Rehearsal today has not been fun. The band is like a pack of pinched nerves, wound tight and hardly daring to move around each other in case we set off a reaction. We barely said hello before tuning up and starting to play.

Things have only been getting worse between us since I walked out of the meeting with Amy. The three of them think I’m being dramatic, but I know what Atlas is up to. Our relationship with the label has always been about getting the most out of each other and nothing more; they haven’t decided to get friendly all of a sudden and start sharing helpful tips out of the goodness of their hearts.

They’re up to something. If I sound like a lunatic for saying it, fine.

I give a final bash to my cymbals as we finish up our fourth run-through of ‘Sofia.’ We haven’t been able to nail it yet.

“I think you need to hit the key change after the bridge faster,” Cole tells Ace, as we all pause to grab water.

“I think you need to pay more attention to yourself,” he snaps. “Four strings is a lot to handle, you know?”

JP and I freeze to watch what happens next. No one back-talks Cole, especially not with a bassist jab.

He lifts his strap over his shoulder and slowly sets his bass down on its stand. A dangerous tension shoots through the room as he draws himself up and takes a few deliberate steps towards Ace. He doesn’t stop until they’re almost chest to chest. He’s got at least three inches on him, and Ace seems to shrink down even smaller as Cole glares at him.

“You want to say that again, man?”

To his credit, Ace doesn’t look away.

“No offence. We all know we’re off. Just let me do my thing.”

“Your thing,” Cole repeats, his voice flat.

I can almost see Ace’s heartbeat pounding through the veins in his neck. Cole stares him down for another moment and then shrugs before backing away.

“Tabarnak,” JP swears, once we’ve all started breathing again. “We’ve been in this fucking basement too long. I need a pizza or something.”

After over a year of living together, I’m well aware that JP eats when he’s nervous. He also eats when he’s tired, excited, bored and just about every other emotion known to mankind, but that’s beside the point. We need something to crank the aggression in here down a few notches, or someone’s to going end up getting punched in the face.

“Actually,” I admit, “food would be good. You guys down?”

Ace and Cole shrug. I take that as a yes. I offer to call for delivery, and we agree to stop practicing once the pizza shows up. We’re halfway through an extra large pepperoni and cheese when the food starts having its intended effect, and I realize no one looks like they want to kill each other anymore.

“Any plans for the weekend?” I venture. It’s Friday night, and I figure we’ve reached a point where we can attempt casual conversation.

“Probably sleeping,” JP answers. “Might browse a vente de garage or two.”

Prowling around yard sales is one of his favourite pastimes. It’s where he finds all the weird shit he turns into instruments, or uses as unfortunate decorations for our living room.

I turn to Ace. “And you? Any plans?”

“I was gonna ask if anyone wanted to go out tonight. There’s this show on the Crescent that looks worth checking out. Electro-funk or something.”

“The angels are pissing out there,” JP warns.

We all stare at him. He looks around in confusion.

“You know?” he prompts. “The rain? When it rains it’s like angels pissing.”

We just keep staring.

“Voyons guys, it’s like you don’t even speak English.”

“Literally no one says that,” Ace tells him, before the three of us burst out laughing.

Things ease up a bit more after that. I notice everyone avoids the topic of Shayla or anything to do with Atlas, but I’m just glad we’re talking. In what I think is an attempt to patch up their rift from earlier, Cole agrees to go to the show with Ace. The two of them head out to brave the angel piss and then it’s just me, JP, and the four remaining slices of pizza.

As soon as they’re gone, a huge and extremely self-satisfied smirk spreads across JP’s face.

“So,” he says, nodding and continuing to smile at me like he’s about to dump a bucket of ice water on my head.

“So?” I repeat.

“You gonna tell me if she’s good in bed?”

I keep my face blank. “Who?”

“The snake. I know you’re banging. I was just kidding before, but now I know you’re banging.”

“You definitely don’t know that.”

“Yeah, I do,” he practically cackles. “I saw you getting on the metro with her last Tuesday, and you did not look like you were going to an interview.”

“God, JP, you’re a fucking creep.” I stretch my arms over my head. “Fine. All right. We’re banging. Just don’t go spreading it around, okay?”

He starts pumping his fist in the air and makes some triumphant grunting noises. “Yeah man, I knew it!”

I pick up a piece of pizza and wait for him to calm himself.

