On the Road: (Vagabonds Book 2) (New Adult Rock Star Romance) (23 page)

Chapter Thirty-seven

THE NEXT WEEK was the point at which we realized we still needed a manager of sorts.  Sure, we had an agency to do a lot of the higher level stuff, but we needed someone to deal with the day-to-day bullshit.  Liz said she could take care of it; after all, she’d been the one to find Peter…something I’d always suspected.  Edna Elizabeth Mayerson had had a dream, and she was persistent—stubborn, even—and, unlike a lot of us, she had the money to buy whatever she wanted.  Granted, she also had the talent, but the money helped her skip a few steps.

I knew Peter was ultimately legit, though; after all, he’d discovered Death Crunch as well.  But that was his usual MO—finding talent.  Liz had apparently approached him and offered him some money to put together the perfect band.

And now here we were, already missing a body part.

We discussed different ways of getting a bass player and someone good enough to learn our set list in a hurry.  So much for the entire band learning
my
new song—that wasn’t going to happen for a while.  Now we just needed to find someone—a girl, mind you—talented enough to learn our songs well enough to take them on tour.  And the clock was ticking.  We talked about ads in music magazines or in local papers.  We could also put out feelers in the music community, but most well-established bands thought we were “just” kids and weren’t interested.  We wondered if announcing it on all our social media would work, and what about Craigslist?

Then we pondered the dark side—how many weirdos would come out of the woodwork with this announcement and subsequent invitation?  And what if we had so many people respond that we couldn’t even begin to go through them all?

In the midst of our discussion, Barbie lit up a joint.  “This shit is stressful.”

She wasn’t kidding, but I didn’t know that I could think straight if I was trying to get high.  Liz asked, “Barbie, could you learn to play bass?”

“Um…maybe you should ask if I
want
to, ‘cause the answer is
hell, no
.  I can only halfway play the piano, so I doubt I could learn to play bass.  How am I supposed to entertain the audience and keep ‘em engaged if I’m trying to remember to play notes?  So let me reiterate: 
Hell, no
.”

Liz rolled her eyes.  “Give me that.”  She took the joint from Barbie and took a long, slow draw on it, holding the smoke in her lungs for a while before slowly blowing it out.  Then she sighed.  “I can play bass if I have to.”

I asked, “Do you
want
to?”

Liz did her thing where she was quiet for a while, and I knew she was deep in thought.  Finally, she said, “I want to go on tour, and I don’t want there to be any fuck ups.  I know you can carry the guitar, Kyle.  You’ve always been able to.  Yeah, maybe we won’t have as rich a sound, but at least we won’t have some newbie trying to learn our stuff while touring.  We don’t need that shit.  We need to look more professional.  We can’t skate by this time, blaming all our shortcomings on our age.  Sure, we’re still not seasoned veterans, but people are going to expect more.  And I already thought about cancelling all the dates we have and starting from scratch, but do
you
want to do that?”

“No.”  Barbie also shook her head, agreeing with us.  Vicki wasn’t there to weigh in on the situation, but she’d been devastated by Kelly’s leaving and I figured she’d be okay with whatever decision we made.  I knew, though, that she’d feel like we did—we hadn’t worked our asses off the past few months just to have to start over again.

“Then it’s settled.  I’ll get started tomorrow.  And, maybe once we’re done with touring, we can look at hiring a bassist and I can go back to rhythm guitar.”

I wasn’t even going to ask if she could learn it that quickly, because when I looked at how fast I’d conquered guitar basics as a preteen, I knew it could be done.  Sure, maybe she wasn’t enamored of the instrument, but knowing how musically inclined my friend was and how important the end goal was to her, I had no doubts she could make sure we hit the road as planned.

But what the hell would we do with the gaping hole in our band?  Only time would tell…

* * *

And so, by the time we filmed our first video and got ready to go on tour, Liz was playing bass as though she’d been doing it for years.

This time, we were treated like
real
rock stars too—we had a genuine tour bus, not a shitty little van to cram ourselves in.  We also had a more rigorous tour schedule and a bigger crew.  It wasn’t that it felt more real, but it felt like maybe the world was taking us more seriously this time.

