I wake up with a hard-on. I lay there blinking at the muffled glow of sunlight streaming in behind yellow curtains and try to work out where I am and why I all I can think about right now is jerking off.

Hotel room... We’re in Ottawa...

I flip over and see a pile of brown hair splayed out on the pillows of the bed next to mine.

Right. I just spent the night four feet away from Kay Fischer.

She’s facing away from me, the blankets pulled up so high they’re almost covering her head. I smile and for some reason get even harder when I hear that she’s quietly snoring. Lifting my head up, I see the clock says it’s already nine. We’re supposed to be on the road back by ten so we can make it to a meeting with Atlas.

The thought at least takes care of my boner situation. I get out of bed and grab some clothes from my bag as quietly as I can before heading into the bathroom. After stripping out of my boxers and t-shirt, I set the shower as hot as it will go and try to burn away the brain fog. I’m not hungover, but I can already tell that getting only five hours of sleep after a show is going to hit me hard today. I can’t even imagine what a European tour will do to me.

The room is so steamed up I can barely see myself in the mirror, so I crack the door open an inch to air things out before getting dressed. I look into the room as I do and freeze.

Kay’s standing by the window, peering through the gap in the curtains. She’s barefooted, the pale skin of her long legs naked until they hit the hem of my shirt and just a hint of her black underwear underneath it. I can’t tear my eyes away from the curve of her ass.

She turns at the sound of the door and I jump away before she sees me, lunging for my toothbrush and turning on the sink full blast, like that’ll convince her I wasn’t looking. I get ready quickly, still picturing her hair all tangled from sleep, tumbling down her back in the sunlight. She looked like a fucking goddess.

Get it together, man.

I drum my hands on the bathroom counter, trying to drown out the image with a beat, but that just makes the picture clearer. When I open the door all the way she’s fully dressed, coat and all, and sitting on the edge of the bed. My shirt is folded up and lying near my pillow.

“Sleep well?” I greet her.

“Not really.”

“Me neither,” I admit. “They have free breakfast here, if you want it.”

“I’m good. I’ve got to get my stuff at Lily’s and then catch my bus. Besides”—she shrugs her shoulders and glances at the bedside table—“I kind of just ate all of those.”

I look at the pile of wrappers from the little packs of hotel room chocolates.

“Didn’t know you had a sweet tooth, Kay.”

“Maybe there’s a lot you don’t know about me.”

I start throwing things into my bag. “I’m sure that’s true, but there are also a lot of things you don’t know about me, Miss Wikipedia.”

I offer to drive her to wherever Lily’s place is even though I don’t really have time, but she turns me down, saying it’s an easy bus ride. We leave the room together, her heading for the lobby and me to the hotel restaurant. We’re two steps out the door when I spot a guy lying face down on the hallway floor.

“Jesus Christ!” I shout. “Ace?”

There’s a moan in response.

“Oh my god.” Kay’s already rushing to crouch down beside him. “Ace, are you okay?”

“So fucking loud,” he groans. “It’s so fucking bright.”

He rolls over and sits up, letting out a gasp and clutching his head as soon as he does. That’s when I’m sure he’s fine; I’m pretty familiar with what hungover Ace Turner looks like. I let myself breathe again.

“You son of a bitch. What the fuck are you doing in the hallway?”

“I got back this morning. I saw the sock, man.” His voice is hoarse.

“The sock?” Kay repeats, twisting to look at me.

I walk backwards to the door of my room and pull the sock I stretched over the handle off, tucking it into my back pocket.

“I don’t know what he’s talking about.”

“You put a sock on the door?”

She looks like she’s about to explode.

I lift my hands up in surrender. “I didn’t want one of the guys barging in and waking you up. They’re not really good at privacy.”

Ace lets out a chuckle that sounds like a dying cat. “Knew you guys were banging.”

“We are not banging!” Kay and I shout at the exact same time.

Ace just keeps rubbing his head.

“Why didn’t you just go to JP and Cole’s room?” I demand.

“Didn’t know where it was,” he grumbles. “I was drunk, man. The floor seemed like a good place to be.”

