Bandom One-shots book 3

Dear Izzy (Duzzy)

POV: Duff McKagan
Date: 1993

I never planned to send them.

The letters were more like a release valve—me trying to make sense of it all. You leaving. The silence. The ache that settled in behind my ribs and refused to go away.

First it was once a week. Then it became whenever something reminded me of you. A guitar line. The smell of rain on hot pavement. An old flannel you left in the corner of my closet, still crumpled like you might come back for it.

I kept them in a shoebox under my bed. Labeled nothing. Just stuffed full of crinkled pages, ink-smudged ramblings, coffee stains, and sometimes a lyric or two that I never showed the band.

And then I heard you were in town.

Just like that. A whisper from a roadie. "Izzy's in LA again." Like it wasn't the first time I'd heard those words and felt something deep in me crack open.

So I mailed the box.

No note. No warning. Just your name. Your address. And the weight of two years of everything I never said.

It took two weeks.

I was halfway through restringing my acoustic when there was a knock on the door.

I didn't have to look through the peephole. I just knew.

When I opened the door, there you were—same leather jacket, same way-too-serious eyes. The years had made you sharper around the edges, a little more tired maybe, but you were still you.

You didn't say anything.

You just held up the box.

Your fingers were smudged with ink.

"I read every single one," you said, voice low, rough.

I swallowed.

"I didn't think you'd—"

"I cried through the third one," you said. "The one where you talked about the rain in Japan and how it made you feel like you were drowning even though you were standing on a stage."

My heart thudded in my chest.

You stepped in without me asking, like your bones remembered this place, and I stepped back, letting you pass.

You smelled like cigarettes and cold wind. Your boots were still the same ones you used to prop up on the coffee table no matter how many times I told you not to.

We sat.

You lit one. Passed it to me.

I didn't take it.

I just looked at you, this impossible thing in front of me—alive, real, reading my words back in your head.

"I missed you every fucking day," I whispered.

You looked up, cigarette shaking just a little in your hand.

"I know," you said. "I missed me too."

We didn't touch.

Not at first.

Just sat cross-legged on the floor like we were twenty again, with a bottle of wine between us and a stack of old acoustic demos playing softly in the background.

"You wrote about the night in Phoenix," you said quietly.

"The one with the thunderstorm?"

You nodded. "And how I kissed you under the loading dock when no one was looking."

I flushed.

"I never forgot it," I said. "Even when I told myself I did."

Izzy's eyes were glossy now. He flicked ash into the tray and looked at me like he was trying to read between my bones.

"I left because I thought I was breaking."

"I know."

"But maybe I was just scared," he said.

We were silent for a long time.

The acoustic guitar looped again, dusty and raw.

Finally, I leaned forward. Picked up the half-burnt cigarette from the tray and took a drag.

Izzy watched me with that unreadable expression.

"You came back," I said.

"Only because I read what you wrote."

I swallowed the lump in my throat.

And then I whispered the only thing I had left.

"You wanna stay?"

Izzy's mouth curled into something fragile. Hopeful. A maybe disguised as a smile.

"Only if you've got more letters to write."

And I did.
Only now, I got to read them out loud.
With you lying next to me, fingers tangled in mine,
As the sunrise hit the pages.