We would also have a month in Europe after the States this time.  I hadn’t known that we were that popular, and I didn’t know if it had all happened after our first tour or during it, but I was ready to bring it—harder, faster, longer, and louder.  The first show on tour, I felt a little nervous covering guitar by myself, but by the second show, I was comfortable.  Our album still went out with the tracks we’d already recorded, but after Liz had practiced on her own for a week, we’d practiced as a reformed band, and we weren’t meeting three days a week.  We were practicing six days a week up until the day we got back on the road.

By day three on tour, I was partying hard again.  I had offers of all kinds for crazy sex, lots more than during our first tour, and I suspected it was partly for the same reason CJ had kept a hands off policy until my birthday.  Most men might have been turned on by this teenage girl, but few would admit it and only a handful would attempt intercourse with an underage young woman.  Yeah, I’d been with a few older guys before my eighteenth birthday, but now there were so many more to choose from.

It also could have been that I was thinner on this tour than the first, and I credited smoking and drugs for that.  My appetite decreased when I smoked but all the drinking made it hard to keep food down and the smorgasbord of drugs?  Well, those made me forget everything.  Except pot.  Sometimes it made me hungry.

On day five, we’d had a huge sold out show somewhere in Texas, and I was blitzed out of my mind.  I’d fucked some guy closer to my age but the combination of alcohol and whatever stupid pill I’d swallowed made me weepy.  I tossed him out after we were done and I picked up my phone.  I started to text CJ and realized my fingers were too uncoordinated to do the task.  Sober, I could text with the best of them, but I couldn’t even type a single word now, even with the help of autocorrect.

So I called him.

I expected to be greeted by his voicemail but he answered.

“Kyle.  What’s up?”

“Hey, CJ.”

After a second, he asked, “What’s wrong?”

I started crying then, because he could tell I was messed up.  “Nothing.”

“Kyle…”

“Oh, CJ, why can’t we be together?”

“Baby, you know why.  You’re on tour and I’m on tour.  It’s physically impossible.”

“That’s not what I mean.  I mean—”  I started crying again.

“You been drinking, Kyle?”

My voice was high pitched when I answered.  “Yes.”

“Maybe you should go to bed, baby.”

I took a long, jerky breath as I controlled my sobs.  “I cheated on you.”

He sounded amused and that pissed me off.  “What do you mean?”

“I
mean
I’ve
fucked
some guys already on tour.”

“Okay.”

“And that’s why this is
never
gonna work.  I’m gonna cheat.  You’re gonna cheat.  We’re a couple of skanky whores.”  CJ started laughing then…and that pissed me off more.  “It’s not funny.  It’s true!”

“Kyle, we talked about this.  We agreed that what we do on the road is okay.”

I tried to bite my tongue but the whiskey and pills had loosened it way too much.  “No, actually,
you
imposed that parti—
particular
mandate.”  Oh, I should have stopped talking.  I was slurring my words and having a hard time getting any of them to come out, besides the fact that my head was fuzzy.  I might not even remember most of the conversation in the morning.

His voice was overly patient and it keeping me pissed off.  “Do you remember why I said that?”

“‘Cause you’re an asshole.”  I didn’t really mean it, although my heart might have.  CJ was, frankly, the only guy I could picture myself with for more than a few days at a time.  Most guys were a flash in the pan that I didn’t care much about.  The only exceptions had been Decker (and that made sense, considering he’d been my “first love” and I’d lost my virginity to him) and Bad Dog (but only because he was also a friend).  Oh, God, I was thinking too much in my inebriated state and I was way too emotional.  I’d have to hide my phone when I planned to drink from now on.  “And Dog.  I miss him too.”

“When did you get a dog?”

“Not
a
dog. 
Bad
Dog.  He used to be one of our roadies.  And he was so good to me.”  I burst into tears again.

“Kyle, honey, I wish I could be there.”

Anger flared through my limbs again.  “No, you don’t.  That’s bullshit, CJ.  If you were here with me, you couldn’t get a blowjob from the cute blonde in the first row!”

CJ’s patience finally wore thin.  I shouldn’t have been surprised.  I was lashing out.  If I’d just been weepy, he might have been able to tolerate it, but I’d compounded it all by being mean and hateful, and I’d worn out my welcome.  “
Kyle.
”

“What, CJ?  I get it, okay?  I get it.  But you don’t have to be so…
in my face
about it.”

I could hear the tension in his voice.  “You’d rather I lie to you?”

Well, no.  No, I wouldn’t.  But I was irrational and maybe even egging for a fight.  “Know what?  I don’t even know why I thought this would work.  You are hot.  You’re amazing in bed.  But this is never gonna work…so have a nice life!”  I hung up the phone.