Kay and I share a look.

“Do you still have your key?” I ask him. He pulls it out of his pocket in response. “Good. Go in the room and get cleaned up. Checkout is in half an hour. You can sleep in the van.”

I don’t wait for an answer as I step past him and walk over to the elevators. Kay follows, and we ride down to the main floor. I stay silent, fists balled at my sides, foot tapping rapidly against the carpeted floor.

“I’m surprised security didn’t wake him up,” Kay ventures.

“I’m surprised he’s not in fucking jail,” I spit through clenched teeth.

I want to say more, but I stop myself. I’ll vent to Cole and JP later. I might feel like I can trust Kay, but Ace is family. I’m not about to spill all his faults to someone who’s still technically not much more than a stranger.

The doors open at the lobby and we get out, pausing in the middle of the room.

“When do I see you next?” I ask.

“They’re sending me to the Trois-Rivières show.”

“Oh, you’re in for a treat. It’s JP’s hometown. They go fucking nuts over us there.”

She hefts her purse onto her shoulder and I can’t stop myself from asking before she goes.

“We’ll be in Montreal for a week. Maybe you and I could hang out?”

She looks at her feet. “I don’t know if that would be—”

“That’s him! That’s the drummer!”

A group of five people with cameras around their necks are charging towards us. One of them has a microphone.

“Matt! Matt Pearson!”

“Shit!” Kay hisses. She pulls her scarf up and the hood of her coat down before I even have time to realize what’s going on.

“Matt, tell us about Ace Turner. He was seen being kicked out of the Heart and Crown last night before vomiting in the street.”

“This is the third incident of the kind this month, Matt.”

“Are you really ready for an international tour?”

“Where is Ace now?”

“Who’s this, Matt? Is this your girlfriend?”

“Tell us, Matt!”

I feel like I’m being suffocated, like the walls are pressing in around me. Kay’s backing away, still hiding her face, but for every step she takes the reporters just move closer.

“Back off!” I roar. “You all need to back the fuck off!”

As quickly as the reporters arrived, a team of hotel security steps in and starts herding them towards the door. A tiny guy in a suit behind the huge guards is screaming at them.

“For the last time, this is private property! We will be contacting the police!”

I watch, stunned, as the reporters give in and slink away. The suit guy turns around and smoothes his hair, striding towards me and Kay.

“I am so, so sorry for the disturbance.”

He goes into a rambling apology and starts offering me things like a free night’s stay and a late check out for today.

“Yeah, thanks,” I cut in. “That’s great. Just keep those assholes out, please.”

“Absolutely, sir. The authorities are being involved as we speak.”

He heads off and I turn to Kay. She still looks wide-eyed and panicked.

“Does that—Does that happen a lot?” she stammers.

“It’s never happened before,” I answer truthfully. “With fans every now and then sure, but never the press. You okay? You look really freaked out.”

“I shouldn’t be here,” she mutters, glancing around the room like she’s expects more cameras to pop up.

“Kay, it’s not a big deal.”

“It is a big deal!” she snaps. “Of course it’s a big deal if pictures of us together get leaked. If they see that before my article gets published they’ll know exactly who I am and—”

She cuts herself off.

“And what, Kay? Who’s ‘they’?”

“Look, I have to go. This was a bad idea.” She whirls around to where the guy in a suit is still talking to his security team. “Does this place have a back door?” she demands.

“Absolutely, Miss. I’ll have a security agent see you out. Or I could call you a cab?”

“It’s fine. Just show me the door.”

She doesn’t even look back at me as she goes.

* * *

“So,” JP reaches over to the passenger seat and claps me on the shoulder, “we saw the sock, man. C’était qui?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Pourquoi?” he demands. “Whiskey dick?”

“I said I don’t want to talk about it. Just pay attention to the road.”

He shrugs and keeps driving, turning up Les Cowboys Fringants on the stereo. We spend the rest of the ride to Montreal in silence, Ace snoring in the back as he tries to sleep off his hangover. We’re so late we have to go straight to the meeting with Atlas.

Shayla meets us outside the building with an expression like a storm cloud.

