I walk out of the metro station tossing mon truc up and down with one hand. It’s French for ‘my thing’ and it’s what I call the little green ball I’ve carried around for most of my life. I’m not exactly a sit-still-and-be-quiet kind of guy, so it helps to have something I can fuck around with when I’m stuck doing something like riding in a cramped metro car.

I spot my band-mates and Shayla standing outside a plain, brown brick building a few feet up the street. I jog over as I pocket mon truc. We’re getting our first look at the new headquarters of Metro Records today.

“Welcome to the dungeon,” Shayla jokes, pulling the door open once I’ve arrived.

After running a booming entertainment management company for a few years, Shayla decided to expand her music industry empire by founding her own record label. Sherbrooke Station just so happened to be in the market for a new label around that time, and she offered us a deal.

Technically she’s not our manager anymore, but not much about our relationship has changed. If there was ever any kind of Sherbrooke Station emergency, I don’t think we could handle it without giving Shayla a call. Câlice, if there was ever any kind of emergency, I’d give Shayla a call. If the zombie apocalypse started today, I sure as fuck would be running straight to Shayla’s house the second I found out. She’s the angry lesbian badass everyone needs in their life. She scares the shit out of us and makes us love her all at the same time.

“This is an improvement to that tiny ass place in Saint-Henri,” Matt comments, as we step inside the office space.

“The team is pissed I couldn’t find somewhere more central,” Shayla tells us, “but for now, this is all the rent I can spare, and it’s not too far from my management HQ, so I can bounce between both all day pretty easy.”

The room is one big open space with a few desks set up, staff hunched over their laptops. The interior barely counts as finished; it’s closer to actually industrial than it is to industrial chic. There’s a sander lying on the floor and bare light bulbs hanging from ceiling.

“You need some help with that?” I ask, pointing at the sander.

“Oh, the contractors must have left it. They’re here every morning.”

“Contractors?” I laugh and slap my chest. “You’ve got all the construction expertise you could ever need right here, Votre Altesse.”

Shayla pretends to hate it, but I think she secretly loves it when I call her ‘Your Highness.’

“Thanks for the offer, but I think we’re going to stick with people who actually understand the concept of safety standards.”

“Tell me about it,” Matt groans. “He tried to mix concrete in our bathtub last week.”

“I put a tarp down!” I protest.

I don’t see what the problem with that was. When the muse isn’t telling me to make music, the muse is usually telling me to build stuff, and last week the muse told me I needed to mix up some concrete for a new table to go out on the balcony. It was going to be génial, until Matt came home to the apartment we share and threatened to have our landlord evict me if I didn’t shut the whole thing down.

Matt shakes his head. “Sometimes I wonder how you made it to adulthood.”

“I don’t think he’s there yet,” Ace argues, clapping me on the shoulder. “Still the baby of the band.”

At twenty-three, I’m three years younger than Ace and Matt, and five years younger than Cole. I was just eighteen when Matt and Ace saw me playing at an open mic night and asked me to join their project—so yes, as these connards put it, I am the baby of the band.

“You boys done with the witty banter now?” Shayla asks. “Can we get on to the reason I brought you here?”

“Yes, Shayla,” we all chorus. I salute her.

She leads us over to a corner of the space where the shell of a partitioned-off room has been built, just the wooden framework without any drywall over it.

“Come, step inside my office,” Shayla jokes, moving right through one of the gaps in the wall and turning to face us after we follow her.

“Stylish,” I comment, pretending to look at imaginary furniture.

“It will be,” she says firmly. “Now, I need you guys to take a look at this new tour media.”

“Tour media?” Cole repeats.

His tone gets all of our feelings across in two words. We just spent all summer doing the Canadian festival circuit and hitting up most of the UK. I love being on the road, but the last thing any of us want to do right now is think about another tour.

“Mona has people trying to book you left, right, and centre, and they’re calling here, too,” Shayla explains. “We had to get a phone line that’s just for Sherbrooke Station. You boys are making us work.”

She starts tapping on the tablet in her hand before holding it up for us to crowd around. She swipes through some pictures of tour posters and designs for t-shirts before asking us what we think.

“Uh...” Matt begins before trailing off.

Shayla sighs. “I know. Trust me, I know.”

The designs look like something I could have made, and while I am a man of many talents, making t-shirts isn’t one of them.

“Are those...bubble letters?”Ace asks

“These would be great,” adds Matt, “if we were the Bay City Rollers. Shayla, we can’t use these.”

“I know,” she agrees. “That’s why I wanted to show them to you. We don’t have the capital to outsource any more graphic design work, and I definitely can’t afford to put someone else on the payroll right now. Everyone has been pitching in where they can, but clearly music people are not necessarily art people. This is the best anyone has got.”

“Hire someone,” Matt says firmly. “Put it on our bill.”

Shayla has refused to go into any debt building this business. She saved for years just to get it started, and she won’t take out any loans. The label could handle smaller bands no problem, but Sherbrooke Station is getting bigger by the minute, and we’ve had to put most of our money into covering our own asses—much more money than labels usually take.

“Are you sure?” Shayla asks. “It would only be for a little while. I just need some college student who’s good with Photoshop to pump out a few designs, but you guys are already getting billed for so much...”

“Go for it, Shayla,” Matt urges. “This place is called Metro Records. You practically named it after us. We’re just making sure you make us look good.”

He smiles to show he’s joking, but I shake my head. “I don’t know about you, but I always look good.”

Matt takes the tablet from Shayla’s hand and holds the photo of the t-shirt up in front of my chest.

“Trust me,” he announces, “no one’s going to look good in these.”

Shayla claims her tablet back. “Agreed. So it’s settled: I’ll hire someone ASAP and keep Mona up to date. How are things going with her, by the way?”