Oh, holy hell.  What had I done?

“Conversion” ~ Straight Line Stitch

Chapter Thirty-eight

I’D PASSED OUT shortly after hanging up on CJ, and I woke the next morning (thanks to a wake up call) feeling like someone had dropped an anvil on my head.  I was still wearing my stage clothes, sprawled on the foot of the hotel’s double bed, the comforter still in place.  All I’d have to do would be to smooth it out, and no one would ever know I’d been on the bed at all.

I brought my hand to my head, sucking in a sharp breath.  Sweet Jesus.  I hadn’t been hung over like this since—well, maybe ever.  This one was bad.  And I felt nauseous too, so much so that I could tell I might not be able to hold even water down—which completely sucked because my mouth felt like sandpaper.

I took my time making my way into the bathroom so I could relieve my bladder, and the details of my conversation with CJ started coming back to me.  I hadn’t said anything I hadn’t been thinking, but I knew I might have damaged our friendship beyond repair.

Well, it didn’t matter.  I hadn’t said anything I hadn’t meant.  But, after pouring a little water in a cup and then walking back in the room, I picked up my phone.  CJ had tried calling twice and then finally texted. 
Let’s talk when you’re sober.
  We’d had other drunken phone conversations, but it just so happened that CJ was a nicer, happier drunk than I’d turned out to be.

And I didn’t know that I wanted to
talk
with him.  I was feeling raw and hurt, and I’d given that away last night.  He was the one in the position of power—out of the two of us, he was the one in the relationship with nothing to lose.  He didn’t love me, so he could walk away.  I had made the choice the night before—wisely, I might add, in spite of my drunken stupor—to do that myself.  I had to step away from this
relationship
(if that’s what you’d call it) before I got hurt any more than I already was.  Yes, I could have done it in a more bad ass way, but what was done was done.  I wasn’t going to apologize and I wasn’t going to take back any words I’d said, but maybe I could save what little friendship we might have left.

I sent him a text. 
Call you later?

I got ready for the ride.  We had a concert that night, so I had to feel better by then.  I showered and packed and then dragged my luggage downstairs.  One of the roadies threw my bag on the bus while I made my way to the little Starbucks station in the hotel and bought a small mocha latte, a bottle of water, a banana, and a biscotti.  I sipped at the coffee but was throwing up in the toilet on the bus before we were actually on the road.  So I instead sipped on the water and took tiny bites of the biscotti and banana before curling up in a bunk and praying for death.

I fell asleep again, though, and how I managed to avoid motion sickness is beyond me.  When I woke up, though, I felt a little more human and wanted to try eating again because I was hungry.  My bandmates, all except for Liz, were still sleeping as well, so I figured they’d had equally rough nights.  My memories were fuzzy after a certain point last night, save for my conversation with CJ which happened to be etched in my brain and always would.

I drank more water, even though my stomach was still a little upset, and took more small bites of the food I’d set aside.  This time, I managed to keep everything down and felt a little better as time went on, and I checked out my phone.  There was another text from CJ. 
As long as you can do it before four CST.

I checked my phone, already synced with Eastern Standard Time, and it was a little before three o’clock.  Damn time zones confused the fuck out of me, and I had to actually picture the sun and the way it moved from east to west to figure out what time it was where.  You would have thought all my travel as a child would have helped and, in a way it did, because I could think about it logically and finally make the connection, but there was nothing intuitive about it.  It was two o’clock where CJ was, so we had a little time to talk.  I just needed some privacy.  Nowhere on the bus could afford any, really.  I considered holding out till we stopped for gas, but a lot of times the driver gassed up after we were dropped off at our destination.  I saw that Liz had her earphones in and decided to just go for it.  What the hell, right?  I had nothing to lose and I didn’t care.  My bandmates by now knew I had a pretty rocky relationship with the guy who was my non-boyfriend.

So I called and CJ answered.  “You feeling better?”

I shook my head, not that he could see that.  “Better than what?  Someone who’s been hit by a train?  Yeah, sure.”

CJ laughed, in spite of the tension I imagined I could feel between us.  “You were pretty upset last night.”

“Yeah, about that.”  I’d had some time to think when my head had stopped pounding, and I needed to protect my already vulnerable heart.  It was stupid that I’d let myself get to that point, but I had an obligations to stop it from going any further.  “You can probably pretty much ignore everything I said, but…”  The silence stretched out in front of me.