“Congratulations, boys,” she says caustically, as JP jogs up after parking The Chick Magnet. “You’ve made the news.”

“What are you talking about?” I ask.

She hands me her ever-present tablet and I look down to see it open to an article on a tabloid site. The headline reads, ‘Sherbrooke Station, Montreal Sensation: Are They Ready for Fame?’

Underneath there’s a picture of Ace outside the pub we were at last night, puking into a trash can.

“Shayla, come on,” I plead. I pass the tablet off to the guys. “This is some stupid gossip site nobody even reads. You know as well as I do we’re not big enough for shit like this to matter yet.”

“This only went up three hours ago, and your fans have already been tweeting it and posting it at all over your Facebook page,” she answers flatly. “And that’s just one article. The concert reviews weren’t great. I’ve had the Atlas PR team jumping down my throat, asking me to explain myself. They’re saying I don’t know how to manage you. This is getting bad, guys.”

“Jesus, Matt.” Cole looks up from the article. “You hired a hooker?”

“What?” I grab the tablet out of his hands and scroll down. There’s a photo of me and Kay in the lobby, her face obscured by her scarf as security guards swarm around her. I zoom in on the text:

Matthew Pearson, Sherbrooke Station’s charismatic drummer, was seen entering the hotel lobby with an unidentified woman shortly after 9AM. It appears the man fellow band member Jean-Paul Bouchard-Guindon has described as, “just a straight up, all around good guy,” might be anything but. Hotel security surrounded Pearson’s companion within seconds of her arrival in the lobby as she attempted to conceal herself. She was later seen being escorted from the building by a guard. An exclusive source within the hotel staff has suggested Pearson may have been engaged with an escort.

“The fuck?” I roar. “Security showed up because of the journalists, and they’re saying Kay is a hooker?”

“I knew you were banging her!” JP crows.

“We are not banging, and this is not the time!”

Shayla stares us all down. “Agreed. Now is not the time for any of this. I don’t know what we’re walking into right now, but brace yourselves, because it isn’t going to be pretty.”

With that, she turns and pushes through the revolving glass doors, and we follow after her into the chrome and concrete lobby of Atlas Records. Weird, giant lights that look like UFOs are suspended over us, making everything blindingly bright as we cross over to the elevators.

Shayla leads us to a room filled with a few classy grey couches and steel tables, the floor to ceiling windows giving a view of the slush-filled streets in Montreal’s downtown core. None of us actually sit, choosing instead to lean against the couch arms or the walls.

A few tense minutes tick by before a guy in a button-down I recognize from a few of our other meetings shows up.

“Sherbrooke Station, Sherbrooke Station,” he chimes. “What are we you going to do with you boys?”

We all just shift on our feet, arms crossed.

“Well sit down, why don’t you?” He takes a seat on one of the couches and we grudgingly follow suit. “In case you don’t remember, I’m David Lee. I work with the in-house PR team here at Atlas. First off, I just want to say congratulations, guys. Well done!”

I do a double-take. David looks around at us with a huge smile on his face, and starts laughing so hard he actually slaps his knee when he sees how confused we all look.

“You’ve got your first scandal already!” he exclaims after getting himself under control. “It takes some people years to make the kind of waves you’re making. By all standards, no one should even care what you’re doing outside of your shows yet. That tabloid story just dropped today and they’re already talking about you on the radio. We couldn’t have done this better if we’d planned it.”

Shayla leans forward. “So you’re saying this is a...good thing?”

David squints at her like he’s just noticed she’s in the room. “I’m sorry, you are?”

“I’m their manager, Shayla McDougal. We’ve met. Several times.”

“Right,” he says breezily, “the manager. Anyways, yes, luckily for us all this turned out to be a good thing, but just because we couldn’t have done it better ourselves, doesn’t mean we wish we hadn’t. Things can get ugly quick in the PR world, and we really don’t want you guys facing the snake pit on your own.”

“Snake pit?” Shayla repeats.

