Come A Little Closer (A Duff Mckagan Fan Fic)

Chapter 12

After about 20 minutes of hopelessly trying to scatter my brain for a route home, I caved and hailed a cab, giving the driver the address to the dorm. When I finally got home, I went up to my half unpacked room and crashed on the bed for what I intended to be a short cat nap.

What felt like a few minutes later, the phone on the nightstand went off, waking me from my nap. The clock read 5 pm. Crap, I had slept the entire day away.

"Hello." I whispered through the receiver, groggy with sleep.

"Damn, sounds like somebody had a busy night! How's L.A?" Kelly said with an enthusiasm that instantly made me feel at home. I could just see her at the kitchen table, one hand holding a burning cigarette while the other absentmindedly twirled a strand of hair.

I told her all about my night and my run in with Duff. She was pretty shocked to hear that he was a full blown glam rocker and laughed when I told her about his eyeliner and teased hair.

After getting off the phone with Kelly, I decided to get up and on with what was left of my day. I took the time to explore my new corner of the Earth and while walking around downtown, I happened to run into Josie.

"Hey, you! Are you okay? What was that all about this morning with that 'I need to call my friend' thing? Oh, and that blonde guy chasing after you? We were all pretty confused!" She seemed to be running on giddily, just rattling off whatever popped into her head.

"I'm so sorry Josie. I feel like total crap about that. It's just that, me and that blonde guy, Duff, sorta have a past."

"Meaning you guys dated?" She asked.

"Oh, God no. But do you remember the friend I was telling you and Steven about last night?"

"The one that you clearly had a crush on that came to L.A?"

"Yeah, um, that's him." I replied, feeling my cheeks turn red with embarrassment.

"Oh shit!" She said with a laugh.

We walked around for awhile, talking about her fling with Steven. She seemed to really like him which made me happy. Josie and Steven both seemed like lighthearted, genuine people who seemed to be perfect for eachother. We then came around to discussing my whole cadaver with Axl, which caused the familiar sensation of guilt to reappear.

"So what are you gonna do? Axl seemed pretty smitten with you, but then that would probably screw things up with Duff. Oh man, you've got yourself in quite the predicament here!" She continued on with her happy chatter, almost like a chipmunk on crack.

Josie was just bubbling with the excitement of blossoming love. It was so sweet that I almost puked. I was being a real buzz kill and I felt bad for dragging her good mood down.

"I honestly don't know." I shrugged my shoulders and kept walking, hoping that my brain would find a way to work out some sort of solution.

"Well, Steven told me that Guns is having a show this Friday at the Whiskey if you wanted to come with me. It would give you a good opportunity to talk to Axl, maybe explain to him what happened. We were all kinda clueless to what was going on 'cause when Duff came back, he kinda just stormed up to his room without saying a word to anyone. Well, by us I mean Axl, Steven and I, everyone else was either still drunk or too hungover to even know which way was up!"

"Shit, I feel so bad. Axl probably thinks its something he did."

"Oh, he'll be just fine. But how about Ben and that girl he found last night! Didn't know the boy had it in him!" Josie said, bringing the conversation back to a lighter topic.

We walked around a bit longer before heading back to the dorms. Josie stayed around my place to help me finish unpacking before we ordered some pizza and called Ben over to watch a movie. once the movie ended we spent the rest of the night passing around a joint, just talking.

I had to admit, I hadn't really known Ben and Josie for long, but we were becoming fast friends which was a relief. It felt nice to have some familiar faces in such a new place that was clearly going to take some getting used to.

I had only been in L.A. for a couple of days, but things were getting pretty crazy real fast!