Indie: I think the ten-minute song is going to be really good.
Jenna: I hope you didn’t tell him that.
Indie: No. I told him it’s unmarketable.
Hudson: And what did he say?
Indie: He said I sounded like a Suit, specifically like Jenna Holden, and that Jenna Holden was hired to get him Balmain deals and negotiate fat deals with record labels, not produce his next album. He also said he’d once caught you nodding your head at a Maroon 5 song, and the fact that you’re not dead to him after that is a miracle in itself, so you should not push your luck. Again, his words, not mine.
Hudson: Classic Alex.
Jenna: We’ll have to work on that. Indigo, how’s his mood? Does he look okay to you?
I didn’t know how to answer that. Alex constantly looked like his soul was shattered, but his bravado was steel and metal. I didn’t know him well enough to know if his current state was good, bad, or indifferent. He didn’t look like he was having suicidal tendencies, but I wasn’t exactly a qualified shrink.
Indie: He’s crabby, but fine.
Hudson: That’s his default setting.
Indie: He and Lucas aren’t getting along.
Hudson: When did they ever?
Jenna: Keep us posted, Indigo.
Jenna: Indigo?
Indie: I said I only answer to Indie.
Hudson: BURN.
Hudson: Also, I think Alex is rubbing off on you a bit.
Oh, he had no idea.
Tokyo, Japan.
Not so fun fact: when you’re an alcoholic, holding a bottle of champagne in your hand is the equivalent of clutching a semi-automatic weapon. Destructive, but somehow still fucking legal in all fifty states.
I don’t know who the fucker was who kept on sending them to every room I’d stayed at during this tour, but whoever they were, they had inside information, malicious intent, and a lot of free time on their hands. Every time we rolled into a new city, Blake, Jenna, and Hudson all made sure to call the hotel and warn the local staff to empty the minibar of alcohol. I was kept away from everything I could get high on, including mouthwash, dust remover, and hand sanitizers. I swear, the fact I still smelled remotely pleasant was a fucking miracle. And though I was too busy hating the world to actively look to score or get pissed, my sobriety was mainly a product of circumstances and laziness. And now I had a bottle of champagne and a minute by myself.
Fancy that.
Knowing Blake would come upstairs to our hotel room any second and that Indie had a key card to my presidential suite, I quickly wrapped the bottle in a hoodie and shoved it into one of my suitcases. They’d both lose their shit had they known I’d found the bottle on the threshold. The first time Blake had opened the door to find a bottle of Jameson, he’d tossed it out of the window and cursed, watching it swan-dive into the ocean. The second time, he’d hired a PI and treated himself to a twenty-minute meltdown in the bathroom. And Indie…she would go on a hunt all over the world to track down the twat who’d tried to throw me off the wagon, turning every stone over until they were found. Never mind the fact I thought I knew exactly who the bastard was—and where he was. In bed, with my ex-girlfriend.
Which reminded me, I needed to throw the plan of fucking Stardust into high gear before I got back with Fallon. She may have been a cheater, but I wasn’t.
The decision wasn’t calculated or even particularly smart. Sure, I saw Indie balling into herself like a kitten on the couch of the private jet with her head on Lucas’ thighs—his crotch—but it wasn’t like I was jealous. My heart rolled in my chest helplessly like a wounded soldier, because Waitrose didn’t deserve anything, much less the only girl on the tour.
The. Only. Girl. On. The. Tour.
If anyone was going to fuck this girl, it’d be me, not my backstabbing drummer and frenemy.
Rising up from my open suitcase, where the champagne had been placed carefully on the side, covered by clothes, I walked across the darkened room—the wrought iron chandelier looming from the ceiling like a devious monster. The wallpaper was black, with Japanese letters smeared in red. I stopped by the kitchen island, flipping over my notebook with the notes from last night.
Progress.
My soul didn’t feel quite as empty when I strode over to the floor-to-ceiling window overlooking Tokyo.
Clean. Busy. Sophisticated. Tokyo was built high, wide, and in long strokes, like she’d been painted by a confident artist. I’d been here once before and had made some pretty sweet memories in the form of a foursome and a dirty underwear vending machine I’d emptied.
