Love is Always Write Anthology Volume 5

rotting carcass of my first story if you hadn't kicked my ass and made me breathe life into the damn thing.
    I thank you both from the very bottom of my heart.

     
    INCONGRUENT ANGEL
    by Cherie Noel
    CHAPTER 1
    Travis learned to play guitar to be close to Aaron. He learned to play better than anyone else on the fucking planet, because the one thing Aaron never screwed around about was his music. Hair color changed from blond to jet black to fire-engine red on a whim, he changed cars like some folks changed their jackets, a different one for Fall, Winter, and Spring and none at all for Summer. In the summer Aaron drove his Harley to and from their practice studio and fucked hot young things across its soft leather seats whenever and, more frighteningly, wherever the whim struck him. Travis made sure the cars all had seasonally appropriate tires, wipers, and emergency kits. In the summer he just spent a lot of time praying to whatever god he thought might be listening at any given moment and made sure the saddle bags always had lots of lube, condoms, and pre-printed statements for the Hot Young Things (HYTs) to sign. The statements all said that they acknowledged Aaron had asked their age and they had shown him proof they were legal.
    It had only taken one summer in the band and a near miss with what could have become a very ugly statutory story for Travis to realize that once the Harley came out of storage for June, July, August, and sometimes September, Aaron's brains parked themselves very prettily in the front of his tight leather riding pants. Travis refused to rely on dumb luck to keep Aaron out of jail. Aaron was too damn pretty for prison, and Travis was too damn ornery to let him accidentally land himself there. Thus the pre-printed forms were created and cleverly packed on top of the lube and condoms. Aaron had no desire to catch anything other than a Frisbee or an occasional Rainbow Trout, and yes, Travis really did mean the fish—so he always remembered the condoms, and having to move the "I'm-not-jailbait" waivers to get to the condoms reminded Aaron to get them signed.
    Travis gnawed his heart out every time the Harley rolled out of his sight. He filleted the poor blood pump in his chest every time the saddle bags came back to the warehouse living space he and Aaron shared depleted of both waivers and condoms. He cooked and ate his pride, swallowing it right down every time he refilled those god-dammed buckle-fronted bags, but would rather do so every single time than take the chance Aaron would reach for a condom and, finding the bag empty, bang whomever was slung across the back of his bike without anything to ease his way or protect him. Better Travis swallow his pride than Aaron come home with some disease, attend a shot-gun service, or spend 10-20 reflecting on the error of his ways in the cool gray environs of Uncle Sam's Quality Arms.
    The morning of the photo shoot—for their fifth recording project in less than three years—Travis woke up late, with the start of a migraine, and forgot to pack the bags. Things might have gone on the same between him and Aaron indefinitely, with him scouring the already much-abused blood-pump he called his heart against the serrated rock of Aaron's seemingly blind indifference, but the headache and muzzy-headedness he occasionally awoke with coincided—on this particular day—with the first day of the month of June. The Harley was already rolling out of the garage-cum-living room when Travis staggered out of bed toward the coffee pot, and two-thirds of the day passed before he even remembered that he hadn't packed the bag with the usual supplies.
    The record label wanted each of them photographed separately this time, and then their artist was going to use all four band member's pictures, one of each of them. One for the cover of the compact disc case, one for the inside cover, one on the cd itself, and one on the back cover. They'd all been assigned certain days to show up for their personal shoot, and then there would be a group shot as well. Travis had no clue what the plan was for the group picture, and to be honest he didn't give a flying fuck at the moment.
    What he did care about was a short list. He really had no business driving, and he needed to get to Aaron as quickly as he could to keep the reckless bastard from getting himself dead or in jail. He drank another cup of coffee and snagged his migraine meds from the bathroom. He'd take the meds as