On the Road: (Vagabonds Book 2) (New Adult Rock Star Romance) (24 page)

Chapter Thirty-nine

BARBIE WAS MORE everything than she’d been on the first tour—she was louder and more obnoxious; more demanding and more narcissistic; she was, once again, full of self-importance and believed that she
was
the Vagabonds.

She was not.  Not by a long shot.

The reason why I refrained from beating her ass on a daily basis was because she
was
important.

It seemed to start near the beginning of the tour.  No matter what we had available in the places where we played (whether it was in the small dressing rooms prepped for us or just a green room or two to hang out in), Barbie demanded more.  The first time seemed legit—she asked a staffer if he could “fetch” her some Tylenol because her head was throbbing.  Never mind that it had been due to her own indiscretions the night before.  I understood.  No one wanted to perform with a pounding head.  It was hard enough standing there under the sometimes-too-hot lights and do our jobs well—it was doubly hard when we didn’t feel good enough to be standing there.

But the very next night in a different place, she asked the staffer to exchange the “pedestrian” Pure Life water for something artesian.  And the stupid asses did it for her.  That was all it took for her to becoming a demanding princess who expected too much but usually got everything she asked for.  That made her bad enough.  She began to act like she was better than the rest of us because she was spoiled.  Liz managed to ignore her and Vicki usually stayed away entirely, only showing up when it was time to perform—and I knew why, especially because it got worse the longer we were on tour.  But Barbie distracted us from a lot of Vicki’s antics because she was going overboard.

I called her on it on more than one occasion.  One time, she demanded flowers in our room because the place “smelled like farts and armpits.”  I rolled my eyes.  Yeah, it smelled musty and like leftover food, but it wasn’t as bad as she’d made it out to be.

“Barbie, you weren’t born with a silver spoon in your mouth.  You don’t have to have everything set to perfection for you to be able to perform.  We getting ready to rock, for God’s sake.  You can do that, with or without being surrounded by roses.”  Would any of my favorite metal guys ever do that?  Hell…would CJ and his band ask for flowers in their room?  Fuck, no.  If those guys were in a room with Barbie carrying on, they’d probably pass gas on purpose just to make her regret opening her stupid mouth.

If she’d just continued being a spoiled diva, I could have dismissed her, but she seemed hell bent on pissing me off.  At first, I just thought I was letting her get to me.  It took a while for me to figure out that what she was doing was intentional.

It might have started just because, well…because she was Barbie, and it was in her nature to be difficult, but it might have started because I’d pissed her off.  We were all sitting in the living area of the bus one afternoon after a particularly grueling show.  We’d had some sound issues but, more than that, we’d had some problems with inebriation.  It was all too clear to me that both Barbie and Vicki were blitzed.  I hadn’t asked Vicki if she was chasing the dragon again and I really didn’t want to know.  Knowing added responsibility on my shoulders, but it was one of those things that I couldn’t fix anyway, much as I wanted to.  I was young and stupid.  We should have locked her in rehab until we knew she was squeaky clean, but we all had our problems and one of them was being too young to know what to do.  And our manager this time was less involved with us personally.  She made sure we were where we needed to be when we needed to be, whether it was a call for a show, an interview, a meet and greet, or to get our asses in the hotel lobby for checkout.  But she wasn’t like Peter in most ways, and that was a very good thing.  He had ultimately been poison.  It would have been nice, though, if she’d been a little more involved.  I honestly didn’t know what she did with her day, and maybe that was okay too.  I did know that the tour itself ran smoothly.  Unlike our first tour, not once did we have any places that couldn’t find our reservations.  We were always expected wherever we went.  On occasion, she had our meals taken care of as well, but we told her early on that we didn’t want her regulating our whole lives.  We wanted a little freedom; after all, that was what we were used to.

But a little more involvement, particularly in terms of my addictive friend, would have been welcome.

I couldn’t really blame our manager, though, because we were all living in our own little worlds.  I don’t know if all eighteen-year-olds are like that, but we were, and I think that was partly a Pavlovian response to what had happened to us under the watch of Peter.  Or maybe we were all divas.