When my phone rang, I didn’t immediately move. The only people I spoke with were already on the tour, as pathetically tragic as it may sound, and Jenna and the rest of my management usually liaised directly with Blake, because he was less likely to be a volatile tosser. I withdrew my mobile from my back pocket, frowning.
Mum.
Not today, Mother Dearest.
I let the call die, watching as the screen lit up again with another call as if on cue.
She hadn’t called when I broke up with Fallon.
Or when I’d been thrown into rehab the first time.
The second time, she hadn’t even answered said phone when I’d been desperate enough to want to talk to anyone, her useless arse included.
In fact, the only time she had picked up the phone to talk to me was after the Grammys’ incident, to tell me I had circles around my eyes and that blue is not my color.
This meant she either needed to break some bad news or ask for more money to nourish her plastic surgery/gambling habits. Unfortunately for her, I was working on not letting people screw me over. Since Mum was about as constructive in my life as fucking leukemia, I chose to cut her out.
Blake walked through the door, talking to Jenna on the phone. “Jenna. Jenna. Jenn-a,” the last one was peppered with exhaustion. “I’ve got it all under control, trust me. And if, by any chance, I need to leave him for a few hours, Indie will take over. Girl watches him like a hawk.”
I flicked my cigarette into the trash, the amber tip still burning. The scent of something unnatural melting—plastic or polyester—spread around the room and I plopped down on the low, black couch and stared at the ceiling.
“What’s up?” Blake asked, boomeranging his mobile across the black marble island.
I stole a bottle of champagne, and I’m probably going to drink it in one gulp next time you take a shit.
“I wrote a song.” Much better.
“Is it any good?”
Blinking slowly, I tried ungluing my teeth from my tongue. “Think I would’ve told you if it was shite? Of course it’s good.” Though, really, who the hell knew? Art is like love. It’s too subjective for you to see it clearly.
“Wanna play it for me?” Blake collapsed on the loveseat across from me.
As if on cue, Alfie and Lucas walked in the main door, waltzing toward the sofa I occupied and taking their seats. The new track was ten minutes long. Way longer than the average song, but for the first time in ages, I believed in something I’d done. It felt good.
“Yeah, play it for us, Winslow. Serenade us like you mean it.” Alfie batted his eyelashes, clutching the fabric of his shirt over his heart.
Lucas looked tense and didn’t say a thing, which was probably good, considering how our last conversation had ended. I smirked.
“I still need to polish a few things, but I’ll give you the notes soon.”
“Notes for what?” Alfie shoved his bacteria-infested hand into a bowl of chocolate-coated strawberries in the middle of the coffee table. No way was I touching those strawberries, or that table, or anything else in the fucking suite now. I wasn’t much of a germophobe, but the bloke was made of fifty percent flesh and blood and fifty percent jizz.
“My new song.”
“You wrote a song?”
“I wrote a song.”
“Let me guess,” Lucas said. “Indie helped?”
I paused for one second before deciding I was above acknowledging his existence.
“I told Lucas I saw you guys hugging down the hall yesterday,” Alfie volunteered, his mouth full, red juice dripping all over his chin. “Just, you know, to spice things up.”
“Wanker,” Blake muttered, shaking his head.
Lucas continued to stare at me like I’d killed his fucking kitten. The fact he had feelings for Stardust was bizarre to me. They’d known each other for less than a week. Where had he acquired all those feelings? His newly found vagina?
“She was there when I wrote the song,” I said noncommittally, refusing to make her a bigger deal than she was.
Lucas’ jaw was tight and square. “The moment we saw her at the Chateau, you knew I had my eye on her.”
“Yeah, well, maybe that inspired me to have my eyes on her, too.” I shrugged, turning on the TV and flipping channels.
Waitrose closed his eyes and fell back on the sofa, releasing a sigh.
“It’s not a good idea, Alex. Even if it wasn’t for me, you are not in the right headspace to start a relationship. You need to battle your demons first.”
“Relationship?” I laughed. “Who the fuck wants a relationship?”
