“I packed for you,” Lola said from the door.
I jumped, my heart pounding. “You scared me.” My nerves were shot. I sat on the unmade bed and smoothed out the comforter, as if it helped. “This place is a disaster.”
Lola shrugged. “That’s what security deposits are for.” She crossed her arms. “So… Are you with us?”
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
“You’re with us, but are you with us. They don’t call it a band for nothing, you know. We need to play as a whole. Are you ready to do that now?”
I shrugged, not looking at her. “Sure.”
I heard Lola sigh and shift on her heels. “Is it the guy? The limo driver?”
“What about him?”
“Is he another Chett? Another guy who’s going to fuck you up for God knows how many years? Because honestly, Kacey—”
“He’s dying.”
Lola’s arms dropped to her side. “What do you mean he’s dying?”
I stared at her, shaking my head.
Her chin tilted. “You mean like, dying dying?”
I nodded.
“Cancer?”
“Heart failure. Slow heart failure.”
Slow failure that’s going to take him so fucking fast…
“Shit.” Lola sat next to me on the bed. “Oh, honey I’m so sorry.” She put her arms around me though I hardly felt it. “Well. You met him on Friday night, right? Or Saturday morning? Whenever you regained consciousness on his couch?”
“Yeah,” I said. “So what?”
“So… It sucks he’s sick, but you’ve known him all of four days. If that.”
I blinked at her. “And?”
“I’m just saying, you found out before you got in too deep. The last thing you’d want is to get involved with someone who can’t give you a future.”
“No.” I shot off the bed, shaking my head vigorously now. “No, you are not going to do this.”
“Do what? Give you a reality check?”
“Talk about him. You don’t know—” I waved my hands. “Never mind. I’m not talking to you about him. Or these four days. They’re mine. So let’s…fucking go already. We have a plane to catch.”
“Glad to hear it,” said a voice at the door. Jeannie leaned against the jamb, arms crossed over her black, mid-riff-bearing shirt. She tossed a lock of dark hair out of her eyes. “You’re ready to rejoin us?”
“We’re cool, Jeannie,” Lola said, staring at me, her eyes soft with compassion but hard with don’t fuck this up. “She’s ready. Right? She needed a little break. Some time to chill. Nothing wrong with that.”
“Yeah, I rested up,” I said. “Now I’m ready.”
“Good,” Jeannie replied. As I pushed past her, she threw out the empty threat she’d been using on me since I joined the band: “Because there are a hundred guitarists who would kill to have your job.”
I muttered under my breath, “Promise?”
Friday was the first concert in Denver and I did the show sober.
To say it was a disaster was being kind.
I fucked up my solo on “Talk Me Down,” I came in late on three different songs, and I riffed the opening chords for “Taste This” at the end of the set, forgetting we’d played it already. Jeannie had to stop the show and make a joke about an early encore while shooting me a death glare.
“What the actual fuck, Kacey?” She screeched at me in the green room. “You go and take a leave of absence for four days, supposedly to get your shit together, and then come back more flaky than before. Are you trying to ruin us?”
Violet and even Lola were waiting for an answer.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I was out of it tonight. I’ll be fine tomorrow, I promise.”
But I wasn’t. Not on the inside, anyway. I managed to get through the next night’s concert without fucking up, but the second it was over, I hit the green room liquor stash hard.
The first burning taste of whiskey nearly made me puke. The second was better. By the fifth, the ache in my heart wasn’t entirely gone, but it was bearable.
We partied back at our hotel, with the band—and fifty of our closest friends—crowded into the suites Jimmy rented. I’d never been claustrophobic, but I felt it that night. Too many bodies, talking too loudly and drinking too much. Smoke—from pot and cigarettes—hung in the air like a gray haze, and the music was so loud I could hardly hear the guy hanging off my shoulder. He was tall, handsome in a slick kind of way. Like a mobster. His stubble grazed my cheek as he leaned in. Not a roadie or part of the crew. A friend of the record execs, maybe. Or not. I didn’t know who he was and I was too drunk to find out. Did it matter?
He could be anyone, and I could be anyone to him.
“Anyone plus anyone equals no one,” I slurred.
“You’re wasted,” he laughed. He leaned in, his breath wet with vodka on my ear. “You want to get out of here?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I really do. I really fucking want to get out of here.”
He smiled with hooded eyes and started to walk me out. I resisted and stepped away from him, staggering a little.