Have A Little Faith In Me Read Online Free PDF Page A

who needed a drink that bad.  “Okay.  Your decision.”
    “Yeah,” Dex confirmed.  “My decision.”
     
    The grounds were packed that night.  There were people who didn’t care about Rocky and the Boulders, or Dex and the Delta Devils, but who wanted to see something that social media had blown up into an Event.  Or a War, depending on your politics.
    The border was clear enough, with the two bands set up on either side of the stage.  There was no worry about who’d control the lights or set off the pyros – there would be no light show, no special effects, just the music. 
    Jason got onstage and introduced the bands.  Rocky stood on one side of him, and Dex on the other.  “We just want to thank Rocky and Dex and all the musicians here at CrossFest for making this such a great experience, so put your hands together for all our performers!  And give yourselves a round of applause, too, for opening your minds and ears to the kind of music you might not listen to otherwise.”  The audience whooped and hollered. 
    “And now, without further ado…the friendly battle of the bands!”
    Dex snorted.  We’ll see just how friendly , he thought, as he and Rocky were left by Jason to shake hands. 
    Instead, Rocky faced Dex and raised his hands in a fighting stance, as if posing for the weigh-in picture at a boxing match.  It would have been comical, the five-foot-four Rocky facing off against the six-foot-four Dex, if it hadn’t been for the light in Rocky’s eyes. 
    It reminded Dex of something he’d read in a book about dogs – a little dog will face off with a bigger dog with no fear, because it really doesn’t know it’s a little dog.  There was so much…anger there.  As if Rocky was blaming Dex for something, everything.
    Dex raised his own fists, too, but kept his distance this time.  No face-to-face, in-your-face episode this time.  He wouldn’t let himself get that close again, wouldn’t let himself get distracted again.
    Then they tapped fists as if they were gloves.  Dex felt the smooth, soft, warm skin on the side of Rocky’s hand as it glided past his own, and it was like a Taser to his soul.  Like a starving man who wanted to gorge himself after so long without food, the touch of another person, no, another man, triggered a hunger he’d refused to feed for so long.
    No.  No, no no.  Not now .  Dex threw up the block, the barrier, inside his head.  He slipped into his acoustic guitar and nodded at his drummer.  Tap tap, go. 
    The first song was Patsy Cline’s “Walking after Midnight.”  Mikey’s steel guitar opened the song, the plaintive notes spreading across the crowd.  Then Dex began to sing the words, the lonesome lyrics, and suddenly he nearly froze.  His own midnight walk flashed into his mind, the scene he’d encountered.
    A terrible sense of loss overwhelmed him.  How many nights had there been like that?  How many years of nights had he spent like that, alone, searching for...what?  For something to take the place of the thing he wanted, needed, couldn’t, mustn’t have. 
    A great singer is a great actor.  You take your own pain and you put it out there, and you trick people into believing it’s your character’s pain they’re seeing.  Wow, people say, you can really act. 
    Dex was so achingly lonely.  And the closer he got to the thing that could end his loneliness, the more it hurt. 
    The one thing that made it hurt less was this – the place to put it, the way to express it, the cut that drained the poison from the wound.  He sang the words with heartbreaking sincerity, and for a moment, he allowed it.  Allowed himself to think of a man, as lonely as he was, walking for miles out in the starlight, looking for Dex the way Dex was looking for him. 
    It was okay, here, now, to want that, to grieve for the want.  It went into the music, yet another sacrifice Dex would make.  And another pain he would feel all the more so later for