The end game—Will Bushell—was waiting for me around the corner, in Paris, in just a few weeks’ time. Lucas’ presence reminded me that Fallon was going to be with him, and it was time to reclaim her. Lucas reminded me of a lot of things, but most of all, he reminded me I was a competitive bastard, and every single thing I did, I did to prove one thing—I was still number one.
Best artist.
Best musician.
Best lover.
I got up from my seat, peeling off my wrinkly tank top.
I was a semi-automatic weapon, fully loaded and ready to fire. I was my own downfall, and deep down, I knew it.
Yesterday I lay with you in a bed of glass
We broke together trying to survive your past
Still, in your pain I found magic
The beauty in something so raw and tragic
When life feels banal and ordinary and beat
Run to me, my blue-eyed girl, to the place where pleasure and pain meet
The. Crowd. Went. Nuts.
A veteran artist knows how to recognize a real buzz from miles away.
There’s the usual buzz. The we-like-everything-you-do type of excitement. Then there’s the promotional buzz. The one that smells of glossy brochures and PR women in pencil skirts and brunches at The Ivy to close a nice, fat deal with a top-notch radio station. Then there’s the real buzz. This buzz. It hums in your veins—not unlike morphine—floods your entire body until every hit of oxygen feels like downing a shot. I watched my fans beneath my boots, clawing out of their own skin with elation. They skulked over security, desperate to get to me. Yelling, screaming, begging.
More. More. More.
The flashes blinded me as I finished playing “Secondhand Love,” the song I wrote after I left Stardust standing in the hall. Nine minutes and twenty-three seconds of anger, frustration, and passion.
I could have kissed her.
And another bloke probably would have kissed her.
But where was the fun in that? I liked playing with my food, and that included driving her crazy until she could take no more of it. I wanted to make her cunt ache and drip for it. Because when I finally touched her, the star would turn into dust.
Pacing the stage, I threw them a crooked smile over my shoulder. I was shirtless, first sign that I was in a good mood. Usually I didn’t like the whole Justin Bieber see-my-abs shite. This wasn’t Hooters, and once you let your record label fuck you in the arse, the least you can do for yourself is keep your bloody shirt on. But I felt like I was standing in the middle of a bonfire singing that song to a crowd for the first time. Sweat trickled down my torso, and I could see on the huge screen behind me that the cameraman zoomed in on the drops running down my V-tap. I wondered how long it’d be before the video hit YouTube, and which would be more successful—my new song, or a picture of me fisting that starlet while coming all over her tits. Probably the latter. I decided to Google it sometime. It wasn’t like I fucking cared what people said about me, anyway.
“There’s more where that came from.” I adjusted the mic on its stand and walked across the stage.
The screams became louder, more frantic. Yeah, this wasn’t polite encouragement. This was hunger, immediate and greedy. I was vindictive and complicated and back. Fuck, I was back. I had lyrics in me and they were gushing out. It was futile to pretend Stardust didn’t have a hand in this. She did, and I was going to keep her until the last drop of greatness poured out of me. Or her. Whoever it came from.
I looked down at my fans. Then up at the inky sky. Then in-between, to the space where a golden cloud of body heat and bright lights powdered above their heads, and smiled.
I put my lips to the mic.
My fingers strumming my guitar, I started to play “Man Meets Moon,” one of my earliest tunes. When I didn’t need a blue-haired girl to save me. When I was a teenager with an agenda and a lot of fucking mind to speak. A kid who didn’t know where the Chateau Marmont was and only knew about caviar from the movies. The video of “Man Meets Moon” had been filmed in Lucas’ basement by Blake. I’d had a zit the size of Beirut on my chin that day, but it still gave me the big break I’d needed.
Alfie, Lucas, and the back guitarist followed suit. I gave the back guitarist a slight head nod, and his eyes widened in disbelief. Everyone on my tour knew what it meant. I hadn’t done that in two years, but it was time. He needed to cover for me while I crowd surfed.
And I was going to crowd surf.
Because tonight, it felt so real and right.
Good and bright.
Just. Like. Coke.