Our big diva, however, was just revving up.  That day on the tour bus might have started it all.  I wasn’t going to tell my bandmates that their poisons of choice had to go, nor was I going to tell them to stop partying (in whatever fashion they preferred).  But I did feel the need to speak my mind.  “Guys…last night sucked.  I’m sorry if you don’t want to hear that, but it did.  It was fucking embarrassing.  We were like amateurs.”  Barbie raised an eyebrow, a snide look crossing her face.  “Seriously.  I know the sound was fucked up, but that doesn’t excuse the other bullshit.”

Barbie knew what I was talking about, yet she chose to challenge me.  “What other bullshit?”

“Oh, come on, Barbie.  Maybe you didn’t notice parts of the syncopated rhythm in ‘Chains’ was fucked up.”  I looked at Vicki.  “Sorry, but the beats were funky.”  Vicki shrugged and frowned, but her eyes admitted that she’d known she was a problem.  “But don’t tell me you thought you got all the words right when you sang ‘Use Me’.”

“I did too.”

Liz sighed.  “I don’t want to point fingers, but they
were
wrong, Barbie.  I don’t even know what song you were singing.”

I felt a smart ass moment coming on that I couldn’t resist, mainly because Barbie was being a complete and total pain in the ass instead of admitting fault.  “I think they were lines from an old Linkin Park song.”

“Fuck off, Kyle.  Okay, so what?  So I fucked up a couple of lines.”

“Yeah, Barbie.  Lines that people in the audience wanted to sing to, and when you started singing whatever the fuck it was, they were scratching their heads, wondering what the hell band they were listening to.”  She glared and was probably trying to think of an answer when I said, “You’re killing us.”

“Oh, yeah, Kyle, ‘cause you’re perfect.”

I shook my head.  “No, I’m not perfect.  But when I see that something’s wrong, I try to fix it.”

“Isn’t it amazing that everything wrong isn’t you?”

“Jesus, Barbie.  I didn’t say that.”

“You might as well.”

“No.  When I see I have a problem, I work on it.  Maybe you didn’t notice that I screwed up the beginning of the solo of ‘Fight’ on our first night.”  Barbie nodded smugly, but I knew it was a cover.  She hadn’t noticed it.  I’d bet a thousand bucks Liz had, though.  “So you wanna know what I did?  I spent over an hour the next day working my ass off, practicing that thing over and over—until my fingers and brain did it right.  Did I want to do that?”  Okay, it would have been a complete lie to say I
hadn’t
wanted to do it, because I wanted to be good—onstage, I wanted to be as close to perfection as possible.  People paid good money to see their favorite bands (and sometimes got a good taste of a new band that they fell in love with, and I hoped the Vagabonds would fall in that category), and the last thing they wanted was to see a band that didn’t have its shit together.  I’d been to a couple of concerts where things weren’t quite right—you couldn’t always put your finger on the problem, especially if you were unfamiliar with the songs, but if it was a band you loved playing songs you adored and they messed them up, you were pissed at them for ruining your good time.  I didn’t want to do that to our fans—and I didn’t want to lose future fans by giving a shitty performance either.  “There were other things I could have done with my time, Barbie.  I could have been on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram, asking our adoring fans what they thought of my new earrings.”  Her eyes flared when I said that, because she’d done that shit more than once.  Her narcissistic tendencies were easily fueled by our male fans who constantly told her what a “beautiful babe” she was, how “hot” and “sweet” she was, how they’d love to have a girlfriend like her.

Yeah, it made me want to puke.

“I could have slept in or gone sightseeing”—okay, so I really wouldn’t have wanted to at our first stop; I couldn’t remember where that was, but it wasn’t a place I would have wanted to explore—“or watched a movie…but I didn’t.  Work first.  Play later.”

“Chatting with our fans
is
work, Kyle.  You think I just do that ‘cause I want to?”

“Really?  You’re even asking me that?”

Vicki was chittering, trying to contain a gale of laughter that threatened to erupt.  Even Liz had a twinkle in her eye.  “Okay, yeah, so I enjoy it, but don’t think it’s easy.  I’m keeping our fans happy—so they fucking come to our shows in the first place.”

At this point, I didn’t know if she was trying to convince us or herself, but I didn’t want to be part of her delusion.  “Look, Barbie, I don’t give a shit what you do during your down time, so long as our performances are tight and professional—
and they’re not
.  Why the fuck do you think people are panning our live performances?”

“Oh, don’t you blame that shit on me.”

