Page 10 of A Little Campfire Blues (Pride Camp 2025 #10)

Chapter Nine

Axis

Up with the sun, though it was more like I hadn’t gotten much sleep last night.

After we’d driven back to the cabin, we’d sat on the porch, enjoying the moonlight, winding down, and chatting about the activities we wanted to check out today.

None of us had been up for a serious conversation, which had been fine by me.

Meeting Mackenzie had rattled me, especially when he’d asked to spend time with us.

My inner little had perked up and started doing a wiggly butt dance, sing-songing, please, please, please, as he shimmied around, but big me had been louder and told little me to sit the hell down and shut up before we embarrassed ourselves.

Mackenzie Redding was a southern rock legend.

No way a man like that would want a little who couldn’t even cut it at a fraction of his level.

I hadn’t even wanted to play once I’d spotted him there.

Hell, I’d been mentally kicking my own ass for bringing the guitar to camp in the first place, when Ezzy had begged me to play for them.

No way I could say no at that point.

Never could say no to them.

Hell, I’d rarely wanted to, and when I’d tried, they’d just given me puppy dog eyes, and it was over. Stick a fork in me; I’d have tied myself to a rocket and ridden it into the cosmos just to bring them back a chunk of moonrock if they’d asked for one.

I didn’t want to wake the others with my restlessness or the sound of me playing on the porch, so I took my guitar down to the shore, well away from our cabin and everyone else’s, hoping for a bit of inspiration.

And to play the way I’d been too scared to the night before.

Why the fuck couldn’t I have been as amazingly talented as Bowie or even the replacement asshole? Why the hell couldn’t I be anyone but ordinary old mediocre me?

Sometimes I wished I could completely give up playing, but then what?

I didn’t have the heart to join my brother and our old man in the repo business; I just didn’t.

It seemed like such a shitty thing to do when people were already struggling.

Yeah, I knew there were folks out there who abused the system and never intended to pay for whatever it was they’d put on credit, but it didn’t seem fair to lump in the people who worked their butts off.

Sometimes life just kicked you in the ass, and you fell on hard times through no fault of your own.

Banks didn’t want to hear that; they just focused on the bottom line, not the faces behind the numbers.

It was the same way with my old man. I’d seen him in action when I was younger.

No compassion at all. Just steely eyes and grim determination.

You wanna eat, kid? Then you’d better stop feeling sorry for those lowlifes and start looking for that license plate number.

Let it be a lesson for you. If you ain’t got the cash in hand, you don’t need it.

Work hard, save up, learn to go without until you can afford whatever the fuck you’re after, and for God’s sake, kid, never get a fuckin’ credit card.

After learning about interest rates, I’d seen why he was so adamant about that part.

I’d eaten a lot of tuna and peanut butter while saving up for my Jeep.

I’d been proud of being able to drive it off the lot without owing anything.

She’d been a few years out of date but never owned, so I’d gotten a hell of a deal on her, but I’d spent a lot of time walking while I’d saved up, and not always in the best of weather.

A wide, flat rock jutted out over the surface of the lake, with plenty of room for me to sit and stare off across the water, guitar across my lap as disjoined words tumbled through my mind, refusing to piece themselves together.

My fingers slid over the strings, caressing and listening to the water lap against the base of my rock.

Trying to push past thoughts riddled with self-loathing had never gotten me anywhere.

The key was always to stop trying, breathe, and just let it happen.

The problem with that was the pain that came when the emotions I wanted to express slammed full force, assembling the words like a storybook narrative of shattered dreams.

Who wants to be the boy born not of love but to serve a purpose?

Who wants to be the boy created to be spare parts?

My mind screamed the questions, as it often did, but those were lines I never wrote down because that meant running the risk of someone seeing them someday, and that was a secret I was willing to take to my grave.

I already felt like a worthless failure; I didn’t need the world to know that the only worth I’d ever had to the parents who’d raised me was that I was genetically compatible with my older brother, who they’d been desperate to save.

Once that mission was accomplished, they’d been stuck with an irritating nuisance they hadn’t known what to do with, so they’d settled for ignoring my presence as best they could.

Great for those times when I hadn’t wanted anyone to know what the fuck I was getting into, but kinda shitty when I’d always felt like a ghost in my own house.

