"Oh my god!" I leapt from his lap with a shriek. "That little shit!" I spun to face the outdoor speaker pouring out Ryan's disembodied voice and pointed at it in outrage. "You little shit! I can't believe you told your fucking friends my nickname!"
I turned back to Brian who sat there chuckling.
"Don't you laugh!" My finger of accusation was pointing in his direction.
He dialled the full on grin back to a smirk, tipped his glass at me in acknowledgment and took a sip managing to avoid the grimace this time. He rolled the Pastis around in his mouth for a moment before swallowing.
A memory washed over me of a much younger, cockier, drunker, Brian with his face streaked with the remnants of some truly woeful make-up. I'd finally worked out why he looked so familiar.
"Holy shit! You're Syn!" I dropped back into my chair and looked at him in amazement. I swear he preened, like a peacock ruffling up his feathers.
"I am," he offered in a smooth, smugly confident tone.
"You tried to kiss me at a party at Ryan's place years ago!" Wow. That had been some night.
"I did?" Was it just me or had some of his self –satisfaction just melted away?
"You did," I confirmed before continuing with an evil grin, "I told you that I didn't kiss guys who wore make-up than I did."
Truth be told I'd thought that Brian was hot, even back then, but Ryan had threatened me with dismemberment if I'd touched any of his friends. If Brian had been a bit more sober I might have risked it but he'd been wasted and I'd already faced down a bunch of death glares from some groupie looking girls that had arrived trailing in the wake of Brian and his friends. Ryan had confirmed they weren't girlfriends so their shitty little attitudes had pissed me off but then Kelly and I were essentially hangers on as well so I'd tried not to judge them too harshly. I was only in Los Angeles for a couple of days on my way to London, I really hadn't needed the drama.
Kelly had been talking to one of Ryan's bandmates Taipan, Taipan Venom, yet another shitty stage name; while I'd done shots with Brian and his friend Jimmy, when Brian had made his not so smooth move of trying to feel me up and stick his tongue down my throat Kelly and Taipan were trying to eat each other's faces off like a bad zombie movie. Clearly Ryan's policy of non-fraternisation only applied to me, his little sister.
Brian gaped at me. "That was you? Didn't you have blonde hair?"
I twirled a lock of my now natural golden brown hair around my finger. "Yes, that was me. I may have undergone a brief flirtation with the bleach bottle."
"Shit I was hammered that night. I was so offended by what you said until I realised you spent the night calling King Maybelline." He began to laugh until he was doubled over and tears were streaming down his face. Finally he looked up at me and said, "Man, Jimmy gave me some shit about that comment. He thought it was one of the fucking funniest things he'd ever heard, the high and mighty Syn, blown off for sub-par make-up skills. He kept that joke running for years, busted it out whenever he thought I was getting above myself. He thought you were fucking awesome."
I grinned at him. Jimmy his friend had been a great guy who'd stuck by my side and discussed all kind of weird and wonderful shit with me when Brian had wandered off to find sluttier pastures. Jimmy was the one who'd come to help me later that night when I found Brian asleep in the bathtub tangled in the shower curtain. It had been Jimmy who'd helped his friend Matt wrestle the drunk but still prepared to give it a red hot go Brian from the bathroom toward the front door where the rest of their friends had been waiting. And it had been Jimmy who'd hugged me and placed a smacking kiss goodbye on my cheek when Brian had waved a gameshow hostess hand over his own body saying, "We can't leave yet, she could have all this!" Jimmy had shown up the day after the party laden with beers, after party beers were law in the USA he'd claimed, to come to the beach with me and Ryan. It wasn't hard to tell that he and Ryan were close and I wondered if he'd been at Ryan's funeral.
"Oh Jimmy! How's he doing?" I asked hoping maybe we'd get a chance to catch up.
Brian's laughter choked off on what sounded suspiciously like a sob and I suddenly suspected that maybe those weren't tears of laughter streaming down his face.
"Jimmy's the friend I mentioned earlier," he took a long sip of his drink.
Oh shit. I felt a lump in my throat. The friend who'd died. God that stung.
"When?"
"End of 2009."