“I’m not.”  Okay, so I partially was, but being direct with her wasn’t working.  Her ego was too goddamned big, and I was anything but diplomatic.  Liz I was not.  I was Kyle Summers, ballsy and in-your-face, and I’d shaken a stick at the snarling dog, inviting her to scrap with me.  I had to try to back off a little.  “It’s all of us, Barbie.  We’re a team.  We’re all in this together.  If one of us looks or sounds bad, we all do.  If one of us has a bad night, we all do.”  I saw Liz nodding her head beside me, and it helped to know she agreed with me.  “If we’re all aware of our own shit, then we can all work to improve it, right?  That’s all I’m askin’.”

Her feathers seemed to smooth a little, but I was sure I wasn’t out of the woods yet.  Barbie frowned but seemed resigned to drop the argument.  Vicki nodded and said, “I know my drum work’s been a little uneven.  I’ll try to be better.”

“Thanks, Vic.  You rock, girl.”  I looked at Barbie.  Frankly, I would have rather swallowed my tongue than say something nice to the girl, but I needed to oil the machine.  “And you do too, Barbie.  We’re the fucking Vagabonds, man.  Let’s give our fans a hell of a show—every night.”

Yeah, it
felt
like we were all in agreement and like things were okay…but I didn’t know at the time that Barbie held onto a grudge like it was a precious heirloom—a dangerous thing for someone who was only aware of her own damn self.

Chapter Forty

IT WAS LESS than a week later that I saw one of the techs changing the strings on my Flying V.  “Dude, what are you doing?”

He shrugged and looked up at me.  “Barbie told me your guitar needed maintenance.”

It took mere seconds for my blood pressure to rise.  I could feel the heat surge through my veins, and I fought to keep my voice steady.  “That was nice of her, but you know I do my own maintenance.  You guys tune it before the show, but that’s it.  Everything else is on me.”  Okay, so maybe that was anal, but the only person I trusted to treat my guitars right was me.  I didn’t want anyone else fucking with my equipment.  Tuning?  Sure.  They needed to be tuned every night before a show.  I was cool with that.  But no way was I going to have them maintaining my guitars.  Besides, I hadn’t had anyone spoiling me on our first tour doing that, and I’d somehow survived.

He shrugged.  “I thought maybe you changed your mind.”

“No, but thanks.”

“Want me to go ahead and finish?”

I hunched over.  It looked like he was doing an okay job, snipping off the strings at about the point I would have, and the guy was a decent guitar player in his own right…which told me he probably had a great amount of respect for the instrument.  I’d already been a bit of a dick and he knew from now on what the drill was.  “Yeah, that’s cool.  Thanks.”  As an afterthought, I said, “Just remember those guitars are like my children.”

He smirked.  “Got it, boss.”

But I was already on to my next mission, and that was to find Barbie.  Why the fuck she’d ask someone to change the strings right before a show anyway baffled the hell out of me.  It made no damn sense.

She was in the green room, flirting with one of the venue’s security guys, a dude who looked like he could have been a professional wrestler—overdeveloped biceps covered in tattoos and well-groomed facial hair, but he was wearing a black t-shirt stretched over his huge pecs and the back said, in tall white lettering,
STAFF
.

She could flirt later.  Right now, we had to talk.  “Barbie, can I have a word with you?”

I saw the spark in her eye and the corner of her mouth turned up into a slight sneer.  She knew exactly why I was there.  “I’m a little busy, Kyle.  Anything you have to say to me you can say here.”

Yeah, she was hoping I’d be more civil with others around me…and, goddammit, the bitch was right.  As much as I wanted to fucking wring her neck and chew her up one side and down the other, I’d be less inclined with people around who didn’t know us very well.  Barbie would make sure I looked like the bad guy if I went at her with full force.  So I drew in a deep breath and forced a smile.  I’m sure it looked fake as hell, but I had to try.  “Did you tell the crew to maintenance my guitar?”

She flashed a smile back at me, equally phony, all teeth, but it never reached her eyes.  She looked like a model who’d rather be anywhere but where she was.  “They
asked
.  So I told them I was sure you’d appreciate it if they took care of it.  I know how hard you work, Kyle, how dedicated you are to this band, and I thought you’d appreciate it if they took a load off your shoulders.”

Nicely played.  What a fucking bitch.  Well, I could play sicky sweet too.  “Thanks so much for thinking of me, Barbie, but I’m sure you remember that I prefer to do the maintenance on my guitars myself.”