Believe in me before I fade away.

Don’t know how long I can be

The ghost in the corner

The dirty secret you can’t fully

Sweep under the rug

And make go away.

I belong here too.

Even if you wish I didn’t

Even if sometimes I wish it too

Only I didn’t get a say, now did I?

You chose now I get to suffer for it.

I scribbled the words down, certain they weren’t in the right order yet, but purging them from my brain let new ones come, along with several chords I started fiddling with as I hummed along.

Sometimes I feel like I don’t deserve to be seen.

Stupid me, always tryin’ ta shine a little brighter.

Electric sizzle, lightning in a bottle

For you, to be your star

Only I’m too numb to feel that I’ve burned out already.

Washed-up, wrung-out, dead thing

Shambling zombie

Too brain-dead to admit defeat.

You call me stubborn.

But it isn’t stubbornness that keeps me going.

It’s the fear of going from useless to nothing.

From useless to nothing

Born to be a broken dream

Burnout, loser.

All I want is to be seen.

But that’ll never happen, will it?

You can’t open your eyes.

You just look for the bad in me.

Content to laugh

And spread more lies.

I was never the bad boy.

I just wanted a moment of time.

A hug, a story, your smile

Why does wanting your love

Feel like committing a crime?

Something rustled behind me, and I immediately stopped singing, though my fingers kept playing with the chords as I glanced back over my shoulder to see a chipmunk sitting there, completely at ease and unbothered by the music.

It took off when we made eye contact, but I didn’t dare go back to singing.

The last thing I needed was Roman or Ezzy wandering along as the lyrics came together, ‘cause they’d ask questions, and never once had I ever lied to them.

The tone was as melancholy as my mood, but I couldn’t stop playing it, adding a flourish here and a somber riff there, slowly beginning to tweak it in between pausing to scribble more lyrics or rearrange some.

“Good spot for playing.”

I nearly fell the fuck off my rock when that voice cut through the music from somewhere behind me. Whipping my head around provided no answers; all it did was let my long hair blind me and force me to bat at it until I could see Mackenzie standing several feet away, watching me.

“Yeah, it, um, it really is,” I admitted, ducking my head and immediately reaching for the case so I could put my guitar away.

“You don’t have to do that.”

“It’s probably time for breakfast,” I muttered, putting it away anyway. “Judging by the shimmer on the lake, I’ve been out here a while.”

“Easy to get lost in the music when you’re in love with it.”

I chuckled at that, low and bitter, ‘cause he was right; I did love it. Sometimes I really hated that about myself. Of course, self-loathing had a way of making me testy, which meant my voice was a grumbled mix of sarcasm and snark when I addressed him.

“What makes you think I love it?”

My tone didn’t throw him, not one little bit. He just cocked an eyebrow at me and smirked until I dropped my gaze, conceding defeat.

“The look on your face when you were playing last night.”

“That was for Ezzy,” I muttered.

“You might have played because they asked, but that look of utter serenity you got while you were doing it was all you,” he replied. “No one can fake that.”

“How do you know?” I grumbled. “I’m good at faking a lot of things.”

“Somehow I doubt that.”

“Harrumph!” I huffed, pouting and crossing my arms now that my acoustic was back in its case.

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” he said, stepping up onto the rock and taking several steps towards me. “Why try and hide something you’re clearly passionate about?”

“Because being passionate about something doesn’t necessarily make you good at it.”

“Actually, that’s exactly how you get good.”

I heaved another sigh and refused to meet his gaze, even when he plopped himself down beside me and let his boots dangle over the water.

“Sucks when the dream doesn’t turn out the way you wanted it to, doesn’t it?” He said, though his tone, far away and filled with longing, made it difficult to tell if he was talking to me or musing to himself.

Was no use denying it. He’d know I was lying if I tried. “Yeah, it really does.”

“Kinda ironic,” he muttered.

Two words, and my curiosity was instantly piqued. “What?”

“That a pair of failed musicians should wind up at the same camp lamenting all the ways our lives haven’t turned out the way we’d hoped they would.”

Well, shit, he hit that nail square on the head.

“What happened to Whiskey River Revival?” I finally got up the nerve to ask.

“All the shit people warn you about when you tell them you wanna be a rock star,” he admitted. “Is that what happened to your band?”