I wracked my brain trying to remember if Ryan had ever mentioned anything, surprised that he hadn't they'd seemed like such good friends, and then I remembered a subdued and emotional New Year's phone call. "The Rev," I said, "Jimmy was The Rev?"
"Yeah, that was Jimmy."
I leaned forward and grabbed his hands, "I'm so sorry Brian. Really I am. I only met him a couple of times but he seemed like a great guy. I know Ryan was devastated."
"We all were."
We sat without speaking for a while, Fear of the Gods final album acting as our soundtrack. Finally Brian's hand twitched beneath mine and I released him.
He raised his glass and said, "To Jimmy and King. Wherever they are they're surely raising hell."
I lifted mine and said, "To Ryan and Jimmy."
I topped up our glasses deciding that if worst came to worst and he drank too much to drive he could get a taxi. I just hoped that Cathy and Jeff weren't going to be too pissed off by a couple of slackers reeking of French liquor and misery cluttering up their patio.
"So Brian, or should I call you Syn?" I asked tucking my feet up under me.
That got me a half-hearted smirk. "Brian is fine."
"Okay then, Brian, you guys were in a band weren't you?" I somehow remembered that from the party. Ryan had mentioned it I think and the groupie sluts following them for a scrap of attention had seemed to confirm it.
He looked surprised and picked up the bottle examining the label. He narrowed his eyes at the alcohol percentage as if he was trying to work out how much he'd had to drink. Maybe he'd decided that this was all too much of a weird coincidence and was working out if he was good to drive.
"Uh, yeah, we were in a band. Jimmy was our drummer." He shrugged and took another mouthful. The Pastis was going down easier each time he drank.
"Do the rest of you guys still play?" He looked like he still played, all tatted up hotness that he was but then I knew guys from my early twenties who'd been friends of Ryan's back home that had been obsessed with music and making it big and look at them now. Slaves to the nine to five. My financial advisor Travis being one of them.
"You could say that," his expression was utterly inscrutable and I had the weirdest feeling that there was some kind of joke that I wasn't in on.
"That's great," I enthused, those cryptic answers of his weren't helping to move the conversation along. "For fun or professionally?" It was like getting blood out of a stone and I resisted the temptation to bash my head against Cathy's teak patio table.
He looked at me incredulous. "This is fucking ridiculous," he grumbled under his breath. Hey! I heard that! "Give me your phone." He held out a demanding hand.
"What the what?" Why the hell would he need my phone? Did I look like Romy White? I was not offering my phone out for people needing to make calls!
"Just give me your phone. Unlocked." Oooh. He was being kind of dominant and yes, the alcohol had quite possibly made me stupid, I found it more than a little bit hot. I handed over my, unlocked, phone and made a valiant effort at not choking on my drool.
His long fingers moved rapidly over the screen of my phone and I tried not to look too eager as I leaned in to see what he was doing. He opened my Spotify app, typed quickly and then went to throw the phone back to me before obviously thinking better of it and dropping it down on the table. Good idea. Phone throwing and I weren't a good mix, witness my attempt to brain him with said phone the day before.
Fear of the Gods cut off and 'Hail to the King' by Avenged Sevenfold began to play.
"Hey, I love this!" I took another sip and smiled. Maybe the hijacking of my playlist was in aid of smoothing our conversational path from sad topics like Ryan and Jimmy's deaths. I could get on board with that. "I really like this band. The guitar in this song is fucking amazing."
"You think so?" he lifted his drink at me and right before my eyes Brian morphed into that cocky little fuck from years ago.
"You don't?"
"Well far be it for me to say..." he said leaning in toward me, eyebrows raised and a knowing look on his face.
I raised my eyebrows back at him my statement unspoken. Seriously man, if you've got something to say just spit it out. Then it clicked. He'd had a band. He still had a band. The callouses on his fingers.
"This is your fucking band isn't it?" I groaned.
He stifled a snort of laughter, "Yup."
"And you're the fucking guitarist aren't you?" I palmed my face.
This time he didn't hold back the laughter or his smug look of triumph.
"Synyster Gates, lead guitarist of Avenged Sevenfold at your service Ace."