“So are you dating or something?” he asks me. “It’s been like two months since you met. When’s the last time you stuck with one girl for that long?”

“You know I’m not opposed to dating, right? I actually prefer it. I just haven’t had time with all the band stuff going on.”

He points a finger at me. “So you are dating.”

“We’re not,” I correct him. “She can’t, not with her article coming up. It looks bad, and I think she’s scared Atlas won’t like us being together. After it’s published though, I...”

I trail off, not even sure where I was headed. I’ve been fixed on the present moment with Kay, taking our time together day by day. Being with her is like walking down a backstreet at night: one moment you’re safe in the glow of streetlamp, the next you’re picking your way through darkness, straining your eyes to see when the next light is going to appear.

I don’t want to bump up against a brick wall one day and realize I’ve reached the end of the road. I want more moments with her, more kisses on rooftops we shouldn’t be on, more nights spent keeping her neighbors awake with her creaking bed frame, more of the way she squints without her glasses, more of her half-smiles and favourite songs—more of her.

If stumbling around with my hands out in front of me is the only way to have her, I’ll do it.

“You should be careful, though.” JP’s voice jolts me back to reality. “She seems cool, and I’m not saying you’re wrong about her, but she’s still the press. Just watch out for yourself, you know?”

“She’s not like that,” I snap.

He holds his hands up in surrender. “Look man, I’m just trying to be—”

“I know!”

He flinches at my shout and I draw in a breath, pausing for a moment to calm down.

“I know. I appreciate it. It’s just, do you think I haven’t thought about all that myself? I know what her job is. I also know who she is. She...understands. About music. She gets it. I’ve never met anyone who isn’t a musician and still gets it the way she does.”

“Then good thing Atlas approved her, if she’s going to write as good of an article as you think she is.”

A pang of guilt hits me like a punch to the gut. I try to steel myself against it. Kay’s article will be good, and if Atlas has a problem with it, we can still use the defence that all her interviews were booked before they took over our PR.

That doesn’t change the fact that I knew the guys wouldn’t go for it and lied to them to get what I wanted.

“You still haven’t told me,” says JP, interrupting my thoughts yet again, “if she’s good in bed.”

I grab the last slice of pizza, pushing my doubts away as I close the greasy cardboard box and set it aside with the others.

“Jean-Paul, you pervert, she is fucking amazing.”

We spend another two hours in the basement talking, and even sit down at our instruments for a bit to fuck around and try writing a new song. The lyrics end up being about Ace and Cole having small dicks, but rhythmically I think we might be onto something.

It’s past one in the morning when I’m finally in my bed and ready to crash for the night. I check to make sure I plugged my phone into the charger and that’s when I notice it’s blowing up with texts. There are seven from Shayla and another five from Cole. I scan over them all, sitting straight up in bed as my heart hammers harder against my chest the more I read.

Shayla and Cole are at the police station. Ace beat someone up and got arrested. The texts are mostly just a jumble of swear words and repeated questions about where I am right now, but from what I can make out the whole thing has something to do with drugs.

“Yo!” JP pounds on the wall that separates his bedroom from mine. “You get the texts?”

“I’m calling Shayla right now,” I shout back.

It takes her five rings to pick up.

“Jesus fuck Matt, where were you?”

I’m about to interject and tell her I was brushing my teeth, but she bulldozes right on.

“I’m at the station. Oh wait, I told you that already. Fuck, this is so bad. Sorry, I’m freaking out. I have the lawyer we work with sometimes coming in. Thank fuck she was in town. I don’t even know why I texted you. There’s really nothing anyone can do right now.”

Everything comes out in one huge gush of word vomit. She’s never lost her cool like this before.

“Shayla,” I begin, waiting to see if she’ll let me talk, “what exactly happened?”

“I don’t know, Matt. I don’t fucking know. Cole doesn’t know. I don’t think Ace even knows. He was hammered, of course. The two of them went out for a smoke at a bar and Ace wandered off to go talk to someone. The next thing Cole knew Ace and some guy were beating the shit out of each other. Cole tried to stop it. I’m scared his nose is broken. He looks like a wreck. He said Ace is even worse and—”

“Shayla,” I interrupt, “it’s okay. It’s going to be okay. Breathe, all right? You’re freaking me out.”

