Chapter 15
Glastonbury ~ Gray 2013
After almost a year and a half in the United States, and with a second US-based album cut, we finally had some downtime. I’d weathered a lot during nearly eighteen months, getting past the anniversary of Lizzie’s death and I was glad I had taken a good hard look at myself. The last year had been the most difficult and uplifting of my life. Parts had been sad and not without its challenges, but I’d survived and considered myself as being a bit smarter about women.
During that year, although I loved the US, I became homesick for London. We hadn’t set foot in the UK once since our shift stateside; so when a unique opportunity arose for us to play at Glastonbury Festival, Brody and I were desperate to go. The festival held special memories for us because we had gone there as eighteen-year-old fans straight after finishing our final exams of high school.
Being asked to play, even if we weren’t the headliners, was a dream come true for CraVed. I was more than delighted to head back to our old stomping ground for a while. Playing in front of a home crowd at an honest-to-goodness festival was definitely something we had to look forward to.
Sleeping for two days straight came effortless to me. Jetlag had kicked my ass, mainly from the to-ing and fro-ing we’d done between LA, Florida, New York, and Chicago in the previous weeks. The two and three hour time differences between those time zones, followed by the five hour change forward to the UK knocked the stuffing out of me. Not to mention we drank most of the way back. Lifestyle-wise I had lapsed back to my old ways much to the delight of Brody who’d missed his drinking partner.
By the third day, I was up and ready for rehearsals. There was no way I had wanted to fuck up on stage at Glastonbury. Fortunately, the guys in the band were of the same mindset. Two days of six hour rehearsals and my fingertips would have bled if it weren’t for the calluses, but our band practice was on point and we were more than ready for our debut at such a famous event.
The only part I wasn’t looking forward to was getting there. The road to the festival was always backed up for long hours, sometimes up to six or seven just to get into the farm where it was held.
When I found out about our mode of transport to reach Glastonbury a new sense of privilege washed over me. All the bands were transported via helicopter which, although exciting, I personally felt it was a shame as it meant the bands didn’t experience the event from a fans perspective before performing there. I remembered Brody and I sitting in the traffic in my secondhand Austin Mini Clubman, packed tightly with our tent, sleeping bags, and two six packs of lager the last time we were there.
That car had meant the world to me. My dad had bought it for me for my eighteenth birthday. I’d crashed it three months after the festival that fall, wrapping it around a tree three days after my nineteenth birthday when I skidded on some wet leaves as I drove around our village.
Viewing the festival site from the helicopter gave me a vantage point like no other. It looked part village with temporary buildings and portacabins and part refugee camp with all the hastily erected tents.
The rain was falling, on our arrival, and the ground had already gone to shit, but the unpredictable English weather never dampened the spirit of the place. As the helicopter hovered above the field I found it hard to believe animals had been grazing those very pastures a couple of weeks earlier, and would again once the festival was over.
We only had one day instead of the four days the campers had, but it was awesome to wander amongst the crowds without being recognized too much. We’d been away for a while, so people who recognized us hesitated, unsure it was definitely us. When we were semi-famous, people tended to leave us alone. At Glastonbury there were so many famous people it didn’t seem to matter.
When I listened to the sounds of a couple of the newer bands it gave me a feel for how the music styles were changing, what was in and what was on the way out. The true classics never died a proper death. Those tunes were cyclic, returning once a decade or so to be sung as they were intended, or as a cover with a new arrangement if someone had the balls to mess with what wasn’t broken in the first place.
After a couple of hours, I headed over with Brody to the stage we were performing on and to meet up with Caleb and Surge. I was excited to meet the headline band, Vanderlight, when a familiar, soft voice I recognized instantly called out my name. “Gray?” Turning, I saw Brody standing beside Phoebe and my heart squeezed at the sight of her. A rush of sad memories from the last time I saw her hit me full on and I felt ashamed about how I’d treated her.
Taking in her appearance she looked a sight for sore eyes. Walking over beside her, I scooped her up in my arms and swung her around in a circle, excited to see she didn’t hold a grudge. She looked fantastic, smelled even better, and most importantly her smile was contagious.
Dropping her to her feet, I hung onto her with one arm around her waist and leaned far enough back to check out the length of her. It didn’t matter that she had on huge, green gumboots, her long, slender legs looked more inviting in them. I smiled at her; she looked like a turtle sinking into a huge puffy pillow coat that looked like it may swallow her head whole. One thing that was different was her hair. Usually, it was pristinely presented, but her platinum hair was soaked so thoroughly that it hung in long, blonde ringlets, while the appearance of her skin was incredible: shiny and radiant.
A water droplet fell from her hair, ran down the side of her face, and carried on down her neck until it disappeared into her blouse. That single tiny spot of rain was probably the sexiest thing I’d seen in a while.
“Look at you. You’re more stunning than ever, sweetheart,” I admitted honestly and leaned in to kiss her cheek. Phoebe shunned me and moved her head slightly away from me. As far as I was concerned she may as well have turned her back on me altogether for the effect it had. I noticed her body language had stiffened, and dropped my hands to my sides in response. For a second I had no clue what to do with them until I stuffed them into my leather jacket.
“How have you been?” I asked softly, glancing around me in both directions because she appeared to be looking past me.
“Good. You?” There was an awkwardness that had never existed between us previously, and I hated the feeling, so I decided to flirt a little just to raise a smile.
“You tell me? Do I look okay?” I asked, grinning widely as I held my hands out so she could see all of me when my jacket fell open.
“Yeah, you look good, Gray.” The reluctant way she said it made me feel embarrassed I’d asked because for a split-second I’d been caught up in the moment and forgot how she felt about me.
“Are you still mad at me, Pheebs?”