Mona is the manager Shayla hooked us up with when she moved on to running Metro Records. Whereas Shayla always looks like some kind of punk rock princess with green-tipped hair and a septum piercing, Mona is quite possibly part of the Italian mob. She never wears anything besides black suits and fancy jewellery. I’m even more scared of her than I am of Shayla, but she knows how to get shit done. Somehow, her and Shayla are best buddies. I think it’s because they both totally would have been cutthroat lady pirates if they were born a few hundred years earlier.

I’m not going to say I have sexual fantasies about that, but I’m not going to deny it either.

“Mona’s impressive,” Matt answers. “She’s sorry she couldn’t be here today. She hates letting us run around without supervision.”

Shayla nods. “Oh, I sympathize. I sympathize so much. Just look; I took my eyes off JP for two seconds, and he’s already destroying my office.”

Everyone turns to where I’m trying to do chin ups on the framework for the wall.

“The gains, man,” I protest. “I gotta get the sick gains.”

The wood creaks under my hands. Shayla herds us out of the building soon after that.

“You guys are coming to the party tonight, right?” Ace asks us, once we’re back out on the sidewalk. “We’re pre-ing at Stéphanie’s place. Well, the people who are pre-ing are pre-ing. Her friend wants to go see some band after, and they don’t seem half bad.”

Stéphanie’s friend is having a birthday party tonight, and of course, this friend asked Stéphanie to invite her boyfriend’s famous band. Cole and Matt don’t seem too stoked about it, but I for one am always up for some cake.

And by cake, I mean Stéphanie’s hot dancer friends.

“Count me in, mon gars,” I tell Ace.

I tie my hair up in its knot and tuck my wallet into my pocket before making my way to my apartment door, humming Flo Rida’s ‘Cake’ to myself as I go. I’ve got a feeling this is going to be a good night. I’m just about to head out into the hallway when my phone starts beeping at me.

I check the screen, where my ‘Take pills’ reminder is flashing.

Merde, I almost forgot.

I backtrack to the bathroom and bend down to reach the very back of the cupboard under the sink. There’s a bunch of random crap in here to hide the three plastic pill bottles with my name printed on the prescription labels. I pop my evening dose into my mouth and then hang my head under the sink faucet, washing the pill down with a few gulps of water. After I double check that the bottles are still hidden, I head out to make my way over to Stéphanie’s place.

There is an actual cake in the apartment when I show up. It’s hard to tell since a few pieces are missing already, but I think it’s supposed to be shaped like a dick. Pop music is blasting, and the tiny living room/kitchen is filled with girls in mini dresses dancing and drinking champagne. Ace is the only other guy in sight.

This is a very ideal situation.

“Save me!”Ace shouts over the noise, getting up from the couch and meeting me by the door.

“Save you?” I repeat. “Mon gars, look around you. This is paradise, man. This is what happens when rock stars die and go to heaven.”

Stéphanie pops up by Ace’s side to say hi to me, and Ace throws an arm around her shoulders.

“No,” he corrects me, “this is what happens when rock stars die and go to heaven.”

He glances at Stéphanie and I pretend to gag.

“This”—he gestures around the room with his free hand—“is just a shit show.”

One of the girls trips over the arm of the couch and lands on her back on the cushions. The piece of cake she was holding smears all over her chest.

“Lucy’s having too much fun eating dick!” someone shouts.

I turn back to Ace. “Paradise, man.”

By the time Matt and Cole show up, we have all the furniture in the room piled up by the wall to make a dance floor, and I’m showing off my ‘Single Ladies’ moves. Learning that routine was the gift that keeps on giving. Stéphanie’s friends are standing in a circle around me, cheering me on.

“NO!” I hear Matt roar, just as I look up to see him shutting the apartment door behind him and his girlfriend.

The song is almost over. I’m about to drop into my break dance speciality to finish things off: the worm.

“Not the worm!” Matt keeps shouting. “You’re so fucking bad at the worm!”

One of the girls hears him too and starts chanting, “Do the worm! Do the worm!”

The rest of my audience joins in with her, so of course, I do the worm. Matt might think I suck at it, but the girls go crazy and take turns hugging me as soon as I’m done. Stéphanie turns down the music after that, and everyone boos for awhile until she threatens to kick them out if they don’t quiet down. They’re soon distracted by the new people in the room, and I take the chance to grab myself a piece of dick.

Cake. Dick cake.

“Cole’s by himself.”

I look over my shoulder to see Stéphanie standing behind me as I cut a piece of the cake. She’s speaking in French for once, and I continue in the same language.

“Ouias,” I agree, “not a good sign.”

Things between Cole and his girlfriend Roxanne have been even rockier than usual lately. They break up and make up so often it’s like watching a ping pong match, but nobody likes having to see Cole brooding and moping around whenever the ball flies out of the court.

Not that anyone who doesn’t know him well could tell his Roxanne brooding from his normal brooding.

“Where’s your little lapin, by the way?” I ask.

I’ve had my eyes on Molly’s bedroom door all night. I was hoping she might turn up and see some of my dance moves—because that’s a gift everyone deserves—but I guess she’s out for the night.

“Oh, she’s home,” Stéphanie replies. “I told her we could have the party somewhere else if it was going to bother her, but she said it was okay. I know she’d say that even if it wasn’t okay, though. Poor Molly. I need to get these girls out of here before I get us evicted.”

“She’s been in her room this whole time?”

Stéphanie nods and swipes some of the icing off my cake before walking away.

I stare at Molly’s room for a moment before I turn back to the kitchen counter and cut another piece off the now mostly destroyed dick. Plopping it onto a plate, I carry it with me across the apartment and raise my hand to knock on the closed bedroom door.