“Right. Breathing.” I hear her inhale and exhale rapidly into the phone. “The cops showed up after that, and the guy Ace was fighting tried to run away. They caught him, and then they took them both to the station. Cole thinks it has something to do with drugs, but he’s not sure. It’s all really unclear and they won’t tell us anything.”

The room feels like it’s spinning. I pinch the bridge of my nose and focus on the floor. “Is he getting out tonight?”

“I don’t know.” I can hear Shayla swallow. “Cole said everyone was taking pictures.”

I stop to contemplate just how bad this could be.

“Should I come over there?” I ask. “Is there anything I can do?”

“I don’t think so. I’ll keep you posted. It does look like he’s going to have to stay the night.”

“Natalie’s home, right? You have someone to look after you later? I’m worried about you, Shayla. You shouldn’t have to deal with this.”

“I’m okay.” The high-pitched edge in her voice doesn’t sound too convincing. “And yeah, Nat’s home. Don’t worry about me. It’s my job to deal with stuff like this. It just...wasn’t how I thought I’d be spending my Friday night.”

“Don’t stay there all night,” I tell her. “Ace doesn’t deserve that from you.”

“Matt...”

“I mean it,” I insist. “Get out of there once the lawyer arrives. Like you said, there’s nothing we can do right now.”

Even if she does take my advice and go home, I doubt she’ll be getting any sleep tonight. JP and I don’t. We spend most of the night in our living room, pointlessly going over the few details we have and checking our phones every few seconds.

I head back to bed around four and manage to sleep until the whistle of an arriving text wakes me up at eight-thirty. It’s from Shayla.

He’s still at the station. Atlas knows. They’re sending their own lawyers.

“JP!” I shout, banging on the wall. “We have news!”

I just hear a loud groaning in response as I text Shayla back.

We’ll head to the station now. I can’t wait this out any longer.

I haven’t even put my phone down when it starts ringing. Shayla doesn’t bother to start with a hello.

“Do. Not. Go. There. My lawyer says there are reporters outside and the last thing we need is for them to see you or any of the guys showing up. Just stay home, Matt.”

I can’t stop the words that come out next through my clenched jaw. “I want to be there to punch his drug addict face when he gets out. If he gets out.”

“That is exactly what we don’t need photos of, Matt. Atlas is pissed. They don’t even want me there. I’m too easy to recognize and link back to the band. Also, they think I’m completely incompetent and a walking invitation for disaster, along with a few other lovely phrases I got in an email.”

I hear a hint of the usual Shayla in her sarcasm.

“They did not call you that.”

“They did, and from the sound of it, they’re going to try to make this the end of my management career.”

“You’re not losing your job over one of Ace’s fuck-ups.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear you feel that way.” She pauses. “Has Atlas tried to contact you today?”

“Not yet,” I answer. “I’ll keep you posted.”

“Same to you.”

We hang up soon after that.

There’s still no news by eleven when Cole shows up at our place. His nose turned out to be fine, just bloodied up from the punch, but the skin under his eye is still swollen. We start attacking him with questions.

“You couldn’t pull him off the guy?” I ask. “Maybe if they hadn’t been full-on fighting when the cops arrived...”

I trail off when I see Cole bristle in his chair.

“Hey, man, I tried.” He jabs a finger at his swollen eye. “Forgive me if I didn’t want to be caught in the middle of a fistfight when the cops showed up. Racial profiling might be a foreign concept to you, but it isn’t to me.”

That shuts me up right away.

“Sorry. That was a stupid thing to say.”

He grunts an acknowledgement, and we try to talk about something else. JP starts banging around the kitchen. He’s been in there for almost half an hour when he walks out with the most massive plate of ham sandwiches I’ve ever seen and sets it down on our coffee table.

“What the fuck?” asks Cole. “There’s three of us. How are we supposed to eat all that?”

“I didn’t even know we had that much bread,” I add.

JP shrugs and grabs a sandwich. I’m not hungry but I take one too, just to have something to do.

“That motherfucker,” I mutter around a mouthful of lettuce and cheese. “I swear to God, if he’s doing crack or something...”

“You’ll what?” Cole prompts. “Kick him out of the band? You know we can’t replace him. As far as Atlas is concerned the rest of us could walk whenever we felt like it, but Ace—he’s the face of this thing.”

