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Chapter Twenty-Nine: Everything Kelsey Wanted


Desi was awake long before he opened his eyes. He lay there, holding her. "Jesus, Kels," he muttered into her shoulder, "I had the most fucked up dream... You awake yet?" He opened his eyes. He was staring into a pillow. He released his arms from around it, rolled away and sat up. The pillow fell from the bed and onto the floor with a soft thump. The room was unfamiliar, but Kelsey's things were everywhere. He looked at the nightstand and the photo was there and the clock was reading early afternoon hours and the sun was peeking through the cracks in the blind. He ran a hand over his face, rubbing away the sleep.

"Nightmare," he whispered, "Nightmare was more the word, Kels... and it doesn't look as though I'm going to wake up from it." He covered his eyes with his hands.

It took him quite a while to come to terms with the idea that she wasn't there - that everything he'd thought for just a moment he might've dreamt was actually reality. When he did, he pulled himself out of bed, feeling heavy and empty and walked to the door, creaking it open and peering into the hallway. He could hear voices down the hall, and he followed them, his feet shuffling across the carpet.

The voices were coming from the home studio.

He peered in the half-opened door and saw Brian and Kevin. He didn't know where the other guys were, but these two were chatting. He knocked on the door frame and they paused, Kevin looked up and his eyes met Desi's and he smiled encouragingly. "Hey. You're up."

Desi nodded.

"How are you?"

Desi shrugged.

Brian got up and opened the door wider and beckoned Desi into the studio, so he stumbled in and sat down absently on the couch. He took a deep breath. They were both staring at him expectantly, as though waiting for him to sink into an emotional outburst. Desi reached for several sheets of music laying on the coffee table and pulled it toward himself, turning it so he could read it.

It was his song. With Nick's name on the top of the printed sheet.

"Nick wrote it," Kevin intoned.

Desi felt his mouth run dry. He pushed the sheet away. Somehow, when Kelsey had told him, part of him had hoped she'd been mistaken or something, but there it was, the proof in literal black and white.

"Yeah," Desi said, answering Kevin, "I see his name there on it."

"We all traveled in to record it," Brian explained, "Then...everything happened." He paused. "So what do you do, Desi?" he asked in a friendly sort of tone.

"Nothing, I suppose. I used to teach music. I worked at McDonalds a bit, but I quit that recently to become a songwriter."

"You write anything I might've heard?" Kevin asked.

Desi was still staring at the sheets he'd pushed away. He looked up at Kevin. "Nawh," he said, shaking his head.

"Maybe you can show us your writing sometime," Brian suggested, smiling. "We're always looking for new stuff. Especially now, we're going to need a lot of new stuff." He grinned at Kev. "Right, cuz?"

Nick and Howie came into the room then, and Nick looked at Desi, then saw the music sheets on the coffee table, pushed away and aiming toward Kevin again. Thank God, he thought, He didn't see'em yet. He swooped in and grabbed the sheets and turned toward the soundboard, wondering how the hell he was gonna get through Desi and the Boys being here in the studio where they'd talk about the song without his intricate little lie falling apart. He looked at Howie, as though expecting help, but Howie shrugged and set himself down in a chair.

"Where in hell is AJ?" Kevin asked, and he got up and left the room.

"Probably sleeping, you know what he's like in the morning!" Brian yelled after him. He turned to Desi. "Monster in the morning, that's what he is. Course Nick here usually is too. You already get your coffee, Nick?"

Nick shrugged. "I don't feel much like coffee today." He stared at the music sheets, then shoved them into a notebook on the soundboard. "I don't feel like much of anything today. I feel like shit today." He sighed. "I don't even know what all to do."

"Me either," Desi spoke up.

"It's weird, ain't it?" Nick said, "How the world just... keeps going?"

Desi nodded.

"Well have y'all thought about... like... funeral plans?" Howie asked awkwardly.

"The best," Nick answered, "The best of everything. On my dime. She gets everything."

Desi stared at his hands, wringing them slowly. "She wouldn't have wanted to be buried," he muttered.

"What?" Nick looked up.

"She was afraid of cemeteries," Desi said. "She wouldn't have wanted to be put in one. She's the scattered ashes type of girl." He took a deep breath, "She would've wanted to be cremated and scattered."

"Scattered where?" Nick asked, "Like the ocean?"

Desi shook his head, "Ever seen that move Elizabethtown? It was a Cameron Crowe film."

"No," Nick answered.

"I have," Brian said. "My wife's a big Orlando Bloom fan. Terrible, depressing movie if I remember right," Brian commented.

"Yeah it was pretty depressing overall," Desi agreed, "But the guy's father died and he went on a road trip and scattered the ashes everywhere he went. Kelsey would've wanted that kind of thing. She would've wanted to be everywhere all at once."

Nick rubbed his chin. "Okay. So. We'll do that."

"What?"

"We'll go on a road trip. We'll scatter her ashes everywhere. Cover the world with her." Nick's voice rose with excitement as he thought about the idea. "Or at least the country..."

Desi blinked up at Nick. "Where in the hell are we gonna road trip to?"

"I dunno, we could drive from here to LA," Nick replied.

Kevin came back in the room, towing half-asleep AJ behind him. AJ rubbed his eyes as he looked around the room at the fellas. "Sup?" he murmured.

"Here to LA?" Desi laughed, ignoring AJ and Kevin's arrival, staring at Nick as though he had fourteen heads. Desi felt his head spinning at the thought of it, at how stoked Kelsey would've been at the idea of going to Los Angeles. She would've been freaking out, jumping up and down, babbling on about putting her feet in the Pacific Ocean and all the crazy stuff they'd see along the way over there... He rubbed the back of his neck. "You're serious?"

Nick nodded. "Absolutely."

AJ glanced between the two of them. "What're we talkin' about?"

"Scattering Kelsey's ashes," Nick answered, eye-locked with Desmond.

AJ looked like he might be sick and lowered onto the arm of the chair Howie was sitting in. Kevin raised an eyebrow.

"I've made the drive before," Nick said, practically begging Desi now, "It ain't that bad a drive."

It had occurred to Nick how perfect this would be. It would be at least a week-long trip, and that week could give him the time he needed to talk to Desi, to right the wrong he'd done him with stealing the song. It could give them time to become friends, to change the past and to heal from losing Kelsey. Together. It was exactly what the two of them needed, he was sure of it. The open road would fix all of their problems. Every last one. He imagined arriving in Los Angeles a new man, just like he'd thought he would arrive in Nashville a new man when he'd left LA. Maybe Nashville had provided all the healing that he could expect it to bring now, maybe he needed to heal as he left Music City behind him.

Nick pictured showing Desi the bits and pieces he'd written the night before. Pictured the two of them working on it, making it perfect, and when he arrived to LA, he could confess his lie to Kevin, AJ, and Brian, and present them with a new song, and give the rights back to Desi for the old one and they could have two songs for the new album, all because of him. He pictured the fellas being twice as proud and Desi, too. And Kelsey.

Of course this was the answer.

It was how he would keep his promise.

It was everything Kelsey wanted.

"Okay," Desi said.