what to do, what to say.
The tour had started great.
So great, I wondered why I hadn’t gone along before.
And Preacher had settled into it.
He still had the pressure; he still had that weight.
But now, he also had me.
It had felt good, realizing that I was to Preacher what he was to me.
That he could lean on me in his way, like I leaned on him in all the ways he supported me.
But something had changed very recently, it was abrupt, Preacher wasn’t talking to me about it and this was so out of character that…
No.
It wasn’t.
He’d gone cold on me before, though it came with the heat of his anger, he’d told me precisely what was on his mind and it didn’t last long.
It was that time, in our first place in LA, and after it had happened, DuShawn warned me to keep him smoothed out.
Finding a way to tell Preacher McCade, who was already in a bad mood, that he hadn’t taken care of me when he lived to care of me in every way possible, including that way, was impossible.
But I had to find a way.
And do it keeping him calm.
“Lyla, you gonna stand there and stare at me for a year? ’Cause I don’t got that time, babe. We gotta hit band breakfast and then we gotta get our asses on a plane.”
I opened my mouth to say something when a knock came at the door.
Then Preacher did something…
Something…
God.
Something I didn’t know he had it in him to do.
He peeled himself out of my arms in a perfunctory way, like he was discarding a T-shirt, and walked out of the bedroom of the suite, through the living room to the door.
I stood there, feeling a chill invade my blood, and only moved when I heard Preacher say, “We’re gonna be down in a minute.”
And then I heard Tommy say, “Need your ear before we’re with the rest of the guys, Preach.”