CHAPTER ONE
We’d told the label that we were starting over mostly from scratch, and we hadn’t been lying; but we hadn’t been all that up front about how long it was going to take us to start the album over with Jack. I was thinking about that fact--and the latest scolding from Ron about how the label people were getting restless--while I sat in front of a teeny tiny cafe that didn’t even have a name anymore, it had changed hands so many times.
Things with Dan and me were still a little shaky, a couple of months after our big meeting with Ron, but we were at least hanging out again. I could look at Sophie without feeling like she was some bitch goddess of whiskey who’d scorned me; but I still felt like the odd man out in the band. Everyone else had someone: Alex had Mary, Jules had Fran, Nick had Olivia, and the sole other holdout, Dan, had Sophie. It was starting to form a new dynamic in the band--we didn’t all just hang out after practices or recording or whatever and get drunk like we used to. The other guys now had someone to meet up with, to go home to.
“You want a refill?” I looked up from my phone. Jimmy, one of the sons of the woman who owned the cafe, was standing at my table with a pot of coffee in his hand.
“Sure, man,” I said, pushing my cup towards him. I’d been out late--really late--the night before, hanging with Nick and Olivia. She apparently wanted to do a special on after-hours parties in the local scene, and if my blurry memories were anything to go by, she’d ended up with more material than she could use. We’d gone to see Garage Collective and Bent Bridges at Chelsea Club, and ran into the boys from The Sweet Goodbye and Nolan from Bang-Bang; from there the night had just gone completely off the rails. As soon as Bent Bridges and Garage Collective finished up, we were all headed out to Scarlett’s, and then somehow found ourselves at the end of the night at Benji’s house from The Sweet Goodbye. I wasn’t even sure if Nick and Liv had managed to get home by the time I crashed in my own bed a few hours later.
Jimmy poured me some coffee; I thanked him and watched him walk to one of the other tables. I’d managed to sleep for a couple of hours before the sun in my room made it impossible, and then made my way to the cafe. I didn’t have a hangover exactly--but I was definitely feeling the lack of sleep. Fortunately, we weren’t in the studio that day, or else I’d be in trouble. I scrubbed at my face and debated whether it’d be worth it to go back home just yet; I didn’t have anything on the calendar for the day, and not even really anything for the night. I obviously couldn’t hang out at the cafe all day, but I didn’t exactly enjoy the idea of spending the next several hours by myself, either.
I opened up my messaging app and found Dan’s number. Yo. You up to anything today? I tapped send. If Dan was busy with Sophie, I told myself I’d check with Jules; if nothing else, Jules was good for some weed and beer and maybe we’d hit up the beach for a bit. I set my phone aside and drank down about half my coffee.
Hey. Soph is helping clean someone’s place from Respects, so I’m free til tonight. Any ideas? I finished off my coffee and told Jimmy I didn’t want anymore; I was already starting to feel like my heart was going to pound clean out of my chest. As far as I knew nothing all that interesting was going on, but there had to be something to do for a few hours.
Let’s meet up in Downtown and see what’s good, I wrote back. That was the best I could I do on only a few hours of sleep. I smiled to myself, remembering some of the high points of the night before; it wasn’t quite the way that things had been before, but it was good to be around other musicians, just hanging out and partying it up. I’d probably spent over $200 at Scarlett’s, but I didn’t think it was all that big a deal in the grand scheme of things. As long as the label didn’t drop us, I could always make it back later on when the album came out.
Sounds good, bro. Meet you at Boston’s in like 30? I did a little mental math--it would take about fifteen minutes to get up to Delray from my place. I could wash my face, take a leak, and check on a few things before heading over. I texted Dan back that I’d see him then and took the check Jimmy had given me for the meal into the cafe.
I felt a bit off as I made my way back home; almost sad. I’d been feeling that way a lot ever since things had gone south with the band; when Dan and I started bickering and rest of the group had to work around us. As a band, we were working on figuring out what the hell we were going to do with ourselves and how to deal with the change in the dynamic, but it was slow going, especially when we had to come up with an album that the label would be willing to put out at the same time. There were some days when I was pretty sure that in like--maybe twenty years--we’d be on some cut-rate Behind the Music web series, talking about how Molly Riot had gone from being one of the most successful indie bands out of South Florida to absolutely imploding in a matter of a year. No one seemed to really have any idea what to do to put things back on the rails and get us on track again; everything was about keeping the fucking train going, not about whether it was going in the right direction. I tried to be optimistic, but unless something changed really fucking drastically, I wasn’t sure we’d even have an album to put out in a few months’ time. I wasn’t sure if we’d even still have a band.