Oh, no.  I’d taken too long to figure out how I was going to say what I needed to say.  “But what?”

“I think it’s best that we don’t see each other.  At all.”

“Okay…”

I had to just spit it all out.  “Probably better to not even call or text or anything like that.”  I couldn’t read what he was thinking through his thick silence.  It made me a little nervous, so I kept talking.  “I mean…like I said last night, we’re both fucking other people, and I think it just confuses us, you know?”

“I’m not confused at all.”  It was my turn to be silent.  I didn’t know how to counter that, because I hadn’t meant that I was confused.  I’d meant that I was hurt, but I was too damn afraid to say it.  “I know exactly what I want, Kyle.  But I don’t think you’re ready for that.”

Yeah.  That hurt.  It hurt bad.  And I didn’t
want
to hurt anymore.  “Yeah.  I think you’re right.”  I tried my fucking hardest to sound sweet as could be, to keep any hint of sadness out of my voice.  “So, I’m gonna wish you and Death Crunch all the best.  Maybe we’ll see you around.”

“Kyle, I—”

“Bye, CJ.”

Fuck me.  That had been the hardest thing I’d ever done, and it felt like my insides had shriveled.  Almost like a grape turns into a raisin, my internals felt as though they were collapsing in on themselves.

I surprised myself, though, because no tears dropped.  I must have cried it all out last night before passing out.  Yeah, it still hurt like a motherfucker, but CJ wasn’t worth anymore of my tears.  Man whore.

God, I wanted a drink.  I wanted to drown it all out until I could forget him.

Liz pulled out her earphones.  “Kyle?”  I looked over at her.  “Sorry, man.  I didn’t mean to, but I overheard that.  You all right?”

I forced a smile.  “Top of my game.”

She nodded.  Being such a private person, she respected my need to not talk about it.  Barbie would have already been trying to pry the entire story out of me and, short of that, would have begun making up her own.  “I’m here if you change your mind.”

“Thanks.”  I rested my head against the back of the couch and closed my eyes.  I still had the music, my first love.  CJ couldn’t compare…and that was what I had to remind myself.

* * *

The sales for our second album surpassed the first one in no time flat.  We were all amazed and shocked and thrilled.  And then we read some of the reviews—and most of the world (well, paid critics, at any rate) thought our sound was more mature, more solid, and less “bubble gum”…whatever the fuck that meant.

And the reviews made me proud of the hard work we’d put into our band.

But we were only as good as our last appearance, and we were getting some negative comments about the shows—that Barbie was wooden (on occasion), that Liz’s bass playing sucked (it didn’t), that we were stoned out of our minds (rarely).  It pissed me off, because I knew I gave a solid performance no matter how blitzed I was.  But it made me realize, once more, that I needed to get more serious.  Maybe I was missing something in my haze.  I needed to save the chemical enhancers for after the show.

It was hard to pass up, though, when we had random meet and greets in various cities.  Some fans were amazing and fun to meet.  I remember one teenage girl asking me for my autograph and the poor thing was shaking like a leaf.  Others got so choked up, they couldn’t say anything.  Most of them were calm and even, though, and they knew that we were normal people, just like they were.  Once in a while, though, you’d get the fucking fans who acted like they knew you, who acted like just because they’d read about you in
Revolver
or followed you on Twitter that they were your best friends.  Well, sure, they might have known all about me, but that didn’t mean I knew all about them.  Some of those weird guys (and girls, to be fair) might have thought they were in love with me, but the feeling wasn’t mutual.  And I had no idea how to communicate that.

It was times like those that I was glad we had bodyguards now.  Eddie from our first tour might have been a bit of a creep because he was an older guy, but there was a whole other level of creep that we were just beginning to discover.

The biggest problem was we didn’t want to insult the fans or hurt their feelings, so we had to be careful about how we handled those situations.  I understood now why some celebrities would run away or flip off people or even punch paparazzi.  It got to be difficult, having to always feel like we were onstage, even when we weren’t.

And, excuse or not, that just made me plunge deeper into the chemical abyss.  CJ, the fans, the plethora of mediocre reviews of the tour that increased the longer we were on the road—and then Barbie constantly whining and picking fights and acting like a diva.  But, little did I know, she had only just begun.