Butterfly
Summary: Four years into the future Jude has become adrift from the girl she was at 18, the music industry and Tommy. Two years since they last saw each other Tommy and Jude are forced to re-unite and confront the demons they still carry at the unexpected death of a friend.
Rating: T, everything's peachy and clean but don't expect it to stay that way!
"That there, That's not me I go where I please, I walk through walls, I float down the Liffey, I'm not here this isn't happening."-Radiohead
It was one of those days you don't really remember. Honestly. It was a Wednesday. Sandwiched in between producing a young up and coming folkie named Deliah Samson (to which I found incredibly ironic), and having lunch with Sadie. Late afternoon came, and so did rain. I was kind of irritated by the time I slipped my key into the lock pushing open the door to the penthouse of the hotel I was living in. My jeans had been dragging in the acidy puddles building up, rushing into the sewers, and taking any other kind of sin the city had seen that day down into the gutters. Now my jeans were wet, and my feet were cold. I shook off my coat and flipped on some lights to give some kind of light to the place. The modern furniture, designed by some famous Swedish architect, seemed especially cold in the grey of the rain. Walking barefoot through the eight rooms that took up most of the top level, I came to my favorite place in the entire spread. The glass panels overlooking the city still got to me every time. It was like I had found a place where nobody could see me, but where all of New York was in the palm of my hand. On the fifty second story here I was again, overlooking the city that had provided me an escape from everything I had gotten away from. The afternoon rain kept a steady beat, beating against the massive panels..
I pressed my head against it leafing through mail for any kind of neglected bills. I knew Ben would be home soon, coming in to make this day all better, with a handful bizarre intricate stories about Tokyo where he had been staying the last week doing press junkets for his band's latest album. The thought alone made me smile. I never was one to warm up to the penthouse lifestyle filled with the un-homey, and unnecessary additions like 1,000 threat count Egyptian sheets and blob-furniture. It used to be hand me a loft to crash in, or naturally my own bed, and I'd be better than okay. But Ben loved it. He was new to all of this, and after all I had met him at the end of his struggle. He had been clawing at the music industry since adolescence, growing up in San Diego playing in string after string of garage bands. I had met him two years ago. It was at the end of one of my...spells, and we'd connected. Ben and I were more alike than anyone I'd experienced in awhile. But unlike me the world had not watched him grow up.
At twenty-two, I was what I would like to think of myself as a full-fledged adult now. Long gone were the diva-fits, and angsty days of my teenage rebellion. All there were now where the memories, like the hotel rooms I had trashed in frustration. Those too had been re-vamped, re-made, re-packaged over and over again for strangers to judge which way they liked it best. I certainly wasn't that Jude Harrison anymore, the naïve girl pounding out a rock ballad on her guitar carrying a badge of independence with L'Oreal #437 Hair-Dye "She's on Fire." I wasn't the girl turned musician next door anymore because I had lived too long in the spotlight to retain that kind of innocent, and last but not least I wasn't the girl spiraling downward over and over again privately and then publicly over Little Tommy Q.
The last one was the hardest layer to shed.
I walked into the kitchen pouring myself a glass of wine and pressing my fingers across my temples. My blackberry was ringing and I figured it was Ben, surprising me, telling me he was outside. I grabbed it, holding it close to my face.
"Hello?" I said, kind of out of breath from running from kitchen to living room.
"Jude?" The voice on the other end was the one person I could place anywhere.
"It's Tommy. I don't know how else to tell you this, but…Jamie…Jamie's dead."