“Yes, I remember that, Kyle, but I also know that our techs want to feel like they’re doing their jobs.  We don’t want them to feel like we don’t love and need them.”

I could see this wasn’t going to work, not while she was trying to make me look bad and herself look good in front of this guy.  So I said, “Well…thanks for thinking of them and me.”  I looked at the bullish security guy who looked like he was ready to walk away, but Barbie placed her well-manicured hand on his forearm while I said, “Sorry to interrupt.”  The smile I plastered on my face made me nauseous.

And I fumed just offstage, waiting for her to show up.  She arrived just seconds before we had to go onstage—typical.  I felt like she wanted us sweating bullets every night wondering if she’d be on time.  Liz, Vicki, and I would take the stage first—in semi-darkness—and we’d begin to play the opening notes to “Dream World.”  Once the lights flooded the stage, the crowd’s roar would grow louder, and Barbie would begin singing offstage and jump on at what she deemed was the perfect time.  There had been more than one time that she hadn’t been offstage when it was time for the three of us to go on, so I wouldn’t have been surprised if tonight had been different.

I had already draped my Gibson over my shoulders.  I’d unplugged it momentarily and was fingering the strings, making sure everything felt right.  Goddammit.  It fucking made me a nervous wreck knowing someone else had worked on it—and right before a show, no less.  Thinking about it made me angry all over again…and, just in time, because Barbie was strutting closer.  She stopped and talked to the tech who handed her a mike, and then she continued walking over.  I had half expected her to keep the guy engaged in conversation until we had to leave so she wouldn’t have to deal with my wrath.  But maybe she thought her stupid explanation had cooled me off.

I wasn’t
that
good an actress.

She stopped and stood next to the three of us and I tried to keep my anger and voice down.  “Don’t you
ever
tell someone to do anything with any of my equipment again.”

“What?  I was trying to help, Kyle.  You need to take care of your guitars if you want them to sound right onstage.”

My ire spiked.  “What the fuck would
you
know about my goddamned guitars?  They’re
my
responsibility, not yours.  You ever—I mean
ever
—do that again, you’ll regret it.”

Her facial expression grew dull, as though she were trying to hold her real emotions in.  “Yeah?  And what are you gonna do?”

We got the cue to go onstage, and the last thing I was going to do was sabotage this band just because I was ready to beat the shit out of Barbie.  The fans—
the music
—always came first.  If my guitar was fucked up for some reason, I could swap it out for my Fender.  “You don’t want to find out.”

Before the lights dimmed, I looked at Vicki and Liz.  Vicki was calm—under the influence, I had no doubt—but I couldn’t read Liz.  I didn’t know whose side she was on or if she even cared.  Typical Liz, but I was sure she too wouldn’t appreciate if Barbie had done the same thing to her.

As usual, though, the show changed my mood.   I poured all my emotion—my anger and frustration—into the music and gave one of my best shows to date.  The danger with emotional playing sometimes is that screw ups can sometimes be easy to make because of being ruled by whatever feeling is holding onto you, but when you have control—when you’ve practiced a song over and over again, so many times that you could play it even if you were in a coma—you can flood the song with emotion, let your inner rage or joy or love flow through your fingers and into the strings, making the song even better than before.  I don’t know how the hell it works; I only know that it does—and it’s usually nothing anyone can put a finger on or even put into words, but they know it.  And it’s often the difference between a good show and one that people will talk about for years to come.

I’ve been to those concerts, so to be able to give one like that was empowering and so moving that I couldn’t hold onto the negativity anymore.  By the time the show was over, I was spent and content and I knew I could save the rest of my anger at Barbie for another day.

After that, though, Barbie’s tactics became more subtle, and I don’t know if it was because she saw she wouldn’t have any allies in that fight or what.  I suspected that she knew she’d have to be more insidious, would have to have someone else on her side if she wanted to win.  And, God, if I could have made her see that there was no winning or losing, that we were all in this together and we were a team…well, hell, I probably could have been a motivational speaker.  But most days it took all I had to not jump down her throat.

I didn’t notice it at first, how she’d have Vicki pulled to one side and would be talking to her quietly.  And when I saw her sidling up to one of the tech guys or roadies, batting her eyelashes and touching their arms, I thought she was flirting.  Turned out she couldn’t get to the guys, because they weren’t interested, and she seemed smart enough to not even try it with the bodyguards, but Vicki?  Yeah, she was able to worm her way into my friend’s drug-addled brain.  Vicki had taken to being a little secretive and keeping to herself since she’d taken the chemical plunge again anyway, but Barbie’s evil patter didn’t help.