“Not at all, this is just a little—”
“There you are. Did you find any?” Harry Lockhart, the bass player from Vanderlight wandered up and shoved his hand under her coat, pulled her in, and kissed her hard. When he released his grip, Phoebe muttered, “They don’t have any. The huge, bald, roadie guy said they’d check out the hospitality tent and get back to me.”
My eyes narrowed when I realized who she was with and to say the following few minutes were even more awkward than before was an understatement. Harry stood with his arms folded, talking down to me and my band members; telling us how lucky we were to be there, and what an honor it was to be supporting them. My first thought was to tell him get the fuck over himself, that luck had nothing to do with the choice, and neither did he, but I figured he was a pretty self-important asshole, and those points would be missed on him.
Conscious because Phoebe stood by his side, I let it ride, not wanting the poor girl to feel any more embarrassed than she already was, but my focus from that was completely distracted by what he did next.
My blood turned a darker shade of red when it was fired up by the way he disrespected her when he grabbed Phoebe by one of her breasts and pulled her toward him. “Kiss me,” he ordered, his tongue hanging out before her eyes flicked to mine and she did what he told her. His hand went up the hem of her skirt and my hand shot out and held his wrist to stop him from humiliating her any further. “Later, mate,” I said, distracting him like I was joking. I wanted to crush his fucking fingers. Instead, I pulled him away from her under the pretense of needing more information about the dressing rooms.
“Fuck. Can’t you read, dude? You follow the big yellow arrows like it said on the entrance.” I nodded, trying to keep my cool when I wanted to rip the dick’s voice box clean out his throat. I watched Brody move in between Harry and Phoebe. Brody leaned in and whispered something while Harry looked at me, and although Phoebe never took her eyes off me she shook her head, and put her hand up in a gesture that said she didn’t want to hear what he had to say.
Brody had always been perceptive and stepped between me and Harry as he slapped Harry’s back and did the one thing we both had read correctly about him. Harry was only interested in talking about himself, so Brody engaged him in conversation.
Being a drummer, Brody was best placed to divert Harry by talking about his skills on the bass. It was the nearest instrument to the drums and they were the rhythm of any band. “Harry, I know you’ve not got much time but I’m a huge fan, and I just wanted to ask you if you could give me a couple of tips…”
As soon as he was out of earshot I turned to Phoebe. “Pheebs? What the fuck?”
Chewing her lip, she shook her head angrily. “You don’t get the right to question me, Gray. No fucking way. This is none of your business.”
“Well, I’m making it my business. No guy is going to treat you like that while I’m around.”
“And you did better than that…how exactly? I was your whore too once, remember? Caleb’s before that.”
“You were not my whore,” I argued through gritted teeth.
“No? Fuck buddy? Friend with benefits? It all comes down to the same thing. You kept me like a pet, and fucked me when you felt like it. At least Harry doesn’t sugar coat it. I know exactly where I stand with him.”
I stood in front of her and gave her a penetrating look, understanding the depth of her hurt even after all this time, “You don’t really think that’s how I treated you, do you?” I asked, focused on that for a moment because hearing her shocking words was like a sucker punch to the chest. What she was to me was much more than that. I cared about Phoebe, still cared about her, and I’d never have treated any woman the way Harry had just manhandled her.
“Listen, Gray, it was good to see you but I better get back. Harry doesn’t like it when I talk to other guys. He’s pretty possessive.” I reached for her hand but she stepped to the side, pulling her arm up out of the way before moving away to where Harry was talking to Brody.
As she reached him, Harry pulled her roughly into his side; his swift action almost knocked her over. My jaw felt tight as my hands curled into fists. Muttering a cuss under my breath, I waited, feeling frustrated as Brody came back with a dark scowl on his face, every bit as furious as I felt.
“You’re not gonna leave her with that dick, are you?”
“Don’t think I want that. I just tried to talk to her but she threw our friendship in my face.”
“No more than you deserve, Gray. You treated her shoddily and let her go.”
“What do you mean, I let her go? We were friends. I had no right to keep her with me.”
“Know what I think? I think you have no idea what she was to you.”
Shaking my head angrily, I growled in frustration. “We were friends, Brody. Friends.”
“Keep telling yourself that, Gray. You may even believe it, but to the rest of us there was a lot more going on than you were willing to admit. Phoebe’s a great girl, you could do a lot worse. Now look…” He swept his hand over in the direction of where Harry was and by then he had Phoebe pinned against the wall and was being less than discreet at feeling her up in public.
The way Harry treated her bothered me and I had a mind to go over there and punch the fucker into the next field, but Phoebe’s comment about it being none of my business was the only thing that had stopped me. If that’s what she wanted who was I to interfere?
I was still mulling over whether to get involved when someone tapped my shoulder. A skinny little guy with thick, black-rimmed glasses, greasy nondescript colored hair, who was wearing headphones and a washed-out band T-shirt told me we had to get prepped for our set.
Caleb grabbed me by the sleeve of my jacket and tugged me in the direction of the dressing room. Glancing back over my shoulder at Phoebe, I couldn’t help feel like I was letting her down, especially after the way she’d stood by me. Surge nudged me. “Gray, you need to step away, this is no longer your business,” he warned. It wasn’t, but knowing that wasn’t stopping Harry from treating Phoebe in such a degrading way.
Reluctantly, I walked away. It didn’t sit well with me, but poking my nose in where it wasn’t welcome wasn’t going to improve Harry’s treatment of Phoebe. I decided that I’d find her when Harry was on stage with his band and try to talk some sense into her. It was strange. I had been crazy excited before I’d seen her and from that moment on, all I wanted was to talk to her again and for our set to be over so that I could have the opportunity to get her away from that sleazebag.