“It’s what we call the press. They’re vipers, every single one of them.” The sudden hardness in his voice surprises me. “They’re going to take every chance they can get to tear you to pieces, which is why we’ll be scheduling all of your media engagements from now on. The transitional period mentioned in your contract is ending and we’ll be handling any new contact you have with the press. We’ve come up with a strategy to maximize on the momentum this tabloid story is building and we’d like you to stick to it.”

“What kind of strategy, exactly?” I ask him.

“Glad you asked, Pat. Our—”

“It’s Matt.”

“Right, right.” He waves a hand at me and laughs like I’ve made a joke. “Our strategy is mainly focused on Ace at the moment. We like the new angle he’s taking as rock’s enfant terrible. There are too many good guys on the scene right now. ‘Homegrown boys with big dreams’ isn’t going to cut it. To take things to the next level, you need—”

“To actually focus on our music again.”

Everyone turns to look at me.

“Shayla said all the concert reviews were shit,” I continue. “Doesn’t that bother anybody? Isn’t that what matters most?”

David clasps his hands together, mouth set in a tight line. “Look, I get it. This is your dream, your passion. It’s what you’ve worked your ass off to get. We’re here to make that dream come true, but to turn you into world famous rock stars, we have to make the world actually care about who you are. Trust us. You know how huge the other bands on this label are. This is what we do.”

“And you’re going to do that by pumping Ace full of alcohol and letting him puke wherever he wants?” Shayla pipes up.

I fight the urge to hug her right then and there for siding with me.

“I’m not a fucking monkey,” Ace grumbles. “Don’t talk about me like I’m not here.”

David just presses on. “We’re going to do this by manipulating the media for you. You all just need to keep a low profile for awhile, and we’ll handle the rest. Forward any attempts the press makes to contact you to us, and we’ll set up interviews and brief you on what position to take.”

“Wait, so we’re being scripted now?” Cole demands.

“You’re being guided,” David corrects. “You’re all very new to this. Like I said, journalists are snakes. We’re here to protect you from them. You just have to let us do our jobs.”

“Do we even have a choice?’ I can’t help muttering, glancing at Shayla for confirmation. She shakes her head.

“All right, well, good meeting with you all. Glad we got that on the table. I’ll forward more details to your manager as needed. I’m sure you have things to discuss, so feel free to use the room for as long as you want.”

David stands, smoothing down his slacks before leaving us on our own.

“I don’t like it,” I blurt out.

“I don’t either,” Shayla agrees, “but you still have to do it. Complying with the PR department is part of your contract. I can’t schedule your press engagements anymore.”

JP leans forwards. “I don’t like them telling us what to say, but they do know what they’re doing, right? Like he said, all the bands on this label are huge.”

“And total sellouts,” I counter. “Can you name a single group on this label whose stuff you still like?”

“We’ve been over this before,” Ace cuts in. “We agreed when we signed the deal that we weren’t gonna let that happen to us. We’re different. Atlas is just a tool to help us get where we want to go. You said that yourself.”

He’s right. I said exactly that in the weeks leading up to us signing the contract. I remember how sure of ourselves we were, how many evenings we spent in the basement splitting a twelve pack and shit-talking about being the new kings of rock. We always knew we’d eventually clash with Atlas, but we swore to ourselves we’d get through it without giving in.

The fact that Ace seems to remember those days too, despite everything that’s happened since, gives me some modicum of hope. Maybe this is just our first test, our chance to prove we can stay true to our word now that the music world’s not all rose-coloured anymore.

That doesn’t shut up the other worry that’s bouncing around my head, though.

“What about Kay Fischer?” I ask.

“You mean the snake?” JP snickers.

“She’s not a snake,” I snap before I can stop myself.

Shayla gives me a curious look. “What about her?”

“Can she still interview us?”

She shrugs. “I guess she’ll have to go through Atlas now if she still wants to talk to you. I’ll email her and let her know.”

“I can do it,” I offer before backtracking a bit when Shayla narrows her eyes at me like she’s caught the scent of something suspicious. “I have her number from when she interviewed me. It’ll save you some time.”

“Right.” Her eyes keep sizing me up. “You watch yourself, Pearson. All right?”