But when Vicki’s behavior began to feel cold and distant, I started to suspect something was up.  Still, I had been keeping to myself for the most part during the tour anyway, aside from partying.  I was under chemical and herbal influence a lot as well, and too much pot made me paranoid, so I didn’t quite trust my judgment.  All I knew was that I wanted and needed to focus on the music.  Everything else—including friendships—was secondary.

But we had a day off and were unwinding in a really nice hotel, nicer than where we usually stayed, and I’d gone to their café.  There was a Starbucks somewhere in the hotel, but I wanted to sit and let my head decide that living was an okay option.  I figured caffeine would help with the process and, after I got that and a few glasses of water down, I knew breakfast might be in order too.  Whatever the case, I had taken a book to read.  I’d considered doing some writing, but my head was too fuzzy and my body in too much—not quite pain but—disarray to create.  I could enjoy someone else’s words while sipping coffee but creating my own would have to wait.

Typical of some of the nicer hotels we were introduced to from time to time on this tour, this hotel restaurant was fairly upscale.  I could tell not only from the linen napkins but the high backs on the booth seats.  There were frosted glass panels between them all atop the seats so that diners could have ultimate privacy, and I noticed, glancing around the room as the waitress seated me, that most diners were seated in the booths that late morning.  I figured the staff filled the tables when they were busier or at night when dimmer lighting afforded more privacy anyway.

Whatever the case, there was soft classical piano music playing in the background and I couldn’t even hear a loud murmur among diners—not that there were many.  I had gotten there before what I figured was the lunch rush, but I really had no idea.  Maybe the place never got busy or was only crowded in the summer when the hotel was filled to capacity.  It was nice and quiet, though, and I was able to begin reading the book while sipping my sweet, white cup of coffee as I felt my body relax into the comfort of the booth.

All that was wrecked when I heard Barbie’s loud, raucous laugh.  “Over there’s fine,” she said, and she was so loud that I at first thought she must have been pointing at my booth, demanding to be seated with me.  My sluggish brain worked as quickly as it could, planning to head back to my room as soon as I’d finished the cup.  But I looked to my side and saw nothing and no one.  I leaned over some and saw a waitress standing beside the booth behind me, getting ready to hand off a couple of menus.  Internally, I felt a wave of relief that I wasn’t going to have to entertain or tolerate that woman for more time than it took to tune her out.

She was fucking loud, though, and it was hard to get back into my book.  Still, I wasn’t annoyed.  I was glad she was there and I was here.

In fact, what got my attention was that Barbie’s voice was low and I couldn’t help the way my ears strained to hear.  I should have been enjoying that damned John Grisham novel and, instead, I was worried about fucking drama queen Barbie.  “I am so sick of her bullshit.  She thinks she’s perfect and better than the rest of us.”

Oh, that old complaint again?  I’d heard Barbie bitch and moan and complain about Liz constantly when we’d been recording our first album.  She’d mentioned Liz sucking on a silver spoon more times than I could remember, and Liz had, as usual, impressed me with her cool and calm composure.  She’d just ignored Barbie’s jabs until the blonde had gotten bored and moved onto greener pastures.  I’d marveled more than once at how well Liz could bite her tongue.

I couldn’t, especially where dumb ass Barbie was concerned.  Half the time, the woman didn’t even know what she was talking about, and I was growing convinced that she was just flat out a bad person.  She didn’t care about anyone or anything but herself—and, when you have a band, at least three other people to consider, that was an awful thing, and I had grown weary dealing with her shit.  I couldn’t hold my tongue any longer than I could hold my bladder after a night of drinking more than a six pack chased by water and whiskey.

Someone on the other side of the booth said something, to which Barbie replied, “She thinks she’s perfect.  That’s the problem.”

The other voice muttered again and then the waitress interrupted them, pouring coffee and asking if they needed more time.

I knew already that Barbie was talking about either me or Liz.  Fine, let her vent.  As long as she turned up to shows and did her job competently, I’d deal with it.  Let her bitch.  I started reading my book again, doing my damnedest to focus on those words rather than Barbie’s high-pitched voice.