“I’m gonna shower,” I say, tugging off my sweat-soaked T-shirt and pulling another one from my duffel. “You guys go ahead. I’ll catch up to you.”
What I’m really going to do is go back to the hotel and work on the song that’s been eating my brain over the last six weeks. Had a chunk of lyrics come to me while we were onstage tonight and I want to get it down before I forget.
Grim cracks the top of a new bottle of Jack. “We’ll wait.” He doesn’t add the “you fucking *” but it’s clear in his expression as he drops into a chair and takes a swig.
This isn’t the first time I’ve used that excuse to ditch the after-party. Since the shit in Paris with Amilia, I’ve tried to avoid the public eye whenever I can. I don’t know if Lucky’s even paying any attention, but the thought of her seeing shots of women grinding up on me leaves an ache in the pit of my stomach that no amount of TUMS seems to touch. I’ve been chewing them like candy. Still, my stomach’s in a constant knot.
I take my sweet fucking time in the shower, hoping they’ll get sick of waiting and go without me, but when I come back to the dressing room in fresh jeans, toweling off my hair, they’re still there.
Grim shoves the bottle in my face. “Drink.”
I tip the bottle and take a swallow. When I go to lower it, he grabs the neck and holds it to my mouth. I swallow the initial flood to keep from drowning in it, and about half the bottle empties down my bare chest.
“What the fuck was that?” I say, shoving him back.
His face pulls into a toxic mix of fury and frustration. “I don’t know what the fuck happened to you, but you aren’t the fucking Tro Gunnison that our fans come to see. You’re like some fucking shadow of that guy. You’re losing your edge, man, and I’m going to make sure you get it the fuck back before you ruin us.”
Acid rises up in me like snake venom and I strike without thinking. I ram my hand into his solar plexus, knocking him back against the wall. “Maybe I wanna be more than a fucking tweaking waste of space when I’m fucking forty.”
Before I even see it coming, his fist ricochets off my left cheekbone. Stars flash in my vision as fireworks go off behind my left eye. I stagger back a step and catch the couch to regain my balance.
In our early days on the road, fights in the seedy Louisiana bars we played weren’t uncommon. One or the other of us were always in some kind of scrap. More than once it started when one of us made moves on some local’s girl. I’ve seen Grim nearly kill a guy with those fists without even flinching.
And the look in his eye now tells me he wouldn’t think twice about doing the same to me.
“Jesus fucking Christ, Grim,” Jamie shouts, stepping between us and grabbing Grim by the shirt. “What the fuck was that?”
“You read the shit they’re saying about us?” he asks, ripping out of Jamie’s grasp. “They say we’re low energy and the crowds are pissed that they’re not getting what they fucking paid for.” He glares at me. “They say our frontman’s lost his edge. That we’re just any second-rate band now. Nothing special.”
“Everyone gets crap reviews,” Jamie says, letting him go. “It doesn’t mean shit.”
Grim shakes his head. “This is different, man. You see him up there. He’s just fucking calling it in. Has been since about halfway through the U.S. leg.” He glares pure disgust at me. “Since he brought that little mutt cunt up on stage with us in San Francisco and bled his fucking heart all over her.”
There’s a second where I picture him dead as my fist swings out. I’m not drunk, so my aim is true, and where his swing didn’t take me all the way to the floor, mine does. But he’s up a second later, all two hundred pounds of over-the-hill beer gut charging at me. I get another punch off before he’s on me and we both go to the ground.
After some clawing and grabbing, I get an elbow around his neck and roll him face down into the floor, a knee in his back. “Don’t fuck with me, Grim. You’re way the fuck too old.”
I slam his face into the floor and pull myself up. Jamie just stares, wide-eyed as I grab my duffel off the chair, yank on a hoodie, and storm out the door. I weave through the hallways and punch out the back door, then wave down a taxi when I hit the street.
I hurl myself in back and when the cabbie looks at me, I tell him to drive. “I don’t give a fuck where.”
He looks confused for a second, so I yank the wad of bills from my bag and toss it over the back of his seat. It’s Euros and I have no fucking clue how much it is, but it’s enough that the driver does as I ask.
I watch the city unfold outside my window as my blood pressure slowly comes out of the stratosphere. Fucking Grim. Sometimes I hate that fucking bastard.
Especially when he’s right.