“He can’t just keep getting away with this shit. He’s going to destroy himself.”

“Ben là,” JP interjects, “that’s a bit dramatic, non?”

I reach for a second sandwich and brandish it in the air to drive home my point. “He’s under arrest, JP. He could be facing criminal charges. This is the definition of dramatic. You can’t go on tour in Europe if you’re in jail.”

“Look, we don’t even know if this is actually about drugs,” Cole says, for what feels like the thousandth time. “I think he was yelling something about that in the fight, but he was wasted. Nothing he was saying made sense.”

I shove half the sandwich in my mouth. I’m about to crawl out of my own skin. What I need is to get out of this apartment for awhile.

“I have to make a call,” I announce, before getting up off the couch.

JP gives me a suspicious glance. “You’re not calling the snake, are you?”

That’s exactly who I was planning on calling. I wanted to call her as soon as I heard about Ace. I feel stronger when she’s around, like all my problems shrink in size until I can step right over them.

From the evil eyes I’m getting from JP and Cole right now, I can tell they don’t approve.

“That’s not really your business, is it?” I ask.

Cole shakes his head slowly from side to side. “It kind of is, man.”

“What part of ‘she’s a journalist; don’t trust her’ do you not understand? This is literally the worst possible time for you to talk to her.”

I could take JP more seriously if he didn’t have a sandwich in each of his hands, but I respond with the note of a threat in my voice all the same.

“What part of ‘I like her, she’s a good person’ do you not understand? You guys are acting like I’m being childishly naive about this. Do you think I would jeopardize the band over someone I wasn’t sure about?”

“If that person had nice tits, sure,” JP quips.

Ham sandwiches hit the wall on the other side of the room as I flip the tray over and let it clatter to the floor. JP gapes at me, eyes wide with a sudden terror.

“Wrong thing to say.”

I don’t even recognize my own voice. In the next second, Cole’s tugging on a fistful of my shirt and pushing me back down on the couch.

“What the fuck, man? This isn’t—”

A knock at the door cuts him off. He leaves JP and I sitting there avoiding each other’s eyes as he goes to answer it. The excess testosterone in the room evaporates when we hear Shayla’s voice.

“He’s out! They got him out!”

JP jumps up and whoops, but I’m not as quick to start celebrating.

“Out on what? Bail?”

Shayla walks into the living room. Aside from a slight redness in her eyes, it’s hard to tell she’s probably been awake for over twenty-four hours. She’s wearing a getting-shit-done kind of leather jacket, and the green tips of her hair are gathered into a tight bun at the back of her head. This is the warrior Shayla I know, love, and fear. The sight fills me with the hope that things might not be as bad as we thought.

“He wasn’t charged.” She notices the ham sandwich explosion and raises an eyebrow but doesn’t stop to ask about it. “After hearing the whole story, I’m surprised they just let him walk without some kind of charges, but he’s out free.”

I motion for her to sit down. “What’s the whole story? Have you talked to him?”

“Not directly. Just to some Atlas people.” She pauses and notices us all staring at her like we’re starving animals and she’s handing out scraps. “Jesus, you guys look like shit. Have you slept?”

“The story, Shayla!” JP urges.

“Right. Okay.” She draws in a breath. “So as I understand it, a guy approached Ace outside the bar and offered to sell him coke.”

“I knew he was a fucking crackhead!” I burst out.

Shayla gives me a dirty look. “He turned him down. The guy kept pressuring him. Things escalated and got violent. I don’t know if this is true, but I’m told Ace was only defending himself. The cops thought they were just shutting down a drunken fistfight, but when the dealer tried to run they searched him and found the drugs. Ace was taken in on suspicion of being involved.”

We all sit there for a moment, taking it in.

“So...” JP begins, when the silence has stretched on for so long I can almost hear the ham and lettuce remnants sliding down the wall, “everything is okay now?”

Shayla barks a laugh. “Have you been on the internet lately?”

We shake our heads and she sighs.

“Let’s just say, I think a photo of Ace getting punched in the jaw is on its way to becoming a meme. This is not something you’re going to live down overnight.”

“So what’s our next move?” I ask. “Ride it out?”

“That’s what I’d suggest, but no. The Atlas PR department has other plans.” She gets up and swings her purse onto her shoulder. “I’m actually here to collect you, boys. We’re going to a press conference.”